In a column titled "Women, Children, and Terrorism" in the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, columnist Badriyya Al-Bashar describes terrorists' contemptuous treatment of their wives and children. This behavior, she says, reflects the "flaw that has taken root in their psychology with regard to their understanding of life, and in their view of the individual and his rights."
"The most amazing thing about terrorist hunts and the killings [of terrorists] that we have become accustomed to hearing about is that amongst the terrorists, there are women who act as spouses and maintain family life, giving birth to children under conditions of murder, terrorism, and hunts, in the absence of security, stability, a natural family environment, and an atmosphere for educating and raising the children.
That includes occasionally finding a head in the refrigerator...
"The terrorists, who have sworn an oath to die without turning a hair⊠see fit to meet the need to have a family, and live their lives â which are based on hunts and hiding â in the framework of an extended family of wives and children â without taking any interest in the health, nutritional, and other needs of these wives and children.
As proper Islamists, the wives are mere breeding stock, acquired as much for tactical reasons as anything else. Islam seems to have lost its equivalent of the Western concept of love sometime around 1200 A.D.
"The wife of [the terrorist] Abd Al-Karim Al-Mujati was apprehended at an eye doctor's, because they thought that her husband was accompanying her. But they found only her and her eldest son. This couple and their children entered [Saudi Arabia] with forged Qatari passports. According to statements by [Al-Mujati's] wife, she urged him to realize the right of polygamy that Islam makes possible⊠and he married another [woman].
Probably needed somebody to share the work of lugging all those explosives around...
"The wife of [the terrorist] Al-Hiyari [Younis Mohammed Ibrahim al-Hayari] bore him a daughter in addition to the daughter he brought from Bosnia. [When she gave birth,] one of Al-Hiyari's Saudi friends had to [register] his wife at the hospital under his own name, [so that] Al-Hiyari's daughter was registered under the name of the friend [as the father].
Doesn't that get her stoned or something?
"In Morocco, two other Saudi terrorists married two Moroccan women in socially acceptable marriages [i.e. marriages lacking an official contract, or Zawaj 'Urfi], and it was only after they were caught that they demanded that the judge legally register their marriagesâŠ
"Wives and children are part of the terror society, yet they are not members of it, and did not choose it. They came to it via marriage and family. They did not adopt its ideas, but they defend them. They did not take part in its crimes, but they find themselves in the hands of the police when the hunts end, without a clear ruling as to whether they are criminals or victims.
"[One example of the terrorists' treatment of their families is] the bitter end of the son of one of the terrorists in clashes [between terrorists and Saudi security forces] in the city of Al-Qassim [in Saudi Arabia]. The clashes led to the killing of Abd Al-Karim Al-Mujati, and to [Al-Mujati] himself exploding his own son's head as his son raised his hands in surrender.
"This clarifies that the terrorists treat wives and children as personal property, and as objects with no right to choose [their own way of life], and no right to live in dignity and security.
"The terrorists' insistence on maintaining a family life of marrying and having children reflects the flaw that has taken root in their psychology with regard to their understanding of life, and in their view of the individual and his rights. Moreover, it stresses the class system in which they live, and according to which everything besides themselves can be sold, abducted, and traded.
"Future literary works may reveal to us the inhuman and irreligious deeds that they are carrying out, as has happened with the confessions of people who quit the terrorist groups in Egypt. One of them acknowledged that the leaders of [the Egyptian terrorist group] Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiyya, to which he had belonged, [forcibly] divorced him from his wife after he left them and a week later, married her to the head of the group, without the obligatory interval before a new marriage. They did this claiming that [the option] of stopping a pregnancy in a hospital fulfils the [Islamic] stipulation [of an interval between marriages for a woman, so she can ascertain] that she is not pregnantâŠ
"This shows that they permit themselves anything that brings them closer to their goalsâŠ"
Posted by: Fred ||
07/16/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
..columnist Badriyya Al-Bashar describes terrorists' contemptuous treatment of their wives and children.
Any difference between this and the way the typical Saudi treats his wives and kids?
#3
On an historical note the reason why christianity gained early traction was because it gave women status and stopped the practice of female infanticide. Consequently they outbred the Romans.
Armed confrontations broke out by the beginning of the week between tribes from Bani Omar and Gharadhan districts, the first of which is in Ibb Governorate and is 193 km south of Sanaâa. The second is administratively affiliated to the governorate of Dhamar and is 100 km south of Sanaâa. The news stated that fierce clashes were renewed last Saturday when some armed tribesmen from Bani Omar made an ambush in the road linking the two districts against a Garadhan car to retaliate the killing of two of their fellows in last weekâs clashes. The ambush destroyed a car. It also killed two children and a woman who were inside, others received bad injuries.
30 people have been killed and 100 injured from both sides in the tribal war, which erupted in March 2001between the two neighboring districts. The crisis is attributed to an old dispute over agricultural lands and artesian wells compelling the two parties to desert their farms.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/16/2005 00:00 ||
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The World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) yesterday denied US accusations that it had financed terrorist organizations. âThese accusations are baseless,â Saleh Al-Wohaiby, secretary-general of WAMY told Al-Riyadh daily. âIslamic associations and charities have taken a clear stand in denouncing terrorist acts and the financing of such criminal acts, which are carried out every now and then in the name of Islam, but of which our religion is innocent,â he explained.
The WAMY chief said his organization operates within governmental channels, be it within or outside Saudi Arabia, and has good relations with European counterparts. Wohaiby urged US officials ânot to hurl haphazard accusations,â which he said were aimed at âturning world public opinion against Islamic associations which are moderate.â He said WAMY had contacted a number of Western lawyers to defend its stand against these accusations. He also pointed out that WAMY had denounced all terrorist attacks including the recent London bombings.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/16/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Gee, I always thought Big Bucks meant No WAMYs.
A prominent UAE scholar denounced yesterday as infidels Muslims who carry out attacks against innocent civilians around the world, including the perpetrators of the London blasts. âDo these people not see the results of their actions? They have turned people against us ... and made them link the name of Islam with terrorism,â Sheikh Hamdan Musallam Al-Mazruhi said in his Friday sermon. âTherefore we should say it out loud that whoever kills innocent people ... is not a Muslim and Islam is innocent of him ... We are astonished at those people who justify these acts and see them as jihad in the name of God and declare themselves an authority for Muslims,â he said. âThose who do that are infidels,â he said.
The scholar said âIslam is a religion of mercy and peace.â âHow does it help Islam, when the blood of civilians is shed around the world, like in Iraq, Afghanistan, New York, Madrid, Bali, Casablanca, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and lately in London at the hands of those killers and criminals ... who are falsely linked to Islam,â he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/16/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
âHow does it help Islam, when the blood of civilians is shed around the world, like in Iraq, Afghanistan, New York, Madrid, Bali, Casablanca, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and lately in London at the hands of those killers and criminals ... who are falsely linked to Islam,â he said.
Hmmm, that list seems kinda short. It's almost as if he's leaving something out. Now whatever could it be that's absent from his pronouncement?
#3
Well y'know it seems to me that there just might be another country out there that suffers quite a number of terrorist attacks but didn't make that list. Name's escaping me now though. I'm sure he just forgot about them as well.
#4
The significance of this is that the focus is always on Muslims as victims - note 7 out of 10 places mentioned are muslims states. Israel and Russia are not mention even though they have been the target of most terrorist attacks (pre-Iraq).
As Terrorism Focus went to press the identity of the perpetrators of the attacks on London commuters on July 7 â indigenous UK suicide bombers of Pakistani ethnic origin â had become established through forensic investigation and extensive analysis of CCTV footage. While there are indications that two of the suspects had recently returned from Pakistan, the presumed link with al-Qaeda has still to be confirmed, since the evidence has not yet been paired with verifiable statements, either from al-Qaeda and affiliated groups, leaving speculation open.
Internet postings, one of the more efficient and accessible means of publishing claims of responsibility, did not provide much in the way of authoritative information. The first was from a previously unknown group calling itself the Jama'at al-Tanzim al-Sirri or âSecret Operations Group, the Organization of al-Qaeda in Europe' (Jama'at al-Tanzim al-Sirri Tanzim Qa'idat al-Jihad fi Urubba) which posted on the al-Qal'a forum, which in the past has hosted bona fide statements from militant mujahideen groups. However, the lack of subsequent postings backing up the statement, indeed the unusual paucity of supporting material, whether on the internet or the satellite media, given the importance of the attacks, cast immediate doubt on its authenticity. While the statement contained the now familiar language of past warnings made and ignored, and the typical disclaimer âHe who gives warning is exempt' [i.e from moral condemnation as to the consequences] and an (incomplete) Qur'anic citation, the text lacked the full paraphernalia of doctrinal justification which would have been expected for such a momentous event. More revealing still was the clumsy anomaly of the language used in the opening salvo:
"I give glad tidings, O Nation of Islam, I give glad tidings, O nation of Arabs [ya ummat al-âAruba], that the time for revenge against the Crusader and Zionist British government has come, in response to the massacre carried out by Great Britain in Iraq and Afghanistan"
Appealing to an ethnicity in the word âAruba (which is a term also equivalent to âArabism') flies full in the face of the ideology and aims of al-Qaeda, the word âAruba conjuring up images of Arab Nationalism, an ideology which par excellence was conceived as a rallying point that specifically sidelined religious identities. Within hours of this posting, the al-Qal'a forum closed, according to the forum administrators, despite their protests of innocence [www.qal3ati.net].
A second posting, a declaration of the âAbu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, the Qaeda (âBase') of Jihad, Europe Brigade', posted on the Tajdeed forum, celebrated the "attacks one after the other in the capital of the Infidels, the English capital ⊠The beginning was at Madrid and Istanbul ⊠today [it is] in London ⊠and tomorrow the Mujahideen will have other words [to say]" [www.tajdeed.org.uk]. But this also presented similar problems of style, not least due to the identification of the group itself. This has long been a problem, since it is somewhat âtrigger-happy' with internet postings. The group also posted a similar claim after the Madrid train bombings. Yet after a year of investigations no evidence of any such group being involved has emerged. The same story is true of the Istanbul bombings of November 2003 and August 2004, with subsequent investigations turning up no trace of the Brigades (see Terrorism Focus, Volume 1, Issue 2).
Sympathizers with jihadi militants, along with terrorism analysts, were equally divided on the rationale behind the timing and purpose of the attack. Parallels with the March 2004 Madrid bombings only went so far, since the political conditions of the United Kingdom in July 2005 have nothing in common with April 2004 in Spain. At that time the Spanish government was facing a hostile domestic environment at election time, where a carefully timed strike brought political upheaval and resulted in the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. Al-Qaeda, in practice, has used astute utilitarian calculation in organizing its strikes, and has abhorred politically damaging, opportunistic attacks, such as that which occurred in the bombing of the theater in the Qatari capital Doha (see Focus, Volume 2, Issue 7). On this yardstick, the London attacks are a strategic disaster.
Yet the perception that âLondon was next' stems from a reading of al-Qaeda published materials. In December 2004 a strategy document "Iraq al-Jihad, Aamaal wa-Akhtaar" (Iraq's Jihad, Hopes and Dangers) appeared on the web confidently predicting the Madrid debacle and estimating that "Britain will only withdraw from Iraq in one of two cases: either if Britain suffers significant human casualties in Iraq, or if Spain and Italy withdraws first." Subsequent strategy documents have emphasized the need to "exhaust the enemy's forces by stretching them through dispersal of targets" and "attract the youth through exemplary targeting" as part of the preliminary âDisruption and Exhaustion' phase of a strategy towards âEmpowerment.' Outlined in the work The Management of Barbarism (for a detailed analysis of this document see Focus, Volume 2, Issue 6).
For Hani al-Sibai, an Egyptian radical Islamist dissident resident in the United Kingdom, the London subway bombings were more particularly focused, and designed rather to steal the thunder from the G8 Conference in Scotland. Speaking during a combative interview with the Qatari satellite channel Al-Jazeera, al-Sibai declared it "a great victory for al-Qaeda; it rubbed the noses of the world's eight most powerful countries in the mud."
Other mujahideen sympathizers were not so sure. Immediately following the first posting by the Secret Operations Group, one signing himself âBu Badr' on the Tajdeed forum warned against his fellow mujahideen indulging in too much applause, noting that "those who defend al-Qaeda actually live in Britain" which "gathered in our Muslim brothers who had been expelled from their countries due to their opinion and views opposing their regimes ⊠Our brothers in al-Qaeda are too clever to strike the thugs in their own country." For this commentator, another candidate was more suspect: "This is [simply] a game played by the swine Blair in order to strike at Muslims and Muslim refugees ⊠a plot to put pressure of the expatriate Muslim Arab communities, and enable the passing of legislation to expel our Muslim brothers from Britain and hand them over to their agents, the ruling regimes in the Middle East" [www.tajdeed.org.uk].
In so doing, the jihadist commentator highlighted the unusual position in the United Kingdom. London hosts more militant members than almost any city outside the Middle East, where radical Islamic clerics, some of them refugees themselves, have until recently become increasingly outspoken on matters reflecting no longer on external politics relating to their countries of origin, but on issues focused internally. The self-styled sheikhs Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri Muhammad have been the most vociferous of these, the former achieving notoriety for his alleged call to kill the then Prime Minister John Major, and the latter for his comments last April to the Portuguese journal Público, where, styling himself the "Leader of Londonistan", he underlined how "several freelance Islamic militant groups are preparing attacks on London" and that "one very well organized group" in London calling itself âal-Qaeda Europe' "has a great appeal for young Muslims ⊠I know that they are ready to launch a big operation" [www.publico.clix.pt]. In each case, however, the sheikhs have sought to protect themselves, at least in terms of the media, by talking of a unilaterally agreed "mu'ahada" (agreement) not to engage in targeting their host country themselves or encouraging others to do so.
Over the recent period the horizon has been darkening for ideologues of this stamp. Abu Hamza is now under arrest and has been indicted in the United States on charges of trying to set up a jihad training camp in Oregon. Omar Bakri Muhammad meanwhile continues to balance on the fine line of legality, boasting of having been arrested, and released, 16 times over his activities, which he ascribes to âthe contradictions of laws made by man."
If in further investigations of the British suicide bombers there fails to emerge an identified âtrigger' for the operation â which would indicate al-Qaeda methodology â and it turns out to be an entirely UK-organized operation, the issue of the timing and purpose of the attack will have to be sought in developments indigenous to Britain. Jihadi commentators on the forums have already mused on the bombings coming two days after the commencement of the trial of Abu Hamza on charges including inciting racial hatred and encouraging the murder of non-Muslims. If there is a connection, the question to be resolved is whether the extremist, radical wing of Islamists in exile have come to feel that their unilateral âcompact' is being eroded and that there is now nothing to lose. Failing that, the possibility always remains that questions of timing are irrelevant, and that the motivation was ongoing jihad against the infidel, pure and simple.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/16/2005 01:06 ||
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LEEDS, England, July 15 - At Beeston's Cross Flats Park, in the center of this now embattled town, Sanjay Dutt and his friends grappled Friday with why their friend Kakey, better known to the world as Shehzad Tanweer, had decided to become a suicide bomber. Turns out, they're not really 'grappling', they get it just fine:
"He was sick of it all, all the injustice and the way the world is going about it," Mr. Dutt, 22, said. "Why, for example, don't they ever take a moment of silence for all the Iraqi kids who die?" You mean the ones killed by al Queda the other day?
"It's a double standard, that's why," answered a friend, who called himself Shahroukh, also 22, wearing a baseball cap and basketball jersey, sitting nearby. "I don't approve of what he did, but I understand it. You get driven to something like this, it doesn't just happen." Fortunately for the citizens of London, it appears Shahroukh would rather lecture the media while decked out in a rapper outfit.
To the boys from Cross Flats Park, Mr. Tanweer, 22, who blew himself up on a subway train in London last week, was devout, thoughtful and generous. If they understood his actions, it was because they lived in Mr. Tanweer's world, too.
They did not agree with what Mr. Tanweer had done, but made clear they shared the same sense of otherness, the same sense of siege, the same sense that their community, and Muslims in general, were in their view helpless before the whims of greater powers. Ultimately, they understood his anger. "Otherness" is the term coined by the late anti-semite Edward Said to describe how the West, under the control of the Zionists, culturally isolates wackos who want to blow us up.
The news that four British-born Muslim men from neighborhoods around Leeds were suspected of carrying out the bombings in London has made the shared dissatisfaction of boys like these and the creeping militancy of some young British Muslims an urgent issue in Britain. And has been for a while because the Brits are too PC to do anything about it.
The bombers are an exception among Britain's 1.6 million Muslims. But their actions have highlighted a lingering question: why are second-generation British Muslims who should seemingly be farther up the road of assimilation rejecting the country in which they were born and raised?
Because their ungrateful parents and religion teach them to despise the very society that brings them material comfort unknown to their co-religionists in actual muslim countries. Logic and gratitude are not the hallmarks of islamic culture.
Speak to young Muslims like Mr. Dutt and his friends in Leeds, or to others like Dr. Imram Waheed, 28, and Farouq Khan, 32, two Islamic activists living in Birmingham, another Muslim population center, and the answers seem clear. Each expresses the grievance in his own way, but the root is nearly the same.
They say they are weary of liberal Muslim leaders and British politicians who promise changes. They see them backing policies against the Muslim world in general, from Iraq to the Middle East to Afghanistan, and promising relief from economic distress and discrimination. Still, Britain's Muslims have languished near the bottom of society since their influx here in the 1950's.
"I know what people don't understand - it's how terrorists could have been born in this country," Shahroukh said. "But my point is, why not?" Because its a civilized country.
A recent poll commissioned by The Guardian found that 84 percent of Muslims surveyed were against the use of violence for political means, but only 33 percent of Muslims said they wanted more integration into mainstream British culture. Almost half of those surveyed said their Muslim leadership did not represent their views.
The grievances of the boys of Cross Flats Parks have not propelled them toward political action. But Dr. Waheed, a practicing psychiatrist, and Mr. Khan, a documentary filmmaker, are acting on their alienation. He may be 'practicing' but I cannot imagine he's any good at it.
Both men, eloquent, better educated and better off than most in their community, are also among the more politically motivated. They have embraced one of the more conservative, if not militant, Islamic movements in Britain today - Hizb ut-Tahrir, or Party of Liberation.
The party's stated goal is to rebuild the Caliphate - the Muslim state dissolved with the fall of the Ottoman Empire - to displace corrupt dictators in the Muslim world, and to instill Islamic mores and Islamicize almost every aspect of daily life. Then we'll have paradise on earth just like we did with Communism and Nazism. Looks like they've already raised a generatino of "Osama Youth."
The group has drawn about 10,000 members to its recent annual meetings, its members say, and includes chapters abroad in places like Uzbekistan. It is a controversial movement, even among British Muslims, and its members have become emblematic of the shift of Muslims born in Britain to more conservative and outspoken expressions of their faith. Read the whole thing. It's full of depressing, first person examples of twisted logic, ingratitude for the benefits conveyed by the West and the hateful ideological strains by the combination of the two.
#1
The grievances of the boys of Cross Flats Parks have not propelled them toward political action. But Dr. Waheed, a practicing psychiatrist, and Mr. Khan, a documentary filmmaker, are acting on their alienation.
A recent poll commissioned by The Guardian found that 84 percent of Muslims surveyed were against the use of violence for political means...
Semantics. What about violence for RELIGIOUS means? according to Islam there is no political sphere, all social and personal acts are religious. Violence for religious means is called jihad.
...only 33 percent of Muslims said they wanted more integration into mainstream British culture.
Arrest their leaders. Try them for treason unless they explicitly abandon taqiya, jihad and sharia. Get them to give up Islam or execute them.
#3
The West needs to ship them all back to the countries of their ethnic origin. Better to do this now, then watch the blood of our children and grandchildren spilled later. Islam is Satanism clear and simple. God doesn't want you to "Submit" to him, Satan does. God loves, Satan (therefore) Islam hates. It's written as clear as day in the Koran. The world just needs to remove their heads from their collective arses and see it. PC will be the death of us all.
#4
'The bombers are an exception among Britain's 1.6 million Muslims. But their actions have highlighted a lingering question: why are second-generation British Muslims who should seemingly be farther up the road of assimilation rejecting the country in which they were born and raised?
Because their ungrateful parents and religion teach them to despise the very society that brings them material comfort unknown to their co-religionists in actual muslim countries. Logic and gratitude are not the hallmarks of islamic culture.'
Islam does not teach them to despise society but to integrate with ones own society, why socialise within a society thats not your own, what have you to gain from it, except veering away from your own people to the Kafirs. And simply its not worth it.
Islam teaches us to be content with what we have and are given and to be grateful for what we have.
NEXT TIME READ MORE ABOUT A SUBJECT-IE ISLAM BEFORE MAKING DECEPTIVE, SYNICAL , FRIVOLOU & INGENUOUS REMARKS.CHECK YOUR FACTS!
#5
oh baby assimilate, it's the only way we can relate
baby baby baby lieber mine!
no bombs that's so unkind!
baby!
baby baby give me a heil!
Iraq poland france stop the bombs and let's romance!
Baby baby give me a heil!
/just watched the producers again
Posted by: Abu Shawn ||
07/16/2005 7:46 Comments ||
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#6
Ima call thisn Gen Tile On my Mind
It's knowin' that your door is always open
And your path is free to walk
That makes me tend to leave my boomin bag
Rolled up and stashed way beneath your couch
And it's knowin' I'm not shackled
like in Gitmo or Bagram
And the blood stains that have dried upon some Jooo
That keeps you in the tribal lands
By the rivers of my pee stains
That keeps you ever gentle on my mind
Posted by: Abu Shawn ||
07/16/2005 7:54 Comments ||
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#7
'#3 The West needs to ship them all back to the countries of their ethnic origin. Better to do this now, then watch the blood of our children and grandchildren spilled later. Islam is Satanism clear and simple. God doesn't want you to "Submit" to him, Satan does. God loves, Satan (therefore) Islam hates. It's written as clear as day in the Koran. The world just needs to remove their heads from their collective arses and see it. PC will be the death of us all.'
If Islam is satanism, then why is that Allah(God) promises all the believers who submit to Him The Gardens of Paradise, where as those who are Kafirs-Non Believers, they are promised the Hell Fire?- IT IS WRITTEN AS CLEAR AS DAY IN THE QU'RAN.
Another meaning of a verse from the Qu'ran is:
Satan threatens you with poverty and orders you to commit Evil deeds & Sins, where as Allah promises you forgiveness from Himself & bounty and All is All-Sufficient for His Creatures' need, All Knower- So Islam still Satanism,
GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT BEFORE YOU POINT FINGERS WITH YOUR MINDLESS AND PRESUMPTOUS REMARKS.
#8
#3 The West needs to ship them all back to the countries of their ethnic origin. Better to do this now, then watch the blood of our children and grandchildren spilled later. Islam is Satanism clear and simple. God doesn't want you to "Submit" to him, Satan does. God loves, Satan (therefore) Islam hates. It's written as clear as day in the Koran. The world just needs to remove their heads from their collective arses and see it. PC will be the death of us all.
#11
Islam does not teach them to despise society but to integrate with ones own society, why socialise within a society thats not your own, what have you to gain from it, except veering away from your own people to the Kafirs.
You might gain a little understanding which breeds patience which breeds tolerance which will (hopefully) allow us all to live together on this small blue marble for some time yet before we exterminate one another completely. Or at least that's the naive kaffir view on the whole thing but then most of us don't suffer from megalomaniacal delusions driven by a frothing-at-the-mouth sort of religious frenzy either so I suppose our perspectives could differ somewhat.
Oh, and another good reason is because most kaffir are skilled with the CAPS-LOCK key and the proper application of boldface type. You could clearly use a little help there.
And simply its not worth it.
Of course it isn't. Allan has promised that the kaffir will fall before your sword or eventually see the light of Islam hasn't he? Thus it would be utterly pointless to even attempt to integrate into a society whose destruction your god has preordained, no? Well that is unless you'd like to learn how to crawl out of the sort of 6th century barbarism in which Muslim society still helplessly wallows centuries after the kaffir figured things out. But I suppose that would be expecting quite a lot wouldn't it? Never pays to overestimate one's fellow man.
You'll have to excuse me now, I have to tend to another batch of bacon grease rounds that are just about ready to come out of the oven.
#12
AzCat unless you'd like to learn how to crawl out of the sort of 6th century barbarism in which Muslim society still helplessly wallows centuries after the kaffir figured things out.
Hey AzCat. You're being offensive to 6th century. Middle East would be a lot better off if its level of civilization preceeding Islamic conquest were to be regained.
#14
to displace corrupt dictators in the Muslim world,
So they're working on Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc. too? Or does that not attract the media the way New York and London does?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 9:20 Comments ||
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#15
If Islam is satanism, then why is that Allah(God) promises all the believers who submit to Him The Gardens of Paradise, where as those who are Kafirs-Non Believers, they are promised the Hell Fire?- IT IS WRITTEN AS CLEAR AS DAY IN THE QU'RAN.
Uh, because Satan is a liar.
It's just that simple.
98zulu nailed it--I decided that Islam was Satanism at about 9:30 a.m. on 9/11/01.
"By their fruits shall ye know them..." says the Bible.
What are the fruits of the followers of Mohammed?
Lies and murder.
Who's the Lord of lies and death?
(I'll ring in here.)
The Devil, that's who.
#16
Regardless of what Islam really is, there is no other way for a deeply religious young man to become a terrorist but that his parents and religion taught him to be that way.
My immigrant forbears taught my parents to be grateful for what a wonderful country they immigrated to and how much better it was than where they came from. This is true of most Americans, and I suspect most muslim immigrants to America. It is clearly not the case with these people in the UK. Yet they have much to be grateful for. It's a lot nicer than Pakistan and the pay is better too.
The post attacking my admittedly harsh comments is self contradictory. You either integrate or you don't. You are either grateful or not. If Islam, as practiced in Leeds, taught people to be content with what they have and to integrate and socialize to an extent with British society, 7/7 would not have happened.
What really concerns me is that we may be able to discourage terrorism by making it clear it's not a winning tactic, but we will still be dealing with people who think it would be understandable and acceptable if it worked.
#17
If Islam is satanism, then why is that Allah(God) promises all the believers who submit to Him The Gardens of Paradise, where as those who are Kafirs-Non Believers, they are promised the Hell Fire?- IT IS WRITTEN AS CLEAR AS DAY IN THE QU'RAN.
#18
I am religious, BTW, and do not consider Islam to be equivalent to Satanism.
However, the death cult nature of the adversary, does remind me of the nutty satanic cults or fads that occasionally flare up in Western countries (think Columbine).
However, I see the West immediately tamping down such attitudes when they emerge while the Islamic world seems to say: "I don't agree, BUT..."
#20
GH8491: If Islam is satanism, then why is that Allah(God) promises all the believers who submit to Him The Gardens of Paradise, where as those who are Kafirs-Non Believers, they are promised the Hell Fire?- IT IS WRITTEN AS CLEAR AS DAY IN THE QU'RAN.
Because bad people don't think of themselves as bad people. Hitler never described what he did as a bad thing - he thought it was a positive good that the world should be cleansed of the lesser races. When Muhammad urged his followers to rape the widows of the soldiers in lands he had conquered, he used the euphemism "marry" to describe their rape. When he committed atrocities, he did them in Allah's name. The Communists who killed tens of millions of people carried out their deeds in the name of the people.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 10:29 Comments ||
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#23
Immigrants optimally integrate in three generations. The first is "old country", who scrape by, work hard and don't usually cause too much trouble. The second generation are neither here-nor-there and often form gangs and mafias. Third generation are pretty well integrated and have lost most ties to the old country. However, in this case, the second generation are being easily manipulated by radicals from other countries who have no intent to really immigrate or to assimilate, just to make trouble. The solution is to first kick out the agitators, then to break up any ghettos of immigrants, to rapidly accelerate integration. Gangs and mafias are crippled if deprived of their 'hoods, and the grinding poverty of a community deprived of economic development. They seek to keep their "people" poor and discontented, both with their lot and society at large, thus protecting the power of the gang.
#25
Moose, I agree. One step would be to have the Imams in the UK record anti-Jihad PSAs for broadcast on UK TV. If they refuse, deport them.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
07/16/2005 11:18 Comments ||
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#26
"a lingering question: why are second-generation British Muslims who should seemingly be farther up the road of assimilation rejecting the country in which they were born and raised?"
Because they see themselves as Muslims in Britain, not British Muslims. Because Islam discourages assimilation. Because they are taught to not fraternize with non-Muslims any more than they absolutely have to. Because they have 7th century attitudes about women and many, many other topics. Because many non-Muslims see them as being to foreign and unassimilated to hire them or to invite thier kids over to play.
IT'S A SELF-INFLICTED WOUND, PEOPLE.
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/16/2005 11:49 Comments ||
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#27
My family's ancestors came to this country from many lands, worked hard, learned English, and fraternized with people of different origins (hence they are from many lands). That's why my grandparents and my parents and my immediate family enjoy the blessings that we do today. And that's why, in my household alone, we have Welsh, Polish, Scottish, Irish, Korean, and Asian Indian backgrounds. We are inclusive to people of good will.
On the other hand, these Muslims are non-inclusive, non-assimilating, and non-adapting. They want the benefits without the obligations. They deserve to go back to their places of family origin and stay there. But they won't go back -- because the very culture that they cherish has made their places of family origin into a hellish wasteland.
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/16/2005 12:10 Comments ||
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#28
Because Moslems are taught to infiltrate non-Moslem lands in order to undermine its culture and take over.
It's a death cult with a very long-term plan. All humans must either submit or die. There is no alternative, according to Islam.
As long as we ignore the long-term aims of Moslems, we won't be able to properly engage and defeat them.
Posted by: Jan ||
07/16/2005 14:36 Comments ||
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#32
Day after day I see information about muslims and the public bullshit story they pedal for the media and the idiots when caught. Then you read the wire transcripts from the same mutts and see what a liar they are. Theirs is a religion of conquest, with a soft set of tactics and some very hard tactics. They simply must not be welcome in civilized nations or the cancer starts. This is a religious war waged by the believers, with a whole pack of followers who come to western nations for the free ride, the material comforts, with absolutely no intention of assimilation or allegiance. WAKE UP people, this is deadly serious!
Posted by: Just About Enough! ||
07/16/2005 15:50 Comments ||
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#33
"If Islam is satanism, then why is that Allah(God) promises all the believers who submit to Him The Gardens of Paradise, where as those who are Kafirs-Non Believers, they are promised the Hell Fire?"
Simple: your so-called "prophet" lied to you.
"Satan threatens you with poverty and orders you to commit Evil deeds & Sins, where as Allah promises you forgiveness from Himself & bounty and All is All-Sufficient for His Creatures' need."
Speaking of poverty and bounty, I would suggest you open your eyes and acknowledge what you see: practically everywhere that Islam has taken hold, we see nothing but poverty, disease, filth, squalor, ignorance, superstition, hatred, shame and violence. And where our Western, infidel ways hold, we have abundance, health and prosperity.
One would think that would tell you something; yet apparently, it does not.
You worship a false god.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
07/16/2005 17:05 Comments ||
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#34
Not only do Moslems worship a false god.
They have been murdering millions and enslaving hundreds of millions in the name of Mohammed's death cult.
Make no mistake: This World War is about defeating Islam.
#35
One step would be to have the Imams in the UK record anti-Jihad PSAs for broadcast on UK TV. If they refuse, deport them.
I like the concept Mrs. D but would those predisposed to violence in Islam's name be swayed or would they see such pronouncements as mere Taqiya, allowable in defense of the faith? That Islam provides a built-in counter argument for the jihadis is likely to severely blunt the effect of any such campaign. And besides, I don't think it's the random non-observant Muslims who'll see a broadcast statement that are going to be the problem in the future, it's the ones who are radicalized in the mosques.
#36
You and I, all of us will face death & our graves one day and the Day of Judgement, As my belief is and will remain for eternity.
For today you believe that what you know is the truth and the ONLY truth, what evidence do you have? For tomorrow is not far, when you shall be proved wrong and have to face the consequences.
Little do you know, with your naive comments, you keep Judging Prophet Muhhamed (pbuh) as an evil figure, read deeper into it and you will realize the complete opposite.
Simply mentioning quotes and opinions from what has been indoctrinated within you via the media,internet etc has blinded you.In addition to this, if there is a society that has been built to the opposite of that of which you live in well then obviously you are going to feel hatred towards it, for they practice everything you dont,its different to what you consider normal, but then who decides what is normal?
The truth will be revealed. Only for some of us, we are blessed and know it before you.
Oh and false gods? There is ONLY one God, And that is Allah-swt. My belief is mine.
Crazy fool I checked out the site and the Qu'ran has been completely taken out of context, as they have only displayed the verses against the unbelivers and plus, parts of it are completely untrue.
But why should an unbeliver be rewarded if he has not done anything to recieve the reward including believing that Allah -swt is One and has no partners and believing in the Qu'ran.
#37
as they have only displayed the verses against the unbelivers
Interesting. How many verses against the 'unbelievers' are there in the Koran?
How does one know if they are dealing with an unbeliever?
If they are an unbeliever today, and you treat them wrongly, what if they become a believer in your Johnny-come-lately religion later?
You'll just rot, worm food, fool. True terror, for you, is the realization that you're a fool, wasting your life, that no one and nothing is coming to save you. You're fucked, because you've never, not once in your pathetic existence, thought for yourself, taken off the blinders and looked at your belief system in the light of day, or had the balls to make your own choices - and live with your decisions. You're a coward, a fool, a tool, a puppet, a slave, and a waste of life. Crawl back into your hole, cretin.
#40
"By their fruits shall ye know them." The "fruits" of Islam are "conversion" by the sword, death, enslavement, reversion to the 8th Century, complete loss of freedom, and worship of a cult of death...totally bereft of love, praise for God, or respect for others. This Satanic cult MUST be expunged from theis planet!
#44
Of course you "know" the truth-- just like Marshall Applewhite and his Heaven's Gate followers just "knew" back in 1997 that by killing themselves, their souls would be magically transported onto an alien spaceship hiding behind Comet Hale-Bopp.
There is absolutely no difference between their "knowing" and yours. Poor, deluded sod...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
07/16/2005 20:23 Comments ||
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#45
[A] society that has been built to the opposite of that of which you live in well then obviously you are going to feel hatred towards it ....
No, hate, loathing, and intolerance flow most "naturally" from the Muslim perspective. Personally I liken Islam to the cockroach: so long as it stays out of my kitchen I am fine with allowing it to do whatever it chooses with the course of its own pathetic existence. One does not hate a cockroach in one's kitchen, one merely squishes it and moves on.
#46
Iâm a Muslim and a Londoner, what happened wasn't Islamic and no one can prove it was or had any thing to-do with the Islamic faith.
Instead of reading extracts from the Quran, which are taken out of context to help the writer prove his/her point. Why not get a copy of the holy Quran and read it for yourself? After that whatever your opinion is, will probably be worth listening to, but before so anyone can make statements wrapped up in ignorance and hatred.
They say donât judge the car by the driver, this phrase can be easily applied to religion too, Islam isn't the fastest growing religion in the west for no reason
There is no justification for what has happened but why should the wider Muslim community be made to suffer the actions of 4 individuals
One thing that has become even more evident is the rampant ignorance and prejudice among people especially on this site
There really isn't any point telling us that: you need to tell that to the Muslims among you who claim it is Islamic, and keep telling them, as loudly as necessary, until they damn well get it.
And if they won't heed that message, and persist in preaching murderous jihad against us "infidels", then report them to the authorities BEFORE they commit their evil deeds.
Otherwise, you've got scant grounds for complaining to us about our "prejudice" and our tendency to lump the lot of you all together at times like this.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
07/16/2005 20:54 Comments ||
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#50
"They did not agree with what Mr. Tanweer had done, but made clear they shared the same sense of otherness, the same sense of siege, the same sense that their community, and Muslims in general, were in their view helpless before the whims of greater powers. Ultimately, they understood his anger..."
"A recent poll commissioned by The Guardian found that 84 percent of Muslims surveyed were against the use of violence for political means, but only 33 percent of Muslims said they wanted more integration into mainstream British culture. "
So, is otherness forced upon them or have they themselves chosen otherness? By their own votes, they have chosen to separate themselves from the host's society. The HOST's society.
A toast-here's to Westerners who refuse to be scapegoats and martyrs for Muslims' unhappiness.
#51
A word of warning to the rabid GH Moslem: I, and many other Westerners, have read the Koran because of 9/11 --and we have connected the dots between the death cult it promotes and the destruction Moslems have wrought on the world in the last 1400 years.
The days of your death cult are counted, just as the days of the Nazi, the Bushido Japanese, the Soviet, the Aztec, and the Carthaginian were counted. The Western world will utterly destroy your cult.
Keep murdering in the name of your false god and die by the sword you keep drawing --or become a decent, free human being willing to pursue happiness on Earth. Ultimately the choice is yours --and our freedom is and will remain ours.
#53
That's pretty much what we thought until 9/11: "At the end of the day, My belief is mine and your belief is yours. "
BUT the Moslem death cult has shown its refusal to leave others live in peace.
SO we will make Islamofascists pay until your death cult is finished.
And then we will benefit from Western medicine, defeat cancer, colonize Mars, develop ever-more powerful computers, and live for hundreds of years --while Moslems keep dying in their abject poverty, willing slavery and parasitic misery.
#54
Bear with me folks, this is long-winded but does have a point.
Lots of interesting assumptions in there my Muslim friend. For example, what makes you so certain that commenters here have not read the Qur'an or the Ahadith or the interpretations of same by Islamic scholars? Personally I found them enlightening (albeit not in the way you might suppose) but ultimately not convincing.
For example and to illustrate a basic point: we in the west are routinely treated to assertions by Muslims that jihad is merely the struggle against temptation (jihad al-nafs), on occasion weâre also told that it is the struggle against the personification of evil (jihad al-Shaytaan, or literally the âstruggle against Satanâ), but always weâre told, quite truthfully, that those are merely peaceful inner struggles or requirements that Muslims speak out against evil. The adventurous commentator will also point out that such peaceful struggles are incumbent upon all Muslims, also quite true.
What is rarely, if ever, acknowledged is that Islam also requires of the Umma (Islamic nation) jihad against munaafiqeen (hypocrites) and kaffir (oppressors, infidels, unbelievers, non-Muslims). Jihad against the munaafiqeen and kaffirs is accomplished via four mechanisms: with the heart, the tongue, oneâs wealth and oneself. But all jihad is not equal, âJihad with one's hand (i.e., physical jihad, fighting) if one is able. If that is not possible then it should be with one's tongue (i.e., by speaking out). If that is not possible then it should be with one's heart (i.e., by hating the evil and feeling that it is wrong).â (Zaad al-Maâaad, 3/9-11). And, âThe greatest form of jihad is jihad with oneâs self (i.e., going oneself and fighting), followed by jihad with one's wealth, jihad by speaking out and guiding others. Daâwah is also part of jihad. But going out oneself to fight in jihad is the highest form).â (Fataawa al-Shaykh Ibn Baaz, 7/334, 335).
Such Jihad talab (against the kaffir, fought in dar al harb) via qitaal (fighting with weapons, war) is sanctioned by Muhammed as narrated in the Ahadith, ââI have been commanded to fight the people until they bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allaah, and establish regular prayer, and pay zakaah. If they do that, then they have protected their blood and their wealth from me, except in cases decreed by Islamic law, and their reckoning with be with Allah.â (Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 25; Muslim, 20).
The vital distinction between the various types of jihad is usually utterly lost on non-Muslims (most probably because theyâre asleep well before reaching this point in the discussion). Jihad al-nafs and jihad al-Shaytaan are required of all Muslims while jihad against the munaafiqeen and kaffir are required only of the Umma as a whole and not of any particular Muslim. That is, so long as a sufficient number of Muslims are waging jihad against the munaafiqeen and kaffir, all others need not join in as the ones actively participating satisfy the obligation of the Umma. Neat isnât it?
Further it is critical to evaluate any statements made by a Muslim in light of the doctrine of taqiya (pretense, dissimilation, lying, concealment, etc. of oneâs true goals and the nature of Islam to protect oneself from the evils of the kaffir and, most especially, to protect or advance the faith itself).
Now consider a few hypothetical statements in light of the above discussion of jihad and taqiya
1. âJihad is the peaceful inner struggle against temptation.â True but only a partial truth.
2. âTo kill innocents is not allowed in Islam.â Leaving aside the possibility of their being no innocent non-Muslims taqiya will allow the Muslim speaker to make this statement to defend the faith against the anger of the kaffir.
3. âI do not believe in violence.â Violent physical struggle (qitaal) against the kaffir isnât required of the speaker so long as a sufficient number of those from the Umma are already carrying that burden.
We could play this game all evening but you get the idea. The âlogicâ of Islam that those raised with it find so elegant is merely childish circular reasoning sprinkled with enough deception to keep the kaffir off balance.
#55
And GH, you can keep your freedom, too, just don't mess with mine!
I once thought some of the best 'Christians' I ever knew were Muslim. I saw more kindness and care for fellow humans in Morocco that in several other places.
No, I do not want to convert to anything else - I admire aspects of Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddists,and Jews, but happen to attend a Methodist (protestant Christian) church. 'Live and let live', as the saying goes, or failing that, - if that's not good enought for you, then - like the James Bond song goes - 'Live and Let Die'.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 21:44 Comments ||
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#56
And GH, you can keep your freedom, too, just don't mess with mine!
I once thought some of the best 'Christians' I ever knew were Muslim. I saw more kindness and care for fellow humans in Morocco that in several other places.
No, I do not want to convert to anything else - I admire aspects of Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddists,and Jews, but happen to attend a Methodist (protestant Christian) church. 'Live and let live', as the saying goes, or failing that, - if that's not good enought for you, then - like the James Bond song goes - 'Live and Let Die'.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 21:44 Comments ||
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#57
There's a first time for everything - including double postings. The Burg seems a bit slow tonight, no?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 21:46 Comments ||
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#58
#51 A word of warning to the rabid GH Moslem: I, and many other Westerners, have read the Koran because of 9/11 --and we have connected the dots between the death cult it promotes and the destruction Moslems have wrought on the world in the last 1400 years
well i can see this isn't getting anywhere, when reading something determined to hate it and the people that follow it, with such a narrow stream of thought nothing is really gonna come out of reading the Quran. just to mention a few,
the christian crusades
tamil tigers of siri lanka (Hindu)
IRA (catholic)
present day isreal (Jewish)
the Bush adminisration (satan!)
the indian army in kashmire (speaking as a kashmiri)
the actions of these people wouldn't you consider that as destrustion and vilations of human rights ( especially in kashmire why do you think they've been fighting for the past 50 years, for their basic human rights)
i could go on ...the last 1400 years,
its quiet easy when there is a group of people to blame, building your understanding of a situation purily from media which is obviously bias and inaccuarte most of the time
#59
Nobody is taking your 'freedom' away, keep it for all I care.
Why the scare quotes around freedom, there GH? Are you afraid of TRUE freedom? You know, the kind where you actually research each and every religion/belief system and come to your own conclusions, instead of being brainwashed and beating your head on the floor "praying" toward Mecca? Here's my summary....You and your death cult go all the way back to (basically) a family feud. You see, you are spawn of Ishmael, while the Jews (and, thus, the Christians) were spawn of Issac. Let's see whom the TRUE God favors. Don't mean/want to break this down to a religious flame-fest, but check out Genesis 16:11-12, then Gen. 17:10, and then Genesis 17: 19-21. God makes his covenant with the seed of Abraham (Issac, his son), and Ishmael shall "be a wild man, his hand will be against every man, and every man's hands against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren." In other words, Ishmael was an illigitimate child (by Abram's wife's maidservant) who would war against his step-brothers and their descendants (the Jews). Sound familiar anyone?
Posted by: BA ||
07/16/2005 21:48 Comments ||
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#60
BA - so current events are a fullfullment of prophecy from Genesis? Whoa! Writen over 3,000 years ago? Before even Nostradameus? How cosmic! That stuff is twice as old as GH's!
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 22:05 Comments ||
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#61
uhhhhh, GH?
The LTTE (google it) attacks Buddhists, not mohammedeans.
The glorious Crusades were a response to the aggressive depradations of mohammedeans.
The entire history of mohammedism has been one of aggression or war. Today, almost every conflict is between mohammedeans and other mohammedeans, or sometime non-mohammedeans. Mohammedism=war.
And, I sure hope you notice what I am calling that cult of yours. Worshipping a man who claimed to be the final profit. Nothing but a arab rascist.
#63
GH will be along shortly to describe how Islam, which came last of the major middle eastern religions, has abrogated all the corrupted faiths that came before. Right GH?
#64
GH, speaking as a Kashmiri, you are full of sh*t:
Kashmir is part of India. Hellooooooo!
You Sunni bastards got Pakistan--and how much blood has been shed over that?!
Plenty.
The whole of Islamic history is soaked in blood--all 1400 years of it--starting with Mohammed and we don't feel like wearing stilts to walk amongst the gajillion severed heads you've hacked off.
You people are going down and I'm going to help.
Crusade: Bring it on!
#65
GH - Kashmiri? Worthless muslim ghetto dweller more likely - troll in the 21st century. We don't need to change your belief or opinion. You'll die ignorant, bigoted, backwards and wrong. Inshallah!
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/16/2005 22:26 Comments ||
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#66
Bobby, not a "fulfillment of prophecy" per se. In fact, technically, I guess, it was just a prediction (at the time of Ishmael's birth) of how Ishmael himself would act. GH (and many Muslims I've spoke with) would probably say that "we share the same book with you", except the part of Issac and Ishmael. Issac was born of Sarai (Sarah), Abraham's wife. Ishmael was born of Hagar, Sarai's maidservant (and thus, illegitimate). This seems to be the ROOT separation of Judeo-Christian beliefs vs. Muslims. You see, Muslims believe that Abraham went up to sacrifice his son, ISHMAEL (not Issac, like the Torah and the Bible state). You see, the mooselimbs changed that some (just guessing here) 1,700 years later in their "holy book", whereas the Torah and Bible have always said it was Isaac (not Ishmael) that Abraham was to kill, and thus, it was Isaac's seed that would covenant with God. I (assume) take it you're not Christian (or at least, skeptical of Christianity), but this is a MAJOR point. Many scholars believe that the modern day middle east population generally descends from the line of Ishmael, which makes my quote even more interesting (from Genesis), as his descendants (generally Muslim) have been warring since their belief system was founded against everyone they live among. Before big Mo's "religion" was founded (600's AD), Ishmael's descendants would be all those nations/tribes that the Hebrews (the nation of Israel) were fighting against (from the time of Abraham on up through the time of Christ, and as many scholars believe, up to today). Thus, the hatred of the Joooooos having a nation of Israel, where they did 1,000's of years ago, under covenant w/ God. I don't mean to make this a religious flame-fest, or "simplify" it to a family feud (Issac and Ishmael were half-brothers), but many of the Christian faith see it that way (or at least take that scripture to mean what it says...that Ishmael would be a "wild man" and would be against all men and all men would be against him). That, to me, explains the whole Muslim belief system....keep to yourself, don't associate with infidels, it's "us" vs. "them", all un-believers are the "others," etc. Heck, even so-called "moderate" Muslims I've known have told me that they couldn't bring me to their mosque because they'd feel uncomfortable. I invite them to my church many times, even for a non-religious memorial service just after 9/11, and it's "NOPE, can't do it." That's what I was getting at about true freedom...the kind where you research it yourself and make up your own mind.
Posted by: BA ||
07/16/2005 22:46 Comments ||
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#67
BA - those were exceptional posts and should be repeated to everyone who states that we must strive to understand the "root causes" of this conflict. Bravo!
#68
to displace corrupt dictators in the Muslim world,
So they're working on Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc. too? Or does that not attract the media the way New York and London does?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 9:20 Comments ||
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#69
Always for "the better good"
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 10:29 Comments ||
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#70
And GH, you can keep your freedom, too, just don't mess with mine!
I once thought some of the best 'Christians' I ever knew were Muslim. I saw more kindness and care for fellow humans in Morocco that in several other places.
No, I do not want to convert to anything else - I admire aspects of Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddists,and Jews, but happen to attend a Methodist (protestant Christian) church. 'Live and let live', as the saying goes, or failing that, - if that's not good enought for you, then - like the James Bond song goes - 'Live and Let Die'.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 21:44 Comments ||
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#71
And GH, you can keep your freedom, too, just don't mess with mine!
I once thought some of the best 'Christians' I ever knew were Muslim. I saw more kindness and care for fellow humans in Morocco that in several other places.
No, I do not want to convert to anything else - I admire aspects of Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddists,and Jews, but happen to attend a Methodist (protestant Christian) church. 'Live and let live', as the saying goes, or failing that, - if that's not good enought for you, then - like the James Bond song goes - 'Live and Let Die'.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 21:44 Comments ||
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#72
There's a first time for everything - including double postings. The Burg seems a bit slow tonight, no?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 21:46 Comments ||
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#73
BA - so current events are a fullfullment of prophecy from Genesis? Whoa! Writen over 3,000 years ago? Before even Nostradameus? How cosmic! That stuff is twice as old as GH's!
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 22:05 Comments ||
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As Britain stepped up its global investigation into the London bombings, Egypt on Friday announced the arrest of an Egyptian biochemist in Cairo while the British police admitted that another potential suspect had escaped detection because he was not considered a serious security risk.
Sir Ian Blair, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said Friday that a man on a security "watch list" arrived in Britain several weeks ago but was not considered a high enough priority to be placed under full surveillance. The man left Britain several days before the bombings, two senior counterterrorism officials said.
Sir Ian declined to characterize the man's importance to the investigation, but investigators said Friday that they had not established a link between him and the July 7 bombing operation that killed at least 54 people and wounded 700.
Two British officials said the discovery that the man, who was not identified, had slipped through the nation's security net had caused some embarrassment for MI5, the domestic intelligence agency. The officials said they had learned of the man's movements during a review this week of the intelligence gathered in the weeks before the bombings.
Sir Ian confirmed that the investigation had broadened in scope and predicted that eventually investigators would prove that Al Qaeda's network was involved. "What we expect to find at some stage is that there is clear Al Qaeda link, a clear Al Qaeda approach," he said in a BBC radio interview.
For those links, the investigators are searching in Britain and around the world, relying on the help of a number of other countries. "There is a Pakistan connection, and there are connections in other countries," Mr. Blair said, though he did not identify the other countries.
[Reuters reported from Pakistan that agencies looking into the London attacks had made four arrests in raids in the Osman Town neighborhood of Faisalabad, but what connection the arrests might have to the London bombings was not clear.]
In Egypt, the Interior Ministry confirmed that the police had arrested Magdy Mahmoud Mustafa el-Nashar, a 33-year-old Egyptian biochemist, in Cairo, where he was being questioned by British and Egyptian investigators.
Mr. Nashar "denied having any connection with the latest events that occurred in London, and he pointed out that all his belongings are in his apartment in Britain," the Interior Ministry statement said.
It added that Mr. Nashar had left Britain for a "scholastic vacation that would last for a month and a half, and he intends to return to Britain to continue his studies."
Three senior counterterrorism officials said questioning Mr. Nashar was crucial to the investigation, but they added that it was still too early to determine whether he had played any role in the plot.
The British police say three of the suicide bombers who lived in Leeds had traveled south and met together on July 7 at the train station in Luton, 40 miles north of London, with a fourth man, identified as Lindsay Germaine, a British citizen born in Jamaica.
More details emerged today about Mr. Germaine, who worshipped at the same mosque in Brixton as Richard C. Reid, the convicted shoe-bomber, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man indicted in the United States in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, several American officials said.
In a pub called the Hobgoblin in Aylesbury more than a year ago, presumably before he converted to Islam, Mr. Germaine pushed someone down a flight of stairs and was barred from the premises, said Lee-Anne Brown, a 19-year-old waitress.
Two men who attend the Leeds Grand Mosque said Mr. Germaine resurfaced there last fall, and one said he was seen there as recently as a few weeks ago, saying he planned to move back to Leeds. A 24-year-old Egyptian man who gave his name only as Ahmad said that last November, Mr. Germaine spent close to 10 nights at the mosque praying and helping serve food during Ramadan.
Zaher Birawi, a spokesman for the mosque, said he did not know Mr. Germaine, and denied that he had spent nights there.
The police were still present at Mr. Germaine's squat, bay-windowed home in Leeds on Friday, removing a computer hard drive in a plastic bag. Investigators searched a community center and removed computers and raided and sealed off Iqra, an Islamic bookshop, where one of the bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, once worked, according to a shopkeeper there. Another bomber, Shehzad Tanweer, lived near the shop.
The family of one of the bombers, Hasib Mir Hussain, 18, on Friday night described their son as a "loving and normal young man who gave us no concern" and said they were devastated by his role in the attacks.
"Our thoughts are with all the bereaved families, and we have to live ourselves with the loss of our son in these difficult circumstances," the family said in a statement issued by the West Yorkshire police. "We had no knowledge of his activities, and had we done, we would have done everything in our power to stop him. We urge anyone with information about these events, or leading up to them, to cooperate fully with the authorities."
In another development in the investigation, Mr. Khan, 30, was said to have had ties to a man arrested last spring in police raids, code-named Operation Crevice, against a terrorist plot involving ethnic Pakistanis, according to an American law enforcement official. The official added that European security services had observed the two traveling together, although he could not say where.
Two officials said Friday that a Pakistani-American named Mohammed Junaid Babar, who pleaded guilty in June 2004 to providing material support to Al Qaeda, had told investigators he also knew Mr. Khan. Mr. Babar, who grew up in Queens, agreed to cooperate with Manhattan prosecutors after his arrest in March 2004, officials have said.
He admitted to smuggling money, night-vision goggles, and other military equipment to Afghanistan, where he also set up a training camp for Islamic extremists and worked to aid a plot to blow up pubs, train stations and restaurants in Britain. Shortly after his arrest, the Operation Crevice raids arrested the plotters in Britain, officials have said.
It was unclear exactly how Mr. Babar knew Mr. Khan. Earlier this week, Mr. Babar was provided with the names of the London plotters, and possibly with poor photographs of one or more of them, and said he did not know them, an official said. On Thursday, after he was shown a better photograph, he was able to identify Mr. Khan, the official said.
European counterterrorism officials who initially said the bombers had used military-grade explosives have been told by the British police that the bombs were made, in part at least, from a cruder, home-made substance called TATP. It was also identified in the explosives used by the so-called Mr. Reid, the shoe-bomber, in his failed attempt to attack a Paris-Miami flight in December 2001.
TATP stands for triacetone triperoxide and is used almost exclusively by terrorists and favored by Palestinian bomb makers, experts say, since it is too unstable for commercial or military use.
Two senior officials said Friday that they had found TATP in one of the houses and one of the cars searched in Leeds. The "working assumption," one official said, is that the same kind of explosives were used in the London attacks.
Underscoring that the investigation is still in its initial phase, Sir Ian said in the BBC interview that the four suicide bombers were mere "foot soldiers," adding that the organizers are still at large. He acknowledged the amorphous nature of terrorist cells, as well as limitations of British law, which do not give the police and prosecutors the sweeping powers to arrest and hold suspects, as is the case in countries like France, Spain and Italy.
"Al Qaeda does not act like some classic Graham Greene cell," Sir Ian said. "It has very loose affiliations. and we have got to find the bankers, the chemists and the trainers all the people who are assisting in this."
Scotland Yard is combing through enormous piles of telephone records, and several intelligence services of friendly countries were helping analyze the calls trying to detect any connection or lead that can help the investigation. The new breed of terrorists, particularly since the March 2004 bombings in Madrid, do not use cellphones in their communications, so searching the calls is a fruitless exercise, a European intelligence official said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/16/2005 00:29 ||
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FROM Kabul to Kingâs Cross, the sinister links of international terrorism are now beginning to emerge from the wreckage of the bomb-blasted Underground trains and the double decker bus.
The ingredients for the bombs match the recommended elements for an explosive device outlined in al-Qaeda documents found abandoned in the basements of houses in Kabul soon after the Taleban and their foreign terrorist acolytes fled the Afghan capital in November 2001.
A reporter from The Times found hundreds of documents, spelling out al-Qaedaâs blueprints for making every type of bomb, from high-explosive devices to improvised nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
He uncovered huge piles of pages in Arabic, Urdu, Persian, Mandarin, Russian and even English. One of the documents included a list of chemicals found in household products which could produce an effective explosive mix when combined with other elements.
The hand-written formula included using triacetone triperoxide (TATP), also known as acetone peroxide and nicknamed âMother of Satanâ because of its volatility; and also their own version of C4, the military plastic explosive. TATP is a primer for an explosive device.
Security sources indicated yesterday that a version of the Kabul blueprint, based on TATP, had been used by the bomb-maker involved in the London terrorist attacks.
The presence of acetone peroxide stamps a link not only with al-Qaeda but also with previous bomb plots, including the attempt by Richard Reid, the Muslim-convert Briton who tried to blow up an airliner in December 2001, and the plot by Saajid Badat, another Briton,who was arrested in November 2003 after aborting a plan to blow up an airliner with explosives in a sock.
Acetone peroxide was found in the heel of Reidâs black basketball shoes after he was overpowered on board a Boeing 767 American Airlines aircraft in December 2001. There was also an element of PETN, a military-style plastic explosive that can be moulded into any shape.
The al-Qaeda formula for explosives has now found its way into the Leeds homes of the London bombers, although since the shoe-bomber plot and the early designs drawn up in the Kabul documents, there have been many refinements.
The bombs detonated in the Underground and on the bus appear to have been a carefully balanced mix of commercially available materials and military-style ingredients. The evidence of this explosive primer in the four London bombs indicates for the first time that the ingredients were acquired in this country and not brought in from abroad.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/16/2005 00:25 ||
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Fuckwit journalists who haven't got a clue - Improvised nuclear weapons - yeh, right!
Otherwise, this is more evil mastermind crap. Someone must have made those nice muslim boys do this. Ergo there's an evil mastermind behind it. It took me 30 seconds to find the formula for TAPT, including how to use it to make detonators. No need to contact AQ.
#3
This is just the beginning of Al-Quaida's purging of the infidels! Soon all Western Civilization will be destroyed!!! And I'll personally behead you, phil_b. FOR ISLAM!!!!!!!
Posted by: Murat ||
07/16/2005 17:34 Comments ||
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Boy! This guy's scarin' me! Can't we stop him? Oh, NNNNNOOOOOOOooooooooooooo!!!!
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 18:01 Comments ||
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4.3
Piss Poor Murat Immitation.
No defense of the cowardly Turkish Army in Korea
No screeching about RC and the deadly Bedwettian
No funny lies about the British Bank bombs
Piss poor. Improvement is desperately needed. May be retained.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/16/2005 23:45 Comments ||
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This is just the beginning of Al-Quaida's purging of the infidels! Soon all Western Civilization will be destroyed!!! And I'll personally behead you, phil_b. FOR ISLAM!!!!!!!
Posted by: Murat ||
07/16/2005 17:34 Comments ||
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I wonder what's riled him up all of a sudden. Did he forget to drink his coffee this morning?
The head of a British-based Saudi opposition group laughed off the U.S. government freezing his organization's assets, saying he had no assets and no links to Al-Qaeda. Another Saudi-run association named by U.S. officials as a possible conduit for terror financing denied it was channeling funds to Islamist extremists. The U.S. government Thursday froze the assets of the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA) and said the group's head, Saad al-Faqih, was on the UN list of people associated with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
The freeze came a day after U.S. officials expressed concern about three other Saudi-run associations that operate around the world - the International Islamic Relief Organization, the World Association of Muslim Youth, and the Muslim World League. Stuart Levey, U.S. Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, accused Faqih of using MIRA to provide Al-Qaeda with recruits and public relations help. Faqih, an exiled Saudi dissident, denied the allegations and said Washington was targeting him because of the threat he and his organization posed to the Saudi government, a U.S. ally. He said MIRA aimed to topple the Saudi monarchy by peaceful means.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/16/2005 00:00 ||
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We need some "targeted killings a la Sharon" on one or two saudi wahabbi bankers and one or two saudi wahabbi mullahs.............
The following are excerpts from interviews with the director of the Al-Maqreze Centre for Historical Studies, Dr. Hani Al-Sibai. The first aired on Al-Jazeera TV on July 8, 2005; in it, Al-Siba'i discussed the London bombings.
Al-Siba'i: "The term 'civilians' does not exist in Islamic religious law. Dr. Karmi is sitting here, and I am sitting here, and I'm familiar with religious law. There is no such term as 'civilians' in the modern Western sense. People are either of Dar Al-Harb or not.
"These institutes, like the Islamic Association [of Britain], represent white-collar people, the effendis, people with 'prestige.' They only represent their own interests and do not mix in society. They don't know... Ask other Muslims... People see them only on their TV screens. They don't participate in the demonstrations for the poor. They are not interested in people's problems. We invite them, and they don't show up."
Host: "The Muslim Association of Britain represents 400 Islamic organizations..."
Al-Siba'i: "These are all interest groups. With all due respect, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Sheik Moududi group do business with one another."
Host: "Are you claiming they are not Muslims?"
Al-Siba'i: "They are behind all these movements. They promote some people nobody has heard of. Then they promote some journalists."
Host: "Excuse me, who do you want to promote? Those who want the banner of 'There is no god but Allah' over the Queen of England and Buckingham Palace? Those who want to establish a caliphate and turn the Queen of England into a captive? Those who say [England] is Dar Al-Harb and property there can be plundered? Are those the kind of people you want?"
Al-Siba'i: "These associations do not represent the Muslim public. They collaborate with the British police for certain interests. They want an 'English Islam,' and not the Islam that was sent to the Prophet Muhammad. If Al-Qa'ida indeed carried out this act, it is a great victory for it. It rubbed the noses of the world's eight most powerful countries in the mud. This victory is a blow to the economy..."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/16/2005 00:00 ||
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As military officials barked orders, more than 300 civilians gathered in the morning hours to practice saluting and precision marching in preparation for possible war.
There were homemakers and retirees, lawyers and street vendors, all volunteers of a newly expanded army reserve force that President Hugo Chavez is organizing to defend the country against the United States and other threats.
"The United States is the only superpower, but if the people are united we can defeat them," said Arnaldo Cerniar, a 65-year-old retired credit officer who began training three months ago. "We need to defend the country against any aggression." Chavez's recent decision to expand Venezuela's reserve force to as many as 2 million people is only one indication of the growing tensions between this oil-rich nation and the U.S. Although Venezuela continues to sell large quantities of oil to the United States, Chavez has threatened to cut off supplies in the event of an American invasion. U.S. officials have dismissed the idea of a military attack on Venezuela.
Nonetheless, Chavez is seeking to diversify crude-oil sales away from the U.S. and has reoriented Venezuela's foreign policy toward its Latin American neighbors and other nations, such as Iran. Chavez recently signed a pact with 13 Caribbean nations to sell them discounted oil and has pushed oil and gas accords with South American nations to counter U.S. power in the region.
So far, U.S. efforts to isolate Chavez diplomatically have failed.
At a recent meeting of the Organization of American States, the U.S. couldn't muster enough support to set up a permanent committee to monitor democracy in the region, a proposal that was widely interpreted as aimed at Venezuela.
William LeoGrande, dean of the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington and an expert on Latin America, said OAS members rejected the measure because Chavez is democratically elected and because the U.S. is disliked in a region where free-market measures have failed to ease poverty.
He said the OAS failure leaves the U.S. with few options to contain Chavez.
"The problem the administration has is that there are not many levers the U.S. can use," LeoGrande said. "As a principal supplier of oil, Venezuela is still commercially important to the U.S."
Many argue that the U.S. criticism has allowed Chavez to benefit politically by playing the nationalist card.
"Every time Condoleezza Rice attacks Chavez, his approval rating goes up 2 or 3 percentage points," said Luis Vicente Leon, a pollster and Chavez critic.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin told ministers on Friday they must work harder to crush violent insurgents in the North Caucasus region, a six-year-old election pledge that still eludes the Kremlin chief.
Putin was making a rare visit to the mountainous region on Russia's southern flank, scene of a long fight with separatist rebels in Chechnya and worsening violence in neighbouring Dagestan that has spilled over from Chechnya.
Putin's previously unpublicised arrival in Dagestan's capital, Makhachkala, was his first time in the region since the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 2004 Beslan school siege in which over 300 people -- half of them children -- were killed.
"In the past few years a lot of work has been done in the North Caucasus and the south of Russia," Putin told ministers and military commanders in camouflage fatigues.
"But from the point of view of fighting organised crime and terrorism, the situation remains fairly difficult and we can't say we have done everything possible so that we can feel relaxed," Putin said in televised remarks.
Dressed in a black polo shirt and shadowed by guards with automatic weapons, Putin toured a secret service training centre and flew in a military helicopter to inspect a border patrol tasked with intercepting armed groups.
Putin was catapulted from relative obscurity into the presidency in 1999 after promising to "wipe out" Chechen separatist rebels behind a spate of bombings and kidnappings that cost hundreds of lives.
Russian troops have restored Moscow's control over most of Chechnya and violence has subsided. The separatists' leader, Aslan Maskhadov, was killed earlier this year.
But attacks -- including the Beslan siege carried out by Chechen gunmen -- persist and are spreading beyond Chechnya.
Opposition politicians say the failure to contain the insurgency gives the otherwise popular Putin a serious credibility problem.
The constitution bars him from running again when his second term ends in 2008 but analysts say the Kremlin will try to convince voters to choose a Putin loyalist to succeed him.
In Makhachkala, scene of a July 1 bomb that killed 10 Russian servicemen, Putin upbraided his commanders for using the wrong tactics against armed rebels.
"When you encounter problems in the fight against terrorism, you send in regular units, but they don't have any special training or equipment," Putin said.
He said security should be tightened on the border between the Russian North Caucasus and the ex-Soviet states of Georgia and Azerbaijan. Security experts say rebel fighters often escape across the mountainous frontier.
Putin reviewed plans to set up two new military bases in the North Caucasus to help patrol the border.
He also ordered Economic Development Minister German Gref to speed up a programme to relieve poverty in the region, which he said provided fertile ground for rebel recruiters.
In mainly Muslim Dagestan, violent attacks on police and officials have escalated sharply.
Analysts blame a combination of organised crime and Islamist militants sympathetic to the Chechen separatists.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/16/2005 00:52 ||
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In other news, Putin ordered the Russian GDP to grow at 8% annually and a doubling of the birth rate of ethnic Russians.
Its one thing to order your army to do something, and another to HAVE an army capable of doing it. In the US Army, such a command forces commanders to listen to those "wild sounding" suggestions from the iconoclasts under them. You know, the kind of guys who, when they retire, go online under the nom-de-internet of Old Patriot. Our culture infuses our armed forces and gives them as much flexibility and creativity that it gives our economy. That sort of "creative rebellion" that we manage so well in all our institutions is in short supply in Russia, which has a history of viewing such behavior as deviant and a threat to the state.
Lefty wingnuts note: You're not "creatively rebellious", since y'all just bitch and moan without contributing a damn thing to solving the problem. Or else you have a "surefire plan" that you won't divulge unless you're elected President.
via Barcepundit. His Spanish translation is better than mine would be
AS IF THERE WAS still any doubt at this point, the Spanish press reports today on a document found in the computer of one of the key perpetrators of the March 11 terrorist attacks in Madrid (link in Spanish, my translation):
A document found in the personal computer of Jamal Ahmidan, "The Chinese", undersigned by the Abu Hafs al Masri brigades and dated March 15, 2004 declares that the March 11 perpetrators intented to remove [Aznar's] Popular Party from the government.
The document was recently found by police, according to the Cope radio network who has seen it. It says: "those who were suprised for our quick claim of responsibility in the battle of Madrid, let them know that there were other circumstances. In the case of Madrid, the time factor was very important in order to put an end to the government of Aznar the ignoble.
The night of March 11, the Abu Hafs al Masri brigades sent the London daily 'al Hayat' a statement claiming responsibility for what they called the "operation trains of death". The same group claimed responsibility last July 9 of the terror attacks in London.
"Let all know that we're a part of the so-called world order. We change states, we destroy others with Allah's help and even decide the future of the world's economy. We won't accept being mere passive agents in this world", the text found in Jamal Ahmidan's computer, one of the main perpetrators of the March 11 cells and who blew himself up in Leganes a few days later together with other co-participants, warns.
Apparently, this statement was a response to intelligence services who questioned the authenticity of the first claim of responsibility sent by the brigades only a few hours after the Atocha [station] attacks.
The text also contains strong criticism of Western leaders, particularly [Spain's] former Primer Minister Jose Maria Aznar, described as the "tail of the American tyrants".
ABC (the Madrid newspaper, not the American or Australian TV network) reports further (also in Spanish) and reminds a very telling detail: when he was brought before a judge after the first 72 hours in isolation (permitted by Spanish anti-terror legislation), the first thing asked by Jamal Zougam, another of the key suspects of March 11, was: "Who won the election?".
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
07/16/2005 16:10 ||
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Suh-prize, suh-prize.
NOT.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/16/2005 21:23 Comments ||
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The Commission investigating the March 11, 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid recently concluded that since the late 1990s, foreign radical Islamists have been using Spain for jihadist activities in support of al-Qaedaâs terrorist operations, particularly al-Zarqawiâs anti-Coalition attacks in Iraq. [1] On-going counter-terrorism investigations reveal that Salafist Islamists traveled to Spain in the late 1990s to early 2000s to organize a network of cells for recruiting suicide bombers for operations in Iraq, Bosnia, and elsewhere and, for terrorist training in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and Indonesia. These foreign jihadists played a significant role in creating and organizing the cells that were involved in 9/11, conducted the Madrid attacks (11-M), and planned to bomb the National High Court. Moreover, the National Center of Intelligence (NCI) has identified numerous Muslim immigrants who have recently left Spain to join the insurgency in Iraq.
The 11-M Commission details that senior cell members were connected in one way or another to the 2003 Casablanca attacks in Morocco and had relations with other Islamic terrorist organizations such as Ansar al-Islam and al-Qaeda. Cell members were connected to Ansar al-Islam, Algerian and Moroccan Salafist groups, to Zarqawiâs âal-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Riversâ and to al-Qaeda proper. A significant majority of the 104 Muslims connected to the 11-M attacks are Moroccan. For example, the Imam of the Mosque in El Portillo, Toledo, Tensamani Jad, regularly called for jihad in his sermons; among those attending were various Muslims implicated in the 11-M attacks. Jad was detained in Morocco due to his ties to the Casablanca attacks. [2]
Spanish terrorism experts have identified Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas aka Abu Dahdah (of Syrian origin) as head of a presumed al-Qaeda cell with members tied to the 9/11 and 11-M attacks. His 2001 arrest in Granada in âOperacion Datilâ resulted in the dismemberment of his cell. [3] Abu Dahdahâs cell was involved in recruiting mujahideen to fight in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Iraq. [4] This recruitment activity ââŠwas happening in our homes, our towns, in Spain â and he even sent Spaniards.â [5] For example, Sais Bahaji, who lived in Hamburg with Mohamed Atta, had Dahdahâs telephone number. When Bajaji left Germany, he accompanied Mohamed Belfatmi, who lived in Tarragona, and whom Spanish police confidently believe was a member of Dahdahâs cell. Another member of Dahdahâs cell, Amer Azizi, participated in the March train attacks and had direct links to Belfatmi. [6] Another member of Dahdahâs Spanish cell and his associate, Yusuf Galan, also traveled to the Indonesian al-Qaeda camp for military training. [7] Intelligence uncovered in the November 2001 âOperacion Datilâ confirms a conversation between Farid Hilali aka âShakurâ, a member of a cell that was involved in the planning of 9/11, with Abu Dahdah. [8]
Separately, the 11-M Commission report identified Rabei Osman Ahmed, (better known as Mohamed the Egyptian), a presumed head of an al-Qaeda cell and one of the planners of the 11-M attacks. Confusingly some press reports instead identify Allekema Lamari â an associate of the Egyptian and the explosives expert â as the head but it is likely that he was the overall emir of the networks that planned and executed the 11-M attacks. [9] The Egyptian was detained in Italy after Italian authorities intercepted a conversation wherein he bragged about the Madrid bombings. [10] Surprisingly no direct connection has been established between the Egyptian and Dahdah, but this could be due to their counter-intelligence practices. In a related case, a Spanish judge in April 2005 accused 11 Pakistani citizens of forming a terrorist cell in Barcelona to support global terrorism and having connections to the cells involved in planning for 11-M. The head of the group, Mohammad Azaal, is linked to Mohamed the Egyptian.
One of the more pernicious personalities to emerge from counter-terrorist operations is Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, also known as Abu Musaab al-Suri, a 46 year-old Syrian of Spanish nationality with allegedly close connections to Osama Bin Laden. Spanish authorities believe he founded the first al-Qaeda cell in Spain. Al-Suri recently revealed that he is working on a manifesto for designing the future of jihad. In his vision, he calls for a new holy war that employs nuclear, chemical and âbacteriologicalâ (biological) weapons, and dirty bombs. [11] Abu Dahdah and several of the 24 al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamists currently on trial in Spain maintained contact with al-Suri up until their arrest in 2001.
In mid-June, Spanish authorities conducted âOperacion Tigris,â arresting sixteen Islamists in Madrid, Cataluna, Valencia, and Cadiz because of their alleged ties to Islamic terrorism: 11 are allegedly linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq headed by al-Zarqawi. [12] Currently, five men are in jail because of their collaboration in Mohamed Afallahâs escape in April 2004. Widely believed to have been involved in 11-M, Allafah recently perished in a suicide attack against Coalition Forces in Iraq, according to the Spanish Police and the Ministry of Interior. [13] The cellâs headquarters was in Syria, from where the two senior recruiters and financiers â Muhsin Khaybar, alias Abdelmajid Al Libi or Abdelmajid Al Yasser, and Abdel Hay Assas, alias Abdalla â managed the activities in Spain.
The 11-M Commission notes that Spanish authorities failed to understand the nature and extent of radical Islamists in-country and therefore, undervalued the terrorist threat to Spaniards. In a November 2003 Spanish terrorist threat report, the authors note that, âIt is clearâŠthat Spain already figures as a declared target for al-QaedaâŠdeduce that Spain could be a target, either in our land, or against Spanish interests overseas, in the near future.â The Commission notes that this âthreat alertâ was issued just a few months before March 11, 2004. [14] Although many of the individuals were picked up for petty crimes, Spanish Police and other security organs had not identified any terrorist-related activity by the cell members.
The Spanish governmentâs recent counter-terrorism operations illustrate the depth and breadth of radical Islamic operations in Spain in support of al-Qaedaâs operations overseas, particularly in Iraq. Over the last decade, militant Islamists in Spain organized themselves into distinct cells for specific jihadist activities. This âbee-hiveâ organizational infrastructure â which replicates the activity of other jihadist networks in Europe â became increasingly sophisticated in terms of recruiting individuals in Spanish prisons and mosques for overseas terrorist operations.
The Muslims involved in jihadist activities in Spain were not necessarily members of al-Qaeda. Instead, they were religious activists that either individually or in groups or cells, decided to act locally in support of al-Qaedaâs global jihad ideology. The international activities of the militants identified in the Commissionâs year-long investigation, strengthens the notion that the âal-Qaeda methodâ became a roadmap and strategy for the foreign fighters who came to Spain and for local Spanish Muslims. Sociologist Manuel Castells, in his appearance before the Commission, argued that Muslims in Europe â who feel disenfranchised due to a variety of sociological and religious reasons â believe the myths and disinformation put forth by bin Laden and his organization. Consequently, the âal-Qaeda Ideaâ becomes a precept, a maxim, a cause, and ultimately a strategy for engaging in jihad.
Insofar as countering this threat in the future is concerned, the most pressing issue is the chemical, biological, nuclear, and radiological (CBRN) threat from non-state actors; al-Suriâs âcall to martyrsâ and the legitimization of CBRN as a legitimate tool in jihad. Another area of concern to the Ministry of Interior and Spanish intelligence is the increasing presence of Moroccans in al-Qaeda cells. The apparent ease with which foreign jihadists motivated Spanish Muslims to radicalize their religious beliefs and recruit them for suicide operations in Iraq illustrates a demographic and ideological shift among Spanish Muslims.
The apparent specialization of recruitment and indoctrination techniques by Salafist Islamists now emphasizes a return to their home countries to continue the jihad in the name of al-Qaeda. Moreover, Spain and other European countries are increasingly becoming more than just a transit area for mujahideen who travel to conflict zones in the Middle East and beyond. Indeed it is particularly worrying that cities all over Spain have been converted into recruiting platforms for suicide operations.
Detecting and dismantling radical Islamist cells will challenge the Spanish intelligence and investigative agencies for some time to come. The Commissionâs reportârich in facts, observations, and recommendations for dealing with militant Islamâis an excellent platform for devising a preemptive counter-terrorism strategy. The Spanish security services should focus on opening regional CT offices, which would combine police, intelligence, and other state services under one authority to monitor terrorist networks. The government needs to quickly increase the number of counter-terrorist police officers for the National Intelligence Center, National Police Corps and other security elements and train them in Arabic, cultural intelligence and other pressing terrorism issues. Furthermore, Spanish counter-terrorism agents have to be trained in analytical, targeting, and operational activities in order to identify, pursue, and apprehend the leadership, personnel facilities, and operational capabilities of those seeking to attack Spanish and broader western interests.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/16/2005 01:09 ||
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French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to deport any Muslim cleric preaching violence.Speaking after meeting his Spanish counterpart in Madrid, Mr Sarkozy said he would seek the expulsion of imams in France "whose sermons are radical". Mr Sarkozy said France and Spain had agreed tougher joint measures against Islamic militancy.
Two days ago, France reimposed border controls with its EU neighbours following the London bombings. After meeting Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso, Mr Sarkozy told reporters radical preaching would no longer be tolerated in France. "The [French] republic is not a weak regime and it does not have to accept speech which on the pretext that it is happening in a place of worship calls for hate and murder. Those who persist in this way will systematically be the object of an expulsion procedure."
Over the past decade France has expelled several foreign-born Muslim preachers after accusing them of abusing their positions by inciting violence. The minister said Western countries must unite in the fight against al-Qaeda. "I know of only one policy against these people - firmness, arresting them, punishing them, penalising them, in Madrid, London, New York, everywhere. We must never allow ourselves to give them the satisfaction of a division between us," he said.
Mr Sarkozy said he and Mr Alonso had agreed to strengthen co-operation in the fight against Islamic militancy. France has stepped up security measures in the light of the London bombings, including restoring border controls with its EU neighbours. On Thursday, French President Jacques Chirac warned that no country was immune from terrorist attacks. "These terrorists have a mentality, a psychological state that is different from our own. All efforts must be made to fight against terrorism," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/16/2005 00:38 ||
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French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to deport any Muslim cleric preaching violence.
I reckon it won't be long until there's no one left to lead prayers.
Since September 11th, al-Qaeda terrorists have been consistently thwarted in their attempts to âtake the battle inside Americaâ. Despite some incidents involving mostly non-U.S. citizens, Americaâs security perimeter has not been breached, and potential cells have been pre-emptively dismantled. There are fears, however, that Americaâs southern, and especially northern boundary, perceived as largely undefended, could be the entry point for the next terrorist attack. The 4000 KM border with Canada has been subject to at least one attempted case of cross-border terrorism involving an explosives-laden car targeting the Los Angeles airport in December 1999, the so-called millennium plot. The perpetrator, Ahmed Ressam, was a member of a large North African jihadist network composed of veterans of the Afghan and Bosnian wars. While based in Montreal, the network stretched across Canada and the United States, and had links to Islamist networks operating in Europe, the Balkans and the Caucasus.
Since the mid-1990s, Franceâs leading anti-terrorism judge, Jean-louis Bruguiere had been investigating the cases of Algerians, many with links to the GIA (Armed Islamic Group), livingâin many cases illegally--in Canada. Among them, Fateh Kamel, a Montreal businessman; veteran of both the Afghanistan and Bosnian Jihads was believed to be one of the main coordinators of support networks, providing forged documents for the Algerian GIA as well as a number of Salafi Jihadists based in Canada and Europe.
In September 1994 Fateh Kamel, along with two Moroccan-born Canadians, Mohamed Omary and Abdallah Ouzghar, left Montreal to join the war in Bosnia. [1] Stationed in the Bosnian town of Zenica, which at the time was an Islamist stronghold, Fateh Kamel fought within the ranks of the El Muzahid unit, composed exclusively of foreign fighters, under the command of the Algerian Abu El Maali. While in Zenica, Fateh Kamel also met French converts Lionel Dumont and Christophe Caze, the future members of the ultra-violent French Jihadist group known as the âGang de Roubaixâ.
After Bosnia, Fateh Kamel joined Osama bin Laden in Khartoum, where he acted as an interface between the GIA and al-Qaeda. [2] He eventually returned to his Montreal headquarters and participated at the highest levels in the coordination and logistical support to operational cells in Europe, the Balkans and North America. Two other Afghanistan and Bosnia veterans, the Moroccan Karim Said Atmani and Hamid Aich whom Kamel had also met in Zenica clandestinely arrived in Montreal in late 1995 (following the Dayton Accords) and proceeded to join his burgeoning network. Fateh Kamelâs network specialized in the procurement of funds and forged documents, particularly Canadian passports, for international jihadists. Helping them was a group of semi-affiliated local thieves, led by Said Atmani and a young Algerian named Ahmed Ressam.
In 1996 Montreal, Ressam, now part of Fateh Kamelâs logistical support cell, encountered an increasing number of young North African men returning from training in Afghanistan. Among them was a past trainee turned al-Qaeda recruiter, Tunisian Abderraouf Hannachi. Many in Montrealâs Islamist circles had initially been approached by Hannachi, who also doubled as the Muezzin at the Assuna mosque in the mid-1990s. The mosque had been frequented by both Fateh Kamel and Omary, and it is very likely that the first contacts between future cell members were made there, including Abdallah Ouzghar, Mokhtar Haouari and Ahmed Ressam. The Mauritanian Mohamad Walid Salahi, closely liked to bin Laden and suspected of having recruited two of the 9/11 hijackers in Germany, had been an Imam at the Mosque and had met Ressam on several occasions. [3]
In March 1998, a few weeks after Osama bin Ladenâs declaration of war against America, Ahmed Ressam, having been ârecommendedâ by both Kamel and Hannachi, flew to Pakistan where he met senior al-Qaeda figure Abu Zubayda. The senior al-Qaeda recruiter sent Ressam, along with two of his former Montreal roommates, Said Atmani and Moustafa Labsi, to the Al-Khalden camp. [4]
The operational âMontreal cellâ which would be involved in the millennium plot was formed in the Khalden camp. It was there that Ressam and others would plot to conduct suicide bombing operations in the U.S., the Middle-East and Europe. Out of a group of about thirty Algerians (as well as Tunisians and Moroccans), several cells were formed and sent on different missions throughout Europe and North America. The man in charge of coordinating, supervising and facilitating the travel of the different cells was the London-based Algerian Abu Doha. The operational Montreal cell was to be composed of Ahmed Ressam and five other Algerians, including Labsi and Atmani.
Ressam, who came back to Canada in February 1999, would soon learn that the rest of the cell had all been thwarted in their plans to reach Canada. Further complicating things was the arrest of Fateh Kamel and another Montrealer Noureddine Saidi in Jordan in April 1999, at the request of the indefatigable Bruguiere.
The people who would end up helping Ressam were not the jihadists that were originally planned, but all were Montreal Algerians interconnected with the GIA and part of Fateh Kamelâs network; including Abdelmajid Dahoumane, a key player linked to an Islamist cell in Calgary, and Hassan Zemmiri, currently held in Guantanamo after his capture in Afghanistan. [5] Others included Mourad Ikhlef [6] (convicted in absentia of the 1992 terrorist attack on the Algiers airports), Adel Boumezbeur, Samir Ait Mohamed and Moktar Haouari. Each would render financial, logistical, material or technical support, but Ressam would travel alone across the U.S. border to Port Angeles Washington.
Ressamâs plot was ultimately foiled on December 14 by Diana Dean, a U.S. border employee, but his capture would reveal that operatives were also inside America waiting to liaise with their counterparts across the Canadian border. Algerian and Brooklyn resident Abdelghani Meskini was the man supposed to meet Ressam in Seattle and was arrested a few days after the latterâs capture.
On December 19, Canadian Lucia Garofalo was also arrested trying to smuggle an Algerian at a remote border crossing in northeastern Vermont. Garofalo was found to have contacts with Atmani and Meskini as well as high-ranking members of GIA cells in Europe. [7] Another Algerian with links to Meskini, Abdel Hakim Tizegha, was arrested on December 24 in Seattle, accused of being part of Ressamâs group. In the weeks that followed, a number of Algerians were stopped and questioned in major cities and border regions across the United States and Canada.
Inside the North American theater, the Fateh Network--and by extension Ahmed Ressamâs cell--was linked to a number of cells spread out across Canada. Among these jihadist groups - and because of cultural and ideological similitude - the closest contacts were established with other North African groups; specifically the GICM (Moroccan Islamic Combat Group); the entity believed to be ultimately responsible for the recent suicide attacks in Morocco and the March 11th Madrid train bombings.
Arrested by Canadian security services, Moroccan-born Odil Charkaoui is suspected of being a member of the GICM; he is alleged to have sent money to cell members in Madrid before the train attacks. [8] Noureddine Nafia, the âEmirâ of the GICM (currently jailed in Morocco), recognized him as one of the members of a cell implanted in Canada. He also revealed the existence of another cell member in Ottawa known as âAbdeslam the Canadianâ. [9]
There seems to be numerous links with the now defunct Montreal cell. Indeed, Odil Charkaoui had had contacts with Tunisian recruiter Hannachi, as well Samir Ait Mohamed, Sait Atmani, Abdallah Ouzghar and Ressam, the latter having identified him as âZubeir Al-Magrebiâ with whom he had trained in Afghanistan in 1998. Ressamâs testimony is supported by Abu Zubayda who said he saw Charkaoui in Afghanistan in 1993, 1997 and 1998. In addition, Charkaoui had links to Abousofian Abdelrazik, a Montrealer from Sudan described as a high-ranking cadre close to Abu Zubayda.
Once used solely as bases of operations, nations such as France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain have all become targets of jihadists. Could Canada be next on the list? Ressam had admitted that in 1999 he and another cell member, Samir Ait Mohamed, had planned to stage a large bomb attack in a Montreal neighborhood; the Outremont district, because of its large Jewish community, featured prominently in the discussions.
Any wishful thinking that, Canada was not in the crosshairs of Jihadists, were dispelled in a November 2002 audiotape attributed to Osama Bin Ladin, where Canada, along with five other western nations, is specifically threatened because of its involvement in Afghanistan. In March 2004, âAl-Battar military campâ an alleged al-Qaeda manual published on various Islamist websites ranked Canada as the 5th most important âChristianâ target.
The dismantling of the Montreal Cell led to the uncovering of a wider network of interconnected Jihadi cells which, while loosely affiliated to al-Qaeda, were not under its direct orders and thus largely independent in both means and targets. It also illustrated that groups like the GIA or the GICM which are seemingly animated by local concerns can be manipulated to strike the âdistant enemyâ, the United States. More ominously, Canadian security realized that Ahmed Ressam was not an isolated individual and that other cells remained in Canada, not only using the country as a launching pad for an attack on the United States but also viewing it as an eventual, softer target.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/16/2005 01:02 ||
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In September 1994 Fateh Kamel, along with two Moroccan-born Canadians, Mohamed Omary and Abdallah Ouzghar, left Montreal to join the war in Bosnia. [1] Stationed in the Bosnian town of Zenica, which at the time was an Islamist stronghold, Fateh Kamel fought within the ranks of the El Muzahid unit, composed exclusively of foreign fighters, under the command of the Algerian Abu El Maali. While in Zenica, Fateh Kamel also met French converts Lionel Dumont and Christophe Caze, the future members of the ultra-violent French Jihadist group known as the âGang de Roubaixâ.
After Bosnia, Fateh Kamel joined Osama bin Laden in Khartoum, where he acted as an interface between the GIA and al-Qaeda.
Fat lot of good Clinton's involvement in Bosnia bought us.
The only topic on the Sunday morning talk shows will be How dumb are the Democrats?
WASHINGTON (AP) - After mentioning a CIA operative to a reporter, Bush confidant Karl Rove alerted the president's No. 2 security adviser about the interview and said he tried to steer the journalist away from allegations the operative's husband was making about faulty Iraq intelligence.
The July 11, 2003, e-mail between Rove and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley is the first showing an intelligence official knew Rove had talked to Matthew Cooper just days before the Time magazine reporter wrote an article identifying Valerie Plame as a CIA officer.
"I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote in an e-mail obtained by The Associated Press, recounting how Cooper tried to question him about whether President Bush had been hurt by the new allegations.
The White House turned the e-mail over to prosecutors, and Rove testified to a grand jury about it last year. Rove's been laughing his touch off ever since.
Earlier in the week before the e-mail, Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had written a newspaper opinion piece accusing the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence, including a "highly doubtful" report that Iraq bought nuclear materials from Niger.
"Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming," Rove wrote in the e-mail to Hadley.
"When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this."
Frederick Jones, a spokesman for Hadley, now Bush's national security adviser, said he could not comment due to the continuing criminal investigation. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said his client answered all the questions prosecutors asked during three grand jury appearances, never invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or the president's executive privilege guaranteeing confidential advice from aides.
Rove, Bush's closest adviser, turned over the e-mail as soon as prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into who leaked Plame's covert work for the CIA.
He later told a grand jury the e-mail was consistent with his recollection that his intention in talking with Cooper that Friday in July 2003 wasn't to divulge Plame's identity but to caution Cooper against certain allegations Plame's husband was making, according to legal professionals familiar with Rove's testimony.
They spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the grand jury investigation.
Rove sent the e-mail shortly before leaving the White House early for a family vacation that weekend, already aware that another journalist he had talked with, syndicated columnist Robert Novak, was planning an article about Plame and Wilson.
Rove also knew that then-CIA Director George Tenet planned later that same day to issue a dramatic statement that took responsibility for some bad Iraq intelligence but that also called into question some of Wilson's assertions, the legal sources said.
The AP reported Thursday that Rove acknowledged to the grand jury that he talked about Plame with both Cooper and Novak before they published their stories but that he originally learned about the operative's identity from the news media, not government sources.
Republicans cheered the latest revelations Friday, saying they showed Rove wasn't trying to hurt Plame but instead was trying to informally warn reporters to be cautious about some of Wilson's claims.
"What it says is, Karl Rove wasn't the leaker, he was actually the recipient of the information not the provider," Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman said on Fox News. "So there are probably a lot of folks in Washington who have prejudged this, who have rushed to judgment who are trying to smear Karl Rove."
Democrats, however, said that even if Rove wasn't the leaker, someone still divulged Plame's identity and possibly violated the law.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders asked Speaker Dennis Hastert on Friday to let Congress hold hearings into the controversy regardless of the criminal probe now under way.
"In previous Republican Congresses the fact that a criminal investigation was under way did not prevent extensive hearings from being held on other, much less significant matters," Pelosi wrote.
Federal law prohibits government officials from divulging the identity of an undercover intelligence officer. But in order to bring charges, prosecutors must prove the official knew the officer was covert and nonetheless knowingly outed his or her identity.
Rove's conversations with Novak and Cooper took place just days after Wilson suggested in his opinion piece in The New York Times that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was used to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.
Summarizing a trip he made to Africa on behalf of the CIA, Wilson wrote that he'd concluded it was highly doubtful the nation of Niger had sold uranium yellowcake to Iraq. Tenet issued a lengthy statement five days later saying that he never should have allowed Bush to use the Niger information in his State of the Union address but that Wilson's report did not resolve whether Iraq was seeking uranium from abroad.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
07/16/2005 18:09 ||
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"In previous Republican Congresses the fact that a criminal investigation was under way did not prevent extensive hearings from being held on other, much less significant matters..."
Wasn't a pending Supreme Court nomination coming up either.
A federal appeals court yesterday backed the Bush administration's plan to let special panels of military officers conduct trials of terrorism suspects detained in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, overturning a lower-court decision that has blocked the "military commissions" for the past eight months. So the last eight months of Gitom news was all due to a judge?
The decision clears the way for the Defense Department to use the commissions to try some of the hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. It was hailed by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales yesterday as affirming the president's "critical authority" to determine how to try detainees deemed "enemy combatants" in the war on terrorism.
The ruling was an important test of the government's strategy of denying such detainees access not only to civilian courts but also to the more formal proceedings of military courts-martial, in which they would enjoy additional rights and legal protections. One of the judges on the deciding panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, John G. Roberts, is said to be on the administration's list of possible Supreme Court nominees.
The decision followed an appeal by the Justice Department of a district court decision last November that had blocked a military commission trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 34, a Yemeni mechanic with a fourth-grade education who admits that he served as Osama bin Laden's driver. Hamdan has been detained in Guantanamo Bay for the past 17 months and accused of being a member of al Qaeda. Three other detainees have been designated to stand trial before military commissions.
The lower court had concluded that Hamdan and others at Guantanamo Bay are entitled to hearings in advance of a criminal trial in which military officers would decide whether they qualified as prisoners of war. This procedure is required by the Geneva Conventions, the international treaties that protect people detained by military forces. Didn't the writer leave out an important little detail here? In the interest of brevity, of course! Like the detail that it was intended to protect military people detained by military forces? Other military forces that subscribe to the Geneva Convention?
Prisoners of war are supposed to be tried in courts-martial rather than by the less formal military commissions. Hamdan, who has claimed that he took his job solely for money and not for ideology, has sought a court-martial. But the administration has vigorously sought to avoid courts-martial, which have rules that make it more difficult to keep defendants from knowing all the evidence against them.
The appellate court swept aside the lower court's decision in what amounted to a general endorsement of a legal theory that the president has broad powers under the Constitution to decide how military detainees are to be handled during a time of conflict.
"On the merits, there is little to Hamdan's argument" that the president's establishment of the commissions illegally tramples the prerogatives of Congress, the three-member panel said in a decision written by Judge A. Raymond Randolph and joined by Roberts and Senior Judge Stephen F. Williams.
The panel said courts should defer to President Bush's decision in 2002 that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to detainees Bush declares as enemy combatants and that, in any event, the conventions are not enforceable by U.S. courts in lawsuits brought by foreigners. The "decision" based on the Geneva Convention? Or did Bu$hitler just make it up? Now I'm confused!
"This decision is a major win for the Administration," a Justice Department news release said. The Defense Department itself declined to comment.
Hamdan's lead civilian counsel, Georgetown University professor Neal Katyal, denounced the decision as "contrary to 200 years of constitutional law." He said it "places absolute trust in the president, unchecked by the Constitution, statutes of Congress and longstanding treaties." He added that it undermines the protections of the Geneva Conventions in ways that could harm U.S. interests in the future. Maybe we should all re-read the Geneva Convention. It seems we missed something!
Katyal expressed particular concern over what he described as the panel's conclusion that the president can "set up an entire architecture of justice as he sees fit," and that under the military's rules for the commissions, those on trial could be forced to leave the room while the proceedings against them continue. Noting that he has not even been allowed to speak to his client, Katyal said the decision will be appealed.
The legal battle, being waged on terrain scarcely visited by U.S. courts in the past century, has been closely watched by human rights advocates, legal scholars, British and European Union parliamentarians, and current and former military lawyers -- including many who submitted their own briefs.
Passions on both sides have run high. The Justice Department argued in April that if the commissions are not allowed to go forward, security breaches could result and the war on terrorism could be slowed.
Hamdan's military lawyer, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, last year denounced the commission set up to try him as a "kangaroo court." Seven retired senior military officers and lawyers warned in a joint statement that if the commissions are allowed to proceed unchecked, foreign tyrants will organize similar court hearings for U.S. military personnel and "hide their oppression under U.S. precedent."
A group of 305 current and former European politicians, who asserted that they span "the political spectrum," said in their court brief that letting the commissions proceed as planned would place the United States in breach of international law and undermine the due process rights of individuals affected by the war on terrorism.
The new ruling is the first in which the administration's plan for using military commissions to conduct criminal trials has been reviewed at the appellate level. It carries less weight than if it had come from a full appellate court. Well, that was balanced. About what you'd expect from WaPo.
#1
So they'll no longer be held without trial. I guess the left will be happy now, eh?
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
07/16/2005 14:02 Comments ||
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So the last eight months of Gitom news was all due to a judge?
Paul Mirengoff over at Power Line had this to say about the judge in his article "What all the fuss is about": The decision in the Hamdan helps show why activists on both sides of the political spectrum fight so hard over judicial nominations. A district court judge appointed by President Clinton bent over backwards to find that trial by a military tribunal isn't good enough for Osama bin Laden's driver and his fellow al Qaeda members who were captured fighting against us in Afghanistan. In doing so, the district judge held that the 1949 Geneva Convention confers individual rights enforceable in federal court, but did not even mention a Supreme Court case, relied on by the government, holding that the comparable 1929 Geneva Convention is not judicially enforceable. The district judge also concluded, as he had to for technical reasons in order to bestow gold-plated process on the al Qaeda man, that when Hamdan was captured we were not engaged in a conflict with al Qaeda that is distinct from our conflict with the Taliban. Huh? And the district judge obliterated the distinction between court martials and military commissions, even though the Uniform Code of Military Justice clearly does not treat the two interchangeably. That's how eager the district court was to make sure that bin Laden's driver gets, at a minimum, the same military trial that a U.S. soldier accused of misconduct (but not of taking the field of battle for the enemy) receives. More at link
HARLINGEN, Texas â Several times a day, a chain-link gate rolls open and dozens of illegal immigrants stroll out of the U.S. Border Patrol station here, blinking into the hot Texas sun as they look for taxis to the bus station and a ticket out of town. Each holds a piece of paper that Spanish-speakers call a "permiso" â permission, courtesy of the U.S. government, to roam the country freely.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, more than 118,000 undocumented migrants who were caught after sneaking over the nation's borders have walked right out of custody with a permiso in hand. They were from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil. But also Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen â among 35 countries of "special interest" because of alleged sponsorship or support of terrorism. These are the so-called OTM, or "Other Than Mexican," migrants too far from their homelands to be shipped right back. More than 70,000 have hit U.S. streets just since this past October...
Illegal immigrants from Mexico and Canada typically choose to voluntarily depart and can be returned home almost immediately upon being caught. Those from other countries must undergo deportation proceedings and await flights to their nations. A growing number of those are freed with a notice-to-appear because of lack of holding space.
Congress in the past two years funded 19,444 immigration detention beds nationally, says Manny Van Pelt, spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. An extra 1,950 bed spaces were approved in May.
The Border Patrol, as it checks apprehended entrants' names against terrorist watch lists and crime databases, contacts ICE's Office of Detention and Removal to see if there's holding space. Unless the entrant is a convict or on a watch list, the answer is often no â and migrants are cut loose.
Migrants from terror-watch countries are vetted not only by Border Patrol agents and criminal database checks but also federal Joint Terrorism Task Force investigators, says Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.
Authorities point out that a new "expedited removal" program, focusing on the quick return of non-Mexicans to their home countries, has resulted in 7,000 deportations. Still, word is out among migrants that if they can make it across the border, they might get walking papers.
Homeland security officials say spotting would-be terrorists is the No. 1 priority of border guards. But veteran line officers note databases can't always detect whether a migrant is using a fake name. And while they're processing OTMs, other illegal entrants are getting by.
Pakistani Farida Goolam Mahomed Ahmed was arrested last July at the McAllen, Texas, airport as she tried to board a plane to New York. She carried $7,300 in various currencies and a passport with pages missing. Agents later learned she waded across the Rio Grande. She was deported in March.
In February, the reputed leader of the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, gang was arrested after he crossed from Mexico into Texas. Ever Anibal Rivera Paz was found 100 miles north of the Rio Grande, hiding in the trunk of a car. He had escaped from a Honduran prison where he was charged with masterminding a deadly bus attack. He is jailed in Houston.
Others who are caught, and then released, fail to show up for immigration hearings... ICE estimates a cumulative 465,000 undocumented immigrants â visa overstays, illegal entrants and others unlawfully in the States â have received final orders of removal but remain at-large.
#2
Build detainment centers. Yes I did say 'detainment Centers'. These are to house the illegals (weather Mexican, Canadian, or not) based on their illegal status and not their race / nationallity / creed / religion / sexual preference / perversion / etc...
Also.... Isn't cutting loose non-mexicans/canadians while detaining mexicans/canadians rather.... err... racist? This looks like its -er- profiling to me.
#3
Do you think we should build a "Great wall of china replica?". This might help keep them out.
Also, the U.S. has allowed a fresman male from Afganastan to enroll at Westpoint....learn all the American military ways. Let's see if in twenty year's he is not considered to be the next Sadam or Ia tola!! What stupid fools we are!
Andrea Jackson
Posted by: Andrea Jackson ||
07/16/2005 12:34 Comments ||
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Andrea maybe the Afghan student is going to major in Engineering (it's WP oldest) and help us build the great Brownsville wall! Think positively! Did you know that West Point's best student Bobby Lee was a foreigner? Yep! It's true.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/16/2005 13:44 Comments ||
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"More than 70,000 have hit U.S. streets just since this past October"Illegal Aliens from countries of "special interest" !
Advocates for sticter enforcement of immigration laws are branded as racist and border control gets nothing but lip service. What the hell am I missing here?
#8
No doubt that we need to close the border. We are at considerable risk stateside with all that can be brought in over the border.
In response to AP's comment, I agree that we shouldn't allow someone from Afghanistan into Westpoint. (I often wonder what military skills our guys have been teaching the Iraqi's, that some day may come back to bite us in the ass) It has been shown many times over how Muslim's core beliefs always win out. Now I probably appear to be racist, I'm just trying to see things very clearly. I feel that some positions should only be enjoyed by American born, and/or at best have very extensive background checks into family and friend connections etc.. Hopefully this has already been done for this candidate.
And CF, maybe detainment farms would be a good thing. Have them work in these farms to earn money to pay for their trip back home, rather than be given everything free. Make it an unpleasant experience for them so they might just think about not attempting crossing into America illegally again. We're not slapping their hand, we're shaking it.
Posted by: Jan ||
07/16/2005 14:20 Comments ||
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close the border - train the afghan guy - both are in America's interests
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/16/2005 14:36 Comments ||
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MCCOOK [TX] â MCCOOK â Ethiopians headed into the Valley Friday morning were intercepted by Border Patrol agents. Four of them were in custody, and agents said 11 more were caught around noon. It was unclear if they were all from Africa, but they were transported to McAllenâs Border Patrol station to determine their nationalities.
It all started when a sheriffâs deputy tried to pull over a black truck. The driver took off and led police on a brief chase before stopping near a field. Several people jumped out of the truck and ran. A convenience store owner in the area said he frequently sees illegals walk into his store.
Agents started the proceedings to deport the Ethiopians.
#1
How hard is it to enter into Mexico, maybe if Mexico tightened up some of it's borders that may help some. With all of the aid that we give them maybe we could have some understandings here. Maybe we need to look at how Mexico deals with it's illegals, which is probably nothing but this could be a start.
Posted by: Jan ||
07/16/2005 14:40 Comments ||
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Mexico actively detains and jails Central and So. Americans crossing their southern border, usually in near inhuman conditions. No or very little potable water or food, disease rampant, etc. They don't want their southern neighbors competing with Mexican illegals for teh gringo $. Remunerations from mexicans working in America ranks second only to oil exports for a source of foreign revenue. Hypocrisy? You betcha
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/16/2005 15:37 Comments ||
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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations, acting after deadly suicide bombings apparently driven by Muslim extremism hit London, launched an initiative on Thursday to build new bridges between the West and Islam. Bridges?! How about a moat!
The campaign's aim was to "bridge divides and overcome prejudice, misconceptions, misperceptions, and polarization which potentially threaten world peace," U.N. chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. Right. If we bigots would just quit misunderstanding all those peaceful bombings, everything would be fine.
Recent events had "heightened the sense of a widening gap and lack of mutual understanding between Islamic and Western societies -- an environment that has been exploited and exacerbated by extremists in all societies," he said. Perhaps if we had sought mutual understanding with the Nazis, WWII could have been avoided.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan was pursuing the "Alliance of Civilizations" initiative, at the suggestion of Spain and Turkey, after 54 people were killed in suicide bombings in London by three British Muslims of Pakistani origin and a Jamaican-born Briton. Jihadis bomb the sh*t out of civilians on a subway, and he wants a freakin' alliance. Would it be impolitic to note that Kofi is a Muslim?
The campaign has no firm plans yet but is expected to present recommendations and a plan of action in late 2006. At least we can count on the UN's record of swift and decisive action.
Posted by: ST ||
07/16/2005 06:11 ||
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#2
'Alliance of Civilizations' - that rather presumes that there is another civilization to ally with, and I've seen precious little evidence of that over the last four years.
Also note the Rooters preamble - "apparently driven by Muslim extremism". Pathetic.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
07/16/2005 11:19 Comments ||
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The naked essence of UN moral equivalence: "heightened the sense of a widening gap and lack of mutual understanding between Islamic and Western societies -- an environment that has been exploited and exacerbated by extremists in all societies"
You see, the mass-murderers are Moslem but the "extremists" are in all societies.
What the UN and Reuters fail to state is that the Islamofascist war against the West has been going on for close to 1400 years. We don't need to "bolster ties" between the West and Islam. We need to decisively defeat that death cult.
#4
I can hardly wait for the ground breaking decisions, promises, resolutions, anti-Jew and anti-American blather that comes out of this UN "campaign".
All the while, the Jihadi's will continue to blow shit up.
#5
When Attila the Hun died, his empire of conquest and destruction died with him. He was a warrior-king.
When Mohammed the Pedophile died, his empire of conquest and slavery continued to grow. He was a witch-doctor/king. The reason Islamist conquest and destruction is a problem is that Mo bequeathed a theory and millennial plan. Had he been a mere Attila, we'd remember his name --maybe-- but we wouldn't have to deal with the Islamofascist war on freedom.
Lenin was another witch-doctor/king, who enabled Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.
#7
(stong gag reflex here)
crazy.
And for what so the UN can build new bridges so the Moslum Extremists terrorists can blow up more stuff,
are they for real, when will the perverbial coffee be smelt
Posted by: Jan ||
07/16/2005 13:52 Comments ||
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#8
Kalle - they just left behind a theory/religion that justifies the worst aspects: power-hungry nature and innate violence of some people
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/16/2005 13:54 Comments ||
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"The United Nations, acting after deadly suicide bombings apparently driven by Muslim extremism hit London, launched an initiative on Thursday to build new bridges between the West and Islam."
What's really needed is to dynamite the bridges we already have-- ALL of them.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
07/16/2005 14:00 Comments ||
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#10
Pointless Tranzi initiative aimed at preparing the West for dhimmification. Late 2006, huh? Right. That's a LOT of luncheons, dinners, conferences, retreats, reports, and other member-funded loot and plunder wankfests from now.
Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said on Friday he had proposed a new government line-up to President Emile Lahoud that includes members of parliament and political parties. Siniora said he proposed the 24-minister line-up after abandoning efforts to seek a government of technocrats following strong opposition from his allies. He said he was expecting to hear a reply from Lahoud soon. The proposed government excludes supporters of Christian leader Michel Aoun, head of the largest Christian bloc in the 128-seat parliament, reducing prospects Lahoud would approve it. "I proposed to the president a version consisting of 24 ministers which I do believe has the backing of over 100 members of parliament," Siniora told reporters after meeting Lahoud, a close Syria ally. "I think this is very democratically representative of the parliament and the best that one can come up with."
Siniora, a member of a coalition that pushed for Syria's pullout from Lebanon, said on Thursday he would seek to form a government of technocrats after failing to win agreement on a cabinet drawn from the various political groups. But problems quickly emerged when anti-Syrian Druze leader Walid Jumblatt informed Siniora he would not cooperate in forming such a cabinet and that his 16-member bloc would vote against it in parliament, forcing the prime minister to drop the idea.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/16/2005 00:00 ||
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United States President George Bush on Friday directed the Pentagon to spend $6-million in "commodities and services" to help transport African Union troops to Sudan's violence-wracked Darfur region.
Bush's decision was announced in a memorandum for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that was made public by the White House.
The move came hours after the US State Department announced that Rice would visit Sudan and the Darfur region next week for her first trip to the African country since taking office.
Fighting has raged in Darfur since February 2003, when local groups launched a rebellion in the name of the region's black African tribes against marginalisation by Khartoum's Arab-dominated government.
The Darfur conflict has claimed between 180,000 and 300,000 lives, with more than two million civilians displaced from their homes.
An additional 200 000 people have fled into neighbouring Chad.
It is a long way away from Leeds. The only similarity was perhaps the washing, hung out to dry on the balcony of the mosque's upper storey.
Down below, hundreds of students gathered yesterday afternoon for Friday prayers. The mellifluous chanting of Allahu Akbar floated into a hot white sky.
Jamia Naeemia madrasa is a religious school like the one that Shehzad Tanweer - one of the four London bombers, from Beeston, Leeds - visited last year. According to his uncle, Tanweer arrived in Lahore last December. His family believed he studied at a madrasa for two months.
Attention was turning last night to a radical school run by a banned Sunni group, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba in Muridke, 20 miles north of Lahore. One Pakistani intelligence source told the Associated Press that Tanweer had spent time there. Locals deny this.
More than a week after the bombings there are still more questions than answers about Tanweer's trip to Pakistan. British authorities have revealed little of his movements. The Pakistanis have merely confirmed that he visited Pakistan twice. But the suspicion remains that Tanweer's experiences at a religious school transformed him from disaffected student to extremist killer.
At one of Lahore's more radical madrasas yesterday there were several tantalising clues. The students at Jamia Naeemia were happy to share their views on global jihad, and the Muslim world's perceived struggle against the US and Britain. "If it's been declared that society is at war, and non-Muslims are killing Muslims, then Muslims have the right to kill non-Muslims," said 20-year-old Hafiz Abdul Rehman.
"We have the right to defend our brothers if they are being killed, whether it's in Afghanistan, Iraq or Kashmir," he added. Like many in Pakistan, though, Hafiz condemned the London bombings.
Hafiz shares a bedroom just next to the mosque with three other students. As well as studying the Qur'an and getting up at 4.30am, they play frisbee, go jogging, and discuss football. "I like Zidane. I think he's a lot better than Beckham," Nadeem Rabbani, Hafiz's roommate, said.
Officials say there are 8,000 registered religious schools in Pakistan and up to 25,000 unregistered ones, especially in the no-go tribal areas close to the Afghan border.
Yesterday Ahsan Siddiqi, director of another Lahore madrasa, the moderate Jamia Ashrafia, said it would be wrong to suggest Pakistan's madrasas were all breeding grounds for terrorists. Pakistan's public education system was dreadful, he said, and for many poor families madrasas were the only hope that their sons could get an education.
"We have 2,500 students studying here. They get food, lodging and education all free," he said. "We survive on charitable donations." What did he think of the London bombings? "The very first lesson we teach here is about love, affection and tolerance," he said.
Nevertheless, there is compelling evidence linking Pakistan's madrasas to the Islamist militant struggle in several places - Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, Bosnia and central Asia. Many mujahideen who fought against the Soviets in the 1980s, studied at Pakistani madrasas in the 1990s. A new hardline movement, the Taliban, emerged from the dusty roadside mosques in Pakistan's frontier provinces.
Yesterday Mr Siddiqi agreed that someone had "caught" Tanweer during his time in Pakistan, "flicking a switch inside his head". He had no idea what precisely had happened to him. "We are talking about a tiny minority involved in terrorism here - one or two per cent," he added. "But the reason terrorism exists is because of injustice. If you take away injustice all these problems will disappear."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/16/2005 00:58 ||
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Article: "But the reason terrorism exists is because of injustice. If you take away injustice all these problems will disappear."
What he really meant was that any failure to meet Muslim demands is injustice. The problem is that the endpoint for Muslim demands, without which fulfilment Muslims will always consider injustice to persist, is that the entire world become part of the Muslim ummah, that Islamic law become the law of the land and that non-Muslims become second-class citizens.
AS INVESTIGATIONS continued yesterday into the extent of the links between al-Qaeda and last week's attacks, intelligence officials in Pakistan confirmed that one of the bombers did visit a radical religious school run by a banned terrorist organisation.
They believe that Shehzad Tanweer spent four or five days at the large Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) complex in Muridke, 20 miles north of the eastern city of Lahore, as first reported by The Scotsman. LeT has extensive links with al-Qaeda and a history of extreme violence.
The Pakistani officials also believe that Tanweer, 22, was in contact with another terrorist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, which is also linked to al-Qaeda. The investigation is focusing on at least one trip - and possibly two - that Tanweer made to Pakistan in the past year.
One official said that while in Pakistan, Tanweer is believed to have visited the 60-acre LeT complex - called Markaz Taiba - which includes a mosque, religious school, housing and farmland. The short nature of the visit is thought to indicate that he went to meet someone or receive instructions.
But yesterday Mohammed Azam, who is in charge of the complex, denied that Tanweer had ever been there. "This is a pack of lies," he said. "They want to malign Islam. They want to target the religion of Islam and Muslims."
And Yahya Mujahid, a spokesman for the terrorist's associated fundraising arm, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, claimed that the group did not condone attacks on civilians.
"It is nothing more than a propaganda of the British press," he said. "We consider attacks on civilian and public places as unislamic."
Yesterday it emerged that three men arrested by Pakistani authorities in 2003 in connection with the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen confessed that Osama bin Laden had asked LeT to recruit Pakistani volunteers for suicide missions to be undertaken on behalf of al-Qaeda and that LET had provided an initial 12 volunteers.
Intelligence analysts suggest that LeT has been moving into areas previously dominated by al-Qaeda because of the pressure concentrated on that organisation since the attacks of 11 September, 2001. It has boasted of access to nuclear and biological weapons.
Tanweer's uncle, Bashir Ahmed, has said that his nephew travelled to Lahore, Pakistan, earlier this year to study Islam.
However, the Pakistani officials said they believed Tanweer also made a trip in the latter half of 2004, in which he met Osama Nazir, a Pakistani militant arrested last year for helping plan a grenade attack on a church in Islamabad that killed five people, including two Americans, in March 2002.
Nazir, a member of the al-Qaeda-linked Sunni militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, told authorities on Thursday that he met with Tanweer last year in Faisalabad, 75 miles south-west of Lahore.
The revelations came as General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, urged the authorities to root out extremism from his country. "We owe it to our future generations to rid the country of the malaise of extremism," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/16/2005 00:22 ||
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If Lashkar-e-Taiba is banned... how do the Pak's justify them having a 60 acre retreat?
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/16/2005 13:30 Comments ||
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The Paks have put a lot of time and effort into turning the Lashkar into an effective Jihadi outfit, they aren't just going to toss them aside when the can keep bleeding India in Kashmir.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
07/16/2005 23:07 Comments ||
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#4
unless the cost becomes too high, Paul?
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/16/2005 23:12 Comments ||
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Extracted from a much longer article in Friday Times...
Tanvir Qaiser Shahid quotes from American scholar Jessica Sternâs book Terror in the Name of God . Even as the government in Islamabad announces that the seminaries in the country are free of sectarianism and violence, Stern visits the seminary Jamia Manzurul Islam run by Pir Saifullah Saif (Sword of Allah) in the heart of Lahore. She was taken there by Mujibur Rehman Inqilabi who secretly belongs to the banned Sipah Sahaba vowed to the apostatisation and elimination of the Shia community in Pakistan. Inqilabi told her that his Sipah Sahaba organisation had penetrated the Deobandi organisations and Sipah speakers were frequently invited by the Deobandi seminaries to speak on the apostatisation of the Shia in the country. Inqilabi also boasted contacts with Jaish e-Muhammad and Harkatul Mujahideen and Al Qaeda. The seminary Manzurul Islam in Lahore turned out to be a large institution giving residence to 450 students apart from numberless âday scholarsâ. When Stern talked to the seminarians they clearly told her that the Shia were not Muslims but apostates.
Tanvir Qaiser Shahid interviewed the Shia leader Allama Sajid Naqvi of the all Pakistan Shia organisation now a part of the religious alliance, MMA. Naqvi was clear why the Shia leader of the Northern Areas, Allama Ziauddin Rizvi, was killed. He discounted the report that Rizvi was agitating against the government for its establishment of a military base in the Deosai plain. He asserted that Allama Rizvi was also not greatly agitated against the Aga Khan Support Programme. The real cause of his death was his struggle in favour of a separate syllabus for the Shia students. Rizvi was for including in the textbooks content that would confirm the Shia creed. He also set aside the government suspicion that a foreign agency had killed Allama Rizvi to set alight the fire of sectarianism in Pakistan.
Allama Sajid Naqvi, despite his membership in the Deobandi-dominated MMA, accused the state agencies of gestating and giving birth to sectarian terror. He referred to the 1988 massacre of the Shia community in the Northern Areas and a similar massacre of the Shia in the Kurram Agency in the tribal areas for which he held General Zia responsible. (Zia died the same year, killed in a plane crash which his son says was an act of sabotage.) Naqvi accused Zia of being a Deobandi at heart. He pointed out that he was actually related to the leader of Pakistanâs largest Deobandi seminary, Jamia Ashrafia. For the governmentâs part, it issued an advertisement on 17 April 2005 promising a reward of Rs 15 lakh for anyone who would help in the capture of the killers of Agha Ziauddin Rizvi.
The Crisis Group Report, The State of Sectarianism in Pakistan , says: âLike other sectarian minorities, those in the Northern Areas believe that political empowerment would enable them to contain Islamic extremism. Elections to even the largely ceremonial Northern Areas Legislative Council have exposed the limited support base of religious radicals. Says a lawyer in Gilgit, âJUI could not win any of the 24 seats, not even in Sunni-dominated areasâ.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/16/2005 00:00 ||
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WASHINGTON - The United States should cut its losses, pull out of Iraq promptly and never again use its military might to build a nation according to its own values, former CIA chief John Deutch wrote on Friday in The New York Times.
US military presence in Iraq is harming US interests in the Arab world, detracts attention from other âimportant security challenges ... North Korea, Iran and international terrorism,â and weakens the US military, said Deutch, who before heading the Central Intelligence Agency (1995-1996) was deputy defense secretary (1994-1995).
âThose who argue that we should âstay the courseâ because an early withdrawal ... would hurt Americaâs global credibility must consider the possibility that we will fail in our objectives in Iraq and suffer an even worse loss of credibility down the road,â he added.
Okay, we considered it. But we're not going to fail. Thanks, and go back to your retirement.
âI do not believe that we are making progress on any of our key objectives in Iraq,â he said, adding that even when the Iraqi government appears to be functioning, âthe underlying destabilizing effect of the insurgency is undiminished.â
How the hell would you know?
Rather than spend years, money and lives in Iraq to achieve âminimum conditions for withdrawalâ -- security and a representative self-government -- Deutch argued that a quick withdrawal now would avoid a lot of grief to come. âOur best strategy now is a prompt withdrawal plan consisting of clearly defined political, military and economic elements,â including urging Iraq and its neighbors to recognize that it would be in everyoneâs interest to allow Iraq to âevolve peacefully and without external intervention.â
And when the jihadis, the Ba'athists, the Syrians, Soodis and Iranians decide to intervene and not be very peaceful about it, what then? We'll be 4,000 miles away.
Deutch argued in favor of propagating democratic reforms through example and economic incentives rather than by force. âIt is one matter to adopt a foreign policy that encourages democratic values; it is quite another to believe it just or practical to achieve such results on the ground with military forces,â Deutch, who currently is a chemistry professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Thank goodness you're not teaching political science. Recall Germany or Japan, 1945 -- we were quite successful in imposing democratic values by military force.
While the United States should not shirk from sending its military to save lives, as it should have done during the Rwandan genocide 10 years ago, he said, âwe should not be lured into intervention that has as its driving purpose the replacement of despotic regimes with systems of government more like our own.
Remind us: weren't you in power then? CIA chief, deputy DoD -- didn't you have the opportunity to urge an intervention in Rwanda? Why didn't you? Why didn't you resign in protest? But we already know why ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/16/2005 00:00 ||
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He should be in federal prison after getting caught with classified documents on his home PC.
I do think it's helpful for somebody to just come out with this viewpoint rather than beat around the bush.
The naivete shown by the comment that Iraq would be free of external interference if only the coalition would leave goes a long way towards explaining why Clinton's foreign policy was so weak.
#6
RVW nails it -- and the other comments are on target too. Nice annotations, Steve.
Isn't it remarkable (OK, not remarkable, scary) how someone who's served at this level can't rise above a high school, cartoon version of events? We took down the Iraqi regime because it was an intolerable, uncontainable, unmanageable WMD proliferation and terror-support threat in the post-9/11 world -- whether they had a few hundred gallons of VX sitting around in April 2003, or not (they had a just-in-time configuration ready for implementation the instant sanctions finally, formally collapsed).
How dim do you have to be to write that the Iraq take-down was and "intervention that has as its driving purpose the replacement of despotic regimes with systems of government more like our own." Whiskey Tango Foxtrot??
It's called strategic exploitation, ya numbskull. You leave a far less threatening system in place of the old one, reducing the need for additional interventions, you intimidate other adversaries and terror supporters and gain intel, and you strike a strategic blow against the spirit and momentum of the quasi-ideology that inspires the terrorists.
The Clinton admin. (both terms) was staffed with the most incompetent national security managers we've had since WWII (barring perhaps the Carter years, though the problem there was more concentrated at the top). Didn't help that the boss was a follower, not a leader -- a poll-obsessed narcissistic retail political hack.
The delusional behavior of the NYT set continues to amaze. I thought no one could ever beat the publication of a pedantic policy lecture by Jimmy Carter on the very issue he personally helped f**k up -- North Korean nukes. But that was just the start. Richard Clarke lecturing Bush on terrorism strategy. Albright opening her mouth on anything. The complete disappearance of standards, self-respect, or accountability among policy types is something to behold.
#7
It's amazing that the failed relics of the Clinton regime get so much ink. Deutch is almost as pathetic as Albright, Berger, Cohen, and Shalala.
Say what you will about her, at least Shalala has a real job.
Posted by: Abu Shawn ||
07/16/2005 8:07 Comments ||
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#8
Don't suger-coat it, Verlaine - give it to us straight!
it would be in everyoneâs interest to allow Iraq to âevolve peacefully and without external intervention.â And this guy was CIA? It's in people of Iran's interest, maybe, for the Iraqis to succeed, but not the mullahs. No one with a central-control gov't - whether mullahs, like Iran, or just despots, like Syria - can afford to have a democracy with voters in the region. Sets a bad example, doncha know.
And we should leave now, because we might not win? Glad his ilk were not at Iwo Jima, Bastone, or Chosin Reservior. I hope you can teach Chemistry better than statecraft. I'm sure you're popular, nevertheless, in Cambridge. Stay there, and shut up.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 8:12 Comments ||
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Verlaine: How dim do you have to be to write that the Iraq take-down was and "intervention that has as its driving purpose the replacement of despotic regimes with systems of government more like our own." Whiskey Tango Foxtrot??
It's called strategic exploitation, ya numbskull. You leave a far less threatening system in place of the old one, reducing the need for additional interventions, you intimidate other adversaries and terror supporters and gain intel, and you strike a strategic blow against the spirit and momentum of the quasi-ideology that inspires the terrorists.
The Clinton admin. (both terms) was staffed with the most incompetent national security managers we've had since WWII (barring perhaps the Carter years, though the problem there was more concentrated at the top). Didn't help that the boss was a follower, not a leader -- a poll-obsessed narcissistic retail political hack.
You have to remember that the liberals who staffed the Clinton administration do not believe in deterrence. In their view, the reason that the Soviets never invaded the NATO countries was because they never wanted to, not because the American interventions in Korea and Vietnam (and a number of other places) had persuaded them that the American response would annihilate them. Their continuing kvetching about Iraq and demands for a pullout are an indication that they still don't believe in deterrence or in the danger of the kind of loss of deterrence that led to 9/11.
#11
Deutch argued that a quick withdrawal now would avoid a lot of grief to come.
Just like your quick withdrawal from Somalia did, eh?
Bin Laden cited that cowardly act by Bill Clinton and his craven stooges as the single most important factor that convinced him that the West had gone irretrievably soft and was ripe for a coup de gras: the 9/11 attacks.
A withdrawal from Iraq-- or even the mere announcement of a "timetable for withdrawal"-- would be Mogadishu writ large. It would convince the world's jihadis beyond any shadow of a doubt that Bin Laden was absolutely right: that while the U.S. has the most powerful, most capable, most lethal military force on the planet, the American people have no guts and they cannot stomach a long, hard fight. In Bin Laden's words, "keep bleeding them and eventually they will leave with their tails between their legs."
A quick withdrawal from Iraq would utterly nullify everything we have done since 9/11. EVERYTHING. Every country on this planet, large or small, would treat us with complete contempt-- and we would richly deserve it. The forces of Islamic totalitarianism-- the Mad Mullahs in Iran, the oil ticks in Saudi Arabia, the Islamoloonies in Pakistan, fanatics of every description, everywhere around the globe-- would rejoice in the absolute, certain knowledge that their victory over the West is imminent. Bin Laden's 9/11 attacks would be viewed as an enormous strategic victory, even though they did trigger a temporary tactical setback. Hamas and Hizbollah would rejoice-- with much ululating and gun-sex-- and redouble their efforts to kill every Jew in Israel, convinced that we don't have the guts to keep them from doing it.
And it wouldn't just be the Islamists, either: a quick withdrawal from Iraq would convince the Chinese that Mao was absolutely right in calling the U.S. a "paper tiger". Bye bye, Taiwan. Crazy Kim and the NKors would be ecstatic, too, at what they would see as proof positive that America is spineless. Time to nuke Seoul.
And that's just our enemies. Our allies would conclude the same thing about America's resolve, with disastrous results; we'd be considered a sick, pathetic joke.
I've been pretty much silent on the recent Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson/Karl Rove kerfuffle, partly because I view it as just one more in a long string of bogus, trumped-up, hyped-up, phony pseudo-scandals concocted by Democrats who are far more interested in battling a Republican president than they are in battling a totalitarian ideology that threatens our very existance.
But I've also ignored it because, in my view, the REAL scandal is that for eight long, miserable years, idiots like John Deutch were in charge and were running America right into the ground.
John Deutch and his fellow witless fools caused 9/11.
And they should shut the hell up, before the rest of us become convinced that the only way to win this war is to round up these idiots and put them in internment camps so they don't do any more damage.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
07/16/2005 9:27 Comments ||
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#12
Is this *really* the John Deutch that was running the CIA. His pitiful grasp of history - and by history I mean recent events like Somalia - is simply mind-boggling. No wonder things got so far out of control.
The Camelot II and Great Malaiseoffal refugees seem to be in great pain - and I'm ready for a career change... I see a convergence of interests and an opportunity. Moonbat Pain Management. I prefer the double-tap.
#14
*with jaw dropped*
I didn't have much of an opinion about cleaning house at the CIA. I do now. Anyone in the CIA (or the entire government for that matter) who is as stupid and clueless as John Deutch needs to go.
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/16/2005 10:44 Comments ||
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#15
I was so floored by this that I had to check to be sure they have the correct John Deutch. They do:
http://mit.edu/chemistry/deutch/biography.html
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/16/2005 10:49 Comments ||
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#17
this is beyond the ass-covering lies that Halfbright and Clinton peddle. This piece of shit really doesn't get it. How frightening he was ever employed at the DOD and CIA, much less rose to his position. Peter Principle in F*&king spades....
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/16/2005 11:18 Comments ||
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#18
So, what would Deutsch have done with the Germans in 1945? But then if Deutsch had been in the administrations in 1945, we'd probably be speaking German today.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
07/16/2005 11:23 Comments ||
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#19
Lest we forget, Douche is the same guy who as CIA director preferred to do his classified work on his unsecured home computer.
Hello ChiComs?
Posted by: Captain America ||
07/16/2005 11:25 Comments ||
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#20
"This piece of shit really doesn't get it."
I gotta tell you, I'm really struggling with this. I've tried viewing people like Deutch as being motivated by evil intent-- that is, they're knowingly giving bad advice, because they secretly desire the bad consequences that would ensue from following it-- but that doesn't work in all cases. In this instance, I think the guy is actually sincere.
Simple stupidity doesn't cut it as an explanation, either: for a person to believe this-- that timidity and cowardice constitute a winning strategy against murderous totalitarianism-- simply because they're "stupid", would mean they'd also be unable to tie their own shoelaces or feed themselves.
I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't some genetic deficiency involved, one that warps these peoples' ability to think rationally about agression and the proper responses to it.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
07/16/2005 11:34 Comments ||
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#21
Anyone with time on their hands should review the CIA report
Douche makes the freckless allegations against Rove look pale by comparison.
Of course, the AG refused to press charges against him even though he had information available on his government issued unsecured computers he used at his two residences.
Posted by: Captain America ||
07/16/2005 11:37 Comments ||
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Posted by: Captain America ||
07/16/2005 11:38 Comments ||
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#23
Sure.....let's withdraw. But first, let's kill all the mooselimb cockroaches. Kill every last one of 'em. Then go home. Sounds good to me.
Posted by: Tom Dooley ||
07/16/2005 12:42 Comments ||
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#24
You want to know why 9/11 happened? Look no further than people like "Laptop" Deutch (as he was dubbed by some), Tenet (buckpasser), FBI director Louis Freeh, and Janet Reno. The latter are quite possibly the worst Attorney General and FBI pair that have ever occupied those offices.
People like Deutsch and his buddies were rampant in the agency in the mid and late 90's. They completely politicized the agency in many areas, warping the analysis areas, cutting back on HUMINT in favor of technically driven solutions that were not ready (cruise missle attack on an aspirin factory?), pulled the teeth on fieldcraft and ops - preferring instead to fling a few cruise missles on empty camps instead. Crap like that is why people like me were not working inside by the end of the 90's (you can only stand so much). Us cold war warriors, or "Cold War Relics" (as the Clintonites liked to jeer us) were not welcome in their politicized, "peace time" agency whose main mission seemed to be support of the State Department and thwarting the Department of Defense.
Thats why someone like Porter Goss was needed to try to clean out the CIA - the remainders of the Clinton era, like Plame and Scheurer, were still doing things the old political way: rampant cronyism and advancing political causes (and later, apparently trying to hinder the current administration), all while ignoring the "mission first" attitude that used to be there.
Director Goss is putting things on a "Mission First" basis again. And its great that some old faces are back at work teaching the next generation of agency people (big hiring surge since 9/11) how the world *really* is and what it means to put your country first, then placing things like the mission, then the agency in their proper order - and *no* politics at all in the mission stack, no glory, just get the job done quietly, and get home if you can.
Its a tough business: when you are right, nobody hears about it, when you are wrong the nation suffers. If you are in ops, nobody ever hears about your successes, not even inside the building because of compartmentalization, and if you are wrong you can die horribly. Don't beleive me? Go look up Mike Spann, one of the few times a death has been made public.
The CIA is truly the silent service, if people are doing their jobs right, starting at the top.
I scanned the report that you provided a link to. Deutch had problems handling classified DOE info back when he was working in that agency.
One does not screw around with that kind of stuff. I can't believe they put a dolt like this in charge of anything, let alone something like the CIA.
I doubt he was bright enough to spell CIA.
Posted by: Darth VAda ||
07/16/2005 13:02 Comments ||
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#26
I do believe you, OS. Here for the rest of us is an account of the last minutes of Mike Spann, who gave his life shortly after attempting to interrogate the traitor scum "American Taliban":
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3067386/
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/16/2005 14:06 Comments ||
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#27
"Lindh, a California native now in his early 20s, pleaded guilty in civilian court to supplying services to the Taliban government and carrying explosives for them. He received a 20-year prison sentence in 2002. He has since sought to have it reduced."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-07-06-americans-iraq_x.htm
Reduced sentence? He should have never left that original prison alive.
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/16/2005 14:12 Comments ||
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#28
Who is surprised by this from a Clintonian? Wonder how the the bad guys managed to plan all those attacks and never get picked up by the CIA? Becuase we were reactive and not proactive. We had tons of resources to throw at Islamic terrorism, but we didn't want to force our values or force them into something like Democracy. Thats because these asswipe clintonians don't believe in democracy. They still believe socialism will work with the right people in charge (them).
#29
I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't some genetic deficiency involved, one that warps these peoples' ability to think rationally about agression and the proper responses to it
Dave, it isn't genetics - it's ideology married to smugness. Ideology: the US as presently constituted is a Bad Thing. Smugness: they have the way to Fix Things and can do so without bad effects for themselves or The World.
It's not complex at all: it's a frighteningly powerful stance to the degree they are allowed to get away with it.
Remember: the wealthy 'progressives' like Soros and that crowd have a lot of their assets overseas. Unlike most ordinary Americans whose retirement or savings are located here: primarily their homes or a mutual fund, these guys can do very will if the US economy tanks or the country's borders collapse.
Posted by: too true ||
07/16/2005 16:05 Comments ||
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#30
Don't suger-coat it, Verlaine - give it to us straight!
it would be in everyoneâs interest to allow Iraq to âevolve peacefully and without external intervention.â And this guy was CIA? It's in people of Iran's interest, maybe, for the Iraqis to succeed, but not the mullahs. No one with a central-control gov't - whether mullahs, like Iran, or just despots, like Syria - can afford to have a democracy with voters in the region. Sets a bad example, doncha know.
And we should leave now, because we might not win? Glad his ilk were not at Iwo Jima, Bastone, or Chosin Reservior. I hope you can teach Chemistry better than statecraft. I'm sure you're popular, nevertheless, in Cambridge. Stay there, and shut up.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/16/2005 8:12 Comments ||
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President Pervez Musharraf has directed law enforcement agencies to launch a nationwide campaign to stop banned militant outfits from holding gatherings, collecting donations and displaying arms. Addressing the nationâs top police officers in Rawalpindi, Musharraf said that the publishing, printing and distribution of hate material such as pamphlets, booklets and CDs should be stopped. âYou must ensure that such material is not available in markets by December this year.â He said that writers, publishers and distributors of such literature must be punished.
The president made it clear that the government would not tolerate extremism and would continue to combat the âmenace of terrorism with unflinching determination and forceâ. He said this fight was in the interest of Pakistanâs continued socio-economic progress. The president reiterated the governmentâs resolve to prevent banned militant organisations from resurfacing under other names. He said that no government in the country could be anti-religion and Pakistan was âundoubtedly an ideological state and an Islamic Republicâ.
âWe have to take the country forward as a modern dynamic, progressive and forward-looking Islamic state,â he said. The president said that the country would continue its fight against terrorism. âPakistan stands at a crossroads. There is an urgent need to address the extremism. We have to transform society and bring about harmony for our long-term progress,â he said. The president referred to the countryâs success in capturing about 700 terrorists and said that the Pakistani police and its intelligence wings deserved praise.
Federal Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao said that about four hundred law enforcement personnel had laid down their lives in the anti-terror drive. In response to suggestions from senior police officers, the president ordered the formation of a committee of provincial inspector generals which would propose ways to improve police efficiency. Musharraf agreed on the need to provide better benefits to law-enforcement forces and said the government would provide the requisite financial resources to them. The president underscored the importance of merit-based inductions and said that police being the frontline enforcers of peace and security needed to be sincere in its efforts. The president urged the police not to concede to political pressures and to do away with the present âthana cultureâ.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/16/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Parvez needs to show more balls or else take a hike!
He needs to:
1. Shut all Madrassahs down - They breed ignorence full stop.
2. Cull the religious leadership et al Soviet Gulag style and sent off their followers for "re-education".
And the Yanks need to get their act togather - They were and are the secondary party responsible for this Jihadi/Madrassah mess in Pakistan ( remember the 1980s Soviet/Afghan Jihad? Well this shit is the legacy of that ) and now need to push Musharaf to get his act togather - Off course they got to support him militarly/financialy and see the neutralizing project to its end, even if it takes decades.
Any wanting to know why/how we have so many Madrassahs in Pakistan please let me know - Will be obliged to inform!!!
#2
I thought a significant number of the Pakistani madrassahs were founded and funded by the Saudis? And anyway, I can't imagine anything is going to change until Pakistan provides universal free education, at least at the primary level, and ideally at the secondary as well. For the poor of Pakistan, the madrassahs are the only opportunity for even a facsimile of an education, useless though it may be. This is not something the Yanks can impose upon Pakistan, nor will Yank financial support enable it to happen. Primary education need not be expensive: a slate and chalk for each child, a blackboard and more chalk for the teacher. Everything else is extra. My own children learnt their letters by picking them out on the signs above the shops, long before they started school; for both, the first word each could read, besides her own name, was "pizza." ;-) There is no reason to believe that the children of Pakistan are any less able than Yankee children.
#3
I'm not sure expanding the primary education as it stands is a good thing, currently, a Year 5 student in a Pakistani state school should be able to:
Acknowledge and identify forces that may be working against Pakistan.
Demonstrate by actions a belief in and fear of Allah.
Make speeches on Jihad and Shahadat (martyrdom)
Understand Hindu-Muslim differences and the resultant need for Pakistan and Indiaâs evil designs against Pakistan.
Demonstrate respect for the leaders of Pakistan
Pakistanâs President Pervez Musharraf yesterday asked the countryâs Supreme Court to rule on whether a Taleban-style law is constitutional, officials said. Musharraf interceded after the Islamist-ruled regional legislature in North West Frontier Province passed Thursday a bill enforcing strict adherence to Islamic teachings. The court said Musharraf had asked the court to decide whether the so-called Hisbah, or accountability bill, was âunconstitutionally overboard and vague and suffers from excessive delegation.â âThe Supreme Court of Pakistan has issued notices to the government of North West Frontier Province and secretary of the provincial assembly to appear and assist the court,â Attorney General Makhdoom Ali Khan told reporters.
Under the legislation a watchdog will be set up with sweeping powers to reform society in accordance with âIslamic valuesâ and enforce the observance of such values in public places. Critics say the ombudsman is similar to the Taleban regimeâs Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Provincial Law Minister Malik Zafar Azam said the assembly would stand up for the new legislation. âWe will strongly defend the law in the Supreme Court,â he said in the northwestern city of Peshawar, where hard-line legislators yesterday distributed sweets to celebrate what they said âvictory against secular forces.â
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07/16/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
The MMA governments needs to be kicked out of office by force or else we will have anothor reincarnation of the Taliban!
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