Daily Times (Pakistan)
Afghanistanâs Supreme Court has closed down all cable television services in Kabul because of their un-Islamic programmes. Chief Justice Fazl Hadi Shinwari made the ruling while rejecting an appeal against a recent ban on cable in the eastern city of Jalalabad. He said he had issued the order after dozens of complaints. Mr Shinwari said: "People who filed complaints to the Supreme Court said they were airing half-naked singers and obscene scenes from movies. We are Afghans, we are Muslims, we have Islamic laws and values in our country." "Therefore we are obliged to do stoopid things..."
Mr Shinwari added: "As a responsible official I cannot allow cable TV in any part of Afghanistan." It is not clear which other areas of the country have been affected by the ruling. Afghanistan insists on being properly Islamic, which guarantees it'll remain mired in ignorance and poverty. Shinwari's probably a symptom of the country feeling its Islamic oats as things get better. In a country governed by men who actually use their gray matter, he might have banned only the channels carrying the material that was so offensive to the easily offended...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/23/2003 01:56 pm ||
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A Kuwaiti civil servant confessed to opening fire on two Americans in Kuwait, killing one and wounding the other, and authorities have found the weapon he used, the Interior Ministry said Thursday. That didn't take long
A Kuwaiti security officer said the suspect, Sami al-Mutairi, 25, was not working alone. And the Interior Ministry, in its statement, said he acknowledged following the ideals of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network. Tap, tap, suprise meter still isn't working
Al-Mutairi was arrested at the border with Saudi Arabia as he tried to flee and was extradited to Kuwait, the ministry said. His weapon and some ammunition was found at his workplace, according to the statement. It did not say where he worked.
The ministry statement said al-Mutairi became a suspect ``in the first hours after the crime was committed.''
The security officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said al-Mutairi was arrested by Saudi border guards Wednesday. The official said he was a Kuwaiti civil servant and the prime suspect, but that he ``had partners, maybe two.''
The official Saudi Press Agency had said border guards arrested the suspect early Wednesday and ``the initial investigation revealed that he was the assailant who fired on the American citizens.'' The "I luv Osama" T-shirt gave him away.
Earlier Thursday, U.S. Embassy spokesman John Moran said the United States hoped investigators would quickly determine whether the assailants ``have ties to any larger organization. We call on the government to do everything in its power to protect our citizens from terrorist attack and to prevent any further tragedies.'' In Tuesday's attack, a gunman hiding behind a hedge ambushed the sport utility vehicle carrying two civilian contractors working for the U.S. military. The attack took place at a stoplight about 3 miles from the U.S. military's Camp Doha, which is 10 miles west of Kuwait City.
The survivor, David Caraway, was in stable condition Thursday at al-Razi hospital in Kuwait City. His co-worker Michael Rene Pouliot, 46, was killed.
Caraway, interviewed from his hospital bed Thursday on the ABC television show Good Morning America, extended condolences to Pouliot's family. He said he remembered little beyond a barrage of machine-gun fire coming from behind bushes along the road.
``Couldn't see anything, anyone. They hit us with the first volley,'' he said. Caraway said the road was not one he and Pouliot usually used. ``These are the risks, you know, you take when you come over here,'' he said. ``The war on terrorism just got a little personal today, that's all.''
Members of an organization representing the families of Kuwaitis killed during the Iraqi invasion in 1990 left a wreath at the spot where the Americans were shot.
``We didn't expect this to happen, this is not an act of the Kuwaiti people,'' said Sharouk Qabazadre, whose father was killed by Iraqi troops. She said the majority of Kuwaitis support and are thankful to the United States for defending Kuwait against Iraq. The government erected a billboard Thursday at a major Kuwait City intersection that read: ``Much Obliged to America and Our Allies: God Bless You All.'' We remember our friends. Can we interest you in a couple of nice cities in Saudi Arabia? I hear they are going to need new guardians for the holy places there.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 10:38 am ||
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The Kuwaitis hopped on this one pretty quickly and efficiently. I like to believe the Kuwaitis are represented more by Ms. Qabazadre than by the gunnies and thugs and Iraqi agents running around. But the fact remains that Qaeda is trying diligently to get as many malcontents and religious fanatics as they can under their wing. I'm surprised there haven't been more of this kind of attack.
Now the question is, what kind of "civil servant" the gunny is. Another cop with a mental problem?
Posted by: Fred ||
01/23/2003 11:08 Comments ||
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and he ran to Saudi...tap, tap, yep it's broken
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/23/2003 12:32 Comments ||
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My proposal: the Kuwaiti Civil Service vs. the U.S. Postal Service. Winner take all, no holds barred, weapons allowed. War and transportation costs recouped by pay-per-view.
Posted by: Joe Katzman ||
01/23/2003 14:19 Comments ||
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Security authorities in Kuwait hold the suspected gunman in the killing of a US civilian earlier this week. The suspect was arrested in Saudi Arabia. According to the official Saudi Press Agency, Saudi border guards Wednesday arrested a Kuwaiti "sneaking into Saudi Arabia from Kuwait." "The initial investigation revealed that he was the assailant who fired on the American citizens on Tuesday," the report said.
On Thursday, he was extradited from Saudi Arabia for questioning, a senior Kuwaiti security source said.
The suspect was identified as Sami al-Mutairi, a Kuwaiti civil servant in his 20s. That's nice, he works for the Kuwaiti government. The last shooter was a Kuwaiti cop. Is this guy going to turn out to be a mental case as well?
A Kuwaiti official said al-Mutairi was the prime suspect, but "had partners, maybe two." We'd like their heads as well, please.
Newspapers said al-Mutairi had also been detained several times in Kuwait in the past for suspected links to militant groups. They said he had tried to go to Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks but was stopped in Pakistan. That's nice, I mean, what trouble could he get into there?
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 09:57 am ||
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A man suspected of involvement in the killing of an American working at a US army base in Kuwait has been extradited from Saudi Arabia, Kuwaiti security sources say. The Kuwaiti is said to have entered Saudi Arabia shortly after Tuesday's ambush on two American civilian contractors, who were working at Camp Doha, the main US army base in the kingdom. Humm, the Kuwaiti policeman who shot the two GIs did the same thing. Do I sense a trend here?
One of the Americans died and the other was seriously injured.
Kuwaiti security officials are now said to be questioning the suspect following his extradition from Saudi Arabia. Question him harder, please
The official Saudi Press Agency said he was detained early on Wednesday near the border with Kuwait. No group has claimed responsibility for the shooting. Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Saad al-Abdullah al-Sabah sent a letter of condolence to US President George W Bush, describing the attack as a "terrorist act". No kidding
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 08:09 am ||
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Yeah, Kuwait, question him harder. Surely, with all that oil wealth, you can afford some fine Turkish Truncheons, complete with fine Turkish consultants to show you how its done. For an extra fee, they'll even show your people how to grow equally fine Turkish moustachios...
AN Algerian asylum seeker suspected of involvement in a plot to poison a VIP has been arrested in North London. The suspect, 31, was seized at his Ponders End home. He is a close associate of a man arrested in Mondayâs mosque raid who is thought to be a top al-Qaâida figure. Good job! They're not slacking off...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/23/2003 10:16 pm ||
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By STEVE KENNEDY
HATE crusader Abu Hamza was in hiding last night as a probe into his shady finances put new pressure on Tony Blair to kick him out of Britain. C'mon, Tony. You know it's the right thing to do...
The hook-handed Muslim cleric has not been seen at his council flat in West London for three days. Has he skipped?
Officials are investigating fraud claims over benefits and £100,000 he is said to have made by selling one council flat before moving into another. Hamza, 44, faces being barred from preaching because of his violent views. And Mr Blair and Home Secretary David Blunkett face mounting pressure to deport him. Teacher Laurence Whitehouse, whose wife died in a terrorist kidnap in 1998, urged them to send him to Yemen. Abu appears to be having a bad week. Hope it gets a lot worse, and soon...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/23/2003 10:13 pm ||
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A Muslim preacher accused of inciting murder and fostering racial hatred urged his followers to kill non-believers and told them: "The way forward is the bullet," a jury at the Old Bailey heard yesterday. Abdullah el-Faisal, 39, endorsed the use of nuclear and chemical weapons and told audiences that the proper definition of jihad was to wage war on non-Muslims - whom he compared to cockroaches - the court heard. "It is Islam versus democracy. It is Allah versus Satan. It is Muslims versus unbelievers," he is alleged to have said in a sermon.
Democracy, as it exists in the west, allows people to do pretty much as they please. They don't have to wear turbans or burkas, don't have to grow beards, can practice any religion they want or none at all. They can disagree with their gummint or with their local mullahs. To Islamists, that's unthinkable as a way of life...
El-Faisal denies five charges of soliciting a person or persons unknown to murder Jews, Hindus, Americans and other non-believers.
He also denies two charges of using threatening or abusive words or behaviour to stir up racial hatred, and one charge each of distributing and possessing recordings of such speeches. "He was preaching intolerance, but worse than that, preaching murder," David Perry told the court, opening the prosecution case. "The message he was conveying is clear: to kill a kaffir [non-believer] is good."
Wonder how his mouthpiece is gonna get him off, with those tapes...
He added that the prosecution could not say what effect the speeches had on audiences. What mattered was what the defendant said and his aim in saying it.
This is the time to draw up the blanket of Freedumb of Speech, by interpreting it as a license to say anything, regardless of truth or consequences...
El-Faisal, a former Salvation Army member, delivered the lectures to groups of young Muslim men and women at venues around the country and distributed the recordings through bookshops, the court heard. "The way forward can never be the ballot. The way forward is the bullet," he told listeners. He urged them to learn how to load missiles, fly planes and drive tanks and said martyrs who died fighting for Allah would feel no pain and go to paradise. He described France, the US and the UK as legitimate targets and urged followers to, "fly into Israel and do whatever you can". El-Faisal said chemical weapons could be used, adding that you would spray cockroaches and asking: "Who has more dignity, a cockroach or an unbeliever?"
I think of this guy, and the hundreds like him infesting our world, every time the Berkeley City Council adopts some dumbass resolution saying that everything's our fault, what ever everything might be. Having joined the Master Religion and become a True Believer®, he's ready to exterminate the rest of us üntermenschen. He doesn't want to negotiate, he doesn't want to compromise. Keep your day care centers and your assistance next time there's an earthquake in Iran. He wants you dead, so he can be a big man with a jewelled turban and your daughters for dancing girls in the caliphate.
He also said nuclear weapons were acceptable if no Muslims were harmed. He said there would be no harm in bombing India and spoke of incinerating the dead bodies to run power stations. "You can go to India and if you see a Hindu walking down the road you are allowed to kill him and take his money. Is that clear?" he said. On other tapes he claimed Jews practiced black magic and said they would be killed by Muslims very soon, as they had been by Hitler.
Clear to me. I'm sure all Muslims aren't thieves and murderers, just as I'm sure Islamists are...
El-Faisal, who is Jamaican, converted to Islam at 16, changing his name from William Forest. In 1983, he moved to South America later studying Islam at a university in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Where else? Might as well get your hatred pure and unadulterated, at the source...
He was sent to Britain to preach after his graduation and moved to Stratford, east London in the mid 1990s, where he established "study circles" of up to 150 young men and women. "He was speaking to people who had come to him for advice, he was speaking to people who had come to him to listen to him ...as a spiritual leader," said Mr Perry. "What is noticeably absent are expressions of love, hope, charity, compassion or pity."
Those are decadent Christian and Jewish concepts. Islamists reject them. It looks like some people are operating under the assumption that Islamist "holy men" are holy using the same definition we use in the west, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Posted by: Paul ||
01/23/2003 08:01 pm ||
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Why are the French, after seeming to have endorsed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, suddenly aligining themselves with the Germans and against the impending military action against Iraq? Analyst Max Boot, writing in the L.A. Times, suggests it is a combination of greed and nationalist pride:
Its first motive is crassly commercial: France has about $1.5 billion in contracts with the current Iraqi government and doesn't want it overthrown for fear that a more democratic regime might take its business elsewhere. Its second motive is essentially wounded national pride. France, a noted poet recently wrote, "used to have the ability to inspire princes and kings" but now "comes the time when no one listens to her anymore and the universe turns without her, except when it judges her with spite or commiseration." This writer suggested that the solution was for France to adopt "a humble and global approach."
Those sentiments are found in a best-selling French book called "The Cry of the Gargoyle." Its author is now foreign minister of the republic.
It is hard to see anything humble about De Villepin's grandstanding Monday, but it was certainly "global": France is taking advantage of Franklin Roosevelt's dispensation -- a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council -- to maximize its influence at the expense of the "hyperpower."
The NYT's William Safire believes that French President Jacques Chirac stabbed us in the back as part of an EU power play with the Germans:
Chirac had made a deal with the U.S. last fall: we agreed to postpone the invasion of Iraq until after U.N. inspectors had been jerked around long enough to satisfy the world street's opinion, and in return France would not demand a second U.N. resolution before allied forces overthrew Saddam. . .
Then Schröder, reliant on his militantly antiwar Greens, made Chirac an offer he could not refuse: to permanently assert Franco-German dominance over the 23 other nations of Continental Europe.
In a stunning power play in Brussels, Germany and France moved to change the practice of having a rotating presidency of the European Council, which now gives smaller nations influence, to a system with a long-term president. This Franco-German czar of the European Union would dominate a toothless president of the European Commission, chosen by the European Parliament.
Little guys of Europe hollered bloody murder this week, but will find it hard to resist the Franco-German steamroller. France then had to repay Schröder by double-crossing the U.S. at the U.N. That explains France's startling threat to veto a new U.N. resolution O.K.'ing the invasion of Iraq â a second resolution that France had promised Colin Powell would not be needed.
Blogger Steven Den Beste has yet another theory, one which seems straight out of a Ken Follet or Tom Clancy novel, and yet, somehow, the most plausible:
Let's do some supposing.
Suppose we (the UK and US) do ignore all the pressure and last-minute finagling and do actually attack Iraq, which I think now is virtually certain.
Suppose we win, which is absolutely certain.
And suppose, once we've done so, and have occupied Iraq and have full (really full, not UN full) access to Iraq's records and can truly find what they have, that we find that everything we've been saying about their WMDs is really true; that they have chem and bio weapons and banned delivery systems, and are near to developing nukes, which I also think is extremely likely.
One more and the most important: suppose that the records also show that during the 1990's companies in France or Germany (or both) actively and deliberately broke the sanctions and sold equipment and supplies to Iraq which helped it to create these things, and that the governments of Germany and France knew and approved of this and actively helped. That's the biggest and most speculative suppose.
On that I can't place a probability; there's no way of knowing right now whether this happened, or whether such records will be found. But I don't consider the possibility of this to be vanishingly small. I think the chance is decent that some such illegal sales to Iraq took place, but I can't say how likely it is that the governments there actively approved of it, or at least deliberately ignored it (which is bad enough). That's the wild card.
But we're supposing now, and so what we've supposed is that after we conquer Iraq we come into possession of undisputable proof of treachery by the German and/or French governments, who are supposedly our allies.
Den Beste speculates that the governments of France and Germany may be trying to derail the war precisely because they want to cover up their own (or their citizens' own) participation in Saddam's WMD programs. He continues:
The first question our governments would face is whether to reveal it. There's a case to be made for keeping it secret and using it for blackmail. (Which is why I will become extraordinarily suspicious if there's a notable change in tone and behavior from either or both nations about two months after the war ends.)
But if such information existed and were revealed, either deliberately or because it couldn't be concealed, then what?
I think at that point that anything resembling formal alliance would have to end. The degree of fury this would cause in the American people should not be underestimated, and it would become politically impossible for the US government to continue to treat either nation in a friendly manner. Our relations with them would come to resemble those we have with China if not being worse.
If Den Beste is right, is anyone up for regime change in Paris or Berlin?
Posted by: Mike ||
01/23/2003 03:29 pm ||
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The last scenario where France & Germany have actively supported Iraq, breaking sanctions, will be seen to be correct. There is no reason for so much opposition from them unless they have a lot to lose, something in the magnitude of a couple of billion. Most of this will be benign stuff, but some will be most embarrasing, when it turns out they helped Iraq in its weaponry programs, indirectly or not.
However I predict that the US & Britain will not reveal any of this after the war. Any information will have to come out independently thru Congress or other sources. The political fallout would be just too great to come out publicly with this, but certainly it will be used as a diplomatic wedge for eons to come.
As for the American public, I don't think most people care about sanctions in Iraq, and so this will not be a big deal except in political circles (and those that pay attention, like Rantburg of course).
#3
UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal adopts the Max Boot theory in today's editorial:
"By aligning himself with and thus shoring up the politically weak anti-American German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Mr. Chirac has a chance to make himself Europe's dominant player. He can also show up Britain's Tony Blair, who's already America's best friend, and at the same time recall for his countrymen the Gaullist days of the force de frappe and independence from NATO.
"But the French and Germans should be careful how much independence they wish for. As we note optimistically in the editorial in today's Wall Street Journal, the U.S. and Europe share common values. But we are now in a post-Cold War, post-9/11 world in which Americans have learned that they are uniquely threatened by terrorists and the states that sponsor them.
"A country that uses its veto to stand in the way of American self-defense will not find many Americans wanting to guarantee its defense in the future. We will turn for help, and help in turn, those countries in Europe and elsewhere that are on America's side."
Posted by: Mike ||
01/24/2003 4:58 Comments ||
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Italy's justice minister said Thursday the arrests of five Moroccans, detained during a raid that turned up explosives and maps reportedly marking churches and a NATO base, were related to Italy's fight against terrorism. Justice Minister Roberto Castelli made the comments during a meeting Thursday with U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. Police on Wednesday arrested five Moroccan men near the northern city of Rovigo after discovering a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of explosives and maps highlighting Padua's Basilica del Santo and the NATO base in Verona in their apartment, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. Carabinieri officials, who confirmed the discovery of explosives and maps, said at the time of the arrests they weren't speculating about possible terrorism-related activities. However, Castelli said the arrests were part of Italy's fight against terror. "Even the facts of yesterday are testimony that our commitment isn't just theoretical but produces results," Castelli told reporters. Italy has been on the ball in this fight
The U.S. Embassy was briefed on the arrests, an embassy source said. Italian authorities routinely brief American officials on operations concerning suspected terrorist activities, the source added.Sofia Tiengo, the lawyer assigned to the five suspects, said her clients had so far only been charged with possessing explosives. She had not spoken to the suspects yet, but said that the two already interrogated by police denied all charges. "They were just, ah, tourists, see. The maps were just of tourist attractions, it's a very pretty base. Explosives? Why, those are part of their religion! You can't deny anyone the right to practice their religion?"
Italy has arrested dozens of people as part of its probe into militant Islamic cells operating in Italy, particularly in Milan and Bologna. Italian prosecutors say the cells provided logistical and other help to Osama bin Laden's operatives, including furnishing forged documents to people who eventually went on to train and fight in Afghanistan. Ashcroft praised Italy's efforts so far.
"Indeed, the recent arrests and the list of convictions of those who have been involved in terrorism are tangible evidence of the fact that Italy takes terrorism seriously and fights it aggressively," he said.
The suspects included a religious leader of Rovigo's Muslim community, Reduane Bnoughazi, 32, and four other men aged 28-41, a police official said Thursday. The official, who asked not to be identified, said the explosives were found during a routine search for illegal immigrants. The officer said the men were employed and were trying to obtain residency permits in Italy. Several recent arrests in Italy's anti-terrorism campaign have occurred after apartment raids where police say they discovered explosives and maps, some designating suspected target areas. In October, police arrested three Egyptians in Anzio, a port town south of Rome, after they said they found two kilograms (4.4 pounds) of explosives and a map indicating the U.S. military cemetery at Nettuno in the men's apartment.
The five people arrested in Wednesday's raid -- identified by police as Bnoughazi, Abdallah Mounder, Moustafa' El Bouhali, Amro Lahrajh and Kamal Ben Reddad -- were being questioned Thursday by prosecutors in Rovigo, near Padua in northern Italy. Italy has years of practice in fighting terror groups, from the Mafia to the Red Brigades.
FOLLOWUP: Drudge has a link to the TABLOID! account that adds more gory detail...
A TERRORIST plot to launch a bomb blitz in London was foiled by Italian cops yesterday. Five Moroccan men with links to al-Qaâida suspects in Britain were seized during a raid near Venice. Police found explosives and maps of central London at the hideout. They also found documents addressed to men in the UK. Somebody's going to be moderately unhappy pretty soon, we hope...
The gang were seized by cops who raided a squalid, damp-ridden hovel in a yard filled with junk. The abandoned farm, with plaster missing from walls and rotten shutters gaping open at windows, had been used as a planning HQ by the mob. Just like home, huh?
Yesterday the five were being held for questioning following Wednesdayâs dramatic swoop in Badia Polesin, 40 miles south of Venice. Only two could speak any Italian and interpreters were being brought in for the other three, but all five denied knowing the explosive was there. "Nope. Nope. Wudn't us. Somebody musta left it there..."
The arrests are understood to have resulted from intelligence supplied by British security forces including MI5. Perhaps originating with the ricin arrests last week?
Italian police said the men, aged between 28 and 41, had contact with al-Qaâida suspects in this country. In contrast to Britain â where anti-terror operations are carried out with utmost secrecy and details of arrest given days later â an Italian TV crew were invited along on the raid. "C'mon, Greta! Snap it up! Geraldo's hair's startin' to smoke..."
TV footage showed one of the gang yelling âItâs a fit up, itâs a fit up,â before being bundled into a police car and driven away at high speed. "Yeah! We been framed!"
A source from British security forces, who are in constant liaison with European partners, said: âThis is a triumph for intelligence co-operation between different countries. âWe believe we have taken out a major al-Qaâida gang looking to target this country.â Among others...
A kilo of C4 was found stuffed inside a sock under a pile of dirty laundry. The explosive, the same type used in the devastating Bali nightclub bombing last year, is a military substance developed by the US Army and is not commonly available. On one map a Nato base at Verona was highlighted with the letters âBXBâ and the historic cathedral in Padua with a âBâ. Police believe these meant they were potential terrorist targets. There were no marks on the London maps but other documents contained details of churches and foreign embassies. A police source in the town of Rovigo said: âC4 is very difficult to come by casually and therefore very difficult to understand how these men say they donât know how it got there. This warrants a serious and thorough investigation.â "Well, we thought the cheese was pretty bad, but what the hell? We're from North Africa. What do we know what Italian cheese tastes like?"
The five were named as Anro Lahrajh, 28, Kamal Ben Reddad, 33, Moustapha el Bouhali, 33, Reduane Bhoughazi, 36, and Abdullah Mounder, 41. Police sources described Bhoughazi, a well-known figure in the areaâs Muslim community, as the gang leader. Later it emerged that one of the gang, Lahrajh, had been held last year with four other Moroccans after a handgun with its serial number rubbed off was found. Italian justice minister Roberto Castelli said the arrests were proof that his countryâs commitment to the war on terrorism was ânot just theoretical but produces resultsâ.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 10:06 pm ||
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This is at least the second time I can recall that the turbans were plotting to bomb U.S. cemetaries. I guess dead American soldiers are easier to, ummm... kill? than live ones.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/23/2003 17:43 Comments ||
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It is all perfectly logical. Any soldiers are targets. Dead soldiers live in the cemetaries.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/23/2003 20:23 Comments ||
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British teenage boys were told to train with Kalashnikov rifles and promised 72 virgins in paradise if they died as religious martyrs, an Old Bailey jury has heard. Muslim cleric Abdullah el-Faisal, 39, made the claim in a video recording of him addressing a study group after the 11 September terrorist attacks in New York. The video was played at the trial of the preacher, who is charged with nine offences, including inciting race hate and soliciting murder. Mr el-Faisal, of Albert Square, Stratford, east London, told the gathering that Muslims were only allowed to sacrifice their lives fighting for Islam.
In the video he says it is the duty of women to bring up their sons "with a Jihad mentality - not be wimps" and boys should train as soldiers for Islam when they were 15.
He said: "Is it sensible for you to be soldiers without Kalashnikov training? "So when you are on holiday from school or college, you must have Jihad training - this is your holiday." Mr el-Faisal tells them: "Even if you are hit by a Cruise missile, the pain will feel like that of a mosquito bite." "A Really, Really Big Mosquito!"
Their rewards in paradise would include 72 virgins and eating from the fruits of paradise, he said. "Religious martyrs are not dead. Do not cry for them. There is a conspiracy against Jihad", he added. "Democracy is not the way forward. The only way to liberate land and man is Jihad. "The way forward is the bullet. Our motto is `might is right'." Nice to have this on video. Let's run it on the BBC so you can see what the enemy really wants.
The prosecution allege the Jamaican-born convert stepped outside his role as a spiritual leader to preach race hate and murder. Mr el-Faisal denies the charges and the trial continues. "That's not me on the tape! It's a Hollywood fake! The jews did it!"
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 08:39 am ||
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We ought to run it on PBS also.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/23/2003 9:24 Comments ||
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I've always wondered if everyone gets 72 virgins, where the heck do they come from? Do they get recycled? "Enquiring minds want to know"
#3
The whole misunderstanding is due to a copyist's error in the Koran very early on. The original text actually said "72 VIRGINIANS". There are plenty of those.
Posted by: Bent Pyramid ||
01/23/2003 10:02 Comments ||
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Maybe age is catching up with me, but the "72 virgins" always struck me as a bit odd. I mean, who the hell has the time? Instead, how about three more, uhm, "experienced" girls. Three would be a good number since it would allow for a nice blonde, brunette, and redhead set. Oh, and they should be good cooks as well.
Posted by: Patrick Phillips ||
01/23/2003 10:48 Comments ||
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What does a virgin get when she arrives in paradise? 72 martyrs?
#10
I don't think someone has thought this through. These gals are supposedly virgins for all eternity. So one cannot spoil any of them.
So, for killing yourself and a lot of other people, you get to hang around with 72 beautiful, eager young gals you can never have sex with. And this is their idea of heaven????
As others have pointed out, no one mentions where they come from. For all we know they could be largely named "baaaaaa--tty"
Posted by: Ben ||
01/24/2003 5:07 Comments ||
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French leaders have reacted angrily after US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described France and Germany as the "old Europe", marking a deepening rift over policy on Iraq.
Finance Minister Francis Mer said he was "profoundly vexed" by Mr Rumsfeld's remarks, while former Employment Minister Martine Aubry described the US as arrogant. Mr Rumsfeld made the remarks in Washington after French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder agreed to work together to oppose US threats of war in Iraq.He told foreign journalists that France and Germany were not representative of modern Europe. "You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't," he said. "I think that's old Europe." Bitch slapped them!
He pointed to the planned expansion of Nato, with seven eastern European and Baltic countries invited to join the alliance.
"If you look at the entire Nato Europe today, the centre of gravity is shifting to the east," Mr Rumsfeld said. And they remember who their friends are.
The BBC's James Coomarasamy, in Paris, says the divisions between Europe and the US over Iraq are growing more public and the rhetoric more pointed by the day. The French Environment Minister, Roselyne Bachelot, told one interviewer: "If you knew what I felt like telling Mr Rumsfeld..." She then stopped herself, saying the word was too offensive. Rummy would gut her and nail her hide to his office wall without breaking sweat
Europe is deeply divided over the possibility of war with Iraq. France and Germany are opposed to early military action, while the UK is sending massive troop deployments to the Gulf.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has questioned the commitment of France and Germany to disarming Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. However, he has described the disagreements with France as a "blip", saying he hoped "the French would come to the understanding" of the need to use the threat of force to compel Saddam Hussein to disarm. Bye, bye, France! Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 07:58 am ||
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Bye, bye, France! Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
Yeah - they don't need any more brain damage!
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/23/2003 9:27 Comments ||
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Or as Tom Lehrer (noted satirist) put it back in the 60's when talking about the proposed MLF (Multilateral force) made up of "our current friends, France, and our traditional friends, Germany". Still good satire almost 40 years later.
That MLF Lullaby reference brought me back to the last verse of the song
Sleep well, my darling; the sandman won't linger.
We hope our buddies won't give us the finger.
Well, they might just be giving us the middle-digit salute.
Posted by: Mark Byron ||
01/23/2003 10:11 Comments ||
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And the French have just invited Robert Mugabe,the mass-murdering,whitey-hating,gay-bashing "president" of Zimbabwe,for a visit despite the EU-imposed "travel-ban".With the French like these...
Posted by: El Id ||
01/23/2003 10:47 Comments ||
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Have they brought the issue of their intervention in Ivory Coast before the Security Council yet for UN approval? I seen anything on that yet... and I doubt I ever will.
Must be tough to wake up one day and realize that your country's been pretty much irrelevant in the world picture since 1946. Let them piss and moan. That's pretty much all they're good at any more.
#6
I think's it's safe to say the French became irrelevant earlier than 1946. I'd say it happened shortly after Dunkirk.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
01/23/2003 11:59 Comments ||
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Who would of thought that France have done the US a huge favor and as a result history will show France triggered the war in Iraq? By pre-empting Blix's ramblings, they have taken all the pressure of Saddam to cooperate with inspection, and absolved the US of any need to return to the UN to "make the case" for war. No more debate, no more time, no more consultation. What were they thinking? This is like walking of the field in the fourth quarter in a Superbowl tie.
The situation will now spiral rapidly. If I was in Bagdad today, I would be on the way out of town pronto, because the war may already be over by the time GW meets with Congress on Tuesday.
Posted by: john ||
01/23/2003 17:46 Comments ||
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France has just announced that it is going to end-run its 97 year old law which separated church and state, by providing state funding to mosques. They even recognized a Muslim authority, with which they will negotiate state-church relations. The Muslim Brothers are well represented in this cash-cow feeder.
#9
I'm not sure about this but I think France's veto threats at UNSC and their opposition to us stems from their oil sources. I remember in '73 during the oil embargo that France had all it wanted while lots of people in Europe were driving around on bicycles when fuel was tight. France just gave their foreign policy away to OPEC and the nozzle stayed on for 'em.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/23/2003 20:36 Comments ||
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I love it! That's even better than when Powell told former Foreign Minister Vedrine that he was getting the vapors. Driving a wedge between Fra & Ger and Eastern Europe (and Spain and Britain too) is a good move. We should further try to drive a wedge between the elites and the average everyday Joaquim. I don't like seeing all the "surrender" jokes all over the blogosphere. The French have an excess of pride (who doesn't) but their problem has always been one of leadership.
Pakistani police arrested four suspected members of an outlawed Islamic militant group in pre-dawn raid Thursday, and they said the men were part of a cell waging war on Westerners and minority Christians. Police also seized five hand grenades and four assault rifles during the raid in the eastern city of Lahore, said Interior Ministry spokesman Iftikar Ahmad.
"So far we know that they belong to Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and have close links with Jaish-e-Mohammed," Ahmad told The Associated Press. He said the men were part of a cell carrying out what they consider a holy war against Westerners and Christians in Pakistan. There have been a number of attacks on Westerners and minority Christians since President Gen. Pervez Musharraf allied his majority Muslim nation with the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks. Musharraf banned Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, but it has re-emerged under the name Jamat-ud-Dawat. Pakistan security agencies working closely with FBI have arrested scores of Taliban, al-Qaida men and alleged associates of domestic terrorist organizations in the recent months. However, Ahmad said no foreign intelligence agency was involved in Thursday's operation. The police officials in Lahore declined to give details of the raid. But security officials familiar with the arrests said the men had received training at camps of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammed -- two anti-Indian Islamic militant groups outlawed by Musharraf after the Sept. 11 attacks to purge the country of extremism and terrorism.
The latest arrests came a day after a team of French investigators arrived in Pakistan to hold talks about the May 8, 2002 suicide attack in Karachi that killed 11 French engineers and three others. Pakistani police have detained several militants for their role in the killings and at least two key suspects have admitted their role in the attack.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 08:57 am ||
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Police in northern Pakistan say unidentified attackers have shot dead a writer whose work was viewed as critical of fundamentalist Islam. The 40-year-old writer, Fazal Wahab, was shot at a local shop. Fatwas, or religious edicts, declaring his work un-Islamic had been issued by senior clerical figures after the publication of two books challenging the role of mullahs. Police say three or four gunmen burst into the shop in the town of Mingora, in North-West Frontier Province, where Mr Wahab was sitting. The gunmen opened fire indiscriminately, killing Mr Wahab and the shop owner on the spot. A teenage shop assistant died on his way to hospital. Police established checkpoints quickly but have so far made no arrests. Two of Mr Wahab's books were critical of the Taleban, the role of the mullahs and Osama bin Laden. It is not clear whether the fatwas called for his death. There's another kind?
Mr Wahab, who was married with five children, called a press conference last month to say he was receiving death threats.
He was reported to have applied for a visa to the United States, with a view to seeking political asylum, but this was rejected. Nice move, State Department
He was not well-known nationally, but locally was engaged in a hostile debate with Islamic leaders through his writings. Which is why he's dead now
The attack will be an early test of the new government's future intentions; whether to pursue the attackers or allow the killings to go unpunished. The latter would send a strong message to clerical leaders that they have broad freedom to operate as they wish. I'm not hopeful they'll do anything real.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 08:32 am ||
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I was very touched by the article about the Pakistani writer's murder in the NWFP in this morning's rantburg. This guy may have been a bit foolish risking his life, but look at his situation. He knew that the Taliban and the Islamic clerics were wrong, he was denied asylum in the US, probably couldn't go to Euro-land. He had no out for him and his family. But he did not shut up. He is a true martyr for what is decent and right about humanity. There are decent people in Pakistan, but they are down at least one today. They should be ashamed, and so should we.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/23/2003 15:23 Comments ||
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The United States says Pakistan is serving as a "platform for terrorism" and that this must stop. The US ambassador to Islamabad, Nancy Powell, also urged Pakistan to ensure that militant groups are no longer able to cross into Indian-administered Kashmir. Correspondents say Ms Powell's comments are unusually strong for a serving US ambassador in Pakistan and amount to a rebuke to the government there. And a female ambassador as well. Bet that twisted their turbans.
Ms Powell was speaking in the city of Karachi where, exactly one year ago, US journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped by Islamic militants who later killed him. "The government of Pakistan must ensure its pledges are implemented to prevent infiltration across the Line of Control (LoC) and end the use of Pakistan as a platform for terrorism," Ms Powell told a meeting of US businessmen in Karachi.Tens of thousands of people have died in violence in Indian-administered Kashmir, which has been the focus of two wars between India and Pakistan. Ms Powell called for the fighting to stop. "We continue to look for ways to encourage peace in Kashmir. "One important step could be a cease-fire along the Line of Control."
A BBC correspondent in Islamabad says it is the first time a US ambassador to Islamabad has made such strong comments.
Last year, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf promised to halt militant attacks across the LoC. He had some success until about six months ago when American and Indian agencies said there was a pronounced increase in attacks. These reached a peak in the lead-up to the elections in Indian-administered Kashmir late last year.
Our correspondent says the American rebuke will hurt Pakistan, coming as its foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, is in the United States preparing for a meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell. Pakistan sees itself as a front-line state in the war on terror. India, however, says it encourages terror by supporting militants attacking civilians and security forces in Kashmir. Ambassadors don't make statements like this, in a prepared speech, without them being cleared all the way to the top. Sounds like a clear warning to me.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 08:22 am ||
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Click on the link to read the full article
After arresting 17 Islamic fundamentalists, including five accused major plotters who face the death penalty, police have yet to resolve the central criminal act of the Bali bombings: who detonated the bomb outside the Sari Club, the bomb which did most of the killing?
So far, police say, three terrorists - Amrozi, 39, his brother Ali Imron, 30, and the operational commander Imam Samudra, 35, a veteran terrorist who had spent two years in Afghanistan - have confessed to roles in the bomb attacks on October 12, but all have denied they exploded the Sari bomb. Although they are otherwise boastful about what they did, none is claiming this poisoned chalice. Ali Imron and Samudra were in action that night. They were the men in command. Are they protecting themselves?
The Sari bomb was the biggest and most destructive of three detonated, 1000 kilograms of explosives packed into a filing cabinet which was put into a van which was driven to Jalan Legian, the tourist strip at Kuta, and parked outside the packed nightclub around 11.30pm. It was a Saturday night, and across the narrow street, jammed with tourists, motorbikes and cars, Paddy's Bar was also doing a roaring business. The bomb had four triggers, three of them backups to the first-choice device, a mobile telephone. Whichever trigger was used, the result was a catastrophe which replaced Australian complacency with fear and suspicion. The blast and the resulting conflagrations destroyed the Sari Club and Paddy's, killing almost 200 people were killed that night, almost all tourists, including 88 Australians.
The next morning, according to police, Samudra, Ali Imron and another plotter, Idris, 35, drove to the smouldering ruins and observed with satisfaction their handiwork. Police said Ali Imron told them he "felt happy" that so many had died. Yet when it comes to naming the man who detonated the bomb, he is not helpful, although there can be little doubt that he knows the culprit.
So far, police have one suspect, Dulmatin, a 32-year-old Javanese electronics wizard who is allegedly a bomb maker for Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the regional terrorist group which is blamed for ordering the attack. Dulmatin was named as the triggerman by Amrozi, the first suspect arrested, on November 5, who gave police the names of most of the key conspirators and their roles. But Amrozi was not in Bali on October 12, having returned to East Java several days earlier after performing his mission - buying the van and the explosives and delivering them to Bali. Amrozi was at home in Tenggulun, a village 200 kilometres from Surabaya, watching boxing on television when the bombs were detonated.
Another expert, Wayan, 35, who had previous experience assembling bombs for JI, helped Dulmatin. Amrozi claimed Dulmatin punched in the three SMS messages which individually activated the three mobiles, sending electrical charges to the detonators, exploding the bombs.
Dulmatin, Wayan and Idris, key players, have yet to be captured and their versions still to be told. But when police tested Amrozi's testimony against that of his brother and Samudra, they found inconsistencies which strongly indicate the plotters are telling the truth only when it suits them. It's every man for himself when you are facing the death penalty, and they are not so eager to be martyrs
When it comes to events on the night of the attack, important elements of Ali Imron's testimony are hard to believe. Police say Ali Imron told them that Samudra, the overall commander, remained in the safe house in Denpasar. Ali Imron described himself as the "field commander". He said he and another plotter drove the van with the bomb to Jalan Legian. Who was the other man? Ali Imron wasn't sure. He thought his name was Jimmy, which might be an alias for Iqbal. This is farce. Police have never heard of Jimmy before. Ali Imron was the "field commander" of a conspiracy about to commit mass murder, he was transporting the bomb - and he didn't know the identity of the man sitting next to him. "He's lying," police said.
Imam Samudra, when caught on November 21, boasted that Iqbal was a suicide bomber, which Indonesian police never tire of denying, justifiably afraid of allowing the conspirators to claim a martyr as a role model for their "Jihad".
Police claim Ali Imron's account supports their version of an accidental early detonation. This is that Samudra used a mobile phone to detonate the third bomb near the American consulate in Denpasar. The signal prematurely detonated the Sari and Paddy's bombs, catching Iqbal unawares.
But there is no evidence to back this theory, and even the police have no idea how one mobile could activate three mobiles simultaneously with a single message. Another version is that the mobile message to activate the consulate bomb somehow "crossed over" into the two other mobiles, although police once again are unable to explain how this could happen. These attempts at explanation lack credibility, especially since Amrozi is insistent that the three mobiles had to be activated individually.
The consulate bomb harmed no one. It was clearly a symbolic attack on the United States. "Destroy America," Samudra shouted when he was arrested. But Samudra has made no reference to this bomb.
So is Ali Imron telling only part of the truth to conceal a greater guilt by his mentor? Why give only this pathetic gesture to Samudra? He was their inspirational leader, the toughest and most experienced terrorist among them, a religious zealot who had fought in Afghanistan, and who, police say, has confessed to participating in a series of bomb attacks in Indonesia in December 2000.
Why give Samudra only one bomb, and the least important? Why not all three, especially the Sari bomb, which was what the plot was all about? He was the fittest, the most deserving to deliver such a devastating message to their enemies. He was also in command, the man most willing and able.
More light needs to be shone into this world of shadows, to establish what are truth, deception and lies. In only three months, the Indonesian police have done a remarkable job, and there is every reason to accept their confidence that they will arrest the suspects still at large, especially those they want most: Idris, Dulmatin, Wayan and another bomb expert, Dr Azhari, a Malaysian.
The arrests give an alarming insight into JI's capabilities. The group was able to provide a cadre of committed, experienced terrorists with sophisticated technical skills, along with the resources to finance and plan the operation. But they exposed a fatal weakness: a reliance on passionate amateurs to be the ground troops, in recruiting Islamic fundamentalists from religious schools.
Mukhlas recruited two blood brothers, Amrozi - whose carelessness in buying the van in his own name gave police their initial breakthrough - and Ali Imron, plus two stepbrothers.
A difficult task for JI will be replacing the veterans Mukhlas and Samudra. But there is no shortage of eager volunteers among the fundamentalist Islamic religious schools of Indonesia and Malaysia.
Posted by: Paul ||
01/23/2003 03:10 am ||
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A TERRORIST plot to launch a bomb blitz in London was foiled by Italian cops yesterday.
Five Moroccan men with links to al-Qaâida suspects in Britain were seized during a raid near Venice.
Police found explosives and maps of central London at the hideout. They also found documents addressed to men in the UK.
The gang were seized by cops who raided a squalid, damp-ridden hovel in a yard filled with junk. Ah, just like home in palestine.
The abandoned farm, with plaster missing from walls and rotten shutters gaping open at windows, had been used as a planning HQ by the mob.
Cops found a cache of deadly C4 explosive, maps of central London and details of potential targets including a Nato military base in Italy.
Incongruously, two pushbikes were propped up outside the house â which was strewn with empty beer cans despite Islamic laws banning alcohol. What are you saying? that the boys might be slipping in their faith?
Yesterday the five were being held for questioning following Wednesdayâs dramatic swoop in Badia Polesin, 40 miles south of Venice.
Only two could speak any Italian and interpreters were being brought in for the other three, but all five denied knowing the explosive was there.
The arrests are understood to have resulted from intelligence supplied by British security forces including MI5.
Italian police said the men, aged between 28 and 41, had contact with al-Qaâida suspects in this country.
In contrast to Britain â where anti-terror operations are carried out with utmost secrecy and details of arrest given days later â an Italian TV crew were invited along on the raid. Key Clue there folks. IF you find out about raids in the Uk, its because the UK govt says you can hear about it. The fact that you dont hear about them is not evidence that they are not happening.
TV footage showed one of the gang yelling âItâs a fit up, itâs a fit up,â before being bundled into a police car and driven away at high speed. no jokes about the guys name being "patsy" or "lee harvey"
A source from British security forces, who are in constant liaison with European partners, said: âThis is a triumph for intelligence co-operation between different countries.
âWe believe we have taken out a major al-Qaâida gang looking to target this country.â One down, how many to go.....
A kilo of C4 was found stuffed inside a sock under a pile of dirty laundry.
The explosive, the same type used in the devastating Bali nightclub bombing last year, is a military substance developed by the US Army and is not commonly available.
On one map a Nato base at Verona was highlighted with the letters âBXBâ and the historic cathedral in Padua with a âBâ.
Police believe these meant they were potential terrorist targets. There were no marks on the London maps but other documents contained details of churches and foreign embassies.
Documents written in Arabic addressed to men in Britain were also found.
A police source in the town of Rovigo said: âC4 is very difficult to come by casually and therefore very difficult to understand how these men say they donât know how it got there. This warrants a serious and thorough investigation.â
The five were named as Anro Lahrajh, 28, Kamal Ben Reddad, 33, Moustapha el Bouhali, 33, Reduane Bhoughazi, 36, and Abdullah Mounder, 41.
Police sources described Bhoughazi, a well-known figure in the areaâs Muslim community, as the gang leader.
A lawyer acting for the men, Sofia Tiengo, said they so far faced charges only of possessing explosives â which carries up to eight years in prison.
Today they were expected to be brought before a judge.
Later it emerged that one of the gang, Lahrajh, had been held last year with four other Moroccans after a handgun with its serial number rubbed off was found.
Italian justice minister Roberto Castelli said the arrests were proof that his countryâs commitment to the war on terrorism was ânot just theoretical but produces resultsâ.
In October cops held three Egyptians in the port of Anzio after finding explosive and a map of a US military cemetery.
Morocco is believed to have a number of al-Qaâida cells in operation.
Last year three Moroccan-based Saudi fanatics were arrested after planning suicide attacks on British and American warships.
Last night British terrorism expert Chris Dobson said a kilo of C4 would be enough to blow a car to pieces and kill or injure anyone nearby.
But he added that it was normally used as an âinitiatorâ to trigger a small, intense explosion and then set off a much bigger bomb made from weedkiller or fertiliser â as happened in the Bali blast which killed 190.
Posted by: Frank Martin ||
01/23/2003 09:58 pm ||
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Only two spoke any Italian. Damn! If it had been in England the following joke would have been apropos;
Q: Why is an al Qaeda terrorist like a cue ball?
A: The harder you hit it the more English you get.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov is preparing a list of terrorist organizations to be banned, drawing on similar blacklists elsewhere, including that of the Council of the European Union that includes Basque ETA and the Irish Republican Army groups as well as Hezbollah and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade from the Middle East. The Russians are expecting that their own blacklist will get equal recognition elsewhere, which may be tricky when it comes to some Chechen figures such as Akhmed Zakayev, currently fighting extradition to Russia in the British courts. If the Brits accept the Russian list, then Russia will expect the international financial controls against terrorism to come into play -- which would mean freezing the bank accounts of actress Vanessa Redgrave, who is hosting Zakayev and helping to funds his legal defense. The Russian's are quick learners, aren't they? Instead of just killing people, sic the lawyers on um.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 02:21 pm ||
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I like the idea of freezing V. Redgrave's bank account! If she wants to consort with terrorists, she should be treated like one.
Turkish authorities have expressed their concern over the US having had talks with the terrorist group the PKK-KADEK.
January 22â Turkish intelligence sources have confirmed that some senior US officials had held talks with representatives of the outlawed PKK-KADEK, which has conducted an 18 year long campaign of separatist terror against Turkey.
It is believed that the contacts took place in Northern Iraq. Washington has denied that any talks were conducted by government officials, saying that those who had met with PKK-KADEK members had no link with the US government.
Ankara has warned that such meetings are contradictory to the US-led international campaign to combat terrorism, launched after the September 11 2001 attacks in the US. The issue of the meetings was brought up during the recent visit of the US head of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, to Ankara by the Chief of the Turkish General Staff, General Hilmi Ãzkok.
Posted by: Murat ||
01/23/2003 07:56 am ||
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Sorry I have mistakenly dashed a part instead of underlining it.
Posted by: Murat ||
01/23/2003 2:06 Comments ||
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OK, now that we've quite clearly implied to Ankara the negative implications of noncompliance with the will of the United States, let's see if this will cost us less in the final aid package...
Posted by: Brian ||
01/23/2003 7:02 Comments ||
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#3
I have an unanswered question: Has the PKK-KADEK exclusively targeted military installations and not civilians? (And I don't mean the occasional civilian killed by a bullet shot at a Turkish soldier). I view a terrorist as someone who targets civilians to induce a change in civilian attitude toward the government or toward the terrorist. A freedom fighter sees civilians as potential allies and a future constituency that they do not dare antagonize, while viewing soldiers and military installations as legitimate targets. Government officials, insofar as they are part of the chain of command, are also legitimate targets (I.e. if they can be tried for war crimes, then they're legitimate targets.)
I sincerely believe that there are terrorists, AND that there are freedom fighters. I propose the above as operational definitions when classifying a violent group.
Thus, if the PKK has exclusively targeted civilians, then nobody should be contacting them about anything other than telling them to stop, least of all us. However, if the PKK has striven to fight fair and avoid civilians, then Turkey is using terrorist rhetoric to eliminate a foe with whom we may wish to contact: either as a means for convincing Turkey that they have a lot to lose if they don't cooperate, or at least to make clear to the PKK that our soldiers are just passing through, and to secure an agreement not to engage us. Turkey may not LIKE the PKK, but if they don't fit the operational definition of a terrorist organization, they shouldn't expect us to treat the PKK like one.
#4
ptah - a quibble - even if they're not terrorists, I would call them guerillas, or partisans. Freedom fighter is rather charged, and given that we dont know what kind of govt such groups would really set up if they won, id hold back on using it.
#5
To Ptah
Yes of course they have attacked civilians, thatâs the definition of terrorism. The PKK has never fought fair and targeted mainly defenceless civilians with suicide bombings etc. The pkk-Kadek is listed as terror organisation by the US department as well. The US has defined the PKK-Kadek as terror organisation, see http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2001/html/10252.htm
Posted by: Murat ||
01/23/2003 8:50 Comments ||
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#6
Liberalhawk: I stand corrected. "partisian" is the better term.
Murat: We agree on definitions. I also followed the link. They claim to have "reformed" in 2000, which I would take with a grain of salt when it comes to any organization with the word "people" in it.
That settles it for me. We still don't know for sure if this is Turkish blather to gain a bargaining edge or the truth. If the latter, and it's NOT the CIA feeling things out, then shame on us.
#7
Ptah: I donât find it likely to be it a blather to gain a bargaining edge (I would if it was only a newspaper article) since the MIT has confirmed it. The intelligence services does not confirm gossips, they only confirm firm evidences.
Actually it does not surprise me since services like the CIA in general do use such underground and even dirty practices to achieve their goals. But it does disappoint me as a Turk to know that the intelligence of an allied country do business with a terror group against my country. I think no one in the US would appreciate it if the Turkish intelligence would have some kind of business with the Al Qaeda either, it just gives me a negative feeling I am dissapointed.
Posted by: Murat ||
01/24/2003 3:04 Comments ||
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#8
And I wouldn't blame you one bit, Murat. I see Israel in the same boat with our attitude of "Our terrorists are worse than yours, but you should negotiate with yours." And like Hezbollah, your terrorists will eventually become OUR terrorists.
#9
Huh... before being disappointed and all that, anybody knows what were they talking about?
The U.S. wants to talk to Iraqi generals right now, and tells them they'll die slowly if they attempt to fight. If it's the same kind of "talks" with the PKK, I don't see anything wrong with it.
#10
Ptah: I donât think that negotiating with terrorists is such a good idea, if then why does the US not try negotiating with the Al Qaeda? You see, there is the wrong attitude in the whole world âas long as terror doesnât hit me, it is not such a bad thing, and maybe I can regard terror also as some kind of freedom fightingâ. If you know that due the Al Qaeda there are 5000 victims and due to the PKK there are about 30.000 victims, you could understand why negotiating with terrorist is the last thing the Turkish administration would think about.
Caton: If the Turkish chief of General staff is issuing his discomfort to the US chief of General staff, do you believe that your noble assumptions are correct?
Posted by: Murat ||
01/24/2003 9:06 Comments ||
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Three soldiers slain in Hamas ambush in Hebron hills
By MARGOT DUDKEVITCH
Two Hamas gunmen shot and killed three Israeli soldiers in an apparent close range ambush south of the West Bank city of Hebron on Thursday evening, the IDF said. Hebron's been asking for the fist of God (caterpillar style) lately - hope they get itIn a statement, the military said that Palestinians opened fire on the three soldiers, who were on a foot patrol near the Beit Haggai intersection. The attackers were also on foot.
Initial investigations reveal that the two Palestinians lay in ambush on the south side of the junction â also known as the Kavassim (sheep) junction - and opened fire on the three soldiers from the Lavie battalion. The three were critically wounded, medics attempted to resuscitate them but to no avail.
"We received a report of a shooting with casualties said," said Dvora, a Magen David Adom medic. "To our sorrow, there was nothing we could do when we arrived, except pronounce them dead," she said adding that the three were apparently shot at close range, riddling the bodies with bullets.
A senior IDF source said that the three were guarding the junction that was known as a dangerous location. The officer also said that it appears that the terrorists made off with the weapons of the three men. House -to House crushing search should be in orderHamas claimed responsibility for the attack, issuing a leaflet saying the shooting was retaliation for attacks by Israeli settlers and the military against Palestinians and their property in Hebron, known as a Hamas stronghold. (formerly a standing City with an economy)Hundreds of IDF troops streamed to the area to search for the terror cell. Residents in nearby Kiryat Arba reported seeing dozens of flares lighting up the night sky. Channel 1 Television said the attackers apparently managed to flee to the nearby Arab village of Yatta. Former village of Yatta Yatta.....(start Seinfeld joke)
Israel Radio said that a patrol of soldiers encountered the terrorists after the attack and were fired upon before the attackers again fled. There were no injuries to the patrol.
The attack took place in a sparsely populated area of the West Bank, south of the city of Hebron, which has been a focus of violence over more than two years of Palestinian-Israeli fighting.
On Nov. 16, Palestinian gunmen ambushed Israeli soldiers and security guards in Hebron, killing 12, in the bloodiest incident there in years.
On Friday, Palestinians shot and killed an Israeli settler in a house just outside Hebron.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/23/2003 08:21 pm ||
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The citizens of Iraq received a taste of democracy in action as the news briefing today by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Richard Myers was broadcast via Commando Solo aircraft to Baghdad. Rumsfeld, speaking at the Foreign Press Center here, said the department is doing this "because the truth matters."
We'll have won when Iraq gets a taste of "civil liberties in action." I think they're concentrating on the means, not the end. If democracy is all they're pushing, they could end up with something along the lines of Algeria or Pakistan...
He said the Iraqi people should know and hear the truth. U.S. Central Command used Commando Solo II aircraft to broadcast into Afghanistan at the start of operations in that nation. Commando Solo aircraft are modified C-130s capable of broadcasting radio and television on a real time basis. The aircraft are part of the 193rd Special Operations Wing of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard. They are based at the Harrisburg International Airport. DoD officials will say only that the crews are operating "somewhere in the Gulf."
More good guys who've gone to do their duty. I hope somebody's keeping an eye on their jobs for them...
Rumsfeld said broadcasting the news briefings shows democracy and freedom at work. Public officials in democracies are held accountable and must explain their actions to the people, he said. "Every week, General Myers and I stand in the Pentagon in front of independent journalists — professionals — and try to answer their questions," Rumsfeld said. "Some of the questions are tough, many are insightful and all add to the information available to the American people and the people of the world."
Guess he's using "democracy" generically to cover liberties like freedom of the press. But I still think they should be stressing the citizen's right to be left alone...
Rumsfeld said that once the reporters leave the studio they do not fear for their lives. "They know that they and their families will not be threatened and that no one will be beaten or punished." Truth matters in a democracy, he said, it is the foundation of justice. He contrasted that with Saddam Hussein's regime, which, he said, is built on "terror, intimidation and lies." In 1991, Hussein agreed to give up his weapons of mass destruction. "For more than a decade, his regime has refused to live up to his promises," Rumsfeld said. "Instead, it has fed the world a steady diet of untruths and deceptions." This is too cute for words. They can watch the briefings as we describe how we are going to take them apart.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 05:50 pm ||
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When Commando Solo shows up, Daisy Cutter and her friend Spectre are usually not too far behind. Might be time to make those travel plans if your a resident of "somewhere in the Gulf".
Spain said publicly for the first time on Thursday it would allow the United States to use Spanish bases to support a possible military strike on Iraq. "In the event a military intervention in Iraq becomes inevitable, the government will not shy away from its political convictions," Foreign Minister Ana Palacio told a parliamentary committee. "(The government) will also take all measures stemming from its responsibilities to friendly and allied countries. Of course, in this area, I include, as in the past, authorization for the use of Spanish bases," she said. Torrejon AB and Rota NB are important for refueling and logistics. Thank you, we won't forget.
Spain's support for the United States came as Germany and France rejected U.S. criticism that they were isolated within Europe in their effort to avoid war in Iraq. Spain noticed that, and stepped right up. No love lost there.
Spain's center-right government, which took up a seat this month as a rotating member of the U.N. Security Council, has backed the United States in the Iraq crisis although opinion polls point to strong opposition among ordinary Spaniards. Speaking to reporters later, Palacio refused to be drawn on whether Spain would support an attack on Iraq without a U.N. resolution authorizing force and whether Spain would allow use of its troops in any conflict. Remember, it was Spanish troops that stopped the NK shipment of Scuds. Bet we don't know half of that story.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 02:47 pm ||
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The Spaniards aren't stoopid. They can see what the mighty EU has in store for them - they'll be relegated to being an economic backwater and tax cow while France and Germany grab all the goodies. I think this has been part of "The Plan", right up to having Spain become a SC member just prior to the start of hostilities.
#3
As someone of French Basque extraction (via emigres to Nevada)- I've been following the ETA/Basque situation, and there may be a little payback from Spain to France over their non-pursuit of ETA over the Pyranees
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/23/2003 20:45 Comments ||
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They know what a terrorist situation is like. Unlike France, It seems to me they want to do something about it. Bravo!
Within the next two weeks, Central Command will conduct a full-scale operational level run-through of the actual U.S. battle plan to be used in toppling Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, well-placed administration officials tell UPI. The run-through, a huge computer simulation, will take place inside several buildings in Kuwait, supervised by the leading U.S. ground commander, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, of the U.S. Army Forces Central Command -- Arcent -- based at Fort McPherson, Ga. McKiernan is former deputy chief of staff of military planning for the U.S. Army. The run-through will consist of three parts: the deployment of U.S. ground and air forces against Iraqi targets, an opposing force acting to thwart them, and an umpire force to monitor the proceedings. The purpose is to ensure that all links between various elements of command and control function perfectly, and correct any glitches. The sources added that the 101st Airborne Division and the 1st Cavalry Division are about to be deployed to the region. The role of OPFORCE will be played by the Iraqi Armed Forces in their final performance.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 02:35 pm ||
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We could find Iraqi Armed Forces weapons pointed in Saddam's direction. Iraqi defense plans were leaked to an Egyptian newspaper, last August. Find them at:
After a dozen deaths, waves of strikes and a general strike expected Friday in Haiti against the American-installed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, all that the poor island needs is a return to the really bad old days. But it could be coming. Exiled dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier (son of the infamous Papa Doc) has announced his "firm intention to return as soon as conditions allow" to the hapless country that he fled 17 years ago. Haiti can hardly wait. Better let the Coast Guard know, I see a increase in boat traffic coming.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 02:31 pm ||
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In Haiti, what difference does it make who's in charge? I mean has it turned into some Carribean paradise with Aristide in charge? Hate to say it, but some people just get what they deserve...
#3
I always find it (sadly) amusing that Haiti is such a backward, horrible nation while the eastern half of the same island - the Dominican Republic - is light years ahead of it's western neighbor! It really goes to show the difference a function government has over a greedy and incompetant dictatorship.
Peter Ackerman's International Center for Non-Violent Conflict, whose training in civic action helped local demonstrators bring down Slobodan Milosevic's government in Serbia, is being flooded with requests from intriguing places for similar teachings. The center's courses and its documentary films by Steven York, "A Force More Powerful" and "Bringing Down A Dictator," have been translated into various languages including Arabic, Farsi and Chinese, and beamed by exiles into Iraq and Iran by satellite TV. Video cassettes of the courses are also being distributed discreetly into Iraq, Iran, Myanmar, Tibet and China. Do not mock this stuff. It helped lead to the Iraq's first peaceful protest against the Iraqi regime. After Saddam "emptied" his jails last year, the disquieting fact was how many of the prisoners never emerged. The regime seems incapable of either crushing or ignoring the protest demos by Iraq's "Mothers of the Disappeared" -- echoing the similar demos in Argentina that helped undermine the military junta. How about dropping these tapes on Saudi Arabia?
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 02:26 pm ||
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Abu Mussab al Zarqawi â a Jordanian â was recently accused by Jordanian officials of masterminding the assassination of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman in late October. And Zarqawi has been linked to some of the men arrested recently in London and accused of possessing the deadly poison ricin. But it is his travels, especially in the past year, that have attracted the attention of intelligence officials.
Zarqawi is the head of al-Tawhid, a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda...
Zarqawi, coalition intelligence sources said, left Afghanistan when the Taliban regime was toppled. From there, said the sources, he traveled through Iran to Baghdad, then to Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Iraq, where Ansar al-Islam, a group linked to al Qaeda, operates. Some in the U.S. intelligence community have questioned whether officials in these countries were aware of Zarqawi's presence, because he might have been using aliases. Reasonable, these guys have so many fake names even they have a hard time remembering who they are.
But there was a report in October on his presence in Baghdad this summer...
But former CIA operative Robert Baer, who spent years in the Middle East, disagreed. "Somebody at some level had to know he was there. Now obviously I can't tell you whether Saddam knew, but somebody in an official line of responsibility for customs and immigration knew he came into the country," Baer said. "Palestinians, other Arabs, even Iraqis go through a very tight screen when they come into that country. Documents are looked at. You just can't do it [sneak in]. It is a police state." You have to be a officially approved terrorist to get in.
Coalition intelligence sources say Zarqawi also traveled to Syria and Lebanon, moving with seeming ease between those countries, setting up terrorist cells. These sources say Zarqawi is believed now to be in Iran. According to U.S. sources, Zarqawi was the person to whom President Bush referred in an October 8 speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, when he sought to point to a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq. "Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks," Bush said.
Tawhid, which is Zarqawi's operation, is reported to be a part of the Islamist alliance making up Ansar al-Islam, though its area of operations ranges outside that to which Ansar is (reportedly) confined, to include Europe...
Now, U.S. sources have linked Zarqawi to the arrests in London of several men accused of possessing ricin. Sources also said evidence was found in al Qaeda safe houses in Afghanistan of the organization's interest in ricin. Zarqawi was convicted in Jordan in absentia of planning to bomb tourist sites and hotels during millennium celebrations as part of a series of al Qaeda attack plots worldwide. He evaded arrest and escaped to Afghanistan. Baer called Zarqawi a very serious threat who manages to bring together very different terrorist groups, including groups representing both Sunni and Shia Muslims. "The names are irrelevant. I say bin Laden could die today and it's going to make no difference to the organization. Somebody's going to carry on. Zarqawi will. He knows where to get money," he said.
That's the prime qualifier for being a terrorist mastermind: knowing where to get the money...
Coalition intelligence sources said Zarqawi's primary focus seems to have been planning attacks in Jordan. Salem Sa'ed Salem bin Suweid, a Libyan national, and Yasser Fathi Ibraheem, a Jordanian, were arrested and have confessed to carrying out the Foley assassination at Zarqawi's direction, according to Jordanian authorities. The Jordanian officials said the men got money and weapons from Zarqawi, who was reportedly planning more attacks. The trial of bin Suweid and Ibraheem is expected to begin in Jordan in the next few weeks. When it does, there could be even more important clues about Zarqawi -- and his connections to other countries in the region, including Iraq. A connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq would be nice to have, we can look through the files at Sammy's HQ when we get to Baghdad.
I don't think the connection's being to be from the Iraqi gummint directly to Binny. The way it looks, the connection's through Tawhid, which seems to have incestuous fraternal relations with Sammy's Ba'athists and with Bashir's in Syria as well. Tawhid links to Ansar, and Qaeda controls Jund al-Islam, which is either an alias for Ansar, or a majority stockholder — Zubaydah used to be its controller back in the good old Talidays.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 06:14 pm ||
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By CONDOLEEZZA RICE
Eleven weeks after the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a resolution demanding â yet again â that Iraq disclose and disarm all its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, it is appropriate to ask, "Has Saddam Hussein finally decided to voluntarily disarm?" Unfortunately, the answer is a clear and resounding no.
These will probably be the arguments that Bush makes next week...
There is no mystery to voluntary disarmament. Countries that decide to disarm lead inspectors to weapons and production sites, answer questions before they are asked, state publicly and often the intention to disarm and urge their citizens to cooperate. The world knows from examples set by South Africa, Ukraine and Kazakhstan what it looks like when a government decides that it will cooperatively give up its weapons of mass destruction. The critical common elements of these efforts include a high-level political commitment to disarm, national initiatives to dismantle weapons programs, and full cooperation and transparency.
First we compliment, and show what the expected is...
In 1989 South Africa made the strategic decision to dismantle its covert nuclear weapons program. It destroyed its arsenal of seven weapons and later submitted to rigorous verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Inspectors were given complete access to all nuclear facilities (operating and defunct) and the people who worked there. They were also presented with thousands of documents detailing, for example, the daily operation of uranium enrichment facilities as well as the construction and dismantling of specific weapons. Ukraine and Kazakhstan demonstrated a similar pattern of cooperation when they decided to rid themselves of the nuclear weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles and heavy bombers inherited from the Soviet Union. With significant assistance from the United States â warmly accepted by both countries â disarmament was orderly, open and fast. Nuclear warheads were returned to Russia. Missile silos and heavy bombers were destroyed or dismantled â once in a ceremony attended by the American and Russian defense chiefs. In one instance, Kazakhstan revealed the existence of a ton of highly enriched uranium and asked the United States to remove it, lest it fall into the wrong hands.
Okay... Now that's what Sammy's thugs should be doing. What've they actually been doing?
Iraq's behavior could not offer a starker contrast. Instead of a commitment to disarm, Iraq has a high-level political commitment to maintain and conceal its weapons, led by Saddam Hussein and his son Qusay, who controls the Special Security Organization, which runs Iraq's concealment activities. Instead of implementing national initiatives to disarm, Iraq maintains institutions whose sole purpose is to thwart the work of the inspectors.
Sammy has a gun fixation, always has, from the time he was a little boy. That's why he's taped holding his manhood gun so often. Bombs and missiles and the ability to kill large numbers of people represent an extension of that. If he wasn't a bloody-handed dictator, he might make an interesting inmate at some long-term treatment facility. I don't think they'd mainstream him, even with today's lax standards...
And instead of full cooperation and transparency, Iraq has filed a false declaration to the United Nations that amounts to a 12,200-page lie.
For example, the declaration fails to account for or explain Iraq's efforts to get uranium from abroad, its manufacture of specific fuel for ballistic missiles it claims not to have, and the gaps previously identified by the United Nations in Iraq's accounting for more than two tons of the raw materials needed to produce thousands of gallons of anthrax and other biological weapons.
Iraq's declaration even resorted to unabashed plagiarism, with lengthy passages of United Nations reports copied word-for-word (or edited to remove any criticism of Iraq) and presented as original text. Far from informing, the declaration is intended to cloud and confuse the true picture of Iraq's arsenal. It is a reflection of the regime's well-earned reputation for dishonesty and constitutes a material breach of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, which set up the current inspections program.
Unlike other nations that have voluntarily disarmed â and in defiance of Resolution 1441 â Iraq is not allowing inspectors "immediate, unimpeded, unrestricted access" to facilities and people involved in its weapons program. As a recent inspection at the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist demonstrated, and other sources confirm, material and documents are still being moved around in farcical shell games. The regime has blocked free and unrestricted use of aerial reconnaissance.
The inspections represent nothing more than a tool to Sammy, to buy him time. Using that time, he expects to find a way out of the corneer Bush (and Rice, et al.) have him backed into. I think he's really relying on his fellow Arabs to put things off until I dunno what â maybe the next round of elections. Bush, meanwhile, has moved the greater part of our military force into position, at great cost in time and money and public approval. If he's slickied this time there won't be a next time; the public won't support him because it won't believe in him. The game the Iraqis and the Arabs are playing is pretty intricate, but it does have an ultimate objective, which is preservation of the status quo.
The list of people involved with weapons of mass destruction programs, which the United Nations required Iraq to provide, ends with those who worked in 1991 â even though the United Nations had previously established that the programs continued after that date. Interviews with scientists and weapons officials identified by inspectors have taken place only in the watchful presence of the regime's agents. Given the duplicitous record of the regime, its recent promises to do better can only be seen as an attempt to stall for time.
See previous comment... I love it when she says the same things I do. It makes me feel smart...
Last week's finding by inspectors of 12 chemical warheads not included in Iraq's declaration was particularly troubling. In the past, Iraq has filled this type of warhead with sarin â a deadly nerve agent used by Japanese terrorists in 1995 to kill 12 Tokyo subway passengers and sicken thousands of others. Richard Butler, the former chief United Nations arms inspector, estimates that if a larger type of warhead that Iraq has made and used in the past were filled with VX (an even deadlier nerve agent) and launched at a major city, it could kill up to one million people. Iraq has also failed to provide United Nations inspectors with documentation of its claim to have destroyed its VX stockpiles.
Many questions remain about Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and arsenal â and it is Iraq's obligation to provide answers. It is failing in spectacular fashion. By both its actions and its inactions, Iraq is proving not that it is a nation bent on disarmament, but that it is a nation with something to hide. Iraq is still treating inspections as a game. It should know that time is running out. You go, girl!
Bush is going to say something long these lines next week. I've no idea what's going to lead the the ultimatum we present Iraq â Sammy's probably spending good money that could go for beer trying to find somebody who does have an idea. But I'm 99 percent sure it's going to happen, and the status quo in the Mideast is going to realign drastically.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
01/23/2003 12:05 pm ||
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If an ultimatum is givin to Saddam. Give us large quantities of VX, Sarin, and a significant number of scuds, or we go to war in a week.
#3
The Bush strategy at work again. Let your critics exhaust themselves in speculative arguements and then unload the big guns. Don't waste fire until you're ready to move. Bravo Condi!
The French and Germans are going to find out what the Democrats have ruefully discovered. Bush is about to change the terms of debate, from if to how.
Posted by: john ||
01/23/2003 14:12 Comments ||
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I do love smart women. I wonder if she's, you know, taken.
Posted by: Bent Pyramid ||
01/23/2003 17:43 Comments ||
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Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz 2008!
Posted by: Brian ||
01/23/2003 18:14 Comments ||
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OPPOSITION within Iraq to President Saddam Husseinâs regime has surged in the past few weeks, with anti-Saddam graffiti and literature appearing in areas supposedly under Baghdadâs control, the Foreign Office said yesterday. Citing interviews with Iraqi asylum-seekers arriving in Britain, officials claimed that the modest but significant unrest in central Iraq has unnerved the authorities, who have taken steps to shore up their flagging support and to crush dissent. The evidence of the asylum-seekers was first alluded to by Tony Blair on Tuesday, when he told MPs that the pressure on Baghdad was beginning to show. âThere is no doubt at all that as a result of the pressure there, the regime in Iraq and Saddamâs immediate entourage, there is evidence that they are weakening, they are rattled about the build-up of forces,â he said.
Yesterday General Richard Myers, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the Pentagon had also picked up reports of dissent. âThere are some indications about unrest in some of the Iraqi leadership. But just hints. We have not seen anything (about) purges by Saddam,â he said.
Yesterday the Foreign Office fleshed out the claims. Officials insisted that a consistent pattern had emerged from scores of interviews with refugees and defectors from Iraq, who have arrived in their thousands in Britain over the past months. Most of the refugees are Iraqi Kurds from the north, but also include former civilian members of the regime from central Iraq, the bedrock of Saddamâs support.
âA lot of them are coming out and saying there is increased dissent in Iraq â for example more anti-regime leaflets being circulated, more underground activity,â one official, who described the accounts as âconsistent and credibleâ, said.
Anti-Saddam slogans, such as âFor how long will the Iraqi people sleep?â, have been daubed on statues and photographs of the Iraqi leader. Leaflets predicting Saddamâs downfall have also been circulated. The campaign of dissent, which is punishable by death for anyone caught, has apparently been co-ordinated by two opposition groups emboldened by the prospect of a looming war. The Iraqi authorities are said to have cracked down on suspected opponents. But they have also attempted to buy the loyalty of people close to the regime with payments and increased rations of food.
Toby Dodge, an expert on Iraq at Warwick University, said that the reports were credible and were supported by independent sources inside the country. âThere is now a strong sense that the regimeâs downfall is coming,â Mr Dodge said. In particular, he said that the Iraqi Communist Party, which was purged by the ruling Baathists 30 years ago, has an active network in the country. Last night Iraqâs Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, ruled out the possibility of Saddam leaving his country to avoid a US-led war. âHe will continue leading Iraq until the last minute of his life,â he told ABC News in America. Time's almost up, Sammy.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 11:46 am ||
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We gotta watch the commies, or it'll be China all over again.
#2
However many hints there are about unrest, I'd be sure to broadcast a few more. I'd even make up a few and slip them to my favorite pet reporter. Sammy's antennae have to be quivering like jello over all the reports he's getting, and I'd like to help him get rattled a little more.
Assuming I was in charge and had a pet reporter, of course :-)
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/23/2003 18:22 Comments ||
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I hope Bush is going to be watching everybody in sight when Sammy is nothing but a lingering odor.
There are going to be Ba'athists in Syria and Libya, sitting around plotting comebacks and dire revenge. The Shiites are going to find the ayatollahs in Iran, oh, so eager to assist them in establishing Iraq as an "Islamic democracy." The Commies (and the commies) are going to be looking for a chance at five-year planning in lockstep with NKor and Cuba and whatever other socialist powerhouses there are left in the world.
Meanwhile, the Soddies are going to be scrambling to minimize the effects of the departure of the status quo by supporting whatever they can find as the most authoritarian trend, the while pushing the joys of being a wahab. Qaeda and its surrogates are going to be going for the Islamist vote, and there will probably be a bunch of Paleos headed into the rubble to try and raise their own intifada.
That's only a partial list - it doesn't include the Kurds, the Assyrians and Chaldeans, various Bedouins, and the relgious conflicts that are sub-boiling at the moment. It's going to be a very interesting time...
Posted by: Fred ||
01/23/2003 18:23 Comments ||
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#4
we're making a list, checking it twice
gonna find out who's naughty and nice
Rice n' Rummy's coming to town
(sung to any Belafonte tune that doesn't gag you)
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/23/2003 20:33 Comments ||
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U.N. weapons inspectors will deliver their long-awaited assessment of Iraq's compliance over the past two months in speeches, not formal reports, and won't present samples taken during their search, the top inspector said Thursday.
"It's an update, not a separate formal report but my speech will be written and available to the council," Hans Blix told The Associated Press after meeting his board of directors at U.N. headquarters. Blix, who heads the U.N Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, will brief the council on Monday along with his counterpart, Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Monday's report to the council will be crucial for the United States to any decision to press for military action against Iraq. Under U.N Security Council Resolution 1441, crafted by Washington, Iraq could be found in "material breach" â diplomatic language which could open the door to war â if it fails to cooperate with inspectors and disarm.
Blix said his speech isn't written yet but that it will build on an assessment he presented to the council on Jan. 9 in which he criticized Iraq for failing to provide pro-active cooperation and fresh responses to hundreds of questions inspectors have on the fate of Iraq's former biological, chemical and nuclear programs. At the time Blix said inspectors hadn't found any "smoking gun," in Iraq.
Since then, his teams have uncovered 16 warheads which he said Iraq didn't adequately account for in its 12,000-page arms declaration. Inspectors also uncovered some 3,000 pages of documents at the home of an Iraqi scientists, some of which Blix said should have been mentioned in the weapons declaration as well. Blix said Wednesday that tests were still being conducted on some of the warheads. None of the results however will be detailed in Blix's report to the council Monday.
"This is far too technical a matter to bring up unless we find something sensational in a sample but I have not had such a report yet," Blix said. Why even bother?
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 11:30 am ||
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A question: Can Blix also be found in material breach of the resolution, in that he is not doing what the resolution is telling him what he's supposed to do?
At first, the 16 warheads DID look, even to me, to be a small thing. However, the point of the inspectors is to serve as an auditing group: The declaration said there no stuff at locations X, Y, and Z, so the inspectors are verifying that there are no weapons at X, Y, and Z. If there are weapons at W, and the report doesn't say ANYTHING about W, then there's nothing to verify.
The original 12 warheads are analogous to a firm's books not balancing, to the order of 12 cents. 12 cents may be small change to us, but it upsets financial auditors to no end, since that's the trigger for a required search for any evidence that the the books were cooked. Financial software goes through all kinds of mathematical contortions to properly round, handle, and account for fractional pennies.
We're talking about a DICTATORSHIP here, people. Would they knowingly leave their controls on their own WMD in such a bad shape that they are risking that their stuff would be pinched by their internal opposition and used against them?. Forget the yammering that they're a third world country: We're talking about Saddam being potentially attacked by WMD stolen from his own arsenal. You can bet your bottom dollar that ensuring personal survival is item #1 on every dictator's to-do list.
#2
Slowly dawning on Blix that his little show is over,hijacked by the French and that a speech may at least get him another 15 minutes on CNN.
Posted by: john ||
01/23/2003 14:27 Comments ||
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"This is far too technical a matter to bring up unless we find something sensational in a sample but I have not had such a report yet," Blix said.
This is like finding vacated medfly pupa cocoons and medfly shit all over without seeing an actual medly and insisting that there's no evidence of a medfly infestation.
There are two distinct elements to both UNMOVIC and IAEA verification. The first is "accuracy" (is inventory A at location X?) the second is "completeness" (are there undeclared inventories?). Both accuracy and completeness have to be addressed before a conclusion can be drawn by either organisation.
Posted by: Russell ||
01/23/2003 16:40 Comments ||
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Russel:
Accuracy and completeness are also factors when auditors go over a set of books. When the books don't "balance", the cause is usually deficiencies in one or both.
I still feel my analogy stands, although different terms may be used. The model for disarmament, with examples, was given in Condolezza Rice's speech above. Iraq emulates none of them.
The resolution demanded a report, and they knew that the report was due and when it was due.
The fear of war has led a few embassies in Baghdad to send dependents home or to shut down completely, diplomats in Iraq said Thursday. "There have been general discussions about evacuation in the diplomatic community, but the decisions are individual ones by individual embassies," said Ambassador Manzar Shafiq of Pakistan, according to AP. Diplomats in only a minority of the estimated 40 embassies have any family members residing here, he conveyed. The Pakistani official said several south and east Asian embassies have shut down partly or completely, and other missions are considering evacuating in early to mid-February. Don't wait until the last minute, folks
He noted that Baghdad ambassadors are waiting to see the content and reaction to the U.N. weapons inspectors' report to the U.N. Security Council next Monday, when they will assess their progress and Iraqi cooperation in the hunt for any forbidden Iraqi arms. That report may determine how much international support Washington would have for a military option. In New Delhi, India's Foreign Ministry said its diplomats are not leaving Baghdad. Russia said Thursday that it has made no decision to withdraw diplomats or their dependents from Baghdad. Meanwhile, Japan has issued a warning for its citizens in Baghdad to evacuate the city. It has also recommended all others to put off travelling to the Iraqi capital. Japan's Foreign Ministry has already warned Japanese they should evacuate all areas of Iraq outside the capital. "Tensions in the Persian Gulf are rising over the inspections regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. It is unclear what will transpire, but the situation may deteriorate suddenly," it said. Now that is a understatement!
"We recommend evacuating voluntarily, given obstacles to leaving Iraq may arise due to a sudden change in circumstances," it added. "Roads and bridges may be congested with burning vehicles, and there is expected to be heavy air traffic causing flight delays."
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 11:04 am ||
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I hope the Chinese embassy has taken an extended holiday.
Iraq's neighbors met Thursday to discuss ways to avert a war and urged Baghdad to cooperate more with U.N. arms inspectors.
Turkey has proposed the meeting adopt a joint declaration calling on Iraq to fully cooperate with U.N. arms inspectors and declare that it will not develop weapons of mass destruction in the future, a Turkish diplomat told AP. I think we already did that, didn't we?
Delegations from Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan â as well as Egypt met in a former Ottoman palace overlooking the Bosporus. The foreign ministers of the countries were expected to formally open the meeting in the palace later Thursday.
Before the talks even started, diplomats from participating countries played down hopes of a breakthrough. The summit was downgraded to foreign minister level and expectations were lowered after Arab nations accused Turkey of failing to consult its partners properly and of using the conference as a way of appeasing its own domestic audience.
âI am very sceptical about the results in Istanbul,â one Arab diplomat told The Times newspaper. âI doubt whether they will emerge with anything more than the same public declarations.â
"We only have one item on the agenda and that is how to help Iraq avoid a military strike," said Mahmoud Mubarak, Egypt's assistant foreign minister. He said the delegates would be asking Iraq to comply with U.N. weapons resolutions and "we are ... asking inspectors to do their work in an honest and impartial way." "There was a solid display of unity of purpose," said Yusuf Buluc, a Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman after a morning preparatory meeting. Buluc said the purpose was "to secure the best possible means to avoid war" and to resolve the crisis peacefully.
One Arab diplomat, according to AP, said the participants may discuss sending an envoy to Baghdad. Turkish and Arab diplomats have stressed that the delegates will not call for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to step down and go into exile as a way of avoiding war. "Such issues are not on our agenda," Turkish Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis said. "We do not consider it appropriate for a state to develop such scenarios for another state." "Somebody might ask us to do the same thing, and we can't have that."
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 10:56 am ||
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The US State Department says the US feels it has enough authority to strike Iraq without going to the United Nations for a second vote on the issue. US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage says the United States has still not decided as to whether it will seek a second UN vote or not.
"We believe that there is sufficient authority to move now, without a second resolution," Mr Armitage told Moscow Echo radio. "No decision has yet been made as to whether or not to seek a second resolution and certainly we will want to have a discussion in New York at the Security Council of some sort after we have hear what Mr Blix and Mr El Baradei have to say on the 27th [of January]." I think the UN really doesn't want to have to vote on this.
Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed El Baradei, are due to give a progress report on the first two months of inspections in Iraq to the UN Security Council on Monday.
Mr Armitage made the comments after two days of talks with top Russian foreign ministry officials on issues ranging from the joint war on terror to the crises surrounding North Korea and Iraq. Russia has repeatedly argued only a second UN Security Council resolution can authorise the use of force against Iraq should President Saddam Hussein's regime fail to disarm.
It has also lashed out against the US's threats of unilateral action against Moscow's Soviet-era Middle East ally, with which it retains close economic ties. Well, you had close economic ties. Sorry about that.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 10:28 am ||
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Russia is not trying to persuade Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to step down and go into exile, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in an interview published Thursday. Ivanov told the Trud newspaper that reports of supposed Russian efforts to avoid war by persuading Saddam it was time to go were the work of publications trying to cast a shadow on Russian diplomacy.
"Any talks about Saddam Hussein's leaving that allegedly are carried out by Russian diplomats in Baghdad is nothing else but supposition," Ivanov said, saying such an action would constitute an intervention in Iraq's internal affairs.
Ivanov, however, said that Russia was in contact with Iraqi officials. "We are not stopping contacts with Baghdad in order to know more about the mood and thoughts of the Iraqi leadership," Ivanov said. Ivanov added there was not enough evidence from U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq to justify military intervention. Speaking in Athens, after arriving for a two-day meeting with the European Union to discuss ways of averting possible U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq, he said "Russia deems that there is no evidence that would justify a war in Iraq." "There is still political and diplomatic leeway to resolve the Iraq issue," Ivanov said. "The efforts of the international community must be directed now at helping international inspectors perform their mission. This is the direction we intend to pursue, among others, along with the European Union."
The talks with Ivanov come as EU foreign ministers plan to meet Monday in Brussels, Belgium. During that meeting, Greece will also host a meeting on the Iraq crisis with the four EU member states currently on the Security Council. "We want to be able to forge a common position, a common ground on Iraq," Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman Panos Beglitis said. Describing Iraq as a "test of credibility" for the EU, Beglitis said forging a common EU position "will not be an easy process." The EU can't agree on a common position on which way toilet paper rolls should be hung in their bathrooms.
Meanwhile, a host of French ministers reacted angrily Thursday to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's dismissal of France and Germany as the "old Europe," saying his remarks underscore America's arrogance. But on a visit to Berlin, French President, Jacques Chirac immediately called for calm to prevent the row from degenerating into a full-blown diplomatic crisis. According to AP, Chirac spokeswoman Catherine Colonna said the president considers the debate on a war with Iraq "legitimate" but wants to see it "take place with seriousness and calmness." And to last another 10 years.
His CALM tone was not echoed by government ministers in Paris, however. "If you knew what I felt like telling him, to Mr. Rumsfeld ... " Ecology Minister Roselyne Bachelot told French radio. She then used a well-known regional expression for a four-letter word. Not very diplomatic of you, Ms Bachelot
Finance Minister Francis Mer said he was "profoundly vexed" by the remarks. "I wanted to remind everyone that this 'old Europe' has resilience, and is capable of bouncing back," he told LCI television. "And it will show it, in time." Times up, Francis
The government's official spokesman, Jean-Francois Cope, said Rumsfeld would do better to listen to the "wise" advise of the 'old Europe' gained through its long history.
"When one is an old continent, a continent with an old historic, cultural and economic tradition, one can sometimes inherit a certain wisdom, and wisdom can be a good adviser," he told reporters. "We're older, and wiser and more cultured than those dammed Americans, so.....Wait, where are you going? Come back! Hello?"
Rumsfeld made the remarks Wednesday in Washington after Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder countered U.S. threats of war against Iraq by together pushing for a peaceful solution. The move led NATO to postpone its planning for a possible war in Iraq. In responding to a reporter's question about French and German qualms, Rumsfeld hinted the United States would turn to new NATO members in Eastern Europe for support.
"You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't," he said. "I think that's old Europe. If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the east and there are a lot of new members." Rumsfeld added that "Germany has been a problem and France has been a problem ... but you look at vast numbers of other countries in Europe, they're not with France and Germany on this. They're with the United States."
Reaction to the comments was more muted in Berlin, but Volker Ruehe, a former defense minister and prominent opposition member, bluntly said: "Rumsfeld is not a diplomat." Nope, he's still got both his balls!
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 10:07 am ||
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Found Ms Bachelot's quote: French Economy Minister Francis Mer says he is "deeply offended" by Mr Rumsfeld's remarks, while Environment Minister Roselyne Bachelot employed "Cambronne" (a polite French reference for s***), used as a term of defiance. The term, usually called "Cambronne's word", derives from a French general at the Battle of Waterloo who, according to legend, was surrounded by British troops and stubbornly refused demands to surrender with a concise scatalogical retort.
So, S**t is another French word for surrender?
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 10:24 Comments ||
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Actually Cambronne and his regiment surrended shortly after making his remark (to the 3rd Hanoverian Brigade composed entirely of militia battalions), so you're probably right.
Posted by: A ||
01/23/2003 14:17 Comments ||
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Veuillez ne pas me nuire,J'essaye de me rendre
( please do not harm me, I am trying to surrender )
Standing orders for all french soldiers,except the legion.
Posted by: Frank Martin ||
01/23/2003 16:59 Comments ||
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AUSTRALIA may declare war on Saddam Hussein without United Nations approval, Prime Minister John Howard warned yesterday.
He said Australia could join the US in an attack on Baghdad even if the UN failed to ratify a military solution.
Mr Howard defended US President George W. Bush, saying he was not a warmonger. "I don't get the impression Bush wants a war. I don't. I talk to him - I don't think he wants war," the PM said. "I think he feels he has an obligation to deal with a difficult problem and not take the easy way out." Amen!
Speaking after farewelling 350 troops aboard HMAS Kanimbla, Mr Howard also said Australia's policy on Iraq did not include removing Saddam from power. Australia's imperative was to dismantle weapons of mass destruction. "Our policy does not include regime change," Mr Howard said. "I think if there were military conflict, then regime change would be likely. But that's not a central policy objective. "Our central policy objective is the removal of those weapons and the message that will send to other countries that might want to do the same thing."
Mr Howard said it was unlikely the UN would deliver a clear directive when weapons inspectors complete their preliminary report on January 27. "I think what the UN says is influential, but at the end of the day what the UN ends up saying could well be ambiguous - no red light, no green light," he said.
"And we could therefore, out of that ambiguity, have to make a national judgment. "I think you could well have a situation where you could read the UN's assessment either way or several ways."
The PM said he decided to send troops now to give them time to prepare for war and to mount pressure on Saddam to hand over weapons of mass destruction. "The most powerful argument for what we are doing, and what the world community is doing, is to stop states like Iraq having weapons - biological, chemical and potentially nuclear weapons," he said. "Because if we don't make sure Iraq disarms, not only will she keep them and add to them and potentially use them, but other countries will copy what Iraq has done." Mr Howard said he shuddered at the thought of war. "The idea of military conflict fills me with horror," he said. "I don't like military conflict at all."
Mr Howard said NATO's attack on Serbian troops in Kosovo showed that UN approval was not a necessity for Allied troops to begin a military attack. "Look at Kosovo. There was no UN resolution on Kosovo," he said. "I don't remember too many people at the time saying that's outrageous. I don't remember it.
"I'm not saying Kosovo is a model for what might happen here. I'm not suggesting that. I'm using that as illustration that people who look for a black and white outcome from the UN could be mistaken. "In the end we could have a grey outcome from the UN and you then have to make a judgment on merits." Outstanding evaluation of the problem. Thank you, Mr. Howard
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 09:45 am ||
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With GB and Australia on board, the UN has already been made redundant. Saudi Arabia, I mean Germany and France need to watch and learn. Their alliance is amusing to start with, and their dependance on the US is well proven. Like Saudi Arabia, they need to decide if they're for us or against us. That means militarily, politically, and the one that takes real backbone, publicly.
#3
I think it's time to replace NATO with something else. It's supposed to be an alliance, but the number of allies we actually have is considerably smaller than its membership.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/23/2003 18:31 Comments ||
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New alliance-trade zone:
NAFTA-AAWLM
NAFTA and a whole lot more.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/23/2003 20:12 Comments ||
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Howard is a staunch ally as is Blair. So am I, and I'm an Aussie, but I can't say the same for the rest of this country. If the US goes in without the UNSC it will be the end of Howard and Blair.
Also, Indonesia is threatening us right now in that coded way they love so well, by letting the TNI raid the East Timorese border. The message: If you go to Iraq and fight muslims there, we asian muslims will cause trouble for you here. If the shit really hits the fan one day we will have to fight them. 20 million aussies and a huge long coastline vs. 180-odd million well-armed indonesians....
Posted by: Down Under ||
01/24/2003 5:07 Comments ||
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A ground-breaking meeting between Palestinian factions in Egypt to discuss a proposal to stop attacks on Israel was delayed again on Thursday to await the arrival of some delegates, and is likely to go ahead on Friday. Meanwhile, Hamas religious mentor Sheikh Ahmed Yassin reiterated on Thursday that his Islamic movement would not agree to a cease-fire unless Israel "stops killing and attacking Palestinian civilians." He added that "it's impossible to demand a cease-fire from someone who is under attack. If the Israeli enemy stops killing our civilians, the arrests, the demolition of homes and the assassinations, we'd consider the possibility of not attacking Israeli civilians." "We won't stop, but we'll think about considering stopping"
The talks in Cairo, the first face-to-face meeting between such a broad spectrum of factions, had been planned for Wednesday but were put off to Thursday because of a last-minute dispute about who would be invited. Palestinian officials said the meeting, which will include groups ranging from Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah to Marxist and Islamist groups, was now likely to go ahead on Friday. "We cannot begin the dialogue today (Thursday) because we are waiting for the arrival of all the rest of the representatives of Palestinian groups...So the talks will be on Friday afternoon," a senior Palestinian official in Cairo said. An Egyptian source said all the factions had now arrived in Cairo and the talks would start on Friday afternoon. He said they could last three days or more.
Saleh Ra'fat, representing the group FIDA, told Reuters that he and Samir Ghosheh, a Palestinian minister and representative of the Popular Struggle Front, had been delayed because Israel had only given them permission to travel late on Wednesday.
An Israeli spokesman said he was checking the report.
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) said in a statement faxed to Reuters in Damascus that some informal talks between individual groups had begun in preparation for comprehensive talks to be held on Friday.
Analysts say the chance for agreement to Egypt's proposal for a one-year cease-fire, against a backdrop of a 28-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, is slim. I've got a better chance of nailing Catherine Zeta Jones.
Some factions have rejected a cease-fire, such as Islamic militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, while others have already laid down hard bargaining positions or are reluctant to commit themselves with war looming in Iraq, analysts say.
Only Fatah has endorsed the truce proposal so far. But analysts said simply bringing the 10 or so groups together is an achievement that could help unify their ranks. Fat chance, each group wants to be in charge. The meeting would make a lovely target though, wouldn't it?
Egypt, which in 1979 signed the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab state, has long played a mediation role in the Arab-Israeli conflict. As the second largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel, some analysts say Cairo may be under pressure from Washington to calm one Middle East conflict as another one brews over Iraq. They want to be a player.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 09:22 am ||
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IDF troops arrested a Palestinian man who fired at their Gaza Strip base while disguised as a woman Thursday afternoon. The militant, who Army Radio reported was armed with a Kalashnikov rifle and grenades, fired on soldiers near Dugit, a Jewish settlement in the northern Gaza Strip. Did he hide the grenades in his bra?
In the West Bank, shots were fired Thursday at a bus, which was slightly damaged in the gunfire. No injuries were reported in either incident. Overnight Thursday, undercover Border Policemen and IDF troops arrested two militants in the Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis, Israel Radio reported. The two men had launched Qassam rockets and mortar shells at Gaza Strip settlements over the last few weeks. Palestinians shot at the troops and hurled dozens of grenades in their direction as they made the arrests. No injuries were reported. Typical Palestinian marksmanship
Eleven Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine activists were also arrested by security forces in the West Bank early Thursday. Also Thursday, reserve duty soldiers found and safely detonated an explosive device near Anbata, north of the West Bank town of Tul Karm.
Sources in the Shin Bet security service confirmed Wednesday evening that it has arrested Abla Saadat, the wife of Ahmad Saadat, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Abla Saadat, 44, was first reported missing earlier Wednesday. The PFLP claimed responsibility for the killing of far-right cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi over a year ago, saying it came in revenge for the Israeli assassination of PFLP Secretary-General Abu Ali Mustafa in Ramallah. Israel has been demanding Saadat's extradition without success. The IDF killed his brother Mohammed in Ramallah last summer. You sure it's his wife? Maybe he likes to dress in womens clothes too?
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 09:15 am ||
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Last I heard, Saadat was still jugged in Jericho. The Paleo high court has ordered him released a time or two, but Yasser's overruled them - Saadat and the other Prisoners of Jericho were a condition for Israeli withdrawal back in April, when the alternative was having Ramallah plowed and sowed with salt.
More important than Yasser merely having his name on a piece of paper, the PFLP was among those plotting to dump Yasser and replace him with Beelzebub or an Aztec high priest or somebody who's in that category of bloodthirsty. So Yasser doesn't care if he ever sees the light of day, unless it'll put a dollar in his pocket.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/23/2003 9:58 Comments ||
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The US military has drawn up detailed plans to secure and protect Iraq's oilfields to prevent a repeat of 1991 when President Saddam set Kuwait's wells ablaze.
The US state department and Pentagon disclosed the preparations during a meeting in Washington before Christmas with members of the Iraqi opposition parties.
Iraq has the second biggest known oil reserves in the world producing, in their current run-down state, about 1.5m barrels a day. But experts contacted by the Guardian predict this could rise to 6m barrels a day within five years with the right investment and control.
At the meeting, on the future of a post-Saddam Iraq - details of which have been disclosed to the Guardian - the state department stressed that protection of the oilfields was "issue number one".
One of those at the meeting said the military claimed that a plan to protect the multibillion oil wells was "already in place", hinting that special forces will secure key installations at the start of any ground campaign.
As well as immediate concern about the environmental impact of having hundreds of Iraqi wells on fire, US, British, Russian, French and other international oil companies are already taking soundings about Iraq's multibillion pound oil supply.
The companies are reluctant to mention oil in public, fearing it will feed Arab suspicion that it is the main factor in the confrontation with Iraq. Yet, with war looming, discussions in private have inevitably begun on the future of the world's second biggest oil reserves. The US and British governments deny that oil is a factor in the confrontation with Iraq
Posted by: Bent Pyramid ||
01/23/2003 08:39 am ||
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If the French keep opposing us in our upcoming war, the French oil companies can kiss goodbye any chances of participating in the Iraqi oil business.
#2
Denny, you don't know how these things work. After it's all over, they'll be reminding us of how they supported us all along in private. That's if we win, of course. If we were to lose, they'd pee on our carcass.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/23/2003 18:33 Comments ||
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Sigh. Fred, you're right, dadgummit! But, at least I can dream. I've been reading too much Den Beste.
#4
They can claim they supported us all along in private till they are blue in the face. They have already made themselves cheese eating surrender monkeys to a murderous dictator, yet again, in public. Pirvate is just that, private. We don't see it, so it never happened. After we secure the evidence of their perfidity against us and their help for Iraq, that is it. They can kiss our collective asses, and their Iraqi debts, goodbye.
Which would wreak their economy, cause internal socail upheaval and possibly revolution, and when they ask us to yet again pull their ass out of the fire of their own construction, we can tell them we can give them all the private support they can use.
Posted by: Ben ||
01/24/2003 4:50 Comments ||
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GERMANY will use its power as incoming president of the UN Security Council to try to head off war with Iraq by asking the chief weapons inspectors to report twice in three weeks, The Times has learnt.
The surprise German effort to buy time appeared to be aimed at defusing the tension that is building around the chief inspectorâs public report to the 15-nation council on Monday.
Germany fears that President Bush could use Hans Blixâs report â and his own State of the Union speech on Tuesday â as a trigger for war. It is therefore proposing bringing the inspectors back for a second assessment on February 14, having invited them to Berlin beforehand.
Berlinâs diplomatic move was launched as the alliesâ simmering dispute over Iraq exploded into a heated row. The French and German leaders vowed to use all their influence to stop the war, while Washington and London fumed that efforts to disarm President Saddam Hussein were being undermined at a critical stage. Behind the scenes ministers on both sides were involved in angry exchanges.
Posted by: Bent Pyramid ||
01/23/2003 08:35 am ||
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ON his debut day as a presidential candidate, Al Sharpton upstaged most other Democratic wannabes at the first 2004 cattle show and showed why he gives big-time agita to a lot of Dem strategists.
Setting fire to his office was pretty spectacular, I've got to admit...
His rivals embraced the driving force behind the Tawana Brawley hoax as an equal aspirant to the Oval Office and even competed to curry favor with him. Both former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts claimed Sharpton had offered them the vice presidency.
He sweetened the deal by throwing in first-class reservations on the Lusitania...
In fact, most other Democratic candidates seemed a bit cowed while Sharpton and Dean - the two Democrats who are farthest to the left and the most passionate speakers - got the loudest cheers from activists at Tuesday's dinner for the pro-choice lobbying group NARAL. "If Sharpton does well, it's going to be hard to deny him a place at the podium at the Democratic convention - in prime time," frets a party strategist already worrying about how heartland America will react.
If I was a Dummycrat, I'd be so-o-o-o embarrassed!
Sharpton, after all, was found guilty of defaming a white prosecutor with false charges that the prosecutor raped Brawley. It took Sharpton three years to pay the $65,000 fine plus interest. And on Tuesday he defiantly insisted Brawley was no hoax, saying: "I believe we were right."
"I mean, look around you! You can't step out of your door in Noo Yawk state without tripping over insidious white district attorneys running off with black children for nefarious purposes..."
One Democratic strategist says: "We pray for Carol Moseley-Braun" - the former Illinois senator who's the only black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. The hope is she'll join the race and draw some support away from Sharpton.
Ohfewgawdsake! Have you ever noticed they're never photographed together? There's a reason for that...
Even detractors concede that with Al Gore out, none of Sharpton's rivals has proven appeal to blacks. That could help him in the South Carolina primary, slated as the third 2004 test after Iowa and New Hampshire. Its Democratic primary vote could be 50 percent black.
On the other hand, Reverend Al repels whites. The only ones who can stand him are Dummycrat pols and manufacturers of mayonnaise hair dressing...
Sharpton sparks worries among Jews at a time when Dems already fear they'll lose their traditional support from Jewish voters because of President Bush's strong support for Israel.
The fact that he's a caricature of a cheap pol has nothing to do with it, of course...
Posted by: Bent Pyramid ||
01/23/2003 12:57 pm ||
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"Both former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts claimed Sharpton had offered them the vice presidency."
Meaning: any of you guys want to get the plague?'
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/23/2003 9:51 Comments ||
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I can well imagine why Al would be giving Dimocrat strategists the heebie-jeebies. What could possibly be worse than having the good Rev as the face of your party? He makes EVERYONE's skin crawl, but the Dims also have to worry about how he'll play in Peoria.
Posted by: Bent Pyramid ||
01/23/2003 9:51 Comments ||
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The Dems have used the media a long time now to further their agenda. Now the media machine is turning around, and in effect, biting them in the ass. It's their messkit....
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/23/2003 10:36 Comments ||
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2004, Sharpton vs. Bush. Well, we won't have to worry about any "dangling chads" for that one.
It will be fun seeing how the Dimbos try to force him out while trying to maintain to their black constituency how much they REALLY CARE about them. That should finally open some eyes....
The United Nations has insisted that members of its weapons inspection team in Iraq who visited a mosque earlier this week did so as tourists and not as part of their disarmament mission. The imam of the al-Nidaa mosque in Baghdad, Sheikh Qutaiba Ammash, had described the visit as an inspection and angrily denounced it as a "provocation for Muslims".
"Let's see if we can manufacture an incident here..."
But UN spokesman Hiro Ueki said: "It was a private visit. They just wanted to visit a mosque. They had no intention to enter, but they were invited to see it. They took pictures only after they asked. Everyone at the mosque was very cordial to them."
The two-faced sonsofbitches were probably very happy to see them, so they could set them up...
He said they had asked questions about the mosque, including about its age, but not others the imam had claimed were asked, such as whether there was an underground shelter. Sheikh Ammash said on Wednesday that five inspectors had arrived at his mosque in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. The cleric said they were unaccompanied by Iraqi minders, as is normally the case when inspections take place. He added that the inspectors agreed to remove their shoes before entering the mosque, in line with Muslim tradition, and toured it for about half an hour.
As tourists, not as inspectors...
"This is a provocation for Muslims in Iraq and their right to worship," he said. "We thank God that it was not a time of prayer when they came, because their lives would have been in danger if they had.
"That's cuz us Muslims take our religion very seriously, and we're just poor Third World yokels who have no control over our actions..."
"Are they looking for weapons of mass destruction or are they gauging the faith in our hearts?" Touchy, aren't they? Seems like a lot of noise over nothing. Think they are working up the nerve to toss the inspectors? I know that would be the stupidest thing they could do, but if they come to the conclusion Bush is going to attack anyway, maybe they try to save a little face on the way down?
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 12:40 pm ||
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Claims about inspecting a mosque are designed to inflame the Islamic world.
That is why the Iraqi's are probably hiding stuff in a mosque or two.
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin, who as a young Army rifleman during World War II gave newspaper readers back home a sardonic, foxhole-level view of the front with his drawings of weary, dogface GIs Willie and Joe, died Wednesday at 81. Mauldin died at a nursing home of complications from Alzheimer's disease, including pneumonia, said Andy Mauldin, one of his seven sons.
"It's really good that he's not suffering anymore," he said. "He had a terrible struggle."
Mauldin was one of the pre-eminent editorial cartoonists of the 20th century, writing and drawing 16 books. It was at the Chicago Sun-Times where Mauldin drew one of his most famous cartoons, published after President Kennedy's assassination. It showed a grieving Abraham Lincoln, his hands covering his face, at the Lincoln Memorial.
With Willie and Joe, Mauldin became the voice of the World War II infantryman. From 1940 to 1945, the laconic pair of unshaven, slump-shouldered soldiers slogged their way through battle-scarred Europe, surviving the enemy and the elements while sarcastically mocking everything from their orders to their equipment and even their allies.
In one drawing, soldiers are marching, bone-weary. Says Willie: "Maybe Joe needs a rest. He's talking in his sleep."
In another, the two are about to jump a down-in-the-mouth German soldier walking by with a bottle of liquor. Willie says: "Don't startle 'im, Joe. It's almost full." And in another, Willie tells a medic: "Just gimme a coupla aspirin. I already got a Purple Heart."
In yet another drawing, Willie grabs a weary GI by the collar and holds up a letter from home: "My son. Five days old. Good-lookin' kid, ain't he?"
The cartoons, published in Stars and Stripes and other military journals, delighted his fellow soldiers and endeared Mauldin to Americans at home. "I wish we had more like him," syndicated columnist Paul Conrad, who served in the Pacific during WWII. "He would have been a lot of fun to go through the war with." In his book Up Front, Mauldin said the expressions on Joe and Willie are "those of infantry soldiers who have been in the war for a couple of years."
"If he is looking very weary and resigned to the fact that he is probably going to die before it is over, and if he has a deep, almost hopeless desire to go home and forget it all; if he looks with dull, uncomprehending eyes at the fresh-faced kid who is talking about all the joys of battle and killing Germans, then he comes from the same infantry as Joe and Willie," Mauldin wrote. Mauldin called himself "as independent as a hog on ice," and his nonconformist approach brought him a face-to-face upbraiding from Gen. George Patton. Mauldin continued to draw what he wanted. In 1945, at age 23, his series Up Front With Mauldin, featuring Willie and Joe, won him the first of his two Pulitzers for editorial cartooning.
The second prize came in 1959, while he was at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for depicting Soviet novelist Boris Pasternak saying to another gulag prisoner: "I won the Nobel Prize for literature. What was your crime?"
William Mauldin was born Oct. 29, 1921, near Santa Fe, and spent much of his life in the West. He attended the Academy of Fine Art in Chicago, learning from such teachers as cartoonist Vaughn Shoemaker, a Pulitzer-winner for the Chicago Daily News.
Mauldin enlisted in 1940 and, assigned as a rifleman to the 180th Infantry, started drawing cartoons depicting training camp for the Division News, the newspaper for the 45th Division.
Once Mauldin's 45th Division shipped overseas, Stars and Stripes, the military-wide newspaper, began publishing his drawings. He was later assigned to Stars and Stripes but continued to spend most of his time with the 45th Division, where he said he received his inspiration.
Author and former Vietnam War correspondent David Halberstam wrote: "One senses that if a war reporter who had been with Hannibal or Napoleon saw Mauldin's work, he would know immediately that the work was right."
After the war, Mauldin freelanced for a time. He joined the Post-Dispatch in 1958, then switched to the Sun-Times in 1962.
He also acted in two movies, including John Huston's 1951 production of The Red Badge of Courage. In recent years, as Mauldin battled Alzheimer's, thousands of veterans, widows and other well-wishers sent him letters, offering thanks and stories of survival.
"You have managed to capture the irony, double standards and outright insanity of Army life," one man wrote, "in a way that allows us to laugh at ourselves and our leaders and keep moving forward in the face of adversity." The campaign to recognize him was sparked by veteran Jay Gruenfeld, who spent years wondering what happened to the man who had made him laugh in a foxhole under fire. He sought out Mauldin and then wrote to veterans organizations and contacted newspaper columnists urging people to remember him. Soon Mauldin was receiving hundreds of letters a day. Said Andy Mauldin: "They tried to pay him back for support he had given them."
Mauldin is survived by former wives Jean Mauldin and Christine Lund and all of his sons. Funeral arrangements were incomplete, but burial is planned in Arlington National Cemetery. God bless you, Joe.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/23/2003 06:50 pm ||
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Burial at Arlington? Good, he deserves it.
Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice should be there.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/23/2003 18:39 Comments ||
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#3
Mauldin was an American treasure. Too bad his work isn't taught in American schools. But I guess he was too pre-post-modernist...
"I read someplace that the American boy is not capable of hate. Maybe we don't share the deep, traditional hatred of the French or the Poles or the Yugoslavs toward the krauts, but you can't have friends killed without hating the men who did it. It makes the dogfaces sick to read articles by people who say, 'It isn't the Germans, it's the Nazis.' Our army has seen few actual Nazis, except for when they threw in special SS divisions. We have seen the Germans - the youth and the men and the husbands and the fathers of Germany, and we know them for a ruthless, cold, cruel, and powerful enemy."
RIP, Bill. I hope the Fields are more Elysian than you could imagine at Anzio, and that the vino flows unchecked.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/23/2003 19:12 Comments ||
Top||
#4
"...And all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side."
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.
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin, who as a young Army rifleman during World War II gave newspaper readers back home a sardonic, foxhole-level view of the front with his drawings of weary, dogface GIs Willie and Joe, died Wednesday at 81. Mauldin died at a nursing home of complications from Alzheimer's disease, including pneumonia, said Andy Mauldin, one of his seven sons.
