Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, has published an article under the title 'The Royal Treatment, Anti-Semitism, that is.' He starts his piece with this statement: The Saudi royal family has been on the forefront in espousing an extreme position of hatred toward Jews... which influences the Kingdom's educational system and media and subsequently its foreign policy. He proceeds by citing examples of statements and policies of the leaders of this country since its inception which are against Jews and hence anti-Semitic.
To be more clear about this issue, certain facts need to be stated.
First, the writer of this article must have been in great hurry to publish it, as his references are a collection of pieces of articles taken out of their contexts.
Secondly, he missed stating that the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia made the issue of Palestine a personal commitment. This was an issue which shaped the Kingdom's foreign policy and was raised in the first historical meeting between King Abdul Aziz and U.S. President Roosevelt in 1945, whereby the latter promised to halt emigration of Jews to Palestine and not to endanger the position of Palestinians, a promise which has been broken by all American presidents who followed, but was kept alive by all Saudi kings who came to power after their legendary father. Another promise was taken up by Saudi Arabia in 1946 at the formation of the Arab League in Egypt, whereby Arab states declared that from that day onward the Palestinian question concerned not merely Palestinians but the Arabs as a whole.
Saudi Arabia has paid a huge price for keeping up this promise internally and externally and the result we are witnessing now: A smear campaign abroad to pressure this country into abandoning its commitment toward the Palestinians. A more valid statement is that the people of Saudi Arabia represented by its leaders are indeed anti-Zionists but not antisemites. Dr. Alfred M. Lilienthal, who met King Saud in Riyadh in 1955 (www.alfredlilienthal.com/kingandi.htm), indicated in his article published by Washington Report on Middle East Affairs that anti-Zionism should not be equated with antisemitism, the racist ideology directed against Jews as Jews. Nor should Zionism, the political movement established to reconstitute Jews as a nation, be equated with Judaism.
Dr. Lilienthal, who was the second Jew to meet a Saudi king, proceeds by saying: The words 'antisemitism' and 'antisemitic' are, in fact, misnomers. Jews constitute no more than 10 percent of the world Semites. The overwhelming majority of Semites are Arabs. Furthermore, most Jews today could not trace their ancestry back to the holy land and, therefore, are not true Semites at all. Ninety percent of the world's Jews are descended from converts to Judaism, mostly the Khazars in what once was southern USSR.
I think Steven Stalinsky is one of them. In fact, it is the Zionists who have been antisemites starting from the holy land of Palestine and ending with a worldwide movement against Muslims and Arabs who form 90 percent of the Semites. The proof of which is his article. Besides, Israel and Saudi Arabia do not recognize each other and do not have diplomatic relations. Then how is either state expected to treat the other's citizens? At the same time, Jews who happen to be citizens of other countries like the U.S. and work for their governments have always been welcomed by Saudi Arabia, keeping with diplomatic norms.
As for Interior Minister Prince Naif's statements which Stalinsky quotes in his article, there is no denying that the September 11 attacks have served the interests of the Zionists more than they have any other group's. Can anyone dare deny this fact?
Concerning Prince Sultan's accusing the Jewish congressmen of being at the forefront of lobbying in the interest of Israel and its perceived enemies, could this assertion be denied? If the pro-Israeli lobby did not influence the U.S. media, then the U.S. could hardly prefer the interests and friendship of a small country like Israel to that of 1.5 billion Muslims. Neither would Israel receive more aid than the rest of the world put together (almost). Moreover, Saudi kings can hardly be accused of being antisemites. They can't be against themselves and their people. Saudi kings were raised by their father King Abdul Aziz to be experienced regional politicians and to fight injustice wherever it may be. And they are paying a price for this. The stability of this country is being undermined by inimical forces as confirmed by Crown Prince Abdullah after the Yanbu bombings.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/10/2004 4:54:25 PM ||
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#1
Fred -
I refer you to my baseball lineup of last Friday.
#5
You ain't even seen an "anti-saudi" campaign yet.
Just wait 'till we get started on it, cookie - you'll think now was heaven.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/10/2004 18:58 Comments ||
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#6
The words 'antisemitism' and 'antisemitic' are, in fact, misnomers. Jews constitute no more than 10 percent of the world Semites.
And in order to be 'sinister' you have to left handed.
Posted by: Phil B ||
05/10/2004 18:59 Comments ||
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#7
Cat's outta the bag about Saudi Arabia, Fahda, sorry.
And your billions in public retions won't change a thing.
Get to work on controlling the monster you created and STFU.
North Korea Saturday claimed Japan was about to possess nuclear weapons, in its latest attack on one of the countries preparing to meet next week to discuss the impasse over Pyongyangâs own atomic ambitions.The report on North Koreaâs state news agency KCNA charged that Japan had secretly pursued a nuclear capability while the worldâs focus was on other countriesâ arms proliferation. Since Japan is one of the most stable of all Asian economies, Iâll continue to remain a lot more worried about some wingnut like Kim playing with matches in a powder magazine.
"Japanâs nuclear weaponization has been pushed ahead at the phase of practical implementation, going beyond the stage of discussion," the report said. "As a result, there are ample conditions for the descendents of Samurais buoyed by fever for reinvasion to have access to nuclear weapons any moment." Preliminary negotiations take place next week in Beijing aimed at clearing the way for a new round of six-nation discussions on the issue of Pygongyangâs alleged nuclear weapons programme. If there was one single driving factor that inspired Japan to begin construction of nuclear weapons, it was the overflight of North Koreaâs Taepo-Dong One missile test immediately prior to South Koreaâs presidental inauguration.
Two rounds of the talks -- involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States -- have so far failed to narrow differences between the United States and North Korea. Japan, the only country in the world to have experienced a nuclear attack, has a number of nuclear power stations but is a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. However, the KCNA report added: "It is a serious miscalculation and foolish dream if Japan thinks it can hide truth behind its nuclear issue and achieve its wild ambition for nuclear armament by hyping otherâs ânuclear issueâ." POT -> KETTLE -> BLACK
Japan and North Korea last week renewed talks over the kidnapping of Japanese citizens by the Stalinist state in the 1970s and 1980s. Tokyo has been pushing Pyongyang to allow the relatives of five returned Japanese abductees to settle in Japan.
#1
a nuclear Japan would be a nice counter-weight, no? How about Taiwan, you want some too? Hey, China, about that Laissez-Faire attitude towards your chihuaha Kimmy.....
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/10/2004 21:49 Comments ||
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#2
I'm with you, Frank. I think it's about time we "sold" some nukes to Japan. I'm not so sure about Taiwan, however, since I think they are overrun with spies from Red China. There, I have no problem with us having a carrier battle group on patrol in the region.
Posted by: Tibor ||
05/10/2004 22:07 Comments ||
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Hell with the 'tech' and sheer industreal power Japan has she can hardly help but to be a few inches from having nuclear capability.
#4
Japan doesn't need our help. They can build several hundred plutonium bombs in a few months with just the 'wastage' from their spent fuel reprocessing.
#5
Japan a nuclear power. I like it. And it would drive the Chinese and NorKs nuts. :-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/10/2004 23:08 Comments ||
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the descendents of Samurais buoyed by fever for reinvasion
Only a North Korean propagandist could be delusional enough to think that any nation would be dumb enough to want to be saddled with a nation of brainwashed, starving dwarves. There's certainly nothing in North Korea to compensate for the sheer pain in the ass of dealing with the North Koreans.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday called for the United Nations to be given the leading role in Iraq and said China was very concerned about the ongoing instability there. What about North Korea, you conniving Mandarin?
After talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Wen said it was important to hand power back to the Iraqis as soon as possible. He declined, however, to comment on allegations that coalition troops tortured and mistreated Iraq prisoners of war. "The unstable situation in Iraq, we feel very concerned and even worried," said Wen, in a joint news conference with Blair. "We must hand over the government back to the Iraqi people as soon as possible. We need to give the United Nations the leading role in the resolution of the Iraqi issue." Not half as "unstable" as your pet Rotweiller, Kim. Chinaâs protection of Kim is directly responsible for the issuance of edicts recommending that North Koreans allow their elderly, handicapped, terminally ill or mentally deficient to STARVE TO DEATH during the famine stricken winters.
As reported by WFP, food imports from all sources totaled the following amounts:
Why have so many people died after so much food has been delivered? ... the central government saw to it that triaged populations did not have access to imported food because they were not seen as critical to the survival of the state.
Wen and Blair, who last met in Beijing in July, said they planned to hold annual face to face talks in an effort to strengthen political and trade ties. The two leaders issued a joint statement pledging greater cooperation on issues such science, technology, education, culture and the environment, as well as anti-terrorism and non proliferation. They agreed to work together to tackle illegal immigration and people smuggling. So, just maybe, hopeless Chinese refugees donât die by the dozen in Morecambe Bay ever again?
Wen is traveling with a delegation of Chinese business executives, and Blair said contracts worth US$1 billion had been signed with British companies during the visit. Ooooh, the carrot!
Wen repeated his call for the European Union to lift a 15-year arms embargo and officially recognize China as a market economy. And now for the quid pro quo!
Blair said he backed Chinaâs effort to be recognized as a market economy. "We will give China every support in that endeavor," he added. That had better be without the modern armaments, Tony.
Blair said he had raised British concerns about human rights abuse in China and also discussed the sensitive issue of democracy in Hong Kong, which Britain handed back to mainland China in 1997 after 156 years of colonial rule. Britain says it has a political and moral responsibility to the territory and wants to see democratic elections there. A little late for that now.
Late last month, the government complained when Beijing ruled that the territory cannot directly elect its next leader because that could stir social and economic instability. Blair said he and Wen has agreed on a commitment to "stability, prosperity and a high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong." "We have agreed to take forward our dialogue in a spirit of cooperation," he added. Wen, who has already visited Germany, Belgium and Italy during the 10-day trip, is accompanied by a large delegation, including ministers for foreign affairs, commerce and national development. He received a traditional guard of honor welcome Monday at the Foreign Office. Queen Elizabeth II will receive him at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday, before he leaves for Ireland, the final leg of his European tour. He is also scheduled to have breakfast with Londonâs Lord Mayor and financial executives. Britain is the EUâs largest investor in China and hopes to attract more return investment, particularly in the field of research and development. Some 30,000 mainland Chinese students attend British universities. When China finally cleans up their mess in North Korea they might have a shred of credibility elsewhere. Until then, they need to remain isolated economically. The idea of advanced weapon systems being sold to China is (as the Taiwanese say); "Feeding the tiger with your own flesh."
#3
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday called for the United Nations to be given the leading role in Iraq and said China was very concerned about the ongoing instability there.
Were this to happen, and it surely should not, expect the bribery attempts to begin shortly thereafter.
#4
The ChiComs were doing the fiberoptic com thing for Sammy before the invasion. They were connecting radar sites up. They had a stake, like the French, et. al with Sammy. Now they have nothing. Give it back to the UN---Geeze Louise! Give the chicken coop back to the fox.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/10/2004 19:27 Comments ||
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North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told Chinese President Hu Jintao last month that Pyongyang was willing to freeze some of its nuclear programs but would not completely scrap them, a Japanese newspaper said on Monday. That stance is in line with North Koreaâs existing position and China is concerned that it could cause a confrontation at six-party, working-level talks to start on Wednesday in Beijing on Pyongyangâs nuclear programs, the Yomiuri Shimbun said. North Korea had agreed to join this weekâs meeting after the reclusive Kim made a rare visit to Beijing in April when he was quoted as telling Chinese leaders North Korea would be patient, flexible and engaged in six-party talks. In his talks with Hu on April 19, Kim said North Korea would not agree to demands by Japan, South Korea and the United States that it scrap its nuclear program in a complete, irreversible and verifiable manner, the Yomiuri reported, quoting Japanese government sources briefed by Chinese officials. Then all bets are off. Looks like that train explosion was just a warmup exercise after all.
Kim also made it clear that North Korea was seeking a quid pro quo such as energy assistance in exchange for freezing its nuclear development, the newspaper said. Destroy the nuclear weapons first. Kimâs track record is worse than dismal. No aid or assistance of any sort until the atomic devices are surrendered. Otherwise, look forward to another winter of freezing starvation. The world cannot afford yet another fruitless spin on the dance floor with this four-flusher.
"North Korea is taking part in six-party talks to discuss compensation for freezing its nuclear development," Kim was quoted as saying. Kim added that North Korea would "continue to carry out nuclear programs for peaceful purposes," indicating that Pyongyang would freeze only those nuclear programs that are for military use, the newspaper said. For such a deceitful ruler there is no such thing as "nuclear programs for peaceful purposes."
China, Japan, North and South Korea, Russia and the United States held two rounds of talks among senior officials on the Northâs nuclear arms programs in August 2003 and in February. But the talks made little progress on how North Koreaâs nuclear programs might be dismantled and its energy and security concerns addressed. Somehow, Chinaâs own credibility and prestige must be made to hinge upon them properly defusing the North Korean crisis. The PRC has provided aid and technology that specifically augmented North Koreaâs threat to the region. China must now pay the piper for sowing such unrest.
Posted by: Zenster ||
05/10/2004 12:33:29 AM ||
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#1
Just like the big furry monster in the Warner Bros. cartoons. We'll love them and hug them and love them and hug them....... Just feeling a little silly this AM
#3
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told Chinese President Hu Jintao last month...
Note that there's still no current news from Kim himself.
Did he survive the train ride home or WHAT?
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 12:40 Comments ||
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#4
Did he survive the train ride home or WHAT?
My own opinion is that he did survive, but thinks the train explosion was aimed at him. He's holed up in a bunker on paranoia overdrive, while the security forces look for the usual suspects.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/10/2004 12:49 Comments ||
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Jen / Steve, he surfaced about 3 or 4 days after the explosion with his senior defense staff in tow to visit a military installation near Pyongyang. He hasn't been reported as seen since.
Tuesday, May 04, 2004: North Korea's leader made his first appearance since last month's deadly train explosion, according to official media that also kept up rhetorical attacks against Washington despite a US offer of emergency aid.
Kim Jong-il inspected a military unit and met soldiers, the official KCNA news agency said in a report on yesterday that did not mention when the inspection by the elusive leader took place.
Still nothing reliable that can be dated.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/10/2004 14:24 Comments ||
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#9
Jen, I picked this up out of the 3 May Washington Times and posted it on Rantburg.
#10
Given the likely anger in the military over famine deaths, Kim Jong Il must now fear the military as his greatest threat, which is perhaps why he avoids visiting military units that are engaged in exercises using live ammunition
(U.S. government sources).
#11
Zenster: Somehow, Chinaâs own credibility and prestige must be made to hinge upon them properly defusing the North Korean crisis.
China's not going to solve this problem. In Chinese eyes, North Korean nukes are a benefit, not a problem. The Chinese are engaging in theater again, pretending to chastise Kim Jong Il, while continuing to supply him with nuclear material. China proliferates as a matter of state policy, in order to balance the power of the US. The US carries out its regional balance-of-power goals using its blue water navy - China does so by selling nukes and ballistic missiles to America's enemies. Irresponsible? Yes. Effective? Yes. The only thing that might prevent China from proliferating further is a threat that an attack on the US using Chinese-provided nukes will be met by the annihilation of China. (It would also help if the US deployed an effective ballistic missile system). I see no sign that US leaders are prepared to make that statement.
#12
Zhang Fei, I'm well aware of how China seeks to counterbalance American military might through proliferation. At some point, both China and Pakistan must be pilloried for the intensely destabilizing effect their spread of nuclear technology has had upon the world. It seems as though Japan is getting their fill of North Korea's nuclear aspirations.
I agree that China needs to be read the riot act about retaliation if North Korea ever launches a single missle attack against anyone. Someone needs to draw them some maps for the path of Pyongyang's fallout cloud. Fortunately, American ballistic missile technology is measuring up to the threat.
At some point, China must be forced to realize that any role they seek as an economic power is totally compromised by their fostering of so much uncertainty in the Asian sphere. It is for this specific reason that China must never be sold any advanced weapons systems like those they are currently attempting to purchase from Europe.
#13
Zenster, youâre right -- Clinton already gave China far too much technology! In a different vein, however, I donât recall you ever answering a central question that you have been repeatedly asked: How do you square your gung-ho, pro-USA-military, pro-National security, âkill them all, let God sort them outâ rhetoric with your âBush is a crookâ rhetoric? Generally, when I ask you this question (or versions of the same) you ignore it or just stop posting for awhile, but I really think inquiring minds would like to hear your answer to the question.
#14
I would, cingold, especially since President Bush (whom Zboy calls "Shrub") is directly responsible for the ballistic missile defense of SDI that he cites for praise above.
(And before "Shrub," it was that other hated GOP President Ronaldus Magnus, whom I'll bet Zipper calls "Ray-gun," who pushed for "Star Wars" and funding of the Patriot missile program in the first place and was villified for it!)
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 21:42 Comments ||
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Milorad Lukovic, the man accused of masterminding the murder of Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic last year, appeared in court for the first time since he gave himself up to police. The trial was however adjourned for a month to allow Lukovic, an alleged crime boss better known as Legija, to prepare his defense before entering a plea. Lukovic, a former commander of the Red Berets secret police unit, is on trial along with another 12 suspected crime figures over the assassination of Djindjic, who was gunned down in broad daylight on March 12 last year. Wearing a tattooed rose on his neck and dressed in black shirt and dark gray suit, the 36-year-old Lukovic showed no emotion during his brief appearance in the packed and heavily-guarded Belgrade courtroom. "Honorable court, I would ask you to give me some time to prepare my defense," said Lukovic, who turned himself in to police last week after 14 months in hiding.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/10/2004 1:14:12 PM ||
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Cesar Royo, 29, a communications specialist for the brigade who had just returned to his bride, said he was among more than 90 percent of Spaniards who surveys suggest were against the invasion and Aznarâs decision to send troops to support the effort. But Royo also said he came away from his experience with a sense that the Spanish troops had something important to contribute, and he felt their mission was cut short in a way that smells of retreat and feels less than noble. Thatâs because it was less than noble. Spain, at least under the present government, does not deserve her soldiers. As Admiral Cervera said as the first shots were fired at Santiago in 1898, ¡España Pobre! ("Poor Spain!").
Posted by: Mike ||
05/10/2004 10:53:23 AM ||
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#1
Not as bad as Viet Nam in 75, but it still can't feel good.
"We felt like a used car being passed from one owner to the next," and an unappreciated used car at that. This is what happens when a democracy loses its moral center.
#5
RWV: Not as bad as Viet Nam...What the fuck is that supposed to mean? The US military held back Communist North Vietnamese invaders and South Vietnamese collaborators for better than 15 years at great costs to this nation, and left honorably in 1973 due to a negotiated armistice the COMMUNISTS violated in 1975 -- long after the US military forces had been redeployed. The evacuation of diplomatic and other civilian personnel from Vietnam in 1975 in no way, shape or form was worse than or even remotely related to the Zapatero-ordered retreat of Spanish forces after less than a year of peacekeeping in Iraq.
#6
I think TWV is relating to the mind set of the soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors who returned and thought they had outfight the enemy only to be kerried at home.
#7
"We felt like a used car being passed from one owner to the next," said Felipe Collado, 30, also a sergeant in the Plus Ultra II brigade, which arrived home Wednesday to a ceremony attended by Zapatero, his defense minister, and the top brass.
For the large part, those Spanish soldiers have little to be ashamed of. They served while their cowardly politicians demanded that they tuck their tails and run.
Spain's repute as a world power of even the least sort should bear this stigma for decades to come.
#8
That's the bitter taste of that I remember from my onetime membership to the forever shrinking Clinton military.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
05/10/2004 16:36 Comments ||
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Garrison, what I meant is that watching those helicopters lifting off the from the embassy and then being pushed over the side of the carriers was a kick in the gut for those of us who had served. What do you think would have happened to those NVA tank columns if our government could have mustered the political will to use the B52s still at Andersen and the carriers still in the region? There is a sick feeling that you get when the people and the government you serve make you standby and watch erstwhile allies fight and die alone.
The Spanish military's humiliation will be orders of magnitude less because the effect of their departure will not significantly affect the outcome. Living on the West Coast where there are lots of Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, etc., it;s hard to forget the results of our politically mandated standdown.
I will never forget nor forgive people like John Kerry, Jane Fonda, and the rest of the "noble anti-war" activists. Neither will I forget nor forgive groups like the Quakers in Philadelphia who held blood drives for our enemies, the NVA. If there is such a thing as a blood curse, then it's on them.
#10
I will never forget nor forgive people like John Kerry, Jane Fonda, and the rest of the "noble anti-war" activists. Neither will I forget nor forgive groups like the Quakers in Philadelphia who held blood drives for our enemies, the NVA. If there is such a thing as a blood curse, then it's on them.
And that is eactly why the pressure must remain in Kerry for the choices he made when he left Viet Nam.
Right now Kerry is playing to sentiments about the war by saying he was a war hero but when he came home he worked to end the war. Nice spin to what he actually did, isn't it?
Does Kerry really think he can get away with glossing over the fact he was so opposed to the war he was willing to use enemy propoganda against those still in the fight, was willing to hurt troop morale, was willing to endanger those in the war zone, and was all too willing to enable the NVA to stay in the fight long after it should have sued for peace or surrender.
#11
Badanov, politics is politics man. The V war was wrong and the price to end it was high. Same thing is true now, we need to end Bush's war now. The truth hurts, but the American people must here it, and they will make the right decision - dump Bush.
#13
Same thing is true now, we need to end Bush's war now.
At the expense of the loss of lives in future terrorist attacks (even possibly yours)?
Sorry, but that's absolutely unacceptable. If we're going to do something, then it's preferable that the job be done right the first time. Shortsightedness such as yours is something that we DON'T need.
#16
Politico, are you old enough to be one of those morally superior beings who told us that the Khmer Rouge and the Pathet Lao were noble freedom fighters when we were finding our downed pilots in their areas with their Geneva Convention cards nailed to their foreheads and their balls stuffed in their mouths? Those people who didn't change their opinions about these bastards until the North Vietnamese had a tiff with PhnomPen and declared the Khmer Rouge evil? Who then suddenly discovered and were all atwitter about the killing fields that you previously refused to acknowledge?
One of those cocktail party twits who revel in their sense of moral superiority over the people who keep you safe? Well, people like you who never peek out of your snug cocoon paid for in other people's blood don't understand that
there is evil in the world. There are people out there who would happily kill you and me and everybody we know or have ever met just for fun.
You should get down on your hands and knees every night to thank God (or whatever power you acknowledge) that there are men like George Bush who recognize the evil and are willing to do what must be done to keep it from our shores and especially thank God that there are young men and women who don't think as you do and are willing to risk their lives in the armed forces of this country to protect you from the things lurking just beyond the darkness.
EFL - I got this from an email from my cousin, I donât have the URL
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Plans to name a Vienna square after Zionist Theodor Herzl drew protest Tuesday from the Arab League, which urged city fathers to reconsider for the sake of continued ``good relationsââ with the Arab world. Representatives of Viennaâs Islamic community also opposed the plan to honor the founder of Zionism, the movement to establish the state of Israel...the 22-nation Arab League sent a letter to Haeupl expressing its ``regretââ at the decision to honor a man whose name `represents a sad memory for Arabs and Muslims.ââ The letter, which was dated April 29, also suggested the plan could lead to terrorism. [ah yes the indirect veiled threat]
But municipal officials said Islamic opposition came late and ...
[the article says that Austria is trying to finally come to terms with its role in the Holocaust]
Carna Amina Baghajati, a spokeswoman for Viennaâs 120,000-strong Islamic community [most of whom are not citizens],
also criticized the plan. She suggested a square be named instead for Mohammad Asad, the Austrian-born Jew [actually he was ethnically Polish but born in a part of Poland that was part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire]
who changed his name from Leopold Weiss, converted to Islam and went on to become an honored 19th century Muslim scholar [he ended his life being very critical of Islamic backwardness and near dispair over the culture of the Arab and Islamic world]
Posted by: mhw ||
05/10/2004 12:20:12 AM ||
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yes--and they want to change the zionist freud's apartment in to a mosque
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
05/10/2004 0:38 Comments ||
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#2
hey if fidel didnt get upset with castro in san francisco, these guys should stay cool.
#6
So the late Prof Said recommended the book? (so says one of the comments at Amazon) I'm not sure that's a great endorsement of its accuracy...
Posted by: James ||
05/10/2004 12:06 Comments ||
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#7
Fairly concise and accurate bio of Weiss here:
He was critical of Islamic ridigity throughout his life. He resigned from the Pakistani government because they refused him permission to marry an American Islamic convert, and tried to publish an English translation of the Quran without "later ideological developments." He repeatedly wrote that he was initially attracted to Islam because of its emphasis on reason rather than zealotry and blind faith. In 1980, he re-issued his work "Islam at the Crossroads," adding extensive footnotes, including this:
âAlas, the present re-awakening (is not) to the true values of the Qurâan and Sunnah but rather a confusion resulting from the readiness of so many Muslims to accept blindly the social forms and thought processes evolved in the medieval Muslim world ...'
Weiss died in 1992. He is buried in the Islamic cemetary in Granada, Spain.
Posted by: Sofia ||
05/10/2004 12:49 Comments ||
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#8
Fairly concise and accurate bio of Weiss here:
http://www.renaissance.com.pk/maylefor2y2.html
He was critical of Islamic ridigity throughout his life. He resigned from the Pakistani government because they refused him permission to marry an American Islamic convert, and tried to publish an English translation of the Quran without "later ideological developments." He repeatedly wrote that he was initially attracted to Islam because of its emphasis on reason rather than zealotry and blind faith. In 1980, he re-issued his work "Islam at the Crossroads," adding extensive footnotes, including this:
âAlas, the present re-awakening (is not) to the true values of the Qurâan and Sunnah but rather a confusion resulting from the readiness of so many Muslims to accept blindly the social forms and thought processes evolved in the medieval Muslim world ...'
Weiss died in 1992. He is buried in the Islamic cemetary in Granada, Spain.
Posted by: Sofia ||
05/10/2004 12:50 Comments ||
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#9
Can we wrap that link, please?
It doesn't do Rantburg any favours for those browsing with Mozilla!
Excerpts from Newsweekâs lead article
Donald Rumsfeld likes to be in total control. He wants to know all the details, including the precise interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners. Since 9/11 he has insisted on personally signing off on the harsher methods used to squeeze suspected terrorists held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The conservative hard-liners at the Department of Justice have given the secretary of Defense a lot of leeway. It does not violate the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, the lawyers have told Rumsfeld, to put prisoners in ever-more-painful "stress positions" or keep them standing for hours on end, to deprive them of sleep or strip them naked. According to one of Rumsfeldâs aides, the secretary has drawn the line at interrogating prisoners for more than 24 hours at a time or depriving them of light. ....
In Iraq, Rumsfeldâs aides say, the Defense secretary delegated responsibility for interrogation methods to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the ground commander of the occupying forces. ....
"If thereâs a failure, itâs me," said Rumsfeld to the senators. "These events occurred on my watch. As secretary of Defense I am accountable for them, and I take full responsibility." Rumsfeld offered his "deepest apology" to the victims of abuse and announced that they would be compensated. Would he resign? "Itâs a fair question," he replied to interrogators during a long, grim day of hearings before both the Senate and House Armed Services committees. "Since this firestorm started, I have given a good deal of thought to the question ... If I thought that I could not be effective, I certainly wouldnât want to serve. And I have to wrestle with that." ....
There is also growing evidence that Rumsfeld, or his top deputies and aides, did not want to hear the rumblings from such suspect organizations as the Red Cross and the State Department. ....
Rumsfeldâs strengths have always been his weaknesses. His imperious manner and biting questions, his obsession with control, his occasional slipperiness, have alienated a large number of senior military officers, particularly in the Army. When his aggressive approach to prisoner interrogation began to backfire, no brave officer rose up to brace him, warn him or rescue him from a situation that Rumsfeld now describes as a "catastrophe." His failure may or may not cost him his job. But the cost to Americaâs standing in the world (and not just the Arab world) is beyond calculation.
Rumsfeld is the most powerful secretary of Defense ever, but his method of consolidating control has proved to be a Faustian bargain. He gained authority over the uniformed military by getting control over what most senior officers care most deeply about: their careers. In a switch from the post-Vietnam era, when the military essentially ran the Pentagon and kept civilian leaders at armâs length, Rumsfeld decides who gets the good jobs. Three-star and sometimes even two-star generals receive their assignments directly from the secretary. And the message he conveys to them, says one well-connected retired senior officer, is clear: "Itâs my way or no way." ...
One senior government official describes a "moat" around the secretary of Defense that is guarded by "dragons." Chief among the dragons, when it comes to Iraq, is the No. 3 man at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. Cerebral and somewhat pompous, Feith is extremely unpopular among top Army officers. They blame Feith, an ardent neoconservative, for hyping the Iraqi threat and then failing to properly prepare for the aftermath of the war. Nominally, at least, he is also responsible for the military-prison system in Iraq. "We set broad policy," says Feith. ....
In the days and weeks ahead, it is likely to emerge that the International Committee of the Red Cross, the State Department and the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Ambassador Paul Bremer in Baghdad, all warned of mounting problems in the prisonsânot just in Iraq but in Afghanistan as well. The Red Cross brought its complaints to the State Departmentâs attention "regularly and consistently over a lengthy period" dating all the way back to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, one top State Department official told NEWSWEEK. A 24-page report delivered to the Pentagon in February tells of systemic "use of ill treatment"âmost graphically, seven shootings of unarmed prisoners, sometimes from watchtowers. The abuses were "tantamount to torture," the report states.
Aides to Bremer say that last August the American proconsul became concerned about reports of detainees who were removed from their families and crowded into makeshift prisons in and around Baghdad, including Abu Ghraib, Saddamâs notorious dungeon and torture chamber downtown. Bremer began urging military and Bush-administration officials to improve the state of affairs. How hard he rang the bell is not clear. "The CPA always viewed this as a military issue," says one administration officialâi.e., someone elseâs responsibility. Likewise, by about November of last year, Secretary of State Colin Powell was bringing up prisoner abuse at meetings of top administration officials, including Rumsfeld. Powell has always been a strong supporter of adhering to the Geneva Conventions, the international accords that safeguard the rights of captured soldiers and civilian detainees in time of war. But it does not appear, from what is known thus far, that Powell was very urgent or vocal about his warnings. Nor does it seem that national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, whose job is to coordinate policy among agencies, swung into action in any forceful way.
In January came the first reports of the grotesque humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A whistle-blowerâa soldier with a sense of decencyâslid a computer disk with some hair-raising pictures under an investigatorâs door. The military publicly announced that it was launching an investigation. With the usual can-do attitude, the report up the chain to the secretary of Defense was situation-under-control. Rumsfeld did not ask to see the pictures.
For a forward-leaning detail man, Rumsfeld was strangely passive. It does not seem to have occurred to him that the photos could be devastating. Last week he protested that he could not very well have reached down into the investigation and asked to see the evidence. Since he might have to rule on the fates of defendants facing courts-martial, Rumsfeld and his aides could not be seen prejudging the case or influencing it in any way. Rumsfeld, who normally mocks lawyers as worrywart bureaucrats and nitpickers, was demonstrating unusual legal fastidiousness. ....
It is also possible that Rumsfeld did not want to know too much. In his public statements he has consistently said that prisoners would be protected by the Geneva Conventions or (for so-called illegal combatants) treated in the spirit of those standards. But he had to suspect that behind bars and out of sight the going would get rough, however careful he was about signing off on particular interrogation techniques. The fact that at least 25 prisoners have died in U.S. custody since 9/11 was a pretty strong hint that something was going wrong.
And yet there was Rumsfeld and his faithful (perhaps too faithful) JCS chairman, General Myers, telling Congress last week that they had read the report of their own investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, only after it was widely quoted by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker. Rumsfeld, who commands the most powerful military in the history of the world, verged on the pathetic in the hearings, complaining that he had been unable to get hold of a plastic disk with the offending pictures until only the night before. ...
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/10/2004 9:33:56 PM ||
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Rumsfeld is the most powerful secretary of Defense ever
Bull. Henry Stimson during WWII had a hell of a lot more power, not only over our military, but also in making decisions in the civilian sphere.
Newsweak once more lets its ignorance of history blind them.
But he had to suspect that behind bars and out of sight the going would get rough, however careful he was about signing off on particular interrogation techniques.
Oh, yes, he HAD to suspect. I like how they phrase this -- an out-and-out denial that Rumsfeld ever approved anything illegal, but done in a way that tries to say he's still responsible.
The fact that at least 25 prisoners have died in U.S. custody since 9/11 was a pretty strong hint that something was going wrong.
Out of how many prisoners total?! It's hard to decide if there's "something going wrong" without context. If we had 100 prisoners and 25 died, yeah, I'd be worried. But if we had 10,000 and 25 died, I don't think it would even be worth noticing.
This whole "story" is nothing but propagandizing. Is this their editorial? Or do they really intend it to be an honest report?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/10/2004 22:26 Comments ||
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Posted by: Super Hose ||
05/10/2004 22:33 Comments ||
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Pardon my vernacular, but I think time will eventually show many of the pictures that have been released are in fact fakes or plants, created to turn the American public against the war.
I think time will show Newsweek et al to be the traitorous bitches we knew them all along to be.
#4
Rumsfeld has done nothing wrong. He's an honorable man, who's good at what he does. A civilian is SUPPOSED to be the head of the military, the Founders planned it that way. To hear generals complaining about him taking control is somewhat stupid on their part. HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE IN CONTROL!!
By God, when you have The National Guard, people from all walks of life, unschooled in the Geneva Convention, many who don't even know what the hell the Geneva Convention is, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE VIOLATIONS OF IT!!!!
So what if a few prisoners have turned up dead. Who cares? They took up arms against MY country. Better them than my family. And the key to this whole thing.....may be just a dogbite away.
Kill them sumbitches, and let's get this shit over with!
Posted by: Halfass Pete ||
05/10/2004 23:49 Comments ||
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"The fact that at least 25 prisoners have died in U.S. custody since 9/11 was a pretty strong hint that something was going wrong"
yeah thats my take too how 25 is much or not? depends
Dont many will had been fired before capture? some of them could have been in a bad health condiion.
So that asshole of "journalist" is already saying that 25 were murdered. If i was from military already had put him in court.
#6
Pardon my vernacular, but I think time will eventually show many of the pictures that have been released are in fact fakes or plants, created to turn the American public against the war.
I doubt that. I see no reason to believe the pictures are fake; certainly the accused are acting guilty -- "I was only following orders!" -- and not claiming the evidence is fake.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/10/2004 23:54 Comments ||
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Bob, there are photos in circulation that are so obviously faked that it taints the whole damn pool of photos in my estimation.
I have no doubt some abuses did occur, but many of the photos now on the internaet are simply faked or planted.
By Rich Galen (recently retured from 6 months in Baghdad) - 5/10/04
Yes, I know itâs technically a blog essay, but it needs to be spread over the world.
⢠I am now officially sick-and-tired of the self-serving and largely uninformed hand-wringing about the goings on at Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad. Join the crowd. As someone who has actually been on the grounds of Abu Ghraib prison unlike the media whiners and Congressional handwringers, let me explain a few things.
⢠First of all, there is no excuse for what a few soldiers did; but there is also no reason to make this into the moral equivalent of the Black Plague.
⢠It should be pointed out that the prisoners at Abu Ghraib are not Boy Scouts rounded up for jaywalking. Really? Iâm shocked. Does CBS know? These are bad guys who either blew up or shot a coalition member; or were caught assembling an explosive device; or were caught in a place where the makings of explosive devices were found; or were caught with a cache of weapons. See the pattern here? Anyone with half a brain cell does; guess thatâs why the media and most of the Dems donât.
⢠In short they were trying to kill me and others like me. And if they succeeded in doing that, they were going to come over here and try to kill you. A thought lost on the media "elite," who think their self-important status somehow grants them special donât-kill-me status.
⢠Ugly thought? You bet. But that is the kind of prisoner being held in the terrorist section at Abu Ghraib.
⢠The Roar du Jour Love that phrase; think Iâll steal it from those who want to get into this story by beating their chests over how terrible it all is, keep telling us that this has damaged American credibility in the Middle East. It hasnât; being nice and PC is what damages US credibility in the ME.
⢠Letâs look at that.
⢠First, lots of Arabs donât like us in the first place. Mein Gott! Iâm shocked. Who knew? Those Arabs will not like us any less for this incident.
⢠That dislike has nothing to do with our cultural insensitivities. It has to do with Americaâs refusal to allow those same Arabs, many of whom have been bankrolling the Palestinian terrorists for decades, to wipe the State of Israel off the face of the Earth they way they have wiped it off the face of their maps. Ooo, Rich, you told the truth. The LLL wonât like that.
⢠Second, those who claim that the Abu Ghraib situation will poison the well of American goodwill for decades, are really the ones who are under rating Arabs. They have to believe that all Arabs will assign the actions of perhaps a couple of dozen soldiers to the 280 million Americans who have pledged to help the Iraqis attain security, independence, and prosperity. Which is what the whining handwringers have done; itâs called "projection."
⢠Those making that claim must, therefore, believe that all Arabs have the intellectual capacity of a frog (a real frog, not a French person) and the emotional development of a three-year-old (a real three-year-old, not a French person). Heh-heh. Imaginative Frog-bashing. I love this man.
⢠Finally, our friends on the Left are so very, very concerned about how foreigners (read, Europeans) will see us.
⢠I donât care what the French, the Germans, or the Spaniards think about us. Get in line around here for that, Rich. The French and the Germans are up to their elbows in the fraud and theft of billions of dollars in what is called the Oil-for-Food Program but which was really the Oil-for-Palaces Program. What? Our "close allies" corrupt? Say it ainât so!
⢠It will be interesting to see if the intellectual elites on the Upper West Side of Manhattan are as upset with their vacation buddies in the Paris 16th as they are with Secretary Rumsfeld when it becomes clear that their pals were fully engaged in the systematic depravation of the people of Iraq. Theyâll pay no attention whatsoever; intentions are all that matters, and everyone knows that the UN has good intentions. (Never mind where that road leads.)
⢠Very often doing the right thing is also the hard thing. The easy thing is to close your eyes to evil; or to make a bargain with the devil. Itâs official; the LLL are easy.
⢠You cannot stop doing the right thing because it is hard, or because you are worried about what those who would make a deal with the enemy in an attempt to rent safety GREAT turn of phrase, might think about you. Listen up, Kerry. This means YOU.
⢠The actions of a few soldiers in Abu Ghraib were wrong. But we cannot allow the spotlight currently shining on them to cast a shadow over the other 135,000 soldiers who are in Iraq doing their jobs professionally, properly, and with honor. Yes. Though the leftist media is doing their damndest to do just that. Theyâre not anti-war; theyâre just on the other side.
He says so well what Iâve been thinking (along with hoards of others). Rich Galen is a treasure; Iâm glad he made it back home safely.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/10/2004 10:54:13 PM ||
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Good for you, Mr. Galen!
"First, lots of Arabs donât like us in the first place. Those Arabs will not like us any less for this incident."
These sentences say it all! As someone who is presently living in the Middle East, I can attest to the veracity of said statements.
My husband and I were joking today about the impossibility of increasing hatred in people who are already maxed out in that department.
The judge in charge of todayâs hearing for an Army sergeant accused of killing two officers in Kuwait last year has issued one ruling today at Fort Bragg. Army Colonel Patrick Parrish ordered the government to find a way to keep Sergeant Hasan Akbar awake during court sessions. After hearing pretrial motions filed by attorneys, he then recessed until May 28th. Akbar has been dozing during court proceedings at Fort Bragg and earlier at Fort Knox, Kentucky. His lawyers say itâs due to a sleep disorder that causes him to wake up frequently at night. That leaves Akbar sleepy during the day. Defense lawyers earlier asked that Akbarâs trial be moved, or that a jury pool be selected from another branch of service. They also say the pool is prejudicial in itself because everyone outranks the defendant. Akbar is charged with premeditated murder and other offenses for the attack on a group of fellow 101st Airborne Division soldiers in Kuwait during the early days of the Iraq war.
sleep disorder that causes him to wake up frequently at night
Were this true - which I doubt - it could be easily fixed.
More likely it's a dodge thought up in cahoots with the lawyer to try to get him some sympathy.
I hope they fix it so he gets plenty of sleep - permanently. And an unmarked grave.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/10/2004 18:56 Comments ||
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Stand him at attention, 45 minutes at a time and fifteen minutes at ease. It's legal, and I guarantee that he will think twice about falling asleep when he realizes he's going to hit the floor.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/10/2004 19:15 Comments ||
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#12 - Naahhh, he thinks he's going to heaven for killing infidels.
Is he in for a fat surprise!
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/10/2004 23:06 Comments ||
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Nope, he probably has obstructive sleep apnea. It's a common medical condition. I treat patients with it all the time (pulmonary physicians see these patients as part of the specialty).
The problem is that when he falls asleep, the muscles that normally brace the pharynx open fail to do so, so the tongue falls back and obstructs his tracha. He wakes up, breathes, falls asleep, obstructs, wakes up ... etc. This can happen 10 to 60 times an hour.
Imagine how you feel the next day. Yep, you fall asleep. This happens every night for years and years. Long-term effects (not that he'll live that long) include obesity, right-sided congestive heart failure, pulmonary hypertension and death due to heart failure.
Treatment is with a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) mask at night to splint the airway open with air pressure. Damned uncomfortable for some, but about 2/3 of the patients will get used to it. When it works, it's 100% effective in treating the disorder.
Now to keep it on him at night if he becomes difficult, I'm told a few yards of duct-tape works nicely.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/10/2004 23:39 Comments ||
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They've probably got him doped up on valium so that he doesn't shout out something stupid like, Allah, the God of Peace, wants you all dead.
FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- Lawyers for an Army sergeant accused in a fatal grenade attack on his fellow soldiers in the opening days of the Iraq war asked Monday that the trial be moved or that jurors be chosen from another branch of the military. "This offense received worldwide coverage," said Capt. David Coombs, one of the lawyers for Sgt. Hasan Akbar. "Any Army member who heard this had a visceral response." Defense lawyers also complained that everyone in the pool of potential Army jurors outranks Akbar, whose court-martial is set to begin July 12.
Well, duh!
Akbar, 32, is charged with two counts of premeditated murder and three counts of attempted premeditated murder for the March 23, 2003, attack in Kuwait on a group of fellow 101st Airborne Division soldiers and others. Two people were killed and 14 were wounded. It is the first time since the Vietnam War that a U.S. Army soldier has been prosecuted for the murder or attempted murder of another soldier during wartime, the Army has said. Coombs argued that reports from journalists embedded with military units at the time were so pervasive that military personnel still could have fixed opinions more than a year later. He suggested selecting court-martial panel members from another branch of service.
Fine, how about the Marines?
They might be able to find twelve midshipmen still sore about the 2001 Army-Navy game.
However, military prosecutor Capt. Rob McGovern said there was no evidence that any potential jurors have been influenced by the publicity. He said panel members already selected for the pool promised that they wouldn't expose themselves to coverage of the case. The judge, Col. Patrick Parrish, did not rule on the motion immediately. It was not clear when he would rule, post officials said.
If convicted, Akbar could receive the death penalty, life in prison without parole or life with parole. His lawyers have said he was accused only because he is Muslim.
And he was missing from his post and he was short a few grenades, etc..
Killed in the March 23, 2003, attack at Camp Pennsylvania were Army Capt. Christopher Scott Seifert, 27, of Easton, Pa., and Air Force Maj. Gregory Stone, 40, of Boise, Idaho.
Akbar's lawyers also asked the judge to require that a new pool of jurors be selected at random. The current pool was selected by the commanding general of the XVIII Airborne Corps, of which the 101st is a member. None of the members has a rank lower than sergeant first class.
Which is standard procedure in a case like this. The military lawyers know this, they're just throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks.
Although the 101st Airborne is based at Fort Campbell, Ky., the case was transferred to Fort Bragg last year because the division was deployed in Iraq. The 101st has since returned. Akbar is no longer a member of the 101st, and has been assigned to the 18th Airborne Corps.
Soon to be assigned to Ft. Leavenworth.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/10/2004 1:28:55 PM ||
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Ah, the old "civ lawyers in a General Court" trick. Lots of fun to be had by all...
#3
obviously taking notes on Mark Geragos's defense of Scott Peterson...venue change and unlimited voire dire challenges?
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/10/2004 16:00 Comments ||
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..Da Rulz (AKA the Uniform Code Of Military Justice) defines 'trial by ones peers' as meaning you are entitled to an all enlisted jury if you are an EM, and they can be of any rank. This has been challenged and upheld time after time. The prosecutors especially like it when an EM is dumb enough to ask for that option, because a jury full of E7s through E9s are likely to hang the guy far higher than an all-officer jury would.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/10/2004 19:19 Comments ||
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Donald, give them the one finger salute
Donald Rumsfeld has been designated by Democratic politicians as the scapegoat for the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison. But any resignation would only whet their appetite to cut and run. The highly effective defense secretary owes it to the nationâs war on terror to soldier on.
Because todayâs column will generate apoplectic e-mail, a word about contrarian opinion: Shortly after 9/11, with the nation gripped by fear and fury, the Bush White House issued a sweeping and popular order to crack down on suspected terrorists. The liberal establishment largely fell cravenly mute. A few lonely civil libertarians spoke out. When I used the word "dictatorial," conservatives, both neo- and paleo-, derided my condemnation as "hysterical."
One Bush cabinet member paid attention. Rumsfeld appointed a bipartisan panel of attorneys to re-examine that draconian edict. As a result, basic protections for the accused Qaeda combatants were included in the proposed military tribunals.
Perhaps because of those protections, the tribunals never got off the ground. (The Supreme Court will soon, I hope, provide similar legal rights to suspected terrorists who are U.S. citizens.) But in the panic of the winter of 2001, Rumsfeld was one of the few in power concerned about prisonersâ rights. Some now demanding his scalp then supported the repressive Patriot Act.
In last weekâs apology before the Senate, Rumsfeld assumed ultimate responsibility, as J.F.K. did after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The Pentagon chief failed to foresee and warn the president of the danger lurking in the Armyâs public announcement in January of its criminal investigation into prisoner abuse. He failed to put the nationâs reputation ahead of the regulation prohibiting "command influence" in criminal investigations, which protects the accused in courts-martial.
The secretary testified that he was, incredibly, the last to see the humiliating photos that turned a damning army critique by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba into a media firestorm. Why nobody searched out and showed him those incendiary pictures immediately reveals sheer stupidity on the part of the command structure and his Pentagon staff.
But then Senator Mark Dayton of Minnesota rudely badgered the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Richard Myers, repeatedly hurling the word "suppression" at him. General Myers had been trying to save the lives of troops by persuading CBS to delay its broadcast of pictures that would inflame resistance. Rumsfeld quieted the sound-bite-hungry politician by reminding him that requests to delay life-threatening reports were part of long military-media tradition.
This was scandal with no cover-up; the wheels of investigation and prosecution were grinding, with public exposure certain. Second only to the failure to prevent torture was the Pentagonâs failure to be first to break the bad news: the Taguba report should have been released at a Rumsfeld press conference months ago.
Now every suspect ever held in any U.S. facility will claim to have been tortured and demand recompense. Videos real and fake will stream across the worldâs screens, and propagandists abroad will join defeatists here in calling American prisons a "gulag," gleefully equating Bush not just with Saddam but with Stalin.
Torture is both unlawful and morally abhorrent. But what about gathering intelligence from suspected or proven terrorists by codified, regulated, manipulative interrogation? Information thus acquired can save thousands of lives. Will we now allow the pendulum to swing back to "name, rank, serial number," as if suspected terrorists planning the bombing of civilians were uniformed prisoners of war obeying the rules of war?
The United States shows the world its values by investigating and prosecuting wrongdoers high and low. It is not in our political value system to scapegoat a good man for the depraved acts of others. Nor does it make strategic sense to remove a war leader in the vain hope of appeasing critics of the war.
This secretary of defense, who has the strong support of the president, is both effective and symbolic. If he were to quit under political fire, pressure would mount for America to quit under insurgent fire. Hang in there, Rummy! You have a duty to serve in our "long, hard slog."
#3
"The odd fact about the American media in this war is that it's not covering the American military. The most plugged-in nation in the world is receiving virtually no true information about what its warriors are doing."
That is such a sad truth. We should all be writing letters to the editors of every newspaper and to the directors of every media outlet in the country and demand a better job. The problem is they would be so busy covering what's really going on in Iraq that they would have no time for their political agenda.
Posted by: Sam ||
05/10/2004 15:11 Comments ||
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Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
05/10/2004 07:32 ||
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posted this, but mine got trapped in the "Editor's Holding Pen". Please delete mine rather than make me look like a double-posting idiot (I do that enuf myself) thx ;-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/10/2004 10:49 Comments ||
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I tend to agree with VDH, but his use of TWA Flight 800 is worrying.
economics that made sense for a 747 to take off with an empty belly tank -- still seems to be the root cause.
Posted by: red ||
05/10/2004 12:23 Comments ||
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Based on the sentence around it, I assumed he meant TWA 847 hijacked to Beirut and where Robert Dean Stethem was tortured and murdered.
Posted by: ed ||
05/10/2004 12:31 Comments ||
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I think there's a lot of evidence to suggest that TWA 800 was brought down by a SAM missile (by Islamist terrorists) and not by some freak spark in the plane's gas tank as the FCC tried to maintain.
It was another "heads up" that IslamoFacists had declared war on the US that we ignored by treating it as a domestic incident.
If VDH attributes it to the WOT, he knows whereof he speaks.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 12:37 Comments ||
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Arab secret weapon! Arab secret weapon!
High altitude stealth SAM! High altitude steath SAM
Ack!
As Mae West might say ""Is that a pistol.........."
It may sound like a gadget from a futuristic Arnold Schwarzenegger film. But full-body scanners - which see straight through peopleâs clothing - are coming soon to airports in the UK.
Ummm... That'll be a mixed blessing...
A high-tech security screening system, designed to detect guns and other offensive weapons concealed on the body, will this month be unveiled by the defence technology firm, Qinetiq, which is part-owned by the Government. The scanners, expected to be deployed within a year as part of Britainâs armoury against terror, capture the naked image of a traveller even if he or she is wearing several layers of clothing. But to protect peopleâs modesty they come replete with "fig leaf technology" that detects which parts of the body need screening out.
Now you know where to hide your rosco, don't you?
The system, which uses a special light frequency to see through clothing, was successfully trialled at Gatwick airport and will go on display at this yearâs Farnborough air show. The technology was originally developed for the Ministry of Defence to use in military helicopters to enable them to see through fog. But it has now been adapted by Qinetiq, which used to be part of the top secret defence research establishment at Porton Down, for civilian use. The airport scanners are designed to detect concealed metallic objects including knives, guns, hand-grenades and shoe bombs on a fully-clad human being. However, the millimetre wave sensors will also highlight metallic items of clothing including bra clasps, trouser flies and buttons. People with pacemakers, metal pins in bones and reconstructed jaws may also find their secrets revealed.
Also people with nippy rings, various types of pubic hardware, and butt bars...
Airport operators will be thoroughly screened to ensure their motives are not prurient or voyeuristic, Qinetiq said.
Likely sometimes they will be, sometimes they won't be...
British Government sources say it could help tighten security at airports while ensuring that passengers are not subjected to delays. Duncan Valentine, managing director of the transport sector at Qinetiq, said that he believed the scanners would soon be in common use. "This launch is a significant development in the fight against terrorism and we foresee millimetre wave technology becoming to people screening what X-ray is now to baggage screening."
It's not gonna make us radioactive or something, is it?
Experts say that the millimetre wave scanner, unlike X-rays, poses no health risks to human beings because it uses part of the light spectrum, to which people are exposed every day, to see through clothing.
That's a comfort. What part of the light spectrum would that be, again?
They believe it will cut down waits for security screening at airports significantly and dispense with the "pat down" by security guards.
I never did quite grasp the diffo between "patting down" and "feeling up."
Only people who are shown to be carrying suspicious looking metallic options in clothing or shoes will have to be checked by security personnel. "It has the ability to penetrate natural materials," said one expert. "What you would aim to do is to project any threats that are found onto a screen. It would look as if someone is wearing a body stocking." The technology has already been successfully piloted at British ports where scanners have seen through lorry walls to detect hundreds of illegal immigrants being smuggled into Britain.
Egad! I can imagine some of the thing found under the getup of the average illegal Pakistani...
The body scanners are expected to be available within a year for other premises with high security, including government buildings and VIP conferences. The airports are also looking at employing other cutting edge technology to secure airport perimeters. Radar is being trialled as a way of preventing terrorists and intruders reaching secure areas. The radar can detect people after they cross an invisible line, while ensuring that dogs and wild animals that stray do not prompt security alerts or set off alarms. British ports are also looking at deploying James-Bond style "diver detection" sonar to stop terrorists planting mines from the sea. The sonar would give advance warning if divers are approaching a secure area.
Posted by: tipper ||
05/10/2004 2:06:25 AM ||
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Can anybody else hear the cry of Fatwa, fatwa. Those nasty English will be able to see our naughty bits
#3
Oh my life, the UK fundies are gonna have trouble with this! Not even a burka can protect your modesty from the Kufr HM Customs & Excise. Can't wait, can't wait.. Anyone refusing must, I repeat MUST, be given an internal cavity search.
Arab foreign ministers Monday endorsed the concept of democracy and human rights in a document prepared for an Arab summit expected to take place in Tunis this month, the Algerian foreign minister said. Abdelaziz Belkhadem told reporters after three days of talks at Arab League headquarters that the document also called for an independent judiciary and promoting civil society, and covered the status of women in the Arab world. "The most important features of the draft declaration is that it asserts the need to develop the Arab system of government and civil society ... in the field of deepening the practice of democracy," Belkhadem said.
"Y'know, like, we gotta have shariah, and amirs, and maybe a grand vizir or two. Otherwise we wouldn't be Arabs, would we?"
Arab League documents have rarely if ever made sense called for internal political changes inside Arab countries, which the league has traditionally considered a domestic matter. Arab ministers have denied any link, but the document on political reform follows President Bush's campaign for democracy in the Arab world.
"No, no! Certainly not!"
An Arab summit in Tunis in March was expected to prepare an indirect response to the U.S. campaign, but the Tunisian government called off the meeting, saying some countries were not being progressive enough about reform. The Tunisians said they specifically wanted the summit to endorse democracy, civil society and the rights of women. Some Arab delegates disputed Tunisia's commitment to these goals, saying it was among the more repressive Arab countries.
And they actually got their way... Amazing! I'm just waiting to see what definition of democracy comes out of this hoedown...
In a separate document approved by the ministerial meeting, the Arab foreign ministers said Arab governments were committed to comprehensive political, economic, social, cultural and educational reform for the sake of development. It said the governments would "reinforce the spirit of citizenship and equality, expand the field of participation in public affairs and support freedom of responsible expression." The document also mentions human rights and the role of women and said this was "in conformity with our beliefs, values and cultural traditions." It does not mention democracy.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/10/2004 2:28:15 PM ||
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Some Arab delegates disputed Tunisia's commitment to these goals, saying it was among the more repressive Arab countries.
You mean the "succesor state" to the Cathaginian Empire", with a 2000 year interegnum, is the repressivist amonst the repressive. Say it ain't so, Shoeless Joe!
#2
The Arabs would not be discussing REFORM of any sort were it not for the US MILITARY's efforts to democratize Iraq, President Bush's vision of democracy being a Godgiven gift for all, and a humiliated and defeated Saddam being pulled from a hole in a goat pasture. So I am not going to cynically SHIT all over this development given the sacrifices AMERICANS are making to pacify Arab League member states, and as a result make America safer for generations of Americans to come.
A UN-backed tribunal in East Timor issued an arrest warrant for Indonesian presidential candidate Wiranto for crimes against humanity in the territory in 1999. Wiranto maintained his innocence and said continuing "rumours" about his legal status were "character assassination."
"Lies! All lies!"
Indonesia also rejected the warrant and the Dili government said it would work with the ex-general if he wins the July 5 election, for which he is the candidate for Indonesia's largest party Golkar. Wiranto was Jakarta's military chief when army-backed militiamen waged a murderous campaign against independence supporters in East Timor, then an Indonesian territory. Some 1,400 people were murdered before and after East Timorese voted in August 1999 for independence. About 200,000 people were deported to Indonesian West Timor and about 70 percent of all buildings in the territory were destroyed. After a US judge at East Timor's Special Panel for Serious Crimes issued the warrant, Wiranto said he has done nothing wrong. "I am clean ... I have never been brought to court, never become an accused," he told reporters in Surabaya.
Now you have...
Indonesia reiterated its previous refusal to hand anyone over for trial. "We absolutely do not need to follow up the arrest warrant issued by the Timor Leste (East Timor) special crimes unit. For us, we do not recognize the term 'extra-territoriality' so it is not valid for Indonesia," said foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa. He said Indonesia had its own human rights court looking into charges of crimes against humanity in East Timor. "And clearly Mr. Wiranto absolutely has never been charged by that court." The Jakarta court acquitted 12 out of 18 defendants and was described by rights groups as largely a sham.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/10/2004 1:10:56 PM ||
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National polls opened in the Philippines on Monday morning amid reports of scattered violence that killed seven people, with more than 200,000 security officers on high alert. The final pre-election opinion polls showed incumbent President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who strongly backs the US war on terror, pulling ahead of film star Fernando Poe Jr, whose best friend Joseph Estrada lost the job in disgrace three years ago. But the polls also indicated that as many as one-quarter of the electorate were undecided.
I'm so confused. I thought Fernando Po was an island? But this Fernando Poe seems to be a man, and no man is an island...
A grenade attack killed two people and wounded another outside the campaign headquarters of a mayoralty candidate in suburban Caloocan in metropolitan Manila late on Sunday, said police director Marcelino Franco. No suspects were arrested, he said. There were no immediate details available about who had been killed. In southern Zambonga del Norte province, men opened fire on the convoy of a mayoralty candidate late on Sunday afternoon, killing three supporters and wounding three more, the military said. In a separate attack in the nearby town of Tampilisan early on Monday, gunmen killed two supporters of yet another mayoralty candidate. Election officials also reported an explosion that set off a fire that gutted portions of a building and destroyed election documents in the central town of Taft in Eastern Samar province.
Just your normal Philippine election.
Reports of abductions and election law violations also ushered in the voting that began at 7am local time (2300 GMT on Sunday). Elections director Ferdinand Rafanan said tens of thousands of election campaign documents loaded in two vans were confiscated by police in the region. Police were also checking reports of vote-buying in one area, he said.
SEE: normal Philippine election
National police spokesman Chief Superintendent Joel Goltiao said the authorities were looking into two reports of abductions of followers of local candidates, including a supporter of a mayoralty candidate in Rodriguez town in Rizal, east of here. Officials say it could take a month before final results are announced because of a lack of computerised voting. One pollster plans to release the results of an exit poll on Tuesday. Mrs Arroyoâs administration and Mr Poeâs camp have accused each other of plots to steal the election, either by cheating or violence. About 230,000 troops and police took up positions before the polls opened to secure polling precincts and guard against violence or terrorist attacks. Last month, police said they broke up a terror cell, foiling what they said were planned bombing attacks in the capital. Also up for grabs are 12 of the nationâs 24 Senate seats and all seats in the House of Representatives, and some 17,000 other posts all the way down to the neighbourhood level.
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
05/10/2004 1:27:30 AM ||
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...With scores of other sons, brothers and fathers likewise vowing revenge, Thailand's south, home to most of the nation's 6 million Muslim minority, is again a powder keg ready to explode. The south is the country's poorest region and was once wracked by a guerrilla insurgency agitating to set up an independent Islamic state. The militants, who often hid in neighboring Malaysia, were not widely supported, but their cause reflected the resentment and sense of marginalization that many Thai Muslims felt. The movement waned in the 1980s and '90s as the authorities in Bangkok boosted economic aid to the south, gave it some autonomy and pardoned many insurgents. And though there had been a steadily rising tide of killings and attacks on security posts in the south in recent years, most officials and analysts dismissed the unrest as sporadic and low-level, blaming bandits as much as they did separatistsâuntil last week's bloodbath. Now the scale and ferocity of the April 28 violence is forcing Thais to confront the reality that Islamic militancy in the south has escalated into a national crisis. The morning after the killings, "Thais woke up to a new reality," editorialized Bangkok's The Nation newspaper. "What happened... may change Thailand forever."
The most profoundâand dangerousâfallout is the potential internationalization of what had previously been a local problem. The image of non-Muslim security personnel firing rocket-propelled grenades and M-16s as they storm the most sacred mosque in Pattani province could serve as a rousing recruitment ad for Islamic radicals worldwide to join the jihad in Thailand. "There's a real danger that militants from Malaysia, Indonesia or the Arab world will now become involved in Thailand's internal conflict," says Anusorn Limmanee, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Any involvement by outside extremists would also raise another grim specter: the possibility that the militants might turn their sights on the millions of foreigners who flock to Thailand's beach resorts, dealing a body blow to the country's chief source of foreign currency, its $7 billion-a-year tourism industry. Ominously, one Islamic separatist group that had been quiet for decades, the Pattani United Liberation Organization (P.U.L.O.), published a warning to foreign tourists on its website within 24 hours of the killings. The message, addressed to "Dear People of the World," said: "Persons who plan to visit Thailand NOW are warned not to travel to Pattani ... Pattani people are not responsible for what happens to you after this warning." The notice pointedly includes the tourist havens of Phuket and Krabi, a few hours' drive away. Already, the U.S., Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia have advised their citizens to avoid Thailand's south.
#1
Sounds like the Muzzys are headed for the receiving end of a butt-kicking there as well. Is there anyplace where Muslims DO get along with their neighbors?
Posted by: mac ||
05/10/2004 8:19 Comments ||
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"The south is the country's poorest region and was once wracked by a guerrilla insurgency agitating to set up an independent Islamic state. The militants, who often hid in neighboring Malaysia, were not widely supported, but their cause reflected the resentment and sense of marginalization that many Thai Muslims felt."
Do you see a pattern? Why is it that the Muslim areas are always the poorest, wherever? Of course, it is not because there is any relationship between the tenents of the Muslim religion and lack of economic success or inability to compete. The answer lies in Sharia - if everyone was under Sharia, then all would be under equal footing - except the infidels, of course. Under universal Sharia, Muslims would thrive. Is it that simple?
Posted by: Sam ||
05/10/2004 9:58 Comments ||
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Under universal Sharia, Muslims would thrive.
No, under sharia, no one would thrive, but non-Muslims would be in worse condition than Muslims.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/10/2004 10:18 Comments ||
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#4
I've long held the feeling that Thais are exceptionally dangerous as a people. Unlike most in Southern Asia, the Thais have that "undefeated" quality, that makes for a really bad choice in an enemy.
Psychologically, the best example of this is both their attraction to their peculiar brand of methamphetamine, and the way in which they deal with both its users and abusers.
Ultraviolence is predicted.
#10
Big Ed, do you consider Buddhist countries run by Communists to be athiests or Buddhists. The death counts are pretty astounding in the Cultural Revolution and Cambodia.
That has nothing to do with what I have seen of the average Buddhist adherant. Another comparison being to compare Easter Orthodox Christianity and Stalin. Lutherans and Hitler. The only thing they have in common is Geography.
The Cultural Revolution and Mao had nothing to do with Buddhism either. It was just a murderous Communist thug on a grand scale.
All of the above were athiests, except Hitler, who followed the Norse pantheon of gods.
#12
If you go back a bit, even the Buddhists were pretty bloody. A few hundred years ago, the Buddhist monks of Japan used to come down off their mountains and burn the local towns when they got irked. Kept up until Oda Nobununga or the Taiko, I forget which, burned them and their monastaries. Every religion contains the fatal flaw of "God is on my side, so I can do no wrong."
#13
Every religion contains the fatal flaw of "God is on my side, so I can do no wrong."
Not those people who follow the "Peacock King" or whatever they call him. As I understand it, they figure Satan's more active -- possibly even the victor -- so they suck up to him.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/10/2004 14:49 Comments ||
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President Bush plans this week to impose economic sanctions on Syria for supporting terrorism and failing to stop guerrillas from entering Iraq, people involved in the deliberations said on Monday. Congressional sources said Bush was expected to curb future investments by American energy firms in Syria and prohibit Syrian aircraft from flying into the United States. Bush was also expected either to block transactions involving the Syrian government or to ban exports to Syria of U.S. products other than food and medicine, the sources said. A White House announcement on the sanctions is planned as early as Tuesday. The move comes after lawmakers, who helped push legislation through Congress last year to sanction Syria, complained that Bush appeared to be appeasing Damascus by not implementing the penalties under the so-called Syria Accountability Act.
The lawmakers, Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, and Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, said they were preparing legislation for stiffer penalties on Syria and additional measures to isolate and weaken its government. The Syria Accountability Act, passed by the House and Senate by overwhelming margins, offered Bush a menu of sanctions to punish Damascus for supporting terror groups, failing to stop guerrilla fighters from crossing into Iraq from Syria, developing chemical and perhaps biological weapons, and keeping troops in Lebanon.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/10/2004 1:24:12 PM ||
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#1
Perhaps we should offer Assad a modest proposal: Offer up the WMDs buried in the Bekaa Valley and neither we, nor the Israelis, will precipitate a Syrian regime change this year.
Reuters journalist Adlan Khasanov has been buried after being killed in a bomb attack on the pro-Russian leadership of the restive Chechen region. Mr Khasanov was laid to rest in the early afternoon in a Muslim ceremony at a cemetery in Novye Atagi, his home village, south of Grozny. Colleagues paid tribute to him as a "golden character ... open, lively and full of incredible energy". Witnesses said Mr Khasanov was taking photographs near Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov when the bomb exploded. He died of head wounds.
The blast that killed Mr Kadyrov and five other people ripped apart a podium at a stadium in the Chechen capital Grozny during a ceremony to mark Moscowâs victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. The 33-year-old had worked as a photographer and television cameraman for Reuters since the late 1990s, much of it in his native Chechnya. Reuters chief executive Tom Glocer paid tribute to Mr Khasanov and said his death was testimony to the courage of Reuters journalists and their commitment to covering news. Mr Glocer said Mr Khasanovâs death was a reminder "that the risks faced by Reuters journalists are not confined to Iraq but extend to wherever conflict is a part of everyday life". Mr Khasanov was the only cameraman to film the first of what would be several assassination attempts against Mr Kadyrov. Mr Khasanov was sitting in a Grozny cafe in 1999 when a bomb exploded as Mr Kadyrovâs convoy was passing near by. He rushed to the scene to film the aftermath.
The government is following up on the conditions of hundreds of Palestinians stranded in a refugee camp near the Jordanian border with Iraq, with some of them reportedly going into a hunger strike to draw attention to their plight.
âWe are working with the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and with several Arab and international countries to find a solution for them,â Minister of State and Government Spokesperson Asma Khader said during her weekly press briefing yesterday.
In the aftermath of the US-UK invasion and occupation of Iraq, hundreds of Palestinians residing in Iraq fled the country and have been living in tents at a refugee camp near the border city of Ruweished for over a year. Most of them refuse to go back to Iraq due to the lack of security in the war-stricken country.
Khader said the ideal solution for these refugees, mainly those who have travel documents issued by the Palestinian Authority, is to be granted access to their home. âThis, however, first needs coordination with Israel and the Palestinian Authority,â she said.
Reuters quoted UNHCR representative in Jordan, Sten Brunee, as saying that while Palestinian authorities would welcome the refugees, Israel has refused to allow them in.
Regarding Palestinians who hold travel documents issued by Arab countries, namely Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, Khader said: âWe hope they will be accepted by these countries.â
Another solution, she said, is for the UNHCR to find a country that will allow entry to these refugees for humanitarian reasons.
However, according to Brunee, âno government in the region is willing to accept even a small number of them.â
Khader emphasised yesterday that Jordan would not grant access to any new Palestinian refugees under any circumstances. âAccepting any new refugees now carries risks for the future,â she said.
The Kingdom, which currently hosts around 1.7 million Palestinian refugees, has repeatedly announced it will not accept any new refugee as such a move contradicts with the right of return for Palestinians under UN Resolution 194 and the Arab peace initiative, which Jordan strongly supports.
In August, the government allowed over 350 Jordanian women married to non-Jordanians, who were residing in the Ruweished camp, to enter the Kingdom with their husbands and children.
âno government in the region is willing to accept even a small number of them.â
That says it all.
Jordan would not grant access to any new Palestinian refugees under any circumstances. âAccepting any new refugees now carries risks for the future,â she said.
Yeah - risks that Jordan might get blown up. Though they think it's OK for Israel.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/10/2004 23:01 Comments ||
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After 55 years in the UN Refugee Camps, the are three to four generations of Palestinians who have never known anything but the dole. They are economic basket cases at best and dangerous terrorists at worst. Who would knowingly admit such a nest of vipers into his country? There is no easy solution to this.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/10/2004 21:01 ||
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That should be "Treatment"
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/10/2004 21:02 Comments ||
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After the way the IIRC played fast and loose with the money we Americans gave the families of the 9/11 victims and their eagerness to see Saddam in prison while ignoring the Iraqi people he murdered and tortured for 30 years, they can just... BITE ME.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 21:08 Comments ||
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#3
Looks like the Red Cross is another organization that has been hijacked by the Left. They had a long standing policy of not publicizing details of prisoners they visit. This statement is from their website - ICRC believes that the best way that it can prevent or halt torture and ensure decent conditions of detention is by getting repeated and unrestricted access to prisoners, talking to them about their problems, and urging the detaining authorities to make any improvements that may be necessary. The price of this is a policy of confidentiality, taking up the problems only with the people directly concerned.
Posted by: Phil B ||
05/10/2004 21:25 Comments ||
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While some of the abuses I've heard about (especially sexual assaults and severe beatings) are troubling, I have no problem with isolation, humiliation, playing smackey-face, sensory deprivation, no exercise, etc., when the individuals are/were involved in anti-Coalition attacks. This is much ado about not much.
Posted by: Tibor ||
05/10/2004 21:28 Comments ||
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#5
I believe that some of the photos are planted. I am certain that those who did abuse prisoners will be fairly tried.
But I am certain that some of the photos are planted or have been altered.
If that is the case, any news media which has distributed them without fully understanding the origins are guilty of dissemination of war propoganda, and are therefore no better than Ezra Pound, and deserve no less than what he was given.
From the US Marine Corp League:
This is some of the stuff my unit does in Iraq...we blow up the town, then give them money
Civil Affairs Marines visit villages near Fallujah
Submitted by: 1st Marine Division
Story Identification Number: 200459103715
Story by Sgt. Jose E. Guillen
Marines put a new twist on mending fences in a village near Fallujah. About two weeks ago, an M-1A1 tank was mired in mud in the small village of Al Budekil. Retriever crews yanked the monstrous vehicle from a farm field, but tore up valuable cropland in the process. A recent visit, though, not only fixed the problems, but allowed Marines to gain the trust of local Iraqis. Marines from 3rd Civil Affairs Group, based out of Camp Pendleton, visited the hamlet dubbed Tank Village and surrounding communities May 6 to compensate for the damages. "All of this is a chain reaction from where the tank got stuck," said Lt. Col. Colin P. McNease, the officer-in-charge of the 3rd CAG detachment under Regimental Combat Team 1. "Aside from paying for damages, we told them we could start some projects out here."
It didnât take long for the word to spread that Marines have taken an interest in lending a helping hand. "People from other villages heard that we compensated for the damages, but also saw that we brought fertilizer and tools for that one village," McNease explained. "As we were leaving, they waved us down wondering if weâre willing to work with their villages too."
The help for the villagers couldnât come at a better time. Planting season is starting for Iraqi farmers and Marines helped by delivering about 50 tons of fertilizer. "Weâre also going to do some irrigation work to help them get started," McNease said. Other smaller steps have been made in villages surrounding the city. Marines are planning on paving two kilometers of road and have already paid out damage claims that were a result of fighting last month. "One of my jobs is to pay claims and to give money for good-will projects," said Maj. Greg G. Gillette, staff judge advocate for RCT-1. "We paid a farmer $4,500 dollars for damages to his car, three cows that were killed and for his crops," added Gillette, a native of New York, Pa. Gillette said the compensation may not pay for the entire damage, but it will certainly help the farmer get back on his feet. Gillette works with village sheiks mostly, but at times he speaks directly with villagers presenting the claims. "I need corroboration, so I mostly deal directly with the tribal sheiks," said Gillette. "We paid... a sheik $9,000 as a good-will payment for damages his village suffered during some of the fighting."
It wasnât just a time to mend fences through. Marines gave in to children swarming them, giving away pens and pencils, soccer balls, nets and Frisbees donated by Spirit of America, a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles. "Itâs great being able to interact with people in a kind way and make them smile," said Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Aaron M. Fullmer, a religious program specialist for RCT-1 from Las Vegas. "If nothing else, it gives them a better view of Americans - exactly what they need." Marines plan for more visits to the village, hoping that the next wonât be about damages from fighting. "Iâm sure there are some people who donât want this program to succeed, but the people working with us right now want it to," McNease said. "Itâs coming along great. Weâre just trying to build a good will with these villages."
#1
Well, the story about the stuck tank was on InstaPundit the other day. He got it here. That story doesn't go into detail about the payments, but it does mention the soccer balls, frisbees, and pens.
Rest easy, dude. It doesnât have to be a*/>#^*! n~t*/#e. And, I donât think theyâve got a lot of $#@!!~~!@@@@>/ lying around, either. Of course, dumber things have happened.
Saddam Husseinâs defense lawyers said Monday they had received no response from the U.S. administration in Iraq and the International Committee of the Red Cross to repeated requests to see their client. Saddahm? Oh, yeah, heâs around here somewhere. Just look for the lice bitten guy that looks like he belongs in front of a 7-11 with a picture of the president on his cell wall.
Lawyers representing the ousted leader also said they were ready to represent Iraqi prisoners abused by U.S. and British soldiers, whose pictures angered people around the world. Can you say contingency fees? Can you say retirement on a tropical island?
Washington has said 66-year-old Saddam, whose interrogation was being led by the Central Intelligence Agency, should be tried in Iraq. Yeah - the CIA has to put clothes on him and take off the dog-collar before anyone can see him.
Salem Chalabi, a U.S.-educated lawyer in charge of administering the special tribunal that will try Saddam, said he expected prosecutors to seek the death penalty for the former Iraqi strongman and officials of his Baath Party. I vote for a necktie party in the square where they tore down his statue, and leave the body hanging to have rotten veggies tossed, and so that the crows and vultures can have a snack. French Lawyer Jacques Verges, who said in March that Saddamâs nephew had asked him to defend the former Iraqi dictator, was not a member of the group, Rashdan said. Gee, I wonder why?
Hard to make out whatâs going on here, but it seems to be for the good. Plus Chalabiâs political obituary may have been a bit premature...
As critics say his tune changed under pressure from Washington and Iraqis, aides to U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi insisted yesterday that far from retreating, he is on top of the political process in Iraq and will see it through until a new government is in place. Mr. Brahimiâs plan to entrust the caretaker government to the hands of Iraqis with no political aspirations has been criticized, among others, by some who doubted there are enough able âtechnocrats.â The caretaker government is scheduled to assume partial sovereignty by June 30. âWe never used the term technocrats,â Mr. Brahimiâs spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, told The New York Sun yesterday. Speaking from Baghdad, where Mr. Brahimi arrived last Thursday, he added that the political ambitions of Iraqis who would assume sovereignty from the American-led coalition on July 1 âwas never the issue.â
But in a briefing to the Security Council late April, Mr. Brahimi said, âMembers of the caretaker government must be careful not to use their positions to try and give advantage to any political party or group,â adding that to prevent even such a perception it would be best if they âchoose not to stand for electionsâ scheduled for January 2005. This was seen by diplomats at the time as an attempt to isolate the Iraqi National Congress leader, Ahmad Chalabi, who has been a longtime critic of Mr. Brahimi and was seen as losing support even among some ardent Washington backers. Yesterday, Mr. Chalabi said that Mr. Brahimi âhas changed his position since heâs come back to Baghdad, totally.â In an interview on CNN yesterday, he added that the U.N. envoy has âcome to recognize the need for the new government to have political support.â He also stressed he did not see himself a candidate âfor any government position.â
According to a press report yesterday, it was the Bush administration that pushed Mr. Brahimi to alter his plan so that politicians could participate in the provisional government alongside professionals. âThe government is going to have both technocrats and people of political stature,â an senior administration official told the New York Times. âItâs important to have both sides in the government.â According to Mr.Fawazi,however,Mr. Brahimi never ruled out âpolitical or ideologicalâ affiliation. Further, rather than a âplanâ of his own, Mr. Brahimiâs council briefing was a result of consultations and was based on âcommon denominatorsâ among Iraqis.
INC spokesman Entifadh Qanbar told U.N. reporters Friday, âTo have somebody from outside the country, who is an Arab nationalist, who had some great support for Saddam in the past, to come and rule the political process in Iraq, is not acceptable.â Speaking on al-Iraqiya television this weekend, Mr. Brahimi countered he had no agenda of his own.âWe came to serve the interests of the Iraqi people,â he said. Mr. Fawzi said that Mr. Brahimi, who has also been criticized for his style of âshuttle diplomacy,â plans to stay in Baghdad this time until the composition of the caretaker government is complete. That is, Mr. Fawzi added, âUnless we fail.â
Wielding axes and shovels, Palestinian vandals desecrated a Commonwealth war cemetery in Gaza in anger over the reports of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British and American soldiers. By the time they were chased out late Sunday, the vandals had destroyed or desecrated 32 graves, breaking the headstones of some and gluing photos of the abuse on others. The message: "We will revenge," was printed in English on a photo of a naked Iraqi prisoner tied to a leash being held by a U.S. soldier.
Reports of prisoner abuse in Iraq have reverberated throughout the Arab world and further intensified anti-Western sentiment stoked by the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. Arabs were further horrified by the photos, which show naked Iraqi men in humiliating positions flanked by smiling U.S. soldiers. The desecration of the war cemetery began Sunday evening, when about 10 Palestinians, some armed with rifles, entered the neat 10-acre plot, which is surrounded by a large stone wall, said Issam Jaradeh, chief gardener of the cemetery.
Jaradeh and his brothers, who live in a house bordering the plot, ran into the cemetery when they spotted the vandals and chased them off, he said Monday. By that time the vandals had already damaged the cemetery, with its perfectly aligned head stones, well-kept lawn and rows of flowers and trimmed bushes. Several gravestones were smashed, including one, presumably the final resting place of an unknown soldier that was engraved with a cross and the words: "A soldier of the Great War known unto God." Other headstones were covered with pictures of the reported abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, emblazoned with a swastika and the words "U.S.=U.K." The vandals also uprooted flowers. The British consulate in Jerusalem said it was investigating the incident. "Itâs very, very worrying," said Andy Fretwell, the regional supervisor for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, an organization charged with maintaining the graves of Commonwealth fighters around the world. "Itâs the first time that anything of a political nature has taken place in that cemetery."
Jaradeh and his family were shocked at the desecrations. "Our religion as Muslims and our tradition as Palestinians forbid such acts," he said. Gaza was the site of several World War I battles, when the British captured the region from the Ottoman Empire. During the World War II, Gaza housed several Australian hospitals and was a base for the Australian and British air forces. The cemetery, one the eastern edge of Gaza City, holds the graves of more than 3,000 World War I Commonwealth fighters and 210 fighters from World War II, including Muslims, Jews and Christians from 17 countries. More than 200 fighters from other nations are also buried there. Jaradehâs family has been taking care of the cemetery since it opened nearly 90 years ago. His grandfather worked there and his father, Ibrahim, retired as caretaker last year after being named a Member of the Order of the British Empire, or MBE, by Queen Elizabeth II for his years of service, Fretwell said. "This place is part of our lives and we care about it more than anyone can imagine," Jaradeh said. Before the current uprising began in September 2000, the cemetery was regularly visited by families of those killed. "Weâve always had an awful lot of respect from the local people. This why it is such a shock," Fretwell said. The vandalism was reported to the police, he said. Beyond that, there was little the commission could do, he said. "All we can really do is repair the damage ... and hopefully it doesnât happen again," he said.
#1
This is an understandable echo of the widespread desecrations of Muslim graves in the US after the contractors were brutally slaughtered and their bodies defiled in Fallujah.
Oh, wait, that was in an alternate universe, sorry.
Posted by: Carl in N.H ||
05/10/2004 16:59 Comments ||
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#2
You know, it's strange that most Palestinians act like pigs. Maybe the prohibition on eating pork stems from a distaste for cannibalism. We should cut off all US funding, both directly and indirectly through the UN and NGOs, that goes to support these swine. If they had to work to eat, like real people, they wouldn't have time for this sort of behavior.
Smoke and flames rose from a Baghdad electricity storage plant today but it was not clear whether saboteurs started the fire or it was an accident. Thick tongues of flame and plumes of black smoke rose from the plant in the western district of Ameriya as fire engines arrived to attempt to extinguish the blaze which officials said had caused significant damage. Police at the scene said without elaborating the plant had been sabotaged, but employees said the fire had broken out after a power cable apparently snapped and fell on the station.
Insurgents fighting the U.S.-led occupation have targeted Iraqâs power production facilities and oil export pipelines to undermine postwar reconstruction efforts. Faris al-Bayati, a senior official of the security division of Iraqâs electricity facilities, said an explosion had been heard just before the fire erupted and that the blaze had damaged cables and coils used to store electricity. An adjacent sub-station was shut down after the fire erupted. Oil exports slowed at Iraqâs main southern terminal today after a sabotage attack on a southern pipeline.
#1
Not a clever way for the "insurgents" to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, particularly with Summer coming on.
Also, did anything ever come of the suggestion to set up something similar to the Alaska Trust Fund to let the Iraqi citizens get a personal stake in the oil revenues? I have to think that giving every Iraqi a piece of the action would severely impede any attempts at sabotage. It's not the same when the people take it personally.
#3
Not a clever way for the "insurgents" to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, particularly with Summer coming on.
If our forces are smart, they'll pound the point home via whatever friendly media outlet possible - the fact that insurgents are more than willing to sacrifice the health and well-being of the Iraqi public to get what they want only proves that there would be little difference between their rule and that of Saddam Hussein.
A Palestinian teenager who decided against blowing himself up in Jerusalem caused panic in a West Bank security office when he went for help, officials said Monday. Palestinian security officials said the young man appeared at their Ramallah office late last week and stripped off his jacket — revealing an explosives vest with a detonation switch at his neck. Fearing they were about to be blown up, five security officers scattered in all directions, shouting at the youth, who looked about 14 but was actually 18 years old. It turned out that the he wanted someone to disarm the explosives.
"Holy shit! I mean Allahu Akbar!"
A short while later, an explosives expert arrived to defuse the bomb vest.
One thing you can always find on short notice in Paleostine is an explosives expert...
The young man, whose name was not released, told the officers he was recruited by the Islamic Jihad group in Jenin and was supposed to blow himself up in Jerusalem. On the way, though, he had second thoughts. "I kept thinking of myself, of my family, and to be honest — I don't want to be flying meat die," one of the officers quoted the man as saying. Security officials said if he had been sent back to Jenin, in the northern West Bank, he would have been arrested by the Israeli military, so the Palestinians sent him to a lockup in Jericho instead.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/10/2004 3:40:37 PM ||
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Although this guy's life isn't worth squat now, at least future bombing fodder have a previous example to think about as they walk toward the checkpoint. That would make it easier to decide not to go through with it, I would imagine.
Posted by: Carl in N.H ||
05/10/2004 16:48 Comments ||
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Will this be news on al-Jazeera or al-Arabiyah?
President Hamid Karzai met Afghanistan's most powerful governor in his western stronghold Monday and delivered a tough message on disarming local militias and deploying government troops to unruly regions. Ismail Khan, the self-styled "emir of Herat," has criticized government plans to disarm tens of thousands of factional fighters in the coming weeks, saying this would leave a power vacuum while the national army remained weak. Karzai played down his differences with Khan, who is viewed by Western diplomats as a major obstacle to disarmament and to government attempts to extend its authority beyond Kabul, but said there would be no rolling back of policies. "There is only a procedural matter, that some consider to give (disarmament) some time, some consider (it) to be done quickly," he told reporters shortly before leaving Herat. "We have not discussed these issues today because there is no need to discuss them. There is an agreement already, a decision on it already."
Karzai was uncompromising when asked about the mixed reception to Afghan National Army (ANA) forces being stationed in what is probably Afghanistan's most stable city. "Kabul is part of Afghanistan, Herat is part of Afghanistan, Khost is part of Afghanistan, Paktika is part of Afghanistan, and the ANA can go wherever it wants." The government wants to disarm 40,000 factional fighters out of 100,000 nationwide by the end of June, a target that U.N. envoy to Afghanistan Jean Arnault said was in jeopardy due to resistance by leading commanders. In an interview with Reuters on the eve of Karzai's visit, Khan questioned why 1,500 national army troops had been sent to Herat after a clash in March in which his son, Civil Aviation Minister Mirwais Sadiq, was slain. Fears are growing that regional power brokers could flex their military muscle and influence landmark presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for September.
They'd better do it soon, then. Quite to my surprise, Karzai seems to have outmaneuvered them. Somehow. I'm not sure how...
Posted by: Fred ||
05/10/2004 3:31:38 PM ||
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Patience. Moderation. Subtlety. A willingness to cut deals. Nuance. Flexibility.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/10/2004 16:49 Comments ||
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Gotta disagree, Steve. Prior to Sadiq, was ANY warlord type physically attacked? (as opposed to Taliban) Not one. Khan, Dostum, Shirzai, Atta, etc are ALL alive and in good health. But theyve been progressively defanged. Not saying force hasnt been important - the USE of force in the Pashtun areas has given Karzai his base (outside of Kabul) - the Pashtun provinces have been his Normandy, as Kabul was his Isle de France. But in dealing with his dukes and counts, he has relied more on subtlety and political skill, supplemented by occasional threat of force, not blasting away. He has proven as masterful as any Valois. Im not sure that this is generalizable beyond Afghanistan, but I think there are lessons to be learned here. Lessons which the simple minded on both right and left and desperately need.
#4
There's also the fact that the warlords were on our side in the fight against the Pakistanis Talibs. Ismail Khan and Dostum and Atta have their good points, and all three of them have at one time or another been actually heroic. If Massoud hadn't been assassinated, the government in Kabul would probably look a lot different than it does, and that each of them would have more power than he does now, with an entirely different power dynamic.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/10/2004 20:26 Comments ||
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For the record, Khan is a title -- I know a Roseanne Klass "Khan", who demanded to some of these warlords (when she was Freedom House's Afghanistan chief) that she be khan and not khanoub, the female perjorative ... they just looked at each other and said "okay" :P
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
05/10/2004 21:41 Comments ||
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Israelâs military has infiltrated the leading Islamic insurgency group in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli military sources said the nationâs intelligence community has infiltrated the Hamas movement in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The sources said Israelâs infiltration of Hamas in the West Bank has been so thorough that the intelligence community usually received advanced warnings as well as details of suicide bombing plots. "This has been one of the most important developments in our fight against Hamas," a military source said. "Three years ago, the idea of being able to infiltrate Hamas was unimaginable."
A senior Israeli security official agreed that much of Israelâs information on Hamas comes from within the organization, Middle East Newsline reported. The official did not dispute the assertion that Israeli intelligence has infiltrated Hamas. The result has been a steady reduction in Hamasâs operational capability in what has prevented the Islamic organization from launching a major attack in the Jewish state, the sources said. They said special operations forces have killed or captured several leading Hamas operatives who had planned suicide attacks in Israel over the last few weeks. They said Hamas, amid a cash shortfall, has been hard-pressed to replace senior operatives. Out of suckers fodder and out of cash, s--t out of luck.
"Hamas has been trying extremely hard to carry out a terrorist attack," a senior Israeli security official said. "But for the first time, we have determined that they have been facing serious operational difficulties." I would sure like to see that kind of a statement by our forces in Iraq in the near future.
Over a 48-hour period, Israeli authorities foiled several attacks. On May 6, Israelâs military located a car bomb containing three explosive devices ready to be activated. The car was found in an olive grove near the northern West Bank village of Salem, east of Nablus. "It is important to stress that more than 70 suicide bombings inside Israel were thwarted in the last seven months by the security forces in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip," an Israeli military statement said. Israeli intelligence on Hamas leaders and operatives improved significantly in both the West Bank as well as in the Gaza Strip in 2003, the sources said. They said this has enabled Israeli forces to track the movements of most senior Hamas operatives and obtain alerts of planned suicide attacks. At the same time, the sources said, Israelâs military has been steadily eliminating key Hamas operatives in the West Bank, particularly in Hebron and Nablus. They said this has resulted in a sharp drop in the quantity and quality of Hamas operations. "The prime minister, in several key operations, has managed to erode Hamas," Deputy Education Minister Zvi Hendel, a vociferous critic of Israelâs policy in the war against the Palestinians, said.
During April, Israeli authorities, aided by improved intelligence, foiled a series of suicide bombings. On April 5, Fatah operative Said Zalah was arrested in Khan Yunis as he prepared for a suicide attack in Israel in cooperation with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Six days later, a senior Fatah operative, Wajah Abu Alun, involved in sending a suicide bomber, was arrested in Jdeida. The following day, three Hamas and Fatah operatives were arrested in the Bethlehem as they were planning two separate suicide attacks. Palestinian analysts agree that Hamas has been frustrated in its effort to launch a major attack on an Israeli civilian target in wake of the assassination of Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdul Aziz Rantisi in March and April. They said Hamasâs failure could affect the popularity of the organization as well as its recruitment efforts. "Everybody has been anticipating a strong response to the assassination," Hisham Ahmed, a professor of political science at Birzeit University and author of a book on Hamas, said. If this were not to happen, I presume that the level of Hamasâs popularity would be seriously affected." If all that the Paleos can do now are car swarms after a hellfire missile attack, then that is real progress! A job well done, IDF!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/10/2004 2:39:44 PM ||
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statements like this make the Paleokillers extremely paranoid, causing intrasquad casualties.... a win-win!
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/10/2004 15:40 Comments ||
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De Joooos De Joooos, they are under every bed, w-we are dooomed, we are dooomed!
#7
I hope they have infiltrated Hamas. But if its true we should be the last to know about it.
Posted by: Luigi ||
05/10/2004 18:42 Comments ||
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As I have pointed out before, the Israelis have developed some kind of new surveillance technology. And this is black propaganda to ratchet up the paranoia. HeHe!
Posted by: Phil B ||
05/10/2004 19:09 Comments ||
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The first clue that Hamas had that the Israelis had infiltrated them was when they noticed a surprising number of Moishes and Avis on the roster.
Posted by: Carl in N.H. ||
05/10/2004 21:16 Comments ||
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Time for a visit from Mister Caterpillar!
Israeli troops have demolished 13 Palestinian houses in Gaza, a day after gunmen ambushed Jewish settlers holding an outdoor memorial service. Bulldozers flattened a row of homes along the road and a four-story block of flats was blown up, leaving about 75 Palestinians homeless, reports say. "They left nothing for us," said one, a member of the Abu Hadaf clan which occupied most of the buildings. "The bulldozers are uprooting trees, demolishing our houses," he said. MEMO TO NITWIT: Those werenât houses, they were sniper nests.
The Israeli army said the houses had been destroyed because gunmen had used them for cover. No Israelis were hurt in Sundayâs ambush, but settlers were left crouching behind vehicles as shooting continued for 20 minutes. About 300 settlers had attended Sundayâs heavily-guarded memorial service on the Kissufim road near Gush Katif settlement for Gaza settler Tali Hatuel and her (FOUR, COUNT THEM, FOUR) daughters. She was ambushed on 2 May on her way to Israel to lobby voters in a Likud party referendum on Prime Minister Ariel Sharonâs plan to evacuate the settlements in Gaza. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for Sundayâs attack. "We heard a shot, and then another one, and we understood we were being fired upon," said one of the settlers. "Instinctively we lay on the ground and hid behind cars." An armoured vehicle drove along the side of the road, to shield people behind clouds of dust and give them cover as they dashed to safety. The Israeli army responded to the attack with automatic fire and tank shells. Two gunmen were killed. The army said one of them had been disguised in womanâs clothing. Trying to qualify as one of those "virgins" in paradise, mebbe?
Television cameras captured dramatic footage of the settlers under attack. One was seen shielding his screaming four-year-old daughter on the ground. But the army played down the significance of the incident, saying between three and five armed attacks against settlements were launched by Palestinian militants in Gaza every day.
- EMPHASIS ADDED -
#1
Mewonders if these cross-dressing gunmen are in some way related to the hermaphrodite homicide bomber stopped by the Israelis earlier???? Hmmm, is AraFAT's "secret weapon" members of the "alternative lifestyle" brigade? Who knows, maybe they can march on Jerusalem for their right to shoot/blow others up in drag! Hope that "San Fran" Nan is on top of this one! Oh how those Palestinians are repressed!
Posted by: BA ||
05/10/2004 15:52 Comments ||
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remember last week's HIV-bomber?
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/10/2004 15:54 Comments ||
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13 houses? Hmmmm..... that's six less than the decoder rings implies for the week.
#4
Zenster - you added emphasis to the wrong sentence; it should have been: between three and five armed attacks against settlements were launched by Palestinian militants in Gaza every day
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/10/2004 23:11 Comments ||
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(via Belmont Club)
US marines have entered the Iraqi city of Fallujah for the first time in more than a month, according to witnesses. Soldiers drove armoured vehicles to the mayorâs office in the city centre without incident. They were accompanied by Iraqi security forces, who will eventually take over security, witnesses said.
Seven British nationals and two Iraqis were wounded when a bomb exploded at the Four Seasons hotel in Baghdad yesterday, a US military spokesman said. A Foreign Office spokesman said that none were seriously injured.
Sixteen suspected members of rebel Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have been killed in running battles in the Baghdad slum Sadr City, according to US military sources. Residents said that US forces destroyed Sadrâs offices in the district with tank fire during the clashes.
The Arabic satellite channel al-Jazeera has broadcast a video tape showing a group of masked men claiming they will kidnap and kill Arab and foreign workers in the southern city of Basra. The footage showed one of the men, some of whom were holding automatic wearpons, reading out a statement on behalf of the previously unknown group.
A US soldier has been killed and another wounded in a roadside bomb attack north of Baghdad. The soldiers were patrolling the town of Samarra when the attack occurred.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/10/2004 2:56:21 PM ||
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The Arabic satellite channel al-Jazeera has broadcast a video tape showing a group of masked men claiming they will (try to) kidnap and kill Arab and foreign workers in the southern city of Basra.
Where is the press with this genocide? Why is there no outrage for the Mooslim Brothers!! Why is Mohammed not running to their aid? Why is the international media not screaming about these despicable acts and pictures! Where is the UN and "Coffee-in-Acan". New York Times, LA Times, Washed-Up Post? Where oh where. The "Black Man", is being burnt, raped, tortured, mutilated again and where is the out cry from the World Socialists? Where is the cry from that Utopian crowd?! Is the hypocrisy so outrages that the USA is more evil that Red China? The Joseph Stalin Soviet Union? Pol Pot?
I know, I know it is the USA and the Jooooooos fault for this too....
Les massacres se succÚdent au Soudan
As he began speaking, Majok lowered his small cocoa-colored eyes and stared intensely at the ground. It was the summer of 2002 and I had just flown thousands of miles deep into the war zone of Sudan, the largest country in Africa, to interview former slaves. Majok, then 12, tightly hugged his long, bony legs, as we sat on the parched termite-infested earth. His ragged black shorts and ripped oversized T-shirt hung loosely on his spindly, dust-covered body. A continuous flow of tears poured down his precious adolescent face, as he spoke of the way he was repeatedly raped and sodomized by gangs of government soldiers. âThey raped meâ, Majok cried. âAnd when I tried to refuse, they beat me.â After taking care of his master's cattle all day, Majok said he was often raped at night. He told me that his rapes were very painful and he would rarely get a full night's sleep. He also spoke about the other slave boys he saw who suffered his same fate. âI saw with my eyes other boys get raped,â Majok said. âHe [the master] went to collect the other boys and took them to that special place. I saw them get raped.â
Yal, another adolescent, had multiple scars on his arms and legs that he said came from the numerous bamboo beatings he received while in captivity. He told me he saw three slaves killed and one whose arm was hacked off at the elbow because he tried to run away. Yal also said he saw other boys raped by his master at his master's house. âAt the time they were raped they were crying the whole day, Yal said. He then told me that he, too, was raped.
Since 1989, Sudans extremist government, which is seated in the North, has been waging war against its diverse populace. The battle is over land, oil, power and religion, by a government that is made up of some of Africa's most aggressive Arab Islamists, says Jesper Strudsholm, Africa correspondent for Politiken. Animist and Christian black Africans in Southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains, have paid a price for refusing to submit to the North. Over 2 million have died as a result of this war, according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees. Often trapped in the fray, are surviving victims the government soldiers capture as slaves. Human rights and local tribal groups estimate the number enslaved ranges from 14,000 to 200,000.
Though thousands still remain enslaved in the North, since 2003, the genocide and slave raiding in South Sudan and the Nuba Mountains has been suspended because of a ceasefire. Amnesty International, however, reports that the government continues to attack black African Muslims in Darfur, Western Sudan. According to Sudan expert, Eric Reeves, more than 1,000 people are dying every week in Darfur because of government attacks, and the numbers are sure to rise. Amnesty also reports that surviving victims have been raped and abducted by government soldiers during these raids. International law recognizes both slavery and rape in the context of armed conflict as crimes against humanity.
As I questioned the former slaves, village leaders, my translators, and many Sudanese immigrants living in the United States, it became apparent that the tribal society in which Majok and the other slaves were born has strict taboos about sexâespecially male-to-male sex. I was told that although many villagers are aware that young male slaves are raped while in captivity, it isn't discussed because of the cultural prohibitions on all forms of male-to-male sex, including rape. In fact, male-to-male sex is considered such an egregious act in South Sudan that if two males are found guilty of having consensual sex with each other they are killed by a firing squad, according to Aleu Akechak Jok, an appellate court judge for the South. If a male is found guilty of raping a male or female, only the perpetrator is shot to death, Jok said. Joks description of Southern Sudan's punishment for consensual male-to-male sex is not too different from Sharia law in Northern Sudan, which imposes a death penalty on those found guilty of homosexuality.
Village leaders told me that male rape victims, who are able to escape slavery in the North and return to their villages, often consign themselves to a life filled with guilt, suffering silently and alone. This affects their minds badly, Nhial Chan Nhial, a chief of one of the villages in Gogrial County said with anger. When they return to us, many of these boys have fits of crying, mental problems, and are unable to marry later on in life.
I worried about Majok and the other boys I had interviewed. These boys were all adolescent and pre-adolescent ages. Many of them told me that their violent experience of rape was their very first introduction to sex. When captured, Ayiel, 14, said he was forced to watch the gang-rape of his two sisters and says he too was raped numerous times. He described his experience as very painful, and said he never saw his sisters again after that incident. Perhaps the most graphic account of male rape was given by Aleek. "I watched my master and four Murahaleen [soldiers] violently gang-rape a young Dinka slave boy," Aleek said. "The boy was screaming and crying a lot. He was bleeding heavily, as he was raped repeatedly. I watched his stomach expand with air with each violent penetration. The boy kept screaming. I was very frightened, and knew I was likely next. Suddenly the boyâs screams stopped as he went completely unconscious. My master took him to the hospital. I never saw him again."
Many of the boys told me that in order to avoid rape some of the male slaves tried to escape, but were quickly hunted down by their captors. They said that the punishment for resisting rape is severe beatings, limb amputation or death. Mohammed, a Bagarra nomad, who has helped to free slaves, broke down in tears as he spoke. "What they are doing in the North is against the Koran," he explained. "Allah says that no man should be a slave to another man, but all should be a slave to Allah." Mohammed said that as a Muslim he was heartbroken the extremists have perverted his religion into a political weapon to torture and oppress people.
When I arrived in Sudan, Ngongâone in a group of five former female slaves that I interviewedâtold me that children were raped while in captivity. Yes, I saw with my eyes them raped, boys and girls, Ngong said. Though I knew about the rape of slave girls, I did not know this could also be happening to boys. I decided to investigate this further when two females from the same group said they had seen slave boys taken away at night to the special place for rape. I interviewed a total of 15 male slaves, for one to two hours each. Six of the boys interviewed said they were raped and the majority of these six said they were eyewitnesses to other boys being raped. Most of these six boys said they were raped numerous times, by more than one perpetrator. Some of the boys gave the full names and the home towns of the men they said had raped them. Though five in this group of 15 boys said they were not raped, they did say they were either sexually harassed or were eyewitnesses to other slave boys being raped. Only four of the 15 boys interviewed said they were not raped or sexually harassed, and were not eyewitnesses to the rape of other boys. All of the boys said they were never sexually abused or raped prior to their enslavement.
In 2004, the rape of boy slaves is not unique to young Sudanese males, as recently exposed in a CNN Presents documentary Easy Prey: Inside the Child Sex Trade. Sadly, the ugly arm of slavery reaches far beyond Sudan and shockingly touches every continent except Antarctica. Slavery expert Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves (FreeTheSlaves.net) says there are approximately 27 million slaves worldwide. To date, however, there has been no comprehensive report on how many male slaves have been traumatized by rape. Maria Sliwa, founder of Freedom Now News (FreeWorldNow.com), lectures on slavery, and is preparing the interviews she conducted while in Sudan for publication
Posted by: Long Hair Republican ||
05/10/2004 12:51:12 PM ||
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Sudan's slaves: Where's the press on this?
The UN's "Human Rights" council (of which Sudan is a seated member) is still vetting the report prior to its being published in, say ... 2008.
#3
It can't be used to damage Bush, so the press won't bother.
They sure have their priorities straight.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/10/2004 19:01 Comments ||
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#4
The media is too busy short-stroking (or fingering) each other over the a few anonymous (remember their heads were covered) 'humiliations' in prison to worry about the government sainctioned child rapes, real torture, and slavery in Sudan....
Besides, as TS mentioned, Saudi money can buy a lot of ethics and, as Barbara mentioned, it does not generate any 'hate bush' feelings for Kerry's campain..... Also this is done by Muslims so it must be ok!
#5
Crazyfool> It's simple: First World doesn't give a crap about the Third World's doings. First World gives a crap about First World's doings. That's it.
And the torture was real btw. And not all their heads were covered. Didn't see the latest one with the dog?
#6
Sorry, a larger photo of the dog one and some more here: http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444
Btw, it's rather annoying when people try to excuse a crime by saying how much more criminal other folk are being. If this had been done in US soil by US police to ordinary Americans citizens never convicted for any crime, would you *really* not mind and just say "other nations have it worse"? Would you really think it trivial?
#7
"First World doesn't give a crap about the Third World's doings."
Not true, AK.
Not only does the US spend hundred of millions on direct aid, but also on trade and this doesn't include the private sector here which sends food, clothing, mission workers, medical aid and medicine, etc. to all the 3rd world countries we can.
If we didn't "care a crap" about Africa, why has President Bush pledged $15 million in AIDS money?
And how come we sent US troops to both Haiti and Liberia just in the last year if we don't care about them?
It's easy to sit in 3rd tier "Europe" and complain about how terrible the USA is, isn't it?
I'll bet our Olympic team can't wait to come to your hot, dusty country where men are men and the goats are nervous!
And Seymour Hersh, Mr. My Lai Massacre, can whine all he wants to about us siccing dogs on Iraqis, but let's face it, do those pictures show the dog doing something evil and foul, like stuffing the Iraqi killer into a shredder? I think not.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 20:47 Comments ||
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#8
Ah, yes, the website "antiwar.com"-- that says it all for me.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 20:49 Comments ||
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#9
Aris - K-9 are used for police control all the time - I have no problem with it
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/10/2004 20:59 Comments ||
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#10
Re #6: it's rather annoying when people try to excuse a crime by saying how much more criminal other folk are being
It is fair to point out the blatant hypocrisy. Arabs should be ashamed, not just annoyed, when Arab atrocities are pointed out.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/10/2004 21:17 Comments ||
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#11
it's rather annoying when people try to excuse a crime by saying how much more criminal other folk are being
Posted by: ed ||
05/10/2004 21:37 Comments ||
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#12
I did not see the picture with the dog. Does not seem so bad (the dogs are under control and it looks like the prisonor was being told to set down or something). Dogs are often used to control prisoners.
I am not 'excusing' what has happened there. I do, however find that it is being hyped excessively by the Left media, the Democrats (Ted Kennedy and Kerry) for its/their own political purposes. I hope you dont think Kerry or Ted give a rats ass about the Iraqi prisoners - they are just a tool to them.
However those responsible for the abuses should be drummed out of the military and serve time if warranted. (And the person who took such grainy shots should serve time for crimes against photography...).
And I am rather annoyed by people who excuse major crimes such as government sponsored and supported wholesale murder, feeding of people to industreal shredders, use of chemical weapons against a population, rape squads, rape rooms,etc... by equalizing it (as Ted Kennedy did today) with a lesser crime done by a few individuals who ARE being investigated with such transparency as we have seen.
#13
Crazyfool> True, it shouldn't be equalized. Hitler was worse, Pol Pot was worse, Saddam was worse, Bin Laden is worse, even Putin is worse, etc, etc.
But my point is that it shouldn't be compared to the worst mass murderers of history at *all*. It should be compared to the standards modern western civilisation holds instead. My memory may be failing me but I think it's been many decades since the army of a democratic state has done such things.
Jen> Ah, yes, the website "antiwar.com"-- that says it all for me.
Do you think that the photos are any less genuine because of the name of the website?
#14
Aris, your point is well taken. The problem with sites like Antiwar.com is that they throw the âbaby out with the bath water.â Of course, the worst offender in this matter is JFsKerry, who is using these crimes (by a few soldiers) to try to springboard his own political future.
With Western civilization at stake, it doesnât make a lot of sense to âcall off the dogsâ just because some of the soldiers should be clapped in irons.
#15
Aris, what part of our handling of this don't you like?
Personally, I don't think anyone's trying to EXCUSE anything. Rather, we're pointing out the idiocy of people who get into a lather over crimes that were already being investigated and prosecuted while ignoring much, much more heinous crimes.
Do you think that the photos are any less genuine because of the name of the website?
I'm pretty sure Jen's reacting to the nature of the "antiwar.com" site's contents, not its name. AFAICR, "antiwar.com" is run by a bunch of dyed-in-the-wool "paleocons" and "libertarians" who'd gladly throw the rest of the world into a shredder rather than lift a finger to do anything. They'd as soon wait until the barbarians are massed on our borders -- or in our cities -- as send one soldier overseas to deal with a problem.
I believe they also tend towards the bizzaro-world "Jews run the US!" type of conspiracy theories, another reason to ignore them.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/10/2004 22:39 Comments ||
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#16
"Aris, what part of our handling of this don't you like? "
The systematic torture bit. If you take the torture as a given, then ofcourse the rest of the handling may be fine. But it shouldn't be taken as a given. And how in the world can only 6 people be responsible for a whole prison?
And the other bit I've recently heard that 70% to 80% of the prisoners there are just random individuals that perhaps just happened to be in the neighborhood when a nearby house was being searched by US forces. Of the "the neighbour came out to see what the fuss was about and we grabbed him instead".
Personally, I don't think anyone's trying to EXCUSE anything.
Well, personally, I think some people are.
As for antiwar.com, I don't even know about its rest of its contents -- I just googled for the photos and it was near the top.
#17
Where are you getting the "systematic" and "whole prison" bits?
Haven't you seen the stories -- some linked here at Rantburg! -- from people who were also at the prison and saw NOTHING like this happening? It's not that they were blind; it didn't happen to every prisoner in the place, and it didn't involve every guard there. Hell, the reason the investigation started was someone who wasn't involved got one of the discs and handed it up the chain of command.
In any case, you misunderstood my question. Apparently it wasn't clear:
What part of the investigation and prosecution don't you like?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/10/2004 23:18 Comments ||
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#18
Aris Katsaris is a complete moron. He uses the same kind of arguments all Socialist do. Am I not right "Greek Boy", I am afraid the great legacy of the Greece has lone gone. The USA is the closest thing to ancient Greece there has ever been and 1000 times better. It's got to be frustrating to be from such great ancient culture and be so oblivious to it that you think like a commie.
Is this the story that you are trying to pass off as "the end all" story What a joke...
I found some of your spew humorous at times. Now I find you to be completely delusional
Make use of your worthless existence and send some money to the Sudan relief fund.
#19
"Where are you getting the "systematic" and "whole prison" bits?"
Systematic: Since the people here have difficulty with words yet again, look it up. Systematic: purposefully regular; methodical.
Do you think that it wasn't methodical? So many scenes of identical-looking humiliation, with bored -nothing out of the ordinary is happening- looks in some of the soldiers' faces?
Have you read the Taguba report? The photos published are the tip of the iceberg, as others have mentioned. Among other things a detainee was sodomised with a broomhandle. And a male MP guard had sex with a female detainee, which under the circumstances accounts for rape IMO. http://www.npr.org/iraq/2004/prison_abuse_report.pdf
"What part of the investigation and prosecution don't you like?"
I don't believe I ever said there was a part of those that I didn't like.
"Haven't you seen the stories -- some linked here at Rantburg! -- from people who were also at the prison and saw NOTHING like this happening?"
Yes, but the problem is that we *do* know something was happening, backed up with photos this time.
Long Hair Republican> According to you everyone who's not a republican is a socialist, so why should I care about the rest of your post?
As for ancient Greece, blah blah, how cute that all the racist fucks over here follow the exact same tactic. Could you be any more predictable? Probably not. Have you filled up your weekly bigoted cliches quota yet?
But if that's of any relevance, the Greek army hasn't tortured anyone recently to my knowledge. Last incidents I know of are 30 years ago, during the (US-backed, if that's of any relevance) junta.
Make use of your worthless existence and send some money to the Sudan relief fund.
Make use of your worthless existence and send some money to the Red Cross. They warned you and you didn't listen, and they were proven right and you were on the wrong.
That has got to be the whitest-legged Iraqi I have ever seen.
I think we found another planted photo. Anyone from DOJ reading this board: Add the New Yorker to your list of outlets publishing enemy war propoganda, please.
#21
I don't believe I ever said there was a part of those [the investigation and prosecution] that I didn't like.
Then STFU, Aris, because that's the official response. The abuse was a bunch of idiots who abused their power, it was not official policy!
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/11/2004 9:51 Comments ||
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#22
What I was commenting on was the fact that the Mainstream media was getting its panties in a knot about what was happening in the prison while ignoring what was happening under Saddam and what is now happening in Sudan. Did you see Jennings explain the mass graves or rape squads/rooms or shreadders? Aris is proably right that the two should not be compared (there is a magnatude of scale of difference between them) but neither should the worse be completely ignored as the media (or congress) is doing in order to leverage the lesser in order to achieve a political goal. Remember that the abuses were already under investigation before CBS (media) decided to show the pictures.
For some reason I dont think the media would be this upset if this had happened under Clinton's watch -- most likely they would be doing their best to put a 'positive spin' on it. But that is just my opinion and observation.
Remember this is the same media which swallowed Billary's 'Vast Right Wing Conspiracy' statement whole -- if a Conservative had said that they would have been laughed off the stage and ridiculed forever (think Dan Quayle).
I see no reason the doubt the photos (the Brit photos are in doubt, but I have not seen them). One can set a camera's exposure to make any shade you want.
It's interresting that about half the Abu Graib population will be moved out. Since half the population are in there for civilian crimes (theft, rape, murder and do not mix with the military prisoners), I think they will be transferred to Iraqi authority. Something tells me their lifestyles will take a serious nosedive.
I do think the US must follow the Geneva Convention (unlike any enemy the US ever fought) to the letter. What do you mean saboteurs, guerillas, spies, and terrorists are not covered under its protection? Interrogate and shoot them without exception.
Posted by: ed ||
05/11/2004 9:56 Comments ||
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#24
badanov> "Then STFU, Aris, because that's the official response."
Shut the fuck about what exactly? What exactly was it that I said that I should shut the fuck up about?
The torture occured, regardless of whether it was "officially sanctioned" or not. So I won't shut up about calling it torture.
Badanov is fast to call New Yorker as disseminating enemy propaganda when showing dogs threatening prisoners, even though the official report I linked reports it as a finding that dogs were used to threaten (and in one case even biting) a prisoner.
So I won't shut up about such obvious nonsense either.
#26
Aris is a twat. Airis is a twat. Aris is a twat...
Posted by: Marc Bolans Mini ||
05/11/2004 10:04 Comments ||
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#27
Go on repeating it. Kinda like "it's just a bad dream, it's just a bad dream", if you repeat it often enough, perhaps that'll make reality go away.
#28
The torture occured, regardless of whether it was "officially sanctioned" or not. So I won't shut up about calling it torture.
And neither will I. I was referring to your bizarre belief that somehow this involved the entire prison and that somehow it was officially sanctioned.
Read the Taguba report; it refutes both of those points.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/11/2004 10:11 Comments ||
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#29
Agreed that the report seems to identify only a particular section -- I have no knowledge of how many sections the prison contains, but my point remains that limiting the guilty parties to 6 seems way too limited.
As a sidenote the Taguba report itself calls this abuse "systemic", so there's a question of yours answered btw.
#30
Agreed that the report seems to identify only a particular section -- I have no knowledge of how many sections the prison contains, but my point remains that limiting the guilty parties to 6 seems way too limited.
Naturally, you have a better handle on the matter than the investigating officer. Did you see the note towards the end about the psychological evaluation?
Due to the nature and scope of this investigation, I acquired the assistance of Col (Dr.) Henry Nelson, a USAF Psychiatrist, to analyze the investigation materials from a psychological perspective. He determined there was evidence that the horrific abuses suffered by the detainees at Abu Ghraib (BCCF) were wanton acts of select soldiers in an unsupervised and dangerous setting. There was a complex interplay of many psychological factors and command insufficiences.
The doctor seems to think it could just be a few people.
But, again, I have no doubt your judgement's better.
As a sidenote the Taguba report itself calls this abuse "systemic", so there's a question of yours answered btw.
No, you called it "systematic". Taguba said (for example):
LTG Sanchez cited recent reports of detainee abuse, escapes from confinement facilities, and accountability lapses, which indicated systemic problems within the brigade and suggested a lack of clear standards, proficiency, and leadership.
"Systemic" means "of or relating to the entire body"; Taguba's saying the problems indicate issues (command issues, for example) with the entire unit.
"Systematic" means "methodical" or "constituting a system". There's nothing in the report that says there was a system of abuse.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/11/2004 10:53 Comments ||
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#31
My last post in this thread, as it's been getting stale.
The Taguba report mentioned the "systemic problems" you are referring to, and in that case I would concede the point -- but it's not the only reference. In page 16, we have the phrase:
"This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard forceThis systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was
intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force
(372nd Military Police Company, 320th Military Police Battalion, 800th MP
Brigade), in Tier (section) 1-A of the Abu Ghraib Prison (BCCF)."
I fail to see any difference in meaning between systemic abuse and systematic abuse. If the report only talked about systemic *problems* you'd be right. But it doesn't.
A Jordanian court jailed three people Monday, including the nephew of a notorious al Qaeda operative, for plotting attacks on U.S. and Israeli tourists. The state security court sentenced Omar Sayel al-Khalayleh, nephew of Jordanian-born al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and two others to three years in prison. "Because the defendants did not actually carry out the acts and because there were no explosives included in the trial, we sentenced them to three years," Judge Fawaz al-Baqour said. "They had no contacts with Zarqawi, except for his relative since they are family members," he told Reuters. Court documents said Khalayleh was influenced by his uncle's conviction the Jordanian government was flouting Islamic strictures. The three men were arrested in May 2003.
Last month the state security court sentenced eight Islamic militants to death, including Zarqawi who was tried in absentia, for killing a U.S. diplomat in Amman. Jordanian state television also showed last month what it said were confessions by captured militants saying they received orders from Zarqawi to attack targets that included the heavily guarded U.S. embassy and intelligence headquarters in Amman. A tape purporting to be the voice of Zarqawi said last month al Qaeda had planned to attack Jordanian intelligence. The United States believes Zarqawi is in Iraq and organizing attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces and other targets.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/10/2004 2:32:33 PM ||
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EFL. Iraqi talking with his brother, a soldier in the new Iraqi army. One of the most hopeful things Iâve read to date.
"The most important thing is that this army has no retards or illiterate in it like the old one. Now education is an essential requirement when applying to serve in the new army and anyone who hasnât finished high school at least has no place there. In fact most of the volunteers are college and technical institutes graduates."
âI feel Iâm somebody now. Iâm respected and get all what most people get. Do you believe that they threw one of the Iraqi officers out of the army because he used us to do him personal services, like carrying his bags, and when we complained about his behavior, they told him â Do you see any of us, American officers use our soldiers? You can go home. You still have the mentality of the old regime and you canât fit in this new army!â imagine that! They listen to our complains, we the soldiers, and bring us justice even if it involved the higher ranked officers. This had never happened in the old army."
"Of course I thought about it!â He sighed as he continued, âDangers were there since I was born; wars, MP chasing me for years, chaosâŠetc. These will not stop me from going on with my life, and I have a feeling that those thugs are the same people who oppressed me along with all the poor Iraqi soldiers. No, Iâm not afraid of them and Iâll do my job. At least this time I know Iâm doing the right thing and that my services will be appreciated."
When I left, I felt real hope in the new Iraqi army. Despite its terrible performance till now, one cannot be pessimistic after hearing the way this army is being formed and the way the soldiers look at it. Iâm sure itâll take time, but Iâm also sure that weâll definitely have an exceptionally efficient, small army with great morals and respect for the law and the institution they represent. An army that can preserve peace and order, and protect the constitution once the Iraqi people agree on one
Posted by: Random thoughts ||
05/10/2004 1:50:09 PM ||
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#1
Given the radically different concepts of what a soldier is and does represented by the new Iraqi Army, it is not surprising that they are not yet ready for prime time. However, I have to believe that the final product will be worth the wait and that properly motivated, armed, and trained, these guys will be able to take the measure of anyone in the region (coalition troops excepted).
#2
Clearly the main error the admin made in Iraq was overestimating how fast we could stand up an Iraqi military and police force worthy of the name. The woeful performance of these units in April (I recall some battalions refused to fight Iraqis, others had 50% desertion) is a reminder of just how badly we underestimated the difficulty training up post Saddam Iraqis.
However, this posting shows that progress has been made. The 50% who did not quit are the cream that is rising to the top.
Insurgents bombed the convoy of the governor of Iraq's Diyala province, killing two of his bodyguards and wounding three others, police said. "A homemade bomb exploded as the governor's convoy passed by," said police lieutenant Abdullah Hassan al-Jabburi, adding that the attack occurred a short distance outside the the provincial capital Baqubah. "The governor escaped unharmed, but two of his guards were killed and three others wounded in the attack, carried out at 9:30 am", the officer said in Baqubah.
Meanwhile, a police officer died after being shot by gunmen on Sunday in Baqubah. In other violence assailants on Monday gunned down a New Zealander, a South African and an Iraqi working for a reconstruction firm in the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk, police said. "A New Zealander, a South African and an Iraqi were shot dead at 7:30 am by several armed men in front of their home in Kirkuk," said police officer Hazem Mohammed Amin. The men, who worked for an Iraqi construction company, were ambushed by more than five armed men, Amin said. Police chief General Turhan Yussef said that the Iraqi driver and the South African were killed immediately while the New Zealander was declared dead on arrival at hospital. The city's deputy governor Ismail Hadidi said there was most probably a a "network planning assassinations of foreigners and local officials." The deaths were the latest of civilians working on the multi-billion dollar project led by the US-led coalition occupying Iraq to rebuild an infrastructure debilitated by decades of war and trade sanctions under jailed dictator Saddam Hussein.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/10/2004 1:19:50 PM ||
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A group of armed Iraqis threatened to kidnap and murder workers employed by foreign companies in Iraq's southern capital Basra, in a videotape broadcast by Al Jazeera television. One of 11 men carrying automatic rifles read a statement to camera saying, "All the employees of foreign, Arab and particularly Kuwaiti companies in Basra are targets to kidnap and kill."
"Cuz this is our country and we'd rather be poor, ignorant and oppressed!"
"We warn them not to go out on the streets of Basra," he said in the name of a group called the "Al-Taf Martyrs Brigades".
"'Cuz bein' martyrs is kewl..."
"For us they are the same as Americans, as British and their ilk. We will make no difference between them." The hooded men, flashing V signs, saluted the brief statement with cries of Allah u Akbar (Holy shit! God is Greatest). Al-Taf is the historic name of the Iraqi Shiite holy city of Karbala. Violence has flared in recent days in Basra where militiamen loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr clashed Saturday with British troops. The video was aired after Iraqi oil officials said crude exports from Basra have been halved by a pipeline blast.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/10/2004 1:15:59 PM ||
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#1
"We warn them not to go out on the streets of Basra," he said in the name of a group called the "Al-Taf Martyrs Brigades".
Solution: make every single member live up to the name of their "organization".
#2
Maybe, just maybe if these clowns had some worthwhile skills besides firing AKs in the air and clinching a raised fist they'd be the freaking ones doing the work and the foreign nationals would not have to be in this shithole trying to put things back together again. The only reason to have aclinched fist is if you have a freaking tool in it.
EFL: Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr Monday ordered his Mehdi Army to launch a broad new offensive against U.S.-led occupying forces following a U.S. crackdown on his strongholds in Baghdad and across the south. U.S. bombs flattened his office in the capital overnight.
"We have now entered a second phase of resistance," said Sadr's chief aide at his main base in the holy city of Najaf.
The dying phase
Sadr's chief aide in Najaf told Reuters he was hitting back. "Our policy now is to extend the state of resistance and to move it to all of Iraq because of the occupiers' military escalation and crossing of all red lines in the holy cities of Kerbala and Najaf," Qais al-Khazali said.
"We've done so well here we've decided to take our show on the road. Excuse me now, I've got to go pack."
Posted by: Steve ||
05/10/2004 11:31:39 AM ||
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#1
No shit. "Come on out, guys, we got a present for ya..."
#2
About 10 days ago, a senior "officer" in the Falluja Brigade was quoted (NYT, I think) that part of the brokered deal between the armed killers in Falluja and the US Marines would include a 'face-saving' US convoy through the city's center on May 10.
So now we have this excerpt from the article:
U.S. Marines made an effort to show they have restored peace to the Sunni Muslim city of Falluja by driving an armored convoy into the center for the first time since a bloody siege last month. But scenes of armed guerrillas cheering the convoy's departure, suggested that peace remains rather fragile.
#3
what exactly these types like Moqtada have inside thier offices remains a mystery to me, i mean what sort of an 'office' is it,are there books and stationary and shit or is it just a 'public relations' office? oh well whatever it was it isn't that now. good :)
Posted by: Shep UK ||
05/10/2004 13:01 Comments ||
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#4
(NYT, I think)
I wouldn't put much into anything they print nowadays.
EFL. John Lehman speaking at the U.S. Naval Institute and Annapolis Naval History Symposium. Words from a man who understands the problem.
We were not prepared intellectually. Those of us in the national security field still carried the baggage of the Cold War. We thought in concepts of coalition warfare and the Warsaw Pact. When we thought of terrorism, we thought only of state-sponsored terrorism, which is why the immediate reaction of many in our government agencies after 9/11 was: Which state did it? Saddam, it must have been Saddam. We had failed to grasp, for a variety of reasons, the new phenomenon that had emerged in the world. This was not state-sponsored terrorism. This was religious war.
This was the emergence of a transnational enemy driven by religious fervor and fanaticism. Our enemy is not terrorism. Our enemy is violent, Islamic fundamentalism. None of our government institutions was set up with receptors, or even vocabulary, to deal with this. So we left ourselves completely vulnerable to a concerted attack.
Many will recall with pain what we went through in the Reagan administration in 1983, when the Marine barracks were bombed in Beirutâ241 Marines and Navy corpsmen were killed. We immediately got an intercept from NSA [National Security Agency], a total smoking gun from the foreign ministry of Iran, ordering the murder of our Marines. Nothing was done to retaliate. Wonder how the world would be different if we had taken action against Iran based on this provable act of war.Instead, we did exactly what the terrorists wanted us to do, which was to withdraw. Osama bin Laden has cited this as one of his dawning moments. The vaunted United States is a paper tiger; Americans are afraid of casualties; they run like cowards when attacked; and they donât even bother to take their dead with them. This was a seminal moment for Osama.
The Secretary of Defense at the time has said he never received those intercepts. Thatâs an example of one of the huge problems our commission has uncovered. We have allowed the intelligence community to evolve into a bureaucratic archipelago of baronies in the Defense Department, the CIA, and 95 other different intelligence units in our government. None of them talked to one another in the same computerized system. There was no systemic sharing.
Posted by: RWV ||
05/10/2004 11:51:01 AM ||
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#1
This guy's got it right: This is a religious war. There is no reason why anyone should be surprised about that. Religious wars were occurring right up until modern times in Europe. The last time the Muslims were tossed out of Europe was the Siege of Vienna in 1683. That's like the day before yesterday in the great scheme of things. I will say again what I have said before: The liberal press oftem asks "Are we at war with Islam?" That is the wrong question. The right question is "Is Islam at war with us?"
Posted by: Luigi ||
05/10/2004 18:35 Comments ||
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#2
Actually Luigi, there is no question. Islam is at war with us. It is comforting to finally hear that someone in charge "gets it".
Posted by: jawa ||
05/10/2004 21:46 Comments ||
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Israeli security forces thwarted a suicide bombing planned for Tel Aviv when they arrested a Palestinian hermaphrodite armed with a 15-kilogram bomb in the West Bank, Palestinian sources said.
Honest to God, we don't make this stuff up...
Amal Jumaâa, 32, is a hermpahrodite who goes by the name Ahmed, Palestinian Authority sources told Army Radio. The report said the terror attack was planned for Monday. Israel Defense Forces troops arrested Jumaâa in the West Bank city of Nablus and transferred her to the Shin Bet security service for questioning. Security forces also arrested the suspectâs 15-year-old brother and a neighbor of the same age, who were also being questioned Monday, Army Radio said. When âdire revengeâ meets a prepared, modern, well organized state it does dissapoint.
Posted by: Phil B ||
05/10/2004 10:13:26 AM ||
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#1
Does a hermaphrodite get 72 raisins? 36 of each? 72 of each?
Too damn many shades of gray... I'm so cornfused!
Posted by: Dar ||
05/10/2004 10:35 Comments ||
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#2
You're confused? How do you think Amal feels?
Posted by: ed ||
05/10/2004 10:38 Comments ||
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#3
How do you think Amal feels?
like a chick with a package?
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/10/2004 10:43 Comments ||
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#4
But does she/he have to wear a burka? There's one for the mullahs.
#5
I think that what we see here, contrary to current wisdom, is that a lot of the suicide bombers are not driven by idealism but by those forces that social outcasts of Palestinian society are subjected to.
#6
Cynic: I've said it before... if the boomers were growing up in the US, they'd be spending their adolescences and early 20's reading Sylvia Plath and contemplating suicide. That's the personality type that shines through in all of the profiles I keep reading. You never see the big husky guys with the fake bomb belts in the demonstrations off themselves, do you?
I hope that there's a special place in hell for the suicide bomber recruiters.
#15
So is this Hermie plumbed like an earthworm, or what?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/10/2004 22:03 Comments ||
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#16
Most hermpahrodites result from not having the right number of X & Y chromosomes. Do a search on Turner's syndrome and Kleinfilgers' (sp) syndrome. Its suprisingly common.
The scandal over abuse at Abu Ghraib is bringing out the stories, from people fearing for imprisoned relatives, from former detainees who claim mistreatment -- and from possible frauds looking to exploit the uproar. . . . Fallujah native Abdul-Qader Abdul-Rahman al-Ani, his left elbow wrapped in bandages, his right forearm bound in a cast, recounted how he was beaten by soldiers who picked him up last month. The soldiers tied him and two others arrested with him to a tree and sodomized them one after the other, he told journalists. "I ask President Bush," he said. "Does he agree with this?"
As Ani, 47, repeated his story, he was interrupted by Jabber al-Okaili, a member of one of the human rights groups that organized the gathering. "Heâs lying," al-Okaili shouted. "Heâs a liar!" Al-Ani was rushed to an office, where al-Okaili and others unwound the bandage on his left arm and found the elbow unscarred and healthy. They cut off half of the cast on his forearm, even as al-Ani insisted, "By God, itâs true, everything I say is true." "Look! Allah has healed my arm! It is a miracle, I tell you! A miracle!"
"All his papers were forged," al-Okaili, of the Free Iraq Institute, said after al-Ani left the building. "Who knows why he did this. Maybe he was paid by former members of Saddam Husseinâs regime."
"There are people who try to exploit the situation," said Adel al-Allami, of the Human Rights Organization of Iraq. "We have to be very careful and very precise in our facts. This is a very sensitive issue."
Posted by: Mike ||
05/10/2004 6:16:57 AM ||
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How many of these people appeared on news shows such as 'Good Morning We Hate America'?
"All his papers were forged," al-Okaili, of the Free Iraq Institute, said after al-Ani left the building. "Who knows why he did this. Maybe he was paid by former members of Saddam Husseinâs regime." Or ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN/BBC/....
#2
This one reminds me of the so called "American" Iraqi who was kidnapped, supposedly last week. His brother and mother, (crying hysterically for his release, albeit dry-eyed), claimed he worked for the Pentagon and was kidnapped by the bad guys. Story stunk from the beginning...the brother told the press that the Arab news network called him and told him his brother had been kidnapped. Also, the Pentagon knew nothing of this story. I'm waiting for the family to demand compensation from someone for something...
Posted by: jawa ||
05/10/2004 21:52 Comments ||
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U.S. aircraft bombed the Sadr City office of militant Shiâite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad early on Monday, witnesses said. They said a U.S. aircraft dropped at least one bomb on the one-storey office around 2 a.m. and virtually destroyed it. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military, which reported 19 members of Sadrâs Medhi Army militia were killed in a series of clashes in the impoverished Shiâite neighbourhood on Sunday.
Finally got a comment: "Flat. You know, like a pancake, only without syrup or butter. Actually, it's more kinda like a rubble pile, only flat..."
U.S. forces had raided the Sadr City office in the early hours of Sunday and arrested two people, one of them said to be a Mehdi Army financier, U.S. military spokesmen said. The raid was part of a stepped up military campaign against an uprising launched by the Shiâite cleric against U.S.-led forces a month ago.
Posted by: Zenster ||
05/10/2004 4:53:13 AM ||
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Headline should be: "Tater office mashed."
Posted by: Mike ||
05/10/2004 6:30 Comments ||
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#8
Frank G - I think you can be a "holy warrior" even if you assume room temperature without firing a shot.
By the way, it is actually , "Allahu Akh-boom-SQUISH-baa.."!
#9
Bomb-a-rama: These are not buildings constructed according to the California strict earthquake codes. Look at another good aspect. Less taxpayer expense if only one bomb is needed.
#10
Big Ed: Ever hear the one about Osama Yo' Mama going to paradise to get his 72 virgins and out walks George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and 70 others who stand in line and beat the stew out of him. Osama turns to God and asks what happened and God tells him "Stupid, I said 72 Virginians!"
Posted by: BA ||
05/10/2004 11:29 Comments ||
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#11
BA - plus George Mason, Patrick Henry, James Madison, Edmund Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, Geoge Wyeth (sp?) just for starters. Thats whats so funny, there were SO MANY prominent patriots from the old dominion, you probably COULD come up with 72 of them. (of course some, including Randolph, Henry, and even old Tom himself would be a tad too radical for most RBers)
#12
Liberalhawk, that's right--George Wyeth (pronounced WITH), who is one of my ancestors who lived in Colonial Williamsburg and worked as an architect with Thomas Jefferson!
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 11:55 Comments ||
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#13
Jen - Any of us who have colonial Virginia ancestors would probably be proud to know that they would fit well in one of the 72 Virginians. My ancestors included Anne Washington, 3rd cousin of George, married to Christopher Gist Sr.. Those Gists were "rascals" too. Any of those folks would be happy to do a # on the Jihadis.
#14
Man, am I glad to finally see one of my greatest jokes get some press! I heard that tater has now vowed to "enlarge" the war against our troops if we go in after him. Like GWB, I say, "Bring it on!"
Posted by: BA ||
05/10/2004 14:40 Comments ||
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After a series of accused in various cases being dischargedâsome on the plea of the policemen themselvesâthe latest to ask to be discharged is Mumbaiâs alleged Al Qaeda man Mohammad Afroze. Though Afroze was booked under the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (now the Prevention of Terrorism Act), these charges were later dropped. He is now on trial under the Indian Penal Code for conspiracy (Section 120 B), waging war against the nation (Section 121 A) and âcausing depredationâ in nations on friendly terms with India. After opening arguments started on May 5, Afroze appealed to Special Judge A P Bhangale to discharge him from all charges on May 7. His counsel Mubin Solkar argued that there was âno materialâ against the accused. Other than his confession, which was later retracted, there is no material evidence. Moreover, Afroze was said to have hatched a conspiracy with his uncle, Mubarak Mussalman, a British national. But as Mussalman is a free man till date, there is little to prove the claims made by the police.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/10/2004 1:18:30 AM ||
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#1
This guy was supposedly planning September 11 style suicide hijackings in Australia and Britain. Sounds like the men with truncheons and mustachios were a bit too enthusiastic.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
05/10/2004 5:24 Comments ||
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All this sounds very noble, except for the fact that Jamatud Dawah controls the Lashkar-e-Taiba. The ad-Dawah Medical Mission is the most important project of Jamatud Dawah, the assumption being that doctors make the best preachers
It was probably the first time in Pakistanâs history that around 600 doctors and students of medical colleges from around the country gathered in a mosque (in Lahore) and shared their knowledge about the recent medical researches and possibilities of providing medical assistance to the poor and needy at their doorsteps for two days. There were lessons on the Quran and Hadith in between these sessions. During these lessons, the speakers, including Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, Hafiz Abdur Rehman Makki, and Abdus Salam Bhutvi, talked about different Islamic themes and asked the attentive and receptive audience to follow the Islamic tenets in their private and professional lives. The occasion was a different kind of conference -- the first Islamic Medical Conference. The first Islamic Medical Conference on May 1 and 2 was organised by the Jamat ud Dawahâs department of Khidmat-i-Khalq and held at the Jamia Masjid al-Qadsia in Lahore, the new headquarters of the Jamatud Dawah. This article sheds a different light on the Lashkarâs recruitment of doctors, since they are meant to act as combat medics on the fields of Jihad, although obviously that doesnât preclude them from helping other sick or injured people in Pakistan.
Jamatud Dawahâs department of Khidmat-i-Khalq has been quite active over the last couple of years. In addition to providing medical assistance, it is implementing a large number of social welfare projects such as digging wells and providing stitching machines to widows around the country. Its monthly budget during the last 14 months has averaged more than Rs 3.5 million, almost twice as much as it was spending previously, the official sources of the Jamat claim. The ad-Dawah Medical Mission is Khidmat-i-Khalq departmentâs most important project. Jamatud Dawah, or its predecessor Markaz Dawat wal Irshad, has always been interested in providing medical facilities to the poor. It founded the Taiba Hospital in Muzaffarabad in the early 1990s to provide medical assistance to the needy, including refugees from the Occupied Kashmir. The hospital has grown to be a 26-bed hospital. According to official sources of the Markaz, around 9,000 outdoor patients visit this hospital every month to get free of cost or very inexpensive medical support. In spite of being a charity, it is considered to be the best private hospital in Azad Kashmir. The Jamatud Dawah also founded another hospital at the Markaz Taiba in Muridke. The official figures of the Markaz claim that around 2,000 students study at the Taiba Educational Complex at the Markaz Taiba in Muridke. Every month, around 6,000 patients get free of cost or inexpensive medical support from this hospital, the sources claim. A new building to house a 100-bed hospital is being built at Muridke. And since much like itâs education system, Pakistanâs health system is in a state of collapse, they will have plenty of people to influence.
According to Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the department of Khidmat-i-Khalq is planning to expand its area of operations even outside the country. "It has already sent relief goods worth 1.88 million to the Iranian city of Bam after an earthquake hit it. It has been sending relief goods and meat of the sacrificial animals to Afghanistan and Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. It offered to send relief goods to help the people in Bhoj in the Indian Gujrat after an earthquake devastated the region but the Indian government declined the offer. It is currently planning to extend its relief operations to the stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh in the coming months," he said. The basic objective of the first Islamic Medical Conference was to extend dawat (proselytise) to the medical community of Pakistan to join the Jamatud Dawah in its mission of khidmat-i-khalq. Hafiz Abdur Raoof further said that the participating doctors and medical students can further the mission of the ad-Dawah Medical Mission by working for just for one hour at any one of the ad-Dawah medical hospitals and dispensaries.
The doctors are not supposed to offer treatment just for bodily ills; they also offer dawat to all their patients. They ask their Muslim patients to become better Muslims and non-Muslim patients to convert to Islam. There is no apparent coercion as the provision of medical assistance is not conditional on accepting the dawat of the ad-Dawah Medical Mission. Like in other sectors, the Jamatud Dawah has been active among medical students. The association these students build with the Jamatud Dawah as students continues forever in most of the cases. For instance, Dr Ahmed Daud, an eye specialist and the vice-chairman of the Ad-Dawah Medical Mission became associated with the Markaz Dawat wal Irshad when he was a student at the Allama Iqbal Medical College in Lahore. He never wavered in his commitment to the mission of the Jamatud Dawah since then. This story supports a comparison I have been thinking about between Hezbollah and Lashkar-e-Taiba. Both are running elaborate social welfare systems, while maintaining a militia of thousands and a terrorist structure. They both have cells spread throughout the world, and operate as the proxies of the intelligence agencies of either Iran or Pakistan.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
05/10/2004 1:10:53 AM ||
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#1
Nice job Paul. Your a warrior. This is a strange deal by western standards. Doctors, who needs doctors when paradise is just a.....
#3
Who knows what qualifies someone to be a "doctor" in the Arab world?
I haven't noticed an outstanding quality to their medical care.
And the Hippocratic Oath is a Western tradition and probably not an Arabic one.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 2:56 Comments ||
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#4
The above article is about Pakistan, NOT about an Arab country. arab != muslim
#5
they seem to identify well with the arab world though, ignoring ancestry, what makes them not arab? they seem the same too me, backward folk with rolling eyes and the occasional gunsex celebration
#6
Arabs are generally identified by language spoken. They dont speak arabic, ergo theyre not arabs. As for backwards, there are urban secular pakis - thats why we get our juicy quotes here from the Urdu press, Paklands extensive English language press is a different story. And even the non-english speaking Punjabis, etc generally dont do the celebratory gunfire thing - thats more a Pashtun thing.
#7
Liberalhawk, if you're going to be technical, I suppose I meant Western vs. non-Western in terms of medical training and qualification and using an oath that originated with an ancient Greek, Hippocrates.
Can't see Pakis using the Hippocratic oath, unless they borrowed it from the British.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 12:34 Comments ||
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#8
The jews have the oath of Maimonides, which differs in some particulars from the oath of hippocrates, and is even preferred by some non-Jewish physicians. As Maimonides lived and practiced in the Arab world, I'd be surprised if the Muslims dont have their own oath for physicians, from the same period. It should be noted that Medicine was an area of muslim achievement in the middle ages, and an area where the West learned from Islam.
#9
But Lh, that was a very, very lonnnnnngggggg time ago.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 12:38 Comments ||
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#10
1. there seems to be some kind of "oath of a muslim physician" floating around, but it seems to be a modern one.
2. I assume that Pakistan and other muslim countries have the difficulties with modern medical care that all less developed countries do, including western background countries in Latin America. It may well be that the problems with ECONOMIC development are rooted in muslim culture, but thats a different thing.
3.My understanding is that the adoption of Western medecine, to the extent feasible, is rarely controversial. (Mbeki in SA, and the idiots in Kano State, duly noted)
4. My point is that the Greek medical tradition was very much a part of the medical tradition in the Islamic world. True, that doesnt give them Pasteur, or vaccination, or zillion other advances - just makes the point that what makes Western medicine superior is essentially modern, and is a legacy of the enlightenment and succeeding periods, NOT of the Wests Greek heritage.
#13
The Abbasids built a large number of hospitals and pharmacies mainly in Baghdad, including the hospital built by Al -Rashid on the western side of Baghdad by physician Gibrael bin Bakhtiihu, Al Sa'edi hOspital built in the eastern I1 side during Al Mu'tad Caliph reign, the Muktadir hospital built by Al Muktadir In 306 A.H. 918 A.D., the Hospital of the, Lady built by his mother at Al Zamiya; Hospital of Ibn al Furat built by his minister Abu al Hassan Ibn Al Furat, .etc: This was an attempt to find places where patients may be treated and are placed under observation for record which IS the II basis of modern hospitals. Muslim doctors had new medical views and theories for the treatment of numerous diseases. Among other innovations they used caustics in surgery; they prescribed cold water to stop bleeding; they treated nasal tumours, and removed cancerous breasts; extracted bladder stones; performed eye and hernia surgery; removed embryos with a machine; used traction for broken bones and anaesthetics. They also distinguished between measles and smallpox.
The state regulated medical practices and physicians; pharmacists were tested during the times of Al Mamun and al Mu'atasim. Caliph Al Muktadir banned medical professionals from practice except after examination. Each medical practitioner takes the Muslim doctor's oath which underlines the confidentiality of the patient and his treatment to, preserve the honour of the profession.
  "I free myself from the Holder of the souls of the wise, the lifter of the Zenith of the sky, the creator of upper , movements if I withold an advice or inflict a harm; if I offer an inferior thing when I know what is superior. You should be : decent and should listen to people to the end as much as you can. If you miss that, you are the loser. Allah will be the witness on both you and me and hears what you say. Whoever breaks his covenant (with Allah) will be the target for His judgement, unless he quits His earth and sky."
- EMPHASIS ADDED -
British troops restored calm to Basra after a weekend clash that left seven British soldiers injured and at least two Iraqis dead. The Daily Telegraph of London reported British troops were under attack throughout the weekend, first battling hundreds of militiamen loyal to the radical Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr on Saturday. The troops were hit with a grenade on Sunday. The resistance arose a day after al-Sadrâs senior aide Sheikh Abdul-Sattar al-Bahadli held in his hand what he claimed were documents and photographs of British guards raping three Iraqi women in prisons in Iraq. Al-Bahadli offered bounties for anyone capturing or killing a British soldier. The Daily Telegraph reported that black-garbed militiamen moved in large numbers through the Basra streets. They reportedly fired upon British patrols, leading to skirmishes in several neighborhoods. Witness said on Sunday a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at the U.S.-led coalition headquarters.
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
05/10/2004 1:04:11 AM ||
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Long article on war spending, with charts at the bottom comparing the Iraq War to past wars. Just the first few paragraphs here.
With troop commitments growing, the cost of the war in Iraq could top $150 billion through the next fiscal year â as much as three times what the White House had originally estimated. And, according to congressional researchers and outside budget experts, the war and continuing occupation could total $300 billion over the next decade, making this one of the costliest military campaigns in modern times.
As a measure of the Bush administrationâs priorities in the war on terrorism, it has spent about $3 in Iraq for every $1 committed to homeland security, experts say.
That divide may be growing. The Pentagon says its monthly costs for Operation Iraqi Freedom shot up from $2.7 billion in November to nearly $7 billion in January, the last month for which ithas provided figures. Since then, the number of troops has jumped by 20,000 to 135,000, and the bloody insurgency has grown.
Defense officials initially said the troop increases were temporary, but last week they changed course and said they planned to maintain the higher levels through 2005, along with increased numbers of tanks and other heavy military equipment. The tempo of military operations has increased sharply in response to a wave of lethal attacks, suggesting the costs still may be climbing.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have started to express deep concern over the costs and the way in which the Bush administration is choosing to cover them. They contend that the White House has been relying on budgeting stratagems to conceal the overall expense, at least until after the election in November. And lawmakers worry that Congress is going to be forced to do something the White House has said until now was not necessary: Chop away at other government programs to cover the costs of an occupation that has no end in sight.
More at the link. No one ever said freedom was cheap.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/10/2004 12:55:44 AM ||
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#1
"Chop away..."
They can start with PBS and NPR, as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure the rest of you can come up with a few dozen more stupid things we all pay for...
#2
Freedom for whom? Apart from protecting the welfare of our unwavering allies,the Kurds, I could care 2 hoots about "liberating" ungrateful Sunnis and Shiites. Did any nation give Americans their free republic on a silver platter? Giving Iraqis the opportunity to fight for their freedom and nationhood by removing Saddam is a big enough sacrifice on our part. I'm sorry, I don't tow the Wolfie neocon line about how wonderful we should feel sacrificing GI's on behalf of "liberating" raghead Sunnis and Shiites who have never and will never value democracy. Freedom came cheaply to Iraqi tribesmen who will hate us in the future, guaranteed, no matter what we do for them[Uncle Saddam made the trains run on time after all]. This "freedom" for Iraqis comes at great cost to Americans and I resent the arrogance and selfishness of neocons deeply.
Posted by: rex ||
05/10/2004 1:28 Comments ||
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There's nothing selfish or arrogant about "we" neocons at all; democratizing Iraq is all about pure self-interest and our security.
If left to themselves, the Sunnis and the Shiites will form another Islamist theocracy somewhat between the old Saddam regime, but more like Iran--and it wouldn't be 5 minutes before they would be declaring jihad against the "Great Satan," except that this time, their Islamist neighbors and friends would join in with more abandon and committment.
These people need to be taught the beauty of democracy and capitalism and what it's like to fully live in the 21st Century, rather than be stultified in the Islamic Middle Ages with a dead economy, growing youth population, no jobs, no education and no opportunities.
Don't knock or blame everything on Mr. Wolfowitz--he's a very smart man who knows a lot more about bringing real peace to the world via bringing peace, prosperity and democracy to the Middle East.
Not only are the IslamoFascists flocking to Iraq to fight us, and not coming to New York and Washington, but as a result of our presence in the region, Iraq's neighbors are slowly but surely having to incorporate democratic reforms into their Islamic totalitarian regimes, too.
We're making great strides, it's just that it really isn't a video game and you're not going to get instantaneous results.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 2:53 Comments ||
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Der Prez:
Yeah, its a lot of money but much'll go to Haliburton and defense contractors who will kick it back to me. Keep the pressure off my Saud backers. They owe me one for lettin' 'em escape justice in the 9-11 massacre, and fer lettin' 'em set up Wahab mosques all over America. They gave Daddy half-mil for his library, last year. Cheney made over $50,000,000 from his Gulf War 1 contacts, and I want my Texas grub stake. Hell, I made loads of unearned cash from Arbusto, Carlyle Group, UAE, Enron, Texas Rangers (yup, ah traded Sammy Sosa)flops. Only in America, can a well connected alcoholic half-wit like me, mek it good. Keep callin' my toe-tappin' critics, "trolls," and coverup any thing that might cause suspicion about my Texas style book-cooking. Special thenk ya to Jenny Clampett. Yee-Hah!
Posted by: George Wahabi Bush ||
05/10/2004 3:14 Comments ||
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#5
Well, Mr. Wahabi, are you through with your talking points from James Carville?
Slinging mud, lies and slander?
I won't even start on Bill Clinton or John Kerry because I want to get some sleep tonight and that takes time.
But suffice it to say that those Waahab-funded mosques were set up in this country long before GWB took office...and if you'd like to see who took money from the Sauds, take a look at Bill Clintoon.
As soon as he was named the Dimocrat presidential nominee, the Sauds funded a multi-million dollar wing for Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas!
Don't know about you, but I've never met a Muslim from Arkansas.
And Dick Cheney made $0 from his "Gulf War I" contacts--as the Vice Presidential nominee, his financial records were an open book, which is a lot more than we can say for either Hillary Clinton, who has yet to produce those Rose Law Firm billing records or Kerry's very rich, Leftist wife.
Furthermore, I hope a lot of money does go to Halliburton, who is unsurpassed and without rival in the Oil Services bid'ness, and to defense contractors to give our troops what they need to defend our liberty and to keep us safe!
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 3:27 Comments ||
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T Rex
"liberating" ungrateful Sunnis and Shiites.
Liberating??? Yeah by Bush definitions this means: "We liberated the Iraqis from the torture chambers (Abu graib) of Saddam, errr I mean we took over the office"
Giving Iraqis the opportunity to fight for their freedom
Well they seem to take that opportunity and are fighting for their freedom (against the occupation that is).
I would say there is actually a success that the US has achieved, they managed to unite the Shia and the Sunni and made them realise they are one people of one nation to fight for a united goal. Albeit a bit different than planned I think the US will succeed in forming a nationhood in Iraq in the end by uniting the Shia's and Sunni's, there is hope :)
Posted by: Murat ||
05/10/2004 6:59 Comments ||
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#7
OK, in today's money, how much did it take us to rebuild Japan from a feudal warrior led society into a peaceful democratic one?
And rebuilding Europe from a pit of 1930's fascism, communism and totalitarianism into a peaceful democracy?
And how long did all that take?
Was it worth it? How many times since WW2 have he had to go and commit lives in Europe and Japan in the numbers we did in 1917 and 1944?
None.
Its pretty obvious that some of these people are being very short sighted because it gains them political ground. But it will cost us in blood in the long run if we try to cheap out and do not change the culture over there through sustained economic and social reforms. And that will take money and time. Do we, as a people, have the guts to answer the words of the real JFK, to pay any price, bear any burden?
Cheap out now and we will end up with more Shah of Iran types which will be followed by a series of Ayatollahs. Which will be paid for in US blood. Civilian and military.
But, how much would it be worth to a child who lost their father or mother at the WTC to have that person come home from work again just one more time?
Bottom line, all specific aguments aside, it was our enemies who decided that they had had enough and called this game, and who laid down the terms of engagement. They showed that they were willing to fight with their biggest guns, their most abundant asset -their lives.
The West, therefore is obligated to fight, measure for measure, with whatever it considers it's "biggest guns" - in this case, it's wealth, and influence. There is no more sense in saving for a rainy day - the clouds are upon us and we're feeling the first drops. Our lives are something that we'll fight to protect, their lives are something that they're willing to throw away in the promise of reward in the world to come.
#9
Oldspook, I didn't see your post until after I placed mine, but it looks like we have the same argument in mind. If we had taken seriously the 1993 attack on the world trade center and dealt with it appropriately, We never would have had to experience the second attempt. Would it have cost us a lot cash? Yeah. Would it have cost us some prestige and "goodwill"? Yes, depending on what you call "goodwill" and from whom we were worried about losing it.
In WWII, appeasement attitudes kept the west from acting until it was almost too late. Now the cry of, "too expensive!" is freaking people out. Pay now, or pay later, but every day the interest is compounding.
#10
Murat-
Since you brought up the subject of fighting against an occupation, it sounds to me like you support the Kurds in Turkey joining a larger Kurdistan!)
#15
Murat,
Israel never occupied a country called Palestine, but the Turks occupy the Eastern Roman Empire. So glad we can come to an agreement. Free Constantinople!
#16
Frank, nope they happily live on in a country called Armenia, but where are the Indians? Still crushed? (scalped?)
How about the liberated Iraqis? I mean those who still have their clothes on, not those pervert ones posing on photos ass seks slaves of female GI's.
Posted by: Murat ||
05/10/2004 10:32 Comments ||
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#17
heh heh - you satirize yourself - I can do no better ;-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/10/2004 10:57 Comments ||
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#18
where are the Indians? Still crushed? (scalped?)
Are you REALLY that ignorant?
Wait. Yes, you really are.
1) There were more than 4 million Native Americans counted in the US census; that includes those who marked "Native" and other races on the census, but doesn't include those (like myself) who have Indian ancestors but don't really consider themselves Indians.
2) Many tribes get to administer their own territory and apply their own laws; has Turkey ever considered doing that for the Kurds?
3) Scalping wasn't introduced by Europeans.
4) Last I checked, Iraqis are still in Iraq and are going to get their own government on July 1st. When is Turkey going to hand the Kurds their own government?
5) Last time you were asked about the Armenians, you said your neighbor was one. Now you say they're in Armenia. What happened to your neighbor?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/10/2004 10:58 Comments ||
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#19
Murat--all but the 1.5 million your country deliberately killed (and have never acknowledged or asked forgiveness for).
As for the native Americans, almost all of them dissapeared through intermarriage (I'm 1/32 Indian and so are more Americans today). There were a few massacres (from a dozen to a few hundred killed) of which none of us are proud, but most simply intermarried with the Europeans.
Unlike the Armenians who are dead dead dead--and YOU are responsible...
Posted by: mary ||
05/10/2004 10:58 Comments ||
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#20
It's like shopping at Neiman Marcus, cept we don't exactly know what we are buying. We'd like to buy a clear win in Iraq, and I guess that would mean some form of democratic government and a free Muslim country. Ain't many of those. We aint shopping cause we just love the Muslims. We're trying to buy some security here. Its like the old Fram Oil filter commercial - we can try to buy it now or we can try to buy it later. Later it'll cost a lot more.
A big part of this war is the war of ideas, and you'd think we'd be good at that. Our idea is freedom, and their idea is suicide bombers and this Islamic law for everbody. But our free media and some of our politicians seem to be helpin them, and it don't make sense.
Lessee - the price is high, but we gonna pass now and pay more later. I aint seen no ideas that don't include a higher price later. Got one?
#21
Murat-
Ask the Kurds if they're happy in Turkey. BTW-there's also a country called Turkmenistan. Does that mean all Turks would be happy to move there? Oh that's right, you're Turks, not men;)
#22
Rabirt, Scalping wasn't introduced by Europeans.
Correction, it was, in fact white europeans paid for every death Indian, the scalp was the proof, if I am not mistaken invented by the Dutch in New Amsterdam (known to you as New York)
Last time you were asked about the Armenians, you said your neighbor was one. Now you say they're in Armenia. What happened to your neighbor?
Don't worry he is still there
Posted by: Murat ||
05/10/2004 11:18 Comments ||
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#23
Yeah, we should have left the Indians alone. By now they might have invented the wheel.
#24
Hank (#20) asks the right question - "I aint seen no ideas that don't include a higher price later. Got one?"
Posted by: Sam ||
05/10/2004 11:23 Comments ||
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#25
It's not just the financial cost of force feeding democracy to Sunnis and Shiites, tribesmen who are locked into a rigid unreformed religion, it's the human lives lost in Iraq. Oh sure, neocons say, it's only 700 soldiers killed and better them than civilians in New York. I say to you that any American life, in uniform or not, that is lost in a PC war of "winning hearts and minds" and that's fought against an enemy that our leadership does not have the courage to spit out is wasted. What does "evil men" mean? I am sick to death of Islam is a religion of peace schtick. Of all our Congressmen, only one has a child serving in the military. To them-both Democrats and Neoconc-because they have no vested interested in the lives of the military and the vast majority of them have not fought in a war, see soldiers as chess pieces in their grand scheme of changing modern history.
Some of you may think Wolfie is a genius with vision, and that's your perogative. I say Wolfie is a disingenuous bureaucrat, who has not come any closer to a battlefield than playing Half Life on his computer. Also, I suspect that Wolfie, like many neocons, started out as a liberal and changed his tune when he saw that military might could be useful in changing world order. What has Wolfie come up with that is so Einstein-like? His theory of democracizing Iraq is like the domino theory of Vietnam and Korea but in reverse. Oh yes, we'll bring democracy to these savages[even if we have to blow them up to liberate them] and then happy happy liberated feelings will spread throughout the Middle East and 100 years from now they'll love us, because that's what drives neocons-the selfish desire to be liked by the world. And we know how wonderfully successful the domino theory worked in the past. Someone suggested that we should empathize with those children whose parents did not come home from the Twin Towers, and I say maybe some of you should start empathizing with those families whose boys have not come home from Iraq because they had their throats slit and their bodies mutilated and covered in shallow sandy graves. Start thinking about those families who are left to grapple with the thought that "evil men" killed their loved ones. There's no closure for these families, because the "enemy" has no name.
This past week leaders of both political parties had their panties in a twist bemoaning alleged "torture"[in San Francisco some people pay good money to be put on a leash] committed against Iraqi POW's. Swimmer almost broke into tears; Rumsfield promised REPARATIONS to these POW's [say what? this is war, I thought, and these particular POW's were not choir boys]; Bush apologized to the POW's and their families even. How does that make our military feel? Betrayed, that's what. I have a question for our politicians...how do you extract info from POW's if you follow the Geneva Convention to the letter of the law? And silly me, I thought the Geneva Convention addressed the rules of war fought between 2 civilized countries with fighters in uniform. If some of you think we should keep GI's in Iraq, taking bullets for your "safety" you can forget about that idea flying for very long[ democracy tkes a long time] I will not send my kids or my neighbors' kids to fight in the ME against a nebulous enemy with limited rules of engagement so armchair warriors can hug themselves about how they are fighting the war on terrorism. As I said, protecting the Kurds and their oil fields makes good sense. But stopping a bullet for Sunnis or Shiites is foolish. Preventing an Islamofacist dictator from taking over is their fight to fight. How short sighted can we be to think that only Americans will fight for freedom. If that's the case, we bother going to Iraq in the first place? As Bush said, it's wrong to think brown skinned Iraqis are any less likely to value freedom. It's time to move on a let the Sunnis and Shiites have their Civil War. Let our GI's sit tight in Kurdistan, where they are welcome. Also, putting GI's on the ground in Iraq has not served as the terrorist "magnet" that Wolfie dreamed it would do. Last I read Al Queda was planning on detonating 20 suitcase bombs in America and Europe. So much for Wolfie the genius.
Posted by: rex ||
05/10/2004 11:26 Comments ||
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#26
Mary Poppins, all but the 1.5 million your country deliberately killed (and have never acknowledged or asked forgiveness for).
Strange figure that 1.5mln, Ottoman empire population statistics of 1910 show 1.2mln Armenians lived throughout the whole empire, I guess we must have killed some of them twice to get to 1.5mln :) Do you know that first claims of Armenian massacre claimed 200.000 but with the years those numbers inflated, well if you tell a ly and token it forward you get wild stories at the end. :)
Remember "Midnight Express" was Holywood phantasy, Abu Graib is for real!
Posted by: Murat ||
05/10/2004 11:27 Comments ||
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#27
As Rex shows, its easy to gripe. Now answer Hank's question - "I aint seen no ideas that don't include a higher price later. Got one?"
#28
Sorry, I did not "just gripe." I defended my view that Wolfie's pie-in-the-sky plan is a recycled domino theory that does not have a good track record 30 years ago nor does it work well today. You can't just super-impose democracy on a nation.
As for my alternative idea, I presented it in my previous 2 posts. That is, to withdraw our GI's from the Sunni and Shiite parts of Iraq. Our presence in those 2 countries is resented more each day. It's obvious we are seen as occupiers rather than liberators, and it does not matter whether we have 20,000 troops or 120,000 troops there. They want us out, end of story.
I say that we should build a large military base in Kurdistan. No doubt the Kurds would love us to be there to protect them from Turkey, Iran, and Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites. Furthermore, this military presence would enable a "protected environment" for oil companies to bring the engineering expertise and the technology there to make the Kurds rich and supply us with needed fuel resources. It's a win-win for us and the Kurds. As well, a military base in Kurdistan gives us a strategic presence in the ME to make sure that Syria and Iran are not planning any nasty attacks on Israel.
I think Wolfie's grandiose idea of having a united Iraq of warring tribes is too rigid and impractical. Wolfie, like many neocons, are loathe to value one culture over another because at heart, neocons, are liberals wearing hawk costumes. So he thinks that Kurds and Sunnis and Shiites will be singing Kumbaye in the next 50-100 years if we just throw enough American $ and GI's lives at the problem.
I say the Kurds have demonstrated through their actions that a) they are our allies and b) they value democracy and freedom. So why fight what's obvious? Go with the flow and protect a friend.
As for the Sunnis and Shiites, perhaps they would be happier having their separate countries as well. Why does Iraq have to be one country? Why not 3 countries? Maybe we should let the Shiites and Sunnis decide what's best for themselves, instead of some neocon bureaucrat in an office in DC deciding.
As for
Posted by: rex ||
05/10/2004 12:13 Comments ||
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#29
Rex - a swing and a miss. The question Hank is asking relates to the larger WoT, not just Iraq. At least "Wolfie" has a strategic plan to address the WoT. No one else does, and the Islamists are not going to quit and stay home. Unless there is some plan to win this "war of ideas," then it will end up as a war of mass killing. We will win that one, but the cost will be greater.
Hank - did I get that right?
Posted by: Sam ||
05/10/2004 12:30 Comments ||
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#30
Plus, it's no good calling those of us who support the war "neo-cons" or "chickenhawks" and picking on Wolfowitz.
We're patriotic Americans who love our country and never want to see another day here like 9/11. Full stop.
Besides, President Bush thinks exactly the same way as "Wolfie" or is that the point of you Lefties?
You try to pick Bush's main men like Tenet, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld which feeds the beast that demands you finally get Bush himself.
Nice try. Sort of.
Meanwhile, you Libs are just sick that these tax dollars you're bitching about aren't going to feed the coffers of all your worthless social welfare programs (=Pork).
Myself, I love knowing that I'm helping to fund the joint U.S.-Israeli laser death ray!
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 12:50 Comments ||
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#31
Me: Scalping wasn't introduced by Europeans.
Murat: Correction, it was, in fact white europeans paid for every death Indian, the scalp was the proof, if I am not mistaken invented by the Dutch in New Amsterdam (known to you as New York)
You're completely full of shit, Murat. You're confusing the practice of paying bounties with the practice of scalping. It may be that Europeans were the first to pay bounties -- though the native use of scalps as proof of manhood and symbols of martial prowess may be interpreted as "paying" in a form other than cash.
In any case, scalping was 100% definitely in North America before Columbus was even conceived. You see, there are a number of pre-Columbian skulls that show evidence of having been scalped -- before, after, and around the time of death. The site I'm most aware of is the Crow Creek Massacre site, which dates to around 1325.
Medial and lateral views of skull fragments (parietal bone) show a large circumscribed area of osteomyelitis on the outer surface. This is commensurate with the effects of antemortem scalping. On the parietal bone medially there are many dilated vascular spaces, as would be seen with inflammatory process on the bone's surface. This process appears to healing, and the individual was able to function until the time of death.
Two of 392 skulls from Crow Creek had similar antemortem scalping defects. That scalping was prevalent at this time in history in this region indicates that the practice antedates the coming of the white man to the North America.
The problem, Murat, is that you have bought into every scrap of anti-American propaganda you've ever come across. You're a bigot, in other words, and you're apparently proud of it.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/10/2004 12:55 Comments ||
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800,000 in 1915 while the genocide was still going on.
Some photos are here. There are much worse photos on other sites.
Posted by: ed ||
05/10/2004 12:56 Comments ||
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#33
I am hardly a "leftie." I am an old fashioned conservative, a paleo-con, as neocons like to refer to us. If I "pick" on Wolfie, it's because he is a willing victim and he deserves my scorn. Wolfie is no genius or hero to me. Wolfie has placed a higher value on the potential for a personal "legacy" in history books than on GI's lives today.
Actually I hold Rumsfield in high regard, because I think he is more realistic and respectful of how military might can be "persuasive." I suspect that Rumsfield, given a free hand, would not waste time "winning hearts and minds." He'd get in , win the war at any cost, and get out in short order. He actually fought in WWII and learned that in oreder to win a war one needs to be brutal. Do you think Rumsfield and his contemporaries would have beat the Axis powers by abiding to every subsection of the Geneva Convention. Doubt it.
That President Bush shares many of the neocon philosophies is not something I respect in him. It's not because I'm a leftie. It's because I dis respect the leftie aspects in him.
Some call it "feeding the enemy" when I criticize aspects of President Bush's liberal brand of conservativism. I say letting him stay on a disasterous neocon course without feedback from the rank and file conservative base is more treacherous for the party and the country as a whole. To sing Wolfie Rocks and Tenet is Cool ballads 24/7 all the while allowing GI body bags from Iraq to reach the bewitching number of 1000, which will happen in short order, will cause Americans to dump the Republicans in November.
Bush is 20 times better than Lurch, but is Bush a Lincoln? No. Lurch is hopeless. But Bush can be redeemed from a neocon fuzzy wuzzy ME approach.Thinking a war of ideas will win over Islam is nuts.
Look at what's happening in America if you want a test case. We bring Muslim immigrants here, we educate them, we tempt them with freedom and liberty...and what happens...eveywhere you turn, Muslim women are wanting to wrear burkas, and we are seeing the beiginning of Muslim call to prayer blaring through our public squares 5x a day. What does that tell you about the deep power of Islam?
Bush's WoT in Afghanistan is fine. I don't mind his blasting Al Queda cave hide outs and nailing Taliban fighters. That's what military are supposed to do. Make terrorists permanently disappear and put the fear of God into those gov't regimes who might hide or support them.
But Bush's plan for using military to change hearts and minds and impose a democracy on Shiites and Sunnis is naive and dangerous if he continues on Wolfie's inflexible course.
To under estimate the power of religion on those 2 tribes could be disasterous in the long run. A Commander and Chief who is smart enough to change strategy as required on the battlefield is the man who will win wars. It's not by accident that the Sunnis and Shiites have not ever chosen democracy over the course of the past few hundreds of years. There's a reason-it's called religion-we must respect Islam's influence and work to peaceful co-existence where possible.
It seems some people, including the WH, are so worried about the "negative image" of "withdrawing" from Sunni/Shiite Iraq that they have lost sight of why we went to Iraq in the first place. We have accomplished our goals. Was "withdrawing" never a goal? Did the neocons think we'd have our military babysit the Shiites and Sunnis forever? What for? Why over stay our welcome? How does inflaming Muslim resentment due to our "occupier" label in Iraq help the WoT?
As I recall some of the reasons for invading Iraq were to search for WMD and to remove Saddam who have been giving aid and comfort to terrorists.
We have chased any WMD in Iraq, if they existed to any great degree, to Syria. Assad, who is not as wacky as Uncle Saddam, no doubt is sweating bullets that his pal's WMD should ever be found in his country...the end result is that those WMD are out of commission. We have intimidated Lybia to come clean about their WMD projects and to spill the beans on other partners. We have given the Sunnis and Shiites some rough democracy guidelines and we have arranged for the UN to over see the election process, if the Iraqis want their help. We have re-trained their police force and re-built much of their aging infa structure.
Why should we stay any longer? What's the point? Building a military base in Kurdistan seems like the only logical thing to do next.
Maybe some of you should think about whether or not you would want to send your own kids to be based in the volatile region of Shiite and Sunni terroritory for the next 50 years, before you gamely assign that death wish task to other families' kids.
Keeping GI's in Iraq much beyond the July 01 deadline is selfish to say the least. Those GI's will have more and more Muslim hatred directed at them and will only drive the so-called good Iraqis closer to Al Queda, not farther away. Let's move on to Kurdistan, while the going is good.
Posted by: rex ||
05/10/2004 14:21 Comments ||
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#34
Rex, you don't have to make the argument that it is dangerous in Iraq, or that the task we undertook was difficult. There is no question that mistakes have been made in the conduct of the the occupation portion of the mission. No one would want to send their kids to Iraq to fight terrorists, you don't need to make that point. But what is the plan to defeat radical Islamic fundamentalism? It doesn't make any difference if the solution is a neo-con plan, a "old fashoined conservative" plan, a liberal plan or a even a European plan.
These guys who flew planes into our buildings are not through. They still hate us, they still want to kills us (its their religious duty), they still plot and plan for the spectacular attack that will dwarf 9/11. Are you one of the ones who believes we can treat terrorist attacks as simple criminal activity? No plan needed other than to investigate crimes and arrest the prepetrators? When the big one goes off in NY, then we start our investigation, and we'll nail them then. The only problem then would be the price had gone uo to a million American lives and a destroyed US and world economy.
Or maybe you are one of the ones who thinks we should just call on our friends at the UN, let them solve the problem. That's right, talk them to death.
Your kind of thinking is just what Hank (#20) was referring to. Cry about the price now, but no clue how to avoid the bigger bill later.
#35
Interesting thoughts, rex, but I still repeat what I said above.
We cannot leave the region to itself.
If left alone, they will go back to jihad on America (Hello 9/11 or worse.) and also will fight between themselves.
The Waahab Sunnis, based in Saudi Arabia, want to kill Shi'ites as much as Jews, Christians and Americans.
They've got to have Democracy and if it's rather force fed to them by US soldiers, so much the better.
There were those who thought we should have left last year after the liberation and look at the insurgency that's sprung up now--Thank God we were there to stop the bad guys!
And those WMDs are probably in Syria (or Jordan or Iran or SA).
They're still out there somewhere in the hands of bad guys.
America is going to drag the Middle East into the 21st Century, even if it's screaming and kicking and dying.
Islamists think that Democracy is a heresy and want to revert to sharia.
We've got to change that thinking permanently or we'll be watching our back (and our front) until the end of time for the next 9/11 attack on our soil...and the next one will be far worse, because next door Iran almost surely has nukes.
So does Pakistan, next door to Afghanistan and that nuke program is paid for by the Sauds.
But in the future, the Sauds might not feel the need to be secretive and just outright have them, right next to Iraq.
The United States is exactly where we need to be with troops--in Iraq fighting our enemies, IslamoFacists.
Whether it costs $150 billion or $150 trillion, we've got to bite the bullet and pay it because in the end, our way of life and our very lives themselves depend on it.
(And I don't care how awful you think it is, even 1000 KIA soldiers is NOTHING compared to any other war we've been in.
This is not to say that we don't mourn every life lost, but Jebus Christ, man! That's still only 1/3 of the number of civilians we lost on 9/11!!! Get a grip and butch up!)
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 14:48 Comments ||
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#36
Y'all's pickin on Rex and it aint fair. He aint got no ideas on how to avoid the "bigger bill" like Jake said. But I ain't seen no other ideas from no one else either.
Truth is there aint no easy answer. Ever path is diffcult, and unless we get some backbone as a nation to see things through, then we gonna have to pay that bigger bill. Folks we gotta make sure that bigger bill dont arrive.
#37
Besides, this is from main paper of the only holdover left from Soviet Communism: SAN FRANCISCO.
I propose that it should be detached from California and Super Glued onto France.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/10/2004 15:06 Comments ||
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#38
Whether it costs $150 billion or $150 trillion
Lotta BirdFeed! Lotta BirdFee!
Ack!
10 time American economy! 10 time American Economy!
Ack!
#39
murat - turkey still has not atoned for the massacre of armenians.. yes America did the indians wrong but frankly if we did not take the land the russians, brits, french, maybe spain or mexico definetly would have. there was not outside pressures like this in turkey's systimatic extermination a people it did not desire...
with your attempt at trying jerry jig the numbers of amrenians in the empire just shows the attempt to deny...
turkey was wrong and is still wrong for trying to distort history..at least America can look at herself and realize mistakes...
so how that new niegbor - kurdistand?
and how was that bitch slap from the euro winnies?
Posted by: Dan ||
05/10/2004 15:56 Comments ||
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#40
Why is everyone so reluctant to separate ourselves from Iraq and move on to stabilizing and investing in Kurdistan? What is the problem?
How does keeping hated American GI's in Sunni/Shiite Iraq stop Al Queda from gaining an influence in their government?
We have straddled our GI's with such limited rules of engagement, that it will be very hard for our GI's to kill known Al Queda operatives without causing big Shiite/Sunni noses getting bent out of shape. Before you know it, our forces will be killed left and right by formerly neutral Shiites/Sunnis who have thrown in their lot with their Al Queda religious brethern. Many of you are still waiting for the roses to be thrown to our GI's in Iraq. Forget about it. It will never happen. Germany and Japan shared similar cultural and social values to the USA. Both were CIVILIZED countries, to put it bluntly without a medieval religion that names non-Muslims as "infidels", so re-building Germany and Japan and winning over their loyalties and gratitude was a slam dunk...to quote Tenet, only in this case the phrase is appropriate.
The very notion that we can win the war on terrorism by transforming a medieval tribal Islamic society in Iraq into another postwar Germany or postwar Japan boogles the mind. Can you not see how ludicrous Wolfie's plan is?
The best we can hope to gain from this ill-considered pie-in-the-sky venture in Iraq, as I said before, is to establish neutral, maybe even good will from the Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis who will eventually govern in their respective countries. Countries plural, not a single Iraq country, Wolfie.
Staying much longer after July 01 galvanizes 2 warring tribes of Muslims against the USA and invites the real possiblity that their unified hostility to US "occupation" will get worse by aligning themselves with Al Queda operatives in the region who would be only too willing to come to their aid.
Taking the bullet, paying the price as some of you say misses the point. It's not how much $ you wave at the Shiites and Sunnis that's going to make them like us.
It's how quickly we keep our promise to not "occupy" them. It's how swiftly we remove any hint of what they view as decadent Western life styles from their midst, decadence which they do not want "infecting" them. They hate our non-burka clad females, they despise our don't ask, don't tell intelligence officers. They dispise our fair skin, our make up, our jewelry, our punked hair styles, everything that shouts "infidel" is a threat to them.
The sexual "humiliation" of the Iraqi POW's has been the icing on the cake for these religious folks. Don't you get it? The more we stay, the more we alienate any vestige of goodwill they may have felt towards us 1.5 years ago.
The WoT will not be won by rebuilding Iraq into a full-fledged democracy. It will be to let Muslims live as they choose and that means letting them practise their religion no matter how much it pains us.
Iraqis did not attack the Twin Towers. Where did you read that? Egyptians and Saudis attacked the Twin Towers because they saw it as part of a Holy War.
These terrorists were not poor plebs. They were educated middle class Muslims who came legally to our shores to send a message that they despised our affluent and decadent life styles. So putting a fair haired B.G. Janice Karpinski in charge of Saddam's prison in Iraq and having a female GI smoking a cigarette and putting a leash on naked male POW's just confirmed to them what OBL has been preaching in his broadcasts.
I say we should support our Muslim allies in the ME -like the Kurds and Israel, and give respectful neutral distance to the Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, keeping a watchful eye from a distance. And if we see and can prove nasty business is afoot in those 2 countries, we CRUSH them militarily with no regard to collateral damage and then we set up a US military run gov't and make it clear that anyone that messes with us again will have their favorite mosques wacked. I think we should make that message very clear to the clerics before we pull out...that American interests are numbero uno with us and if they pull any jack ass moves like getting chummy with OBL, we will not hestitate to CRUSH them, because our military base in Kurdistan is only minutes away.
Then I say we seal up our borders in the USA,put military/national guard on our borders to back up the border patrol[cover your ears, neocons and Democrats] and make it very very hard for Al Queda to get any ideas about paying off some corrupt Federales to get them across the southern border.
We should put a moratorium on all immigration except for business visas until we can sort out who we have within our borders and how much we need every year.
We should also pay for each American citizen and legal resident to get high tech faorgery proof biometric ID cards and tell the ACLU to take a hike. In fact, we should suspend the non-profit status of the ACLU and cause them major financial woes by fighting them with amicus briefs from the Federal Justice Department on every case they bring to court. As well, we should suspend the practice of babies used as citizenship anchors. And we should tie all foreign aid to verifiable annual goals of "progress."
I think our porous borders or easy access to US citizenship and our holus bolus foreign aid to Third World thugs and dictators cause us greater dangers from terrorism and undesirables generally than whether or not Shiite and Sunnis have the Bremer-Wolfie perfect version of "democracy." It's the enemies within that are greater threats to us than the enemy without or at least that's my opinion. Before we start "fixing' other nations in the world, we should remodel the leaky roofs and plumbing in our own house.
Any Presidential candidate who said he would protect America's borders in actions and not in PC words would win an 8 year term hands down.
Posted by: rex ||
05/10/2004 16:16 Comments ||
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#41
Now Rex is talkin ideas, and they ain't bad. We treats our friends as friends, and our enemies as enemies. We tells enemies what we gonna do if they cross us, and if they do we obliderate them. We build fences to keep those who aint welcome out. We bio-ID all of us, and watch us real close. We tie our help to foreigners with their doing good, and make them prove it for they get more.
Rex is thinkin, an I don know if theys good ideas, but at least theys ideas.
But Rex made one hollow point and I just can't let it go without at least pointing out that it is hollow. "Iraqis did not attack the Twin Towers. Where did you read that? Egyptians and Saudis attacked the Twin Towers because they saw it as part of a Holy War."
There are still people who think we attacked Iraq because the govt thinks the Iraqis flew planes into our buildings, and that just is not so. The dangers presented by a Saddam led Iraq have been described ad nauseum. The importance of the Iraqi operation on the overall WoT is evidenced by the effort the Islamists have put into preventing a democratic government in Iraq. You can mock the "Wolfie" plans all you want, but it is clear the Islamists are terrified by the idea of a free Muslim nation, and they are determined to prevent it.
Posted by: Carlos ||
05/10/2004 17:26 Comments ||
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The prisoner abuse scandal has so tarnished the Army's 800th Military Police Brigade that soldiers slated to receive an Army Bronze Star medal have been dropped from the list, the brigade's commander, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, said Sunday. "The vast majority of fine, outstanding soldiers in the brigade are paying dearly," Karpinski told The Associated Press in an e-mail.
After the Army started its investigation into abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib penitentiary, "many, many" of the soldiers' recommendations for the Army medal were downgraded, said Karpinski, whose 2,800-member brigade operated 12 U.S. prisons and detention camps across Iraq, including the sprawling Abu Ghraib facility west of Baghdad.
An Army report into the abuses at the prison, written by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, faulted Karpinski and other commanders in the brigade and its subordinate battalions, saying leaders paid too little attention to the prison's day-to-day operations. Previous abuses of prisoners or lapses at the prison went unpunished or unheeded, the report found. Karpinski's subordinates at Abu Ghraib at times disregarded her commands, and didn't enforce codes on wearing uniforms and saluting superiors, which added to the lax standards that prevailed at the prison, said one member of the 800th MP Brigade.
The soldier, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said commanders in the field routinely ignored Karpinski's orders, saying they didn't have to listen to her because she was a woman.
Cheez, those folks should have their asses handed to them real quick. How're we supposed to change the Arab mindset when our guys are acting like this?
Now, that soldier said his own Bronze Star commendation was quashed after the investigation started. "I was supposed to get one and so were others. (The recommendations) were downgraded and subsequently kicked out," he said. "There's a stigma of belonging to the 800th. You don't deserve any medals. Everybody thinks it's the 800th that's guilty of these crimes, when it's a subordinate unit." Some of those turned down for the medals won't even get the Army's consolation prize, the simple Army Commendation Medal, the soldier said.
Karpinski said the decision to cancel Bronze Star awards was yet another blow to an already demoralized brigade, which was stretched thin across Iraq while handling some of the Army's toughest tasks. "This will contribute in a large way to the morale of the soldiers who placed their lives on the line every day and survived, despite often seemingly insurmountable obstacles and challenges," she said.
The general, who works as a business consultant in civilian life, said low morale inside the brigade and at Abu Ghraib was no secret. Soldiers "spoke openly about their concerns" to visiting members of Congress and other high-level visitors. Those included occupation chief L. Paul Bremer, U.N.'s top Iraq official Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was killed in a bombing last August, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
A personal Web site created by one member of the brigade, Sgt. First Class Bill Sutherland, mentions the abuse and calls the 800th MPs a "dysfunctional" unit. "I'm ashamed that I was with them," the text on the site says. "But I will agree with one thing: the unit was very dysfunctional. From the HHC, to S2, S3 and S4 shops," or the brigade's headquarters command, intelligence, operations and supply sections.
So General Karpinski, anything to say about this?
The vast majority of the soldiers in the 800th MP Brigade and its subordinate units served without incident in Iraq. Taguba's report reserves special commendations for two battalions within the 800th that operated well, "with little or no guidance from the 800th MP Brigade." Taguba found the 744th MP Battalion and its commander Lt. Col. Dennis McGlone smoothly ran the prison that holds the top figures of Saddam Hussein's regime - including perhaps the deposed leader himself. The 530th MP Battalion under Lt. Col. Stephen Novotny also did a good job operating the detention camp northeast of Baghdad holding some 2,000 members of the Mujahedeen Khalq, an Iranian guerrilla group opposed to Tehran's clerical regime.
The report commends two individual soldiers and a sailor for either halting abuse at Abu Ghraib or refusing to participate. But those commendations are tucked at the end of the report.
The soldier interviewed said he worried that the stigma of the abuse scandal will intrude on his civilian career. "If I put on my resume that I was with the 800th MPs, I probably wouldn't get a job," he complained. "It's gotten bad enough to make people suspect that I did something."
Yet another good reason why you don't let the bad things slide.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/10/2004 12:39:24 AM ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Karpinski's subordinates at Abu Ghraib at times disregarded her commands, and didn't enforce codes on wearing uniforms and saluting superiors, which added to the lax standards that prevailed at the prison, said one member of the 800th MP Brigade.
The soldier, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said commanders in the field routinely ignored Karpinski's orders, saying they didn't have to listen to her because she was a woman.
Disregarding orders is pretty serious stuff. Although Karpinski may need to take some heat over the lax discipline, those soldiers who used a commanding officer's gender as an excuse for misconduct exhibit more of a resemblance to the enemy than their own comrades.
Once again, it's difficult not to imagine that part of their orientation prior to arrival in Iraq specifically dealt with the local culture's endemic disrespect and mistreatment of women. To have then gone on to mirror exactly that same sort of discriminatory attitude is nothing more than jock mentality behavior and unprofessional in the extreme.
#2
Anyone else think Karpinsky was removed from her post with cause?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/10/2004 7:14 Comments ||
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#3
RC,
Are you saying anyone else besides you or Zenster?
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/10/2004 8:21 Comments ||
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#4
I agree with the downgrading of the medals - but not the reasoning behind them.
Bronze Stars should not be given out routinely like this. An Army Commendation medal is the proper award. The Army has cheapened the Bronze Star by awarding it routinely in Iraq, and that is crap. I got mine for "exceptional actions" while engaged in combat against the enemy, on a battlefield, under fire. Not for just doing my job in a war zone.
As for the rest of it, it sounds more like the remnants of Clinton's Kindergarten Army (and the officers it produced) than a real military unit - and the results we see in that prison are predictable if you know the lack of discipline and professionalism the Clinton-era leadership allowed - it was more concerned with appearance and PC (mixed gender boot camp, "Don't Ask Dont Tell", "inclusiveness" etc) than combat effectiveness and discpline. It starts with the commander and flows down hill from there. Thank God there were a gew good non-com's who blew the whistle on this crap.
This 2-star should have his resignation on the desk along side the 1-star in the article.
#5
Military SOP: Make everyone pay for the sins of the few, and they will be motivated to police their own ranks. I agree with this.
Posted by: Cthulhu Akbar ||
05/10/2004 10:27 Comments ||
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#6
If Gen Karpinski spent half the time inspecting her subordinates' operations that she has spent on talk shows doing the Mea Culpa and ass-covering, things wouldn't have gotten out of hand
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/10/2004 10:29 Comments ||
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#7
It is pretty obvious that the 800th Brigade commander, brigade staff, HHC, and at least one battalion were not members of the US Army, but a uniformed mob. Dereliction of duty does not begin to describe this situation. I am looking forward to Genl Karpinski's court martial, and the announcement that the officers and NCO's who were supposed to be in command and controlling the unit have been busted to E-Nothing and assigned as a cleaning crew in support of the CPA's cleaning of the Baghdad sewers!
#8
and the results we see in that prison are predictable if you know the lack of discipline and professionalism the Clinton-era leadership allowed - it was more concerned with appearance and PC (mixed gender boot camp, "Don't Ask Dont Tell", "inclusiveness" etc)
Don't even bring up mixed gender basic. I love my wife, think women are great. But when I am in basic two weeks from now and standing in front of some chick holding pugil sticks . . . I am going to be so tempted to not hit as hard as I should. It is conditioned into me. The ladies will be coddled, not by the DI's, but by their fellow soldiers, some because of conditioning, some because of what they want from the ladies . . . face it, 19 year olds are chock full-o-hormones. Sticking them in close proximity is a recipe for accidents galore, everything from pregnancy to rape (both real and imagined). Or maybe not. If they keep the recruits too tired to think about sex . . .
#9
The 800th MP BDE is an EPW handling unit per several websites I checked. Handling EPWs (POWs) is part of their training mission every drill weekend and annual training period. For soldiers from that unit to say that they weren't prepared to process and imprison EPWs (as I've been reading in interviews all weekend) is pure BS. Every aspect of their Mission Essential Task List would be tailored to the EPW mission.
By the way, the unit is a Reserve outfit. Apparently the BDE fielded two great battalions and one crappy one. Consistency is always a problem in the reserves and National Guard.
Don't worry, pugil sticks are phase three. By that point, there won't be one person in your platoon, male or female, that you won't want to hit as hard as you can. ;)
Posted by: Cthulhu Akbar ||
05/10/2004 12:31 Comments ||
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#11
Handling EPWs (POWs) is part of their training mission every drill weekend and annual training period.
Better grab those training records before they disappear.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/10/2004 13:07 Comments ||
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#12
Very good points but involving those MP's in interrogations crossed a line that should not have happened.Is it not true that military intelligence was in command over most MP's ?
1) Downgrading medals due to actions of others is bullshit pc thinking that hurts the morale of good troops. Give them where they are due and be fair about it.
2) How about we let the mil courts take care of this instead of saying "this or that guy needs to be hung" and "what were they thinking!", from experience I've learned that second guessing those on the scene is for amateurs. AFAIK none of us were present and don't know how the system ran there.
3) If intel was coercing guard behavior (I haven't seen enough on this yet) and the guards followed it - then they are both wrong.
3) Were they dealing w/true epw's or out of uniform irregulars/terrorists?
4) mixed gender training at the boot camp level is bullshit and fairly useless from what I've witnessed. Thank God the Corps has resisted that fiasco.
5) James - w/equal rights comes equal responsibility, everyone takes the same oath and signs the same dotted line. Hold nothing back in training - your country demands it. Hit first, hit hard, hit often. Good luck.
#14
Old Spook, when it comes to awards and decs, it's not who you know, it's who you blow. Just look at Kerry.
The V for valor on the Bronze Star still has some meaning. Like you said, the Bronze Star without the V has been administratively awarded for superior performance in a war zone damn near forever. I have (had) a friend who was awarded one in WWII for improving the availability of radios for the 8th AF.
You don't want to know about the diminuation of requirements for Air Medals and DFC's during Viet Nam. Kind of like the grade inflation that went on in universities back in the states. Still depressing.
Posted by: Random thoughts ||
05/10/2004 18:20 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
