Holocaust survivors move closer this week to being able to find a paper trail of their own persecution when the keepers of a Nazi archive deliver copies of Gestapo papers and concentration camp records to museums in Washington and Jerusalem.
For a survivor, it could be discovering one's name on a list of deportees crammed into a cattle car; a record of a fiendish medical experiment from which physical or mental scars remain; an innocuous-looking "behavior report" condemning the inmate to further tortures; or an order from the Gestapo, the secret police, to liquidate a camp, signaling the start of a "death march" in the closing days of World War II.
But it will be months before the archive can be used by survivors or victims' relatives to search family histories. Even after it opens to the public, navigating the vast files for specific names will be nearly impossible without a trained guide.
This week, the director of the International Tracing Service, custodian of the unique collection that has been locked away for a half century in Germany, is transferring six computer hard drives bearing electronic images of 20 million pages to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Copies will go to the Yad Vashem Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem.
It is the first tranche of digital copies from one of the world's largest Nazi archives, with the final documents scheduled to be copied and delivered by early 2009.
"For research into the Holocaust, this is the main substance. It is the heart of the archive," said Reto Meister, the former Swiss diplomat who heads ITS, a branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Meister will hand over the hard drives to museum director Sara J. Bloomfield in Washington. He also will brief U.S. Congressional staff on progress in opening the files a nod to American lawmakers who pressed the ITS' 11-nation oversight commission to open the doors.
Though the museums' researchers can begin working with the material immediately, the public must wait for legal formalities to conclude which could take several more months.
Unlocking the archive required all 11 countries to amend their international treaty. France, Italy and Greece have yet to complete the process. The others on the commission are the United States, Israel, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Luxembourg and Germany.
The index of 17.5 million names on file with ITS is the key to finding documents and will arrive later this year, though it is not in computer-readable format and cannot be used like Google. "The public will be able to come to the museum and see the material in the manner in which we received it," said Paul Shapiro, director of the museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.
Also, there is no guarantee that a name appears in the archive. It may have been among the many destroyed by the Nazis as their defeat approached. Those sent to directly to death camps may never have been listed anywhere.
But historians believe the files will add texture to the narrative of misery in the camps, where millions of people were worked to death or were simply exterminated with industrial efficiency. Six million Jews died in the Holocaust, one of every three Jews on earth.
The Associated Press has been given repeated access to the archive in Bad Arolsen in recent months. Random searches through its 16 linear miles of files revealed a wealth of mundane yet telling detail on life and death in the camps.
For instance, a researcher can learn that already in 1936, well before Hitler's Final Solution was launched, food rations at the Lichtenberg concentration camp were so meager that an officer complained to his commander that the inmates' health was in jeopardy. The file contains no indication rations improved.
The Tracing Service was created from the papers gathered by the Allies after the war and stored in a disused SS barracks in Bad Arolsen. The Red Cross took over responsibility in 1955. Its task was to find missing people, reunite families or discover how victims died. Later it was used to support restitution claims.
"There can be a lot there that no one expects," said Juergen Matthaeus, the director of applied research at the Holocaust Studies center in Washington. "This is the biggest trove of material on the camps. If it's not there, then probably it's not to be found."
Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Senator Hillary Clinton warned Democrats not to ``oversell'' plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, setting a cautious tone on the war that was echoed by the party's two other leading presidential candidates.
Clinton and her main competitors for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards, agreed in a debate this morning that pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq can't be accomplished in just a few months and that any withdrawal must be balanced by security concerns.
``It is so important that we not oversell this,'' Clinton said at the ABC News-sponsored forum in Des Moines, Iowa. Edwards concurred, saying it ``would be hard'' to move troops out within six months, as suggested by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, while Obama said U.S. options are limited.
``George Bush drove the bus into the ditch and there are only so many ways you can pull that bus out of the ditch,'' the Illinois Democrat said.
The debate was the first among the Democrats running for president held in the state that traditionally kicks off the official nomination contests with its party caucuses in January.
The candidates continued a discussion about whether Obama has enough experience to be president, and Clinton, of New York, was questioned about whether polls showing more than 40 percent of the public views her unfavorably suggest she is too polarizing a figure to lead the party to victory in 2008.
In a previous debate, Obama said he would be willing to meet unconditionally with hostile foreign leaders during his first year in office.
Debate on Experience
In today's forum, Clinton said no president ``should give away the bargaining chip of a personal meeting with any leader,'' and Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware said he stood by an earlier statement that Obama isn't ready for the job.
``To prepare for this debate I rode in the bumper cars at the state fair,'' Obama, 46, said, drawing laughter from the audience. Critics aren't arguing with ``the substance of my positions,'' the first-term senator said. ``I think that there's been some political maneuvering taking place over the last couple of weeks.''
Clinton, 59, took her turn on defense when the candidates were asked whether Democrats should be worried that nominating the former first lady will hurt the party.
Lobbyist Donations
The nation needs someone who ``can break out of the political patterns that we've been in over the last 20 years,'' Obama said. Edwards, 54, a former senator from North Carolina who is trailing Clinton and Obama in national polls and in raising money, suggested her ties to lobbyists will prevent her from being able to change Washington.
``These people will never give away power voluntarily,'' he said, renewing his call for Clinton to foreswear lobbyist contributions. ``We have to take their power away from them.''
Clinton said her critics are making an ``artificial distinction,'' because while Edwards and Obama don't take money directly from lobbyists they accept donations from law firms that hire lobbyists. ``It's the people who employ the lobbyists who are behind all the money in American politics,'' she said.
She said comments made last week by Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's political adviser, that Clinton enters the primary season with higher negative poll ratings than any previous frontrunner show she is the best candidate to beat the Republicans next year. More people hate her, so she's the best candidate?
Nuclear Weapons
Clinton also defended comments she made in a Bloomberg News interview in 2006 that she would rule out using nuclear weapons against Iran. She criticized Obama for a recent comment that he wouldn't use nuclear weapons against terrorists.
``This was a brush back against this administration which has been reckless and provocative,'' she said of her earlier statement, whereas Obama's remark was on ``hypotheticals'' that shouldn't be addressed by a presidential candidate.
On the war, Richardson was alone in saying U.S. troops should withdraw from Iraq in six to eight months, leaving no residual forces behind to protect civilian personnel.
Biden led the other Democrats in disagreeing. ``It's time to start to level with the American people,'' Biden said. ``If we leave Iraq and we leave it in chaos, there'll be regional war. The regional war will engulf us for a generation.'' Whoa, Joe!
Clinton said Biden is ``absolutely right,'' cautioning that ``this is going to be very dangerous and very difficult'' and ``a lot of people don't like to hear that.''
Edwards said a timetable of nine or 10 months is more reasonable. Obama said Biden is right and that ``this is not going to be a simple operation.''
When the eight candidates were asked whether there was a major issue where they didn't tell the whole truth, Clinton and Edwards cited their votes to authorize Bush to use military force in Iraq.
Clinton said while she thought at the time that her vote was an ``appropriate approach.'' Looking back on it ``I wouldn't have voted that way again,'' she said. ``Obviously for me that is a great regret.''
Edwards said that he had a ``huge internal conflict'' about the war authorization that he didn't express at the time.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/19/2007
17:50 ||
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#3
Hillary knows that she has more room to say what she really feel and anticipate doing, American ASPs will have to accept her direction or...consider... a 'Black Man' in the job...Ohh my God, the Sky Will Fall!!!
Just when the historic India-US civil nuclear agreement of July 18, 2005, appeared poised for successful completion, with the consensus on the much contested text of the 123 Agreement having been arrived at in July, the situation looks very bleak in mid-August 2007.
The deal has become the proverbial red rag for the principal opposition parties and it now appears that the very survival of the United Progressive Alliance coalition led by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh [Images] in its current form is at stake.
While there was an inherent inevitability about the breakdown between the Left parties and their UPA allies even at its very formation in 2004 when the National Democratic Alliance government was defeated, three determinants merit preliminary analysis at this stage.
What will be the implications of the current political impasse for India's long term politico-diplomatic, strategic-security and trade-technology interests? The short answer is "adverse."
By distorting and deliberately altering the contours of the debate, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left parties are acting in a manner detrimental to India's interests in the early part of the 21st century.
In preventing Dr Singh from realising what still is a very prudent agreement, which will enable India in a holistic manner, the opposition stance will ensure a Pyrrhic victory that will keep India in fetters and in the long run -- subaltern to China in the Asian geo-political context.
The manner in which the current political debate is being contested indicates that the techno-strategic detail of the 123 Agreement is really a red herring. What is being bitterly contested is the nature of India's external orientation with the evolving strategic architecture of the 21st century -- and the relationship with the US in particular. The agreement has the potential to liberate India from the technology denial regimes and the politico-diplomatic ostracism that has been its cross to bear since May 1974 -- and in many ways admit India into the global 'panchayat' as a credible member.
This admittance was being facilitated by US President George Bush [Images] and from inflexible 'estrangement' over the nuclear nettle, the India-US bilateral relationship exuded signs of moving towards mutually beneficial engagement.
Clearly this policy shift is at complete variance with the ideological position of the Left parties for whom anti-Americanism is an article of faith. In the case of the BJP, the picture is more complex.
The NDA government deserves credit for its May 1998 initiative and the manner in which it restored relations with the Washington Beltway culminating in Bill Clinton [Images];'s visit to Delhi in March 2000. Who could have accused the Indian Parliament of being anti-American when President Clinton received what must rank as the longest and most enthusiastic standing ovation when he addressed a joint session of Parliament at the time?
However, the BJP and the Left have now found common cause in stoking anti-Americanism in the Indian polity and while this is being interpreted as cynical pre-election posturing that is part of Indian politics, it is moot as to how much of this will translate into tangible electoral gains at the next general election -- even if it is held well before mid-2009.
Thus what we are now witnessing is a degree of manipulative racism and prickly nationalism in the domestic Indian political discourse. Hence engaging with the USA is deemed suspect and denounced as being inimical to India's sovereignty -- even if the assertion is counter-factual. The sub-text of this articulation is that India is better off as part of an elusive Asian solidarity leading to global multi-polarity (to balance the USA) wherein China and perhaps Russia [Images] will play the lead role with India in a complementary role.
This is doubly ironic considering that over the last 50 years, China and the US have often acted in a manner that thwarted India's security and strategic interests to advance their own agendas. It merits recall that Beijing [Images] had little hesitation during the latter phase of the Cold War to tango with Washington against Moscow [Images].
But that is the stuff of realpolitik and this abiding tenet of international relations appears to have been lost sight of in the current emotive Indian debate. The current global strategic grid has three major nodes of relevance -- the US, Russia and China. (The EU and Japan [Images] are already part of the US framework.) India has the potential to be part of this grid and it was this deeper intent that impelled the July 18 agreement -- with tacit support from Moscow.
An enabled India, free of technology denial fetters and strategic outcaste status will be a swing-state of considerable relevance in the 21st century and this would have made for some degree of credible multi-polarity to emerge at the global level.
And this profile would have allowed India to deal more effectively with all the other principal players on the global stage without being subaltern to anyone -- be it Washington or Beijing.
To that extent the highly visible nuclear strand of the July 18 agreement was both symbolic and substantive -- the former to herald India's strategic 'liberalisation', and the latter to ensure tangible gains such as the import of nuclear fuel etc.
If the opposition parties have their way and the deal is either delayed or scuttled, then the world at large will come to an irrefutable conclusion. India's political spectrum prefers to remain insular and a country of one billion people with multiple aspirations will not be part of the global management grid in a formal sense.
The Indian State will remain obsessed with more petty persuasions such as caste, reservations and communal issues. The world will move on and the major players will set the agenda -- be it on politico-strategic issues or the regulation of trade and technology and pressing energy and environmental challenges.
Paradoxically, what the world is seeking from India -- access to its middle-class market and the new technology-savvy human resource -- will flourish.
The Indian public that can afford it will not be denied the latest mobile phone and education cum employment opportunities abroad. Thus with the obstruction to the nuclear deal, the net result will be a stunted Indian State fending off technology denial regimes and placed below the global management hierarchy as a permanent 'outsider', while the Indian public will be increasingly drawn into the vortex of globalisation -- alas on unfavorable terms.
Some facts about India are inexorable -- as for instance its economic and technology potential.
The country is already a one trillion dollar economy and there is a sense that we do not need the nuclear deal.
This is misleading. India's energy needs have not been met either by hydro-electric potential or coal for 50 years. Unless there is unfettered access to technology, investment, markets and higher education, much of India's proven potential will be exploited at sub-optimal levels. The time-line for realising the various inter-locking procedures such as the IAEA protocol and NSG concurrence is very tight.
And above all, the concatenation of circumstances in the US is most favourable now. This may not be the case in early 2009 if there is a change of party in the White House.
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Indian independence, one truism about Indian politics is self-evident. The manner in which Dr Singh is being pilloried over the India-US deal proves the adage that honesty, personal integrity, merit and the larger national interest will always be trumped by narrow self-interest in the Indian political arena.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007
14:38 ||
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Great article, john frum.
What will be the implications of the current political impasse for India's long term politico-diplomatic, strategic-security and trade-technology interests? The short answer is "adverse."
By distorting and deliberately altering the contours of the debate, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left parties are acting in a manner detrimental to India's interests in the early part of the 21st century.
Wherever leftist and communist doctrine has shaped a country's formative years the result is always the same. Stunted, backwards, elitist tyrannies. Soviet Russia, China, Cuba all of them are stifled by archaic, outmoded methodologies and hidebound political caste systems.
The manner in which Dr Singh is being pilloried over the India-US deal proves the adage that honesty, personal integrity, merit and the larger national interest will always be trumped by narrow self-interest in the Indian political arena.
In Philippine-American politics this is known as The Crab Dance. It serves as an explanation of why there is such poor representation for such a substantial and well-established minority. In a barrel full of crabs there are usually one or two really energetic individuals who will attempt to escape their staved prison. Often, just as they begin to edge over the barrel's top, other crabs will see their imminent escape and attempt to ride their coattails by latching onto them for a free lift out of confinement. What happens is that the one or two potential escapees are inexorably dragged back down into the barrel to rejoin their docileand soon to be steamedcompanions. In the long run, The Crab Dance serves as a metaphor for how fragmented groups simply refuse to allow one portion of their number to succeed andby thwarting such ambitious individualsend up deleting all chances of group success. India excels at this in spades.
#2
It seems the nuclear deal is now gaining support from the Indian public... arcane nuclear technical details may be hard for the average Indian to understand, but if the communists are against it, many feel it must be good for India....
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007 17:30
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The Japanese PM Abe will pay a visit to India soon and he will travel with investments.. Japan wants to build a massive freight corridor from Delhi to Mumbai that will have manufacturing hubs along its length.
This will really kick start Indian export manufacturing and reduce Japanese reliance on China for low cost labor.
Expect to see the communists do all they can to derail this. When a Japanese minister visited India about 2 years ago, accompanied by business executives, he advocated increased Japanese investments in India.
That did not sit too well with China. The Indian communists and union leaders were summoned to Beijing. When they returned to India, a wave of wildcat strikes affected the plants of Japanese companies in India.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007 17:37
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This will really kick start Indian export manufacturing and reduce Japanese reliance on China for low cost labor.
I'm hoping that with such a boost in exports there will be a reciprocal loosening of India's draconian import laws. Unlike China, India's lack of a wholely anti-capitalist communist government might explain the overwhelming absence of institutionalized intellectual property theft, copyright violation and product counterfeiting.
India's average per capita income of US$3,100 versus China's US$5,600 (2004-2005 numbers), makes Asia's largest English speaking democracy a major player in the expanding off-shore manufacturing market.
Expect to see the communists do all they can to derail this.
A particularly appropos choice of words. Fortunately, Britain's historic legacy of colonial rail infrastructure leaves little doubt that India can readily recognize the worth of such a transport corridor. All that remains is the establishment of a free-enterprise zone astride the track-bed and solid incentives for foreign investment.
It would be a genuine pleasure to see newly arrived India sit down and eat China's lunch at the global table. The cast iron rice bowl of Beijing's currency manipulation and monopolistic practices needs to be shattered at the earliest opportunity.
Lieutenant Clay Hanna looks sick and white. Like his colleagues he does not seem to sleep. Hanna says he catches up by napping on a cot between operations in the command centre, amid the noise of radio. He is up at 6am and tries to go to sleep by 2am or 3am. But there are operations to go on, planning to be done and after-action reports that need to be written. And war interposes its own deadly agenda that requires his attention and wakes him up.
When he emerges from his naps there is something old and paper-thin about his skin, something sketchy about his movements as the days go by.
The Americans he commands, like the other men at Sullivan - a combat outpost in Zafraniya, south east Baghdad - hit their cots when they get in from operations. But even when they wake up there is something tired and groggy about them. They are on duty for five days at a time and off for two days. When they get back to the forward operating base, they do their laundry and sleep and count the days until they will get home. It is an exhaustion that accumulates over the patrols and the rotations, over the multiple deployments, until it all joins up, wiping out any memory of leave or time at home. Until life is nothing but Iraq.
Hanna and his men are not alone in being tired most of the time. A whole army is exhausted and worn out. You see the young soldiers washed up like driftwood at Baghdad's international airport, waiting to go on leave or returning to their units, sleeping on their body armour on floors and in the dust.
Where once the war in Iraq was defined in conversations with these men by untenable ideas - bringing democracy or defeating al-Qaeda - these days the war in Iraq is defined by different ways of expressing the idea of being weary. It is a theme that is endlessly reiterated as you travel around Iraq. 'The army is worn out. We are just keeping people in theatre who are exhausted,' says a soldier working for the US army public affairs office who is supposed to be telling me how well things have been going since the 'surge' in Baghdad began.
They are not supposed to talk like this. We are driving and another of the public affairs team adds bitterly: 'We should just be allowed to tell the media what is happening here. Let them know that people are worn out. So that their families know back home. But it's like we've become no more than numbers now.'
The first soldier starts in again. 'My husband was injured here. He hit an improvised explosive device. He already had a spinal injury. The blast shook out the plates. He's home now and has serious issues adapting. But I'm not allowed to go back home to see him. If I wanted to see him I'd have to take leave time (two weeks). And the army counts it.'
A week later, in the northern city of Mosul, an officer talks privately. 'We're plodding through this,' he says after another patrol and another ambush in the city centre. 'I don't know how much more plodding we've got left in us.'
When the soldiers talk like this there is resignation. There is a corrosive anger, too, that bubbles out, like the words pouring unbidden from a chaplain's assistant who has come to bless a patrol. 'Why don't you tell the truth? Why don't you journalists write that this army is exhausted?'
It is a weariness that has created its own culture of superstition. There are vehicle commanders who will not let the infantrymen in the back fall asleep on long operations - not because they want the men alert, but because, they say, bad things happen when people fall asleep. So the soldiers drink multiple cans of Rip It and Red Bull to stay alert and wired.
But the exhaustion of the US army emerges most powerfully in the details of these soldiers' frayed and worn-out lives. Everywhere you go you hear the same complaints: soldiers talk about divorces, or problems with the girlfriends that they don't see, or about the children who have been born and who are growing up largely without them.
'I counted it the other day,' says a major whose partner is also a soldier. 'We have been married for five years. We added up the days. Because of Iraq and Afghanistan we have been together for just seven months. Seven months ... We are in a bad place. I don't know whether this marriage can survive it.'
The anecdotal evidence on the ground confirms what others - prominent among them General Colin Powell, the former US Secretary of State - have been insisting for months now: that the US army is 'about broken'. Only a third of the regular army's brigades now qualify as combat-ready. Officers educated at the elite West Point academy are leaving at a rate not seen in 30 years, with the consequence that the US army has a shortfall of 3,000 commissioned officers - and the problem is expected to worsen. Is this true?
And it is not only the soldiers that are worn out. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to the destruction, or wearing out, of 40 per cent of the US army's equipment, totalling at a recent count $212bn (£105bn).
But it is in the soldiers themselves - and in the ordinary stories they tell - that the exhaustion of the US military is most obvious, coming amid warnings that soldiers serving multiple Iraq deployments, now amounting to several years, are 50 per cent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress.
The army's exhaustion is reflected in problems such as the rate of desertion and unauthorised absences - a problem, it was revealed earlier this year, that had increased threefold on the period before the war in Afghanistan and had resulted in thousands of negative discharges.
'They are scraping to get people to go back and people are worn out,' said Thomas Grieger, a senior US navy psychiatrist, told the International Herald Tribune in April.
'Modern war is exhausting,' says Major Stacie Caswell, an occupational therapist with a combat stress unit attached to the military hospital in Mosul. Her unit runs long group sessions to help soldiers with emerging mental health and discipline problems: often they have seen friends killed and injured, or are having problems stemming from issues at home - responsible for 50 to 60 per cent of their cases. One of the most common problems in Iraq is sleep disorders.
'This is a different kind of war,' says Caswell. 'In World War II it was clear who the good guys and the bad guys were. You knew what you would go through on the battlefield.' Now she says the threat is all around. And soldiering has changed. 'Now we have so many things to do...'
'And the soldier in Vietnam,' interjects Sergeant John Valentine from the same unit, 'did not get to see the coverage from home that these soldiers do. We see what is going on at home on the political scene. They think the war is going to end. Then we have the frustration and confusion. That is fatiguing. Mentally tiring.'
'Not only that,' says Caswell, 'but because of the nature of what we do now, the number of tasks in comparison with previous generations - even as you are finishing your 15 months here you are immediately planning and training for your next tour.' Valentine adds: 'There is no decompression.'
The consequence is a deep-seated problem of retention and recruitment that in turn, says Caswell, has led the US army to reduce its standards for joining the military, particularly over the issue of no longer looking too hard at any previous history of mental illness. 'It is a question of honesty, and we are not investigating too deeply or we are issuing waivers. The consequence is that we are seeing people who do not have the same coping skills when they get here, and this can be difficult.
'We are also seeing older soldiers coming in - up to 41 years old - and that is causing its own problems. They have difficulty dealing with the physical impact of the war and also interacting with the younger men.'
Valentine says: 'We are not only watering down the quality of the soldiers but the leadership too. The good leaders get out. I've seen it. And right now we are on the down slope.'
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/19/2007 15:06
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"Only a third of the regular army's brigades now qualify as combat-ready."
Well DUH! Why would the Army have more 'combat-ready' units than they need for, well, COMBAT. This is USA standard. 1/3 deployed, 1/3 just back from deploying and 1/3 readying to deploy.
#4
And even with the fatigued soldiers and worn-out equipment, we are push Al-Q out of any safe havens they have in Iraq.
What amazes me is that the Media finds it news that soldiers are tired after combat missions. Well, duh!!! Combat is extremely stressful and tiring; hell, just patrolling in all that gear in the summer temperature of Iraq is exhausting.
And as for the wear and tear on the equipment, that is why you buy it - to use it. Of course, the fact that the US is also replacing entire series of equipment with new and different equipment {HUMMERs with MRAPs} while at the same time destroying the enemy is carefully glossed over.
I also notice that none of the supposed bitching soldiers in the one paragraph are named : how do we know if they actually said what Al-Grauniad purports or if they even exist? There is NO way to fact check the article when the writer carefully avoids using names - guess the TNR debacle is having an impact.
#5
The solution is Tea Time at 11 and 4 each and every day, no matter what.
Posted by: ed ||
08/19/2007 16:31
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Tired soldiers, wanting the damn war to end. I for one am stunned by this.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
08/19/2007 16:35
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#7
Great disinformation. Thanks to Kerry and al-G for letting al-Q know they are getting whipped by the least educated most under equipped Americans avaialble. But I am sure this will all turn around on a dime upon the coronation of Her Royal Thighness, Hilary!
#8
A really big question, and one not as obvious as it might seem, is "What are the troops *doing* in Iraq?"
Everybody assumes that *all* military personnel are fighting; then, when they think about it, they realize that the vast majority involved in combat operations are actually *supporting* those relative few who are doing the actual fighting. A lot of those support jobs are not high stress.
However, we need to realize that their are a LOT of military personnel in Iraq who are not directly involved in doing either fighting *or* direct support for the fighters.
They are doing other things. And the big question is "What other things?"
For example, the US military is deeply involved in construction projects of all kinds in Iraq, several thousand of them in progress right now.
They are also very engaged in "external security". For example, manning Patriot anti-missile batteries against Iran.
Then you have IA and police trainers. Administrative liaisons all over the place, to coordinate with the Iraqi government and US State Department and other non-military organizations.
But the numbers of such personnel really start to add up. And it doesn't even count those who are not in Iraq proper, but in the region and the Navy.
In truth, this doesn't diminish the fatigue or stress of combat and many combat support personnel. But it does show that the numbers of those affected may be far less than the military as a whole.
#9
Officers educated at the elite West Point academy are leaving at a rate not seen in 30 years, with the consequence that the US army has a shortfall of 3,000 commissioned officers - and the problem is expected to worsen.
Unless things have changed drastically in the last dozen or so years, most new lieutenant get their commission from other than West Point. Most officers use to come from the ROTC programs.
As for the 3,000 shortfall. Let's remember that Congress only got around to authorizing an [temporary] additional 20,000 troops from a pre-war standing of around 480,000. That means you're going to be short on officers for time being till the system can catch up, not only for the direct fills but for the factors of normal turnover.
#10
As of 2000, Academy grads made up 17% of new officers and officers and 55% came from ROTC. Overall, 16.7% of all active duty army officers are USMA grads and 59.7 of were commissioned via ROTC.
Don't know what the proportions are for the reserves and guard.
#11
WRT to the officer shortage, it is real. But not for the reasons that the useful idiots are implying.
Having just graduated OCS myself, it is because making it into the officer ranks is hard. According to my classmates who have at least one deployment prior to OCS, OCS was more stressful than being shot at. I found this to be true also. The washout rate in my class was 43%.
Of course, I went thru the accelerated program. Would you beleive I am a 60 day wonder. They cut out non-essentials like weekends off, sleeping and eating.
Posted by: N Guard ||
08/19/2007 22:06
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#12
Congratulations, N Guard! With officers like you, we'll do just fine. My mother did three years of high school in six months like that; she said the promise of a diploma and sleep at the end kept her going.
#13
N Guard -- it's voices like yours that I kept waiting for in reply to this article. Thank you --- 60 day wonder in my mind, WOW -- congrats, you deserve these congrats for your achievement, cause it is surely your achievement. Job well done... and thank you.
At least once a day, kinda nod your head sideways and down, and feel a little presence on your left shoulder. (I like hiding on that left shoulder.) Kinda smile and know, that presence you feel, is not only me, I'll be there everyday, rooting you on, but all your unknown friends at Rantburg and other Americans, wishing you well. Staying close to you, so you stay close with us.
#14
Somewhat OT...
Went through a quick-cooker program in another field, back in the old country. There was a lack of contract programmers (1980, a first sign that paracapitalistics tendencies started to appear in the economy afer the 1968 experiment was squashed by Rusin invasion), so the company tha neded them invited about 300 people that were working already in puters--operators and such. After giving us IBM aptitude tests, 300 shrunk to 60. A 3-months program that contained 4 years of Tech U followed. Just puters and programming, no poli-sci, marxism-wankism. 7:00 to 20:00, with 15 minute break for a lunch. Sunday off. 15 people finished (the rest dropped out) and after final exams (design 4 different programs in 4 lingos and perform a viva voce defense, with a proof), 6 new programmers were hatched, me one of them. Not that I was somehow a rather bright lad, I was just focused, and the job promised degree of flexibility unheard off at the time behind Iron Curtain. But the main reason I wanted to go through the program was that I already had my escape form behind th Iron Curtain on a drawing board n thought tht new kill set may prove to be rather handy at my final destination. I had several contingencies... the fun part was that one of the programs for my final exam, written in Fortran, calculated the size and shape (including stripes) of a hot air baloon, for a load of 240kg, elevation of 700m and distance of 60 km. The examiners got curious where I got the idea, I mumbled something about just usual type of curiosity that was my trait and that I saw something on TV wich gave me the inspiration. ;-)
Not sure I would be keen to repeat that kind of load and experience, but I was still a kid (late 20's) thus not as rusty as I am now.
Of course, the learning never stopped, but it goes on at much slower and relaxed pace.
The current opposition of the leftist parties -- particularly, the Communist Party of India-Marxist -- to the agreement (the so-called 123 agreement) with the US on civil nuclear co-operation and to India's developing strategic relations with the US takes one's mind back to the days before the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to India in November last year.
A Chinese company had won a contract for the construction of a gas pipeline from the Godavari area in Andhra Pradesh. It wanted to bring about 1,000 Chinese engineers to work in the project. The ministry of home affairs and the Intelligence Bureau of the Government of India were not clearing the issue of visas to the Chinese engineers. They asked a number of inconvenient questions as to why it was necessary for the Chinese company to bring in so many of their engineers when unemployed Indian engineers were available.
There was also a paper prepared by the National Security Council Secretariat of the Prime Minister's Office suggesting that proposals for foreign investments in sensitive sectors such as telecommunications from China, Pakistan and Bangladesh should be subjected to a special security vetting.
Sitaram Yechury of the CPI-M, allegedly at the instance of the Chinese embassy in New Delhi, raised a big hue and cry about it and literally forced the Government of India to order the issue of visas to the Chinese engineers and to drop the proposal for a special security vetting for Chinese investment proposals in sensitive sectors.
After Hu's visit was over, Times Now television news channel had invited me to participate in a discussion on the visit. Arnab Goswami of the channel anchored the discussions. D Raja, CPI's member of the Rajya Sabha, participated in the discussions from Delhi. I told Raja: "It is surprising that you pressurised the government to issue visas to 1000 Chinese engineers. You were not bothered about Indian engineers not getting these jobs. If a US company had wanted to bring 1000 American engineers, would you have urged the government to issue visas to them?"
Raja told me: "Mr Raman, you are an eminent person. You should not mislead people by raising such scenarios."
For the last two months, the Chinese authorities have been expressing their concern over reports that India has joined hands with the US, Japan [Images] and Australia to counter the growing Chinese naval power in the region and that the forthcoming naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal involving the navies of these countries plus Singapore is the beginning of this project to counter Chinese naval power and presence in the Bay of Bengal/Indian Ocean region.
It is not without significance that the vigorous campaign of the leftist parties -- particularly of the CPI-M -- against the recently concluded Indo-US agreement on civil nuclear co-operation and against the growing strategic interactions between India and the US in particular has coincided with the beginning of the Chinese campaign against the so-called quadrilateral strategic interaction involving India, Japan, the US and Australia and the naval exercise with the additional involvement of the Singapore navy.
The leftists' campaign against India's relations with the US reflects more China's concerns and interests than those of India. I have never been excited over the Indo-US agreement on civil nuclear co-operation. Nor do I share Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh's [Images] enthusiasm for US President George Bush [Images] and the Indo-US agreement. I am inclined to feel that what we are seeing now is a one-night stand between Dr Singh and Mr Bush. Like most one-night stands, the happy thoughts thereafter will become an embarrassment in course of time.
I also feel -- as I have stated on many occasions in the past -- that we should go slow on the development of our strategic relations with the US, keeping in view the fact that we live right in the midst of the Islamic world, and that about 45 per cent of the world's Muslim population lives in the South Asian region. Ours is still a fragile society and we should not create misgivings in the Muslim community by overlooking their sensitivities on this subject.
Having said that, I also feel that we should not let the leftists dictate our foreign policy and push it in a direction favourable to China. I find it difficult to discount the suspicion that the leftists have mounted their present campaign to promote Chinese and not Indian interests.
After joining the IB in 1967, I went on a visit to Kolkata. Those were the days of China's Cultural Revolution. The Marxists were not yet in power in West Bengal, but were very active. As I was travelling in a taxi from the Dum Dum airport to downtown, I saw the following slogan painted by the Marxists on the walls everywhere: 'China's chairman is our chairman'.
The present day Indian Marxists don't say this, but they do believe that 'China's interest is our Interest'. It is this belief which is behind their present campaign against the Government of India. Their hidden motive should be exposed.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007
13:44 ||
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#1
China's interest is nobody else's interest except except Beijing's own. Anyone foolish enough to think that they can bed down with the Chinese and wake up unpenetrated is beyond foolish. The Chinese have always served their own interests and served them so exclusively that it has often come back to haunt them. Even frequent self-defeats do not give them pause to reconsider their monomania over being the Master Race.
#2
Pakistanis were led to believe that China would come to their rescue in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971.
Surrounded Pak troops cheered and emerged from their bunkers when the sky filled with parachutes. The Chinese PLA had come to fight the Indians they though...not quite... the Sikh paratroopers made short work of them...
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007 17:28
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#3
Lest we fergit, many pro-Beijing/PRC Netters view both Pakistan and India as future Chicom territories, which is backed up by Chicom Govt white papers. *Various other Netters, however, do argue that INDIA is set to one day overtake China as Asian-Pacific competitor vv the USA.
So whatever happened to the Iranian General who defected to the west? Haven't heard anything lately from him.
BAGHDAD (AP) - American forces are tracking about 50 members of an elite Iranian force who have crossed the border into southern Iraq to train Shiite militia fighters, a top U.S. general said Sunday.
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, whose command includes the volatile southern rim of Baghdad and districts to the south, said his troops are tracking about 50 members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps in their area - the first detailed allegation that Iranians have been training fighters within Iraq's borders. "We know they're here and we target them as well," he said, citing intelligence reports as evidence of their presence.
#4
I'm in favor of lining the Iran-Iraq border with impaled iranians that are found. Make sure the ones coming across know the fate that awaits them. After all, since no Iranians are involved and they aren't iraqi's, then no one can complain about them.
#5
If done properly, they should never again trust any al-Quds who goes to Iraq and comes back. They could be a "Manchurian candidate."
Much as Silentbrick's "heads-on-spikes" public relations campaign is appealing on so many different levels, I'm still obliged to go with 'moose's Whack Plant-a-Mole strategy.
During WWII, it was a supreme irony that Russian soldiers who somehow managed to escape Nazi capture were instantly transported off to the Gulags. These brave and heroic individuals were deemed irreparably tainted by visions of advanced European weaponry andeven within the abhorent constraints of Nazi ideologyfree-thinking individualism.
So we need to make it with Iraq. Tehran's mullahs must learn to tremble at the prospect of a democracy tainted operative showing back up on their doorstep. All the better if in the process such agents mysteriously pop a cap in some beturbaned cleric's overly ample ass.
#9
Yea, but that 'Tit For Tat' by the Iranians will be a bear for the US; being that they have said that all parts of the Straits are covered by their mobile missiles; it's interesting to see what will happen should the US react further than just watching their movements, especially since three of the carrier groups are playing away from the field at the moment!!
Soldiers engaged in counter-insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir [Images] and the north-east will soon have a new weapon to help them take on militants -- portable non-lethal laser dazzlers that can stun and blind their opponents. "Two versions of the portable non-lethal dazzlers, including a hand-held laser dazzler, are set to be inducted into the Indian armed forces for use in counter-insurgency operations. This will make the 21st century soldier a technology-driven jawan," a top defence source told PTI.
The laser dazzlers, which can be mounted on existing weapons used by the soldiers, were tested in Kashmir in October 2006 and will be inducted into the army possibly by 2008, sources said. They could be used against militants operating in the hinterland of Kashmir and against those infiltrating into the state across the Line of Control.
The Defence Research and Development Organisation's Laser Science and Technology Centre in Delhi has developed two variants of the PNLD suitable for counter-insurgency operations. The hand-held and weapon-mounted versions of the PNLD have a maximum range of 50 meters and 500 meters respectively, the sources said.
Both variants are completely non-lethal directed-energy weapons employing intense visible light and produce randomly a flickering green laser output that is sufficient to cause temporary blindness or disorientation. The dazzlers also have an in-built safety interlock to prevent misuse and the weapons do not cause permanent blindness, the sources said.
They do, however, lower reproductive rates for Muslims same as polio vaccine and iodinized salt.
The dazzlers also have an integrated low power red laser beam for aiming in twilight and dark conditions.
The weapon-mounted dazzler has an integrate daylight sight too.
After trials of the dazzlers in the north-east and Kashmir, a memorandum of understanding was signed for manufacturing the systems for the army, the sources said. Under the MoU signed by the Defence Research Development Organisation with SDS Electronics Pvt Ltd of Panchkula, the transfer of technology for the two versions of the PNLD was completed in November 2006, the sources said.
The laser dazzlers use "diode pumped solid state" lasers with a wavelength of 532 nm and weigh 850 g.
Blinding weapons are banned by the 1995 United Nations Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons. As these dazzlers do not cause permanent blindness, they skirt this regulation, the sources said.
On 18 May 2006, the US military announced it would issue dazzling lasers designed to be attached to M-4 rifles to troops in Iraq. This weapon is intended to provide a non-lethal way to stop drivers who fail to stop at checkpoints manned by US soldiers. However, this proposal attracted criticism from human rights groups, who said even these weapons can cause permanent damage.
Certainly worked on the HR groups.
The US forces also used the Saber 203 dazzlers in Somalia in 1995 during Operation United Shield.
The Chinese armed forces have fitted dazzlers to their Type 98 main battle tank to overwhelm the optical systems of enemy tanks. Chinese forces also use the ZM-87 portable laser disturber that can blind enemy troops at a range of up to two to three kilometres.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007
12:47 ||
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#1
Interesting--
I wonder why we havent heard the usual deafining whine from the usual suspects?
Or has it been lost in the background noise?
or is it not very effective, and therefore of no interest to the moonbats?
Posted by: N Guard ||
08/19/2007 13:58
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#2
Dazzle them, then plug them, sounds fair to me.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/19/2007 13:59
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Glad you noticed, N Guard. If the innovation is from the United States, then the NGOs are loud in their opposition to it, but there is not a peep when China or India implements it. It's not about What is done, but who is doing it. Supposedly, "monitoring" style NGOs bill themselves as opposed to "illegal" behavior, but THEIR demonstrated behavior is that they are opposed to the Uniteds States or Israel, and actually feel that such a stance is inherently fair and right. IMHO, after informing them, and the attending reporters, of such blatant bias at their NEXT dog-and-pony news conference, the NGO bastards should be shoved against a wall, the double barrels of a shotgun loaded with blanks shoved into their mouths all the way to the back their throat, and the trigger pulled. Messy, so hazmat suits are required, but no ricochet.
#5
Chinese and North Koreans are especially bad about aiming blinding lasers at our pilots and satellites. BTW, highly illegal by international treaty, not that pieces of paper have ever deterred our enemies. Several have received permanent eye damage. So now visors have filters for the most likely laser wavelengths.
If we ever go to war with China or their proxies, I expect massive use of blinding lasers and a lot of blinded infantrymen (e.g. Iran-Iraq war), less for the protected vehicle operators.
Posted by: ed ||
08/19/2007 15:45
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The standard US military goggle set includes laser filter lens. While the media and NGOs are not paying attention to the ChiComs' use of blinding lasers, the US military has been.
#7
The Pak army will equip the jihadis with googles for sure. They already provide frequency hopping radios and insulating gloves and tools for dealing with the electrified LOC fence.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007 17:04
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#8
The dazzlers also have an in-built safety interlock to prevent misuse and the weapons do not cause permanent blindness, the sources said.
Personally, I was hoping for a few more megawatts of beamline strength.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - In the nine months since she was born, tiny Fatima Jubouri first lost her father, then gunmen killed her mother and uncle and she was left alone and uncared for in a pile of garbage in Baghdad.
Police found Fatima, malnourished and suffering from dehydration in Iraq's scorching summer heat, hidden under rubbish in one of southern Baghdad's most violent districts. How she got there is not clear, although there is speculation her mother hid her before she was killed.
For now, Fatima is the centre of attention, doted on by nurses and other visitors to her ward. But soon, and no one at the hospital knows exactly when, U.S. soldiers will return to take her to an orphanage to join her five siblings.
... adoption is forbidden in Muslim countries.
Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground
If you had not have fallen
Then I would not have found you
Angel flying too close to the ground
And I patched up your broken wing
And hung around a while
Tried to keep your spirits up
While you were feelin' down
I knew someday
That you would fly away
For love's the greatest healer to be found
So leave me if you need to
I will still remember Angel
Flying too close to the ground
Fly on...
Fly on...
Past the speed of sound
I'd rather see you up
Than see you down
Leave me if you need to
I will still remember
Angel, Flying too close to the ground
ABBOTABAD, 6 August 2007 (IRIN) - Iodine deficiency is a major health problem in Pakistan. According to the Islamabad-based Network for Consumer Protection, around 50 million people across the country suffer from it.
Sumaira Khatoon, 35, is concerned by her youngest son's performance at school. The boy, Farhan, 10, has failed his examinations twice and teachers say he is "incapable of learning". Sumair and her husband Farooq Ahmed, 40, who live in the small town of Thandiani, some 30km from Abbotabad, in Pakistans North West Frontier Province (NWFP), had no idea that the problem could be linked to iodine deficiency. "Both our other children, a daughter and a son, do well at school. We are very worried about Farhan," said Farooq.
The child shows no obvious signs of iodine deficiency. He seems active and the tell-tale swelling of the thyroid gland, known as goiter, which occurs when there is a serious iodine deficiency, is not visible.
"It is commonly believed iodine deficiency shows itself only as goiter, but actually it can lead to slow mental development, retardation, lethargy and reproductive problems, including miscarriages or still births among women," said Dr Faiza Zafar, a physician based in Abbotabad. She diagnoses iodine deficiency quite frequently among patients from all over the NWFP.
In 6.5 million people the problem of iodine deficiency is rated as severe, while in many parts of the NWFP, where rain and rivers wash iodine and other minerals out of the soil, up to 90 percent of people outside major towns are said to suffer from some level of iodine deficiency.
On paper at least, the solution is simple. Iodised table salt was introduced in Pakistan in 1994 and currently the UN Childrens Fund (UNICEF), which began importing potassium iodate into Pakistan around the same time, supplies provincial health departments. The rate, at US$2.50 per kilogram is low, and the cost of adding it to salt ground at local mills is minimal.
But a quite different problem has plagued the campaign to promote and popularise iodised salt. "Many people believe that this salt is a means of preventing reproduction and is being distributed as part of a Western conspiracy to stop the growth of the Muslim population," said Dr Zafar.
Sorta like the polio vaccine? Wait til they hear the evils of aspirin and penicillin.
Zafar said: "Some patients refused to use the widely available iodised salt because they were convinced it would reduce fertility.
This belief, which exists not only in the NWFP but also in many parts of Pakistans populous Punjab Province, is similar to misconceptions surrounding the oral polio vaccine, and also fortified flour, the marketing of which has begun in some parts of the country.
However, Amjad Malik, a medical student who is working in Abbotabad to combat iodine deficiency, said: "Such problems have to be tackled and not allowed to stand in the way of people's health.
This may be easier said than done though - especially in conservative areas of the NWFP where campaigns conducted by the government or non-governmental organisations (NGOs), hold little weight and are often regarded with distrust.
Combating deeply rooted beliefs is hard, with many people seemingly unconvinced by factual evidence. "Allah Almighty has given us many natural wonders, including salt. Why should we add man-made medication to it? If a child is ill or a woman suffers miscarriages, that is God's will," said cleric Abdul Hakim, based at a mosque close to Thandiani.
However, gradually, the message regarding iodine has begun to reach some families. "If this will help my son, I am willing to try it," said Sumaira Khatoon, cautiously sniffing a handful of iodised salt brought from a corner-shop.
According to the results of UNICEF-supported research conducted by the Peshawar-based Research Centre of the Khyber Medical College, in the Swat area of the NWFP, the findings of which were published in 2003, 52 percent of boys and 45 percent of girls aged 8-10, from a sample of 960 students, were found to suffer from goiter. While this marked a slight improvement over figures reported in past years, the incidence of the problem remained high.
According to the Network for the Sustained Elimination of Iodine Deficiency, a network of major international organisations working globally against iodine deficiency, only 17 percent of Pakistans population uses iodised salt. This compares to over 70 percent in neighbouring India, 93 percent in Nepal and 78 percent in Bangladesh.
International agency Micro-nutrients Initiative (MI) has now taken over responsibility for promoting iodised salt in the country and is working with the Health Ministry. Attempts are being made to persuade rock-salt crushing factories to add the nutrient to its products. Wider marketing of iodised salt and indeed a battle against widespread malnutrition, which causes stunting among 38 percent of Pakistani children, according to international findings, may help solve some of the issues millions of people face.
How about just pulling non-iodized salt from the market?
But the struggle could be a long and difficult one, aid workers say. Many NWFP villages are cut off from major towns for months by snow and people tend to live in virtual isolation, unwilling to alter age-old beliefs.
In addition, heightened pro-militant sentiments currently prevailing in many areas of Pakistan, particularly in NWFP, are making it even harder than before for the government or NGOs to get their message across and correct the misconceptions which have consistently plagued efforts to improve health in many spheres.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007
09:32 ||
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#1
Headline should have read: "Unconvinced by facts, unwilling to change age-old beliefs" That's the major problem in Pakistan.
#2
Many people believe that this salt is a means of preventing reproduction and is being distributed as part of a Western conspiracy to stop the growth of the Muslim population
god forbid...breeding like friggin rats, then complaining there isn't enough room/free food/jobs.....
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/19/2007 12:15
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#3
The idea that iodine can prevent iodine deficiency is a plot by Crusaders and Jews to impurify the precious bodily essences of Muslims. No doubt, the element itself was discovered by Jews. Joos, Jooos, Joooos, I tell you!
#5
Many people believe that this salt is a means of preventing reproduction and is being distributed as part of a Western conspiracy to stop the growth of the Muslim population
On to us. I knew this would happen, it was so damn obvious, I said in the Water, in the Water, but noooooo we gotta try the salt angle. Still good reports from the Polio Vaccine front.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
08/19/2007 12:47
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#7
"Many people believe that this salt is a means of preventing reproduction and is being distributed as part of a Western conspiracy to stop the growth of the Muslim population," said Dr Zafar.
We only wish that the polio vaccine and iodized salt were secret involuntary birth control menthods. Instead, the usual Islamic Idiocy transcends our own limited expectations and outdoes even itself for utter opacity.
Between Pashtoons leaving their wimmen folk to freeze in the winter highlands while the Brave Lions of Islam go downslope to get earthquake aid, the polio vaccine scare and now this ... IODIZED SALT ... fer cripes sakes ... I no longer have the least sympathy for these maroons.
Pakistan is essentially an advanced form of what Palestinians would be like with their own nation after a few decades. Just like the Palestinians, I no longer feel the least twinge of sypmathy for their combined sufferings. My only regret is that this sort of terminal stupidity simply cannot kill off these willfully ignorant cretins fast enough.
Muslims deserve Islam and all its attendant woes. When they finally learn to shrug off the chains of intolerance and unenlightenment, only then will some sort of relief begin. Until then, the West's only obligation is to sit back and quietly watch them sink into the mire of their own Islamic cesspits and squash whomever tries to come our way.
#9
More muslim transference, telegraphing what muslims would do when and if they ever get on top.
Posted by: ed ||
08/19/2007 16:00
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#10
More muslim transference, telegraphing what muslims would do when and if they ever get on top.
Word, ed. I had dinner with woman lst night who simply refused to accept that one culture could be superior to another. She kept insisting that other cultures also thought that they were the best just as I was asserting that America's was the best. I tried to point out how ours promotes actual freedom while so many others, especially Islamic ones, do the exact opposite. Even confronted with how the vast majority of this world's population wants to immigrate to America, she could not bring herself to admit that such a thing was a frank admission of American culture's superiority.
I politiely pointed out how us having dinner together while she was unescorted by a male relative would get us lashes for adultery in Saudi Arabia, not to mention how her revealing outfit would do the same as well. I even noted how women especially would die in droves under a global caliphate as they would only be able to see extremely scarce female doctors. She countered with the usual tired old memes of how America should not go around trying to export democracy and "sticking our nose where it doesn't belong." She insisted that people in Islamic countries need to rise up for themselves.
I tried to point out how those people often face heavily armed militaries and an elite clerical aristocracy who has not the least interest in their freedom and, in fact, sees democracy with its manmade laws as a direct affront to shari'a law. I'm hoping that a tiny bit of this leaked through. She's a seasoned traveller and runs her own business, so there's a slight hope. I light of how she is a black woman, I really need to inform her of how Islam treats black Muslims, but that will have to wait for another time.
#14
Zen, continue on enlightening her, believe me, it eventually gets through (or else she's as dumb as a brick and will never "get it.").
I've done the same to many black older generation people at my work (Federal Gov't Agency). When I can't get through to them about Mike Vick, I usually enlighten them about world events (usually involving attacks by Islam) and they are utterly amazed at how much we *don't* hear by the MSM. Most of them keep an open mind about it and are beginning to see the cancer that is Islam.
This belief, which exists not only in the NWFP but also in many parts of Pakistans populous Punjab Province, is similar to misconceptions surrounding the oral polio vaccine, and also fortified flour, the marketing of which has begun in some parts of the country.
This one quote gives me hope that we'll win this WAR one way or another. Either we take them out wholesale (if needed) by military/diplo actions, or they will *eventually* kill themselves by being the world's first wholesale religious group worthy of the Darwin Award of the Century. As a Christian, I still have hope that they can be converted and/or saved on a physical level. As a human, though, anyone who just chalks up kids' deaths and sufferings as Allan's will is beyond my sympathy.
As if 9/11 weren't bad enough (attacking adult civilians), I learned *all* I needed to know about Islam in that school "seige" in Beslan. That attack alone turned the tide for me, and I say "Full Steam Ahead" in taking out Islamic gov'ts and especially "holy men" like these.
Posted by: BA ||
08/19/2007 20:13
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#15
I've done the same to many black older generation people at my work (Federal Gov't Agency). When I can't get through to them about Mike Vick, I usually enlighten them about world events (usually involving attacks by Islam) and they are utterly amazed at how much we *don't* hear by the MSM.
You've got it, BA. I own a white wolf-hybrid (named, Zen). So often black kids (and even white kids as well) are utterly terrified of my slightly aggressive but totally friendly animal.
After shopping at my local Supermercado, I exited the store, untied Zen, and headed towards my car. At every opportunity, I make sure kids always have a chance to positively interact with Zen. He loves children and sucks up their attention like the strokes-monster he is.
Outside of the store it was truly discouraging to see a family of kids almost run in terror from Zen, except for the eldest child. He hung back and gave Zen all sorts of strokes while I talked to the child's father about pets and animals. It was so refreshing to hear a responsible black man, on his own, bring up how evil Vick's dog fighting crap was and then also encourage his other terrified children to come and pet Zen. Sadly, few of them would, but his eldest son hung out and gave Zen all sorts of strokes to help prove the rest of them wrong.
At the funeral of Iofemi Hightower, her classmate Mecca Ali wore a T-shirt with the slogan: "Tell Me Why They Had To Die."
"They" are Miss Hightower, Dashon Harvey and Terrance Aeriel, three young citizens of Newark, New Jersey, lined up against a schoolyard wall, forced to kneel and then shot in the head.
Miss Ali poses an interesting question. No one can say why they "had" to die, but it ought to be possible to advance theories as to what factors make violent death in Newark a more-likely proposition than it should be. That's usually what happens when lurid cases make national headlines: When Matthew Shepard was beaten and hung on a fence in Wyoming, Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times that it was merely the latest stage in a "war" against homosexuals loosed by the forces of intolerance. Mr. Shepard's murder was dramatized in plays and movies and innumerable songs by Melissa Etheridge, Elton John, Peter, Paul and Mary, etc. The fact that this vile crucifixion was a grisly one-off and that American gays have never been less at risk from getting bashed did not deter pundits and politicians and lobby groups galore from arguing that this freak case demonstrated the need for special legislation.
By contrast, there's been a succession of prominent stories with one common feature that the very same pundits, politicians and lobby groups have a curious reluctance to go anywhere near. In a New York Times report headlined "Sorrow And Anger As Newark Buries Slain Youth," the limpidly tasteful Times prose prioritized "sorrow" over "anger," and offered only the following reference to the perpetrators: "The authorities have said robbery appeared to be the motive. Three suspects two 15-year-olds and a 28-year-old construction worker from Peru have been arrested."
So, this Peruvian guy was here on a green card? Or did he apply for a temporary construction-work visa from the U.S. Embassy in Lima?
Not exactly. Jose Carranza is an "undocumented" immigrant. His criminal career did not begin with the triple murder he's alleged to have committed, nor with the barroom assault from earlier this year, nor with the 31 counts of aggravated sexual assault relating to the rape of a 5-year-old child, for which Mr. Carranza had been released on bail. (His $50,000 bail on the assault charge and $150,000 bail on the child-rape charges have now been revoked.) No, Mr. Carranza's criminal career in the United States began when he decided to live in this country unlawfully.
Jose Carranza isn't exactly a member of an exclusive club. Violent crime committed by fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community is now a routine feature of American life. But who cares? In 2002, as the "Washington Sniper" piled up his body count, "experts" lined up to tell the media that he was most likely an "angry white male," a "macho hunter" or an "icy loner." When the icy loner turned out to be a black Muslim named Muhammad accompanied by an illegal immigrant from Jamaica, the only angry white males around were the lads in America's newsrooms who were noticeably reluctant to abandon their thesis: Early editions of the New York Times speculated that Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were being sought for "possible ties to 'skinhead militia' groups," which seemed a somewhat improbable alliance given the size of Mr. Muhammad's hair in the only available mug shot. As for his illegal sidekick, Malvo was detained and released by the INS in breach of their own procedures.
America has a high murder rate: Murdering people is definitely one of the jobs Americans can do. But that's what ties young Malvo to Jose Carranza: He's just another killer let loose in this country to kill Americans by the bureaucracy's boundless sensitivity toward the "undocumented." Will the Newark murders change anything? Will there be an Ioefemi Hightower Act of Congress like the Matthew Shepard Act passed by the House of Representatives? No. Three thousand people died Sept. 11, 2001, in an act of murder facilitated by the illegal-immigration support structures in this country, and, if that didn't rouse Americans to action, another trio of victims seems unlikely to tip the scales. As Michelle Malkin documented in her book "Invasion," four of the killers boarded the plane with photo ID obtained through the "undocumented worker" network at the 7-Eleven in Falls Church, Va. That's to say, officialdom's tolerance of the illegal immigration shadow-state enabled 9/11. And what did we do? Not only did we not shut it down, we enshrined the shadow-state's charade as part of the new tough post-slaughter security procedures.
Go take a flight from Newark Airport. The TSA guy will ask for your driver's license, glance at the name and picture, and hand it back to you. Feel safer? The terrorists could pass that test, and the morning of 9/11 they did: 19 foreign "visitors" had, between them, 63 valid U.S. driver's licenses. Did government agencies then make it harder to obtain lawful photo ID? No. Since 9/11, the likes of Maryland and New Mexico have joined those states that issue legal driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
Newark is the logical end point of these policies. It is a failed city: 60 percent of its children are being raised in households without fathers. Into that vacuum pour all kinds of alternative authority structures: Mr. Carranza is alleged to have committed his crime with various teenage members of MS-13, a gang with origins in El Salvador's civil war of the 1980s that now operates in some 30 U.S. states. In its toughest redoubts, immigrants don't assimilate with America, America assimilates to the immigrants, and a Fairfax, Va., teenager finds himself getting hacked at by machete wielders.
One could, I suppose, regard this as one of those unforeseen incremental consequences that happens in the darkest shadows of society. But that doesn't extend to Newark's official status as an illegal-immigrant "sanctuary city." Like Los Angeles, New York and untold others, Newark has formally erased the distinction between U.S. citizens and the armies of the undocumented. This is the active collusion by multiple cities and states in the subversion of U.S. sovereignty. In Newark, N.J., it means an illegal-immigrant child rapist is free to murder on a Saturday night. In Somerville, Mass., it means two deaf girls are raped by MS-13 members. And in Falls Church, Va., it means Saudi Wahhabists figuring out that, if the "sanctuary nation" (in Michelle Malkin's phrases) offers such rich pickings to imported killers and imported gangs, why not to jihadists?
"Tell Me Why They Had To Die"? Hard to answer. But tell me why, no matter how many Jose Carranzas it spawns, the nationwide undocumented-immigration protection program erected by this country's political class remains untouchable and ever-expanding.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/19/2007
09:29 ||
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as usual, Steyn rules. The illegal immigrant population isn't all hard-working pickers and meat packers. It'll take a 9/11 attack done by illegal southern border crossers to push that current 79% opposing amnesty for illegals to a level even Washington and the asshole Congress cannot ignore. Workplace enforcement shouldn't be PR events for Chertoff and his ilk, they should be a daily fact of life. MS13 and other gangs need to be ruthlessly crushed
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/19/2007 12:01
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to push that current 79% opposing amnesty for illegals to a level even Washington and the asshole Congress cannot ignore
#2
Hey Gertrude here's a little tip: European women 5-month's pregnant should stay out of 7th century muslim hell holes. Could it be she has a little Achmed bun in the oven? I smell set up.
Posted by: regular joe ||
08/19/2007 10:41
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Send those checks and money orders to...
Posted by: Gary and the Samoyeds ||
08/19/2007 11:07
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John Robb's take on what we face. Intro to the long article:
For the first time in history, announced researchers this May, a majority of the worlds population is living in urban environments. Citiesefficient hubs connecting international flows of people, energy, communications, and capitalare thriving in our global economy as never before. However, the same factors that make cities hubs of globalization also make them vulnerable to small-group terror and violence.
Over the last few years, small groups ability to conduct terrorism has shown radical improvements in productivitytheir capacity to inflict economic, physical, and moral damage. These groups, motivated by everything from gang membership to religious extremism, have taken advantage of easy access to our global superinfrastructure, revenues from growing illicit commercial flows, and ubiquitously available new technologies to cross the threshold necessary to become terrible threats. September 11, 2001, marked their arrival at that threshold.
Unfortunately, the improvements in lethality that we have already seen are just the beginning.
#1
It is a perverse twist of history that this new threat arrives at the same moment that wars between states are receding into the past. Thanks to global interdependence, state-against-state warfare is far less likely than it used to be, and viable only against disconnected or powerless states.
No. Thanks to United States military preeminence. Europe was widely considered to be too economically interdependent in 1913 to ever go to war; what it lacked was regional hegemon to guarantee the peace.
Insurgents detonated a bomb at a market close to a polling station in Rueso district of Narathiwat on Sunday, injuring a villager and a soldier. The five-kilogram explosive device, which was placed at the market located near Ban Laloh train station, went off at around noon. A soldier who was patrolling at the polling unit and a villager whose shop locating nearby were wounded from the blast. They were rushed to Rueso hospital.
The blast prompted security forces to step up security in the area, for fear that insurgents may stage an attack on the referendum day.
WaPo interviews 30+ US soldiers, shows courage and heroism with not too much spin and despair. Starts on front page (A01), but a long article. 2 US KIA (ironically, in the clean-up phase) and 11 wounded, 32 bad guys, including a couple of women and children. Worth the time and registration effort. I missed when this actually happened, but think I read about it here a while back? The bad guys were poised to retake Ramadi. Excerpts:
About 200 yards from the canal, Stark's Humvee crested a small dirt berm, and his driver, Spec. Kevin Gilbertson, saw something odd: two large semitrucks parked just to the left of the road ahead. "I wonder what they're doing?" Gilbertson called to Stark. Then they spotted a few men fleeing across the field to the south and accelerated toward the trucks.
Stark recalled that he turned and to his disbelief saw clustered behind the trucks -- only a few feet away -- at first 10, then 20, then as many as 70 heavily armed men. "Traverse left, open fire!" he yelled instinctively to his gunner. Startled, Pfc. Sean Groves unleashed a rapid burst from his M240 machine gun.
Young's gunner, Sgt. William Fellows, had nearly exhausted the 1,800 rounds he carried for his M240 machine gun. So the 24-year-old from Springfield, Mo., grabbed a Vietnam-era M-14 rifle and fired off five magazines. With only 100 rounds left, he was minutes from running out, he recalled: "We all basically went black on ammo."
At a mud-brick outpost a few miles southwest of the battle, a scout platoon set off in seven Humvees loaded with machine gun rounds. They arrived about 11 p.m., just in time to resupply Stark's patrol, and together the soldiers advanced toward the trucks.
"Spray it down!" ordered Capt. Jimm Spannagel, the scout platoon's leader. The trucks caught fire, munitions inside shooting off like fireworks, then exploded in gigantic red balls. Meanwhile, the insurgents, who outnumbered the Americans throughout the battle, were repositioning. Some swam across the canal to set up machine gun nests midstream on a small piece of land known as Donkey Island. Others dug in on the canal's beaches or behind its four-foot-high banks. Sorry. I just had to make sure you saw this one:
Fighters in white tunics and running shoes moved like ghosts over the battlefield, displaying tactics that the Americans said mirrored their own. They signaled with flashlights, bounded into position and crawled to try to evade the superior U.S. firepower. Yet the clever and adapatable enemy is wearing white in the moonlight.
The Humvee lurched forward, and Stark saw an insurgent curled in the fetal position but still moving. Wary after the grenade incident, Gilbertson recalled, he pulled out his 9mm pistol and shot the man, who then detonated his suicide vest. Flesh and ball bearings splattered the right side of Stark's Humvee, which was lifted off its wheels and thrown down, causing its third flat tire.
After that, the soldiers said, they decided to kill any wounded insurgents able to move. At 1:35 a.m., as a group of insurgents was evacuating casualties to tents to the north, Young ordered a Bradley Fighting Vehicle that had arrived on the scene to open fire. Eight insurgents and five civilians, three male and two female, were later found dead in two tents, the military said. In the end, the battle of Donkey Island left 11 U.S. troops wounded and two dead, while an estimated 32 insurgents were killed. Not including the eight "civilians"?
The heavy fighting between the Americans and the al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgents had deep repercussions across Ramadi.
Iraqi police officers close to Buchan "lost it" when they heard of his death, Rosa said. "I love Sergeant Buchan. When he died, all of the police cried," Col. Jabbar Hamid Ajaj said in his Ramadi office, plastered with posters he had made featuring Buchan.
At his mansion near the main U.S. base in Ramadi, Sattar, the tribal leader, was alarmed to learn that he had been the insurgents' prime target but took comfort in the U.S. tank stationed outside his home. "If al-Qaeda gets away from the Awakening, they won't get away from the American forces," Sattar said. "We are allies," he added as he shared a tiny cup of bitter coffee with Lt. Col. Miciotto Johnson, commander of the 1-77. "I defend Col. Johnson, and Col. Johnson defends me." The end of the article has the obligatory hand-wringing:
But U.S. officers in Ramadi say it is only a matter of time before al-Qaeda in Iraq strikes again. "We're still expecting attacks similar to this one," said Maj. Andrew Wortham, the 1st Brigade Combat Team's intelligence officer in Ramadi.
Soldiers who fought in the battle say they feel extremely lucky to have happened upon the insurgents -- and to have survived. They're concerned that if U.S. forces leave, the insurgents will return and easily kill local police and officials, who are obviously moronic and undertrained, compared to the Iranian-trained 'insurgents'. "I worry about pulling out of this area early. If we do, these guys are dead meat," Lauer said.
Spannagel, the scout leader, said the fighting revealed "a false sense of security that we'd won the battle in Ramadi." In fact, he said, "this shows the enemy is patient. This is his land. He's got all the time in the world. . . . They're going to continue to fight in Anbar." It's a quagmire, I tellya!
Now if they had lots of pictures, and were there, this'd be almost as good as Yon's reporting!
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/19/2007
07:43 ||
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June 30th was the battle. Right there on the front page, when I opened Mrs. Bobby's WaPo to get the comics.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/19/2007 9:17
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Bummer for the terrs. "months of planning", pre-positioned munitions, snooper&poopers finding out where to attack.
Accidentally encounter a small American patrol and...all gone for zilch.
For all the munitions they had, the terrs were using homemade grenades, bottles with shot and explosive. Either they didn't have enough grenades, or the grenades they had weren't adequate. Weren't, in other words, as good as the homemade kind in pop bottles.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
08/19/2007 10:09
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#3
thanks Bobby, no need to register btw just x outthe ads...
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
08/19/2007 10:38
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The Clever, Adaptable and increasingly sophisticated enemy is again becoming more and more powerful able to inflict heavy casualties in the surging violence.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
08/19/2007 12:27
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#5
except for the dead and captured ones
/meme
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/19/2007 12:33
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Nice video at link. Title is "Renewed Threat in Ramadi", except that was six weeks ago.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/19/2007 13:55
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#7
Very impressive ! First, 3 inexperienced men against 70, then improved to 9 vs. 55 (allowing for enemy deaths).
Very impressive. Hollywood will start filming next week......not.
#8
You catch the reference to "the Awakening"? I assume that refers to when the Sunni tribes got hit with the 44" cluebat and realized AQ was waxing their butts more than the infidel's.
To make the cold, hard facts of victory more palatable to defeatists, Bush craftily proposes to drape his winning plan in surrender clothing. NYT:
WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 The White House plans to use a report next month assessing progress in Iraq to outline a plan for gradual troop reductions beginning next year that would fall far short of the drawdown demanded by Congressional opponents of the war, according to administration and military officials.
One administration official made it clear that the goal of the planned announcement was to counter public pressure for a more rapid reduction and to try to win support for a plan that could keep American involvement in Iraq on a sustainable footing at least through the end of the Bush presidency.
The officials said the White House would portray its approach as a new strategy for Iraq, a message aimed primarily at the growing numbers of Congressional Republicans who have criticized President Bushs handling of the war.
Ha ha, NYT humor! What message is Bush going to aim at the growing numbers of Congressional Democrats who now say he's doing something right in Iraq? Well, I think we've just seen it. It's a figleaf to cover the nakedness of their admissions that winning may trump surrender. Memo to NYT, etal. You may want to go count heads on that growing number of Congressional Republicans who have criticized President Bush's handling of the war. I suspect the sponginess factor of spineless resolve may be up. . . .
Here's a good kicker:
Most Congressional Democrats have already called for the withdrawal of all American combat forces from Iraq beginning early next year. After nearly five years, a half-trillion dollars and over 3,700 American lives, it is long past time for a change of direction in Iraq, the Senates Democratic majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said in a written statement this week.
Ha ha ha! More NYT humor? The subtle irony of mocking Reid with his own tired broken-record pronouncements. Get it? "After eight months and countless go-nowhere surrender votes, it is long past time for a change of direction in Congress."
But surely NYT didn't intend that to be funny. The good scribblers of NYT buried Reid way at the end. Once upon a time, you'd be reading that near the top. I sense NYT surrender enthusiasts, like the ones in Congress, are groping around for a way to get on the right side of this war thing before dread September comes barrelling in. This article shines a klieg light down the path: Embrace victory, call it defeat!
Posted by: Mike ||
08/19/2007
07:32 ||
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Parts of an interview given by Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah to Iranian national television were censored by Iran's censors to avoid raising ire in Lebanon.
Hizbullah holds mass rally marking first anniversary of 'divine victory' in Second Lebanon War. Nasrallah accuses US, Israel of driving wedge between organization, Arab nations and the rest of the world
"We are ready to be torn apart, spliced into tiny pieces, so that Iran will remain exalted. I am a lowly soldier of the Imam Khamenei. Hizbullah youths acted on behalf of the Imam Khomeini."
"We are ready to be torn apart, spliced into tiny pieces, so that Iran will remain exalted. For if Iran remains exalted, we too shall be exalted. I am a lowly soldier of the Imam Khamenei. Hizbullah youths acted on behalf of the Imam Khomeini, with the aid of Imam Hussein, and sent their blessings to the Iranian people," said Nasrallah in an interview with reporter Bijan Nobaveh on the day marking the start of the Second Lebanon War according to the Persian calendar.
Nasrallah also thanked Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and all the "brothers and sisters" in Iran.
From an internal Lebanese perspective, Nasrallah's words, which carry much weight, are tantamount to dissent. Nasrallah confirms that he serves supreme leader of Iran (Khamenei) and that his men fought for Iran last summer.
Nasrallah's opponents within Lebanon have long asserted that Nasrallah's loyalties lie with Teheran and that Lebanon is not first on his list of priorities.
Nasrallah himself since the beginning of the war declared himself a proud Lebanese patriot who's first and foremost priority was Lebanon. "Show me one incident in which I did something for another and against Lebanon," he reiterated constantly.
Meanwhile Nasrallah continued to celebrate Hizbullah's "divine victory" last summer. In a speech before thousands in Beirut he warned Israel: "If you are thinking of going to war with Lebanon I promise you a big surprise that will change the fate of the war and the region," he warned Israel and the US.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/19/2007 8:55
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#3
I think Nasrallah was promised big bucks by Iran during or after last summer's conflict. He hasn't gotten the big bucks and he's both pissed off at Iran and also more dependent on them than ever.
#5
2009, Joe. February, IIRC. Which is to say, I agree, the Bush Presidency still has a lot of time. And he has said he will retire from politics after this gig- will never run for office again. Nothing to lose, everything to win.
A suicide bomber killed two soldiers on Saturday and two others died in a fierce clash with militants in North Waziristan, officials said. Two soldiers were killed and as many injured in the suicide attack at the Dharkhubi checkpost near the town of Mir Ali, a security official said. Two other soldiers were killed when militants attacked Isha and Qamar checkposts in North Waziristan.
The suicide attack near Mir Ali town came hours after troops attacked three suspected militant hideouts in South Waziristan, triggering a shootout that left at least 10 soldiers injured. Gunmen also killed a policeman on Saturday when they lobbed a hand grenade at a police checkpost in Bannu, police officer Dar Ali Khattak said. Five other officers were also injured in the attack.
A suicide bomber also blew himself to pieces in Bannu after being cornered by police, injuring a policeman and a civilian, Khattak said.
A suicide bomber also blew himself to pieces in Bannu after being cornered by police, injuring a policeman and a civilian, Khattak said.
Earlier, a soldier was injured when militants clashed with security forces near the Christian cemetery in Miranshah. Separately, militants fired up to 20 rockets before dawn at the Banda checkpost outside Miranshah, but there were no reports of casualties.
The Taliban of South Waziristan on Saturday abandoned the peace agreement they had signed with the government in 2005. In South Waziristan, a tribal jirga set off to negotiate the release of 15 paramilitary soldiers taken hostage by militants last week.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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#1
Interesting, the Taliban putting the 'squeeze on' up there in North Waziristan; smells like they're trying to hide or protect something...or someone. The hairs on Binny's neck are prolly standing up bout now!
The Taliban's reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, in a rare message on Saturday called on Afghans to shun their differences and join the militant Islamic movement's campaign to drive Western troops from Afghanistan. Omar made the appeal through a Taliban spokesmen, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, on the eve of the 88th anniversary of Afghanistan's independence from Britain. He said Afghanistan was once again "occupied by colonialist forces", referring to foreign troops in the country. "We have to ... put aside all of our internal, regional and linguistic differences and get united against the enemy," said the message, which was read to Reuters over the telephone by Yousuf from an undisclosed location.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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Israel said on Saturday it will allow fresh deliveries of fuel into Gaza, after a freeze which plunged much of the impoverished Palestinian territory into darkness overnight. "Fuel deliveries will resume to the Gaza Strip on Sunday morning via the Nahal Oz crossing," a military spokesman told AFP. On Friday, the Israeli army confirmed it had barred deliveries via the Nahal Oz crossing for "security reasons." The Palestinian electricity company said on Friday that it had been forced to stop nearly all electricity production in Gaza because of the suspension of deliveries. "We are forced to stop three out of the station's four generators", its director Rafiq Maliha told reporters in Gaza. Gaza has a single 140-megawatt power plant that provides about three quarters of the territory's electricity needs. All of the fuel for the plant comes from Israel. The remainder of Gaza's electricity needs is supplied by Israel, Egypt and private electricity generators. Home to some 1.5 million largely impoverished people, Gaza is one of the world's most densely populated places.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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#1
Israel said on Saturday it will allow fresh deliveries of fuel into Gaza
#10
Alcohol is a much greater danger to internal combustion than a little sugar. Add 10% ethyl alcohol to diesel fuel (what most power plants use), and watch the pistons melt, the engine gum up, and valves become caked with carbon. It's also more soluble in diesel.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
08/19/2007 20:26
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I thirds it, OP! Time for the Gazans to reap what they sow in my book. Any nation who's entirely running on four generators and still can't buy a cluebat about the cause-effect thingy is right dense, that's for sure.
Posted by: BA ||
08/19/2007 22:08
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President General Pervez Musharraf said on Saturday that he was in favour of "national reconciliation", but it would happen after the general elections on the basis of political parties' strength in the new assemblies.
"I am in favour of national reconciliation in view of internal and external situations, but this will be given serious thought after the general elections," Gen Musharraf was quoted as saying by a participant of a meeting between the president and Pakistan Muslim League parliamentarians in Bahawalpur. The president, who has held a series of meetings with PML parliamentarians as part of his election campaign, faced a number of questions regarding a deal between him and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, but he did not divulge any details. "Your interests will not be harmed," he was quoted as saying. "The PML and the PPP will separately contest the elections."
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
08/19/2007 8:21
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IONews, WAFF.com > US NAVY deploys SEAWOLF/
VIRGINIA class SSN Subs to Pacific. Pearl Harbor gets three VIRGINIAS [no new SSN honey for Guam]; + WORLDTRIBUNE > INDIA, JAPAN AND NEW ASIAN POWER BALANCE. Article redux on WAFF.com < RUSSIA, CHINA, IRAN WARN USA TO STAY OUT OF CENTRAL ASIA.
Tajikistan handed down 17-year prison sentences on Saturday to two former Guantanamo Bay detainees convicted of fighting alongside Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Both men were detained by the US military in Afghanistan in 2001 and held in the Guantanamo military prison for five years before being returned to their home country to face charges of being mercenaries in a foreign country.
A Supreme Court judge said the men had belonged to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a militant group active in Central Asia in the late 1990s. IMU guerrillas fought alongside Taliban forces in Afghanistan but the group was largely destroyed by the US-led military campaign there in 2001. "Tajik citizens Mukit Vokhidov and Rukhniddin Sharopov were found guilty of mercenary activity and illegally crossing state borders," presiding judge Musammir Urakov told reporters. He said the men would serve their sentences in a penal colony.
Tajikistan, a Muslim nation of 7 million in Central Asia, shares a 1,340 km (840 mile) border with Afghanistan. The ex-Soviet country remains flooded with weapons after a 1992-97 civil war between Islamist guerrillas and the secular government in which more than 100,000 people were killed. The foreign ministry says at least 10 Tajik citizens are being held in Guantanamo Bay, most of them detained by US troops in Afghanistan on suspicion of involvement with the Taliban or al-Qaeda. In the last five years, about 70 suspected members of the IMU have been arrested in Tajikistan. Most were put on trial and received sentences of between 15 and 25 years.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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IDF troops shot and killed three Palestinians over the weekend during operations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
On Saturday, the IDF opened fire at three Palestinians, spotted near the Gaza security fence south of the Karni Crossing. One of the Palestinians was killed and the two others were wounded and taken for questioning. The army said soldiers fired when the Palestinians appeared to plant an explosive device along the border fence. The Southern Command was investigating the incident and had not ruled out the possibility that the three were not terrorists and were trying to cross illegally into Israel in search of work. "Every time someone approaches the fence we categorize it as a potential terror attack," explained an officer in the Southern Command. "Our mission is to stop anyone who comes close to the fence." According to the officer, the IDF has noticed a slight increase lately in the number of attempts by Palestinians to infiltrate into Israel.
Earlier Saturday, five Palestinians were caught after they had infiltrated into Israel near Kibbutz Be'eri. "This is a complicated mission since sometimes they are terrorists and sometimes they are civilians sent by terrorists to test us and to collect intelligence," explained a military source. "We view each incident as a potential terror attack and cannot afford to take any chances."
On Friday, two Palestinians were killed during one of two gunfights between IDF troops and Palestinian gunmen near Jenin. The first exchange of fire broke out after soldiers entered the village of Kafr Dan, local residents said. Two Palestinians were killed, an Islamic Jihad gunman and a civilian, doctors said. Several were wounded.
Earlier Friday evening, the IAF fired two missiles at Palestinian rocket launchers in the northern Gaza Strip shortly after three rockets and 12 mortars were fired toward Israel. The missiles missed the launching squad that was on its way back from firing rockets toward Israel and caused no casualties, Hamas said.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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(SomaliNet) Three government soldiers were seriously wounded when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb near the police academy in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia on Saturday morning, witnesses said ? as there is mounting security concern in the city with constant bombing. It was a remote controlled bomb, which went off as the government car was passing the road around 7:15 am local time, according to the eyewitnesses. Suspected Islamist-led insurgent groups carried out the bomb attack.
The security forces did not open fire but sealed off the site of the blast searching for any suspects. No one has been arrested for the latest attack. On Friday night, the militants attacked the police stations of Wadajir and Waberi neighbourhoods using heavy machine-guns and rocket propelled grenades. No casualty was reported on the policemen.
Mogadishu has been a city of violence since the Ethiopian backed transitional government forces drove the Islamic Courts Union out of the country late December 2006. One third of the residents particularly the young people fled Mogadishu due to escalating violence.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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#1
I'll bet that Rantburgers may be the only people on the face of the earth (outside your Somali interested in survival) that give an iota about what is happening there. Verrrry interesting that you never see this in MSM or even on cable news.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
08/19/2007 9:14
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There was no manger, Christ is not the Messiah, and the crucifixion never happened. A forthcoming ITV documentary will portray Jesus as lefty libtards Muslims see him.
With the Koran as a main source and drawing on interviews with scholars and historians, the Muslim Jesus explores how Islam honours Christ as a prophet but not as the son of God. According to the Koran the crucifixion was a divine illusion. Instead of dying on the cross, Jesus was rescued by angels and raised to heaven.
The one-hour special, commissioned and narrated by Melvyn Bragg, is thought to be the first time the subject has been dealt with on British television. Lord Bragg said: "I was fascinated by the idea ... Jesus was such a prominent figure in Islam but most people don't know that." He denies the programme will divide communities. Raised as an Anglican, he describes the documentary as thoughtful and well researched. "I hope it will provoke among Muslims the feeling they are included in television."
The director and producer, Irshad Ashraf, said the film was an attempt to shift the focus away from extremism to the spiritual side of Islam. "Jesus is loved and respected by Muslims and he's one of the most important prophets in our religion."
Representatives from mainstream Anglican and Catholic organisations were invited to take part in the film, to be broadcast on Sunday, but nobody was available, Mr Ashraf said.
Philip Lewis, the Bishop of Bradford's aide on inter-faith matters, urged believers on both sides to take advantage of a "worthwhile contribution to understanding a complex issue".
Predictable, I s'pose.
However, Patrick Sookhdeo, an Anglican canon and spokesman for the Barnabas Fund, which works with persecuted Christians, accused broadcasters of double standards. Mr Sookhdeo, who was born a Muslim and converted to Christianity in 1969, said: "How would the Muslim community respond if ITV made a programme challenging Muhammad as the last prophet?"
They'd shrug and call for more tea, of course. Doesn't everybody?
#1
I call for seething and burning of ITV offices and Moskkks!!...or not. NASCAR's on today, so I'll have to pass
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/19/2007 10:45
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#2
I hope they spend time on the Islamic version of Jesus's ancestry. The Koran makes him the son of Miriam (sister of Moses and Aaron).
Of the few Moslems who know this and the fewer still who will discuss this soberly with an infidel, the typical answer is that the reason the timeline looks goofy is that Christians and Jews have distorted the bible.
#3
Philip Lewis, the Bishop of Bradford's aide on inter-faith matters, urged believers on both sides to take advantage of a "worthwhile contribution to understanding a complex issue".
Don't tell that to all the prophets and disciples who for over 1600 years all made the predictions and then who witnessed those predictions come true of God's Son mission on Earth. A simple issue.
#4
I either believe in Christ and am therefor a Christian, or I do not and I am not (I happen to believe) If I believe, then it is a settled issue for me, and the "worthwhile contribution" is in fact just so much hooey...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/19/2007 14:04
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#5
Fair enough ... When might we expect the sequel: Mohammed as seen by the rest of the civilized world.
#6
Wonder if director and producer, Irshad Ashraf will included the part where Jesus (Issa) comes back to earth and wipe out the Jews and Christians (kill all pigs and break all crosses)? More UK taxpayer funded taqqiya.
Posted by: ed ||
08/19/2007 15:54
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#9
"Jesus was rescued by angels and raised to heaven" > IMO, makes Jesus at minima equal to Mohammed, iff not superior. Iff Mohammed was alegedly taken to heaven on a winged horse sent by God, as various srticles all over the Net have described ala Islamic beliefs, IS NOT AN ANGEL A SUPERIOR ENTITY TO A HORSE???
#10
Seriously, we need seething and rioting, and people with signs about how outraged we are....
oh wait...we are actually educated, reasonable, civilized people, not barbaric cretins from the 7th century pretending we belong to a real religion and are actually educated instead of mind controlled from birth.....
silly me
#11
Always to the point, JosephM. For many the documentary will be an eye opener, incomplete though it is. Shortly after 9/11 the PTA brought in a speaker from the nearby (Saudi-built) mosque. One of the teachers just couldn't get past the fact that Muslims do not regard Jesus Christ as one third of the holy trinity of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, that is as divine rather than a mere man, however holy. Not many Westerners doubt the crucifixion happened, and when faced with Islam's insistence that their god deliberately fooled people, many will wonder how a religion that claims to supercede Christianity can have any validity when it insists God is a liar.
#12
touche', TW! I say we go ALL the way back to the root of the entire problem....Isaac vs. Ishmael.
Isaac (the rightful son of Abraham by Sarah, his wife) was in God's chosen lineage, and thus, is the one portrayed as being *almost* slain by his father, when God steps in. He is the descendent of the Judeo-Christian line of beliefs.
Ishmael (the "bastard" son of Abraham, by Hagar, Sarah's nurse-maid) is run out of Dodge and is said to be a donkey of a man, whose descendants would always be at war with Isaac's descendants. He is the one the Muslims claim that Abraham almost killed before God stepped in, and thus, he is on the "loosing" side, as he is NOT the chosen lineage of God (yet, he is the descendant of most Arab people and the Muslims in general).
Granted, this is a "simplified" version of events, yet we see that even now, the descendants of Ishmael are still warring against those of Isaac. How d'ya like them apples, Mr. Melvyn Bragg?
Posted by: BA ||
08/19/2007 22:29
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A college student received more than 100 stitches after being bitten by a shark in Sarasota Bay. Andrea Lynch, 20, said she was floating on her back near a boat when the shark bit her in her side Wednesday, shook her a little bit and then let her go. When she got back in the boat, she told her three friends that she might have been bitten by a shark and they thought she might be joking - or mistaken. "I reached back with my hand and felt all these gashes on me," she said, "and there was blood running down my body and pooling in the boat."
Lynch had 17 puncture wounds. Doctors said the shark's teeth got close to her lungs, but missed all major organs.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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#1
She is lucky- fortunately, sharks think that humans taste bad and usually spit us out after a shake or two.
An Afghanistan expert has said that most of the legitimate community representatives from Pakistan's tribal areas and Afghanistan may not embrace central government control, but they reject the militant radicalism that is ravaging their communities.
Alex Their, who has spent 14 years working on Afghanistan and Pakistan, told the US Institute of Peace that while a communique from the recently held grand jirga in Kabul signalled commitment to fighting terrorism on both sides of the border, implementation will be hard. The Afghan and Pakistan Taliban groups have guns, funding, and international support, and both the Afghan and Pakistani governments are weak in these areas, he added. He said the idea for the peace jirga emerged over a year ago, and negotiations over location, representation, and agenda were tense given strained Pak-Afghan relations. President Pervez Musharraf was reluctant about the jirga all along, and he cancelled his participation in the opening ceremony in Kabul at the last minute, embarrassing both Presidents Hamid Karzai and George Bush, who had helped to broker the agreement for the meeting. However, due to significant international pressure, he did attend the closing of the jirga and made a remarkable speech acknowledging, for the first time, Pakistan's partial culpability for the ongoing insurgency in Afghanistan.
Asked what Bush and Karzai discussed at Camp David during the latter's visit, Their replied that the two presidents focused on the headline issues in their talks: the fight against the Taliban (including the role of Pakistan) and the booming narcotics trade. Significant progress has not been made on either front, and their shared priorities must be to stop the backsliding over the past year and a half of the security situation in Afghanistan, he added. He expressed the fear that despite continued international support abroad and bipartisan support in Washington, Afghanistan is in danger of being dragged down with Iraq. The insurgency in Iraq is also spreading bad news to Afghanistan in the form of increased suicide bombings and other tactics, such as improvised explosive devices (IEDs), hostage-taking and beheadings. There is a real danger as well that the American public will increasingly lump Afghanistan in with Iraq, and calls for withdrawal will follow apace, in his view.
Asked if the US could be influential in repairing the breach between its two allies in the region, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Thier answered that the US has a tremendous amount of influence with both countries. In many ways, Pakistan is a more complex problem for the US than Afghanistan, because its relationship with the Musharraf government and the Pakistani people is less stable. Washington has relied heavily on Gen Musharraf to support the US agenda after September 11, but the Pakistani government has also failed to deliver on critical items on the US agenda, such as removing militant safe havens, shutting down radical madrassas, and reinstating democracy. US military and financial support to Pakistan being significant, Islamabad is unlikely to risk that during a tense domestic period.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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#1
Popular appeal is not necessary, as long as it's an excuse to kill, it'll do...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/19/2007 8:53
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As Pakistan completes its first sixty years, it is natural to ask whether the next sixty would look any different. Given the difficulties of even forecasting the future six months out, how can we define the nations long-term future?
Paradoxically, it is often easier to talk about the long-term than about the near-term. When Winston Churchill quipped, The future, though imminent, is obscure, he was referring to the near term. Over the long haul, he knew the curtain had fallen on the British Raj.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007
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#1
Ahh, jovial I AM.
"Internally, several questions will need to be answered. Will Pakistan finally make a transition out of feudalism, something India did decades ago? Will literacy and primary enrolment rates rise to the levels seen today in the Asia-Pacific countries? Will rates of domestic savings and investment rise to the point that growth ceases to depend on foreign aid? Will the character of economic growth change sufficiently to make a dent in the poverty rate? Or will growth be swallowed up by rising population, which, if current trends continue, will make it the fourth largest state in the world? Depending on how these issues are resolved, Pakistan will either become an economic powerhouse be sent to an economic purgatory."
I would like to see everyone doing better - excellent debate questions. Wish I could get that here in the US rather than snowmen and white/black and covetous crap.
#2
Territorial Disintegration: Inter-provincial rivalries and events across the borders cause the Frontier to merge with Afghanistan, Balochistan with Iran and interior Sindh with India. Karachi becomes as a city-state. Punjab is all that survives of Pakistan. To paraphrase Toynbee, the nation dies from suicide, not murder.
The most likely option...
Posted by: john frum ||
08/19/2007 9:06
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#3
December 8th; 2012 > a great global-felt quake, China versus USA geopolitics in the Pacific, large comet slamming into the earth knocking earth off its normal orbit; 2018, 2022, etal.; moon explosions 2030, ....................etc. *Radical Islamism gets a foothold on Guam + other PACOAS, eventually to challenge, by armed force iff need be, the authority of both local Catholicism-Christianity, Culture, as well as Public Governance. BETTER TO WARN/ADVISE MY PEOPLE + USA NOW BECUZ I MAY NOT BE AROUND, at least not as "Joseph Mendiola". SECULARISTS > "GOD/RELIGION IS FAKE" > ergo Mankind must prove he can control = stop the wraths of God/Apocalypse, etc.
#5
C2CAM Pert/SCIENCE NEWS > INDONESIA, PERU, SOLOMONS QUAKES ARE SOLAR-CAUSED??? Sun abnormally emitting more Rays, Gravity. *RENSE > NASA's Sun-watching satellites detecting strange Solar XRay burps. Said same strange XRay burps = emissions possible time-jumps/skips - may prove useful in saving Earth from Solar/Radiation-induced Annihilation? come or after 2012???
Multi-National Division ? Baghdad Soldiers discovered an improvised explosive device production facility in an abandoned building in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Khadra Aug. 16.
Iraqi Police officers from the 2nd Battalion, 5th Regiment, 2nd National Police Division and Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, were led to the production site by an anonymous tip from a Khadra resident.
The search uncovered a kitchen area being used to produce homemade explosive material. Nine PVC pipes, three of which were ready-made pipe bombs, were discovered. Twenty pounds of half-inch ball bearings, 15 gallons of nitric acid, three high-powered rifles and various spools of cellophane and wire were also found. An explosive ordnance disposal team detonated the cache on site, destroying the facility.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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KOLKATA, India - Security was stepped up for the exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen on Saturday after the controversial author was issued with a death threat, police said. The move came after radical Muslim cleric Majidulla Khan Farhad on Friday accused Nasreen of defaming Islam and announced an unlimited financial reward to anybody who would kill her, according to the Press Trust of India.
The Indian coppers need to pay a 'visit' to Farhad.
Police in plainclothes have been posted in and around Taslimas flat in the wake of the threats of Muslim clerics after Friday prayers at a city mosque, city deputy police commissioner Gyanwant Singh told AFP.
The death threats against the author came just over a week after Nasreen was physically attacked by radical Muslims in Hyderabad during the launch of a translation of one of her novels. Other murderous clerics in Kolkata backed the call of Farhad, who is from the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, and accused the author of insulting Prophet Mohammad in her writings. Muslims in the country will not tolerate an insult to the prophet, said Syed Nuroor Rehman Barkati, cleric of the Tipu Sultan Mosque in the heart of the city.
Taslima is fanning communal passions in India by her writings. We will hold protests if she does not leave the country within a month, Barkati told AFP by telephone. Our fatwa (religious edict) against her is a death threat. We have given her a months time to avoid it, he said.
However, on Saturday, the home ministry extended Nasreens visa for another six months.
Nasreen remained confined to her home on Saturday. Though she was shocked by the attack on her by the Muslim group in Hyderabad, Nasreen has said she has no intention of leaving India, which she described as her second home and a good place to live in. She has said she would like now to become an Indian citizen.
She should come to the U.S. She's an American born in the wrong place.
The author was forced to flee her homeland in 1994 after radical Muslims decried her writings as blasphemous and demanded her execution. Nasreen has incensed conservative Muslims for writing a novel Lajja or Shame depicting the life of a Hindu family facing the ire of Muslims in Bangladesh. The book is banned in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
Nasreen, who is also a doctor, has also lived in self-exile in Europe and the United States but has lately been living in India.
It was the second death threat against the author in just a few months. In March All India Ibtehad Council, a splinter group of the influential All India Muslim Personal Law Board, offered a 500,000-rupee (12,000-dollar) bounty for the extermination of the notorious woman.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/19/2007
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Lebanon has charged over 100 suspected militants with terrorism, accusing them of belonging to an al-Qaida-inspired group that has been battling the army for almost three months, a court official said Saturday.
Prosecutor General Saeed Mirza filed the charges on Friday, targeting 107 suspected Fatah Islam members in police custody and an indeterminate number still at large, including group leader Shaker Youssef al-Absi, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Mirza accused the suspected militants of "establishing a gang with the aim of committing crimes against the people, stealing money, undermining the state's authority and attacking its military and security institutions," according to the official.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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Two men wielding a fake bomb and claiming al-Qaida ties hijacked a Turkish plane Saturday, holding passengers and crew hostage before surrendering peacefully in Antalya more than four hours later, authorities said. It was the fifth hijacking or hijacking attempt of a Turkish plane in four years by people falsely claiming to be carrying explosives or arms - despite increased security at airports following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
The hijackers' motive remained unclear Saturday evening. One of the men was Turkish and the other was believed to be a Palestinian carrying a Syrian passport, Transport Minister Osman Gunes said. Earlier, Turkish Cypriot authorities said the men were Iranians protesting US policies.
The alleged bomb turned out to be made of play dough, CNN-Turk television reported, citing police sources.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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#1
One hopes the Turkish prison depicted in Midnight Express continues to be in operation.
Posted by: regular joe ||
08/19/2007 9:15
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Our own Sgt. Mom has a book published! You can order To Truckee's Trailhere. From the BookLocker website:
To Truckees Trail is a fictional retelling of the all-but unknown real-life adventure on the California wagon-train trail. The Stephens-Townsend Party were bold, daring, and lucky and did everything right, two years before the ill-fated Donner-Reed party, who followed the very same path, but encountered only disaster.
Half a dozen families set out from Council Bluffs, Iowa in the spring of 1844, venturing into a barely known and lightly-tracked wilderness. Those fifty men, women and children walked nearly two thousand miles, across plain and desert, fording rivers and climbing mountains, depending on nothing more than their own skill and courage... and each other. They hoisted their wagons up a sheer mountain cliff, got caught in the snow and nearly starved and when nearly at the end of their epic venture, were press-ganged into participating a small civil war. They were the first to bring wagons over the perilous wall of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, and yet hardly anyone has ever heard of them. Until now.
Writer Celia Hayes has imagined that a diary account of their trail-blazing adventure exists and told their stories, from Dr. John Townsend, the diarist who is the partys co-leader, to Elisha Stephens, the taciturn wagon master who distains the company of other people, the old mountain-man Caleb Greenwood with his Indian sons who led them into the wilderness, the feisty Isabella Patterson with her brood of children who means to rejoin her husband in California, and her youngest son, the talkative and fearless Eddie. Ordinary Americans all, but on an extraordinary adventure on an unknown path through the wilderness, as they find their way To Truckees Trail.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/19/2007
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#1
Thaks for the link, Steve... and Booklocker even offers a sample chapter for whose who don't want to buy a pig in a poke, as it were.
1,999,985 more copies sold and I can think about buying a castle in J.K. Rowlings' neighborhood!
#5
Well, yeah... tell your Best-beloved to order a copy for you! And then, when you have read it and if you really enjoy, to post a review at Amazon.com, or wherever!
Seriously, I wrote this book because it was really a wonderful story... and also because I really believe we need to reclaim our histories. We need to know that our ancestors (actual or only philosphical) were brave and competant, and pulled together in adversity. We need to know this; we must be reassured about this, in the stories that we tell to each other in the dark times.
I think you would like it, TW... the central love story is between a couple who have been married for more than a decade, and are still crackers about each other!
#6
Hey it took me all day to see this... maybe we should run this another day Dr. Steve, unless youse thinks the avarage RBee is a bit swifter than I is?
;-)
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
08/19/2007 23:25
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When America's top commanders in Iraq held a conference with their British counterparts recently, Major General Jonathan Shaw - Britain's senior officer in Basra - was quick to share his views on how best to conduct counter-insurgency operations. For much of the last four years, the Americans in the room would have listened carefully, used to deferring to their British colleagues' long experience in Northern Ireland. This time, however, eyes that would once have been attentive simply rolled.
Few were in the mood for a lecture about British superiority, when they fear that Downing Street's planned pull-out from Basra will squander any progress from their own hard-fought "troop surge" strategy elsewhere. "It's insufferable for Christ's sake," said one senior figure closely involved in US military planning. "He comes on and he lectures everybody in the room about how to do a counter-insurgency. The guys were just rolling their eyeballs. The notorious Northern Ireland came up again. It's pretty frustrating. It would be okay if he was best in class, but now he's worst in class. Everybody else's area is getting better and his is getting worse."
The meeting, called by General David Petraeus, the senior US officer who has the task of managing the surge, is emblematic of what is fast becoming a minor crisis in Anglo-American military relations.
In Britain, Gordon Brown's government has tried to depict a quiet process of handover to Iraqi troops in Basra, which will see the remaining forces in the city withdraw to the airport in November.
What US generals see, however, is a close ally preparing to "cut and run", leaving behind a city in the grip of a power struggle between Shia militias that could determine the fate of the Iraqi government and the country as a whole. With signs of the surge yielding tentative progress in Baghdad, but at the cost of many American lives, there could scarcely be a worse time for a parting of the ways. Yet the US military has no doubt, despite what Gordon Brown claims, that the pullout is being driven by "the political situation at home in the UK".
The short version is that the Brits have lost Basra, if indeed they ever had it.
A senior US officer familiar with Gen Petraeus's thinking said: "The short version is that the Brits have lost Basra, if indeed they ever had it. Britain is in a difficult spot because of the lack of political support at home, but for a long time - more than a year - they have not been engaged in Basra and have tried to avoid casualties.
"They did not have enough troops there even before they started cutting back. The situation is beyond their control.
"Quite frankly what they're doing right now is not any value-added. They're just sitting there. They're not involved. The situation there gets worse by the day. Americans are disappointed because, in their minds, this thing is still winnable. They don't intend to cut and run."
The officer predicted that the affair could have long-lasting implications. "There will be a stink about this that will hang around the British military," he said.
One US official said that recent US military intelligence reports sent to the White House had concluded that Britain had "lost" Basra, and that Pentagon war games were predicting a virtual civil war in the South once British troops left. He said: "When the White House makes the case for continuing the surge on the Hill they will say: 'Look what happened in Basra when the Brits went back to their barracks. We can't pull out now. Give us more time to get it right'."
He added that White House officials had expected Mr Brown to strike a different tone on Iraq to that of Tony Blair, but that they were disappointed not to win a firmer agreement to keep British troops in place. "They don't mind a change in rhetoric, but the bottom line for the president was to keep Basra as a British responsibility. He didn't get as much as he wanted. There was a whiff of double dealing about it all."
As The Sunday Telegraph revealed last week, plans have been drawn up to send thousands of American troops into southern Iraq to take over the supervision of the vital supply route north from Kuwait, a task the British will bequeath when they leave.
But the senior US officer warned that combat troops may also have to go into Basra itself to "protect the population" from violence between its numerous warring Shia militias - an extra burden as perilous as any in Baghdad.
US Marine Colonel Gary Anderson, who has conducted recent Iraq war games for the Pentagon, said the situation Britain would leave behind in Basra "could be the most bloody part of the transition". He said: "The primary issue in Basra will be a struggle between various Shia factions for control of the region, and frankly the regular government in Baghdad as well. It will be between pro-Iranian factions and those that are more nationalistic. It's going to be nasty."
This isn't Northern Ireland. They thought they had a pretty good model but Iraq is a different culture.
Basra has gone far towards revising the common American image of British soldiers ...
Col Anderson said British troops "did the best they could", but added: "I'm not sure they did as good a job as they did traditionally. This isn't Northern Ireland. They thought they had a pretty good model but Iraq is a different culture."
Michael O'Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, added: "Basra is a mess, and the exit strategy attempted there has failed. It is, for the purposes of future Iraq policymaking, an example of what not to do.
"Basra has gone far towards revising the common American image of British soldiers as perhaps the world's best at counter-insurgency."
#3
Never thought much of their approach down south. But note - many of its flaws are/were embraced by many US commanders as well. I put most of it down to an aversion to action, risk, responsibility - usually cloaked in some rationalization about how COIN requires all sorts of odd approaches to prove you can eat soup with a spoon. Nonsense. The "unconventional" parts of COIN are simply common sense - using bribes, favors, etc. when needed, and avoiding gratuitous damage to locals and non-combatants.
It's pretty deep in the British officer class. Recall one former officer, a Sandhurst grad, seriously questioning the .50 cals on some of the convoy Humvees in Baghdad as "too big for an urban environment". Now, I myself wondered about the grenade launchers (Mk 14?) on some of the Humvees, but the .50 cal? As the primary job was to stop VBIEDs in their tracks, .50 cals were quite appropriate.
I've probably mentioned it before but the morale of the officers in our office was horrible. Every last one was getting out, some early - budget, political environment, everything was discouraging. The unbelievable incident in the Gulf a while back (incl. the bits at MoD) may have been a stark symbol of how bad things are. Great shame, of course, as well as yet another step towards total dependence of world civilization on the blood and character of a small volunteer segment of US society.
What were Churchill's famous words - "never have so many owed so much to so few" .... ??
#6
Upside is, when US forces have to come in to clean up the mess, the "insurgents" who have been playing patty-cake with the brits will get a really rude surprise...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/19/2007 8:52
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#7
yet another step towards total dependence of world civilization on the blood and character of a small volunteer segment of US society.
Just so.
Posted by: regular joe ||
08/19/2007 9:12
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#8
The Brits were always stressed down in Basra, and while "just holding down the fort" was enough for most of it, there was little else they had the numbers and firepower to do. Hopefully, the situation will be settled enough elsewhere so that the US military can head down there in force to confront both the Shiite-on-Shiite action and the Iranian hanky-panky.
But spare us from advise on northern Ireland. The US has performed ten times as many effective modern counterinsurgency operations on the four corners of the world as had Britain.
When we move into Basra, we will do counterinsurgency the US way.
Damn those Brit Politicians, playing Army and Navy from London..
We need Allies that are cutting and running like we need Congress trying to emulate Downing Street & Whitehall....
IIRC Originally The Brits were knocked back on their ears, but eventually kicked some Basra butt, but then they quit too early, pulled way back into "Fort Basra Mode" and never fully regained leverage over the Badr Brigade, run by Hadi Al-Amiri and Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, deadly Shiite actors working with Iran and their rivals Muqtada al Sadr & the Mahdi Army and a few Sunni enclaves.
The Brits never acquired leverage over "The Al-Quds Force" which trains Iraqi militants in manufacturing improved explosive devices and finances and organises pro-Iranian militias in Iraq," noted the the British Ahwazi Friendship Society report. "According to SPC, the Iraq network is under the command of Jamal Jaafar Mohammad Ali Ebrahimi, who is also known as Mehdi Mohandes."
Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army,
Iranian run Sheibani and Qazali networks These are Shia terrorists which are trained, armed, funded and directed by Iran's Qods Force, and have connections to Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army. Sheibani networks
So gentlemen, how many USA units do you figure it will take to "fix" Basra?
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
08/19/2007 9:55
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#10
So gentlemen, how many USA units do you figure it will take to "fix" Basra?
None: one daisy cutter ought to do it. Forget about the hearts and minds crap -- these swine have neither.
Posted by: regular joe ||
08/19/2007 10:46
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#11
AC-130
Daisy Cutter
MOAB
Nuke
Is there any cliche too good for them?
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
08/19/2007 12:32
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#12
And, there's the supply line issue. The Basra area is our port of entry for a lot of material, equipment and troops. Not the place where you want to irradiate or destroy docks, highways and bridges wholesale.
#15
Real Generals thinker of logistics
Amateurs thinker of tactics.
Kinder Kz think of weapons.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
08/19/2007 12:51
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#16
Why be hard on the British? It's not their war. It's wasn't their premier city center that was destroyed by muslims. How many Ameicans fought on the British side the last time British territory was invaded?
The question is why waste so many resources and treat with such gentleness those who are indoctrinated to from birth to kill or enslave us and destroy our civilization? Those who think of us as pigs and monkeys and rape is an instrument of their civilizational advancement.
Posted by: ed ||
08/19/2007 16:20
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#17
Why the hell would the US military listen to the British military for COIN, if Northern Ireland is supposed to be their big "win"? The goddamned IRA WON! The Sein Fein is a LEGAL political party in NI, and is sharing power with the Protestants. The Sein Fein IS the IRA - just its more presentable political face. How is that a "win" for the British forces?
#19
Man, It must be a bi*** to try to due your job, while your brow sweats to the thought that a shiny 'crescent' missile is pointed at you from over your shoulder.
Negotiations to secure the release of 19 Korean church volunteers being held in Afghanistan by the Taliban have failed and the insurgents' leadership council is now considering their fate, a Taliban spokesman said on Saturday.
If the talks had "succeeded," the Talibs would be able to just grab anybody at any time to get their guys out of jug. And since the prisoners are 19 pretty, for the most part, girls, they may still "succeed."
"The talks ended without any result and have failed as our main demand was not accepted," Qari Mohammad Yousuf told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location. "I don't think (further) talks will yield anything. I am awaiting for the decision (on the hostages fate) from the leadership council," he said. He said the talks between the Taliban and South Korean officials broke down last Thursday, the day they were reported to have started. The Taliban on Monday freed two women hostages, the first to be released since they seized 23 Koreans from a bus in Ghazni province on the main road south from the capital Kabul last month. They have killed two male hostages. They have threatened to kill the remaining captives if their demand for insurgent prisoners to be freed from jail is not met.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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#1
So, you hold 19 hostages - Innocent women in order to free killers from prison? What kind of "Lions" are you? More like wolves.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
08/19/2007 9:11
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#4
Someone ought to tell the Chinese that the hostages are their nationals; they seem to know what they're doing in dealing w/these thugs. The Skoreans seem to have gone from being the "Irish of Asia" (tough, hard-drinking, pugnacious) to the British of Asia (Basra's babysitters) in one generation.
Posted by: regular joe ||
08/19/2007 9:41
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#5
More like the hyenas of Islam.
Posted by: Natural Law ||
08/19/2007 9:46
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#6
yes , maggot larvae
they are probably raping the women left, that's probably the only thing keeping them alive.
Posted by: Jan from work ||
08/19/2007 12:47
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#7
FREEREPUBLIC > Taliban threatening to start killing SOKOR hostages as early as this Monday [ today Guam time].
Sixteen troops and dozens of Muslim militants were killed on Saturday in clashes between government forces and Al Qaeda-linked rebels on the southern island of Basilan, the military said.
Nine soldiers were also wounded in the fighting that broke out in the jungle when Marines launched an attack on a rebel camp, said military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Bartolome Bacarro. Bacarro said that the Muslim extremist Abu Sayyaf suffered about 30 wounded or dead but a military official in Basilan said as many as 42 members of the extremist group had been killed.
An airforce MG-520 helicopter gunship, which was sent to back up the troops, crashed in the waters off Basilan, killing the pilot but the co-pilot was rescued by a navy boat, air force chief Lieutenant General Horacio Tolentino said. Tolentino said the helicopter crashed after suffering from unexplained vibrations but asserted that "it was not fired upon." "It was not hit," by enemy fire, he said. Earlier, a military source said the helicopter went down after the pilot was shot by the Abu Sayyaf.
Details of Saturday's clashes remained sketchy because of a media blackout imposed by the military on Basilan, but sources said the gunbattle on the outskirts of the town of Unkaya Pukan turned into close-quarters combat. "The enemy suffered a lot of casualties. We are still trying to get the exact number but their casualties are heavy", regional military spokesman Major Eugene Batara said.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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France circulated a draft U.N. resolution Friday that would extend the mandate of the 13,600-strong U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon and call for a permanent cease-fire and long-term solution to last summer's Israel-Hezbollah war. The draft, obtained by The Associated Press, emphasizes the need for greater progress in resolving these issues and reiterates the Security Council's intention "to consider further steps to contribute to the implementation of a permanent cease-fire and a long-term solution."
Earlier this month, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the council to extend the mandate of the force, praising the troops for helping to establish security in southern Lebanon following the conflict last summer.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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Four rival outlawed parties and groups in four southwestern districts have closed ranks and are regrouping, sources said. Leaders of Bipplobi Communist Party (BCP), Gono Bahini (GB), Gono Mukti Fouz (GMF) and recently floated Mukti Bahini led by notorious criminal Mukti, held several meetings in Kushtia and Chuadanga in last 20 days, intelligence sources said. Outlaws belonging to the parties are active in Kushtia, Jhenidah, Chuadanga and Meherpur. Leaders from the four districts attended the meetings.
The meetings decided to sink differences on issues like supremacy in their respective areas, local leadership and toll collection. This correspondent also contacted some leaders who talked from their hideouts. There is no 'war' between them now, they said.
Sources said, the first meeting was held at Udaypur village in Kushtia on July 30. Top leaders of outlawed parties attended the meeting. They included GB's second-in-command Mandar, BCP's Bakhtiar, GMF's Choto Mukul and Mukti chief of Mukti Bahini, the sources said. A good number of regional leaders also took part in the meeting. They included Liton, Keramat and Chatur of GB; Kalimuddin and Mamtu of Mukti Bahini; Icha, Faraz, and Rofez of GMF and Keti, Uzzal, Danesh and Biru of BCP.
Outlaws belonging to different parties usually had rivalry over toll collection from businessmen and rich farmers in the areas. They often clashed over establishing supremacy in the respective areas, which led to murders. Some intelligence sources however claimed that they have sank differences and are trying to regroup to save themselves.
According to official sources, at least 150 outlaws including some 'regional leaders' were killed in 'crossfire' with police and Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) in the four districts in three years since June 2004.
According to official sources, at least 150 outlaws including some 'regional leaders' were killed in 'crossfire' with police and Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) in the four districts in three years since June 2004.
At least 500 cadres belonging to 14 outlawed parties are active in the southwestern region. Police said they are aware of the meetings and have increased their vigilance in some areas of Sadr upazilas of in Kushtia and Jhenidah.
Police in a a raid arrested two top cadres of outlawed GMF and BCP from Khezurtala village in Kushtia Sadar upazila on August 1. The raid was done acting on a tip-ff that some leaders of two former rival outlawed parties were holding a secret meeting there. Later, the arrested cadres--Basir Ahmed and Zamarat Hossain--were killed in 'crossfire' on the same night after police took them to Khejurtatala village to retrieve firearms.
Wotta shame. Don'tcha hate it when that happens?
In another incident, villagers caught GB cadre Abdul Kuddus of Kalicharanpur village in Jhenidah Sadar with a rifle and five bullets from a house at Jhoudia village in Kushtia Sadar upazila when some outlaws were holding a meeting there on August 11. Three others managed to escape. Kuddus is a close associate of most wanted of GB chief Azibor Rahman.
According to different law enforcing agencies, outlaws are trying to capture some water big bodies including Nandia, Uzangram and Chypaygachi in the districts. They earlier fled from the areas following tougher action by law enforcing agencies.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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#1
I just wanted to use Biplobi in a sentence. Thank you. Now, back to your regular Upazila.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
08/19/2007 8:20
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Al Qaeda uses Bosnia as a transit point, receiving help from Islamic veterans of Bosnia's 1992-95 war, US diplomat Raffi Gregorian said in an interview with a Sarajevo daily published Saturday. "Certain intelligence agencies consider Bosnia-Hercegovina as one of the Al Qaeda's transit points", Gregorian told the Dnevni Avaz newspaper. "There are sympathisers in the country who are ready to help Al Qaeda with hiding agents, providing financial support or providing false documents," he added.
Gregorian is the principal deputy to Miroslav Lajcak, the top international representative here. Asked whether there were so-called 'sleepers' in the Balkans country, Gregorian replied "No, there are more likely helpers". Bosnia came under the spotlight after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States due to the presence in the former Yugoslav republic of former fighters from Islamic countries.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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#1
A lot of these are probably just empty disposable and non-reusable/reloadable launch tubes used in practice exercises and then usually thrown in the trash, except someone might have taken one home as a souvenir and lost it or something...
By David Eshel
When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his surprise visit to Damascus, last month, rumors spread over Tehran's real intentions: whether it was as innocent as to wish the Syrian president godspeed on his second inauguration occasion. Or was a secret meeting shoring up a common strategy against Israel?
New intelligence assessments, currently circulating among Mid East experts now suspect, that the real reason behind Ahmadinejad's visit, was to warn his Syrian friend against taking any evasive action on the mutual strategic alliance, which lately seems to be undergoing growing uncertainties.
#2
Assad is in easy range for Israeli airstraikes, and he knows it.
Ahmadi-nejad is the typical arrogant Persian,, thinking he can lord it over the Arabs and use them as cannon fodder for his schemes, while he sits safe in Tehran.
And there is your "diplomatic" line of attack to fracture that "alliance".
But thats only if we had a CinC that had brains and guts enough to push it (Bush isnt the guy, he wimpishly already refused to discpline CIA and State), and if we don;t have anyone in State with the balls to work with CIA to do it (nor do we have inyone left in the top of the CIA with the guts to do this against the Eastern Elties old-boy club).
#3
Opinion: Baby Assad considers himself a major player and Master of High Cunning. Eventually, his scheming will get him in hot water either with the Israelis or his 'allies'. It was probably a mistake for his daddy to buy him the boardgame Risk when he was a kid.
#4
General Assef Shawkat ( left), the president's brother-in-law, who by sheer chance is also prime suspect in the Hariri affair.
Nothing but a complete and total coincidence, to be sure. Baby Assad is in way over his head. He has neither the assets nor the strategic savvy to profitably entertain Iran's meddlesome and dubious interests. Islamic Unitybe it Sunni or Shiitestill remains, as ever, a splendid oxymoron and little else.
#5
Syria has economic problems. The eastern half of the country is loaded with refugees. They're trying to regain hold of their client state, but Lebanon isn't following the master plan and is playing hard-to get. The Iranians are supposedly working with Syria, but the Persians aren't to be trusted(it isn't just Greeks bearing gifts that one should beware). Lastly, the UN may just initiate legal proceedings on the assassination.
So, the Baathists are getting antsy. They figure there's this big target being painted on their collective foreheads. Assad doesn't have the control over the Baathists like his father did. Maybe he's getting tired of sleeping with one eye open...
Iranian authorities have arrested dozens of alleged international drug smugglers, state radio reported on Saturday. The report said the smuggling ring's head and 84 others were Tanzanian nationals who swallowed narcotics to bring them into Iran. Authorities arrested five others, including three Pakistanis and two Iranians. Police also confiscated dozens of kilograms of cocaine and heroin after arresting the alleged smugglers, said the report.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas has decided to sack civil servants linked to Hamas in the latest move against the rival Islamist movement since it seized power in the Gaza Strip. "This decision was proposed three days ago by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and finalised on Friday by President Abbas. It will remain in force as long as Hamas continues to control the Gaza Strip by force," a Palestinian official said on Saturday.
Hamas seized control of Gaza in a bloody takeover on June 15 ago after overrunning security forces loyal to Abbas in a week of vicious street battles, effectively splitting Palestinian society into two. The Palestinian official said the decision affected civil servants appointed after a power-sharing agreement in February paved the way for a short-lived national unity government headed by Hamas. Following the Gaza takeover, Abbas fired the Hamas-led cabinet and appointed his own headed by Fayyad whose power in reality only extends to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Sacked Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya refuses to recognise the Abbas cabinet and insists that he remains the legitimate leader of the Palestinian government.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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Senior military commanders have told the Government that Britain can achieve "nothing more" in south-east Iraq, and that the 5,500 British troops still deployed there should move towards withdrawal without further delay.
Last month Gordon Brown said after meeting George Bush at Camp David that the decision to hand over security in Basra province the last of the four held by the British "will be made on the military advice of our commanders on the ground". He added: "Whatever happens, we will make a full statement to Parliament when it returns [in October]."
Two generals told The Independent on Sunday last week that the military advice given to the Prime Minister was, "We've done what we can in the south [of Iraq]". Commanders want to hand over Basra Palace where 500 British troops are subjected to up to 60 rocket and mortar strikes a day, and resupply convoys have been described as "nightly suicide missions" by the end of August. The withdrawal of 500 soldiers has already been announced by the Government. The Army is drawing up plans to "reposture" the 5,000 that will be left at Basra airport, and aims to bring the bulk of them home in the next few months.
Before the invasion in 2003, officers were told that the Army's war aims were to bring stability and democracy to Iraq and to the Middle East as a whole. Those ambitions have been drastically revised, the IoS understands. The priorities now are an orderly withdrawal, with the reputation and capability of the Army "reasonably intact", and for Britain to remain a "credible ally". The final phrase appears to refer to tensions with the US, which has more troops in Iraq than at any other time, including the invasion, as it seeks to impose order in Baghdad and neighbouring provinces.
A senior British commander: "It was never that kind of battle, in which we set out to defeat an enemy."
American criticism of Britain's desire to pull back in southern Iraq has recently become public, with a US intelligence official telling The Washington Post this month that "the British have basically been defeated in the south". A senior British commander countered, "That's to miss the point. It was never that kind of battle, in which we set out to defeat an enemy." Other officers said the British force was never configured to "clear and hold" Basra in the way the Americans are seeking to do in Baghdad.
If the British withdraw, American troops will have to be sent south to replace them.
Immediate American discontent is said to centre on the CIA's reluctance to leave Basra Palace, an important base for watching Iran, which may explain why Britain has held on to the complex until now. But last week it was reported that US intelligence operatives were in the process of pulling out. Further ahead, the US is concerned over the security of its vital supply line from Kuwait, with some American commanders saying that if the British withdraw, American troops will have to be sent south to replace them. As the hub of Iraq's oil industry, Basra is also a tempting prize for the Shia militias battling each other for control.
There are fears that the bloody power struggle in Basra will escalate sharply if and when British troops depart, but commanders point out that up to 90 per cent of the violence is directed against their forces. They are understood to believe it was never the role of occupation troops to intervene in a "turf war" among factions from the same community, all of which have links to the government coalition in Baghdad.
Mr Brown will have to take these wider concerns into account, in reaching a decision that has political as well as military implications. At Camp David he stressed that "we have duties to discharge and responsibilities to keep" in support of the Iraqi government and "the explicit will" of the international community. The 15 September report on the progress of the security "surge" by the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the American ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, will be crucial to British as well as US military plans.
General Petraeus is expected to report mixed results, and to plead for more time for the surge to work. But the White House, under pressure from Republicans facing disaster in the 2008 elections, is likely to announce at least some troop reductions. British commanders, and some US commentators, believe that will enable the Prime Minister to spell out plans for a British withdrawal when MPs return in October, although the process may last well into next year.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday described arch-foe Israel "the flag of Satan," and said the Jewish state was destined to fall apart, the official IRNA news agency reported.
"The Zionist regime is the flag bearer of violation and occupation and this regime is the flag of Satan," Ahmadinejad told an international religious conference in Tehran. "It is not unlikely that this regime be on the path to dissolution and deterioration when the philosophy behind its creation and survival is invalid," he said.
Iran consistently refuses to recognise Israel's right to exist in the Middle East, and Ahmadinejad sparked outrage in the international community when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map" shortly after coming to power in 2005. In June, he said a "countdown" had begun that would end with Lebanese and Palestinian militants destroying Israel. His government last year hosted a conference on the Holocaust questioning the German Nazis genocide of the Jews during World War II.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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#1
Getting worried about the Great Satan ruining your dreams Nut Job?
ADDIS ABABA - Ethiopia freed 31 opposition members on Saturday who had been held without charge since a disputed 2005 election led to violent street protests, a senior official said. The Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) members were arrested after they cried foul over some 2005 election results, sparking protests in which 200 people were killed, 800 wounded and 30,000 arrested, according to a parliamentary inquiry.
They admitted their guilt in a letter, Special Adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Bereket Simon, told Reuters. That is the basis for their pardon.
But global anti-poverty campaigner ActionAid said at least two activists, including one of its own staff, remained in prison facing charges of outrage against the constitution. They were not released, the aid agency said, because they refused to sign a formal apology. They ... continue to defend their case. They declined to join the others in an appeal for a pardon, ActionAid spokesman Julian Filochowski said in a statement, adding that they were prisoners of conscience.
It was unclear how many other prisoners were still being held in relation to the riots.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/19/2007
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The ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) is faced with a serious internal crisis with a strong anti-Pakistan People's Party (PPP) group not supporting President General Pervez Musharraf's bid to strike a "deal" with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Sources in the PML told Daily times that there is a clear divide in the party and a majority of parliamentarians not only opposed the idea of a Musharraf-Benazir agreement, they had also threatened a "revolt" against such a move if all political parties were not involved in a "deal".
The sources said Khurshid Kasuri, Hamid Nasir Chattha, Manzoor Wattoo, Majeed Malik, Kabir Wasti and Ishaque Khakwani were among those who believed that a deal only with Ms Bhutto would not benefit the country and the PML. "They have called for a deal with all political parties," the sources said.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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(SomaliNet) Eritrea responded angrily on Saturday to a threat by U.S. Assistant Secretary Jendayi Frazer to place it on a list of state sponsors of terrorism. Frazer said on Friday the United States was considering putting the Red Sea state on the terrorist list for allegedly funnelling weapons and aid to Somali Islamist insurgents battling the American and Ethiopian-backed interim government. "We have tried our best to act with restraint with Eritrea," Frazer told reporters in Washington. "We cannot tolerate... their support for terror activity, particularly in Somalia."
Asmara said the accusation was baseless. "We are very, very grateful to Ms. Jendayi Frazer (for) exposing her ill-will towards the Eritrean people," Information Minister Ali Abdu said icily.
A U.N. monitoring group last month accused Eritrea of sending large quantities of weapons to Islamists in Somalia -- a charge Asmara denies.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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#1
Like a funner, it goes through Eritria. Right here. Still a thousand imprisoned Christian ministers from what I hear.
Coalition Forces killed two terrorists and detained 16 suspected terrorists during operations in central and northern Iraq Saturday targeting senior leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq and its bombing networks.
Coalition Forces raided two buildings in Baghdad looking for a senior leader of the car bombing network there. As the ground forces arrived at the target location, a man came out of the building brandishing a weapon. Coalition Forces, responding appropriately to the hostile threat, engaged the man, killing him. Another armed man maneuvered onto the roof of a nearby building, and Coalition Forces engaged the second armed man as well, killing him.
In a related operation, Coalition Forces attacked the car bombing network during a raid in Tarmiyah targeting associates of the al-Qaeda in Iraq emir of the northern belts around Baghdad. The emir has directed car bombing and suicide attacks against Iraqi civilians. Coalition Forces detained six suspected terrorists for their alleged involvement with the network.
In Salah ad Din province, Coalition Forces targeted al-Qaeda in Iraq senior leaders and their foreign connections. During a raid in Bayji, ground forces captured an alleged weapons and logistics facilitator and one additional suspected terrorist. A precision raid in Tikrit nabbed an individual believed to be a senior al-Qaeda in Iraq operative believed to move large amounts of explosives and foreign terrorists into Iraq.
Iraqi and Coalition Forces detained five suspected terrorists southwest of Kirkuk based on information gained from an operation that killed three foreign terrorists Jun. 23 south of Hawija. The detainees are believed to be associated with senior-level advisers and leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
In Mosul, Coalition Forces detained two suspected terrorists based on information gathered from operations earlier in the week. The two suspects are believed to have ties to al-Qaeda in Iraq senior leaders. "We are constantly assaulting the al-Qaeda in Iraq network, from the highest levels of leadership to the operatives who carry out attacks," said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, MNF-I spokesperson. "We will continue to target them until the people of Iraq can forge their own future without the threat of vicious and indiscriminate attacks."
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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The human cost of the war in Afghanistan to British soldiers can be revealed today as figures show that almost half of frontline troops have required significant medical treatment during this summer's fighting.
In a graphic illustration of the intensity of the conflict in Helmand province, more than 700 battlefield soldiers have needed treatment since April - nearly half of the 1,500 on the front line. The figures, obtained from senior military sources, have never been released by the government, which has faced criticism that it has covered up the true extent of injuries sustained during the conflict.
The Ministry of Defence releases the number of soldiers taken to hospital, a fraction of those who require treatment on the battlefield. The new figures relate to the number of soldiers patched up and sent back to the front line and who do not appear in official casualty reports.
By contrast, US official figures take into account soldiers treated on the front line. In their figures, wounded troops include those away from the front line for 72 hours or more.
One British army official said the 700 cases include a 'handful' of officers who suffered injuries and chose to carry on fighting. The injuries include shrapnel wounds, cuts, burns, acute heat stroke and diseases such as 'DnV' - diarrhoea and vomiting that can incapacitate a man for days. Of the 700 cases, 400 combat troops were described as being so ill they were forced to 'lay down their bayonets'.
Official casualty figures between April and the start of August stood at 204, with about half stemming from the battlefield.
The number of soldiers requiring front-line treatment was discussed at military briefings in Helmand during intensive fighting this month and relate to the current deployment, which began in April. An army spokesman said official casualty figures between April and the start of August stood at 204, with about half stemming from the battlefield.
Military sources said the willingness of soldiers to carry on fighting while suffering was indicative of the bravery being routinely displayed.
'The courage of the soldiers has been remarkable. Many are getting patched up and just want to get on with it. Most do not want to leave their comrades,' said the source in Helmand. Last week, details were released about how 26-year-old Captain David Hicks, of the 1st Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment, refused morphine after being mortally wounded by shrapnel so he could keep a clear head to lead his men. He later died of his injuries.
The MoD said the figures should not be confused with its published 'casualty' figures, claiming that cases treated by frontline medics often related to minor ailments and complaints that were not considered life-threatening or serious. The spokeswoman went on to say that, in serious cases, troops were not given the option to carry on fighting.
However, the number of serious injuries is rising. A spokesman for the British Limbless Ex-Service Men's Association said that 27 British soldiers had lost limbs serving in Afghanistan and Iraq during the past 12 months.
Many young infantrymen intend to leave the army because the firefights they have survived in Helmand could never be surpassed
The frenetic nature of the conflict in southern Afghanistan is underlined by the fact that many young infantrymen intend to leave the army because the firefights they have survived in Helmand could never be surpassed. In terms of soldiering, the conflict has offered some of the most intense fighting for 50 years, with two million rounds of ammunition so far fired by British forces.
'You could be in the army for decades and you will never get anything like that again. Will it be bettered? I can't see it,' said one soldier. Commanders are understood to be concerned that the Helmand conflict could precipitate an exodus of combat troops who feel military life will never offer the same challenge again.
Campaigners have frequently argued that British troops are paying a higher price on the battlefield than has been made public. Casualty figures are expected to rise in the coming months as the current tour, from April to October, finishes, when regiments that have experienced the brunt of fighting push on to gain ground before they leave.
#1
Only adding to the shame and sorrow of what's happening to the UK military - not a question of courageous and able practitioners, but a rot in their home country's understanding of its responsibilities and the way the world works. The US is not immune to these, of course. Don't want any of my discouraging words to be construed as disrespect for the British military. The political class and electorate that fails to support them, that's another story.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
08/19/2007 8:06
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#4
Shock toll of British injured in Afghan war
It's nothing compared to the First Anglo-Afghan War. On January 1, 1842 following some unusual thinking by Elphinstone an agreement was reached that provided for the safe exodus of the British garrison and its dependents from Afghanistan. Five days later, the retreat began, The departing British contingent numbered around 14â16,000, of about 4,500 military personnel, and over 10,000 civilian camp followers; the military force consisted mostly of Indian units and one British battalion, the 44th.
As they struggled through the snowbound passes, the British were attacked by Ghilzai warriors.The evacuees were harassed down the 30 miles of treacherous gorges and passes lying along the Kabul River between Kabul and Gandomak. and massacred at the Gandamak pass before reaching the besieged garrison at Jalalabad. The force had been reduced to fewer than forty men by a retreat from Kabul that had become, toward the end, a running battle through two feet of snow. The ground was frozen and the men had no shelter and little food for weeks. Only a dozen of the men had working muskets, the officers their pistols and a few unbroken swords. The only Briton known to have survived was Dr. William Brydon.
Lady Butler's famous painting of Dr William Brydon, reportedly the sole survivor, gasping his way to the British outpost in Jalalabad, helped make Afghanistan's reputation as a graveyard for foreign armies and became one of the great epics of Empire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Afghan_War
#5
Al-Guardian - I might have known. Just another BS-filled piece of enemy propaganda from Britain's internal enemies masquerading as "news". Look, dipwad, soldiers don't go "looking" for combat, and it's not the only thing that keeps them serving. Obviously the closest the "reporter" has ever come to a military unit is watching the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. The idiot's own words contradict what he writes. The officer that refused to leave his men, the soldiers that have been "nicked" but not seriously injured continuing to fight, etc., shows a military with high morale and cameraderie - something this dipwad wouldn't understand in a thousand years. The British military may not be as well-equipped and well-trained as some of the US troops (mostly special operations types), but they punch well above their weight, and deserve the respect of those at home. Sadly, it doesn't seem as if the British "elite" feel obligated to point that out.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
08/19/2007 16:53
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Unidentified militants in NWFP's Karak district have threatened some international oil exploration companies working in the area with suicide attacks if they did not withdraw Frontier Constabulary (FC) personnel from their offices. "The heads of some international oil exploration companies have told me that unidentified militants had sent letters and made threatening phone calls to them to withdraw the official security from their offices or face suicide attacks," Maulana Shah Abdul Aziz, member of the National Assembly from Karak and chairman of a local committee of oil explorers, told Daily Times on Saturday.
He said that Schlumberger, Mool and Tilo ? all international oil exploration companies ? had been threatened with suicide attacks. He added that Chinese company BJP, which is conducting a seismic survey in the area, had also been sent written threats.
Aziz said the companies had successfully explored four wells of crude oil in the area and three of them were under construction. He added that the four wells were producing 5,000 barrels of crude oil and 70 million cubic feet of natural gas every day. He said that more than 3,000 workers of these companies were engaged in the area. Aziz said the companies were considering leaving the area due to the threats. "These companies are working for the prosperity of Pakistan so I, my Khattak tribe and some other local tribes have assured them of full security. I am also contacting the federal and provincial authorities in this regard," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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#1
We don't need no foreigh workers in our soon-to-be Islamic Paradise. No oil, neither. Just the Innernet and cell phones to communicate with our Brother Lions of Islam™.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/19/2007 17:46
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The BBC has abandoned plans to screen a fictional terrorist attack by Muslim suicide bombers in the primetime drama Casualty after internal clashes over whether the highly sensitive subject matter would cause offence.
Sigh.
Not as much offense as the actual kabooms caused. But Beebs saw fit to ignore that.
A source close to next month's new series of Casualty, the long-running BBC1 hospital drama, said that it was to start with a two-part special in which a young Muslim runs into a bus station and blows himself up. Another Muslim is wearing a suicide vest but fails to detonate it; instead he is injured and the vest has to be carefully removed. The source said that senior figures in the drama department supported the idea but were blocked by editorial guideline staff, who oversee the corporation's editorial and ethical standards. The drama staff were overruled because of concerns that the story would perpetuate stereotypes of young Muslims in Britain.
Who else in Britain has self-detonated on public transporation? Name one other group. If only one bunch does it, it's not a stereotype; it's a characteristic.
The link details a different movie about a suicide bomber being produced by Channel Four.
#1
The drama staff were overruled because of concerns that the story would perpetuate stereotypes of young Muslims in Britain.
I would be much more worried that a third of their audience would be rooting for the bombers.
Posted by: regular joe ||
08/19/2007 9:50
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#2
Not 30% - nowhere near Joe.
Datapoint: the piece of filth (a Doctor!) that tried to detonate the Jeep at Glasgow and got burned to a crisp for his trouble was at a hospital near where I work. Lotsa cops, some tooled-up, helicopter etc.
Some responses I heard: "dunno why we're spending money on him", "I'd pour salt/bleach/etc into the wounds", "the doctors should keep him alive, but in a lot of pain". This from a lot of people from a very wide cross-section of society (Profs to cleaners). Only one person tried to "see things his way"...
I know we're not going to be fortunate all the time, and so I expect to see more 7/7 type events. My mind was made up way back in early 2002 through 2003 - seems the British people are getting that way too.
ps the BBC is very out of touch with the general populace.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
08/19/2007 10:45
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#3
Tony -- what's the asian population in Red Ken's London?
Posted by: regular joe ||
08/19/2007 10:51
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#4
Dunno for sure - London has a high %age of all ethnic 'minorities'. Some figures say about 30% of London is ethnic, which now includes Poles, East Europeans and a lot more than just the Asians - Pakistanis/Bangladeshis mostly.
As for that PoS Livingstone, I remember him from the GLC days and his feting of IRA sympathisers. Swine.
London isn't Britain, in the same way that the East and West coast intelligentsia is not the US (and lets not consider the loony-bin that's Washington). And I've already mentioned the hive of villainy that is the BBC (unrepresentative and biased).
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
08/19/2007 11:08
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BAGHDAD - Iraqs political leaders held cordial but candid talks on Saturday in an attempt to revive national reconciliation efforts and repair the fractured unity government. The five leaders, representing Iraqs majority Shia Muslims, Sunni Arabs and Kurds, met for about 90 minutes and are expected to meet again on Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told Reuters. It was the first time they had met for two months.
The meeting was cordial but characterised by candid discussion of the issues and a sense of responsibility to resolve the political crisis afflicting the country, Salih said. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki attended the talks with President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, Shia Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, and Masoud Barzani, president of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
"Tea, Tariq?"
"Yes, thank you, Nuri."
"Jalal, can I get you some biscotti?"
"If it's not too much of a bother, Adel."
"Hot out, isn't it?"
Salih said the leaders discussed the results of preparatory talks that had been going on almost daily since July 15. The results included tentative agreements on a review of the de-Baathification law, provincial powers and frameworks for crucial issues dealing with militias, insurgent groups, detainees and powersharing, Salih said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/19/2007
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#1
Which is diplomatese for "they called each other sons of pigs and dogs but remembered to use the proper titles for one another."
Posted by: Jonathan ||
08/19/2007 18:06
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Syria has begun delivery of the first batch of anti-aircraft missile and gun range land-based Pantsyr-S1E defense systems (SA-22 E in NATO terminology), the Web site of Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported Saturday.
The report, based on wires from the arms-related branch of the Russian Tass news agency, cited a previously signed agreement between Syria and Russia for the purchase of 50 sets of the system for a total of about $900 million. According to other sources, however, the signed deal included only 34-36 systems.
Army Radio reported that Russian military officials agreed to the deal only after Syria vowed that the systems would not be resold or distributed to a third country, such as Lebanon or Iran. But in May, the reputable Jane's Defense Weekly reported that Syria agreed to transfer ten of the systems to Iran.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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#1
...the systems would not be resold or distributed to a third country, such as Lebanon or Iran.
It's not 'reselling' when it's Iran's money buying the stuff, is it?
#2
I wonder if they'll put them in the same area as the SA-6ers were located? I mean it's the same country, it would be a shame if IDF artillery leveled the front line batteries. I mean that's really not fair.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
08/19/2007 8:16
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A suicide car bomber attacked a US convoy in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing 15 people, including 11 civilians, and injuring 26 others, police said. Police said the attack took place in a crowded area west of Kandahar. "Fifteen people, four Afghan security guards and 11 civilians were killed and another 26, including 19 civilians and seven guards, were injured in the suicide blast today," police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib told AFP.
The logistics convoy, which was guarded by a US private security firm, was heading to troubled Zehri district in Helmand province when the attack took place. The blast destroyed two vehicles belonging to the guards and a civilian minibus, police said at the scene. "The bomb was so strong that it ripped through the civilian minibus and several other vehicles," police officer Jan Mohammad said.
Body parts and pieces of metal from the suicide bomber's car were scattered 100 metres from the site of the blast, which partially destroyed the outer wall of a nearby mosque. Bloodied turbans, sandals and shoes littered the pavement. One of the convoy's security guards collected body parts and bits of flesh from the road. Ten passengers aboard the minibus were killed, an AFP reporter at the scene said. Only a woman and her baby daughter emerged from the bus unscathed. She leaned against the wall of the mosque, wailing uncontrollably.
On Friday, another suicide attacker blew himself up outside the house of a district governor in Kandahar, killing the official and three of his children, and injuring three others.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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Sherry Rehman, information secretary of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), on Saturday rejected the findings of recently conducted media surveys related to political parties and their popularity ratings, and said the party still represented the largest number of voters in Pakistan.
In a statement, Sherry said that in a random survey that appeared last week, some media reports erroneously reported the findings and failed to distinguish that the PPP votes had been divided between the father and daughter. When put together, the PPP polled the largest amount of votes even in such non-scientific surveys, she added.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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#1
Could someone hit me with the cluebat please? I must have missed the first half of the story. Are these contested waters, or does Turkey think it owns the entire Med? Why is Turkey so PO'd that some companies put in bids on oil exploration that it is going to take action against their countries?
#2
Cyprus has been an independent country ince 1960, but throughout history both Turkey and Greece have claimed the island as their own and the population is divided between Turkish and Greek backgrounds. In 1974 the Greek Cypriots attempted a coup and in response Turkey occupied 1/3 or so of the island. There is a UN-monitored Green Line but the status of things there politically has been disputed ever since.
The Greek portion of Cyprus has essentially asserted control of all the oil in and around Cyprus by issuing this call for bids, including waters that in any case might be considered Turkish. Turkey is pissed that companies from the 4 countries mentioned (including the US) have responded with bids and that they are locked out of the decisionmaking process.
This is seen in Turkey as just one more example, as with the PKK operating in Turkey across the Iraqi border, of a failure on the part of Europeans and Americans to treat Turkey as a full partner despite its NATO status. It strengthens the hand of the Islamicists within Turkey by stirring up the perception of ill-treatment.
#3
of a failure on the part of Europeans and Americans to treat Turkey as a full partner despite its NATO status
A "full partner" which is military occupying, as you reminded, a sovereign country that happens to be an EU member, after an invasion that was marred by thousands of disapperances, rapes and the eviction of the native population and the bringing in of colonists from anatolia; and yet, the turks have the schtupazh to feel entitled to that EU membership. Bizarro world.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
08/19/2007 8:22
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#6
My friend you seek the Kemallist Thought Club?
By being perceived of as supportive of the Greek-backed Coup _we_ are giving the Islamicist branch of Turkey's populace a big crowbar to pry away the Kemalist faction from its natural western symapthies.
Don't complain to me that the strategy works when you think it shouldn't.
The Howl-wadag district commissioner in south of the Somalia capital Mogadishu was wounded in roadside bomb attack that targeted his vehicle on Saturday ? as the Wardhigley DC escaped from grenade bomb explosion, local security official said. Yusuf Geelle Elmi and two of his body guards were injured when they convoy hit a remote controlled roadside bomb near the police academy in south of the capital, according to the Howlwadag deputy district commissioner Ahmed Mohamed Yusuf. The DC admitted to the Medina hospital where he is now being treated. Mr. Mohamed denied that the deputy Mogadishu Mayor Abdulahi Hassan Firimbi was injured in the explosion saying he was safe.
Also, the district commissioner of Wardhigley Hassan Ali Mohamed known as 'Hashash' has escaped from grenade bomb attack that targeted where he was standing with his security men near Bakara market today.
The incident came as the security forces were conducting search operations in parts of Wardhigley neighborhood. "Unidentified man sneaked through a group of young men who I was telling them to stop moving during the search for weapons and then threw two grenade bombs at me, one of it exploded far place from me but the other failed to detonate, I was very lucky because the bomb rolled between my legs as it went defused," said Ali Mohamed.
The forces opened fire in all directions to find the attackers but no one was arrested for the latest bomb attacks. Meanwhile, witnesses said an exchange of gunfire between government soldiers and local militants killed a woman who was selling a kiosk outside Mogadishu's biggest market.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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(SomaliNet) A prominent traditional elder was shot dead in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia on Saturday night by unknown gunmen. Moalim Haaruun Moalim Yusuf, 60s, was killed in front of his home in Yaqshid district, north of the capital after the maqrib prayer, according to the local witnesses. "Three unidentified gun men shot my husband with bullets, one of the bullets hit on his head," said Madino Guled Mohamed, the wife of the slain elder. "I don't know he was killed but I can assure you that my husband was involving in the reconciliation congress in Mogadishu,"
It is not yet clear who was behind the latest killing of the elder. Earlier, the suspected Islamist-led insurgent groups vowed that they kill anyone who participated what they called 'the conspiracy conference' in Mogadishu. Moalim Harun was well-respected traditional elder from the Abgal-clan of Hawiye tribe in Mogadishu.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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Hundreds of camels have died in Saudi Arabia this week from a mystery ailment. The Agriculture Ministry has said 232 camels died in the space of four days in the Dawasir Valley, 400 km (250 miles) south of Riyadh. King Abdullah has promised compensation for owners, who say the real number of deaths is far higher.
Poor li'l camels. :(
Don't really care too much about the owners.
Agriculture ministry officials have denied an infectious disease caused the deaths and blamed them on animal feed supplied by food storage authorities.
It wasn't Chinese was it?
"The disease has to be limited to one place to prevent it spreading and then they have to find a serum," said camel breeder Hamad al-Harthy, who talked of hundreds of deaths. "They need to bring in help from abroad to find a solution," said trader Turki Abdelaziz.
Ouch. The Royals won't be happy to hear that sort of sentiment.
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
08/19/2007 16:52
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#10
Camel flu??? My first guess would be complications due to poor genetic security due to forced interbreeding for the sake of mass production. Too close genetic ancestry > weak or poor resistance to diseases.
TANK: The decapitated body of a religious scholar was found near Jandola in South Waziristan on Saturday. The beheaded body of Maulana Zarma Khan was found on the road near Jandola a day after he was abducted. The deceased was the resident of Barwand area of Tiarza tehsil.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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A MILITARY adviser to President George W Bush has warned that British forces will have to fight their way out of Iraq in an ugly and embarrassing retreat. Stephen Biddle, who also advises the US commander in Iraq, said Iranian-backed Shiite militias in the south would try to create the impression they were forcing a retreat. They want to make it clear they have forced the British out. That means theyll use car bombs, ambushes, RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] . . . and there will be a number of British casualties.
The comments coincide with British military estimates that withdrawal could cost the lives of 10 to 15 soldiers.
Some British officers believe they are facing a humiliating retreat under fire to Kuwait or the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. I regret to say that the Basra experience is set to become a major blunder in terms of military history, said a senior officer. The insurgents are calling the shots . . . and in a worst-case scenario will chase us out of southern Iraq.
Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who advised Bush on the troop surge, said Iran would use its influence with the Shiite Mahdi Army to exploit the situation. It will be a hard withdrawal. They want the image of a British defeat . . . It will be ugly and embarrassing, he said.
The Ministry of Defence said the British were not heading for defeat. Although the militias are trying to claim credit for driving us out, they are failing.
#3
If you're going to get 'routed' withdrawing through Kuwait etc., then withdraw northward instead. Through Teheran to Turkey. With maximum tactical and strategic air support.
#4
I can't wait to see 'The Poodle On The Run'! The Brits may spin it well enough to avoid comparisons to the hostage 15 debacle, a couple of months ago. I still don't know what happened to the Commander of the Cornwall, who 'turned his head' while his men were swooped down on...did they give him a medal?
(SomaliNet) At least 20 people were killed and dozens more were injured in fierce battle that renewed in the rural areas of Hiran region in central Somalia on Saturday ? as the fighting spread to the neighboring region of Galgadud. Sources say the fighting, which was between Murursade and Hawadle clans in same settlement, took place in Gorof and Goobo villages of Hiran province. Both clans belong to Hawiye, one of the four major tribes in Somalia. The rival clans have had clan-feud.
Reports from Beledweyne, the provincial capital of Hiran region told Somalinet that conflict has intensified and spread into nearby Galgadud region where the rival sides continue to kill each other.
The latest outbreak of the clan fighting came as negotiations under way to go between the warring sides to tackle the long-running conflict. They have long been fighting for pastoral and land ownership.
The current transitional government did not yet give comment about the clan fighting in central Somalia. On August 9, nine people were killed in revenge attack near El-Bur town of Galgadud region in central Somalia. Armed militiamen from Hawadle clan invaded Wabho village 40km east of El-Bur town killing nine men of Murursade clan.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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MANAMA, Bahrain - Bahrains largest Shiite Islamic parliamentary bloc the Al Wefaq Islamic Society, said on Saturday that it was currently reviewing several laws, including the penal code, because of an urgent need to modify them.
The bloc is currently reviewing a number of laws, including the Penal Code, which is an ancient law that was issued more than 30 years and is in dire need of radical amendments in most doors, said Jalal Fairooz, an Al Wefaq opposition MP. Special emphasis is placed on aspects concerning the ethics of society to tighten sanctions on the patrons of prostitution which violates the ethics of the community, he said.
Fairooz pointed out that his bloc had contacted the Bar Association, Bahrain Human Rights Society and other political and social societies and praised the Ministry of Interior and Public Prosecution for raiding places of prostitution.
The move comes just days after the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR) issued its second report on human trafficking in which it focused on internet websites promoting prostitution. The report revealed that more than 10,00 people had subscribed to such networks, and more than 50 websites had links to prostitution networks in Bahrain.
Last June, the United States State Departments annual report on human trafficking ranked several of the US Gulf allies, including Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, in the lowest category and subject to possible sanctions.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/19/2007
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#1
The English translation is interesting. Special emphasis is placed on aspects concerning the ethics of society to tighten sanctions on the patrons of prostitution which violates the ethics of the community. So, the sanctions violate the ethics of the community? Or is it tightening the sanctions that violates the ethics? It isn't the patrons of prostitution, because the translator would use who. And if prostitution did that, the translator would use a comma afterwards.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
08/19/2007 7:48
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#2
It's interesting to see Bahrain try to crack down on patrons of prostitution and not just on the prostitutes.
The Internet and web-enabled cell phones must be making huge inroads in these Gulf states among the younger set.
Multi-National Division ? Soldiers uncovered the largest weapons cache found to date in the Ameriya neighborhood Aug. 14. Acting on a tip called in by a resident, Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces conducted a search in the western Baghdad neighborhood, uncovering the cache in a woodworking shop. The Soldiers uncovered the cache, after finding a fake floor board in the shop.
The cache contained 265 mortar rounds of various sizes, 47 rockets of various sizes, 22 rocket-propelled grenade rounds, more than 50 land mines, 300 pounds of homemade explosive, more than 150 pounds of other explosive material and more than 70,000 rounds of small arms ammunition. An explosive ordnance team was called in to evaluate the cache. EOD blew the ordnance and weapons on site.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/19/2007
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Ouch! Ya know, their "Neighborhood Watch" may not be the best, but I just have to believe SOMEONE in the neighborhood would have noticed:
265 mortar rounds...47 rockets...22 rocket-propelled grenade rounds...50 land mines...300 pounds of homemade explosive...150 pounds of other explosive material and more than 70,000 rounds of small arms ammunition!!
oh wait...someone DID!! :)
I sure hope one of the EOD guys drawled: "Ya'll have a nice day" as they drove away from the smoldering hole left behind!
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.
Parts of an interview given by Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah to Iranian national television were censored by Iran's censors to avoid raising ire in Lebanon. 
From an internal Lebanese perspective, Nasrallah's words, which carry much weight, are tantamount to dissent. Nasrallah confirms that he serves supreme leader of Iran (Khamenei) and that his men fought for Iran last summer. 
A suicide bomber killed two soldiers on Saturday and two others died in a fierce clash with militants in North Waziristan, officials said. Two soldiers were killed and as many injured in the suicide attack at the Dharkhubi checkpost near the town of Mir Ali, a security official said. Two other soldiers were killed when militants attacked Isha and Qamar checkposts in North Waziristan.
The Taliban's reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, in a rare message on Saturday called on Afghans to shun their differences and join the militant Islamic movement's campaign to drive Western troops from Afghanistan. Omar made the appeal through a Taliban spokesmen, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, on the eve of the 88th anniversary of Afghanistan's independence from Britain. He said Afghanistan was once again "occupied by colonialist forces", referring to foreign troops in the country. "We have to ... put aside all of our internal, regional and linguistic differences and get united against the enemy," said the message, which was read to Reuters over the telephone by Yousuf from an undisclosed location.
President General Pervez Musharraf said on Saturday that he was in favour of "national reconciliation", but it would happen after the general elections on the basis of political parties' strength in the new assemblies. 
Tajikistan handed down 17-year prison sentences on Saturday to two former Guantanamo Bay detainees convicted of fighting alongside Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Both men were detained by the US military in Afghanistan in 2001 and held in the Guantanamo military prison for five years before being returned to their home country to face charges of being mercenaries in a foreign country. 
On Saturday, the IDF opened fire at three Palestinians, spotted near the Gaza security fence south of the Karni Crossing. One of the Palestinians was killed and the two others were wounded and taken for questioning. The army said soldiers fired when the Palestinians appeared to plant an explosive device along the border fence. The Southern Command was investigating the incident and had not ruled out the possibility that the three were not terrorists and were trying to cross illegally into Israel in search of work. "Every time someone approaches the fence we categorize it as a potential terror attack," explained an officer in the Southern Command. "Our mission is to stop anyone who comes close to the fence." According to the officer, the IDF has noticed a slight increase lately in the number of attempts by Palestinians to infiltrate into Israel. 
KOLKATA, India - Security was stepped up for the exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen on Saturday after the controversial author was issued with a death threat, police said. The move came after radical Muslim cleric Majidulla Khan Farhad on Friday accused Nasreen of defaming Islam and announced an unlimited financial reward to anybody who would kill her, according to the Press Trust of India.
Two men wielding a fake bomb and claiming al-Qaida ties hijacked a Turkish plane Saturday, holding passengers and crew hostage before surrendering peacefully in Antalya more than four hours later, authorities said. It was the fifth hijacking or hijacking attempt of a Turkish plane in four years by people falsely claiming to be carrying explosives or arms - despite increased security at airports following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. 
Negotiations to secure the release of 19 Korean church volunteers being held in Afghanistan by the Taliban have failed and the insurgents' leadership council is now considering their fate, a Taliban spokesman said on Saturday.
Sixteen troops and dozens of Muslim militants were killed on Saturday in clashes between government forces and Al Qaeda-linked rebels on the southern island of Basilan, the military said.
Four rival outlawed parties and groups in four southwestern districts have closed ranks and are regrouping, sources said. Leaders of Bipplobi Communist Party (BCP), Gono Bahini (GB), Gono Mukti Fouz (GMF) and recently floated Mukti Bahini led by notorious criminal Mukti, held several meetings in Kushtia and Chuadanga in last 20 days, intelligence sources said. Outlaws belonging to the parties are active in Kushtia, Jhenidah, Chuadanga and Meherpur. Leaders from the four districts attended the meetings.
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas has decided to sack civil servants linked to Hamas in the latest move against the rival Islamist movement since it seized power in the Gaza Strip. "This decision was proposed three days ago by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and finalised on Friday by President Abbas. It will remain in force as long as Hamas continues to control the Gaza Strip by force," a Palestinian official said on Saturday. 
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday described arch-foe Israel "the flag of Satan," and said the Jewish state was destined to fall apart, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Coalition Forces killed two terrorists and detained 16 suspected terrorists during operations in central and northern Iraq Saturday targeting senior leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq and its bombing networks.
The BBC has abandoned plans to screen a fictional terrorist attack by Muslim suicide bombers in the primetime drama Casualty after internal clashes over whether the highly sensitive subject matter would cause offence.
BAGHDAD - Iraqs political leaders held cordial but candid talks on Saturday in an attempt to revive national reconciliation efforts and repair the fractured unity government. The five leaders, representing Iraqs majority Shia Muslims, Sunni Arabs and Kurds, met for about 90 minutes and are expected to meet again on Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told Reuters. It was the first time they had met for two months.
Hundreds of camels have died in Saudi Arabia this week from a mystery ailment. The Agriculture Ministry has said 232 camels died in the space of four days in the Dawasir Valley, 400 km (250 miles) south of Riyadh. King Abdullah has promised compensation for owners, who say the real number of deaths is far higher.
TANK: The decapitated body of a religious scholar was found near Jandola in South Waziristan on Saturday. The beheaded body of Maulana Zarma Khan was found on the road near Jandola a day after he was abducted. The deceased was the resident of Barwand area of Tiarza tehsil.
(SomaliNet) At least 20 people were killed and dozens more were injured in fierce battle that renewed in the rural areas of Hiran region in central Somalia on Saturday ? as the fighting spread to the neighboring region of Galgadud. Sources say the fighting, which was between Murursade and Hawadle clans in same settlement, took place in Gorof and Goobo villages of Hiran province. Both clans belong to Hawiye, one of the four major tribes in Somalia. The rival clans have had clan-feud. 
