"Our strategy is this," President Bush said last month. "We will fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America."
He was talking about jihadists, of course. And Mr. Bush is behind the curve. The president apparently missed the smoking-gun 1991 document his own Justice Department introduced into evidence at the Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas. The FBI captured it in a raid on a Muslim suspect's home in Virginia.
This "explanatory memorandum," as it's titled, outlines the "strategic goal" for the North American operation of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan). Here's the key paragraph:
The process of settlement [of Islam in the United States] is a "Civilization-Jihadist" process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who choose to slack.
The entire 18-page platform outlines a plan for the long haul. It prescribes the Muslim Brotherhood's comprehensive plan to set down roots in civil society. It begins by both founding and taking control of American Muslim organizations, for the sake of unifying and educating the U.S. Muslim community this to prepare it for the establishment of a global Islamic state governed by sharia.
It sounds like a conspiracy theory out of a bad Hollywood movie but it's real. Husain Haqqani, head of Boston University's Center for International Relations and a former Islamic radical, confirms that the Brotherhood "has run most significant Muslim organizations in the U.S." as part of the plan outlined in the strategy paper.
The HLF trial is exposing for the first time how the international Muslim Brotherhood whose Palestinian division is Hamas operates as a self-conscious revolutionary vanguard in the United States. The court documents indicate that many leading Muslim-American organizations including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim American Society are an integral part of the Brotherhood's efforts to wage jihad against America by nonviolent means.
The Muslim Brotherhood is an affiliation of at least 70 Islamist organizations around the world, all tracing their heritage to the original cell, founded in Egypt in 1928. Its credo: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." Sayyid Qutb, hanged by the Egyptian government in 1966 as a revolutionary, remains its ideological godfather. His best-known work, Milestones, calls for Muslims to wage violent holy war until Islamic law governs the entire world.
According to a 2004 Chicago Tribune investigation, establishing the Brotherhood in the United States has been a 40-year project that has worked mostly underground even beneath the notice of many Muslims. Richard Clarke, the former top U.S. national security official, told the Senate in 2003 that the Muslim Brotherhood is the common thread linking terrorist fundraising schemes in the United States which likely explains why so many mainstream American Muslim organizations were named by the feds as "unindicted co-conspirators" in the HLF trial.
Is this just alarmist paranoia? Not at all.
This matters because high-profile organizations with roots explicitly in the Muslim Brotherhood have successfully established themselves in a paramount position to define Islam in America according to a radical politicized model. And they've done so without the American public having the slightest idea about their real agenda. Indeed, the Bush administration is unwittingly helping the Islamist cause by including their leaders in public events, thus conferring them legitimacy. On Labor Day weekend, the same Department of Justice that's presenting evidence of the ISNA's involvement with radical Islam at the Dallas trial sponsored a booth at wait for it ISNA's national convention in suburban Chicago.
Look, no rational person believes America is going to exchange the Constitution for a caliphate. Rational people aren't the point. As the London subway bombings showed, even a tiny cell of committed radicals can kill a lot of people. Mustafa Saied, an American Muslim who left the Brotherhood, told the Tribune that he worried about the radicalism the Brotherhood inculcated in its membership here. "With the extreme element," he said, "you never know when that ticking time bomb will go off."
As long as they commit no crimes, CAIR, ISNA and the other Brotherhood-related groups have the right to advocate for their beliefs. But they don't have the right to escape critical scrutiny, and they deserve informed opposition. Courageous Muslims like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy are sounding the alarm about radical Islam's stealth takeover of U.S. Muslim institutions. Why are the news media ignoring this? Fear of being called Islamophobic?
This has got to stop. Six years after 9/11, we're still asleep. Islamic radicals have declared war on us and some are fighting here in what looks like a fifth column. Read their strategy document. It's there in black and white, for those with eyes to see.
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist. E-mail him at rdreher@dallasnews.com.
#1
Indeed, the Bush administration is unwittingly helping the Islamist cause by including their leaders in public events, thus conferring them legitimacy.
When is that going to change? Every single important Muslim that Bush has been seen with should be brought forward to make a well-publicized statement of his position regarding establishment of shari'a law in America. Any who do not publicly condemn the pursuit of such treason need to be deported, jailed or monitored.
As long as they commit no crimes, CAIR, ISNA and the other Brotherhood-related groups have the right to advocate for their beliefs.
Bullshit. Sedition and treason are crimes. An avowed goal of subverting the constitution is actionable criminal conduct.
. . . There is a yearning in some quarters to see an old-time convention again, with platform or credentials fights, multiple ballots, favorite-son candidates and old political pros holding back delegates on the first or second ballot so that their candidate can be seen as gaining strength on the third or fourth. . . . Is it possible that the Democrats or the Republicans could have that kind of convention next year? . . .
The old-time convention was a medium through which men who seldom saw each other and often didn't know each other could communicate, negotiate and reach an agreement. And not always productively. . . .
The function of the convention as a communications medium became clear to me in reading the memoir of Franklin Roosevelt's 1932 and 1936 campaign manager, Postmaster General James Farley. At one point Farley tells how he was able to predict, accurately, that Roosevelt would carry every state but Maine and Vermont in 1936. Farley transmitted the prediction to FDR in a book sent by special messenger containing copies of letters from Democratic leaders in every state, letters he assured Roosevelt were "not a week old." He added that he was "telephoning every state leader north of the Mason and Dixon line this afternoon for last minute reports, and if I get anything worthwhile I will pass it on to you this evening."
In other words, in 1936 it was considered extraordinary for even the campaign manager of the incumbent president of the U.S. to make long-distance calls to political leaders. Men of business in the 1930s, and up through the 1950s when direct-distance dialing was instituted, communicated largely through letters. Long-distance calls remained rare in the early 1960s, when they cost about $1 a minute at a time when factory workers earned $100 a week.
Politicians in the years of old-time conventions did not reveal their bottom-line negotiating positions or their goals in writing. They remembered that the 1884 Republican nominee James G. Blaine was assailed with the concluding words of a letter that had gotten into the wrong hands: "Burn this letter!" In 1932 Farley could not begin his serious politicking for the Democratic nomination until he got off the train at Chicago's Union Station and could speak with other politicians in person. Campaign managers did not really know how many delegate votes their candidates had until the first roll call. Preliminary roll calls on platform resolutions or credential fights provided useful and hitherto unavailable information about candidate strength. . . .
Today the convention as a communications medium has been replaced by other media, such as long-distance telephones, frequent air travel, an abundance of public opinion polls and by the television networks' delegate counts (Martin Plissner conducted the first one for CBS in 1968; in 1976 the networks' counts held up in the very close contest between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan). Not to mention the Political Hotline (founded by Doug Bailey in the 1980s), the Internet, the blogosphere and Blackberries. The kind of communication that was possible only at the convention in the old days is now going on all around us.
The parties will continue to hold national conventions, because the experience of the last 25 years tells them that they can be (though aren't always) effective advertisements for their nominees, who have of course been chosen months before. The vice presidential nominees also have been chosen before the convention in most cases. But even if the caucuses and primaries of one or both parties in 2008 fail to give any candidate a majority of delegates, no one is going to wait for the convention to negotiate an outcome.
He's probably right, damnit! An old-fashioned floor fight would be fun to see, but it ain't gonna happen.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/17/2007 13:05 ||
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There are still possibilities. For example, with some subtle maneuvering ahead of time, Hillary might be weak enough so that she might not win the first ballot against Obama.
While she was then figuring out how to nail the second ballot, the delegates would have been freed up. At that point, Al Gore could enter and try to take the second ballot in a proclamation vote, if his people had calculated taking enough delegates away from both Hillary and Obama to win outright.
Even if he couldn't take the second ballot, he could then play king maker for "anybody but Hillary". If Hillary still won, he could then split the party, and go independent or Green.
Article from 2004 that the WSJ reprinted today after the Judge's nomination as AG was announced. Worth reading.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/17/2007 15:04 ||
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Well, there is one documented incident involving an FBI intelligence agent on the West Coast who was trying to find two men on a watch list who he realized had entered the country. He tried to get help from the criminal investigative side of the FBI, but headquarters intervened and said that was not allowed. That happened in August 2001. The two men he was looking for were named Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. A few weeks later, on Sept. 11, they were at the controls of the airplane that struck the Pentagon.
And don't forget it.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/17/2007 17:57 Comments ||
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The Terrorist Death Watch count cranked up to over 9,000 during the weekend. 142 killed in September so far in Iraq to 27 of our own. 277 in Afghanistant to 2 Americans.
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I'm so sorry I haven't killed any Infidels recently and have run out of female relatives for honor murders. I will work harder to perfect myself in the image of the Perfect Man, the Pedophile Mohammad.
Posted by: Titus Hayes ||
09/17/2007 13:25 Comments ||
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Once again, another "islam-must-be-saved-from-within" article.
I'm SOOOOO tired of waiting for the "self-criticism" to start. I've concluded it ain't a-gonna happen. It's one of the (many) inherent flaws of their system of beliefs:
- belief in their superiority
- belief in the unwavering, uninterpretable, verbatim truth of the koran
- belief that you must submit to the rulings of religious leaders (who won't lead in the self-examination they so desperately need because it would diminish their power)
- belief in jihad and violence as a valid tactic for social change
self-criticism will never take root with such a set of principles in place.
Any self-criticism would imply that there is something wrong with Islam. The vast majority of Muslims see nothing wrong with killing the Infidel wherever and whenever they can. Being critical of such an idea amounts to apostasy.
Are they going to continue to say that the higher degree of religiosity you have the higher likelihood that you are a threat, because thats the message theyve sent, Mr. Wahid said.
They're out there on the left so you can look moderate. Theyre saying what needs to be said, opening the conversation up so John Edwards isnt considered the left-wing fringe loon that nobody should listen to.
Which seems like it should be exactly the reason why John Edwards needs to make his independence from them clear, but according to Hamsher's tirade, this is why Edwards can never criticize the netroots. Well, this is Hamsher jockeying for netroots power.
[W]ere not very happy when the people we defend turn around and start kicking them...
We love you. We want to love you.
Knock it off.
"I love you. Do as I say or I'm going to hurt you." Sounds like something the whacked-out stalker chicks in Fatal Attraction or Misery would've written.
I'm sure she realizes that since Edwards is using them because they are useful that he will only use them to the extent they are useful. He wants power, not true love. And so does she, obviously.
You have to love watching Lefties twist themselves into rhetorical pretzels. All the high-minded talk about 'questioning authority' and how dissent is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy goes right out the window when they are the ones being questioned. Then - suddenly - it becomes "My side right or wrong! And don't you DARE question my authority, much less stray off the intellectual reservation!"
Hit the link for a really good cartoon/illustration.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/17/2007 12:38 ||
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The leftist mind makes much more sense when you think of it as a mental condition.
This year I marked the anniversary of Sept. 11 by driving through Massachusetts. It wasn't exactly planned that way, just the way things panned out. So, heading toward Boston, I tuned to Bay State radio talk-show colossus Howie Carr and heard him reading out portions from the official address to the 9/11 commemoration ceremony by Deval Patrick, who is apparently the governor of Massachusetts: 9/11, said Gov. Patrick, "was a mean and nasty and bitter attack on the United States."
"Mean and nasty"? He sounds like an oversensitive waiter complaining that John Kerry's sent back the aubergine coulisagain. But evidently that's what passes for tough talk in Massachusetts these days the shot heard around the world and so forth. Anyway, Gov. Patrick didn't want to leave the crowd with all that macho cowboy rhetoric ringing in their ears, so he moved on to the nub of his speech: 9/11, he continued, "was also a failure of human beings to understand each other, to learn to love each other."
I was laughing so much I lost control of the wheel, and the guy in the next lane had to swerve rather dramatically. He flipped me the Universal Symbol of Human Understanding. I certainly understood him, though I'm not sure I could learn to love him. Anyway, I drove on to Boston and pondered the governor's remarks. He had made them, after all, before an audience of 9/11 families: Six years ago, two of the four planes took off from Logan Airport, and so citizens of Massachusetts ranked very high among the toll of victims. Whether any of the family members present Tuesday were offended by Gov. Patrick, no one cried "Shame!" or walked out on the ceremony. Americans are generally respectful of their political eminences, no matter how little they deserve it.
We should beware anyone who seeks to explain 9/11 by using the words "each other": They posit a grubby equivalence between the perpetrator and the victim that the "failure to understand" derives from the culpability of both parties. The 9/11 killers were treated very well in the United States: They were ushered into the country on the high-speed visa express program the State Department felt was appropriate for young Saudi males. They were treated cordially everywhere they went. The lap-dancers at the clubs they frequented in the weeks before the Big Day gave them a good time or good enough, considering what lousy tippers they were. Sept. 11 didn't happen because we were insufficient in our love to Mohamed Atta.
This isn't a theoretical proposition. At some point in the future, some of us will find ourselves on a flight with a chap like Richard Reid, the thwarted shoe-bomber. On that day we'd better hope the guy sitting next to him isn't Gov. Patrick, who sees him bending down to light his sock and responds with a chorus of "All You Need Is Love," but a fellow who "understands" enough to wallop the bejesus out of him before he can strike the match. It was the failure of one group of human beings to understand that the second group of human beings was determined to kill them that led the crew and passengers of those Boston flights to stick with the obsolescent 1970s hijack procedures until it was too late.
Unfortunately, the obsolescent 1970s multiculti love-groove inclinations of society at large are harder to dislodge. If you'll forgive such judgmental categorizations, this isn't about "them," it's about "us." The long-term survival of any society depends on what proportion of its citizens thinks as Gov. Patrick does. Islamism is an opportunist enemy but you can't blame them for seeing the opportunity: In that sense, they understand us far more clearly than Gov. Patrick understands them.
The other day, you may recall, some larky lads were arrested in Germany. Another terrorist plot. Would have killed more people than Madrid and London combined but it was nipped in the bud so it's just another yawneroo: Nobody cares. Who were the terrorists? Mohammed? Muhammad? Mahmoud? No. Their names were "Fritz" and "Daniel." "Fritz," huh? That's a pretty unusual way to spell Mohammed.
Indeed. Fritz Gelowicz is as German as lederhosen. He's from Ulm, Einstein's birthplace, on the blue Danube, which, last time I was in Ulm, was actually a murky shade of green. And, in an excellent jest on Western illusions, Fritz was converted to Islam while attending the Multi-Kultur-Haus the Multicultural House. It was, in fact, avowedly unicultural an Islamic center run by a jihadist imam. At least three of its alumni including another native German convert have been killed fighting the Russians in Chechnya. Fritz was hoping to kill Americans. But that's one of the benefits of a multicultural world: There are so many fascinating diverse cultures, and most of them look best reduced to rubble strewn with body parts. Fritz and a pal, Atilla Selek, had been arrested in 2004 with a car full of pro-Osama propaganda praising the 9/11 attacks. Which sounds like a pilot for a wacky jihadist sitcom: "Atilla and the Hun."
Fritz Gelowicz. Richard Reid. The Australian factory worker Jack Roche. The Toronto jihadists plotting to behead the Canadian prime minister. The son of the British Conservative Party official with the splendidly Wodehousian double-barreled name. All over the world there are young men raised in the "Multi-Kultur Haus" of the West who decide their highest ambition is to convert to Islam, become a jihadist and self-detonate.
Why do radical imams seek to convert young Canadian, British and even American men and women in their late teens and twenties? Because they understand that when you raise a generation in the great wobbling blancmange of Deval Patrick-style cultural relativism nothing is any better or any worse than anything else; if people are "mean and nasty" to us, it's only because we didn't sing enough Barney the Dinosaur songs at them in such a world a certain percentage of its youth will have a great gaping hole where their sense of identity should be. And into that hole you can pour something fierce and primal and implacable.
A while back, I had the honor of a meeting with the president, in the course of which someone raised the unpopularity of the war. He shrugged it off, saying that 25 percent of the population is always against the war any war. In other words, there's nothing worth fighting for. And I joked afterward that some of that 25 percent might change their mind if Canadian storm troopers were swarming across the 49th Parallel or Bahamian warships were firing off the coast of Florida. But maybe not. Al-Qaida's ad hoc air force left a huge crater of Massachusetts corpses in the middle of Manhattan, and Gov. Patrick goes looking for love in all the wrong places.
How many people in any society think like Deval Patrick? That's the calculation to make if you want to figure out its long-term survival prospects.
#1
Americans are generally respectful of their political eminences, no matter how little they deserve it.
This needs to change in a big bad way.
Why do radical imams seek to convert young Canadian, British and even American men and women in their late teens and twenties? Because they understand that when you raise a generation in the great wobbling blancmange of Deval Patrick-style cultural relativism nothing is any better or any worse than anything else; if people are "mean and nasty" to us, it's only because we didn't sing enough Barney the Dinosaur songs at them in such a world a certain percentage of its youth will have a great gaping hole where their sense of identity should be. And into that hole you can pour something fierce and primal and implacable.
I was discussing Islamic terrorism with my friend who runs the local Middle East food store. I've been going there for over a decade. She's a Syrian-born Christian and has had nothing but pure hatred for Muslims. At first I opposed her blanket condemnation of Muslims but in the past few years have had to admit to her that she is right.
We were speculating upon how such young poeplechildren reallycan commit such vicious crimes. Both of our thoughts centered upon the lack of any rational philosophy or reasoned approach to reality. She then uttered an old Syrian saying that stuck permanently in my mind:
#2
a failure of human beings to understand each other, to learn to love each other
One of our leaders said this on the sixth anniversary of the attacks? The same leader who said the attacks were "mean and nasty and bitter"?! I hope this guy can think better than he speaks. Was he crying when he gave his speech? Does this guy look suspiciously like a purple dinosaur?
He's had six years to figure it out but he is still in way over his head, or maybe that beauty contestant from South Carolina is his speech writer. And she hates him.
In any case I hope South Carolina's voters are embarassed enough that they get rid of him at the first opportunity.
#9
This is the same guy a few weeks back that, after some local yoots having a dispute put a bullet into a state house window right under his office, had the Boston cops round up all the local bums who congregate across the street on the Common even though they supposedly had nothing to do with it.
Sounds like another "failure of human beings to understand each other, to learn to love each other." I guess that's for the "little people". Maybe he should've gone over and hugged a bum and made it all better...
While some US politicians claim that the war is lost, a broader analysis of the existential struggle between two visions of the world may provide a different picture.
The trick that the party of defeat uses is simple: reduce the larger struggle to the war in Iraq, then further reduce it to the success or failure of the so-called "surge"; then proceed to show that, despite the presence of 22,000 additional US troops, the terrorists still manage suicide attacks. The conclusion: the war is lost; let's run away as fast as we can!
However, the "surge" as such is not the issue.
There is no doubt that the arrival of additional US troops has helped improve security in parts of Iraq.
Nevertheless, whatever success the "surge" might have had is due to the psychological impact of the decision by President George W Bush to increase the number of US troops rather than cut and run.
The real issue in Iraq, as in all other theatres of the global war against terrorists, has always been one of commitment and resolve, especially on the part of those who have the power to make a difference.
Rather than enter into a debate about the actual number of suicide bombings, let us note some positive developments that no one can deny:
* The Sunni Arab tribal sheikhs in the once unruly Anbar province have decided to come off the fence and take up arms against Al Qaeda, even if this means collaborating with the Americans.
* The principal Arab Sunni armed groups, including the 1920 Brigade, and the Islamic Army of Iraq have switched side by agreeing to work with the Iraqi government against foreign terrorists.
* On the Shiite side, Muqtada Al Sadr has ordered his Mahdi Army to lay down arms for the next six months. Sadr took the decision after dozens of his commanders, former members of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guards, decided to switch to the government side.
* Another Iranian controlled Shi'ite group, known as the Thar Allah (God's Revenge), has also suffered major setbacks with dozens dead and scores captured by the new Iraqi army.
* The British withdrawal from Basra did not lead into a take over by Iran's agents, although both Sadr and Thar Allah did test the waters. Instead, the Iraqi army and police, with support from nationalist Shi'ite groups such as Fadila (Virtue) and the Islamic Council of Iraq, control Iraq's second largest city. The Basra Bloodbath, predicted by some pundits, has not materialised.
* The various political blocs, both Sunni and Shiite that had withdrawn from the Iraqi parliament during its long summer recess, have ended their boycott.
* Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's coalition government has won a new mandate with the reaffirmation of support by three blocs of parties that account for 85 per cent of the seats in the parliament.
* As the parliament prepares for a new session, a full legislative programme tackling key issues such as sharing oil revenues, municipal elections, and federalism, is unveiled.
* Most Arab states have ended their boycott of new Iraq and dispatched diplomatic missions to Baghdad to open embassies. France has also ended its boycott and sent Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to Baghdad with a message of support.
* The United Nations, hoping to raise its profile, is also expected to appoint a new high representative to Baghdad to revive its frozen programmes.
* Anyone visiting Iraq now could take a stroll in the neighbourhoods "re-claimed" from the terrorists, including in places such as Basra where there are no US troops. A trickle of displaced persons is beginning to return to areas that had become wastelands because of gang wars among sectarian groups.
* Religious leaders of Arab Sunni and Shiite communities attending a "National Reconciliation Conference" in Redwaniyah, have denounced sectarianism and pledged support for new Iraq.
* Al Qaeda has had to postpone its promise of formally announcing the creation of the so-called Islamic Emirate of Iraq on three occasions. Last October, Al Qaeda promised it would issue a new currency for its putative "Islamic emirate" and name a "Governing Council". However, those fantasies, however, had to be shelved as Al Qaeda lost its safe havens in a few places in Anbar, Diyala and Salahuddin provinces.
* Judging by the buzz in pro-terror sites in the cyberspace, Al Qaeda is facing recruitment problems for the war in Iraq. One Al Qaeda guru, using the nom de guerre of Sheikh Bassir al-Najdi, recently warned that the organization was unable to replace "lost martyrs" in Iraq. No one knows how many terrorists have been killed in the past six months. However, the buzz in pro-terrorist circles is that a whole generation of Jihadists has been wiped out. The funeral industry in those Arab countries where the Jihadists originate is booming.
* More importantly, perhaps, the number of defectors from Al Qaeda is rising. In Saudi Arabia alone, numbers of former Jihadists in Iraq have surrendered to the authorities and joined a rehabilitation program. Some have appeared on television to repent their criminal deeds in Iraq and urge on the "faithful" to fight Al Qaeda.
* Inside Iraq, Al Qaeda has not been able to replace at least five key commanders killed or captured in the past six months.
What is certain is that the political tide is turning in favour of new Iraq.
As in any war, what counts in this war is the protagonists' states of mind. No war is won with a defeatist discourse.
The "surge" was a political signal that the US did not intend to throw in the towel. That signal persuaded fence sitters in Iraq and, beyond it, the broader Arab world, to take side. Most chose the side of new Iraq against its internal and external foes.
The US and its Iraqi allies cannot be defeated in Iraq. However, defeat could be manufactured in Washington where part of the American elite seeks it in order to win in the domestic political war.
Each time an American political leader speaks of defeat, he encourages the terrorists, discourages allies, signals to fence sitters to look elsewhere, and thus prolongs the war.
It is not twenty-two thousands more or fewer American troops that would determine the outcome of the war in a country the size of France. What could persuade the terrorists and the sectarian gangs that their cause is lost is the perception that behind those 22,000 troops stands a nation, a "superpower" at that, determined not to surrender to terror. A United America can win with even fewer troops, acting as symbols of US commitment. A divided America will lose even if it doubled the number of its troops.
To win in Iraq, the Americans need to end their own partisan war on this issue.
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A United America can win with even fewer troops, acting as symbols of US commitment. A divided America will lose even if it doubled the number of its troops.
The money quote.
And this is the precise strategy of the Democratic Party - to divide America so that we will lose the WOT. Because that this they only way they can 'win' power. And the more dead Americans the better for the Defeatocrats.
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No, JohnQC, they really don't. They think the whole thing is juiced up by the Republicans in order for THEM to get/keep power. The Europeans have thought essentially the same way. I think it is a natural state of the species to deny unpleasantness - "if I don't believe it, then it does not exist." This is the exact situation Europe faced with regard to the rise of fascism in the 1930's. That psychological study which was much-discussed here last week may actually have been onto something, but with incorrect analysis.
. . . the Times article leaves a number of questions unanswered. We'll begin with the issue of Israel successfully penetrating Syria's air defense system. While it's happened before, the Syrian air defense network was supposedly re-organized after an embarrassing 2003 Israeli strike against a Palestinian terrorist camp near Damascus. During that raid, the Israelis reportedly exploited confusion over geographic responsibilities within the Syrian defense system. The most recent mission--which involved a much deeper penetration into Syrian territory--suggests that (a) Bashir Assad's air defense network hasn't improved, or (b) the Israelis are using more advanced measures to target the system, and render it impotent.
Then, there's the matter of that commando team. If the Times is correct, those personnel arrived in the target area a day ahead of the fighters, inserted (we'll assume) by Israeli Sea Stallion helicopters. As we've noted before, the successful infiltration of a commando team by helicopter, deep into Syrian territory, is an impressive operational feat, indeed. But getting the commandos (and their choppers) all the way across Syria (and back again), undetected, represents a monumental challenge, even for a state-of-the-art military like the IDF.
That raises another interesting question: where did the commandos and their choppers come from? The target also lies relatively close to Syria's northern border with Turkey, which just happens to have close military ties with Israel. It would be far easier for those Sea Stallions to infiltrate from an airfield or forward operating base in Turkey, rather than making the long trip across Syria. So far, little has been said about a possible Turkish "role" in the enterprise, despite the fact that the IDF has long trained in that country, and members of Turkey's armed forces routinely utilize Israeli military facilities.
There's also the possibility that the commando team staged from a location in Iraq . . . .
Finally, there is still debate over exactly what was at the Syrian complex, and the urgency of the Israeli strike. In the Times' account, the target is alternately referred to as nuclear "material" and "equipment." Obviously, those descriptions are a bit vague, covering everything from fissile uranium (and other bomb components) to the machinery used in fabricating nuclear weapons. But then, there's this quote--from an Israeli source--which suggests the IDF were going after something much more ominous:
This was supposed to be a devastating Syrian surprise for Israel, said an Israeli source. Weve known for a long time that Syria has deadly chemical warheads on its Scuds, but Israel cant live with a nuclear warhead.
Truth be told, we may never know what was at that "agricultural center" along the Euphrates. But it is revealing that the Israelis, who had been watching the facility for months, suddenly elected to strike the complex, after that "cargo" arrived from North Korea. Something about the shipment spurred Israel to action, suggesting that it was more than equipment, or material that could be eventually used in nuclear weapons.
Spook 86 is the pseudonym for a former member of the U.S. intelligence community. During a 20-year career in military intelligence, he served as an analyst, operations planner, flight commander, briefer, nuclear targeteer and aircrew member among other positions. Now retired, he maintains extensive contacts within the U.S. intelligence community. Views expressed are his own, and not necessarily those of the U.S. Intelligence Community, Department of Defense, Starfleet Command, the Korean Central News Agency, The Weekly World News, the guy across the street, or anyone else. So there!
Any relation to Old Spook? I wonder.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/17/2007 17:46 ||
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If there had been a warhead -- or any fissile material, for that matter -- it would be easily detected. No idea if anyone would let us know.
I bet there would be some countries willing to release the discovery in order to prove Israeli "irresponsibility".
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
09/17/2007 19:32 Comments ||
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This weekend, the mystery of the Israeli aircraft over northern Syria became more important and even less clear than it was before.
We think that this raid or reconnaissance flight, or whatever it was, was important. It's importance was less about U.S.-Syrian relations than about Syrian-Turkish relations. That relationship has been critical to both countries for years. If the Syrians are actually storing anything sensitive along the Turkish-Syrian border, that would mean that the Syrians might have some sort of understanding with the Turks that would be extremely important for the region. For us, the location of the facility is more startling than the possibility of a North Korean shipment, chemical weapons or even a dry run for a strike on Tehran.
Since when do the Syrians trust the Turks enough to do anything important along the border? Since when do the Israelis have to do reconnaissance flights along the border? The Turks patrol that area pretty intensely. We had thought there was a strong intelligence-sharing program. Perhaps it's no longer a trusted channel? Of course, the Turks somehow might have been complicit in this.
The mystery is deep and we are baffled, but it does not strike us as trivial. Something important happened Sept. 6.
#2
If the Syrians are actually storing anything sensitive along the Turkish-Syrian border, that would mean that the Syrians might have some sort of understanding with the Turks that would be extremely important for the region.
Or it could mean the Turkish border is as far from Israel as it is possible to get and they Syrians - mistakenly - thought this would provide cover.
For us, the location of the facility is more startling than the possibility of a North Korean shipment, chemical weapons or even a dry run for a strike on Tehran.
Yes, because Stratfor apparently does not employ a brain trust with its analysts. A casual stroll through the internet reveals a Syrian chemical weapons production facility near the Turkish border at Al Safir that has been in operation since the 1970s. Hence the air defenses. That this should prove a surprise to Stratfor proves an inability to pay attention or an inability to conjure better analysis - even a better headline - than nine out of ten blogs on the subject. The only surprise to me is that people continue to pay for this level of analysis.
#3
What Excalibur said. I'm continually impressed by how much some of the prominent members of the blogosphere are better an analysis than the overpaid "experts" at StratFor. "Wretchard" at the Belmont Club, the Instapundit, Jules Crittenden, Cap'n Ed, the Powerline crew, and many prominent citizens of beautiful downtown Rantburg--all superior to StratFor, and worthy to bat in the same league as the likes of James Dunnigan.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/17/2007 14:59 Comments ||
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#4
Compare and contrast this analysis with Stratfor's.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/17/2007 17:44 Comments ||
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#5
It's been all downhill for Stratfor since the war against Serbia.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Memo lays bare group's plans to destroy U.S. from within
. . . the Times article leaves a number of questions unanswered. We'll begin with the issue of Israel successfully penetrating Syria's air defense system. While it's happened before, the Syrian air defense network was supposedly re-organized after an embarrassing 2003 Israeli strike against a Palestinian terrorist camp near Damascus. During that raid, the Israelis reportedly exploited confusion over geographic responsibilities within the Syrian defense system. The most recent mission--which involved a much deeper penetration into Syrian territory--suggests that (a) Bashir Assad's air defense network hasn't improved, or (b) the Israelis are using more advanced measures to target the system, and render it impotent.
