N'Djamena: Oil revenue that was meant to be used as part of a poverty alleviation fund will be used to buy weapons, the Chadian president confirmed. President Idriss Deby asked France's Le Figaro: "Which country in the world wouldn't want to buy arms to defend itself if it had the money?"
Most of Europe.
The reality though is that Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world and cannot afford to support a Deby's failing regime. Derby complained that Sudan was arming Chadian rebels and that the World Bank had made the land-locked country poor by freezing the country's oil production royalties.
The World Bank froze the money after it became clear that Chad would not abide by an agreement requiring that a percentage of oil revenue was invested for future poverty alleviation efforts. The bank provided funding for a $3.7bn oil pipeline to carry oil to the coast for export.
The World Bank initiated the project as a pilot project and given Chad's disregard for the agreement they signed it is unlikely that the bank will easily consider funding projects of this nature in the future. In this way, Chad has made Africa poor by making it more difficult and, therefore, more expensive to access funding.
Chad wishes to use the blocked money to buy weapons and has threatened to halt supplying oil should the money is not unfrozen by the end April this year. About 170 000 barrels a day through the pipeline, which is operated by ExxonMobil Corp, Chevron and Petronas.
#1
They seem to think that they'll have more success with poverty alleviation if Chad is overrun by Sudan, with the resultant loot/pillage/rape/burn sequence, and their precious holy blessed pipeline DESTROYED, than if they actually let the country try to continue to exist.
The Sudanese investigative panel probing into the death of the late vice-president John Garang concluded Wednesday there was no reason to believe his death was a result of criminal activity. Head of the investigative panel Abel Aleer told a press conference here that the case of Garang was officially closed, having been open for 18 months. He emphasized that no evidence was found to determine any criminal activity leading up to the crash of Garang's helicopter which was on a flight from Uganda to Sudan. He delivered a 240-page report on the investigation to President Omar al-Bashir. The report attributes the plane crash to pilot error and adverse climate conditions.
Sudan refused to grant visas for a U.N. military assessment mission planning a U.N. peacekeeping operation in Darfur, a U.N. spokesman said on Wednesday. The Khartoum government has not consented to U.N. troops to augment the African Union soldiers currently trying to stop the killing and rape in Sudan's Darfur region. But officials said they would discuss it after a peace pact, under negotiation in Abuja, Nigeria. Salim Ahmed Salim, the African Union's chief mediator at the Abuja talks between the government and two rebels groups, told the Security Council on Tuesday he expected a ceasefire deal by April 30 but acknowledged frustrations lay ahead.
Hedi Annabi, a U.N. assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping, went to Khartoum this week and spoke to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and other officials about sending the U.N. team to Darfur. "They felt this was not the time for a U.N. assessment mission to go into Darfur until the Abuja process was completed," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. "We have a clear political line from the Sudanese at this point." But Dujarric said planning continued and options for an eventual force in Darfur would be presented to the Security Council. "It's much more a bump in the road than the end of the road for us in terms of contingency planning," he said.
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said, "That's clearly a mistake that undercuts our ability to do contingency planning."
Still, there has been hesitation among African Union officials about placing their 7,000 troops in Darfur under U.N. command. North African Arab nations support Sudan. More diplo-speak at the link...
Peter Akinola, Anglican archbishop and president of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) issued some controversial warnings during February's deadly violence between Christians and Muslims. A couple weeks after the clashes he explained his concerns for the church and his nation to CT associate editor Collin Hansen.
What is the greatest challenge for the church in Nigeria?
How are we going to convince our Muslim neighbors and our governments that Nigerian Christians have no other place to call their country but this country? Since 1988, people have been maimed and brutally murdered, their hard-earned money and property destroyed by hooligans, by murderers, all on account of religion. And no one has been brought to justice that we know of. Usually arrests are made, but before you know what is happening they are released, so it's like they're doing this with impunity. So our challenge, therefore, is how we're going to get everybody in this country to know that Nigeria belongs to all of us.
I have been in touch with my Muslim counterpart this whole time, and we are hoping that we can meet soon, so we can work together and see how we can get our followers to understand.
What do you hope to hear from your Muslim counterpart?
Saudi Arabia issued a stark warning yesterday that Iraq was in the grip of civil war which threatened to "suck in" neighbouring countries.
On a day when at least 17 more people were killed across Iraq, Riyadh expressed alarm that events were spiralling out of control.
"Civil war is a war between civilians and there is already war between civilians," Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said.
"The threat of break-up in Iraq is a huge problem for the countries of the region, especially if the fighting is on a sectarian basis. This type of fighting sucks in other countries."
Prince Saud's warning echoed comments by President Hosni Mubarak, of Egypt, a week ago and contrasted with the cautious optimism about Iraq's future often expressed by America and Britain.
Speaking at a British-Saudi conference, he was plainly at odds with his co-host, Jack Straw. The Foreign Secretary said: "I do not believe there is a civil war in Iraq. There is a high level of sectarian violence but also great restraint shown by Shia leaders".
Arab countries have expressed alarm at Iran's growing influence in Iraq, while the West has accused Syria of helping Sunni insurgents.
Saudi civilians are known to have volunteered to join the jihad or to have provided funds and, like many governments, Riyadh is worried about hardened fighters returning to stir violence in their own countries.
The disagreements between Britain and Saudi Arabia - including on the possibility of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear defiance - have not prevented the two countries from working to agree on a huge arms deal.
A complex series of contracts could mean the sale of up to 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets to Saudi Arabia in return for billions of pounds and millions of barrels of oil.
The contracts would include the transfer of technology to Saudi Arabia, the assembly of some of the jets there, contracts for training and maintenance and the upgrading of its Tornado strike force.
The Eurofighter, which is built by a consortium of companies from Britain, Germany, Spain and Italy, appears to have beaten off stiff competition from the French Rafale fighter.
British officials were cautious about forecasting success but Prince Saud suggested that the agreement was sealed. He said: "It is a good deal for both countries. We have reached the time when we have to renew our equipment."
He said it was in all countries' interest for Saudi Arabia to be able to defend itself.
The deal, which has been under negotiation for several years, coincides with Iran's growing radicalism and repeated western accusations that it is seeking to build a nuclear bomb under the guise of developing peaceful nuclear technology.
The United Nations has given Teheran until the end of the month to halt its uranium enrichment programme.
Saudi Arabia is alarmed that the United States has pointedly refused to rule out the use of force to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities and that Iran has conducted high-profile naval exercises in the Gulf, where two-fifths of the world's oil is transported.
Prince Saud said the prospect of military action "is of great concern to us".
Referring to the possible imposition of sanctions against Iran, he said: "Sanctions hurt people, not governments."
Instead, he said there should be more intense political discussions with Teheran.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/20/2006 01:57 ||
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If I were SA, I'd be worried about a rich assertive Shiastan on my border. Not to mention a poor violence plagued Sunnistan.
#3
Prince Saud said the prospect of military action "is of great concern to us".
Yeah, well you weren't so concerned when Saddam Hussein took Kuwaiit for a concubine and knocked on your door. Saddam really is a loser -- if he hadn't been such a psychopath he'd have had the whole kit and kaboodle, with our blessing and the blessing of 90 percent of the rest of the world.
Major General Mansour Al-Turki talks to Asharq Al-Awsat about current security issues in the kingdom in dealing with terrorism and the media. The transcript of the interview with Al-Turki follows:
Q) One year ago, Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz stated that 75% of terrorism had been eliminated from Saudi Arabia. Were you able, practically, to disassemble the infrastructure of terrorism?
A) From the seven terrorist attacks that had taken place after the bombing of the residential compounds (the first of the terrorist attacks), we witnessed a change in the capacity of explosives, the tools used and an alteration to simpler weapons. This reflected the incapacity of terrorist movements to provide explosives and weapons as well as the difficulty to load cars with explosives. Instead of these weapons, terrorists resort to knives and light weapons just as they did in the Yanbu district and Abdulaziz Oasis in Khobar. After counter attacks launched by security forces, terrorists resorted to planning the assassinations of some figures. From this change in methods and goals, we understand that terrorist movements were at their peak in terms of numbers, armament and planning. However, this had changed when information about terrorists was collected by security forces, which then lead to the foiling of their plans.
Q) Has the arrest of 40 criminals from all over the Kingdom whose names did not feature on the published wanted lists show that other generations of extremists and terrorists are emerging?
A) On many occasions, Prince Naif Bin Abdulaziz asserted that we are still fighting the war against terrorism. We still expect that further terrorist attacks could take place in Saudi Arabia, as we believe there remain a considerate number of those who believe in extremism. Nevertheless, we could never charge anyone who believes in this line of ideology unless they are involved in terrorist activities. We further expect, however, that a number of them will transform this ideology into practice and it is for this reason that security and precautionary measures are taken. Much, much more: Continued on Page 49
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04/20/2006 01:31 ||
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Apparently concerned that fighting in Iraq could spill over into this oil-rich kingdom, Saudi Arabia is considering a major fortification of its 500-mile border with Iraq.
"The government is thinking of building an electrified fence along the whole border with Iraq in case things go really badly in Iraq, and it starts falling apart," says a security adviser to the Saudi government, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the government has not made any official announcement of such plans.It has, however, admitted that it is looking at strengthening its border defenses.
"We are currently conducting a study on technical defense systems which we can use to beef up security measures along the border," Mansour al-Turki, an Interior Ministry spokesman, told the daily Al-Riyadh.
The border with Iraq lies mostly in barren desert. A 20-foot-tall sand berm that runs its entire length provides the first line of defense. Parallel to that is a second berm and a tall fence topped with barbed wire, with a six-mile-wide no-man's land separating the two barriers.
But despite the barriers and extensive electronic surveillance by Saudi border guards using motion detectors and night-vision cameras, some US critics have claimed that suicide bombers have been sneaking across the Saudi border into Iraq to join the insurgency.
One high-level European diplomat in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, defended the Saudi effort at securing its border in Iraq. "I don't think border security is really a problem," says the diplomat, who requested anonymity because of the issue's sensitive nature. "We're impressed with what the Saudis are doing. The problem is with the Americans in Iraq. The American-controlled side of the Iraqi border is less secure because they don't have enough troops deployed there."
According to a recent report compiled by Saudi defense analyst Nawaf Obaid, using government data, the kingdom has already spent $1.8 billion securing its border with Iraq since 2004. "But this amount has been mostly for the deployment of additional troops on the border and not for actual physical defenses," says Mr. Obaid in a telephone interview.
In his report, "Meeting the Challenge of a Fragmented Iraq: A Saudi Perspective," which was published this month by Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies, Obaid calls for the creation of a permanent border security committee to tackle cross-border issues between the kingdom and Iraq.
"One of the most critical tasks facing such a committee [is to strengthen] security on the Iraqi side of the border. It is in the interests of both Saudi Arabia and Iraq to confront challenges such as smuggling and terrorist infiltration that an insecure border presents," writes Obaid.
One of the kingdom's major concerns is that Iraq's sectarian violence may spill over and agitate tensions between Saudi Arabia's Sunni Muslims, a majority of the population, and its minority Shiite community. Adherents of two sects that split centuries ago, Sunnis and Shiites have a rocky history of coexistence in many countries.
In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah has tried to ease tensions between the country's Sunnis and its Shiites, who are concentrated in its oil-rich eastern province. But Shiites are still often discriminated against in education and the job market and are regularly criticized by Salafist preachers - hard-line Sunnis - who claim that Shiites are not real Muslims.
"The Saudis are afraid of what may come out of Iraq in the future, because of the threat of Al Qaeda infiltrators and Shia [Shiite] fighters coming across the border," says Faris Bin Hizam, a Saudi journalist and specialist on Al Qaeda, in a phone interview from Dubai, U.A.E.
"The new wave of Shias coming out of Iran and Iraq are more dangerous than the Shias in 1979 during the Iranian Revolution that brought Khomeini to power. Then, there was Saddam Hussein to oppose them. Now, he isn't in power anymore," explains Mr. Bin Hizam. "I see a very difficult future for the whole region as it's not only Saudi Arabia that fears a Shia uprising, but other Gulf countries, Jordan, and Egypt as well."
But it is not only on the Iraqi border that Saudi Arabia feels threatened. Its 900-mileborder with Yemen has long been a transit point for smugglers of weapons and drugs, and terrorists sneaking into the country. Running through mountains in the west into Saudi Arabia's barren Empty Quarter in the east, the border with Yemen has been difficult to patrol and impossible to seal off completely. Smugglers have even reportedly trained goods-laden mules to avoid Saudi border guards.
In an attempt to control the border, Saudi Arabia began building a fence but was forced to freeze the project in 2004 after strong protests from the Yemeni government.
"The Saudi government has a habit of overspending on security, and the Yemeni fence project will cost upwards of over $10 billion once it is finished," says Ali al-Ahmad, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, a Saudi opposition think tank in Washington. In an e-mail exchange, Mr. Ahmad contends that the security fence along the Yemeni border has failed to stop weapons, drugs, terrorists, and illegal workers from "flooding" into the kingdom.
Ahmad believes that the Yemeni border poses a greater risk than the Iraqi border, in part because Yemen is a key weapons source for Al Qaeda operatives in Saudi Arabia. The sparsely populated border with Iraq is also easier to protect, he says, lending itself to electronic and visual surveillance methods, which are cheaper than a new fence.
Bin Hizam agrees with Ahmad, saying the length of the Iraqi border makes building an electrified fence along the entire length of it economically unviable. But Western security and construction firms are reportedly standing ready.
"A consortium of British, French, and American firms are interested in bidding for a contract to improve border security," the European diplomat confirmed.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/20/2006 01:23 ||
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"The Saudi government has a habit of overspending on security, and the Yemeni fence project will cost upwards of over $10 billion once it is finished,"
Better that they spend their oil money on such things than on financing jihad.
#4
Can see it now in the "Arizona Daily Star": pictures of migrants fried on the electrified fence! Which is why it will never happen here...the sieve will continue y en el futuro nosotros hablamos espanol...???
Pupils protest as college linked to Iran puts fundamentalist text on curriculum, reports our correspondent
MUSLIM students training to be imams at a British college with strong Iranian links have complained that they are being taught fundamentalist doctrines which describe nonMuslims as filth.
The Times has obtained extracts from medieval texts taught to the students in which unbelievers are likened to pigs and dogs. The texts are taught at the Hawza Ilmiyya of London, a religious school, which has a sister institution, the Islamic College for Advanced Studies (ICAS), which offers a degree validated by Middlesex University.
The students, who have asked to remain anonymous, study their religious courses alongside the university-backed BA in Islamic studies. They spend two days a week as religious students and three days on their university course.
The Hawza Ilmiyya and the ICAS are in the same building at Willesden High Road, northwest London a former Church of England primary school and share many of the same teaching staff.
They have a single fundraising arm, the Irshad Trust, one of the managing trustees of which is Abdolhossein Moezi, an Iranian cleric and a personal representative of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme religious leader.
Mr Moezi is also the director of the Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale, a large mosque and community centre that is a registered charity. Its memorandum of association, lodged with the Charity Commission, says that: At all times at least one of the trustees shall be a representative of the Supreme Spiritual Leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Both the Irshad Trust and the Islamic Centre of England Ltd (ICEL) were established in 1996. Mr Moezis predecessor as Ayatollah Khameneis representative, another cleric called Mohsen Araki, was a founding trustee of both charities.
In their first annual accounts, lodged with the Charity Commission in 1997, the charities revealed substantial donations. The Irshad Trust received gifts of £1,367,439 and the ICEL accepted an exceptional item of £1.2 million.
Around the same time, the ICEL bought a former cinema in Maida Vale without a mortgage. Since then it has received between £1 million and £1.7 million in donations each year which, it says, come from British and overseas donors. The centre declined to say if any of its money came from Iran.
Since 2000, its accountants have recorded in their auditors report on the charitys accounts that they have limited evidence about the source of donations.
The links between the two charities and Iran are strong. The final three years of the eight-year Hawza Ilmiyya course are spent studying in colleges in the holy city of Qom, the power base of Irans religious leaders.
The text that has upset some students is the core work in their Introduction to Islamic Law class and was written by Muhaqqiq al-Hilli, a 13thcentury scholar. The Hawza Ilmiyya website states that the module aims to familiarise the student with the basic rules of Islamic law as structured by al-Hilli.
Besides likening unbelievers to filth, the al-Hilli text includes a chapter on jihad, setting down the conditions under which Muslims are supposed to fight Jews and Christians.
The text is one of a number of books that some students say they find disturbing and very worrying. Their spokesman told The Times: They are being exposed to very literalist interpretations of the Koran. These are interpretations that would not be recognised by
80 or 90 per cent of Muslims, but they are being taught in this school.
A lot of people in the Muslim community are very concerned about this. We need to urgently re-examine the kind of material that is being taught here and in other colleges in Britain.
Mohammed Saeed Bahmanpour, who teaches in both the Hawza and the ICAS, confirmed that al-Hilli text was used, but denied that it was taught as doctrine. He said that, although the book was a key work in the jurisprudence class, its prescriptions were not taught as law. When he taught from it, he omitted the impurity chapter, he said.
Dr Bahmanpour said: We just read the text and translate for them, but as I said I do not deal with the book on purity. We have left that to the discretion of the teacher whether he wants to teach it or not.
The idea is not to teach them jurisprudence because most of the fatwas of Muhaqiq are not actually conforming with the fatwa of our modern jurists. The idea is that they would be able to read classical texts and that is all.
Dr Bahmanpour said that Mr Moezi had no educational role at either the ICAS or Hawza Ilmiyya. Mr Moezi has been the representative in Britain of Ayatollah Khamenei since 2004 when he also succeeded Mr Araki in the role and as a trustee of the ICEL and the Irshad Trust.
The Islamic centres website reports Ayatollah Khameneis speeches and activities prominently and one of the first sites listed under its links section is the supreme leaders homepage.
A spokeswoman for the ICEL also confirmed its links with the Irans spiritual leadership but said the centre was a purely religious organisation.
Middlesex University, which accredits the ICAS course but not the Hawza Ilmiyya, said: The BA in Islamic studies offered by the Islamic College of Advanced Studies is validated by Middlesex University.
This means that Middlesex ensures that the academic standards of this particular programme are appropriate, the curriculum delivers to the required standards, learning and teaching methods allow achievement of standards.
THE DOCTRINE
The water left over in the container after any type of animal has drunk from it is considered clean and pure apart from the left over of a dog, a pig, and a disbeliever
There are ten types of filth and impurities: urine, faeces, semen, carrion, blood of carrion, dogs, pigs, disbelievers
When a dog, a pig, or a disbeliever touches or comes in contact with the clothes or body [of a Muslim] while he [the disbeliever] is wet, it becomes obligatory- compulsory upon him [the Muslim] to wash and clean that part which came in contact with the disbeliever
From the al-Hilli text
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/20/2006 02:02 ||
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When a dog, a pig, or a disbeliever touches or comes in contact with the clothes or body [of a Muslim] while he [the disbeliever] is wet, it becomes obligatory- compulsory upon him [the Muslim] to wash and clean that part which came in contact with the disbeliever
Do I have to clean with an odd number of small stones or am I mixing that up with something else? I'm so confused. Good thing we have all these imams around to keep these things straight.
#7
Can I get me a cartoonist to draw one of Mr. PBUH pissing on a Koran? Being a disgusting pig, I wanna put it on a billbord. Although they don't believe it, two can play at this game.
All hail the mighty devout Muslim warrior!
Chechen PM in sauna sex scandal
By Andrew Osborn
April 5, 2006
His public image as a devout Muslim warrior who frets about the morals of Chechnya's peoplehas been carefully constructed by spin doctors. But Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's pro-Moscow Prime Minister, has become ensnared in an embarrassing sex scandal that has made his loud moral preaching appear rather hollow.
The scandalis potentially embarrassing for President Vladimir Putin since the Kremlin has chosen Mr Kadyrov as its point man in the strife-torn republic. Mr Kadyrov's aides have laughed off the grainy video of a man identical in appearance and voice to him in a sauna with two prostitutes, as a "provocation". No pics, sorry...
True or not, the footage is damaging for the 29-year-old Prime Minister, since he is married with children and has made a name for himself by criticising the media for broadcasting "immoral programmes" and by urging Chechen women to wear headscarves. In recent months he has outlawed gambling, clamped down on alcohol sales and partially introduced Shariah law. He was also recently reported to have issued an order for women's mobile phones to be monitored to ensure that wives are not in contact with ex-boyfriends.
The sauna footage was shot on a mobile phone and first appeared on a Chechen rebel website. The rebels regard Mr Kadyrov as a "phoney Muslim" who is trying to hijack Islam to quell separatist sentiment.
Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian reporter who specialises in Chechnya, has added credibility to the clip's authenticity by claiming that she too has been sent footage of a man identical in appearance to Ramzan.
Her claims go beyond debauched infidelity. She told a website: "On them [the clips] were the murders of federal servicemen by Kadyrovtsy [his private army], and also kidnappings directed by Kadyrov ... On the basis of them, a criminal case and investigation should follow."
But Mr Kadyrov has become too powerful for the Kremlin to remove easily and is expected in time to become the republic's President, a job his father did before he was assassinated. Yesterday he was back on state television - ironically he was talking about a beauty contest he is organising for Chechen girls.
His public image as a devout Muslim warrior who frets about the morals of Chechnya's peoplehas been carefully constructed by spin doctors. But Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's pro-Moscow Prime Minister, has become ensnared in an embarrassing sex scandal that has made his loud moral preaching appear rather hollow.
#1
Prominent Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy expressed support for Prime Minister Kadyrov, saying, "I know what he's going through. Been there, done that, got the, er, bathtowel."
Posted by: Mike ||
04/20/2006 11:36 Comments ||
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The president of Kyrgyzstan, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has threatened to close a US military base if Washington does not agree to a steep rise in rent. Mr Bakiyev said that if the US did not pay more than the current $2m (£1.1m) annual rent for its airfield at Manas he would terminate the rent agreement, ending the Pentagon's permanent presence in the geopolitical hub of central Asia.
Help me out here: do we need this base?
He said negotiations began last July. The US embassy in the capital, Bishkek, declined to comment. Mr Bakiyev came to power through violent demonstrations that forced out the authoritarian president Askar Akayev.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/20/2006 00:49 ||
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UPI: Kyrgyzstan President Kurmanbek Bakiyev wants the United States to pay more than $200 million in rent for an air base or says he could ask the troops to leave.
Speaking on television, Bakiyev said there had been no progress in rent negotiations in the past nine months for the facility near Bishkek's main civilian airport.
"Kyrgyzstan reserves the right to consider terminating the bilateral agreement of Dec. 4, 2001, should any circumstances prevent completion of the negotiating process by June 1, 2006," he said.
About 1,000 U.S. soldiers are stationed at the base, set up in December 2001 to support U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan, the Russian Novosti news agency said.
Bakiyev said his country had been generous in allowing the base to open in the first place "despite the fact that our partners in regional and other organizations expressed their concern over the presence of a U.S. airbase on Kyrgyz soil."
In February, Bakiyev said the United States should pay 100 times more, or $207 million for the use of the military base, China's Xinhua news agency reported.
In the coming days, Russian officials will turn their attention toward Kyrgyzstan, as Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev is scheduled to arrive in Moscow on a state visit April 24-25. The Kyrgyz president is due to discuss "specific economic projects," including the construction of the Kambaratinsk hydropower plant and a natural gas joint venture, the RIA-Novosti news agency quoted Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry spokesman Alikbek Dzhekshenkulov as saying. Putin could also exert pressure on Bakiyev, who is facing rising political opposition at home, to close an American air base in Kyrgyzstan. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Bakiyev said on April 19 that he might order American forces to vacate the air base at Manas, outside the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, if the US and Kyrgyz governments can not come to terms on a new leasing agreement, RIA-Novosti reported April 19.
#10
Would Tajikistan be useful? They are certainly amenable to foreign troops and they are cheaper...
The Indian Air Force is putting a squadron of MiGs at Aini, 15 km from the Tajik capital.
It already operates a base at Farkhor, near the Afgahn border, manned by ARC (Aviation Research Centre) - a department of RAW (India's overseas intelligence-gathering agency) tasked with elint and photorecon.
There are rumors that RAW has special forces troops operating from this base.
Posted by: john ||
04/20/2006 15:57 Comments ||
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Mr. Puppet, my concerns are that if the Central Asian supply route suddenly becomes problamatic that the Pakistani one would too.
They're not supporting the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda (and giving them refuge) for their health.
From East Asia Intel, Subscription.
SEOUL Analysts are scrutinizing all accessible North Korean financial records to see how the DPRK could possibly have come up with the enormous sums needed to carry out a nuclear weapons program, top U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill suggested.
The question is whether Kim Jong-Il is drawing upon the vast sums hes believed to have deposited in Swiss bank accounts, much of it made from gold mines in and around the North Korean town of Unsan in a mountainous region far north of Pyongyang.
The CIA has long believed that the "Dear Leader" had made off with about $4 billion from the mines and may well have increased that sum through judicious investments. Hes got British experts working to exploit the Unsan project, originally developed by American and British engineers and exploited by the Japanese before their defeat in World War II. Analysts have also concluded that the search for gold and other minerals in North Korea is a major reason why China is so interested in supporting the existing regime and continues to coddle Kim Jong-Il, as it did his father, Kim Il-Sung.
A British businessman, Roger Barrett, operates one of the few foreign companies that has actually made a profit in North Korea. His firm, Korea Business Consultants, has been advising on advanced techniques for extracting gold. He said he was making money from the investment before the United States cut off the conduit for North Koreas access to hard currency via Banco Delta Asia in Macao.
Asked about Kim Jong-Ils treasure trove in Swiss accounts, Hill dropped an elaborate hint of U.S. concern before a forum of business people sponsored by the American Chamber of Commerce in Seoul.
Rather than saying he knew nothing about it, which might have been a diplomatic response, he said bluntly: If a country pulls out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and announces its making plutonium, its fair to say the country will have its records kind of looked at. Hill added, for good measure, Thats life in the big city, before driving home the point that the DPRK (he used the initials) "needs to understand, as long as its producing nuclear weapons, were going to have a real close look at the financing.
Hills remarks impressed diplomatic analysts as a scarcely veiled threat of the economic repercussions of North Koreas refusal to return to six-party talks on its nuclear weapons program and of the Norths recent boasts that its going right ahead building nuclear warheads. The small community of foreign businessmen in Pyongyang, fearful of the impact of the cutoff of North Korean funds on their own dealings, was highly critical of the pressure from any U.S. action affecting North Koreas finances. Remember all of the outrage and boycotting of businesses dealing with South Africa not too long ago? Well, what about all the human rights violations of the NORKS today? Nobody putting any heat on Mr. Barrett or others making money off the NORKS. Typical Left hypocracy.
The European Business Association in Pyongyang denounced the campaign as an attempt to dissuade foreign companies from doing business with North Korea and to drive the North Korean economy into bankruptcy. That's a fair assessment. Wish it would work faster and bring down Kimmies Hell on Earth, so the people of North Korea could have a chance at a better life.
Hill denied, however, that the United States had imposed sanctions by banning U.S. financial institution from having anything to do with any account set up in the U.S. on behalf of Banco Delta Asia in Macao or from imposing similar restrictions on other firms aiding and abetting North Korean trade. These are not economic sanctions, he said, even though North Korea often describes them as such. Works for me. Who cares what you call it.
What we have going is an attempt to protect against known money laundering he said. A small bank in Macao was designated as a money-laundering concern. As a result, Macao authorities went ahead and froze the accounts of Banco Delta Asia. Hill estimated the DPRK had 30 or 40 accounts totaling about $20 million. Significant, but still chump change when it comes to Nuke programs.
Hill indicated the sum was trivial compared to the benefits North Korea would reap if it returned to the table and accepted a deal for giving up its nukes. We better not start giving away the farm to dictators who welsh on deals.
Look at the nature of whats on the table, he said, alluding to the promise of an enormous energy agreement if North Korea gave up its nuclear weapons. If you try to put a dollar value on energy assistance, he said, you would see the DPRK would get energy assistance worth probably billions of dollars. WHY should they even get one red cent????? And who told Mr. Hill that he has the authority to talk about giving US taxpayers' money away like Slick Willie and Halfbright used to do?
Estimating that $20 million equaled a weeks worth of assistance, Hill asked rhetorically, Why would someone hold up reform for the sake of a $20-million account? What the DPRK needs to do, he said, is to take a deep breath and think this thing through. People who systematically destroy their own people are psychopaths. You do not negotiate with these monsters. And you do not believe them without extensive verification. It's a survival thing.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/20/2006 13:21 ||
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#1
How long have they been printing counterfeit hundred dollar bills again?
#4
Remember all of the outrage and boycotting of businesses dealing with South Africa not too long ago? Well, what about all the human rights violations of the NORKS today? Nobody putting any heat on Mr. Barrett or others making money off the NORKS. Typical Left hypocracy.
The villains in South Africa were white. You'll notice that since they're out of power, the fact that the place has turned into a criminal festival is absent from news.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
04/20/2006 20:45 Comments ||
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#5
That's right, Robert. South Africa had everything going for it. Now it is starting the long slide to socialism and dictatorship, just like its neighbor Zimbob. Africa's tragedy.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/20/2006 22:37 Comments ||
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In earlier commentaries this Feb. 20, March 22, and April 6, we analyzed recent developments in the context of the leadership struggle between the separatist Kurdish movement's political and military wings. After our analyses appeared in this column, a well-known Turkish journalist, with a similar analysis, brought the issue to Turkish readers' attention. Yet it is the first time that the Kurdistan Workers' Party's (PKK) leadership made this competition clear in one of its recent official announcements on their webpage. In this announcement, the terror group clearly challenges and harshly criticizes the political wing of the Kurdish movement. It labels the latter a political party and targets some of the leading figures. It maintains that "while the Turkish military is launching operations against 'our people,' demanding peace would mean annihilation. Under current circumstances neither the Kurdistan People's Congress (Kongra-gel), the new name of the PKK, nor its military wing, the People's Resistance Force (HPG), demands peace; demanding peace means accepting defeat. If carefully reviewed, in our latest calls we asked [the people] to intensify the resistance continuously. Therefore, if anyone, be it a political party [implying the Democratic Society Party, DTP] or any individual [implying Diyarbakir Mayor Osman Baydemir], urges a halt to resistance, our people should not listen to them. On this matter you should follow our, the HPG's, statements."
This statement clearly shows that the military wing of the Kurdish movement is in charge and in a position to lord over the DTP. The military wing doesn't even leave room for the DTP to pursue a slightly different discourse.
In the next paragraph of the announcement, the terror organization signals a strategy shift from rural-based terror tactics to urban warfare. They call on Kurdish youth to take up arms and carry out individual attacks. "The youths should establish full resistance units (armed action units) in every village, town, neighborhood, borough, city and metropolis. When there is a police/military operation, these units should kill the security forces. Under the current circumstances, this type of structuring became an obligation and an immediate duty." The terror organization urges Kurdish youth to "choose civilian targets, tourist destinations, factories." It says "you can set fire to these places You can target police, military personnel, bureaucrats who advocate the military operations, as well as Justice and Development (AK) Party and Republican People's Party (CHP) offices in southeastern Turkey, and parties which are hateful toward the Kurdish people [implying Turkish nationalist parties]."
With the latest announcement, the organization changed its traditional strategy, according to which terrorists had to follow the chain of command to attack a target. In the latest announcement, the PKK asks youngsters to act individually: "The attacks mentioned aren't difficult to carry out; you can put gasoline on your target and set it on fire. Two or three youths could come together, and even if you lack arms you could stab the enemy when you find them in a quiet place; you could even choke them with wire. This type of new organization and action is an obligation. The only way for resistance against state forces is to organize full resistance units and attack our enemies."
This doesn't mean that the PKK will dismantle its terrorist units in the mountains or send them to the urban centers for urban warfare. What the PKK wants is for Kurdish youth in cities to join the fight by organizing small resistance units. The PKK hopes that this new organizational structure will bring it success. The announcement states: "By organizing this way, while our trained activists will continue to do their job on their front, the people will do their job on their front. By acting together and intensifying the resistance together, we can defeat the enemy."
The most likely reason why the organization decided to implement such a tactic is that it is losing ground in urban centers and having difficulty recruiting in these centers. Instead of pushing people to join the organization actively and leave their homes, it would be much easier for them to push people into these types of actions; they can take part of the organization's subversive activities where they live.
This is a dangerous plan for the Kurdish people; the organization risks jeopardizing the life of the Kurds. Imagine a likely scenario: while walking down the street, a police officer is shot from a building. The response of the security forces in such cases could be harsh, and unfortunately civilian people might suffer if the PKK's plan is implemented. Thus, the Kurdish people should strongly oppose this plan by discouraging their children from joining these units. On the other hand, as a community, the Kurds should disapprove of this plan by organizing big demonstrations against it and openly condemning it.
Otherwise no government agency can prevent civilian suffering in either the eastern or western cities of Turkey.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/20/2006 01:39 ||
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A SUSPECTED al-Qaeda operative in custody in Turkey claimed to have been a member of a gang that kidnapped British hostage Kenneth Bigley in Iraq and beheaded him, a newspaper reported today.
Louai Sakka, a Syrian national and alleged associate of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda head in Iraq, said he presided over a mock trial of Bigley, who was snatched in Baghdad in September 2004, The Guardian said.
His defence lawyer told the newspaper he was convinced the claims were true.
"My client has been a warrior for Islam for the last 10 years," said the lawyer, Osman Karahan.
"He was one of the men who interrogated Bigley. He says they put Bigley on trial, found him guilty and executed him," he said.
"My client was the chief of court. He wants Mr Bigley's family to know that he was not killed for no reason. This was justice. If he had committed a serious offence in the United States he would have been executed, and it was the same for him in Iraq."
The Guardian said it was unclear what "charge" the British engineer had faced. The paper also noted that Sakka has failed so far to reveal the whereabouts of Bigley's remains, despite apparently knowing the location.
The terror suspect said Zarqawi ordered Bigley's execution when he realised Britain would not agree to his demands to free all female prisoners held by US-led coalition forces in Iraq.
The Briton's grisly beheading in October 2004, three weeks after his kidnapping, sent shock waves across the world.
Sakka is thought to have been in Iraq at the time, but the newspaper emphasised that his claims were hard to substantiate.
Foreign Office officials contacted by the daily were unaware of the man's confession, first made during questioning about his alleged role in suicide bomb attacks in Istanbul in 2003 that left 63 people dead.
Sakka, who was arrested in August last year, is due to stand trial next month accused of financing the deadliest terror acts on Turkish soil.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/20/2006 01:12 ||
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#1
"My client has been a warrior for Islam for the last 10 years," said the lawyer, Osman Karahan.'
Brave warrior indeed to behead an innocent civilian unarmed man. Bow to the Lions of Islam.
#2
No surprise here. Working for Jim McDermott is not exactly like working in Congress. Fulbright, McDermott, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, none of these are exactly pro-American. In the day, I would have said communist, now they are just all pathetically anti-American.
With a few personnel shifts going on in the White House, there's speculation that presidential spokesman Scott McClellan may be looking to step down.
I've heard he already has...
One of the people the White House has approached as a possible replacement for McClellan is FOX News Radio host Tony Snow.
Tony's my favorite, next to Patty Ann...
The White House discussed the possibility with Snow as recently as this week. Snow, who hosts "The Tony Snow Show," once served as a speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush.
Other people have also been approached about the position, including former Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clark and Dan Senor, the former Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman in Iraq, who served the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer.
McClellan, who has been press secretary for two years, refuses to speculate about his own future. But he has acknowledged that he has held the job for "a long time." A spokesman switch would come as new White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten is looking to solidify a staff by meeting with all personnel members individually about their futures in the Bush administration.
Bolten, who took over for Andy Card as White House chief of staff late Friday, told staffers on Monday that if they thought they would leave their posts in the near future, they should do so soon.
On Tuesday, President Bush tapped U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman for the head of the Office of Management and Budget. Susan C. Schwab, a deputy USTR, has been chosen to take over for Portman. Also, Jim Towey, head of the White House office of faith-based and community initiatives, resigned to become president of St. Vincent College in Pennsylvania. Several former high-ranking U.S. military generals have in recent weeks called for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation, but Bush has stepped in and said he has the utmost confidence in his Pentagon chief.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/20/2006 02:00 ||
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#1
Snow would be good, assuming his health has improved. Suggest he bring a 45 along with him to set the tone.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/20/2006 3:38 Comments ||
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#2
Myself, I've always been a fan of Dan Senor. Although his new wife (Campbell Brown), attractive as she may be, might present a potential conflict of interest for him.
Nothing against Tony, I was just very impressed whenever I saw Senor speak on behalf of the CPA and his personal experience in Iraq might prove valuable, I would think.
#8
What's wrong with a woman? I used to love Tory's Pentagon briefings, as she could explain things better to the lay person. Michelle Malkin can hold her own and not as sharp tongued as Coulter, though I'd like to see her take Helen Battle-axe on!
On March 29th, 2006 the drive-by media failed to report the scuttling of a new bill in the House of Representatives. H.R. bill 609 would have amended the Higher Education Act of 1965 and required Americaâs colleges and universities to report any donations received from Saudi Arabia as part of the Title VI international education bill. The new bill, dubbed the Burton Amendment to the College Access and Opportunity Act, was put before one chamber of Congress by Congressman Dan Burton [R-IN], and would have required US colleges and universities to report such donations through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a publicly available and searchable database.
In what should have been a shoo-in, the amendment was voted down at the last minute on a roll call vote 306 to 120.
This illustrates the sway of Saudi money â even in our own Congress, the âvoice of the people.â
Our educational system is, if anything, worse. As we are working hard to secure our borders from terrorism and fighting terrorist movements overseas, the same people who are financing much of the worldâs terrorism are pouring money into American colleges and universities with the intent of undermining support for our governmentâs efforts in the War on Terror.
American universities â those idealists who claim racism, misogyny, religious persecution and violations of human rights are antithetical to their mission â are more than willing to accept funding from the Wahhabist Saudi regime that practices such behaviors. The funds go to set up Middle East Studies centers that serve to indoctrinate future generations of American college students to support the goals of overseas terrorists and dictators. These centers also promote outreach programs in which teachers and professors in our local communities are trained and provided with curricula that preach a radical anti-democratic, anti-American, and frequently anti-Semitic agenda in our primary and secondary school classrooms. Our children are their targets. Saudi expenditures in American colleges have far exceeded the funding spent on propaganda by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Yet for all the âeducational assistanceâ sent abroad, Saudi Arabiaâs own illiteracy rate has remained at nearly 50% of its population. Rather than spending money to teach their own people to read, the Saudis are busy with a public relations campaign to export support for their despotic regime to the US.
Future generations of Americans are being indoctrinated because college administrators just want the money. Imagine if during the Cold War, Congress stood by and allowed the Soviet Union openly to pour millions of dollars into our nationâs colleges and universities to promote anti-American textbooks endorsing communism in our classrooms, or if Hitler had staffed German Studies departments with Nazis to promote the glory of the Third Reich during the Second World War, and you can get the picture.
Meanwhile, Saudi propaganda, in their own television and print, still vilifies the West and Jews and continues to roil the conflict in the Middle East against Israel and our presence in Iraq.
Congressman Burton intends to reintroduce his bill in the near future. It is high time the public rises up and demands it be passed. Meanwhile, a bill exposing who gets campaign money from Saudi Arabia in Congress should be the next thing on the agenda.
Minuteman border watch leader Chris Simcox has a message for President Bush: Build new security fencing along the border with Mexico or private citizens will. Simcox said Wednesday that he's sending an ultimatum to the president, through the media, of course "You can't get through to the president any other way" to deploy military reserves and the National Guard to the Arizona border by May 25.
Or, Simcox said, by the Memorial Day weekend Minuteman Civil Defense Corps volunteers and supporters will break ground to start erecting fencing privately. "We have had landowners approach," Simcox said in an interview. "We've been working on this idea for a while. We're going to show the federal government how easy it is to build these security fences, how inexpensively they can be built when built by private people and free enterprise."
Simcox said a half-dozen landowners along the Arizona-Mexico border have said they will allow fencing to be placed on their borderlands, and others in California, Texas and New Mexico have agreed to do so as well. "Certainly, as with everything else, we're only able to cover a small portion of the border," Simcox said. "The state and federal government have bought up most of the land around the border. I suspect that's why we'll never get control of the border."
But he said the plan is to put up secure fencing that truly will be an effective deterrent, and to show how easily it can be accomplished.
Simcox gave this description of the envisioned barrier-and-fencing complex:
Start with a 6-foot deep trench so a vehicle can't crash through; behind it, a roll of concertina (coiled, razor-edged barbed wire) in front of a 15-foot high heavy-gauge steel mesh fence angled outward at the top.
Behind the fence will be a 60- to 70-foot wide unpaved but graded dirt road better than most in the area, along with inexpensive, mounted video cameras that can be monitored from home computers. On the other side of the road will be a second, 15-foot fence, with more concertina wire on its outside.
Simcox said those involved in the planning hope to keep costs to between $125 and $150 a foot. I'll go in for 3' or so.
#1
This is a great idea, fencing along the highest-trafficked areas. It will force the illegals to either concentrate or to use land that is much harder to cross, often with no roads on either side.
The results should also be impressive, perhaps crossing a threshold resulting in a major drop in the sheer number of illegals.
#4
I'm amazed this didn't happen years ago. The farmers along the border who get their fields trampled could have gotten together, gone on O'Reilly, gotten donations of time and money. Built a trench and then fences to protect their land.
The end result is the illegals would be channeled into corridors that would be easier to watch and patrol.
The commander of Fort Leavenworth says criticism of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by some retired generals who have called for his ouster raises questions about balancing issues.
I would not ever want to see the military politicized, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus said Monday night during a question-and-answer session following a speech at the University of Kansas. And I would not want to see generals chosen on the basis of whether theyd keep their mouths shut in retirement, rather than on the basis of whether they can provide sound military advice. Petraeus said the free speech of the retired generals should be weighed against civilian control of the military. I am wrestling with that one, he said.
Petraeus spent 2œ years in Iraq as a top Army commander. He led the 101st Airborne Division, which had a key role in the invasion, and later was put in charge of training and equipping Iraqi military forces. After completing that assignment in September, he was sent to Fort Leavenworth as commander of the post and its Combined Arms Center.
He spoke Monday before an overflow crowd at the universitys Dole Institute of Politics. Reacting to recent criticism of Rumsfeld from a handful of retired generals, President Bush has said the defense secretary has his full support. Richard Myers, the retired Air Force general who headed the Joint Chiefs of Staff until the fall, has denied assertions that Rumsfeld intimidated top commanders into silence while the invasion of Iraq was being planned. Critics complain the U.S. should have committed more troops to the effort and that the strength of the Iraqi insurgency was underestimated.
I dont know what happened in 2002 and 2003, Petraeus said of the planning period before the invasion. I was not at that level, obviously, so I dont know about the numbers. Petraeus offered a list of observations about soldiering from his time in Iraq, with the broad themes that counterinsurgency efforts are improved when soldiers understand the language and culture of a nation, when they can help develop effective local leaders and when they dont make more enemies than they take off the streets. He said those lessons helped reopen the University of Mosul and resulted in widespread improvements to the Iraqi infrastructure.
During the questioning, Petraeus conceded that the U.S. military should have remembered some lessons from the Vietnam War. We had learned lessons before, and we had forgotten some of those lessons, he said. Were certainly going to endeavor this time not to let history repeat itself in that regard.
#1
very interesting. Petraues isnt joining the chorus against Rummy, but hes not really defending him either (as Pace, Myers, and Franks are) He certainly says lessons were forgotten, and its reasonable to ask why. Petraues is highly respected, and he could be decisive. He clearly doesnt want to be, perhaps because he sees higher position in HIS future, and he doesnt want, when he reaches that higher position to Have to deal with a military where its routine for retired gens to speak out - but at the same time he knows how fed up the Army is with Rummy, and he doesnt want to alienate them.
#2
He also knows the next Prez may be a donk. That's why, when one gets to the level Petraeus is on the brink of, the job involves both internal and external politics no matter how much theortists try to draw bright lines.
#5
uh, no. Look at his positions on everything from abortion, to labor rules at DoD. Hes a conservative. Not a moderate, a conservative. A strongly neo con leaning conservative, at that. He is however A. a genuine American nationalist, which for him means not being a firebreathing partisan B. A man of integrity and independence
If McCain runs against a DLC type democrat, Hillary or Mark Warner, or Evan Bayh, or Joe Biden, I will almost certainly vote Dem - McCain is too conservative for me on many issues. But, if the Dems nominate someone I who is too dovish for me (or who raises other serious problems), Feingold, or Kerry, or Dean, or Gore, or Clark, I might well vote for McCain, with confidence that the overall fate of the Republic is in good hands.
#8
McCain is too conservative for me on many issues.
Like free speech?
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
04/20/2006 14:05 Comments ||
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#9
LOL. He must be talking about the other Sen McCain, the one in the second alternate universe on the Left. This one lives with his wet finger in the wind. The RINO version of Hillary. Oh wait, lh says Hillary's a centrist.
Okay, a pattern is emerging. I think I understand, now. Nevermind.
#10
LTG Petraeus was LTC Petraeus a few years back and standing on a rifle range at Fort Campbell, KY when an accidental discharge 5.56 round found his chest. He was rushed to Vanderbilt Hospital and attended to by Doctor Bill Frist. Should be no surprise they've been very close friends ever since. Don't look for the LTG Patreaus, who some refer to as the'perfumed prince,' to bash anyone in the administration. And by the way, he's still on active duty.
#11
Petraeus is taking the appropriate stance. He's not pitching a book, not running for office, not siding with the donks, and not being an obstacle of transformation.
How refreshing
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/20/2006 14:49 Comments ||
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#12
"Like free speech?"
No. Like health care. Like social spending in general. Like any labor issue. Like abortion. Like just about any domestic issue that cleanly splits conservatives and liberals (and immigration is not one of them) other than campaign finance reform.
and yes, Hillary policy positions are centrist, for the most part.
Youre confusing personality, and partisanship, with ideology.
#23
There's a great deal of statistical fluff in there. Let's eliminate the Kennedy post entirely - irrelevant. Same for Clinton - she's someone else's cross to bear.
Lots of stats don't make good stats or relevant stats.
The NARAL post was a waste - his base is Arizona, lol.
The Eagle Forum, which is a single-issue outfit (Pro-Family they call themselves) is safe stuff in AZ.
The RLC, which isn't actually Republican but Libertarian (founded and run by self-proclaimed Libertarians), doesn't break down the bills and votes - so I have no idea what they stand for, other than themselves, so their grades of McCain's votes means nothing to me.
The indexes just don't cut it. Issues cut it. His prominent membership in The Gang of Fourteen, his bogus election funding reform bill (McCain-Feingold) and the amazingly flawed immigration bill (Kennedy-McCain) are all serious issues everyone knows about where we actually get to see what he thinks... and I find him lacking right down to his toes.
The RINOs, of which he is a prominent herd member IMHO, have completely botched the last few years of majority. They should've nuked the filibuster. They should've collected their courage and pushed through the judicial appointments that languished (some dying) during the Donk Legislative Games. They should've shown spine and resolution in the face of silly Donk stunts which were of no value except partisan MSM fodder. They should've acted like leaders with commitment and spine. But they didn't. McCain is one of them on many important (to me) issues, such as judicial activism and immigration. He's conveniently nuanced on other issues (wet finger describes it well) where a stalwart conservative would've helped get things done. He and Frist and Schumer and Snowe and Collins and Voinovich and the rest of the cowards didn't.
#24
"The indexes just don't cut it. Issues cut it. His prominent membership in The Gang of Fourteen, his bogus election funding reform bill (McCain-Feingold) and the amazingly flawed immigration bill (Kennedy-McCain) are all serious issues everyone knows about where we actually get to see what he thinks... and I find him lacking right down to his toes."
He joined the gang of 14 not cause he likes liberal justices, but cause he was trying to find a way out for the Senate from another partisan disaster. Thats not a sign hes not a conservative. Immigration like i said, cuts different ways. There are business conservatives who take a very different view of immigration than other conservatives.
That leaves McCain- Feingold. Which is ultimately a process thing. In any case, is he RINO cause he disagrees with you on one issue? By that definition many folks who we think of as liberals arent.
#25
you can attack the conserv groups all you want. As far i can tell, no one other than the most extreme folks on the right think hes a "Rino".
As for adjusting for the fact that hes from Arizona, thats just too funny. Do you apply the same geographical adjustment to liberal Dems, to prove theyre really moderates in disguise?
#26
LOL. Were those supposed to be incisive responses? AZ's certainly more conservative than NY, wouldn't you say? So the fact that he's from AZ is relevant and your comment is rather specious.
How about the 527's that ran wild in 2004, easily skirting and subverting the so-called reforms of McCain-Feingold? The last election season was one of the most incoherent and "lawless" ever. The Soros, Tides, et al campaign to discredit the poor little actual grassroots donation-funded SwiftBoat Vets was despicable. That they wasted their money was heavenly.
Have you even looked at the analysis of what Kennedy-McCain would yield? How about 35M+ immigrants since it provides amnesty for the 12M here now and grants fast-track citizenship to all of their adult relatives? Anyone favoring this piece of crap isn't a conservative in any sense of the word.
I'm not sure why you defend McCain since you are Hillary's man. I agree with WC.
#27
I wonder how different my military career would ahve been if we got to vote for our leaders? As my TI graciously pointed out of the very first day in basic: "This aint a democracy, we just defend it." These perfumed princes should try to remember that the next time they feel the need to parrot the LLL moonbat fever swamp talking points.
The U.S. government released the first list of detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison yesterday -- the most extensive accounting yet of the hundreds of people held there, nearly all of them labeled enemy combatants.
In all, 558 persons were named in the list provided by the Pentagon in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit by the Associated Press. They were among the first swept up in the U.S. global war on terrorism as linked to al Qaeda or the Taliban.
The list is the first official roster of Guantanamo detainees who passed through the Combatant Status Review Tribunal process in 2004 and 2005 to determine whether they should be deemed "enemy combatants." Many have been held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay for more than four years. Only a few have faced formal charges.
Some names are familiar, such as David Hicks, an Australia Muslim charged with fighting U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan. He is one of 10 detainees selected to be tried by a military tribunal, on charges of attempted murder, aiding the enemy and conspiracy to commit terrorism. Australian press sources have said he underwent training with British Islamic extremists, including would-be shoe-bomber Richard C. Reid.
Lesser-known detainees on the list include Muhammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who reportedly was supposed to be the 20th hijacker in the September 11 attacks. Although his presence at Guantanamo had been reported, the military previously declined to confirm it. Others on the list, such as an Afghan identified only as "Commander Chaman," remain mysterious.
The detainees on the list came from 41 countries. The largest number -- 132 -- came from Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan followed with 125, then Yemen with 107. Partial, unofficial lists of Guantanamo detainees have been compiled by news organizations, lawyers and pressure groups, but the United States had confirmed only the names of the 10 who have been formally charged.
"This is information that should have been released a long time ago, and it's a scandal that it hasn't been," said Bill Goodman, legal director of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which has helped coordinate legal efforts on behalf of the detainees.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/20/2006 00:59 ||
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NEW YORK - An international media watchdog called Wednesday for the release of a Sudanese news cameraman detained at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who is suffering from throat cancer. Sami Al Haj of the pan-Arab TV station Al Jazeera was arrested by the Pakistani army on the Afghan border in December 2001 and has been held at Guantanamo Bay by the US military since June 2002.
Aside from the fact that Guantanamo Bay is a legal and humanitarian scandal, the Americans seem to be holding Al Haj simply because they have it in for Al Jazeera, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in a statement. How else can you explain the fact that he has been held for four years without being charged while other journalists have been cleared and released in no time at all? the statement said.
Among the various possible reasons are he had advance knowledge of where to set up his camera for various al-Qaeda festivities ...
The watchdog cited Al Hajs London-based lawyer, Clive Stafford-Smith, as saying that his client was suicidally depressed and was being denied treatment for his throat cancer.
Categorical nonsense: no American military prison medical system will deny an inmate needed medical care. If he has throat cancer, he's getting treatment.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/20/2006 00:10 ||
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#1
Wah! A Media Watchdog should wath the media not the lawful actions of nation states. They can sod off.
He for damn sure is getting better medical care then He would get in Sudan.
Do us a favor, drop dead "Reporters Without Borders" you are TRANZI tools Amnesia Internationl.
Posted by: SPoD ||
04/20/2006 0:25 Comments ||
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#2
OK we'll release him forthwith - gahter his luggage, and deliver him to his homeland.
...
At 10,000 ft AGL over Khartoum, going about 180kts by the time he "gets home".
#3
Preferably from a plane at 30000 feet and without offending islamic sensibilities (parachutes are unislamic). Or, maybe, use a torpedo lauching tube?
#4
Preferably from a plane at 30000 feet and without offending islamic sensibilities (parachutes are unislamic). Or, maybe, use a torpedo lauching tube?
Naaah, from the bomb bay of a B-52, along with about 39 1000-lb "welcome home" fireworks.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/20/2006 16:01 Comments ||
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As I picked my way along a narrow walkway, I had to cup my hand over my mouth to block the stench. At various intervals, the path that threaded among simple brick dwellings disappeared and revealed the sewer underneath. Here in the Christian quarter of a village in Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province, we were accompanying the parish priest on his sick rounds. At one doorway, we stopped and he entered. A crowd gathered round and as we peered through the door, the whole family stood with the priest as he offered a solemn blessing over the sickbed, while its occupant was deep in prayer.
Whispering to me as we left, the priest said: "I have to visit. It's the only thing that seems to lift their spirits. In any case, when they get ill, they don't call a doctor. The first thing they do is to call a priest and only then will they think about getting medical help." A scene that could come straight from the pages of an 18th-century English clergyman's diaries is a snapshot of modern-day life in Pakistan.
About 85% of Pakistan's Christian population lives in the Punjab's villages. The large number of Christians -- up to three million -- belies their largely invisible status in a country that is at least 95% Muslim. Even the gas stations have mosque "prayer rooms."
An Islam that echoes through the air -- especially at prayer time -- also explains why a Christian born into poverty will almost inevitably die poor, too. Most work as domestics, cooks or -- more likely -- as labourers at brick kilns or in the huge fields of cotton and wheat that spread far and wide. They face huge problems obtaining identity cards, making it very difficult for them to get on the voters' list or to gain access to health care and other state benefits.
Pakistan is dominated by a form of Islam that tends to view outsiders with suspicion if not contempt. As priests, sisters and lay people frequently said to us during our three weeks in Pakistan: "We know we're not wanted here."
This means that Christians are dangerously at risk from laws with the severest of penalties. One such Christian is Yusif Said, who was at the centre of one of the biggest religious disturbances in Pakistan's history. Last November, Yusif, a 46-year-old man from Mosquito Colony, Sangla Hill was falsely accused of breaking Article 295-B of the Blasphemy Law after a row over a game of cards. His alleged crime was to have burned pages containing the Koran; his sentence if found guilty would be life imprisonment. His accuser went on to call successfully on local imams to take action against the whole Christian community. The result was that 3,000 men, many of them bussed in from outside the town, ransacked Sangla's Christian quarter, burning two churches and their adjoining presbyteries, schools and hostels.
Tearful throughout an interview, Yusif made it clear that if he changed his religion the charge would have almost certainly been dropped and that he would be able to walk away a free man. Now, even though a group of Christian lawyers successfully fought his case, Yusif must remain in a safe house. The support given to him by organizations such as Aid to the Church in Need, which I represented while in Pakistan, will prove crucial for his future well-being. If Yusif stepped outside, the fear is he would be killed. The fact remains that, regardless of the outcome of the court case, Yusif is a guilty man in the eyes of the Islamists.
The situation would have been even worse if he had broken another article of the Blasphemy Law, 295-C, which states that insulting the Prophet Muhammad is worthy of death. In the 20 years since the introduction of the Blasphemy Law, the courts have dealt with 900 cases, a disproportionately high number of them involving Christians.
What increasingly makes matters worse for Christians is the perceived link between them and the Western world, which is now being demonized by extremists. Unable to hit out at the West, some Pakistani Islamists take out their wrath on the local Christian population. This happened recently with the row over the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. In Pakistan, at least three churches were burned, and countless other Christian buildings came close to suffering the same fate.
So has this set back the cause of inter-faith dialogue? I asked Bishop Joseph Coutts of Faisalabad, who spoke of continuing dialogue with Muslims in his large diocese, telling how at one such meeting one Islamic leader interrupted another and told him not to confuse the blasphemous cartoonists with Christians, particularly those in South Asia. Hence, said Bishop Coutts, when anti-cartoon fury spread, the backlash against Faisalabad Christians was comparatively small.
To an outsider, Christian practice in Pakistan comes across as being influenced by Islam in its best and most spiritual forms. Churches are often quite bare, with people seated on the ground, and the Missal is sometimes placed on a book rest similar to the type used for the Koran. Thus, in some sense the similarity of certain beliefs uniting Muslims and Christians -- such as the emphasis on the Virgin Mary and Abraham -- is given outward expression. Away from the headline-grabbing incidents of persecution against Christians are the lesser-known stories of how individual Muslims approached church communities affected by aggression and said their faith had nothing to do with that of the Islamists. Recalling the many such incidents of this kind, the bishops are fanning the hopes that these softly spoken words represent the voice of the majority.
For a church rocked by a wave of persecution, bonds of compassion as well as faith and practice could well prove crucial in the search for inter-faith harmony.
Posted by: john ||
04/20/2006 11:35 ||
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Whispering to me as we left, the priest said: "I have to visit. It's the only thing that seems to lift their spirits. In any case, when they get ill, they don't call a doctor. The first thing they do is to call a priest and only then will they think about getting medical help."
Start a drive to ordain Doctors, either that or revive the concept of the Doctor/Priest.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/20/2006 13:57 Comments ||
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It seems Islam cannot cope with modern technology?
replacing the condition of eyewitnesses in establishing adultery charges with DNA test results would be like waging a war against God. The condition to provide four eye witnesses cannot be done away with. Technology or no technology, we have to stick to the divine dictates.
Although Pakistan has fine DNA testing laboratories, these facilities remain closed to the public and results obtained from them are not recognised by the Islamic clergy and the judiciary.
Fierce debates are going on in the country among clerics, jurists and social scientists on the admissibility of DNA tests that establish genetic links as evidence in court. There are apprehensions of adverse fallouts from allowing the people free access to the tests.
The concept of DNA testing in criminal cases is relatively new in Pakistan and was introduced by the government to meet security challenges facing the country as well as global powers engaged in the war-on-terror in Afghanistan.
In 2001, the research laboratory of the Centre for Excellence in Molecular Biology (CEMB) at the Punjab University was suddenly notified as the first official laboratory for DNA testing. The CEMB director, Dr. S Reazuddin, was declared director of the laboratory for conducting crime-related DNA testing and for determining paternity cases.
While the utility of DNA testing cannot be denied in Pakistan where suicide bombings and anti-terrorist raids including those against Al-Qaeda terrorists are common, its advent has raised serious concerns in this highly conservative society.
DNA technology has wide application and can be used for identity determination in mass disasters such as an earthquake, in searches for missing persons, solving inheritance issues, medicine and in scientific and archaeological research.
There were no objections when DNA testing was used to identify the remains of Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and beheaded by terrorists in Karachi, in 2002. Similarly, the people were unconcerned when DNA tests were used to determine whether Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaedas second-in-command, was among those killed in a US military air-strike inside Pakistans territory, in January.
But eyebrows are invariably raised whenever there is a demand to resort to DNA testing in deciding cases that touch on adultery and paternity sensitive issues in the Pakistani society.
Muhammad Imtiaz, a criminal lawyer, told IPS that so far there is no clear-cut policy on admissibility of DNA tests as evidence in Pakistani courts. Different courts have come out with different observations, he pointed out. The Lahore High Court handed over a two-year-old child Rohail to Sahazad Ali on April 27, 2005, after a DNA test proved him to be the biological father. Shahzad had told the court that he had been living with the mother of the child without marrying her.
But, in another case, the same court observed on May 20, 2005, that DNA testing is not acceptable as evidence to establish adultery for which Hudood laws (Islamic jurisprudence) call for the direct testimony of four pious male eyewitnesses against an accused.
To make matters worse, the government has not yet amended the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to allow DNA test results to be made admissible as evidence in criminal cases. Civil and family courts of the country, that are burdened with cases of inheritance and paternity disputes, cannot benefit from DNA tests.
As the debate goes on, the government succeeded, earlier this month, in establishing its first DNA test laboratory in Islamabad, meant solely to investigate complicated terrorism and criminal cases. The one at CEMB is basically an academic research laboratory.
The newly-established laboratory has facilities for testing cases related to microbiology, ballistics and explosives, chemical examination and toxicology. It has been established by the National Police Bureau, under its National Forensic Science Programme (NFSP), with the help of China that provided the technology and the basic equipment.
Amjad Ali, a social activist, says that giving the people access to DNA testing laboratories can prove disastrous. In a society where people can kill their wives on mere suspicion of being disloyal, what will they do once they have irrefutable evidence is anybodys guess, he says.
The rights lobby Amnesty International has noted that in Pakistan hundreds of women are known to die each year as a result of honour killings. Many more cases go unreported and almost all go unpunished. Police almost invariably take the mans side in honour killings and rarely prosecute killers. Even when men are convicted, the judiciary ensures that they get off with a light sentence, reinforcing the view that men can kill their female relatives with impunity.
Ali thinks that DNA testing was promoted in Pakistan at the behest of the US without consulting local groups and creating awareness among the masses. Had this been done, the level of tolerance and acceptance among people would have been higher. They just want to equip Pakistan to fight their war against terror. Beyond this, they have no concern whatsoever, he said.
Siddique Akbar, a cleric, told IPS that replacing the condition of eyewitnesses in establishing adultery charges with DNA test results would be like waging a war against God. The condition to provide four eye witnesses cannot be done away with. Technology or no technology, we have to stick to the divine dictates.
On the use of DNA tests to determine a childs paternity, he says this would create problems for many. Our religion prohibits us from publicising others sins. Publicly declaring someone illegitimate or of having fathered a child outside marriage is no service at all.
Reazuddin, said that, initially, his laboratory was open to the people but the facility is now restricted. Depending on the sensitivity of the issue, the laboratory has been directed by the government to conduct tests only on samples forwarded by courts or in cases registered with the police.
In the past, several private tests conducted here have removed doubts regarding their legitimacy. While this is a great service, problems arise when the situation is otherwise, said Reazuddin. Telling someone that the child he is bringing up was fathered by someone else is difficult. Besides, we cannot hide facts as this would be tantamount to committing professional dishonesty.Dawn/IPS News Service
Posted by: john ||
04/20/2006 11:27 ||
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The condition to provide four eye witnesses cannot be done away with. Technology or no technology, we have to stick to the divine dictates.
No, no, absolutely not. We love to watch live porn, and will not resort to technology, whether DNA testing or videorecorder!!!It is our Allah-given right to watch adultery and a dirty American plot against Islam.
According to Khabrain two boys, thinking they would get a nice time, entered a Majlis of Shia ladies on the chehlum of Imam Husain in Dera Ghazi Khan. Misled by hostile sectarian myths, the two boys took burqas and entered the Majlis but were quickly identified as boys. The guards opened fire whereupon one got killed. The other boy was caught by the men who broke his arms and legs.
Posted by: john ||
04/20/2006 20:37 Comments ||
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KATHMANDU - Nepals embattled king cracked down on a major pro-democracy rally planned Thursday amid a powerful Indian diplomatic intervention and dire warnings about the survival of the worlds last Hindu monarchy. King Gyanendra has so far refused to budge despite a mounting death toll, but so have his subjects who have poured out on to the streets for most of the last 14 days of a general strike that has crippled the Himalayan kingdom.
Strike leaders and a seven-party opposition alliance that has Maoist rebel support have vowed to fight on, until multi-party democracy is restored. With a shoot-on-sight curfew in force after four more people were shot dead Wednesday, the stage was set for another street battle in the capital and for a showdown between giant republican neighbour India and the absolute ruler in Nepal.
New Delhis special envoy Karan Singh, whose father ceded the princely state of Kashmir to India in 1947, was to meet the king later Thursday. I wish for peace in Nepal and I am optimistic, senior diplomat Singh said after arriving in Kathmandu.
Daddy set a great example of how to get peace, didn't he?
But he had sterner words to say before leaving India to join Indias Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran in a concerted bid to persuade Gyanendra to back down. We do not want to interfere in the internal affairs of any other country but the situation in Nepal seems to be spinning out of control, said the 75-year-old.
The prime minister has asked me me to go to Nepal to take a message to the king and also make a general assessment of the situation, said Singh, whose wife is the grand-daughter of the last Rana dynasty prime minister of Nepal.
Former Indian ambassador to Nepal, Deb Mukharji, described the mission as grave. Singh was sent to impress on the king that a very serious change of course is required. Otherwise the future of the monarchy is in jeopardy, he said.
Rabindra Khanal, professor of politics at Kathmandus Tribhuvan University said the king was not about to yield. The king is not going to give up easily. Confrontation will continue, Khanal warned with the death toll already 10 and hundreds wounded. He is not in a hurry to resolve the political crisis. He is still trying.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/20/2006 00:44 ||
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Dr. Karan Singh is married to the Princess Yasho Rajya Lakshmi, grand-daughter of the last Rana Prime Minister of Nepal, Maharaja Mohun Shumsher.
The former regent of Jammu and Kashmir may not sit on a throne anymore buy he is
(a) alive
(b) very influential - a former Indian Member of Parliament, Federal Cabinet Minister, Chancellor of several Universities etc.
King Gyanendra on the other hand seems destined for a firing squad or lonely exile.
He may want to heed the advice of Karan Singh...
Posted by: john ||
04/20/2006 18:27 Comments ||
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A Levies force will inducted in North and South Waziristan as part of the government's efforts to further improve the law and order situation there, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao said on Wednesday.
Are they gonna be issued drums?
Sherpao said the recruitment of the planned Levies force would start soon. The government has also started a number of development projects in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas for the people's socio economic uplift. "It was decided during a recent meeting with US authorities that Americans will assist in the capacity-building of Levies and help with training as well as extend assistance towards development activities in the fields of education and health in FATA," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2006 00:00 ||
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PESHAWAR: Announcing a fund raising campaign for the Palestinian government, NWFP Senior Minister Sirajul Haq on Wednesday urged the federal government to extend financial support to the Palestinians. Talking to reporters upon his return from Iran after attending the Al-Quds Conference, Haq said that the conference was held at a time when Israel and the US were creating hurdles in the way of the new Palestinian government. He congratulated Iran for the conference, saying it had fulfilled a sacred duty.
He said that Pakistan was the only Muslim country that did not attend the conference, which was attended by the representatives of 67 countries and the speakers of parliament from 19 countries. The absence of the Pakistani flag was noticed by everyone attending the event, he said. Siraj said that Hamas had won an overwhelming majority in the general elections, despite opposition from the US and Israel. He said that Hamass victory in the elections represented the trust that Palestinians put in the partys leadership. He said that the West had refused to accept the verdict of the Palestinian people because the new government refused to end Jihad against the Israeli subjugation. The people of Pakistan would not shy away from making any sacrifice for their Muslim brethren, he said. He said that he had assured the Iranian president other Iranian leaders of the support of the Pakistani people in case of any US aggression against Iran.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2006 00:00 ||
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We'll think about it, Sirajul.
In the meantime, could you whip me up a sundae?
An explosives scanning machine has been installed in the residence of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan that his family must pass through every time they leave or enter the house. The unannounced fresh restrictions on the disgraced nuclear scientist and his family have stressed the entire household, a family friend told Daily Times. The source said even Dr AQ Khan's wife was required to pass through the scanning machine.
The top level source also said that Aysha Khan, Dr Khan's youngest daughter, had been stopped from visiting her detained father without explanation. Aysha runs a private school in Islamabad. Her husband, Saad Khan, was imprisoned in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi for several days some months ago after he beat up a British diplomat. He and his family have been put on a visa blacklist by Western embassies since the quarrel.
Can't imagine why...
Dr AQ Khan's eldest daughter, Dina Khan, left Pakistan shortly after her father was put under house arrest, allegedly with an "insurance policy" some "important documents". Dina's 13-year-old daughter Tania is still staying with Dr AQ Khan at his house.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2006 00:00 ||
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Dina has proof of the complicity of the Pakistan army high command in the nuclear smuggling network.
This is safe in London, to be released if AQK is harmed.
Posted by: john ||
04/20/2006 11:02 Comments ||
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Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Chairperson Benazir Bhutto has struck a deal with the government and postponed her planned meeting with Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) patron chief. Sources said that certain powerful government authorities were unhappy with the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam (PML-Q) and wanted to be rid of the PML-Q and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). These authorities contacted Benazir, asking her to sever her relations with the PML-N, sources added.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2006 00:00 ||
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is this serious? does this mean Perv and Bhutto are gonna be on the same side?
From think-tank analysts to angry retired generals to Capitol Hill lawmakers, it has become nearly universal conventional wisdom that the U.S. invasion force that conquered Iraq in 2003 lacked the manpower to secure the country after Saddams fall.
But the Pentagons civilian policymakers have learned a much different lesson. According to a senior civilian who played a crucial role in developing the just-released Quadrennial Defense Review, the problem with Operation Iraqi Freedom was not too few U.S. troops, but too many.
You could have adopted a radically different concept of operations, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. You could have trained free forces in various parts of Iraq and over time they could have gained greater control of the country.
Weve heard a lot of calls with people saying they would like to have seen a much larger force, especially for stability tasks. ... What is in some ways just as interesting is what if we had gone in with a much smaller force, but from the get-go leveraged the capabilities of the Iraqis?
IIUC that was the original idea, but then Congress got involved and vetoed the use of Chalabi's people and others, forcing the whole role onto coalition troops
People with ties to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had pushed such a plan in the months before the invasion, but military planners ultimately rejected it as unrealistic, and the defense official said the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction made such an approach impractical.
But the concept fits neatly with Rumsfelds push to use precision, speed and information technology to reduce the manpower requirements of warfare. And its more than just an argument over theory or past history; the less-is-more concept is crucial to the QDRs recommendations against increasing the size of U.S. ground forces, which analysts and politicians across the political spectrum have advocated.
To a number of experts, it illustrates the thinking of a Pentagon leadership that seems unwilling or unable to abandon previously held opinions in the face of new evidence.
Do they actually understand what is going on? asks retired Marine Col. Thomas X. Hammes, who has served in Iraq and written extensively on counterinsurgency and the future of warfare. They still dont get it. Theyre staying with their faith more than with reality. Thats the part that scares me.
the alternative can also be argued: that many military leaders are highly risk averse (paradoxically) and cannot step out of the working model they've been immersed in since the cold war was the mission
Criticism of the 2003 invasion force as too small and of the decision after Saddams fall to cancel deployment of additional troops for security is perhaps the most stinging criticism of the Rumsfeld Pentagon.
There is a period of time where there is a security vacuum, said Michele Flournoy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. What you need is a larger force for an initial period, so you dont allow widespread looting and chaos and disorder. If you go in bigger, you can come out faster.
Maybe, but the question is: what force with what mission and what capabilities? I don't know if Rumsfeld's ideas would have worked because they were hamstrung in some ways from the beginning.
But it is not surprising that defense leaders would suggest that a model so successful in Afghanistan could have worked in Iraq as well, said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Youve got a group of people in [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] who powerfully believe in small, fast, light, high-tech, Biddle said.
When such planners must choose between using a massive, traditional invasion force or one that relies on special operations forces and high-tech weapons, one of them looks like castor oil, and the other is an ice cream cone, Biddle said.
The preferred model of warfare for Rumsfeld and company is Afghanistan, Flournoy said. Thats what they want all campaigns to look like.
In many situations, Flournoy said, such an indirect approach is preferable. But applying it to Iraq, she suggested, ignores several facts. A campaign light on U.S. troops could succeed in a situation where an existing government needs support against an insurgency, she said, or, in a case such as Afghanistan, when an established insurgent fighting force opposes a weak central government.
Neither condition existed in Iraq in 2003. While exile leaders such as Ahmed Chalabi claimed to have thousands of freedom fighters at their disposal, their actual capabilities were much more modest. Its one thing to say youre going to install these guys in the government ministries, Flournoy said. But to say they had viable security forces that borders on fantasy.
OTOH, when the Pentagon wanted to finish training and supplying them, it got sabotaged and then vetoed in Congress by allies of the old school + the Dems.
Biddle, who has been deeply critical of the current push to expand Iraqi security forces, said relying on indigenous troops would only have exacerbated the religious and ethnic tensions now threatening to tear Iraq apart. Any native anti-Saddam force would overwhelmingly have consisted of Shiite Muslims and ethnic Kurds opposing Saddams Sunni Muslim-dominated regime giving those groups an early start on the rivalry now causing much of the bloodshed in Iraq.
Awww gee. I guess it would be politically incorrect to note that the Sunnis by and large were the support base for Saddam.
And both point out that even a large indigenous force likely would have lacked the manpower to guard Iraqs border, patrol its dense urban areas, round up the massive ammunition stockpiles that have fueled the insurgency or secure suspected nuclear, chemical and biological sites.
BUT ... they might have had a lot of information that would target such a search more effectively
Its sort of hard to see, Biddle said, how you get anything other than chaos.
LASIK is quite inexpensive nowadays - I highly recommend it for those who are shortsighted.
Words vs. actions
Perhaps more important than the argument over what already has happened in Iraq is the debate over the future size and shape of the military, and strategies for future operations.
Iraq has been held up as Exhibit A in the case for a larger Army and Marine Corps. Many outside analysts and retired officers say the strains of the past three years make clear the ground forces simply arent large enough to carry out the nations strategy.
But the senior Pentagon civilian said concepts such as the different approach to the Iraq invasion were crucial to the QDR, which attempts to lay out a long-range strategy.
Its not one-size-fits-all, the official said. But we increasingly see, especially in complex situations where we need to defeat military forces as well as the broader challenge of stability and establishing legitimate governance, that we have to think about some very different approaches.
This led to the QDRs conclusion that while the size of the U.S. military is about right, the available personnel should be shifted away from traditional heavy formations to boost such capabilities as special operations, civil affairs and support functions, the official said.
People havent grasped the point that its a big admission on our part that the mix of forces and capabilities weve got is wrong and we need to change that, the official said.
The force structure left over from the cold war had some major hidden costs. For instance the large force in Iraq imposed a huge logistical support burden. Many of the IEDs hit supply convoys rather than patrols.
The question is whether they alone are enough. Even as the administration argues it isnt using a one-size-fits-all approach, its refusal to consider larger ground forces leaves the U.S. military too small to cope with situations requiring heavy forces.
Do you want to count on the assumption that youll always have some indigenous force thats up to handling the job with more modest support from special ops? Flournoy said. Im not willing to count on it. I think its a prudent hedge to have ground forces that are able to do that.
Some, sure. But it's interesting to see that not one critic mentions the role of technology to support that smaller force. We've already fielded things like robots to search caves and microUAVs to do tactical recon. Not everyone has figured out how to use this stuff, though
Hammes, the retired Marine colonel, said this is especially true if, as the QDR contends, the military must take on counterinsurgency as a core mission.
The primary requirement for counterinsurgency is security, which is manpower-intensive, said Hammes, whose book, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century, has made him one of the countrys leading experts on fighting insurgents.
see above re: vision.
As far as the plans Rumsfeld and his senior aides have for the U.S. military, Theres a great deal of tension between what theyre saying and what theyre doing, Hammes said. It just doesnt make any sense.
Not if you keep seeing it through the eyes of old doctrine. The irony here is that the Marines overall have been much quicker to pick up on Rumsfeld's changes than the Army ... not surprising, given that our post-WWII Army is a huge bureaucracy aimed at fielding hundreds of thousands of troops at a time. The doctrine, roles, policies and procedures are all oriented that way. The Marines are stretching some too, but because they started with an expeditionary capability they've been much more adaptable in Iraq, doctrinally, in the use of technology and in dealing with the Iraqis. That's why under Rummy we have a Marine as chair of the joint staff and another Marine general as commander of Strategic Command (!!!). These guys get it. A lot of the Army generals, and a lot of *retired* Marine officers don't. They are quite capable of executing old doctrine well. But the world has changed and they haven't.
Saw this recently in a briefing in which a soon to retire Army colonel wanted to rehash Army vs. Navy armwrestling re: resources. It's the wrong question. The right question is, where should we invest our defense dollars to build up the JOINT force. A lot of the retired (and some active duty) generals are making good points about potential downsides of changing doctrine. But a lot of others are like the French 'students' protesting economic reforms. They don't want changes, but have no recognition a vastly changed world or solutions for the problems that world poses TODAY.
#1
"...push to use precision, speed and information technology to reduce the manpower requirements of warfare."
This is absolutely essential. Even if in a given situation 'more troops is better', we don't usually have them available. And in this war, with potentially hundreds of battlefronts, we can never have enough troops available for that operational model; even if the entire country was motivated and mobilized we'd still be badly outnumbered. We MUST fight 'smarter, not harder.'
#2
Counteroffensive to defend Rumsfeld begins. Indirect method to be used. Heavily armoured but immobile retirees caught in cossfire.
Perhaps more important than the argument over what already has happened in Iraq is the debate over the future size and shape of the military, and strategies for future operations.
Perhaps more important than that is the promotion lists Rumsfeld will send to Congress in the next 2 1/2 years. That will decide the debate and that is why Rummy will not leave.
#4
IMHO, the lesson that we really need to learn from the war is how to supply fast moving forces in a situation where enemy troops have been bypassed. I think we have a real handle on combined arms operations, and the lower rank officers from this war will make outstanding generals.
As for the occupation, the assumption that training is easy underlies the thinking here. Ummm... it's not. 50% of the training that our troops have they bring with them into the service. It's cultural, and that is why so much of the work in training the Iraqis or Afghans is much harder.
I'm not sure these great thinkers can demonstrate a war where the use of native troops took the burden off of American soldiers. Perhaps Vietnam, but we were in retreat and any warm body between us an another casulty was the idea. Certainly the French resistance was not a key player in the liberation of France. The ROK took years to become an effective force and Americans bore the brunt of the Korean War.
I still think that the logistics of combined arms is where the greatest lessons are to be learned.
#5
But the senior Pentagon civilian said concepts such as the different approach to the Iraq invasion were crucial to the QDR, which attempts to lay out a long-range strategy.
What about crucialto fucking VICTORY! This entire General Officer (GO) backlash is a product of a pentagon centric, econo-war diplo approach utilizing the secure base-camp (Green Zone) limited engagement mentality which led to what most would agree is something less than total victory 35 years ago. Harry Summers book "On Strategy" which covers the period 1965-1972 and has been around for a while, would be a good read for many of these pentagon elites who think a counterinsurgency warfare and Foreign Internal Defense (FID) are new concepts. Like the Prussian war strategy, Clausewitz would find Rumsfeld's strategy "intellectually arrogant." What is forgotten is War is as Clausewitz put it, "merely a continuation of politics." The race to early "success" and host nation hand-off as opposed to victory, along with the premature entry of Bremmerite diplomats and politicians ties the hands of military commanders. I can assure you the somewhat fatherly and occassionally deferential SECDEF you see in the news conference is not the same man found in the daily pentagon grind. The "pottery house rules" (you break it - you buy it) voiced by General Powell and the cautions of General Shinseki were both lost on this man. The unceremonious departure of General Shinseki and the SECDEF's bringing General Pete Schoomaker, a fine Special Forces officer, out of retirement to be the Army Chief of Staff and to hurry along "Army Transformation" both sent very bad signals which have not been forgotten. Also not forgotten on the GO's has been the pentagon directed legal hammering of soldiers and marines under the UCMJ involving Rules of Engagement (ROE) and "prisoner abuse" charges. Yes Major General Taguba, I'm talking about you and your Abu Gharib reports which should have never seen the light of day or a reporters notebook. All of the events of Abu Gharib could have been handled in the manner coined by LTG Donn A. Starry, "soldier's business." War is a bitch, bad stuff happens, it ain't pretty, correct it and move on. As for the retired generals, let them speak their piece and let the chips fall where they may.
#6
I understand your analysis, Besoeker. But you left out two major players: the media and the Dems, both of whom arguably worked hard to make sure the strategy that was chosen would fail.
War is indeed the pursuit of geopolitics by other means. There were geopolitical considerations woven into the original strategy and it was precisely those (IMO) which most alarmed the Dems and the MSM and which they fought tooth, nail and "fake but accurate" story to derail.
I agree there were big risks in Rumsfeld's approach. The reality is that there were ALSO major geopolitical risks in dealing with Iraq from a framework rooted in old doctrine. I seldom hear proponents of that doctrine admit this.
You are not alone, however, in deeply resenting the signals Rumsfeld has sent to the Army's general officer staff ...
#7
As I said in another forum, Rumsfeld does not answer to the Generals. He answered to George Bush.
The whining of the Pentagon chairborne brigades is all about commanding large units in combat. That's how you get promoted. In the War on Terror, few generals get to command in combat. The small unit commanders are earning the experience and awards.
While the prisoner abuse charges were damaging, it is laughable to blame Rumsfeld for that. The media created the circus. And, in point of fact, the military ought to have been embarrassed by Lynndie and her buddies.
Lastly, in this country the civilians control the military. I'd rather their hands were tied a time or two than have to suffer the results that we have seen where civilian control of the military is lost.
Posted by: john ||
04/20/2006 10:01 Comments ||
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#10
the QDR is aimed at the future.
The idea laid out here is interesting. To have liberated a PART of the country, then raised local forces to move on. Note this is NOT the same as the insert Chalabi idea that the State Dept, IIUC, vetoed. That assumed wed liberate the country all at once, as we actually did, but would have brought exiles into help occupy it. Its debatable in retrospect whether that would have worked - using locals was a great idea, but in retrospect its clear Chalabi, though not a bad administrator, had very litle support in-country. This alternative has both advantages and disadvantages. It would have made it more of an Iraqi op earlier, and maybe eased the diplo situation. OTOH the civil war issue is quite serious, as weve since found, and this might have made it worse. And you cant just dismiss that and say the Sunnis were favored - of course they were, but any new democratic Iraq still has to include them as citizens, and unless youre willing consider ethnic cleansing, to establish a stable iraq thats not totalitarian, you have to do it in a way that doent exacerbate ethnic tensions. There are other issues as well - a longer war, which this involves, means more chances for Saddam, whos left in control of the Sunni Triangle, while you build up a force elsewhere, to make mischief. Remember, one of the original reasons to go to war was because of WMDs and the possibiliy of them going to terrorists. I for one, do NOT believe the admin deliberately lied about that - they really believed it was a possibility. One of the reasons for the blitzkrieg to Baghdad was to preempt any WMD response.
All of which is irrelevant to the question of whether we were correctly prepared for Iraq. By winter 2003 Rumsfeld knew he wasnt going to get a Chalabi force, and he certainly wasnt planning on a take one area and then build strategy. He WAS planning on a blitz to Baghdad with US forces. Given that, he had an obligation to plan on the aftermath. Its becoming clear that he never seriously planned for it, that he dismissed earlier serious work on the problem done by the State dept and others, that he had too few resources for the immediate aftermath of victory, and that that had a serious impact on the course of the last 3 years.
OTOH this DOES seem relevant to future war planning. Take Iran for example. There are many parts of Iran that might be suitable for a strategy like this.
#11
One value of this escapade in retrospect may be to establish that the borders of the middle east drawn on maps in London in 1922 are disfunctional. We'll also know that after Iran.
#12
"As I said in another forum, Rumsfeld does not answer to the Generals. He answered to George Bush."
He DOES answer to Bush. And Bush answers to the people of the United States. ANd the people of the US, to judge Bush's confidence in Rummy, need facts about what happened. Key fact being, did Rummy really provide the generals with all the forces they said they needed (as he has repeatedly said he did) or did they not ask, cause they knew it was pointless. The only ones who know the truth to that are Rummy himself, and the generals.
"The whining of the Pentagon chairborne brigades is all about commanding large units in combat. That's how you get promoted. In the War on Terror, few generals get to command in combat. The small unit commanders are earning the experience and awards."
Two of the generals DID command big units in Iraq. I see no evidence that what motivates them is careerism. Rummy is a patriot. So are the generals, AFAICT. Lets listen to what each has to say.
"While the prisoner abuse charges were damaging, it is laughable to blame Rumsfeld for that."
The problem clearly went at least as high as Miller, and probably Feith. Rummy didnt seem all that concerned with the systemic problems, and was slow to discipline Miller and Feith.
" The media created the circus. And, in point of fact, the military ought to have been embarrassed by Lynndie and her buddies."
The military was profoundly embarrassed IIUC, and not just by Lynndie and her buddies, but the whole systemic problem.
"Lastly, in this country the civilians control the military. I'd rather their hands were tied a time or two than have to suffer the results that we have seen where civilian control of the military is lost."
Did you speak up when the active brass was digging into Clinton and utilizing all their contacts on the hill to keep open gays from being allowed in the military?
#13
"He DOES answer to Bush. And Bush answers to the people of the United States. ANd the people of the US, to judge Bush's confidence in Rummy, need facts about what happened. Key fact being, did Rummy really provide the generals with all the forces they said they needed (as he has repeatedly said he did) or did they not ask, cause they knew it was pointless. The only ones who know the truth to that are Rummy himself, and the generals."
Yeah, so? You've proven nothing here. Nothing. Stated the obvious and implied something sinister about Rummsfeld with your spin. Bullshit.
"Two of the generals DID command big units in Iraq. I see no evidence that what motivates them is careerism. Rummy is a patriot. So are the generals, AFAICT. Lets listen to what each has to say."
We've heard what each has to say. It's America. No one has stopped anyone from speaking out, have they? That there are traditions which have been drubbed by it is an issue, however. And these traditions have good reasons for their existence - not undermining civilian control of the military. Disagreeing with your boss' strategy is common. Outside of the military it's a minor issue compared to inside, but it usually ends in having your ass handed to you with a pink slip.
"The problem clearly went at least as high as Miller, and probably Feith. Rummy didnt seem all that concerned with the systemic problems, and was slow to discipline Miller and Feith."
Systemic? Bullshit. Isolated. Rumsfeld allowed the Military Justice System to work, just as he should have, instead of letting a bunch of MSM assholes steeped in BDS railroad him into stupid actions. BTW, what part of this are you having trouble with?
"The military was profoundly embarrassed IIUC, and not just by Lynndie and her buddies, but the whole systemic problem."
Yes, indeed. Bad apples always embarrass the organizations they infest. Systemic? There you go again. Prove it. You're full of shit.
"Did you speak up when the active brass was digging into Clinton and utilizing all their contacts on the hill to keep open gays from being allowed in the military?"
LOL. The ultimate PCIdiot issue. Gays don't belong in the military and you lack common sense if you can't recognize that fact. There are innumerable issues which arise from it due to the accommodations afforded people in the military. Obviously, you have never served.
What a large post, my dear. Yet it fails to impress in any way.
#14
I foresee a whole new range of problems had we used fewer personnel. Granted, the conventional war would have been over with all deliberate speed in either case, and yet, had we not utterly destroyed the Baathists as a functioning unit, I suspect we would have a lot more trouble today than we do now.
Compare with the German model. Was there ever any doubt that the entire Nazi organization, military and civilian, had to be utterly dismantled? And yet, even as thorough a job as we did, there were still vestigial Nazi groups performing routine government functions for quite a while.
Such bureaucrats were by themselves toothless, but had any serious Nazi elements remained, they could have put flesh on those bones with great speed--using the remaining framework to reconstruct their power.
In any event, we destroyed the Baathist regime and for a long while there was considerable chaos. Saddam knew that his military had little chance of conventionally stopping the US military, so many efforts were made to establish a shadow leadership to lead an unconventional war.
Now how in heck could we have tried to use existing Baathist frameworks more than we did, yet somehow exclude those who were part of the effort to reestablish the Baathist regime? It is difficult now, had we behaved otherwise, it might have proven impossible. The new Iraqi government would have been so infiltrated with saboteurs and traitors that the civil war would have happened.
So no, in 20/20 hindsight, we used the right number of personnel. Not too few and not too many.
#15
Ima going to echo Beoseker and recommend that everyone here read On Strategy. It is actually quite a slim volume and could be read in a weekend if you dedicated yourself to it.
#17
Ah, the Goldie Locks syndrome. Not enough, too much, or just right.
It's history, the only useful result now is for lessons learned. But, each operation is unique in large measure.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/20/2006 14:44 Comments ||
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#18
LASIK is quite inexpensive nowadays - I highly recommend it for those who are shortsighted.
Unfortunately it won't help those who are totally blind, or equivalently, apologists for Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld may be the new school, but clearly it matters not in places like...oh I don't know...Ramadi, 3 years into the conflict.
So when is this new doctrine of Rumsfeld's going to bear fruit? Soon? Any time now? 3 more years? Or is Ramadi a special case, not winnable at all? Or Iraq for that matter.
Rummy's new school: casualties are low, steady as she goes, then get the fuck out.
#19
Yeah Rummy has really screwed thing up. Look at our successes. Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo, France. Fifty million liberated and counting is not a bad record.
#22
Myself, I think the turnover to the Iraqis, without any reserved functions such as security, was far too fast. The Iraqis have officially been running the show for the last 2 years (Fallujah I and Najaf being prime examples of where politics screwed up perfectly good and necessary operations) and that is a huge part of the problem. Where the military knows what they want and need to do, the government either doesn't or, in the case of Jaafari's Joke, is opposed because they're Iranian puppets. For example, the Jabr refusal to field the trained police and the free-run of the militias and death squads.
RR apparently has a BDS stiffie with a Rumsfeld fetish and ignores the several parts of the equation that don't fit its hit mentality.
The point is victory over the asshats. The major impediment for the last 2 years has been purely political, interfering in all things military, both within Iraq and here in the US.
#24
Me too, Jim#6. Everyone but the Arabs DID. Actually, if we include Afghanistan in the picture for completeness, everyone but the devout of Islam DID.
There's a hard lesson in there, somewhere.
And I agree, RR is spinning for power, not for victory.
#25
If anyone has BDS it is you people. I mean, the man can do no wrong! Fire Rumsfeld? Forget it. That would be an admission of failure.
Where the military knows what they want and need to do, the government either doesn't or, in the case of Jaafari's Joke, is opposed because they're Iranian puppets.
Sure. You can always spin it that way. Of course, the wonderful thing about spin, is that given enough angular speed, you can say that it's the US that can't handle Iranian puppets in their sphere of influence. Funny how spin works.
#28
As to the question at the beginning of the comments, the Crow Scouts utilized against the Apaches were an unmitigated success. Ran the Apaches into the ground, and did it quite cheaply. So native troops can be quite effective against an enemy force, especially if you exploit their tribal/ethnic hatreds and permit them a level of revenge-taking.
#30
the point is on RR's head. Troll fever - catch it!
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/20/2006 19:46 Comments ||
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#31
Everybody seems to be forgetting two significant factors: the 4th ID wasn't able to come in through Turkey as the original plan called for, and the collapse of the Iraqi Army happened so fast because all the big-shots cleared out BEFORE their units faced American troops.
It was decided afterwards that the 4th wasn't in position to help in Iraq, even as follow-up forces. We also had no idea we would face the kind of asymetric warfare we ran into.
Personally, I believe the military is too small for all the jobs it has to do, and we're asking far too much of the troops that go back time and time again into the hostilities. We also don't allow those soldiers enough time to integrate all the new techniques and practices that are coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan on an almost daily basis.
I do believe part of the problem between the Generals and Rumsfeld is the realignment of forces from a Division/Corps/Army heierarchy to a small-unit/brigade/theater commander heierarchy. I also believe Rumsfeld is right on this. The only enemies that large-unit tactics might be necessary for are China and Russia, and I can't see us engaged in a conventional war with either of them. Even if we should be forced into a war with either of these nations, the small-unit approach, in a combined-arms environment, would be more effective than set-piece divisions, with less overhead, putting more combat troops on the "point of the spear".
The Civil War is a good object lesson in how such forces operate: the massive human-wave attacks at Gettysberg are analogous to divisional combat, while Jeb Stuart's marauders are the equivalent of the small-unit operations. Gettysberg achieved little beyond destroying large parts of both armies, and precluding a Southern victory. Stuart's marauders tied up thousands of Union soldiers, panicked half the population of the Shenandoah Valley, and made supplying Grant's armies twice as difficult as they would normally be. Modern technology plays as a force-multiplier to small-unit effectiveness, and allows tactical changes to be implemented in policy when something doesn't work, or when something works better than expected.
Generals always begin a new war by fighting the last one - the one they learned from. It takes time, effort, and strong wills to ensure that change, when necessary, is implemented. Check the number of generals sacked at the beginning of World War II, and you will begin to get an idea of what Rumsfeld is doing.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/20/2006 21:51 Comments ||
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BAGHDAD - Iraq will convene a much-awaited session of parliament on Thursday, only the second since elections in December, the office of assembly speaker Adnan Pachachi said on Wednesday. The session was to be convened on April 17, but was later cancelled after leaders failed to resolve the political deadlock over who would lead the next government.
It will be only the second gathering of lawmakers since the election in December 2005 to choose the first countrys permanent post-Saddam Hussein parliament.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/20/2006 00:47 ||
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BAGHDAD: Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari stood firm Wednesday that he is the Shia nominee for a new term, saying that to step down is "out of the question." Al-Jaafari's comments, made in a nationally televised press conference, mean the deadlock over the premiership is likely to continue.
Sunni and Kurdish objections to al-Jaafari have stalled efforts to form a unity government four months after national elections. "As a matter of principle, I think the idea of making a concession is, for me at least, out of the question," al-Jaafari said. The prime minister said he still enjoys the support of the Shia alliance, the dominant bloc in parliament, despite a few public calls from within for him to step aside.
I'm starting to lose patience with Jaafari, and I suspect the people who count in Washington are, too. It's become pretty obvious the deadlock is intentional, keeping Iraq without a functioning government while all the gunnies in the world fire indiscriminately in every direction. I'm wondering if the drivers for the deadlock are in Terrorhan.
There are times I think it's a pity we're not given to car booms like everybody else in the Middle East. The problem of Jaafari (and of Moqtada and a half dozen other bad actors) could be solved so quickly to be replaced in a short time by similar, but different, problems, of course.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Not comfortable with the precedent this "hell no, I won't go" stance is setting in a nascent democracy. The more he digs his heels in, the more he needs to be replaced.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/20/2006 0:39 Comments ||
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#2
This is Tater's boy, doind what he gets paid to do: keep a governmnet from being formed so Iran (the puppetmaster) can continue to foment civil war.
Need to go beat up the Madhi Ary a bit more to get Jaafari a clue. If that fails, arrange an observation flight. Im sure the Kurds and Sunnis will figure out what to do when given the flight plan and a stinger or 2 just "falls oyut of" a US supply truck nearby the Kurdish resistance barracks.
#3
Jaafari, Jaafari
Youre to close to Sadr
We want you to leave and go far
Jaafari, Jaafari
Youre hated by every Kurd
The Sunnis think youre a turd
Jaafari, Jaafari
Allawi will no longer play nice
And dont even think of Ms Rice
Jaafari, Jaafari.
Posted by: a crooner ||
04/20/2006 10:23 Comments ||
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#4
Flash
Jaafari has "thrown his nomination" back to the UIA. The Iraqi parliament meeting scheduled for today has been postponed, so that UIA can meet, can reexamine their nomination for PM.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/20/2006 21:26 Comments ||
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#10
If Jafaari continues to drag his feet, he needs to meet the working end of a sniper's bullet. I don't care who that sniper works for, the deed itself is what needs to be done.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/20/2006 21:53 Comments ||
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BAGHDAD: The chief judge in the trial of Saddam Hussein ruled on Wednesday that signatures linking the ousted Iraqi leader to the 1980s Dujail Shia massacre were "authentic". As the trial resumed after a two-day recess, Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman said that "the experts verified these documents, and the signatures of Saddam Hussein were found to be authentic".
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2006 00:00 ||
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Saying that dignity was more important than aid in dollars, Palestinian Premier Ismail Haniyeh insisted yesterday that his Hamas-led government would not renounce violence despite mounting Western pressure over its failure to condemn a Tel Aviv bombing.
We reject all pressure on our people and government to forego our basic rights. We will not touch the rights of the Palestinian people whatever the circumstances, Haniyeh said during talks with police and security officers. Your visit is proof that this country is more important than money, that dignity is more important than dollars. Today you prove that dignity is the most important thing, he said, addressing his visitors.
The prime ministers defiance was later backed by six militant groups, including Hamas own armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, at an outdoor news conference by gunmen in Gaza City that broke up only after the appearance of an Israeli helicopter.
Snicker.
Five other armed groups joined Hamas military wing in backing the prime minister, including the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. We reject all forms of political blackmail in the form of political money, a masked fighter read from a joint statement at the Gaza City gathering. We fully support the position of the elected government which rejects recognizing Israeli occupation. It is very important not to commit to any agreement that denies our people their rights or hurts the national interest.
Can I get some of that low-carb Dignity? I'm trying to lose some of those winter pounds...
Looks like they only have the high-calorie version in stock. Why else would they think they're sitting fat and pretty?
#1
Newly Iranian-suppor HAMAS repeatedly threatens Israel, while also newly Iranian-suppor HEZBOLLAH/HIZBOLLAH threatens Turkey - yep, you betcha, without a doubt no future Iranian Empire in the PC making here. Its only Uranium, NOT Plutonium, ergo NO WMDS IN IRAN - Fascist warmongering Male Brute [SSSSHHHHH, SOCIALIST]Amerika makes yet another mistake requiring OWG Socialism, and to lose sovereignty. Fascist Amerika and its MOtherly Clintonian Commie/
LeftSocialist-majority demand it.
Posted by: SPoD ||
04/20/2006 5:49 Comments ||
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#4
Is dignity spending the life of your state spending money others gave you to kill your brother? Or is it demanding land you were already paid for? Or is it folloing a false religion, albiet the GODdamned circumstances?
#7
They have tried everything to raise money but a telethon and that is next. The Israelis are being kind by taking the embargoed Palestinian tax receipts to pay Israeli firms for electricity, water, etc. When the funds run out, I suspect the electricity will stop and the Paleos, being unable to afford a single candle, will curse the darkness.
#10
Hey, Ismail Haniyeh; quick question: Dignity is defined as "the quality of being worthy of esteem or respect". How do you psychotic pieces of shit from hell qualify as 'dignified'? I ask merely for information.
#11
I guess the world insulted their dignity over the past, what, 50 years by providing aid. So sorry to have forced them to debase themselves by sending cash.
I say we preserve their precious dignity forever by never giving them one more damn dime.
#12
Hama's dignity would taste even sweeter only if the US cut off ALL aid.
Posted by: ed ||
04/20/2006 22:39 Comments ||
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#13
I somehow find Paleos and any form of honor or dignity or self-consciousness as a non-sequitar. They need to learn the meaning before using the words. It doesn't apply. Killer-Loser cult beggars
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/20/2006 22:44 Comments ||
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Iran's Islamic authorities are preparing a crackdown on women flouting the stringent dress code in the clearest sign yet of social and political repression under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
From today police in Tehran will be under orders to arrest women failing to conform to the regime's definition of Islamic morals by wearing loose-fitting hijab, or headscarves, tight jackets and shortened trousers exposing skin.
Offenders could be punished with £30 fines or two months in jail. Officers will also be authorised to confront men with outlandish hairstyles and people walking pet dogs, an activity long denounced as un-Islamic by the religious rulers.
The clampdown coincides with a bill before Iran's conservative-dominated parliament proposing that fines for people with TV satellite dishes rise from £60 to more than £3,000. Millions of Iranians have illegal dishes, enabling them to watch western films and news channels.
The dress purge is led by a Tehran city councillor, Nader Shariatmaderi, a close ally of Mr Ahmadinejad who helped to plot last year's election victory.
Loosely arranged headscarves - exposing glamourous hairstyles - and shorter, tight-fitting overcoats (manteaus) became a symbol of the social freedoms that flourished under the reformist presidency of Mohammed Khatami.
During his election campaign, Mr Ahmadinejad dismissed fears that his presidency might herald a forced reversal, saying Iran had more urgent problems.
However, Mr Shariatmaderi denounced the trends as "damaging to revolutionary and Islamic principles". "We are looking for a social utopia to live in but in the last couple of months, our attention has wavered," he told fellow councillors. "In the present international situation, people must unite under known principles."
The clampdown recalls the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution, when women wearing lipstick were often confronted by female vigilantes wiping their faces clean with handkerchiefs, which were said to often conceal razor blades.
The new campaign will hold taxi agencies accountable for their passengers' attire, police will be able to impound cabs carrying women dressed "inappropriately". Agencies guilty of repeat offences will be closed. Police have reportedly been stopping women motorists recently whose hijab was judged inadequate. Police have also raided fashion stores and seized brightly coloured manteaus.
Tehran's police chief, Morteza Talai, said the campaign would try to clamp down on people making "the social environment insecure".
Young women shopping in north Tehran's fashionable Tajrish neighbourhood yesterday, however, were uncowed. Matin, 24, a nurse, was wearing a gaudily patterned light-blue head scarf pushed back to reveal sunglasses and bleached blond hair. Her tight, short black manteau with intricate gold patterns seemed designed to provoke the ire of the authorities. But she was unrepentant. "I'm a married woman and it should be my husband who tells me what and what not to wear. He likes the way I dress," she said.
Surprisingly, Narges Asgari, 20, a dressmaker wearing an all-encompassing black chador, was also critical. "I don't think people will listen because they want to take decisions themselves," she said. "Clothes depend on the culture of their families. I wear the chador because, in my family, it's something we accept."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/20/2006 01:54 ||
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#1
Just got harder for our boyz to tell a woman from Michael Jackson.
#4
But she was unrepentant. "I'm a married woman and it should be my husband who tells me what and what not to wear. He likes the way I dress," she said.
Sigh. I guess that's seen as progressive in that centurypart of the world.
...people walking pet dogs, an activity long denounced as un-Islamic by the religious rulers.
Wading into oil politics for the first time, Iran's hard-line president said Wednesday that crude oil prices now at record levels still are below their true value.
In statements likely to rattle world oil markets, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also said developed countries, not producing countries like Iran, are benefiting the most from the current high prices.
"The global oil price has not reached its real value yet. The products derived from crude oil are sold at prices dozens of times higher than those charged by oil-producing countries," state-run Tehran radio quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
"The developed nations are the biggest beneficiary of the added value of oil products," he said.
The president, who is embroiled with the West and the
United Nations over Tehran's nuclear program, stopped short of saying Iran would use oil as a weapon, a tactic much feared by his antagonists on the nuclear issue. Nor did he say what oil prices should be.
Oil prices leapt above $72 a barrel Wednesday, settling at a record high for the third straight day.
"The products derived from crude oil cost over 10 times the price of oil sold by producing states. Developed and powerful countries benefit more from its value-added than any party," Ahmadinejad said.
Oil prices should be determined on the basis of market supply and demand, the Iranian leader said.
"Oil is the major asset of nations possessing it. Its price should not be lowered on the pretext that it will prove harmful to developing states, thus permitting the world powers to benefit the most from it," he said.
George Orwel, an analyst at the New York-based Petroleum Intelligence Weekly said he thought Ahmadinejad was playing the oil card to resist pressure over Iran's nuclear program.
"They are using the oil as a political football. Every time there's an issue with Iran, the oil market freaks out," he said in a telephone interview.
Earlier this week, as oil prices pushed above $70 a barrel, ABN Amro broker Lee Fader said the trigger was heightened fear about U.S. military action against Iran, which has said it would go ahead with plans to enrich uranium in defiance of the United States, Europe and the U.N. nuclear agency.
Iran says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful, but the West fears it is intent on arming itself with nuclear weapons.
If the United States were to attack Iran, Tehran might try to cripple the world economy by putting a stranglehold on the oil that moves through the Strait of Hormuz a narrow, strategically important waterway running to Iran's south.
While discounting Ahmadinejad's seriousness in his Wednesday comments about the value of oil, Orwel conceded the oil industry could not do without the 2.5 million barrels that Iran exports daily.
"Ahmadinejad is trying to show his muscle so that the Bush administration can realize the consequences on the oil market of further confrontation with Iran," Orwel said, adding that he fully expected Iran to threaten to cut off oil if the confrontation with the West continued.
While Ahmadinejad did not say he would use oil as a weapon in his dispute with the West, Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi said last month the oil card was in play.
"If (they) politicize our nuclear case, we will use any means. We are rich in energy resources. We have control over the biggest and the most sensitive energy route of the world," he said, referring to the Straits of Hormuz.
In keeping with Iranian leaders' tendency of late to contradict themselves, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki later denied Iran would adopt such a policy.
Iran is the world's fourth-largest oil-producing country and the second in OPEC.
Ahmadinejad urged oil-producing countries within and outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to establish a fund to help alleviate the pressure resulting from high oil prices on Third World nations.
Oppenheimer & Co. oil analyst Fadel Gheit said he considered it unlikely that Iran had any intention of cutting off its oil, the lifeline of its economy.
Gheit noted, however, that there was some truth in Ahmadinejad's comment on developed countries benefiting most from increased oil prices, though the statement would likely be seen as an attempt at "fanning the flames" of a red-hot oil market.
"What he's saying makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, the source of the comment is going to send jitters in the market," Gheit said.
"The street value (of oil) is triple what OPEC is making," Gheit added, referring to the value of a barrel of gasoline versus the value of a barrel of oil.
Gheit estimated that in London, where the retail price of gasoline is about $6 a gallon, about $150 worth of gasoline can be made and sold from every $50 barrel of oil.
"That is why Exxon Mobil and all the rest make so much money," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/20/2006 01:52 ||
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#1
O'REILLY on FNC this AM was claiming that he has evidencias that Big Oil companies, espec EXXON-MOBIL, were wilfully gouging US consumers wid unnecessary price hikes at the pumps, and that world oil supply was at an eight year high, i.e. USA is actually in an oil glut, NOT shortage.
U.S. gasoline stocks slumped more than 5 million barrels last week, government data released Wednesday showed. It was a larger fall than analysts polled by Reuters expected, and supplies are now nearly 5 percent below last year's level.
#5
"The global oil price has not reached its real value yet. The products derived from crude oil are sold at prices dozens of times higher than those charged by oil-producing countries," state-run Tehran radio quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
No sh*t, genius. I can't fill my tank with crude. Insane and ignorant, you are.
#6
Ahmadinejad is now concerning himself with the proper price of a base commodity? I thought he was on a countdown to the end of this world and on to the next. No need to price oil there! What if all of his BS and bluster was just to raise tensions, AND the world price of oil and thus Iranian oil profits?
#7
"The products derived from crude oil are sold at prices dozens of times higher than those charged by oil-producing countries"
With crude at $72/BBL ($1.70/gal) and gas at $2.75/gal, perhaps he is refering to non-fuel petrochemical feedstock end products. Although with ahMADinejad it can be hard to tell sometimes.
#8
U.S. gasoline stocks slumped more than 5 million barrels last week, government data released Wednesday showed. It was a larger fall than analysts polled by Reuters expected, and supplies are now nearly 5 percent below last year's level
Never mind. :>
#10
The man needs an economics lesson -- the markets (absent government manipulation) determine true value. You'd think he'd appreciate the true value of gasoline refining since he's short on it.
#13
Wading into oil politics for the first time, Iran's hard-line president said Wednesday that crude oil prices now at record levels still are below their true value.
Translation, I wanna rattle their cage and jack up the price some more.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/20/2006 22:12 Comments ||
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#14
grudgingly...mahdi in the well IS Funny :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/20/2006 22:27 Comments ||
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LONDON: Britain does not expect Iran to comply with United Nations Security Council demands to halt uranium enrichment by the end of April, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Wednesday. The UN Security Council has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to report by April 28 on Iran's compliance with a council demand that it stop enriching uranium and answer the agency's questions on its nuclear programme.
"We are working on the basis that Iran will not meet the proposals from the Security Council on the 30-day deadline," Straw told BBC Radio Four in an interview from Saudi Arabia. Straw said negotiating with Iran was unpredictable. "But what is most likely to happen is that the matter will move back to the Security Council and there will then be discussions about the next steps which the international community will take," he added. Straw's comments followed a meeting in Moscow of senior officials from the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France %u2013 the council's permanent members %u2013 and Germany.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2006 00:00 ||
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Straw said negotiating with Iran was unpredictable
Foolish Stawman, negotiations with Iran is highly predictable and ridiculous.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/20/2006 0:42 Comments ||
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SPACEWAR.com reports that Russia will not intervene should the Iran crises lead to armed conflict between MadMoud and America. Assuming the Russians are believable, thats leaves the ball in CHINA's court - eeeerrrrrr, sorry, meant Kimmie and the [future] Chinese-controlled, ergo anti-Chinese, COMMIE NORTH KOREAN EMPIRE. No one should be surprised iff China conditionally + quietly demands Dubya not help Taiwan in return for China's "assistance" vv Iran, i.e. China can finally attack Taiwan without fear of US intervention - I don't believe Moralist Dubya will go for it, though.
#3
If what you say is true Joe then Russia must have sold its inventory and told the U.S. ok now you can blow it up. The Russians they do have a racket going.
Lebanon's Hizbollah dismissed on Wednesday a new United Nations report asking Lebanon to disarm the guerrilla group and set its borders with Syria as pandering to Israeli demands. The report, obtained by Reuters on Tuesday and prepared by UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, was in response to Security Council resolution 1559, which demands foreign troops leave Lebanon and all militias in the country disband. "Terje Roed-Larsen ... tries to meet the demands of the Israeli agenda through the Lebanese gate," Ali Ammar, one of pro-Syrian Hizbollah's 14 parliament members, told LBC Television.
Hizbollah and Israel have clashed sporadically in the Israeli-occupied border territory of Shebaa Farms, which Israel considers Syrian land. Hizbollah considers it Lebanese. The Jewish state believes Hizbollah is a terrorist organisation and wants it disarmed. In Tuesday's report UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Lebanon must set its borders with Syria and disband Hizbollah before it could be master of its own nation.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2006 00:00 ||
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The United States failed to secure backing for its campaign for targeted international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programmes at a meeting on Tuesday of major powers in Moscow. The No 3 State Department official, Nicholas Burns, told senior officials from Russia, China, Germany, France and Britain that sanctions should be imposed on Iran, especially after Tehran declared last week it was aiming for industrial-scale production of uranium, a US official said.
Russia and China oppose sanctions and the parties came to no consensus in Moscow, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in Washington after being briefed by US officials about the meeting. Burns raised the issue of some form of sanctions and there will need to be further discussions on this, Casey said. Later, Burns demanded an end to Russias cooperation with Iran in building the Islamic republics first civilian nuclear power station. We also think it is important for countries to stop cooperation with Iran on nuclear issues, even on civilian nuclear issues like the Bushehr facility.
Also, the chief of the Russian general staff said that Russias military would not intervene on one side or the other should the current Iran crisis lead to an armed conflict. You are asking which side Russia will take. Of course Russia will not, at least I as head of the general staff, suggest the use of force on one side or the other. Just as was the case in Afghanistan, General Yury Baluevsky told reporters.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2006 00:00 ||
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SPACEWAR.com reports that America has asked Russia to stop cooper/assisting Iran wid both nuclear and missle tech. MOre importantly, SPACEWAR reports that Russia claims it will NOT interven in the IRAN CRISES SHOULD IT LEAD TO US-IRANIAN ARMED CONFLICT. The same website also reports about the on-going furor in Russian circles about Russia's declining confidence in its own nuke deteeeerrent capabilities vv the USA.
Sounds like the ball now is the court of the Commie Airborne Forces + Commie Specfors. Methinks Moscow knows or suspects CHINA has a NORKOR andor TAIWAN CARD TO PLAY AGAINST DUBYA AND AMERICA.
#4
Joe I suspect you're right about Chinese willingness to use NKOR / Taiwan to make things tough for us.
They'd best be careful, tho, because last I heard a majority of Japanese now favor ammending the constitution to allow offensive military ops. Of course it would take the Japanese a while to make the shift ...
but not that much. Maybe a week or two in a hot crisis, months otherwise.
#5
Interewting article on pg 1 of today's WSJ on the rising Chinese star in Asia. Concludes by asking whether the bigger problem might not be the declining American star in the Pacific. Our Pacific strategy needs attention and resources.
#6
theres multilateralism and theres multilateralism.
Bush on Iraq was of course not unilateral, no matter how much hes attacked for that. He had Britain, Spain, Italy, Australia, Poland, Japan and a host of lesser powers supporting him. Now MAYBE it wasnt multilateral as we would have liked, but it was multilateral.
On Iran now, we're even more multilateral. I cant think of any member of the Iraq coalition of the willing who is not supporting us on Iran. And of course, and importantly, France and Germany ARE supporting us, at least to this point, and probably beyond.
The question is do we need Russia and China along. Well thats complex, and doesnt actually need to be decided yet. The next step is probably not immediate sanctions. The next step, after the IAEA reports, is a Section 7 UNSC resolution demanding Iran stop enrichment, without explicit reference to sanctions. With a time limit. When the time limit is broken by Iran, THEN we introduce a resolution for sanctions. This drags things out but the advantage is 1. That we might get Russia and China onboard, however low the probability 2. Its makes it much easier to keep France, Germany, and more reluctant folks in the UK and US on board. And thats essential. If we're going to try econ sanctions by a coalition of the willing France and Germany are essential. If we're going to use force, and not face HUGE costs from diplomatic blowback, the stronger the support from a broad range of allies the better.
#7
The questions is, Can Bush get an Authorization to Use Force after November and the answer is, No. Will he try to get one before November? We're in one of those waiting periods while diplomacy works its magic where nothing is happening. But Bush is running out of time to get public opinion up to speed to support the ATUF. Short of an incredibly stupid move by the MM, for which they have deomnstrated an amazing propensity, the MM get a free ride till April 2009.
#8
do you really think that if Blair, Merkel, and even Chirac were supportive, a res wouldnt go through?
the politics might be more like Iraq 1 than like Iraq 2, with the allies all on board, and more opposition domestically. But even then enough Dems crossed over.
#9
I believe that if Bush can not do it, it will not be done. I do not see the combination of resolute will + electability that would stop Iran becoming nuclear, assuming the timeframe actually extends beyond Bush's 2nd term.
#10
do you really think that if Blair, Merkel, and even Chirac were supportive, a res wouldnt go through?
Which congressional district do they live in?
The decision to AUTF is purely domestic: "May I risk the lives of your children to accomplish some foreign policy goal?" What a bunch of Euros think is interesting but ultimately irrelevant as the decision last time proved. (I do not consider the Brits Euros, yet.)
One third of the country will sign up. One third will never sign up. So what we end up talking about is getting a majority of the undecided third in the middle on board.
The media BDS is so bad they will go nuts trying to stop it. If there is an election going on, there is enough independent focused debate and advertising that people will pay attention. Once the election is over, the MSM agitprop machine will go into full "lame duck" gear and erode Bush's ability to do anything.
Listen to RR. There's a problem in Ramadi so Rummy hasn't liberated anyone. That's the mindset the MSM will pound in daily. That and the run-up to the all important Iowa caucuses. Unless the Mullahs Melt Manhattan, they'll be on A17, below the fold.
#11
Short of an incredibly stupid move by the MM, for which they have deomnstrated an amazing propensity, the MM get a free ride till April 2009.
I fear you are dead right. I can't decide if the MM's are showing political genius or are just damned lucky. Still it won't matter in the end. Gone in 60 Hours is the end game.
RENO, Nev. (AP) - The Bush administration is relying too heavily on other countries in the international effort to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, according to Sen. Harry Reid. I guess we're being too multilateral by working with the EU 3, whereas we are too unilateral when we have a coalition of over 30 nations.
Reid, D-Nev., said the administration should be taking the lead, but instead is relying on Germany, France and Great Britain to convince Iran to end its uranium enrichment program. "It is hard to comprehend," Reid said Tuesday in Reno. "We should be involved at trying to arrive at a diplomatic solution. ... Not just these three countries." We are. We're the 'bad cop.'
Reid said the Middle East is a "powder keg" because of U.S. failures in Iraq, the rise of fundamentalism and the recent election of Hamas in Palestine. "Our not being involved diplomatically in trying to solve the situation in Iran shows the Bush failure in foreign policy there and elsewhere." And he said the U.S. has no military option in Iran. "We don't have the resources to do it" because of the ongoing war in Iraq," he said. The B-1s, B-2s, F-117s and US Navy must all be in Ramadi.
On Wednesday, Republican National Committee spokesman Tucker Bounds said the president has not ruled out military action in Iran.
No basis in reality to anything he said. None but the AP put it out as "fact."
Posted by: SPoD ||
04/20/2006 0:34 Comments ||
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His comments give aid and comfort to the enemy. Particularly "We don't have the resources"
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/20/2006 0:46 Comments ||
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LAST OF MOHICANS > MOHAWK CHIEF > "Les Francaise Fathers in Washington first say angrily that America must obey and work with world community, that warriors must stay home with women NOT go fight big he violent white bully men with Burquas whom ride strange long-necked Horses/Dogs with humps on back, and no matter how many women are taken or people killed by strange white men with long-necked horses with humps on back. Now Les Francaise Fathers say America is too much medicine with same world community - America must leave women and go fight by itself alone against same strange violent white bully men whom ride strange long-necked horses with humps. Les Francaise Fathers say have no money for anything yet Les Francaise Fathers keep voting for higher deficit budgets and salaries for Les Francaise and squaws of Les Francaise. Les FRancaise Fathers say its sad becuz Great Spirit who doesn't exist only allowed Chief Kerry to have five big Big BIG lodges/mansions that costs many horses and wampum. World community chief named Kofi Annan say Les Francaise Fathers must put in "progressive" governments = councils of chiefs lands of strange violent bully men with long-necked horses. Mohawks will keep word to Les Francaise Fathers and do what Les Francaise Fathers would do or want to do, espec He Big Chief BURTHA - Mohawks will show up in Iran and North Korea and Taiwan ready for war, ready to fight any enemy of Les Francaise, but then go to Disneyland or Video Porn Movie instead. BIG FUN/JOKE ON LES FRANCAISE FATHERS WHO DON'T KNOW MOUTH FROM ASS".
The US government has released its first official list of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp.
The list of 558 people comprises three-quarters of the total number of detainees who have passed through the camp, which was set up in 2002 after the end of the war in Afghanistan.
Secrecy surrounding the camp, and persistent reports of human rights violations, have attracted notoriety for the prison, in the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
The people named on the detainee list come from 41 countries, although nearly two-thirds are from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
Former officials of Afghanistan's Taliban regime are particularly prominent on the tally. The Taliban's former defence ministry chief of staff Mullah Mohammed Fazil is still in custody along with intelligence officials Abdul Haq Wasiq and Gholam Ruhani.
Kabul's former ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, is also included, although he was released from the prison camp late last year.
Also included on the list is David Hicks, an Australian for whom lawyers are currently fighting to establish British citizenship via his mother, who was born in south London.
The court of appeal last week rejected a home office claim that he was not entitled to register his citizenship on account of his previous alleged membership of al-Qaida.
The Guardian today reported that foreign secretary Jack Straw had written to US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice demanding the release from Guantánamo Bay of UK resident Bisher al-Rawi.
Mr Rawi, an Iraqi citizen, took the British government to court last month claiming he had been hired by MI5 to track an alleged Muslim extremist and was only arrested after British intelligence passed false information to the US.
Another detainee named on the list is Muhammed al-Qahtani, accused of being the 20th hijacker in the September 11 attacks. The Saudi citizen was stopped as he tried to enter the US in Orlando, Florida, shortly before the attacks.
Details of Qahtani's interrogation caused outrage and shed fresh light on the techniques used in Guantánamo Bay when a logbook was leaked to Time magazine last year.
He was frequently awoken at 4am and interrogated until after midnight, with requests for toilet breaks refused until he wet himself, while Christina Aguilera music was played at him if he dozed off.
The list has previously been seen by members of the Red Cross, but was only publicly released after the Associated Press news agency sued US authorities under the freedom of information act.
It numbers all the detainees who have appeared at hearings in Guantánamo Bay to determine their combatant status.
The hearings took place between July 2004 and January 2005. All detainees at the prison between those dates received a hearing, but only 38 of them were determined to be "no longer enemy combatants" by the military tribunals, and only 29 of those were released.
A total of around 750 people are believed to have passed through the camp, and 490 are currently believed to be in custody there.
Groups working for the release of detainees welcomed the release of the list. Sayeed Sharif Youssefi, an official from Afghanistan's independent peace and reconciliation commission, said it would help in his efforts to obtain the release of Afghan detainees.
"This is very good news and it helps us because now it is easy for us to identify the Afghans in Guantánamo, learn how many there are and from which provinces they come from," he said.
Bill Goodman, legal director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights said: "This is information that should have been released a long time ago, and it's a scandal that it hasn't been."
Posted by: john ||
04/20/2006 11:56 ||
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500 Mohammeds, scattered Ali, all fuck ups.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/20/2006 14:46 Comments ||
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I can't believe Fred didn't jump all over this business opportunity.
#4
I'm not sure that this list is real. Just look at the first few names -- Hugh Jass, Ben Dover, Mike Hunt, Haywood Jablowme, I.P. Daily, William Fitzpatrick & Patrick Fitzwilliam, etc.
Posted by: tibor ||
04/20/2006 23:41 Comments ||
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A Belmont University administrator is out of a job after Nashvilleâs alternative newspaper drew attention to a mocking cartoon he drew of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. The Baptist university in turn has been criticized by some for having an official who would mock another faith and for allegedly forcing out someone for expressing a commitment to free expression.
Bill Hobbs is a conservative blogger and political commentator based in Nashville and until Monday, he was a public relations official at Belmont. Hobbs announced his resignation just days after The Nashville Scene published an article detailing a satirical cartoon contest he started (and abandoned) amid the furor over the Danish cartoons mocking Muhammad.
In his contest, since removed by Hobbs, but reproduced in the Scene article, a stick figure of Muhammad appears with a bomb and the caption âMuhammad Blows.â Readers were invited to âexercise your right to free expression by drawing pictures of Islamâs âProphet Muhammadâ before the West gives in to Islamist intimidation and fear of Islamist violence and makes it illegal to do so.â
The contest by Hobbs never took off, and the Tennessee blogging world is full of suggestions that the cartoons were publicized last week as part of various political machinations in the state having nothing to do with Belmont University. But Hobbs was repeatedly identified as an official of Belmont (at least until Monday). To date, several American colleges â among them Century College of Minnesota, New York University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign â have found themselves caught up in controversies over the Danish cartoons and how to respond to them, but no one besides Hobbs has lost a job.
Hobbs announced his resignation from Belmont in a posting on another blog in which he said that his departure was a âmutualâ decision and praised the university. But many commenters there and elsewhere criticized the university for not sticking up for Hobbs. His departure from Belmont is being called McCarthyite, âa travesty of justice,â and evidence that âthe barbarians are truly at the gate.â (Few of the comments have noted that Hobbs worked in public relations at Belmont.)
#2
Instapundit has been following this for several days. Mr. Hobbs apparently has already found subsequent employment, and doesn't want people to worry about him.
Review of the upcoming film by Deroy Murdock in National Review. EFL'd.
United 93 arrives just in time. As we bicker over Donald Rumsfelds job security by day and obsess over American Idol by night, writer-director Paul Greengrass offers a harrowing reminder of whats in play on Earth today.
In a film of devastating emotional power, Greengrass traces that mornings mounting horrors. This is no PC film crafted by moral relativists in Malibu. As soon as Universal Studios logo fades to black, a man quietly prays in Arabic. He holds a small Koran in his palms while sitting atop a motel bed. Its time, one hijacker announces, and their murderous journey begins.
United 93 should bury for good the absurd cliché that violent Muslim zealots are cowards. Rather than watch their knees knock together like castanets, the four al Qaeda agents on the doomed flight are focused and ruthless. When a cockpit screen announces, Two a/c [aircraft] hit World Trade Center, the al Qaeda agents celebrate. The brothers have hit the targets, says pilot Ziad Jarrah. Were in control, replies hijacker Saeed al Ghamdi. Thanks be to God.
Behind them, ordinary Americans who had been eating omelets, knitting, and perusing travel guides quickly discern that their plane is a missile, and they mount a plan to retake it.
Though their jet slammed upside down into a field at 580 MPH, United 93s 44 passengers surely spared many more lives than they sacrificed. They also likely saved the U.S. Capitol, whose photo Jarrah affixes like prey to the airliners steering column.
That final image haunts me a physical struggle for the controls of a gasoline-fueled 21st-Century flying machine between a band of suicidal religious fanatics and a group of innocents drawn from amongst us all, Greengrass said. Its really, in a way, the struggle for our world today.
Greengrass uses little known actors and even some real-life air-traffic controllers and military tacticians who were on duty on 9/11. They make the film feel like a documentary, or perhaps a reality TV show captured on celluloid. The cast appears perfectly authentic as they grapple with a growing sense of doom and an increasingly unfathomable challenge.
One performance stands out among many fine ones. Ben Sliney ran the FAAs Command Center in Herndon, Virginia, from which it coordinated air-traffic controllers response to the hijackings. It also quickly grounded some 4,500 aircraft across America. Sliney supervised all this on 9/11, his first day on that job. He is portrayed rivetingly on screen by none other than Ben Sliney himself.
This fine films verisimilitude parallels recent, real-world developments.
Shall we pull it down? Jarrah asks another hijacker as passengers bang on the cockpit door.
Yes, put it in it, and pull it down, the other replies. Allah is the greatest.
Those words are on tapes played at the death-penalty trial of al Qaeda agent Zacarias Moussaoui. His Arctic demeanor mirrors the ice-cold evil that runs through the veins of those who have declared war on America and our allies. . . .
It sounds like Greengrass got it right. Don't know about you folks, but I'm going.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/20/2006 16:19 ||
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I'm not. I don't care to see the inside of a jail.
I kn0w my limits.
I've tried to steel myself to going by watching the trailers and backgrgound story -- and they rip me up every time. I can't even sit still watching them. But I'm going anyway, dammit.
Posted by: SLO Jim ||
04/20/2006 18:07 Comments ||
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Any patriotic citizen should see this movie. American begins to fight back, by God, "Let's Roll"
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/20/2006 19:50 Comments ||
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I'll buy a ticket, or maybe more, for support, I doubt that I'll see it though. Like Mr. 6, I know my limits and living in the PRM my opportunities to play the beserker are way too frequent.
#7
my luck, the guy next to me will mutter "Allahu Akhbar" and it'll be the end of several lives as we/they knew it
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/20/2006 20:31 Comments ||
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Dunno if I could take it. Know I have to try.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
04/20/2006 20:43 Comments ||
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We owe it to the heros of Flight 93.
Ummm, no this is not going to do anything for those folks, it only enriches Hollyweird, there are other, better ways to honor them than flocking to make Producer/Directors wealthy.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/20/2006 21:50 Comments ||
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Whether you go or not, buy a few tickets. As far as I know, they only count ticket sales, not actual bodies in seats. We were in Germany when Schindler's List came out. I did the same thing back then.
#11
#9 RJ - The point is, this director apparently (at least for this film) is NOT like the rest of Hollyweird.
Let's encourage him.
For those who don't think they can take it - and I do understand - TW has the right idea.
I knew there was no way I could sit through a public showing of Schindler's List - though I have seen it several times on tape/TV. I had too, even though I knew how painful it would be. (I used to live in Germany.)
It's important we support good films, even as we condemn the standard crap they spew out of the Left Coast.
Never Forget, Never Forgive.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/20/2006 23:24 Comments ||
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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.
Sudan refused to grant visas for a U.N. military assessment mission planning a U.N. peacekeeping operation in Darfur, a U.N. spokesman said on Wednesday. The Khartoum government has not consented to U.N. troops to augment the African Union soldiers currently trying to stop the killing and rape in Sudan's Darfur region. But officials said they would discuss it after a peace pact, under negotiation in Abuja, Nigeria. 
With a few personnel shifts going on in the White House, there's speculation that presidential spokesman Scott McClellan may be looking to step down.
The commander of Fort Leavenworth says criticism of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by some retired generals who have called for his ouster raises questions about balancing issues.
NEW YORK - An international media watchdog called Wednesday for the release of a Sudanese news cameraman detained at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who is suffering from throat cancer. 
KATHMANDU - Nepals embattled king cracked down on a major pro-democracy rally planned Thursday amid a powerful Indian diplomatic intervention and dire warnings about the survival of the worlds last Hindu monarchy. King Gyanendra has so far refused to budge despite a mounting death toll, but so have his subjects who have poured out on to the streets for most of the last 14 days of a general strike that has crippled the Himalayan kingdom.
A Levies force will inducted in North and South Waziristan as part of the government's efforts to further improve the law and order situation there, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao said on Wednesday.
PESHAWAR: Announcing a fund raising campaign for the Palestinian government, NWFP Senior Minister 
An explosives scanning machine has been installed in the residence of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan that his family must pass through every time they leave or enter the house. The unannounced fresh restrictions on the disgraced nuclear scientist and his family have stressed the entire household, a family friend told Daily Times. The source said even Dr AQ Khan's wife was required to pass through the scanning machine.
Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Chairperson Benazir Bhutto has struck a deal with the government and postponed her planned meeting with Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) patron chief. Sources said that certain powerful government authorities were unhappy with the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam (PML-Q) and wanted to be rid of the PML-Q and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). These authorities contacted Benazir, asking her to sever her relations with the PML-N, sources added.
BAGHDAD - Iraq will convene a much-awaited session of parliament on Thursday, only the second since elections in December, the office of assembly speaker Adnan Pachachi said on Wednesday. The session was to be convened on April 17, but was later cancelled after leaders failed to resolve the political deadlock over who would lead the next government.
BAGHDAD: Prime Minister 
BAGHDAD: The chief judge in the trial of Saddam Hussein ruled on Wednesday that signatures linking the ousted Iraqi leader to the 1980s Dujail Shia massacre were "authentic". As the trial resumed after a two-day recess, Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman said that "the experts verified these documents, and the signatures of Saddam Hussein were found to be authentic".
Saying that dignity was more important than aid in dollars, Palestinian Premier Ismail Haniyeh insisted yesterday that his Hamas-led government would not renounce violence despite mounting Western pressure over its failure to condemn a Tel Aviv bombing. 
Iran's Islamic authorities are preparing a crackdown on women flouting the stringent dress code in the clearest sign yet of social and political repression under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
LONDON: Britain does not expect Iran to comply with United Nations Security Council demands to halt uranium enrichment by the end of April, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Wednesday. The UN Security Council has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to report by April 28 on Iran's compliance with a council demand that it stop enriching uranium and answer the agency's questions on its nuclear programme. 
Lebanon's Hizbollah dismissed on Wednesday a new United Nations report asking Lebanon to disarm the guerrilla group and set its borders with Syria as pandering to Israeli demands. The report, obtained by Reuters on Tuesday and prepared by UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, was in response to Security Council resolution 1559, which demands foreign troops leave Lebanon and all militias in the country disband. "Terje Roed-Larsen ... tries to meet the demands of the Israeli agenda through the Lebanese gate," Ali Ammar, one of pro-Syrian Hizbollah's 14 parliament members, told LBC Television. 
The United States failed to secure backing for its campaign for targeted international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programmes at a meeting on Tuesday of major powers in Moscow. The No 3 State Department official, 
RENO, Nev. (AP) - The Bush administration is relying too heavily on other countries in the international effort to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, according to Sen. Harry Reid. 
