An hitherto unknown group, Saiful Muslemeen (The Sword of Muslims), claimed responsibility on Thursday for a series of rocket attacks on Afghan army bases, a Pakistan-based news agency said. Saiful Muslemeen claimed in a hand-written fax message to the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) that it had fired at least four rockets at an Afghan army base and the airport in the eastern town of Jalalabad on Wednesday night. The group, believed to be linked to the Taliban, said it had carried out similar attacks on Afghan government installations in the past and would continue to do so. AIP said it did not know where the group was based but added it believed the claim was genuine. Wednesday's attack did not cause any damage, AIP said.
Hmmm... Lemme think here. I'd say it was based in NWFP, myself. Maybe in Balochistan. I'd also say it was made up of Pashtuns, most of them born on the Pak side of the border. I'd also say it got its arms and ammunition in Pakistan, paid for by the donations of the faithful and disbursed by either JUI or JI.
I'd also say the there's a chance these bloodthirsty bastards will eventually shoot their way back to power with the backing of Qazi and Fazl and their madrassah networks. If that happens, we'll face the choice of either letting them rot as we try and contain them, or throwing them out again. Containment won't work — it didn't work the last time. If we throw them out again, we're going to have to chase them across the Pak border and kill them in their nests, not let them regroup like we did the last time. That means war with the Paks, because they won't sit still for it. So we might as well get it over with sooner, rather than later.
If the next Afghan government has any Pashtuns in it, we'll have to do the same thing all over again yet a third time, and by then we'll be really tired of it.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 11:58 am ||
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Fred---I am sure that these discussions are going on in the White House and the Pentagon. I think it may be a question of timing. I hope that we deal with this soon, or Afghanistan will become a Quagmire (TM).
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/13/2003 12:01 Comments ||
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I hope they realize the solution doesn't lie in Afghanistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/13/2003 12:07 Comments ||
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I'm sure India would be more than happy to help out here.
#4
Most of my Indian friends are divided over this, in the manner typical of so many third-worlders I know. While they are all opposed to the Iraq war and the WoT in general, they are almost blase about the prospect of losing a couple of cities in exchange for wiping out the "Paki bastards." I can never figure some folks out.
#5
11A5S,
As somebody of India origin living in the UK I can tell that there is a very different mentality of people there with respect to the cost of life. Sure every body goes boo hoo whenever somebody is killed, but they take no action to prevent it in the first place.
India has a population of over 1 billion with much of it living in pretty dire condition. People there just see this as normality. When I read on a daily basis that another person has been killed in Kashmir by Paki terrorist I just wonder why the Indian government puts such low value on the lives of these people. They treat seem to treat the military as cheap expendable labour, if one gets killed there are plenty spare.
WRT Indians being againt the WoT, I think its because this war completely ignores the terrorist threat to India which is from Pakland. Indians see the US turning a blind eye to Pak sponsored terror in India and frankly feel pissed off at the US and the whole situation.
#6
I think the Kashmir problem is just a symptom of Pakland as a problem, just like Afghanistan is. If Iran wasn't a power in its own right, they'd have more of a problem oozing over from Balochistan, too. As it is, it's mostly drugs, banditti, white slavers, and other undesirables. Pakistan was lucky in that when 9-11 happened there was no other way to get into Afghanistan. That set the stage for them to be our "best friends" in the area. We needed their help, and we phrased the request in sufficiently hair-raising terms that they knew they were gonna get it with Afghanistan if they didn't give it.
We've been pointing out their two-faced ways and mocking their ignorance and brutality here for a year and a half. Using only open-source information, anybody who reads these pages regularly can come to no other conclusion than that Pakistan promotes terrorism not only within Kashmir and India proper, but also in Afghanistan, and also world-wide. Everywhere there are atrocities to be found, Pak thugs are to be found. Imagine what picture the intel reports must be painting.
I think India's taking our "one step at a time" approach as ignoring the Pak problem. The Paks aren't. They're scared to death they're next on the list (they're not - Syria is - but they're on the list). With each successful move against the terror machine, the subsequent moves become easier - look at today's Rantburg headline and yesterday's. The countries on the list have the opportunity to reform, to become what they pretend to be instead of what they really are. Iran's making steps in that direction, Syria's sticking its chin out and screaming "hit me." The Pak fundos are doing the same thing, even while Perv is smart enough to realize that if they don't stop, they're going to get whacked.
The fundo world is still counting on the mighty ummah to come to the defense of these Islamic hellholes. Mullah Omar called for jihad to save his regime, and it didn't work. Sammy called for jihad to save his regime, and it didn't work. All it got them was Pak gunnies to be slaughtered in the first case, Syrian gunnies in the second case. We took Afghanistan in a month, Iraq in three weeks. When it's Syria's turn in the barrel it'll take two weeks. Eventually, it'll sink through the dense Islamic bone that when they're in the sights, the regime's going to come down, so it'll be better to reform than to be reformed.
Pakland's disadvantage is being an Islamic state populated by primitives. But their turn will come on the list. It'll be complicated by their nukes, but they'll be dealt with. I also have to qualify that by saying that they'll get their turn on the list if Hafiz Saeed doesn't manage to set off a nuclear war between Pak and India before then. If that happens, the place will make a nice, if slightly radioactive, parking lot, and I'm sure India will feel very sorry after it's all over. Civilized people always do when they're forced to do terrible things.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/13/2003 19:39 Comments ||
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Pak as terror central? Hmmmmm. Check with the Philippines.
Interesting news day today, Fred. Good work. Tomorrow should have some fireworks.
Posted by: Scott ||
04/14/2003 0:26 Comments ||
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The men showed up at the end of the party celebrating the new school. They broke the windows, ripped the vitamins poster in half, tore the skeleton system off the wall. They set fire to biscuits and books. Abdul Bari Rohani hid his ID badge under a mattress. But the men found it. "They looked at my identification card and said, `Who is this headmaster, this Abdul Bari, son of George W. Bush? We are looking for him,' " said Rohani, who managed to escape detection.
During the Taliban regime, Afghan girls were not allowed to go to school, and boys were educated in Islam. When the Taliban fell 18 months ago and schools opened their doors to all children, not everyone supported such equality. Last fall, schools for girls in Wardak province, near Kabul, were attacked. Boys' schools had been safe. But in the past two months in Kandahar province, a former Taliban stronghold, seven of the schools were attacked and burned, including the one in Sheik Mohammadi, about 6 miles south of Kandahar. The schools have been accused of teaching Western thought and relying on Western money.
Such incidents are part of an increasing number of attacks in southern Afghanistan not only on Westerners but also on Afghans in recent months. The attackers are masked men with causes reminiscent of the Taliban. They call for more restrictions and seek to destabilize the central government. At many of the boys' schools and the nearby villages the men left leaflets claiming to be from the Jamiat Jehash Moslemein, or Muslim Gathering Movement, warning people working with the Afghan or U.S. government to quit for their own safety. "They want to make the situation critical," said Soltan Mohammad Azizi, a deputy education minister in Kandahar province. "They attack schools - they don't care which schools. They just don't want children to go to school."
Lt. Gen. Mohammad Akram Khakrizwal, head of security in the province, said Jamiat Jehash Moslemein was just another name for Taliban. "The people who used to be against education are the Taliban," Khakrizwal said. "They are behind this. They want everybody to grow up illiterate and uneducated like them."
You have to be illiterate and uneducated to be as devout as they are. There is no God but Allah, and there is no Book but the Koran, so don't go readin' any of that other stuff. You'll get ideas. Ideas ain't good.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 11:49 am ||
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Its inevitable -- education and free thought always win when they have a fighting chance -- and I think your average Afghanis have HAD it with over-zealous fundamentalist crap...
These bastards think they have a mandate from God to spread illiteracy and ignorance??? What kind of ridiculous nonsense is that???
Posted by: Steve W, ||
04/13/2003 22:08 Comments ||
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Hire a bunch of local parents,especially mothers(ain't no more vicious creature than a mother protecting her offspring)give them small arms and the training.Then see what happens to these bastards next time they go after a school.
President Hamid Karzai threatened on Saturday to fire provincial officials who failed to act against remnants of the Taliban regime blamed for a series of recent attacks around the country. Karzai told a gathering of provincial governors they had a duty to provide security and defense for the people. "From now on I want the governors, especially those in the border areas, to resist strongly those Afghans and foreigners who come to Afghanistan and harm the country," he said. "And I shall not show any leniency or consideration to anyone in government responsible for defense of the country who does not carry out his responsibility. He will be dismissed, he will be punished." Not an awful lot of lines to read between there...
The past three weeks have seen a spate of attacks in southern provinces blamed on remnants of the Taliban regime ousted in late 2001. Government officials say the attacks appear to have been orchestrated by from Pakistan. The attacks have included the killing of soldiers near the Pakistani border, the burning of several schools, rocket attacks and the killings of a Red Cross worker and two U.S. soldiers. "This soil is Afghanistan's soil," Karzai said. "Safeguarding Afghanistan's frontiers is the duty of the Afghan nation. If we can't defend it from a few terrorists or foreigners, then we should go. There were hundreds of thousands of Taliban; they went to their homes. We need the ones who cause problems in Afghanistan under the guise of the Taliban. We need the big Taliban, those guilty of oppression." Karzai said these included top commanders Mullah Akhtar Usmani and Mullah Dadullah, who recently announced that the Taliban was regrouping to regain power. The Afghans were helped out of their mess by the Americans, but it's fair to expect them to clean up the remnants. They've been hindered in part because fo their peculiar internal balance of power. But a lot more of the hindrance has come from the Paks, continuing their Great Game whether anybody else wants to play or not.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 11:37 am ||
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As well as tightening the screws on the govenors,Karzi needs to send Mushariff a backdoor message"Clean-out the NWFP or we will do it for you".With Allied military and inteligence support of course.After all since these a-holes are recieving covert/overt help from the Pak Government then these attacks are an act of war.
OT, Fred, but a follow-up to one of yesterday's posts... EFL
Hungarians have overwhelmingly supported joining the European Union. The National Election Office said 83.8 per cent of votes cast were for membership. The turnout was 45.6 per cent, far lower than expected and below the required 50 per cent mark. But the vote was valid because more than two million Hungarians voted yes. I did the maths - 38% of the total pop. said "yes".
Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy said: "No one can doubt that the real winners today are Hungary's children(TM). This is a cause for celebration." Mr Medgyessy will sign the accession agreement with the EU on April 16 in Athens. Membership is set to begin on May 1, 2004, after all 15 current EU members ratify the agreement that would add Hungary and nine other countries.
Posted by: Bulldog ||
04/13/2003 08:50 am ||
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Another lemming joins the rush to oblivion.
I really hope the UK goes for that free-trade deal some US senators are proposing (has it been passed as a law?). That would completely PO the axis of weasels. Of course, it's highly unlikely that Blair will go for it; "at the heart of Europe" is a phrase used often by him.
Posted by: Tony ||
04/13/2003 10:04 Comments ||
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Now that they want to play, they better get ready to PAY, and it's not all about money....
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/13/2003 11:16 Comments ||
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Exactly. First goes the sovereignty, then the EU 'constitution' comes along, and then goes the ability to leave the EU.
There's still time for the US to throw a spanner in the works, perhaps by extending free-trade to the coalition of the willing (or perhaps even NAFTA membership).
Posted by: Tony ||
04/13/2003 15:13 Comments ||
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Tony Blair is going to have to do some serious thinking and make a decision very soon. Either he wishes to act as the representative of a sovereign nation, or he wants to be a tiny cog in a Franco-German open sewer. We'll have to wait and see how things work out. Frankly, from what's coming to light in Iraq, I wouldn't be surprised if the United Nations imposed sanctions on the "EU" - especially since the EU has virtually torpedoed any possible UN leadership role in Iraq.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/13/2003 16:17 Comments ||
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Actually it's now that there exists no ability to leave the EU and it's *with* the constitution that such an ability is given to member countries.
See it as lemmings falling off a cliff, if you will. I'm sure you'd have said the same to Jefferson and Washington. A Union of states? Who ever heard of that! :-D
#6
Bulldog, what kind of weird math are you doing? Or care to tell me how many % of the US population voted for Bush, please? According to your math of course.
#7
TGA - 83.8 % of a 45.6 % turnout = 38.2 % of the electorate actually turned out and voted "yes". The rest either voted "no" or didn't bother to vote at all. What did you make it? It's not exactly equivalent to voting in the US elections. The act of joining a body like the EU isn't comparable to changing presidents, is it?! I wonder, out of interest, just how few yes votes were theoretically required for membership to be authorised.
#9
Maybe they didn't turn out because a large majority in Hungary favors EU anyway and they'd thought they rather enjoy a warm spring day instead. When the outcome is clear fewer people bother to vote.
Doesn't answer my question though. Can you please do the same math with the U.S. president elections?
And don't tell me that voting for a president is irrelevant.
#10
Bulldog, for a referendum to be "conclusive" in Hungary, the same answer has to be given by atleast 50% of those who voted validly, and atleast 25% of all the electorate.
Paragraph (6) of Article 28/C of the Constitution:
"A national referendum shall be considered successful if more than half of the voting citizens casting valid votes, but at least more than one-quarter of all voting citizens, gave the same answer for the subject."
#12
I would vote "yes" indeed. But if the polls told me the day before that about 80 percent are going to vote "yes" anyway and it was a sunny day...
How high is the percentage of people who turned out to vote for US president? 40%? 50 % voted for Bush? So that makes 20% of Americans voting for Bush? That's the math I'm questioning. Only cast votes (hanging chads included or not) are counted. That's democracy.
Only in Iraq 100% vote.
And maybe the Hungarians saw a bit more in the EU than that "semi-democratic, largely unaccountable, inefficient, and frequently corrupt foreign administration" you name. I do too. And we are working on making the EU more democratic, accountable and less corrupt.
Pakistan has dismissed as baseless the remarks of the US special envoy for Afghanistan that the Taliban are re-grouping in Pakistan. Then you won't mind if we go in and kill any we find, right?
US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad says key members of Taliban are active in Pakistan and that Pakistan needs to check their activities otherwise appreciation of Taliban activities is tantamount to going against the US interests. Rather like the Syrians, the Paks are sending bad guys to make war on us. No doubt both countries will bitch when we kill them...
"If someone makes such a baseless talk, I think it is based on ignorance. Perhaps Mr. Khalilzad does not have full knowledge of the situation," snotty Foreign Office spokesman Aziz Khan told the BBC Radio's Urdu service. "As far as Pakistan is concerned, no other country has extended as much cooperation to the coalition against terrorism as has been extended by Pakistan," Khan said. He said the top US leadership has very much hailed Pakistan's record in this regard. "We are in constant touch with the US as well as Afghan officials," the spokesman said. We know that. The question is, how much touch does the Pak government, as opposed to the fundo parties, maintain with our enemies? The answer to that question can be found in Kashmir.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 01:02 pm ||
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I saw Mike Wallace interview the Shah of Iran decades ago on 60 minutes. In the interview, Wallace asked about the followng incident: the Shah, in a conversation with the Soviet Ambassador, had accused the Soviets of overflights of Iran with their spy planes. Nonsense, the Ambassador replied, we know nothing of such flights. Then, the Shah replied, since you don't know about these planes, you won't mind if we shoot them down. The Ambassador's face froze. The flights stopped.
Wallace asked the Shah if the story was true. The Shah smiled.
I suggest we use a similar strategy in Afghanistan to deal with the Paks: if they deny that their people are coming across the border, than surely they won't mind if we and the Karzai govt troops kill the intruders. We can smile when we say it.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/13/2003 14:44 Comments ||
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Blasting US-led invasion, a member of Pakistani parliament on Saturday said Iraq has been pushed into total chaos, anarchy and ethnic violence in the name of "liberation". Dr. Sher Afgan Niazi told IRNA in an interview that the so-called champions of civilized world had turned Iraq into chaos and anarchy, raining death and destruction on innocent civilians. They were easier to hit than the military — they were running too fast...
He condemned the US and its allies and accused them of committing genocide against Iraqi men, women and children, irrespective of cast and creed. Dr. Niazi ruled out return of normalcy in near future, saying the law-enforcement agencies had gone missing, leaving the country in chaotic situation. Ummm... They started showing up for work yesterday, Doc...
"There is complete breakdown of amenities structure and even doctors and patients at hospitals are unsafe," he said. It appears the US and its partners in genocide, the former federal minister noted, deliberately let Iraq witness the present extremely volatile state of affairs. "No plan of action was made as to what will be next after Saddam Hussein government is toppled," he contended. Oh, sure there is. See, we're going to install a viceregal style gummint and then plunder Iraq's wealth and use the Iraqis for houseboys. Kinda like what Pakland would do if they ever managed to beat somebody in a war.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 12:16 pm ||
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"....turned Iraq into chaos and anarchy, raining death and destruction on innocent civilians."
He later added: "I would feel perfectly at home there."
"...committing genocide against Iraqi men, women and children, irrespective of cast and creed."
He added: "Genocide must be committed only against Zionist, Christians AND Hindus."
#2
"No plan of action was made as to what will be next after Saddam Hussein government is toppled," he contended.
Sure there was! Only, we expected to have to FIGHT to get where we are now, instead of having to chase Iraqi soldiers running away. The housekeeping group wasn't supposed to be needed until D-day+90, instead of D-Day+20! So now we have to scurry and catch up. Once we get the right people in place, things will run smoothly, and all these nutcases will have to find something else to complain about. Sheeesh! Like, they don't have anything better to do????
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/13/2003 13:30 Comments ||
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I love it when a Plan (TM) comes together. All the grandstanders are just chewing on another bone. The only glue holding Iraqi society together was fear, and the fear is gone, so we have to start from square one. Ah, yes, another challenge for the Coalition of the Willing....as usual we will do the heavy lifting while the rest of middle earth east generates methane and hydrogen sulfide.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/13/2003 14:58 Comments ||
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A huge cache of arms and ammunition procured from the Taliban by the Ulfa were seized from a remote hideout at Rongdupara in west Garo hills by the Meghalaya police, who also had an encounter with the militants. The cached arsenal, including eleven rocket propelled grenades, an AK-56 assault rifle and thousands of rounds of medium machine guns, besides two communication sets, were seized in a raid on Friday night. The encounter took place at 9:00 pm in the same area, said to be a stronghold of the Ulfa, but there was no casualty on the side of the police. A number of militants were injured in the fire-fight as evidenced from the blood stains in the jungles, the officials said. I guess Pakland could make more money if they exported furniture or rugs or something, but exporting arms, ammunition, and jihadis is probably easier.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 11:41 am ||
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Either he's repeating himself â he does do that, since he has a one-track mini-mind â or this is a rehash of his frothing at the mouth from ten days ago.
Talking to Pakistani weekly The Friday Times, Saeed said the solution for the Kashmir imbroglio was not to bow before India and beg for dialogue. "They only understand the language of jehad. We have no choice but to respond by killing Hindus", he said.
"Luckily for us, we only speak the language of jehad. Ain't that a coincidence?"
He added that the greatest threat faced by the world was the "evil trio" of America, Israel and India. "The need for jehad against India is paramount", he said. Axis of Infidels. Wow, I'm honoured to be part of it.
The Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police A K Suri had stated that Lashkar was behind the massacre of 24 Hindus in Nadimarg on March 25.
Posted by: rg117 ||
04/13/2003 07:12 am ||
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"...the "evil trio" of America, Israel and India"
Hey, where's the UK on that list? And Australia? It's not like we're not trying. Hmph, sometimes it seems like you're just not appreciated.
#4
They're there in spirit. I'm sure the cannon fodder appreciates that.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/13/2003 9:21 Comments ||
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"...the "evil trio" of America, Israel and India"
Don't worry Bulldog. I think that Jihad Boy's omission of the UK was a simple mistake. The eye of the cyclops does not have much for field of view, ya know........
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/13/2003 11:22 Comments ||
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Bulldog - You can't be in it, 'cuz you're not as Evil as we are. Nyah!
Posted by: Fred ||
04/13/2003 12:08 Comments ||
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If the UK was on the list than it wouldn't be a trio now would it? Say what you will but these Jihadis are sharp as a tack!
Posted by: Fred ||
04/13/2003 15:22 Comments ||
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#10
Whether we like it or not, France will have to join this Axis of Infidels when their 5 million muslims start demanding an Islamic homeland in the south of France, and a Villa for each of their extended family. Vive la Islam-Ville!!!!
Posted by: Tony ||
04/13/2003 15:32 Comments ||
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I'd like someone to post a complete list of the members of the "Coalition of the Willing", with their contributions, so I can know where to spend my money. I plan to divide the world into three segments: The Coalition, the "Axis of Weasels", and the "fence-sitters". If I can, I'll buy from the Coalition. If it isn't there, I'll try the "fence-sitters". IF I can't find what I want there, I'll do without.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/13/2003 15:55 Comments ||
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No, not the French! Then it will have to be something like the Hexagon from Hell. Catchy, but it still includes the French. Ick.
Posted by: Baba Yaga ||
04/13/2003 16:02 Comments ||
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Old Patriot --
Check out this link from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2862343.stm
And one from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A49565-2003Mar18¬Found=true
Don't know where to find "the fence sitters", but basically if they ain't part of the coalition, and they ain't part of the Axis of Weasels, I'd put those countries there.
Go forth and shop! ;)
Posted by: Baba Yaga ||
04/13/2003 16:08 Comments ||
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Iraqi intelligence agents were ordered to take files and computers with information about weapons of mass destruction home from their offices before United Nations weapons inspectors arrived late last year, say documents found at a security headquarters in Baghdad. The handwritten notes from a meeting between a departmental director and operatives on 23 September last year were in a red notebook I found lying on a desk at the surveillance centre of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, the Mukhabarat.
Baghdad -- A Moscow-based organization was training Iraqi intelligence agents as recently as last September -- at the same time Russia was resisting the Bush administration's push for a tough stand against Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi documents discovered by The Chronicle show. The documents found Thursday and Friday in a Baghdad office of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, indicate that at least five agents graduated Sept. 15 from a two-week course in surveillance and eavesdropping techniques, according to certificates issued to the Iraqi agents by the "Special Training Center" in Moscow.
#1
Great - the Cold War ends, and now -- the Russians aren't just selling their best arms to the armies of Islamofanatics -- they're training Islamic operatives??? For use by goverments of known fanatics and terrorists??? This is just wonderful...
I wonder how much it costs to send 5 operatives through the Moscow "Special Training Center"???
Steve W
Posted by: Steve W, ||
04/13/2003 22:03 Comments ||
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What I think is kind of weird is how does this fit in with their Chechen mess? You would think they would be very wary of any Islamo-fascists at all.
BAGHDAD, April 12 -- Tahsin glanced uneasily over his shoulder, a well-practiced habit in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. A fugitive, he hurried along an alley near the barbershop where he worked, less than a mile from U.S. troops patrolling his neighborhood. With hardly a look, he passed slogans from a bygone era scrawled on the wall -- "Yes to the leader Saddam." Settling nervously into a car, he recounted his story as a soldier in Saddam's Fedayeen. "I was sure I was going to die," he said.
Attempts by tribal leaders in deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Husseinâs home city of Tikrit to broker a ceasefire with US forces appear to have failed. Despite the last-ditch effort to stave off an assault on the last major town under Baathist control, US troops continued their assault on Tikrit, apparently ignoring an appeal from 22 leaders for an end to the attack so that a peaceful surrender could be negotiated. Iraqi troops and paramilitaries had fled the town, said Al-Jazeera TV correspondent Youssef Al-Sharif, who interviewed armed men who said they represented leaders of the 15 main tribal family groups in the city 175 kilometres north of Baghdad.
The men said they took up arms to protect the town from a possible attack by Iraqi Kurdish fighters or Peshmerga moving in from the north after Iraqi troops and paramilitary fighters left. They also said they wanted to prevent the looting that has gripped major Iraqi cities since US forces entered the heart of the capital on Wednesday. âWe are carrying arms to defend our city from the Kurds. We do not want them in our city. We have no problems with the Americans. We want peace but we will not allow the Kurds to come in,â one unidentified man told Al-Sharif.
âWe have 15 tribes here and the leaders of the tribes are negotiating with the Americans. We donât want to fight the Americans. The Iraqi military left the city five days ago,â said the armed man. Another resident Youssef Abdul Aziz said, âWe are ready to surrender, but let them stop their bombardments. After that we are asking for just two days to persuade the Fedayeen to lay down their arms.â
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 08:09 pm ||
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Sorry guys, we only accept unconditional surrenders.
NUMANIYAH, Iraq, April 13 -- The wrong turn happened just after dawn on a clear Sunday morning, March 23. The convoy from the Army's 507th Maintenance Company wandered by mistake into the riverfront city of Nasiriyah and suddenly it seemed to the soldiers that every Iraqi was trying to kill them.
"We got turned around and then lost and we rolled into Nasiriyah before it was secure and when we rolled in there was an ambush waiting for us," recalled Spc. Shoshana N. Johnson, 30, from El Paso, Tex.
The bullets and explosions came from all sides. Some of the humvees flipped over. Other drivers hit the gas hoping to outrun the danger, but ran into even heavier fire. In the swirling dust, soldiers' rifles jammed. Pfc. Patrick Wayne Miller, 23, began shoving rounds into his rifle one at a time, firing a single shot at enemies swarming all around.
Some Americans died where they fell. Johnson was shot with a single bullet that sliced through both feet. Spc. Edgar Adan Hernandez, 21, of Mission, Tex., was hit in the bicep of his right arm. Spc. Joseph Hudson, 23, of Alamogordo, N.M., was shot three times, twice in the ribs and once in the upper left buttocks.
Finally, it fell to Sgt. James J. Riley, a 31-year-old bachelor from Pennsauken, N.J., and the senior soldier present, to surrender. "We were like Custer," he recalled today, still sounding shocked. "We were surrounded. We had no working weapons. We couldn't even make a bayonet charge -- we would have been mowed down. We didn't have a choice, sir."
The battle lasted about 15 minutes. Nine U.S. soldiers were dead. Those captured by the Iraqis would become the war's best-known soldiers. One, Pfc. Jessica Lynch, 19, would be rescued from a local hospital on April 2. Five others -- Johnson, Hernandez, Hudson, Riley and Miller -- became prisoners of war until this morning, when they were found, along with two captured crew members of an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, by U.S. Marines in a house north of Baghdad.
In their first interviews after being freed, the former prisoners described a harrowing journey through the Iraq war -- from their ill-fated missions and capture through an arduous imprisonment where death often seemed around the corner. Speaking to reporters from The Washington Post and Miami Herald aboard a C-130 transport plane evacuating them from Iraq, they alternated between tears and smiles and hollow gazes as they told their stories.
The capture of the Americans came within a 24 hour period that was the darkest of the war so far for American commanders. Even as U.S. forces toppled the government of Saddam Hussein and seized Baghdad, the search for the prisoners consumed top U.S. officers. Their fates were a mystery until this morning.
U.S. Marines have uncovered an underground vault containing the detailed files of Saddam Hussein's secret police. Under the headquarters of the Special Security Organization, run by Saddam's most trusted son, Qusay, the Marines found a massive complex of offices over an area the size of two football fields, littered with millions of documents â detailed records that stretch back more than three decades. In just one room were files for a million souls â their pictures, personal details, and entire history recorded in minute, chilling detail. Yeah, but that's all in the past now. What's needed now is to fight the infidel occupiers so that Iraqis can choose a new dictator.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 05:10 pm ||
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It's a good thing that totalitarian regimes the world over have this thing for documentation. Makes it a lot easier at the war crimes trials.
Posted by: Baba Yaga ||
04/13/2003 21:06 Comments ||
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US Marines have discovered 278 artillery shells carrying a substance that tested positive as a blistering agent, senior officers have said. Major Stephen Armes, of the Marines 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment, said the shells were found in trailers parked in a schoolyard. Three were mounted on launchers, he said. But the battalion commander said more tests were required before any conclusions could be drawn. Coalition forces have yet to find any evidence of chemical weapons since launching the war in Iraq on March 20. All the alleged finds have so far turned out to be false upon further analysis.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 05:04 pm ||
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I really don't believe that "all the alleged finds have so far turned out to be false upon further analysis". I believe after the war is over, and things settle down to a dull roar, some of those "negative" finds will slowly creep back into the "positive" side, when no one is looking. I just wonder what game Rumsfeld and Bush are playing over this. No American should let this drop below the radar screen - I think it's extremely important to someone to falsify all the chemical weapon evidence, and I'd like to know who and why.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/13/2003 17:28 Comments ||
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And I think that all these NBC weapons finds are being suppressed and collected for one big "IN YOUR FACE, UN!" moment.
We'll then kick the UN out of New York, announce tie dissolution of NATO, and invite all democratic nations to join a new international coalition consisting ONLY of freedom loving nation.
#3
The thing that bothers me is that all these weapons are being found in SCHOOLS. Absolutely f**king brilliant! Would anyone ever see UNMOVIC inspecting schools? Blix looking under desks? ha! ha!ha! The genius of Saddam.
Posted by: john ||
04/13/2003 20:55 Comments ||
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Schools! Maybe it was Ritter's idea!
Posted by: john ||
04/13/2003 20:57 Comments ||
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Ritter would have found them if they would have hidden them at the schools. ;)
Posted by: Baba Yaga ||
04/13/2003 21:10 Comments ||
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Baba Yaga - Nah, Ritter wouldn't have found them, he'd have been far too busy looking up the skirts and down the shirts of little girls. And boys too, or so I hear.
Ed Becerra
Posted by: Ed Becerra ||
04/14/2003 1:38 Comments ||
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I'm with Old Patriot on this one. There is a discerneable and disturbing trend in all of this.
A bio/chem cache found in a schoolyard by soldiers, reported on by an embed. Afterwards, the story is buried. We've seen a number of these and the next week it's always the same: The coalition has yet to find any WMDs, and all previous reports have turned up negative. Really? How so? There has been absolutely nothing concrete offered up to refute anything that has been reported so far.
Not like me to be the paranoid, but the patterns are there, and I bet they continue.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
04/14/2003 2:01 Comments ||
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One thing would appear to be certain:
You don't fill artillery rounds with pesticides...
#9
One thing that has not had much mention is the difference between WMD and pesticides.There is not much difference they both work on the same principals.The major difference is concentration and exposure time.
Iraqâs nuclear chief was in custody Sunday, sources told NBC News â the third of Saddam Husseinâs most wanted advisers to be found amid his regimeâs collapse. Jaffar al-Jaffar joined Saddamâs half-brother and his chief science adviser as the regimeâs first figures to be taken alive and could provide much-needed intelligence to coalition forces on Iraqâs weapons of mass destruction. Can we collect the entire set?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 03:56 pm ||
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This is a big time catch. He's been involved in iraq's nuclear program since the mid 1980s. If the rumors are true, he helped test a 10kt device below Lake Rezazza in September 1989.
Posted by: Douglas De Bono ||
04/13/2003 16:51 Comments ||
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From a Time article on Uday, that's worth reading despite the picture of an "infantrywoman" lying on his bed...
In a 1990 letter, Uday reveals that his father plans to create a greater Iraq that includes Kuwait, Palestine and Arabstan, a region of Iran historically controlled by Baghdad. The note says Saddam is beginning with the easiestâKuwait.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 03:36 pm ||
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One of the arguments against the First Gulf War put forth by the leftists was that there was no evidence that Saddam planned to continue his conquests after taking Kuwait.The same thing,as you may recall,was said about Hitler and Czechoslovakia.
Posted by: El Id ||
04/13/2003 17:49 Comments ||
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Same article as the one on Sammy's half-brother.
On Saturday, Vice Adm. Timothy Keating, the commander of all naval forces in the war, said two or three of the five U.S. aircraft carriers launching planes on missions over Iraq may head home soon. While the air campaign is far from over, its focus has shifted away from heavy bombing toward protective air cover for ground troops around Baghdad and in northern Iraq. Surveillance and reconnaissance missions by U-2 spy planes, unmanned Predator drones and other aircraft are continuing apace, and aerial refueling and cargo planes are still very busy. Keating said the USS Kitty Hawk, which has operated in the Persian Gulf since February, probably would be the first to leave. Its home port is Yokosuka, Japan. The USS Constellation, also in the Gulf and on its final active deployment, probably would go next, he said. Keating said orders to send carriers and other forces home would have to come from Gen. Tommy Franks, the war's overall commander, and that no such orders have been received. Plenty of time to bring them home for a re-fit, leave for everyone, and then a new training cycle right before Baby Assad does something really stupid.
Yokosuka. That's in Japan. It's close to Korea...
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/13/2003 02:22 pm ||
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Carriers are floating airstrips subject to no-one. Now that we've got airstrips in Iraq itself, there's no need for the carriers to overstay their tours.
As soon as we get those airstrips up to snuff, Keating will be seeing those orders.
Allied forces have captured a half brother of Saddam Hussein in northern Iraq, a U.S. official said Sunday. Watban Ibrahim Hassan, who had in the past served as an adviser to his half brother, was captured near Mosul as he apparently tried to flee to rat-infested Syria, the official said. Hassan had fallen out of favor with Saddam in 1995 and was dismissed as Iraq's interior minister, head of the regime's secret police and other domestic security agencies. Saddam viewed Hassan as a threat and kept a close watch on him, the official said. Saddam's son Odai is reported to have shot Hassan around the time of his dismissal as interior minister. Another rat caught.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/13/2003 02:18 pm ||
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As rescued prisoner of war Jessica Lynch spent her first full day back in the United States recovering from her injuries, she rejoiced over news that seven other U.S. POWs - including five captured with her - were found alive Sunday in Iraq. ``This is certainly an answer to our prayers and - we're certain - the prayers of literally millions of other concerned citizens of the world,'' Lynch and her family said in a written statement.
The 19-year-old private first class remained in satisfactory condition Sunday at Washington's Walter Reed Army Medical Center, said Major Gen. Kevin Kiley, a physician and commander of the hospital. ``She seems to be in good spirits,'' Kiley said. Lynch and some four dozen other wounded soldiers arrived Saturday in the United States after leaving a hospital in Germany. Kiley said when he greeted Lynch and told her he was glad to have her at Walter Reed, she said: ``I'm glad to be here, too, sir.''
Lynch, from Palestine, W.Va., was rescued April 1 from an Iraqi hospital by U.S. forces in a daring commando raid. She was treated at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for a head wound, a spinal injury and fractures to her right arm, both legs and her right foot and ankle. Gunshots may have caused open fractures on her upper right arm and lower left leg, according to the hospital. Kiley would not elaborate on her injuries or how they occurred but said it would be ``at least a few weeks'' before her release. ``I will tell you the vast majority of the troops that come in with similar types of injuries have full or near full recovery,'' he said. ``To the families of these great troops, we'd like to offer you our assurances that they will receive the best care imaginable. To the media, we hope you'll be as supportive and respectful to these GIs' privacy as you have to ours.'' Judging by the feeding frenzy so far, doesn't look like that will happen.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/13/2003 02:13 pm ||
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My Brother's an X-ray tech with the VA in California. I'll have to ask him if he's seen any of them.
Printed by that bastion of American conservatism, the New York Times.
As allied troops interview Iraqi scientists, the chances grow of finding the chemical weaponry that Western governments believe Saddam Hussein was hiding since the gulf war of 1991. If the troops do find it, they will also find something else: that the means for making it came primarily from Western companies years ago. At right is a graphic showing the origins of what Iraq said it imported for its chemical weapon effort. The data was given to United Nations inspectors in the late 1990's, and was reconfirmed in Iraq's 12,000-page declaration last fall. But the statistical material on which it is based remained confidential until recently. I can't get a separate URL for the graphic, but go take a look. All our favorites are there. And the US didn't contribute a darned thing.
The data reveals that firms in Germany and France outstripped all others in selling the most important thing â specialized chemical-industry equipment that is particularly useful for producing poison gas. Without this equipment, none of the other imports would have been of much use. From the 1980s to just this January, if Sammy needed something for his WMD program, he knew where to buy it.
Iraq didn't declare everything it bought, so the data is incomplete. But they can be presumed to be reliable as far as they go. In general, the pattern of Iraqi behavior with United Nations inspectors was to admit buying something only after learning that the inspectors already knew about it. Thus, it seems logical to assume that the admitted imports actually occurred. Wonder if French or German government officials in charge of export controls ever connected the dots?
Iraq sometimes lied about the quantities of ingredients or munitions to protect suppliers or to conceal stocks remaining on hand. Equipment, on the other hand, was listed in discrete units, so those quantities seem to be reliable. The countries of origin are compiled based on the exporter, not the manufacturer, because it was the exporter who decided to sell a sensitive item to Iraq. Most of the equipment described in the report is restricted for export today, even though it also has civilian uses, but it was probably not restricted when it was sold in the 1980's. Back when Sammy wasn't yet considered the threat that he became.
While individual items may have had innocuous uses, the usefulness of a combination of items on an order for making poison gas could have tipped off a seller. A former United Nations inspector, citing one case, said: "anyone looking at the order could see that all the chemicals were for sarin." Wonder if Hans Blix ever made the connection?
The absence of American firms from this picture does not mean that none supplied Mr. Hussein's mass-destruction weapons programs. American firms show up on lists of suppliers of anthrax strains to Iraq, and of advanced electronics for nuclear and missile sites. The anthrax strains came from ATCC, a consortium that maintains stocks of just about every cell line and bacteria ever found/created for biomedical research. My medical research lab has ordered stuff from ATCC. In the 1980s virtually anyone could order anthrax, since the bacteria adn spores were being used to create antidotes and to test new antibiotics. That's how Sammy got them -- the Iraqis filled out papers saying that they were doing "medical research", and ATCC sold them the anthrax. That was in the 1980s, kids.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/13/2003 01:53 pm ||
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Steve,
Like most anything, this stuff can be used for good or evil. Thank God we have a President who is more interested in his primary responsibility of defending this country than supposed world opinion. President Bush stated it again clearly this morning- we will not tolerate the proliferation of WMD.
Let's hear it for our now safe POWs! Hurrah!
#2
This trail of evidence leads directly to Paris, Berlin and Moscow. I'm betting we'll find a healthy dose of stuff rom Beijing as well.
Posted by: Douglas De Bono ||
04/13/2003 16:54 Comments ||
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Man, there is geopolitical gold to be mined from this, the Russian espionage thing. George is from Texas. Lots of dirty poker played down there. If it's banked right, we could make Iraq our own private theme park, with Europe paying the bills. (plus $10 oil) Don't think for a minute many Iraqis wouldn't mind. I just hope Powell knows how to crank the right screws.
Posted by: Scott ||
04/13/2003 17:27 Comments ||
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Scott, Please remember the Klintoon years when Information was presented which would convict even the Pope, and the media and others rejected it and simply went on.
The French government insists that it has strictly enforced a tight embargo imposed on Saddam Husseinâs regime by the United Nations in 1990. But Saddam never lost his taste for French weapons or luxury goods. And evidence found by U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq suggests thatâdespite U.N. sanctionsâthe dictator continued to receive an abundant supply of both until very recently. Who's shocked by this?
LT. GREG HOLMES, a tactical intelligence officer with the Third Infantry Division, told NEWSWEEK that U.S. forces discovered 51 Roland-2 missiles, made by a partnership of French and German arms manufacturers, in two military compounds at Baghdad International Airport. One of the missiles he examined was labeled 05-11 KND 2002, which he took to mean that the missile was manufactured last year. The charred remains of a more modern Roland-3 launcher was found just down the road from the arms cache. According to a mortar specialist with the same unit, radios used by many Iraqi military trucks brandished MADE IN FRANCE labels and looked brand new and never used. RPG night sights stamped with the number 2002 and French labels also turned up. And a new Nissan pickup truck driven by a surrendering Iraqi officer was manufactured in France as well. I'm betting this is just a small fraction of what the French actually shipped to Saddam.
U.S. soldiers who moved into one of Saddamâs sumptuous palaces found a treasure house of less-deadly French goodies. Sets of Baath Party-logo silverware were marked MADE IN FRANCE on the back. And the palace was littered with the French cigarette brands Gauloise and Gitane. There were even packages of brown-stained white French underwear. Political conservatives on Capitol Hill are already fuming at this new evidence of possible French perfidy, though French officials deny wrongdoing. A French Embassy spokeswoman speaking from both sides of her mouth at once insists that the Roland-2 missile was an old model which the manufacturer stopped making years ago, though she admits the Roland-3 is a newer model. She says the Chirac governmentâs position is that new goods from France found in Iraq were probably illegal deliveries that Saddam purchased on a marche parallel, or black market. "It was those alk runners that did it!"
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/13/2003 01:47 pm ||
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Considering how short the shooting war lasted, those French arms must be pretty effective, eh?
The French Arms merchants should be worried about the reputation of their products.
#2
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Finally heard from a friend of mine in Kuwait yesterday. Half of what they're finding supplied to the Republican Guard after 1991 came from France. I'm sure there are going to be SERIOUS repercussions for France from all of this. If not, we need to have a little "Saddam" party with our own government.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/13/2003 14:15 Comments ||
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"Political conservatives on Capitol Hill are already fuming at this new evidence of possible French perfidy"
And what are political liberals on Capitol Hill doing? Lining up for French bribes?
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/13/2003 14:33 Comments ||
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Rolands are antiaircraft - wannabee Patriot missles.
My bet is they caused the damage in Baghdad becuase they were unguided once the ground radars shut off. And if the ground radars stayed on, they likely caught a wild weasel HARM from a SEAD misslion, and became unguided fairly rapidly.
The leader of Iraq's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) Jalal Talebani on Saturday called on Iraq's neighbors to refrain from interfering in his country's internal affairs. Speaking in a gathering of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Assyrians in Kirkuk, he said the Iraqi people would determine the fate of the country and there is no need of neighbors to interfere in the country's domestic affairs. He doesn't think they need any Turks to ensure that Turkmen get a bigger slice of the pie, anymore than they need any Medes or Persians to ensure that Shiites get a bigger slice...
He said all Kurdish, Turkmen, Arab and Assyrian communities would continue to co-exist in their country and they would get united in reconstruction of their motherland and creation a free Iraq. Political and administrative programs should be developed soon to run the cities, he said. He cited Kirkuk as an exemplary city where all Iraqi communities from every race co-exist peacefully. The policy of the regime of Saddam Hussein consisted of sowing discord among the Iraqi ethnic groups, he said, adding that today every Iraqi national is aware that the country needs unity more than any other thing. He said the PUK would do its utmost to contribute to the administration of justice and fairness in the Iraqi society. And we wish him every success in doing that — even while we realize that forces on most of Iraq's borders will be operating against it.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 12:37 pm ||
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Keep in mind that it goes way beyond the traditional Shi'ite/Sunni rivalries or even Turkish/Kurdish rivalries in Iraq. Syria has sponsored radical Kurdish groups (foremost among them being the PKK) and Iran sponsored the nutty Islamic ones like Komala Islamiyyah or Ansar al-Islam. All of this infighting, plus the turf war between the PUK and KDP in the early 1990s, has taken its toll on the Kurdish community.
The PUK and Talebani seem to have the right idea with a federal model for the new Iraq, though. We should wish them the best.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/13/2003 12:45 Comments ||
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Iraqi scholar and member of the political bureau of the Islamic Action Organization of Iraq said the Iraqi people would not accept foreign rule in their country. Speaking over phone from Nassiriya to IRNA reporter, Javad Al-Atar commented on the political attitudes of the people of southern Iraq and said the Iraqis would support a civil society where Shiites would be considered the first priority to run the country. In a word, no.
For the people of Iraq, the period of tyranny and dictatorship is over, he noted. But he'd like to start it up again...
He went on to say that the Iraqi masses are very happy to see the collapse of Saddam Hussein regime and they are astonished over the lack of resistance by the Iraqi forces in the face of the invading forces. Al-Atar said with the dismantlement of Saddam's regime the Iraqi people are for establishment of a government with due respect for the Islamic values and principles. "Yes! Us Iraqis have a God-given right to cut each other's heads off!"
He said the people would not accept some with unislamic beliefs to rule them and they want the officials from all levels be Iraqi nationals. He said a summit is to be held in Nassiriya on Tuesday April 15 with the participation of all opposition groups to decide the future of Iraq. The Supreme Assembly of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), on Saturday announced its readiness to attend the April 15 summit of the Iraqi opposition to help map out plans to uphold the Iraqi people's interests. And see if they can't grab off some power for themselves...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 12:32 pm ||
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Armed radical groups have surrounded the house of Iraq's top Shi'ite Muslim cleric, giving him 48 hours to leave the country, one of his aides has said. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's Najaf property was under siege from members of splinter group Jimaat-e-Sadr-Thani, Kuwait-based Ayatollah Abulqasim Dibaji told Reuters. "Armed thugs and hooligans have had the house of Ayatollah Sistani under siege since yesterday. They have told him to either leave Iraq in 48 hours or they would attack," he said. "Total terror reigns in Najaf. They have told other ayatollahs to leave too. This is the biggest catastrophe for Najaf."
This is also something the U.S. should step on really hard â lotsa Shiite casualties, and let the Medes and Persians bitch all they want. Otherwise, this sort of mess is going to be common in Iraq for years to come.
Kuwait-based Ayatollah Abul Qasim Dibaji accused Jimaat-E-Sadr-Thani, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, of trying to take control of the holy sites of Iraq. âArmed thugs and hooligans have had the house of Ayatollah Sistani under siege since yesterday,â said Dibaji. Sadr is the 22-year-old son of late Iraqi spiritual leader Mohammad Sadeq Sadr, killed in 1999 with two other sons. Their deaths are widely blamed on the Iraqi secret service for supporting Iranâs Ayatollah Khomeini after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Associates of Sadr denied he had any links with the siege or killing last week in Najafâs main shrine of senior Shia cleric Abdul Majid Al-Khoei, who had just returned from exile. A leading Shia cleric in Kuwait also accused Sadrâs followers of threatening another cleric in Najaf, Sayyed Mohammad Said Al-Hakim with unspecified punishment unless he pledged allegiance to Muqtada Sadr. Seems like Sadr's trying to build up his power base in the traditional Iraqi manner...
Hakim is the nephew of Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Al-Hakim, who heads the Tehran-based Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), the main Shia group that opposed Iraq's former president Saddam Hussein. Abdul Hassan Al-Fajaji, an official of the London-based Al-Khoei foundation, said on Sunday evening there was no change in Najafâs security situation, describing it as âvery bad.â It's crawling with holy men, so it's likely pretty bad...
âPeople are screaming, crying, talking to the men to stop that against their marja (spiritual leader) but no one listens,â he said. âThatâs very dangerous for our religion if something happens.â Some Shia sources said US troops stationed on the outskirts of Najaf had entered the city to help restore order. The US military had no confirmation of the move. Fajaji said US forces were not intervening. âI asked them to protect us, but they say it is not their business,â he added. Since we have no idea who's doing what to whom, or why, that's probably for the best... Abed Al-Budairi, an aide to the pro-Western Khoei, said Sistani left his Najaf home before it was surrounded by men wielding knives and guns but that Sistaniâs son was in the building. âThis is the biggest catastrophe. Total terror reigns in Najaf,â said Dibaji. âNajaf is a main centre of learning, like Oxford in England. It has more than 1,000 years of history.â Kinda like Oxford, only with thugs...
Senior Shia leaders have accused Jimaat-E-Sadr-Thani of orchestrating the killing of Khoei, who witnesses say was hacked to death by an angry mob outside the Imam Ali mosque days after returning from London under the protection of US forces. Budairi said he believed Sistani had been targeted because he was Iranian born and groups opposing him wanted an Iraqi as the spiritual leader in Najaf. Yasss... Better to have an Iraqi disbursing the contributions of the faithful...
A senior Shia opposition leader in Tehran condemned the siege. âWe hope that the wise clerics in Iraq manage to control those with more hardline tendencies and remind them that what is happening in Najaf does not benefit the Iraqi people,â he said. Oh, come now. How could a few goon squads bumping holy men off harm the Iraqi people?
Lebanonâs leading Shia cleric Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah issued a statement telling Muslims to use all means to defend Sistani from an âevil assault.â Oh, a fatwah. That'll help.
Relatives say Khoei, the son of the late Grand Ayatollah Abdul Qasim Al-Khoei and Iraqâs highest Shia religious authority in the world at the time of the 1991 Gulf War, was the victim of a power struggle for control of Najaf. His family in London on Saturday insisted his role in Najaf had been âpurely humanitarian, not political.â According to relatives, all the Al-Khoei brothers, except one were killed by the Baath regime or disappeared. Moqdada Sadr's probably looking for him now...
Confused scenarios of the circumstances of Majid Al-Khoeiâs death continue to emerge. One of his companions, Abu Tarek, told the Al-Muâtamar newspaper published by Ahmad Chalabiâs Iraq National Congress in London said six people-not two-had been killed in the clashes outside of the Najaf mosque. Abu Tarek was quoted as saying those killed were three of Al-Khoeiâs nephews who lived in Najaf and the man who was allegedly the real target of the violence, Haider Al-Kilidar, who had long been related to the Baath regime, according to a journalist with Al-Muâtamar.
Followup, also from al-Jazeera...
Armed men are reported to have lifted a siege of the home of Shia spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in the early hours of Monday hours before the expiry of a 48-hour deadline they had imposed for the cleric to to leave the country. The circumstances of the withdrawal of members of a group calling itself the Jimaat-E-Sadr-Thani are still unclear but if confirmed they will come as a relief to the residents of the central Iraqi city of Najaf who have seen their 'liberated' city torn apart by inter-Shia strife. The stand-off was a worrying sign of volatility among Iraqâs majority community and aggravated concerns about national unity in post-war Iraq. Never mind.
Posted by: Anonymous ||
04/13/2003 10:53 am ||
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The only thing these nutcases respond to is overwhelming force. Now is the time to nip these guys in the bud and send a message to the rest of them. Every nutcase success in Iraq will also translate to be a greater threat to the safety of our troops.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/13/2003 11:27 Comments ||
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Careful AP, this goes right back to how Saddam handled the situation.
Posted by: john ||
04/13/2003 21:29 Comments ||
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Seems like the marines should have told them"Back-off,go home or die."
After days of negotiations, religious and civic leaders of Kut handed over administrative control of the city Sunday to the U.S. Marines' Task Force Tarawa. The Marines will serve as temporary administrators, allowing locals to perform as many governmental functions as possible. Iraqis trained by U.S. forces will be armed with weapons seized from the defeated Iraqi army and will patrol the city to counter any paramilitary fighters that might try to attack U.S. forces. And to control looting...
Intelligence reports had suggested that Kut, a settlement of 300,000 along the Tigris River, may have contained suicide bombers from other countries looking to launch attacks against U.S. troops. But the reports appear to be outdated, and it "looks like the terrorists may be gone," a Marine told CNN correspondent Art Harris, embedded with the 2nd Marines. They acknowledge, though, that pockets of resistance still pose a threat. Residents told coalition forces that they had shot and killed several terrorists and driven the rest out of town. Not a single shot was fired as members of Marine Task Force Tarawa sent a convoy into the city Saturday, Marine sources said. Must... control... urge... to... ululate!
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 09:20 am ||
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Residents told coalition forces that they had shot and killed several terrorists and driven the rest out of town.
Which is what the 2nd Amendment is all about. Bravo!
Seven U.S. soldiers previously listed as missing have been found alive by Marines heading north of Baghdad Sunday, General Tommy Franks says. It is not known whether the seven, six men and one African-American woman, are the seven held prisoner of war by Iraq, or include the six soldiers listed as missing in action.
Probably a pretty good guess that they are, though...
Gen. Franks, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer the soldiers, appeared to be in "good shape." The Pentagon officially lists seven American POWs and six missing in action. The seven arrived by helicopter at a base south of Baghdad, where they will receive medical treatment before being flown to Kuwait for further treatment and debriefing, CNN's Bob Franken reported from the scene. Two were suffering from gunshot wounds, sources said, although it was not clear when they were wounded. The seven had been handed over to a light U.S. Marine armored unit north of Samarra, 75 miles northwest of Baghdad, by junior Iraqi guards after Iraqi officers deserted.
Posted by: Kiwi ||
04/13/2003 07:40 am ||
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I wonder if these are the troops from the supply convoy that got ambushed in Al-Nasyria. If they are good because I was afraid that we would not be seeing them again. Has the five sided nut house said who the bodies retieved from the hospital in Al-Nasyria are?
Posted by: Someone who did NOT vote for William Proxmire ||
04/13/2003 9:20 Comments ||
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#2
Yes I do believe the are the ones that got ambushed in Al-Nasyria.
The ones that Al Jazeera was showing...
Posted by: sonic ||
04/13/2003 11:27 Comments ||
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#3
The rescued POWs were identified as Army Spc. Edgar Hernandez, 21, of Mission, Texas; Army Spc. Joseph Hudson, 23, of Alamogordo, N.M.; Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson, 30, of Fort Bliss, Texas; Army Pfc. Patrick Miller, 23, of Park City, Kan.; Army Sgt. James Riley, 31, of Pennsauken, N.J.; Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Ronald D. Young, Jr., 26, of Lithia Springs, Ga.; and Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 David S. Williams, 30, of Orlando, Fla.
Young and Williams are the Apache helicopter pilots who were captured after their aircraft was downed during a mission. The other five are members of the Army's 507th Maintenance Unit whose vehicle was ambushed when it took a wrong turn early in the war.
As U.S. and British forces further fanned across Iraq, a host of Iraqi patriots vowed organized resistance by setting up a National Front for the Liberation of Iraq.
Oh, this is gonna be good...
A statement entitled "Aggression Ends, Liberation Begins", a copy of which was obtained by IslamOnline.net Friday, April 11, said the new Front comprises local representatives of armed groups and resistance brigades, some still manning positions in Iraq along with Arab volunteer fighters. I have a feeling this will turn out to be like Afghanistan, where hardly a week goes by without some new group announcing its formation and making blood curdling threats, only to never be heard from again.
Yeah. And I have a feeling that the ones who're caught are going to turn out to be Syrians, Paleos, Jordanians, and similar riff-raff...
"Also, there are concerted efforts to add large numbers of Iraqi army soldiers, Republican Guard and Special Forces members to the Front," read the statement.
That's because they did such a bang-up job resisting the Hated Infidels™...
"Iraq may lose the war, but it would never surrender or die," underlined the statement.
"Us Syrians Iraqis will never put up with being deprived of our dictator!"
As for the U.S. plans to install former army general Jay Garner in power in post-war Iraq, the Liberation Front underlined that the "Iraqi people will never allow this Zionist and Sharon-relative general to rule them." Garner is due to take up the post of head of an interim administration for Iraq in the coming days. He has stated political views in total support of Israel and his ties with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have prompted accusations of Zionism from some Arab critics. The former general has been regularly denounced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for his views.
If CAIR hadn't denounced him, I'd be worried...
The Liberation Front branded as "Thief of Baghdad" Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon's favorite for the leadership of Iraq after the end of the occupation phase. "Iraqis are against the likes of Chalabi who should be described as the 40 thieves," the statement said, referring to the persons invited by Washington for a conference on the future of Iraq.
I dunno. He'd have to be a master hand at thievery to outdo Don Saddam and his capos...
The statement mentioned Adham al-Samra'y, the former Iraqi Military Intelligence chief, and Nizar Kharazzi, the former General Intelligence chief. "They are agents for the CIA," it charged. The statement made clear that Iraqis would not accept "their territories to be distributed among the murderers, the invaders; or to be racially divided."
"Nope. Nope. We intend to plunder it ourselves, soon's we get rid of those damned infidels..."
It carried the National Front for the Liberation of Iraq's determination to "liberate" Iraq and boot out the occupation forces. "The Iraqi people should keep in mind that what happens in their country is reminiscent of the situation in Palestine, south Sudan, the battle is common and the enemy is common," underlined the statement. I guess they must view the conflict in South Sudan differently from the rest of the world, unless they suddenly are feeling sympathy for the million Christians and Animists killed by an Islamist Arab regime, but somehow I doubt it.
In a telephone interview with IslamOnline.net from Paris, Iraqi opposition member and columnist El-Amir el-Rakabi said reliable political sources told him the Front founders belong to some Islamic and nationalist trends in Iraq. I wonder who makes up the 'Islamic trends' part of the alliance, any Shias like Al-Badr Brigades or Hezbollah, or are they all Sunnis? For that matter, I wonder what portion will consist of local Fadayeen, Baathist, Republican Guard Nationalists and what portion will be Jihadis just along for the chance to kill some infidels..
It's probably significant that this guy is safe in France, where the gummint loves him and his ilk most to death, and not in, say, Najaf...
"The sources, who left Iraq on Thursday, told me that the Front was formed through intensive contacts shortly after the U.S. forces occupied Baghdad and the Iraqi regime fell," El-Rakabi said.
Oh, they left Iraq on Thursday, did they? In the dead of night, perhaps? With suitcases full of cash? That's what usually happens when the dictator's henchmen beat it out of town...
He said that "all of the Front members share a common concern; feeling the bitterness of defeat at the hands of the occupation forces."
Yup. It's the displaced Baathists...
The Front will start accepting volunteers within coming few hours, El-Rakabi said, calling on all national powers in the Arab countries to support the newly-formed liberation body with money and weapons in order to liberate Iraq from the Anglo-American occupation. I'm guessing the Baath party branches in other Middle Eastern countries will be one of the primary organisers for this 'Liberation Body', so apart from Syria preasure should be put on Jordan, Yemen and Lebanon to deal with the Baath branches in their countries.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
04/13/2003 02:17 am ||
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#1
honestly the islamic component scares my tits off!
While the west pretends Islam is the religion of peace, in fact the only palatable version of Islam is practiced by the 'moderates' or 'secular muslims' who just take the nice parts of Islam and leave behind the violent parts.
They are, in fact, non-practicing as far as the direct explicit orders of the Koran go.
That leaves the traditionalists and fundamentalists: and they are enjoined by Muhammad himself to physically fight those who do not accept Islam until they either accept it or are dead.
Which means fighting with them is inevitable - and they are loyal not to a state or a country - they never fight for a country as such - they fight only for Islam. Their first loyalty is to Islam above all else.
Even if we win all our battles in the Middle East and get good co-operation from the "renegade, infidel" governments of Syria, Saudi, Jordan et al: we will always be threatened by the spectre of Islam. It may be 50 or 100 years down the track but they will try to convert or kill us by any means possible.
The problem is this: the Koran is contradictory, but the Muslims believe that the later prophetic revelations outrank the earlier ones.
But unfortunately all the peaceful, happy teachings of Muhammed were in his early, peaceful years in Mecca where he tried to convert people by persuasion.
This failed, he went to Medina and returned as a warlord with a conquering army.
SO his later revelations were greatly influenced by his warlordism: ie sowing the seeds of the religion of violence we know so well today.
And because they think the later ones cancel out the earlier ones, the fundos all subscribe to the brutal religion of force.
#2
Actually, they're the ones in deep trouble. Deep inside our bag of options is the carpet bombings of Muslim cities. Everyone thinks Iraq is a big deal, and from the hysterical coverage, one would think we had refought WWII. The truth is that we have used a tiny fraction of the power we used in WWII. If they mess with us, I can see an invasion of the countries in the Middle East sponsoring terrorism against us. Note that we are using 0.3% of GDP ($40B) to fight this war. We used 50% of national output to fight the Nazis and the Japanese in WWII. We put 14 million men under arms from a population of just over 100 million. Today we have a population of 280 million. Can these guys really play in the same leagues as we can? (They can't put anywhere near that many trained men into the field - most of these countries are not only poor, they lack the means to produce the modern weapons systems needed to defeat us. Note that although we have been pretty discriminating about civilian casualties, we do have the option of inflicting these casualties if the civilians are substantially going to be combatants).
#3
These Islamist nutcases sound scarey, and they are---when they are fueled by mega bucks from sympathetic regimes, like Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Pakistan needs bucks from the US and Saudi to stay afloat, so it is part of the Axis of Evil, Welfare Division. If the Islamists don'g get money, then they are just foamers. We need to stick to the Plan (TM) and keep stout hearts. 9-11 and Afghanistan were the beginning, and Iraq was the end of the beginning. The Coalition of the Willing (TM) will stay the course. It will take 10 years or more, but we will prevail.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/13/2003 11:59 Comments ||
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#4
I wanna believe that, Paul. But 9-11 didn't take a lot of cash, just a lot of will. And our open society is flush with targets of opportunity. It's not the pocketbook we must squash, but the shrill Islamic preachers who motivate the terrorists.
Unless you're saying it's THEIR pocketbooks we're going after.
Posted by: Scott ||
04/13/2003 12:14 Comments ||
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#5
The name itself provides some very cogent clues about their make-up, their politics, and their support: NATIONAL FRONT FOR THE LIBERATION OF PALESTINE IRAQ. In other words, the same jihadis fighting against 'the infidel' Israelis, and anyone else they can stir up trouble against.
George Bush needs to understand, at the core of his being, that the way to defeat these bunch of thugs is to destroy their base, destroy their financial support, and deny them the means and opportunity to do anything. The Israelis finally went far enough to destroy the houses of gang members. We may need to destroy a city or two to get the message across. Hopefully, it won't come to that, but it HAS to be an option on the table, or we won't have a chance to root out these thugs and murderers. We also need to stop chiding Israel when they do the exact thing we're going to HAVE to do.
And I, too, believe 90% of this group will be non-Iraqis, just as 90% of the NFLP is not Israeli arabs.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/13/2003 13:06 Comments ||
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#6
I mainly worry because the Islamists understand our weaknesses.
They know to white-ant our societies: just look at Europe fer-gawds-sake. UK is next bad after Europe.
I want to move to the USA: at least you are taking it seriously.
In Australia, we have indonesia to the north (which always makes me shiver) and a growing Islamofascist population here: but what makes them dangerous is our PC culture which insists the word Muslim *never* be used in the same sentence as rebel/violence/terrorist.
People in this country would have NFI of what links Ivory Coast rebels with Phillipino Abu Sayyaf, to Hamas - NFI!!!
So they will continue entering the country, converting strangers, breeding, bringing in extended family, protesting and pushing for greater rights and more leniency to practice components of Sharia: if we disagree, we are 'racists'.
My fear is that my future children (should I ever have any) will either be wearing Burquas or emigrating to the USA as refugees.
#7
You know, anon1, you're worried about too many things. Only a few, or rather one is needful. You should try the bible.
Now I'll find out if I'm still posting at the Fray, won't I?
Posted by: Scott ||
04/13/2003 13:50 Comments ||
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#8
Hey, anon1, maybe this little story will help calm you down. At the start of the Civil War, General Grant was on his first mission against the enemy in Missouri marching to the reported position of a Rebel force. As he got closer, be became more and more nervous until he wanted to turn around and retreat back to base, but then he crossed the last ridge and the enemy had fled. He never forgot the lesson - The enemy has just as much reason to be afraid of our forces as we have of his. So concentrate on what we will do to them not so much what they might do to us.
Posted by: Chris Smith ||
04/13/2003 17:40 Comments ||
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Edited to highlights...
It was a cool fall day in November 1979 in a country going through a religious and political upheaval when a group of Iranian students attacked and seized the American Embassy in Tehran. This seizure was an outright attack on American soil; it was an attack that held the world's most powerful country hostage and paralyzed a Presidency. The attack on this sovereign US embassy set the stage for the events to follow for the next 23 years.
America was still reeling from the aftermath of the Viet Nam experience and had a serious threat from the Soviet Union when then-President Carter had to do something. He chose to conduct a clandestine raid in the desert. The ill-fated mission ended in ruin, but stood as a symbol of America's inability to deal with terrorism. America's military had been decimated and downsized/right sized since the end of the Viet Nam war. A poorly trained, poorly equipped and poorly organized military was called on to execute a complex mission that was doomed from the start.
Shortly after the Tehran experience, Americans began to be kidnapped and killed throughout the Middle East. The attacks against US soil continued.
In April of 1983 a large vehicle packed with high explosives was driven into the US Embassy compound in Beirut. When it explodes, it kills 63 people. [Islamic Jihad ]
Then just six short months later a large truck heavily laden down with over 2500 pounds of TNT smashed through the main gate of the US Marine Corps headquarters in Beirut. 241 US servicemen are killed. [Hezbollah]
Two months later in December 1983, another truck loaded with explosives is driven into the US Embassy in Kuwait. [Islamic Jihad]
The following year, in September 1984, another van was driven into the gates of the US Embassy in Beirut and America slept. [Islamic Jihad]
In April 1985 a bomb explodes in a restaurant frequented by US soldiers in Madrid. [ETA and Islamic Jihad both claimed responsibility]
Then in August a Volkswagen loaded with explosives is driven into the main gate of the US Air Force Base at Rhein-Main, 22 are killed. [West German Red Army faction and the French Direct Action]
Fifty-nine days later a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro is hijacked and we watched as an American in a wheelchair is singled out of the passenger list and executed. [Palestine Liberation Front]
The terrorists then shift their tactics to bombing civilian airliners when they bomb TWA Flight 840 in April of 1986 that killed 4 [Ezzedine Kassam Unit of the Arab Revolutionary Cells] and the most tragic bombing, Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 259 [Libyan intel and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine].
The terrorists decide to bring the fight to America.
In January 1993, two CIA agents are shot and killed as they enter CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. [Mir Aimal Kasi, probably al-Qaeda's first U.S. hit]
The following month, February 1993, a group of terrorists are arrested after a rented van packed with explosives is driven into the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people are killed and over 1000 are injured. [al-Qaeda]
Then in November 1995 a car bomb explodes at a US military complex in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killing seven service men and women. [Islamic Movement for Change, the Tigers of the Gulf, and the Combatant Partisans of God all claimed credit]
A few months later in June of 1996, another truck bomb explodes only 35 yards from the US military compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. It destroys the Khobar Towers, a US Air Force barracks, killing 19 and injuring over 500. [Movement for Islamic Change]
The terrorists are getting braver and smarter as they see that America does not respond decisively.
They move to coordinate their attacks in a simultaneous attack on two US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. These attacks were planned with precision, they kill 224. America responds with cruise missile attacks and goes back to sleep. [al-Qaeda]
The USS Cole was docked in the port of Aden, Yemen for refueling on 12 October 2000, when a small craft pulled along side the ship and exploded killing 17 US Navy Sailors. Attacking a US War Ship is an act of war, but we sent the FBI to investigate the crime and went back to sleep. [al-Qaeda]
And of course you know the events of 11 September 2001. Most Americans think this was the first attack against US soil or in America. How wrong they are. America has been under a constant attack since 1979 and we chose to hit the snooze alarm and roll over and go back to sleep. [al-Qaeda]
You don't have to be in the FBI or CIA or on the National Security Council to see the pattern that has been developing since 1979. The President is right on when he says we are engaged in a war. I think we have been in a war for the past 23 years and it will continue until we as a people decide enough is enough. We have to be ready to pay the price and make the sacrifice to ensure our way of life continues. We cannot afford to hit the Snooze Button again and roll over and go back to sleep. We have to make the terrorists know that in the words of Admiral Yamamoto after the attack on Pearl Harbor "that all they have done is to awaken a sleeping giant."
Posted by: Scott ||
04/13/2003 11:13 am ||
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It's not as if the military or the CIA hadn't told the world this was war. We kept saying it over and over. The "civilian leadership" just didn't want to acknowledge it. Reagan came the closest to understanding, and knew our military was too weak to fight that war. He began building it up, both to force Russia to collapse, and to have enough forces to wage a war of defense effectively. Bush I played political games, and we lost the edge Reagan had established. Clinton was a disaster for the military, aided and abetted by the Democratic Party and its socialist agenda. Now we're under DIRECT ATTACK, and we're finally beginning to respond. It's going to take those that attack us a few years to understand that things have changed. The United States is now MAD AS HELL, and will not tolerate any more attacks. I hope, fervently, that there's no sliding back into the past, once the business in Iraq is over. We, the people, need to keep our government aware of the fact that we demand they do their duty and protect us, including taking out the bad guys on THEIR territory, if that's what it takes.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/13/2003 13:23 Comments ||
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#2
I appreciate what you're saying, patriot, but I actually believe we, as a people, don't get it. It's gonna take another 9-11 (of course, military blood not being as valuable as New York blood) before more wake up and smell the hashish, and even then the blinders on the left will find a way to blame the US.
There will always be dorks like Charles Lindbergh (shoulda tried the Pacific) around.
Posted by: Scott ||
04/13/2003 13:41 Comments ||
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#3
I don't think America is going to go "back to sleep" after the shooting stops in Iraq. #1 -- the memory of 9/11 is still fresh for us. #2 -- Americans do NOT want a repeat, or heaven help us, something worse. #3 -- GWB is a determined guy, with more of a steel backbone than his predecessors had, including his father. #4 -- America's on a winning streak right now. Yes, there is plenty to do with Iraq/Afghanistan/mopping up al-Qaeda. But at least now there are some impressive victories on our side, as opposed to years past when the other side was racking up all the points. #5 -- The other troublemakers are toning it down now for the first time in decades. Hell, even North Korea is cautiously giving the ok to multilateral talks, something they said they would never do.
We still might be a little groggy, but I think we've reached for the morning coffee and are starting to get it in gear.
Posted by: Baba Yaga ||
04/13/2003 13:50 Comments ||
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#4
I don't think that killing Jihadis by the thousands is going to solve the problem. These are uneducated, indoctrinated people that are basically being controlled by the dictatorial regimes (Pakland, Syria, Iran, Nkorea, etc). Dictators like these do not give a shit about the Jihadis ("strap this to your ass and blow yourself up. There are 72 virgins waiting for your in heaven."). Simply killing the Jihadi foot soldiers is like swatting flies, its a never end job.
The only way to deal with this problem is to make it very clear to the dictators that THEY will be the targets. Every time a terrorist strikes, the leadership must be taken out. Once the dictator realizes that his life and dictatorship are at risk, he will stop using terrorism as a state policy.
#5
That's the 64k?, how do we take down the motivational apparatus (the madrassah system) or at least cripple it without destroying the secular institutions?
Could we buy off a few ayatollahs? Or create a few?
Posted by: Scott ||
04/13/2003 16:24 Comments ||
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#6
How about a simple, publicly announced deal? For every act of Islamic terrorism committed, one Muslim Holy Place/City gets replaced by a faintly glowing crater? Only thing I'm not sure about is whether to start with Mecca or work up to it.
Posted by: Aussie Mike ||
04/13/2003 16:25 Comments ||
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#7
Every time we have some sort of emanation from Pakland's JUP, I note that they signed Binny's declaration of war against us. It wasn't one of their front organizations, it was the party secretary, and he was noted as a member of the JUP. As far as I'm concerned, everyone who signed, and their organizations, should be on the kill list:
Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Ladin
Ayman al-Zawahiri, amir of the Jihad Group in Egypt
Abu-Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, Egyptian Islamic Group
Shaykh Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan
Fazlur Rahman (Khalil), amir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh
As far as I know, all of these guys are still at large, though we've tried for Binny and Ayman, and the Paks had Fazl Khalil under house arrest for awhile.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/13/2003 16:47 Comments ||
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President Bashar al-Assad receives a phone call from Blair on the latest developments in Iraq. "Hi, Bashir! It's Tony... No, we're not coming for you yet..." President al-Assad reviews with French Foreign Minister, De Villepin the standing situation, and Arab and international efforts to back the United Nationsâ role in Iraq. Syria will do whatever it can to allow the Iraqi people determine their future. "Yeah. They don't need anybody to pick their dictator for them..." Lebanese officials stress the importance of solidarity with Syria. "We lo-o-o-o-ove the Mother Country..." Political circles and Arab media activities continue condemnation against the American accusations against Syria. "See that? All the usual suspects are on our side. Just like they were on Sammy's..." In a joint press conference, al-Shara: War on Iraq is illegal and the American accusations are allegations. De Villepin: Syria has an important regional role. Ummm... Yes. As a target... One Palestinian martyred by Israeli bullets in Ad-Daherya, and the number rises to 2373. Terrible, the way they keep popping those gunnies, ain't it? General Director of the International Agency for Nuclear Energy, Mohammed al- Baradee: There is no evidence of the existence of mass destruction weapons in Iraq. "Nope. None there. Take my word for it." With the increasing anti-war demonstrations, the United Nations appeals for a central role. "Hey! Lookit me! Yo! Over here! Don'tchoo ignore me, now...!"
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 07:54 pm ||
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#1
I detect a note of concern.
Posted by: Matt ||
04/13/2003 20:37 Comments ||
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#2
Of course,AssHat received transcripts of Blair's other phone calls courtesy of the Russians, so there were no surprises, I'm sure.
Not that any of the intelligence available to AssHat is native - he seems a rather dim bulb to be tweaking noses with that smarmy Foreign Minister that has hit the interview circuit of late.
The latest blurb I heard (MSNBC, I think) was that Syria hopes to covertly undermine all US activities in Iraq, on a low-burn scale, to drag it down into another Lebanon - under its effective control, of course.
I think the 4th ID has a mission, after all...
BTW, the UN is DEAD. D E A D. All reporting of the statements of minions and parasitic pseudo-officials is of no consequence - but the entertainment value is definitely high. I read these to see if the day brings a new "topper" - a new all-time absurd declaration.
US forces engaged Syrian nationals in combat in Baghdad overnight, killing many of them, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. Rumsfeld's assertions in US television interviews echoed similar comments by Army General Tommy Franks, the US commander, but both men stopped short of saying what Washington might do about it. "In a firefight, a lot of them got killed last night," Rumsfeld said of the Syrians in an interview with CBS television. Other foreign nationals also have engaged US forces in Baghdad, but the largest number were from Syria, he said in an earlier interview with NBC television. Somehow, we guessed that, didn't we?
It was not clear whether they had any connection to the Syrian government, he said. "People were busy fighting them. They weren't asking their biographies," he said. "I was born in a log cabin I helped my father build... FIRE!
I met my mother at a high school dance... FIRE!"
Franks in an interview with Fox television referred to them as "mercenaries," and said some had been taken prisoner. Syrian fighters have entered Iraq by the busload, Rumsfeld said. "Some we stopped. The ones we could find, we turned them around and sent them back. And some we've impounded and put into enemy prisoner-of-war camps," he said.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 04:57 pm ||
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#1
"And some we've impounded and put into enemy prisoner-of-war camps," he said.
"Where they will tell us who they REALLY are, or we'll send them into the tunnels beneath Baghdad, looking for Sammy. Just to be fair, we'll give each of them a flashlight with almost-dead batteries, and a leaky gas mask."
Syria backed Iraq in every way it could. Syria also occupies Lebanon and supports Hezbollah, Hamas, and any other anti-Jewish hate group it can possibly dig up. Assad is going to be swimming in the Med pretty soon, if he's not careful. I hope he's a strong swimmer, and can manage with those two JDAMS around his neck.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/13/2003 17:11 Comments ||
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#2
"In a firefight, a lot of them got killed last night"
Translation: Hey Syria, we are getting good at killing Syrian fighters. You starting to get the hint?
#3
Not to defend Syria, but this is a rather good thing in a way. The jihadis are having no impact on our operations and many are now dead--the swamp is being drained.
Posted by: chris ||
04/13/2003 18:58 Comments ||
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#4
We've met the Syrian military probes.......... successfully, now we've got this damn 4th Infantry Division fully unloaded and on its way to the border to meet the mighty syrian army, jihadis, hezbolla, & fat Baathis irregulars too.. all against a singel US division. We should be quaking in our boots.
Also heard Oil pipelins shut off between Iraq and Syria, so no more free ride for syrias marvelous economy...what a joke this country is, enlisting france as your defender does give you a bit of confidence doesnt it?
New World Order can be effectively described by a single Sentence.
" Sucks to be a Socialist Dictator"
It makes more and more sense to go ahead, since all the gear is on-site, to finish "draining the swamp" and finish the Ba'athists. Given the proclaimed Ba'athist's "principles" and following the bread crumbs, this is just a long-overdue continuation of de-Nazification... It appears the trail leads to Europe, after Syria! What a surprise!
France won't survive another decade as a "Western" state, given its idiotic social and economic polices, lack of will, and truly unsettling demographics. I don't know whether to be alarmed or smug. Being right on this one will be more painful than I thought.
This all seems a bit heady, doesn't it?
Is anyone else here getting that funny feeling that every page turned makes it more obvious that we should follow our instincts and keep rooting out the "states" that make it possible for terrorism to flourish?
I believe that terrorism will die on the vine, no matter who issues a fatwa, if the "states" that facilitate them are brought down. Without state support, the documentation, finances, training, planning, acquisition of materiel, etc. becomes exponentially more difficult.
Heady stuff to consider the path this could take. I don't doubt that there is the will in the Bush WH to do it, either. Ignoring the gutlessness of the multilateralists, what about our own weenies: The US Congress... can they be dragged along?
I guess that will be up to us.
Everything is unraveling and we are entering new territory. The rules only work if everyone subscribes to them. The Islamofascists have demonstrated that they do not. It makes sense for America to fully redefine what we want and what we are willing to do to get it. Throwing out the rules (never attack first, etc.) must be viewed in a new light cuz the lethality of weaponry has risen exponentially. I've just recently become a believer in pre-emption and ignoring those who hope to rein us in with the old rules. It's the only thing that makes sense, now. We either save our way of life through overt actions against all identifiable foes - or watch it become embattled on every side by Liliputians... eventually to be smothered by Islam, if not mediocrity and malaise.
A summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French and German counterparts has been dubbed a failure by some officials here, who warned the troika's "peace camp" alliance would crumble with the end of the war in Iraq. "Senior government officials, speaking in the corridors of power in Moscow, have no illusions about any long-term perspectives for the axis," the well-connected Izvestia daily reported in its weekend issue. "Sooner or later Iraq will fall and Russia and the United Sates will resume normal relations. The situation in Iraq does not mean that we intend to get into an argument with the United States," said the source before adding that Moscow never expected "any long-term principled" position concerning Iraq from either Paris or Berlin. It's not a good idea to expect anything "long-term principled" out of Chiraq...
The comments indicate that Russia's nuanced position over the war in Iraq is becoming even more difficult to decipher. Putin is still pushing to protect a nascent friendship with US President George W. Bush in the face of strident opposition from the Russian media and top government officials. Analysts have long argued that Putin is far keener to preserve friendly ties with the United States than with the pro-European, anti-war camps embedded in much of the Russian media and the foreign and defense ministries. Putin is the most intelligent of the three members of the "troika." One has his ideology, one has his pride, and Putin has his worries.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 04:12 pm ||
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When they used the term axis, were they...
Naaaaah, couldn't be.
Posted by: Scott ||
04/13/2003 16:30 Comments ||
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#2
Russians always gravitate to the strongest.
Posted by: Douglas De Bono ||
04/13/2003 16:49 Comments ||
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#3
F Russia
Posted by: g wiz ||
04/13/2003 17:12 Comments ||
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#4
Putin is going to have to kiss major-league ass privately to overcome the effects of Russian spying and cooperation with Iraq.
#5
I think he's going to have to do more than private ass-kissing, what with the memo regarding Russian spying on Blair, and the supposed list of available hit men for assassinations.
Posted by: Baba Yaga ||
04/13/2003 19:13 Comments ||
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#6
I smell a double-cross...Chirac better watch his back, and read the stories coming from the Telegraph.
Posted by: john ||
04/13/2003 20:22 Comments ||
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The United States has pledged to tackle the Syrian-backed Hizbollah group in the next phase of its 'war on terror' in a move which could threaten military action against President Bashar Assad's regime in Damascus. The move is part of Washington's efforts to persuade Israel to support a new peace settlement with the Palestinians. Washington has promised Israel that it will take 'all effective action' to cut off Syria's support for Hizbollah - implying a military strike if necessary, sources in the Bush administration have told The Observer. The new US undertaking to Israel to deal with Hizbollah via its Syrian sponsors has been made over recent days during meetings between administration officials and Israeli diplomats in Washington, and Americans talking to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem. It would be part of a deal designed to entice Israel into the so-called road map to peace package that would involve the Jewish state pulling out of the Palestinian West Bank, occupied since 1967. It would also avenge 281 dead Marines, as well as making the world a safer, better smelling place.
'If you control Iraq, you can affect the Syrian and Iranian sponsorship of Hizbollah, both geographically and politically,' says Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution think-tank in Washington. 'The United States will make it very clear, quietly and publicly, that Baathist Syria may come to an end if it does not stop its support of Hizbollah.' Good idea. It will also give Hezbollah's other godfathers something to think hard on...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 04:04 pm ||
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The Syrian economy has to be close to collapse. they have lost their best poil sponsor, they no longer have the lucrative traffic between France, germany and Iraq and they have the United States military turning off the oil spigot.
Posted by: Douglas De Bono ||
04/13/2003 17:00 Comments ||
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'If you control Iraq, you can affect the Syrian and Iranian sponsorship of Hizbollah, both geographically and politically'
Sheesh. It took a Brookings Institution doubledome to figure that out? Welcome to the Land of The Cluefull, Ivo Daalder!
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/13/2003 17:06 Comments ||
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The Islamic Republic has stressed that it considers US-British troops responsible for any threat against Iranian PoWs who may still be in Iraqi prisons. The Persian-language newspaper `Entekhab' on Saturday quoted a ranking army commander as saying that he had asked the Foreign Ministry to notify the troops in Iraq in a formal note of Iran's position in that regard. I hope it's worded a little better than that bit of spew. Something along the lines of "The Islamic Republic requests that any of its nationals incarcerated in Iraq be returned by Iraq's conquerors." Never make faces and call names while you're asking for a favor. Brigadier-General Mirfeisal Baqerzadeh, the head of the search and recovery committee for those missing in action, voiced concerns about the threats against Iranian PoWs after the fall of Baghdad's regime. "Iran considers the US-British troops in Iraq responsible for the threats against Iranian PoWs, and they should live up to their commitments regarding Iranian prisoners," Entekhab quoted him as saying. I doubt if we've given the matter any thought, actually...
"Considering that Iraqi prisons and detention centers are under the US-British control, they are responsible for the consequences of any threat against Iranian PoWs." Baqerzadeh further said whether there is any more Iranian PoWs in Iraq is merely a possibility, stressing that but the issue was still not definite. "We just had certain data and documents that had been obtained from the 1980-88 war with Iraq or from the reports of Iranian troops that have seen their comrades in Iraqi prisons," the official said. These documents, he added, show that a certain number of Iranian PoWs are still in Iraq. If we find any, we'll probably send them along, as long as they stay away from our embassy.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 12:57 pm ||
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Actually, we'd have done it anyway, as a matter of personal respect for OURSELVES. We've always prided ourselves on doing the "right" thing. I'm sure that the team put together to go through the Iraqi Ministry of Torture and Mayhem's records will provide every assistance to the Iranians. It's in OUR best interst to do so, as well as theirs. We can carefully express our condolences about the brutality that Saddam exerted against Iranian prisoners of war. It may even have an impression.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/13/2003 13:35 Comments ||
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Total crap. They didn't want the remains of the Iranians we DID find. They're looking for an excuse, not their countrymen
`Iran News' on Sunday suggested that Iran can use the China experience to end its long-running antagonistic standoff with the United States instead of a plebiscite as recently proposed by Expediency Council (EC) chief Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani. "The leaders in Beijing did not need a referendum to reach the conclusion that it would be in the national security interests of China to end its decades-long antagonistic standoff with Washington," noted the English-language daily in its editorial. "The decision-makers should simply weigh the pros and cons of the issue and if deemed advantageous to our national interests, not a second should be wasted in reestablishing ties with the United States," the editorial further said. "Don't give 'em time to decide we should be number one on the poop list..."
It is interesting to compare the responses of Iran and Syria to the U.S. victory. The guys running Iran are obviously much smarter than the ones running Syria. It's still early in the game, but it looks like the Iran-Syria axis may come apart and Iran stands back from open belligerence. That should have a major effect on Iranian-financed, Syrian-sheltered terror networkds.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 12:52 pm ||
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Maybe having American troops on two borders (Iran-Afghanistan and Iran-Iraq) woke a few people up. Especially when neither war turned out to be the quagmire the rest of the world predicted.
Now, will someone tell me why bringing some "instability" in this region is such a bad thing?
Posted by: Baba Yaga ||
04/13/2003 13:22 Comments ||
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#2
If you want to keep Iran paying attention, keep pushing on the weak sista, which in this case is.....Syria.
gotta stop this rhyming crap. pretty lame.
Posted by: john ||
04/13/2003 20:29 Comments ||
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I say we start by putting a Starbucks and Kentucky fried chicken in Tehran.
The Syrian foreign minister on Saturday night branded as "baseless and futile" the US threats against his country. Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs Farouq Al-Shara who was speaking at a joint press conference with his French counterpart Dominique de Villepin, added, "the Damascus government does not evaluate such phony threats as real, or serious." Neither did Sammy. And he had Dominique on his side, too...
He meanwhile emphasized, "all the same, if we make sure that such threats are really the US foreign policy, we will respond to them seriously." Like by sending Syrians to make war on our troops?
De Villepin and Al-Shara attended the press conference at Muridan Hotel of Damascus, following a joint meeting with the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to the IRNA reporter in Syria. The Syrian foreign minister emphasized, "the threats against Syria are made by the extremists within the US administration who do not even heed the interests of the US nation, and the future of the Americans in the Middle East." He's talking about people who don't like Syrian gunnies...
Some US politicians and military commanders have during the past few weeks been accusing Syria of sending weapons to Iraq secretly and of providing for the fleeing of the high ranking Iraqi officials into the Syrian territory. The Syrian foreign minister reiterated: "The Americans have up to now despite occupying the whole Iraqi territory found no weapons of mass destruction there. How are they going to prove the existence of such weapons in Syria then?" I suppose we could go look...
Al Shara said, "Syria has a special status within the Islamic and Arab world, as well as among the members of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM). That is besides the hundreds of millions of black and Arab Americans, who have on numerous occasions announced they are pleased with the performance of the Syrian government." Hmmm... Wonder why he brought them up?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 12:43 pm ||
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Al Shara said, "Syria has a special status within the Islamic and Arab world, as well as among the members of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM). That is besides the hundreds of millions of black and Arab Americans, who have on numerous occasions announced they are pleased with the performance of the Syrian government."
"Hundreds of millions" of black and Arab Americans. Hmmm. Population of 280million, 19% black (53 million, about 6% [3.2mil] black Muslims), Arab American population about 3% (8.4 million, about 25% Christian, so about 6.3 million Muslim). Even considering 2% non-black, non-Arab Muslims, still just a tad over 12 million. Long way from "Hundreds of millions". Even looking at the entire world, with over 1 billion Muslims, 2/3 are poor, uneducated, and have problems enough at home. The rest are either active in trying to run governments, stay alive, feed themselves, and continue to keep the Muslim communities they control above water.
Syria is trying to appear greater than it is, like a cat whose fur stands on end when it's frightened. The United States has no problem seeing through all this hype. Ever seen a WET cat?
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/13/2003 16:52 Comments ||
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Fredo, I'm telling you, there's something funky going on with the WMD thing. More has been less, knowhaddimean? What is angle there? Do you 'spose we're trying to cover for the AoW? I mean they are so completely rippable, -What could GWB want from them?
Posted by: Scott ||
04/13/2003 18:40 Comments ||
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"hundreds of millions of black and Arab Americans"?
Sure....just like there are no infidel Americans at Baghdad International Airport.
I guess Info Man made it to Damascus. What the hell, one Baath party is pretty much like another.
Posted by: Baba Yaga ||
04/13/2003 19:36 Comments ||
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President Mohammad Khatami said Saturday that the 'unequal and extensive' war on Iraq has had no winner but losers, advising the US and UK to get out of Iraq quickly and permit the establishment of a broad-based and democratic government there. I beg to differ. We won. Sammy lost. We'll leave when Iraq has a new government, and it won't be an "Islamic republic."
President Khatami told a large group of people in the city of Saravan that both the regime of Saddam and the invading US and British forces were defeated in the operations. "The first loser of the war was the dictatorial and belligerent regime of Saddam, who ruled the noble and oppressed Iraqi nation for about a quarter of a century and inflicted heavy damages on Iraqi people and regional nations," said Khatami. He got that part right, though it wasn't Sammy who taught the noble and oppressed Iraqi people to hook auto batteries up to each other's genitalia. They thought that up themselves.
He said, "The next losers in the war were the invading forces." He added that the forces were defeated first of all in the world public opinion and then morally. These moral wounds don't hurt much, y'know that?
President Khatami said the world, including Islamic countries, and many governments and policy makers condemned the military invasion as is evidenced by the anti-war demonstrations which are still going on worldwide. He said the invading forces also suffered moral defeat for massacre of women, children and men as well as ruining vital resources of the Iraqi nation. Had to mow them down when the Heroic Iraqi Army started pushing them out in front of them, using them as shields. Too bad, that.
Khatami called for the establishment of a democratic and popular system in Iraq by Iraqi people themselves with the support of the world people, including states of the region. Uhuh. The "states of the region" intend to assist them right back into dictatorship of one form or another.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 12:26 pm ||
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As for "world public opinion", I think it will take MONTHS before most of the "world's leaders" stop messing their pants long enough to HAVE an opinion. There was "shock and awe", not necessarily from the bombing campaign, but from the way the US military tore through the Iraqi defenses like a B-1 through wet tissue paper. I'd be surprised that, after several months of quiet contemplation (plus the 'leaking' of some of Saddam's more brutal practices), "world opinion" didn't migrate slowly into the corner of the "Coalition of the Willing", with a lot of hand-wringing and self-castigation for those left out.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/13/2003 13:42 Comments ||
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President Mohammad Khatami said Saturday that the 'unequal and extensive' war on Iraq has had no winner but losers, advising the US and UK to get out of Iraq quickly and permit the establishment of a broad-based and democratic government there.
No doubt so his agents can infiltrate the country and make it more "Iranian-friendly".
President Khatami said the world, including Islamic countries, and many governments and policy makers condemned the military invasion as is evidenced by the anti-war demonstrations which are still going on worldwide.
So what? This is supposed to mean then that the U.S. military "lost"? Ha......haaha....haha..haaahahahahaaahahahaa!!!
He said the invading forces also suffered moral defeat for massacre of women, children and men as well as ruining vital resources of the Iraqi nation.
Funny how people in the Middle East have this habit of using the word "massacre" to describe a situation when there wasn't one.
#4
Bomb, think of this as "mental" massacres. As you clearly state, the entire ME live in a situation where there isn't one, except in their collective mind. The same is true for the Peace Movement for that matter.
And in that warped deluded frame of mind there are no winners, just losers.
Posted by: john ||
04/13/2003 20:43 Comments ||
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A very funny satire from Esquire magazine! Lightern up! It's funny!
By Stephen Sherrill
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: My friend told me you can't get pregnant if you have sex in a hot tub. Is that true? âDiane Macdonald, Sioux City, Iowa
Secretary Rumsfeld: There is an awful lot of misinformation out there. Diane, the reality is that you can get pregnant if you have sex in a hot tub. Are hot tubs fun? Yes. Do hot tubs make you want to have sex? You bet. But anybody who believes that you can't get pregnant is simply uninformed, misinformed, or poorly informed, and does not belong in a hot tub.
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: My husband and I have an active love life, and I'm generally satisfied, but sometimes I'd like him to go "down there." âKate Waterman, Enid, Oklahoma
Secretary Rumsfeld: Down where? I'm here to answer legitimate questions about sex in a frank and candid way, but I'm not doing this just to waste my time. Do you mean your belly button? Your knees? Your toes? Boca Raton? Argentina?
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: My wife and I are happily married, but the spark seems to have gone out of our sex life. How can we spice it up? âHarry Blumenthal, Bakersfield, California
Secretary Rumsfeld: There's no great mystery here, Harry. It can't be that hard to understand. You get in there, you do your job, you develop an exit strategy, and you get the heck out of there. That's the way sex works. Why does everything have to be so difficult?
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: My wife wants me to talk dirty when we make love, but I've never been able to do it. Any advice? âJoel Brennan, Syracuse, New York
Secretary Rumsfeld: Listen, anybody that can talk clean can talk dirty. Dirty talk is just like normal talk, except dirty. Your wife wants dirty talk, so give her dirty talk. Something like, "Those breasts are first-rate," or "I am going to give you a darned good orgasm," or, if she likes the rough stuff, "I'll tell you this, I am about to give you the business and I don't want to hear any guff about it."
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: I keep reading about something called the G-spot, but I can't seem to find it. Can you tell me where it is? âElizabeth Kaplan, Tacoma, Washington
Secretary Rumsfeld: I could tell you. But I'm not inclined to.
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: I'm thinking about trying a threesome, but I don't know how to approach my girlfriend about it. Have you ever tried a threesome? âDave Barcott, Boulder, Colorado
Secretary Rumsfeld: Nice try, Dave. I can see what you're trying to do, but you're going to have to do better than that. Donald Rumsfeld is not going to be tricked into revealing something stupid about Donald Rumsfeld and Mrs. Donald Rumsfeld by such a question. If I answer, then someone will say, "Oh, goodness, the Rumsfelds are into threesomes," and then it gets repeated and picked up, and then suddenly everybody's talking about Donald Rumsfeld and Mrs. Donald Rumsfeld and threesomes, and that's not what this is about. That said, bring it up in a very loving way and let her choose the third party. Also, alcohol never hurts.
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: If you have sex in a hot tub, can you get pregnant? âMolly Chaplan, Toledo, Ohio
Secretary Rumsfeld: Good gosh. Okay, yes, yes, you can get pregnant from having sex in a hot tub. In fact, you can't not get pregnant from having sex in a hot tub, nor can you get pregnant without having sex in a hot tub. I hope I've answered your question, Molly.
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: My husband has a problem with premature ejaculation. Is there something I could do to make him last longer? âEllen Shapiro, Knoxville, Tennessee
Secretary Rumsfeld: I'm just going to say this once. There is no such thing as premature ejaculation. There is ejaculation, and there is non-ejaculation. If your husband is ejaculating, then count your blessings. Congratulations, you just had sex. That's what men doâthey ejaculate. All this business about, "Oh, henny penny, my husband is a premature ejaculator!" is just a lot of twaddle and claptrap. You say it enough and pretty soon, believe me, he won't be ejaculating at all.
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: My boyfriend sometimes likes to put on makeup and dress in women's underpants when we make love. Should I be worried? âAmanda Stein, St. Albans, Vermont
Secretary Rumsfeld: I am not an expert in this area, but I will refer this question to General Tommy Franks and have him get back to you.
Posted by: Penguin ||
04/13/2003 11:44 am ||
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The Hermit Kingdom North Korea said on Saturday it would consider any form of dialogue with the United States about its suspected nuclear arms ambitions if Washington was prepared to make a "bold switchover" in its policy toward Pyongyang. The dramatic shift from a rigid insistence on bilateral talks came in comments from North Korea's foreign ministry just days after U.S.-led forces unseated Iraq's President Saddam Hussein in a war the South Korean president said had "petrified" Pyongyang. Nope. Not a sight you want to see when you're relying on an Army Based Policyâ¢...
Washington â which lumps communist North Korea in an "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran for seeking weapons of mass destruction â wants multilateral talks that also include regional players South Korea, Japan, Russia and China. "If the U.S. is ready to make a bold switchover in its Korea policy for a settlement of the nuclear issue, the DPRK will not stick to any particular dialogue format," the official KCNA news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying. "Really. Whatever's fair. We don't mind..."
"North Korea has recently started showing a change in its attitude in a gradual and indirect way," said Kim Jung-roh, deputy spokesman at the South Korean Unification Ministry. "Also, as the Iraq war is coming to an end faster than expected, North Korea has less options to take." Thanks to John for the headzup!
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 10:58 am ||
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The communist doctrine calls "negotiations" "War by other means", the way we describe war as "diplomacy by force". We talked with North Korea every week for 50 years now, at Panmunjom. It's gotten us nowhere. I hate to say it, but the only thing North Korea will be moved by is for Russia and China to remove the life support. Only when that happens will there be TRUE negotiations with the DPRK. We need to begin putting pressure on Russia and China to give us a hand here. Both have far more to lose than they do to gain by continuing to prop up Kim.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/13/2003 13:12 Comments ||
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If the U.S. is ready to make a bold switchover in its Korea policy...
The switchover being....
Wait a minit! Lemmie guess! The insistence on Multilateral talks, right? Am I right?? Huh? Am I?
President Fidel Castro remained defiant amid international criticism of Cuba's harsh measures to reign in dissent and halt violent hijackings, saying he would fight to the end to defend his nation against the United States. "We are now immersed in a battle against provocations that are trying to move us toward conflict and military aggression by the United States," Castro told a group of Venezuelans in a Friday night speech broadcast on state television. "We have been defending ourselves for 44 years and have always been willing to fight until the end," Castro added in the speech, which marked the coup attempt against his political ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a year ago. Fidel saw Sammy's statue coming down. He's counting how many statues and portraits of himself there are...
Castro made no direct reference to Friday's execution of three convicted hijackers by firing squad, nor the sentences of up to 28 years handed down earlier in the week for 75 government opponents charged with collaborating with U.S. diplomats to undermine the socialist system. But he made it clear that he considers his country to be under attack from the United States and that he will do all to ensure his system remains intact. Yep. Armed Struggle®. That's the way to go. Yep.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 09:45 am ||
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"I understand there is a vacancy on the Axis of Evil. Pick me! Pick meeeee! Pretty please with a cherry on top!"
Posted by: Baba Yaga ||
04/13/2003 15:52 Comments ||
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Israel must make "painful concessions" to help achieve Mideast peace by giving up some Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in Sunday's editions of the newspaper Ha'aretz. Asked specifically about Netzarim, an isolated settlement in central Gaza that has been a flash point between Israelis and Palestinians, Sharon said, "I don't want to get into a discussion of any specific place now. This is a delicate subject. But if it turns out that we have someone to talk to, that they understand that peace is neither terrorism nor subversion against Israel, then I would definitely say that we will have to take steps that are painful for every Jew and painful for me personally." Before the Paleos got around to installing Abbas, that statement would have been unthinkable. Before Bush ditched Yasser, Abbas getting in would have been unthinkable...
The "someone" Sharon referred to might be the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, who accepted leadership of the Palestinian Authority's day-to-day operations last month. In a further reference to the settlements, which have been one of many sticking points in reaching an accord between Israelis and Palestinians, Sharon said, "Look, we are talking about the cradle of the Jewish people. Our whole history is bound up with these places. "Bethlehem, Shiloh, Beit El. And I know that we will have to part with some of these places," he said. "As a Jew, this agonizes me. But I have decided to make every effort to reach a settlement. I feel that the rational necessity to reach a settlement is overcoming my feelings." If he makes an honest effort, and nothing comes of it through bad faith on the Paleo side, then nothing's ever going to come of it. So the Paleos have one, single chance, right now. And we all know Hamas is going to turn itself inside out trying to wreck it.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
04/13/2003 09:27 am ||
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"As a Jew, this agonizes me. But I have decided to make every effort to reach a settlement. I feel that the rational necessity to reach a settlement is overcoming my feelings."
Wow, those are some sincere words. Are you sure that it really was Sharon doing the interview. Could have been the clown from spawn. I always thought there was quite a bit of resemblance.
And are we sure that it was really Yasser at the Camp David Conference and not just a camel. I always thought there was a resemblance there too.
#2
Hey, camels are noble beasts. Unlike Arafat, who is just a beast, and a nasty one at that.
Posted by: Baba Yaga ||
04/13/2003 12:55 Comments ||
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This is not the first time Ariel Sharon has talked about making painful concessions to achieve peace.I don't see much that's new here.However,note that Sharon is talking to his supporters here;'painful concessions' means giving up claims to much of the West Bank and Gaza,not giving up half of Jerusalem like Barak suggested;that was seen as betrayal by Sharon and the rest of the Israeli Right.
There's no way the Sharon government is going to offer the Palestinians as sweet a deal as the one they turned down in 2000.
Posted by: El Id ||
04/13/2003 13:16 Comments ||
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El Id,
Good! I hope to heck that the palis are offered less than they spited in 2000. Why the bleep should the last 2 1/2 years of abominable behavior be rewarded?
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.
