Chad has demanded that neighbouring Sudan disarm Chadian rebels in its violent Darfur region as a condition for peace talks to end a growing dispute with Khartoum over rebel and militia raids in the border area. Chad accuses Sudan of sheltering and backing Chadian rebels who attacked the border town of Adre last month. It has declared a "state of belligerence" with Khartoum. The dispute is adding to insecurity in the Darfur region, where local militias backed by Khartoum have been raiding villages, occasionally straying over the border into Chad.
In recent months, scores of soldiers have deserted the army in Chad, Africa's newest oil producer, to join rebel groups near the large, arid country's eastern border with Sudan. Khartoum denies backing Chadian rebels but the dispute has cast a shadow over its preparations to host an African Union summit from 23-24 January which Chad says should be held elsewhere. Muammar Gaddafi, Libya's leader, offered to mediate and Chad said Idriss Deby, its president, met Gaddafi in Tripoli at the weekend and laid down four conditions to end the dispute.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
After reading the headline I was expecting a graphic of Monty Python's Black Knight.
This year's Eid al-Adha, Islam's festival of sacrifice, will be celebrated amid a escalating war of words fought on the Internet between al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. On the eve of what is considered one of Islam's holiest days, which coincides with the end of the annual Haj pilgrimage, two prominent al-Qaeda leaders have both assailed the Brotherhood for what they say is it's betrayal of Islamist principles.
Al-Qaeda Number 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, fired the first verbal salvo when on a video message broadcast by Qatar-based TV network Aljazeera on 6 January, he accused the Egyptian chapter of the Brotherhood of serving Washington's interests.
"That is the truth of the political game America is playing in Egypt, through presidential and parliamentary elections, to exploit the masses and their love for Islam," he said.
"They (the Brotherhood) said they won 30 seats, now they say they have won 80 and in five years time they will say 100. And so goes [the American] strategy to conceed them some space," he said, referring to the Brotherhood's decision to take part in the Egyptian polls.
Al-Zawahiri, describing the Brotherhood as "these Islamic factions who have been pursuing the same strategy (parliamentary legitimacy) for decades" pointed to how the Brotherhood's founder, Hasan al-Banna, "had tried this experience twice since World War II and failing."
The Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt) sharp response came from the mouth of its spokesman Essam al-Erian. "Those who are opposing reformist Islamic movements [like the Brotherhood] are the Americans, the autocratic Arab regimes, the secular extremists and al-Zawahiri. What's that like for a strange alliance," he said.
The Brotherhood spokesman added that his organisation believed in the use of jihad, or holy war, but only in contexts "like Iraq and Palestine" of self-defence against external attacks.
Just days later, in an audio message posted on the Internet, Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq also raged against what he saw as the Brotherhood's treachery.
"How can anyone choose any other path but that of Jihad? They (the Brotherhood) have chosen to enter parliament and accept the constitution. Well, they are deviants," he said.
"I appeal to the Islamic party (the Brotherhood): abandon this strategy which is a losing one for Sunnis and which is not in accordance with (Islamic) Sharia law... Where do you think that road will take you?" he added.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/11/2006 00:25 ||
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This is getting ridiculous, now the Muslim Brotherhood is too warm and fuzzy for Al-Q?
These guys really have gone around the bend on this radical islam thing.
Millions of citizens and residents offered Eid Al-Adha prayers at the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the Prophetâs Mosque in Madinah yesterday. Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, the imam of the Grand Mosque, in his sermon called on Muslims to respond to the hate campaign against Islam. âIslam is the religion of moderates and yet a vicious campaign has been unleashed to tarnish its image. For the misdeeds of a few, the entire community is being held to ransom,â he said. âWe all must realize that they are always on the lookout for the mistakes of a few Muslims so that Islam gets a bad name and people all over start hating it.â
That's a slightly different take from the Telegraph version of his remarks we carried yesterday...
Calling for more moderation among Muslims, he said deviation of thoughts and concepts had assumed âdangerousâ levels. âWe now see fights and challenges taking place in the form of intellectual invasion globally for more freedom,â he said.
... and one thing Moose limbs don't need is more freedom...
âFight terrorism and extremism,â he told Muslims and urged them to spread the message that Islam does not preach terrorism, and moderates should not be held responsible for the crimes and killings being committed by a few in the Muslim world. He appealed to the few disgruntled elements that have strayed from the path of peace to return to their senses. âLetâs start with ourselves. However, reforms should not be imposed on us. They should come from within us and in keeping with the tenets of Islam,â the imam said.
"And how long's that gonna take?"
"'Bout another 1400 years."
Referring to the Al-Aqsa Mosque issue, which remains unsolved, he called a halt to the ongoing killings and destruction of homes and property by Israelis. âThey are trying to destroy the mosque,â he said. He reminded the Ummah not to forget the people of Iraq who are in a hopeless situation struggling for peace and prosperity.
Had a pretty hard time homogenizing that tirade, I'd guess. It'll be interesting to see the MEMRI version. I think they still haven't quite caught on that people are watching...
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2006 00:00 ||
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Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri was found in possession of a "manual for terrorism", prosecutors told the jury as his trial began at the Old Bailey. David Perry said the Encyclopaedia of Afghani Jihad explained how to make explosives and run a terrorist unit. Would that be the Dorling Kindersley Encyclopaedia of Afghani Jihad?
Mr Abu Hamza faces 15 charges including possessing a document "useful" to a terrorist and soliciting people to murder Jews and other non-Muslims. The 47-year-old from west London denies all 15 charges he faces.
"Lies! All lies!"
Yar har har - we'll makes him walk the plank for this'n me hearties..
... and not a word about the train schedule home ...
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2006 00:00 ||
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There is no secret if the whole world knows he's in china, every major news network is running the story.
And, it's no secret what he wants. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$
TEN alleged terrorists were on hunger strike in a Victorian prison in protest over a refusal to allow them to pray together. The men, devout Muslims who are being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day in the maximum security Barwon Prison at Lara, began the hunger strike this week. The 10, arrested in pre-dawn raids in November, are facing charges of being members of a terrorist organisation.
Their lawyer, Rob Stary, said they had not been allowed to pray together. He said the men wanted to hold a short prayer service on Friday afternoons. "They just want to be dealt with in the same way as other remand prisoners," Mr Stary said on ABC radio."I understand they don't present as any disciplinary problem or any management problem.
"We said right from the outset that this was for no sinister purpose or political purpose, it's simply an opportunity to pray together."
Mr Stary said he understood that the men were regarded as exemplary prisoners in regard to their conduct and were respectful to the prison staff. He said he was also concerned that they were being held in maximum security. "It's extraordinary, they're unconvicted prisoners, the only other persons of this category are said to be people who are alleged underworld killers," he said. "They're not charged with any offence of violence, they're charged with being members of an unnamed and unspecified organisation."
Mr Stary said he was worried about the health of the men who were prepared to carry out their hunger strike indefinitely. "They've done it of their own initiative, I certainly don't endorse it," he said. "I'm concerned about their well-being, physically and mentally.
"I'd hate to see something serious happen to them, I dread that...but clearly their religious commitment is something of significance to them in a way that perhaps you and I don't understand."
Corrections Victoria Commissioner Kelvin Anderson today said the accused terrorist suspects must remain separated, and that position would not change despite their hunger strike. "Prison authorities have worked closely with Muslim leaders so alleged terrorism suspects have special food, prayer times and places to pray," he said. "Individuals charged with terrorism offences have been separated from each other for security reasons. No religious festival could ever have priority over our risk assessment arrangements.
"Our hand will not be forced by a hunger strike. We will not compromise public safety.
Nine of the men were arrested in Melbourne during coordinated ASIO, New South Wales Police and Victoria Police raids in Sydney and Melbourne on November 8 last year. The 10th man was arrested in Sydney and later extradited to Melbourne. All were charged with being a member of a terrorist organisation.
One, Muslim cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika, 46, was also charged with directing a terrorist organisation. The others are: Ezzit Raad, 23, of Preston; Aimen Joud, 21, of Hoppers Crossing; Fadal Sayadi, 25, of Coburg; Amer Haddara, 26, of Yarraville; Ahmed Raad, 22, of Fawkner; Shane Kent, 28, of Meadow Heights; Abdulla Merhi, 20, of Fawkner; Hany Taha, 21, of Hadfield and Izzydeen Atik, 25, from Williamstown. The men, who have been remanded in custody, were due to reappear in the Melbourne Magistrates Court for committal mention on April 11.
French travellers risk delays or even being refused entry to the US because of a dispute over biometric passports.
The Interior Ministry is embroiled in a court battle with the unions of the Imprimerie Nationale, the state-owned printing agency, over a decision to award a contract to provide the high security passports to Oberthur Card Systems, a smart-card maker.
The unions, which think the Imprimerie Nationale should produce the passports, have managed to block Oberthur from beginning production after a Paris court ruled that the public agency had a monopoly on secure administrative documents.
France is one of 27 "visa waiver" countries whose citizens should require only a passport to travel to the US. But it is now the only one that has not complied with US rules that came into force last October requiring passports to have an embedded digital photograph, excluding it from the scheme.
An American official said yesterday that visa applications to the American embassy in Paris had risen more than twofold while the average wait had reached six weeks.
"The US has been watching this as a train wreck in slow motion," said the official. "The [French] government has assured us and assured us and assured us that they would have the biometric passports.
"There have been cases where people have got to the airport and realised they need a visa.
"We've had to make Herculean efforts to shoe-horn them in."
#2
Also bear in mind that Spain is at the Western end of the Mediterranean - there are troubles and wars being wilfully fomented all along the trade/oil routes from the Americas to the Malaccas to the Red Sea and Mediterranean Sea. The Spetzlamists don't care too much about the Black Sea because the Russian naval forces are already there, and dominate oer and besides those of Iran, Turkey, Ukraine, and lessor CENASIA Islamic wannabes. Some analysts estimate that 70% of the world's trade flows between these points. which thus makes control of the routes a de facto weapon against the econ hyperpower USA, but not the only weapon.
When we left him Russ Tice was claiming that he got canned for trying to uncover a spy at first NSA and then DIA (he is not quite sure). Russ says that is how NSA âtakes care of troublemakers.â But Russ knew that he was on a holy mission to save the world from the evil Bushitler regime.... Now Russ has sealed his fate (I hope) but acknowledging he was the source of the story that ran in the NYT. I know I donât have the vast resources of the NYT but donât you think they would check out ole Russâs story and maybe his background? I watched the video and if the AG wants to lock him up he gave them ample evidence. I only hope that Bush and Gonzo donât flinch and let this guy off the hook. Trust me you throw a few jabbers in jail and they will stop.
#1
As I understand it, Tice said that a colleague was a ChiCom spy and the government was hiding it and calling him mentally unstable.
Any way we at Rantburg can check this and/or shed light on how a place like NSA and DIA handle complaints like this. I'd assume there is a counterintelligence function that would take such charges very seriously regardless of the who's president.
It does seem like Tice really could not have known much about the intercepts in question, but if he's typical of the sources used by Risen, then the guy is a liar as well as a traitor.
#2
I like this quote: "The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we're going to do whatever it takes to get them,"
Like that's a bad thing after we had smoking holes in New York and Arlington.
As best as I can tell Tice did not follow proper procedures for 'whistleblowers', he is whining about something that was reviewed by DOJ with NSA counsel and Congress, and legal expertise was not in his job description.
Also, it's pretty clear in the law that call detail records do not carry any expectation of privacy and 'vaccuming' bulk traffic contents without any post processing is not functionally, or legally, equivalent to a 'wiretap' unless and until the contents of a particular call are analyzed. So he is way out of line on many dimensions. How can a loose cannon like this get so much responsibility?
BERNON MITCHELL AND WILLIAM MARTIN, 2 NSA traitors and defectors, end 1960.
We know from working at NSA [that] the United States reads the secret communications of more than forty nations, including its own allies... Both enciphered and plain text communications are monitored from almost every nation in the world, including the nations on whose soil the intercept bases are located
#4
Tice got canned because AFTER the DIA investigated the matter he accused the DIA officers as accomplices. It was after that point that the agency sends Russ to talk it over with a head doctor. The Doctor diagnosed Russell as âparanoidâ delusional. The agency usually doesnât let people keep their clearances after they have been diagnosed as CRAZY. I have a sneaking suspicion that Russ was suffering before 2000 and then caught a case of BDS. The nutty just keep getting nuttier!
You forgot to mention that the "paranoid and delusional" but yet undiagosed are still good-to-go at DIA, lol. It's only after you go to the doc that your troubles actually start.
I would assume there is a pretty high tolerance for eccentricity at a place like NSA and being a head case can, I believe, be correlated with the the mathematical and logic skills necessary to do some of the work they do.
How can he claim that these revelations did not involve classified info? He needs a lawyer to avoid a firing squad based on my reading of the law from articles. What am I missing?
#8
SPoD: They don't shoot nut jobs so they will just lock him up.
Hell, they don't shoot anyone anymore where treason is concerned. If outright carrying weapons against your own country on the battlefield (a la Johnny Jihad) won't do it, I can't think of anything short of mass assassination that will.
Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security Agency, is now a whistleblower the agency would like to keep quiet. For 20 years, Tice worked in the shadows as he helped the United States spy on other people's conversations around the world. "I specialized in what's called special access programs," Tice said of his job. "We called them 'black world' programs and operations."
But now, Tice tells ABC News that some of those secret "black world" operations run by the NSA were operated in ways that he believes violated the law. He is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department and the National Security Agency in the post-9/11 efforts to go after terrorists.
"The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we're going to do whatever it takes to get them," he said.
Tice says the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and international phone call as they are switched through centers, such as one in New York, and to search for key words or phrases that a terrorist might use. "If you picked the word 'jihad' out of a conversation," Tice said, "the technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out of the system for processing."
According to Tice, intelligence analysts use the information to develop graphs that resemble spiderwebs linking one suspect's phone number to hundreds or even thousands more.
Excellent! You then refine that graph and see what shakes out.
President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants.
But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.
Key word: if.
"That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum," Tice said.
The same day The New York Times broke the story of the NSA eavesdropping without warrants, Tice surfaced as a whistleblower in the agency. He told ABC News that he was a source for the Times' reporters. But Tice maintains that his conscience is clear. "As far as I'm concerned, as long as I don't say anything that's classified, I'm not worried," he said. "We need to clean up the intelligence community. We've had abuses, and they need to be addressed."
The NSA revoked Tice's security clearance in May of last year based on what it called psychological concerns and later dismissed him. Tice calls that bunk and says that's the way the NSA deals with troublemakers and whistleblowers. Today the NSA said it had "no information to provide."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/11/2006 04:06 ||
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"The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we're going to do whatever it takes to get them," he said.
This is a bad thing!?!?
Check out his pic. He's too fat to hang.
Posted by: ST ||
01/11/2006 5:30 Comments ||
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#2
Isn't this the guy that accused a coworker of spying, and when the NSA cleared the coworker, he refused to drop it?
#6
"If you picked the word 'jihad' out of a conversation," Tice said, "the technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out of the system for processing."
Well, that's just terrible. Now if they were picking out "Hillary is a commie dyke" that would be okay.
And:
He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used
How often is the "full range" of anything used? It's not like there are are 20 million NSA ops to listen in on everything.
#7
The NSA revoked Tice's security clearance in May of last year based on what it called psychological concerns and later dismissed him. Tice calls that bunk and says that's the way the NSA deals with troublemakers and whistleblowers. Today the NSA said it had "no information to provide."
Maybe I'm just naive, but I'd hope that the NSA wasn't just limited to using psycho labels as means of 'dealing with troublemakers'.
#8
#7 The NSA revoked Tice's security clearance in May of last year based on what it called psychological concerns and later dismissed him. Tice calls that bunk and says that's the way the NSA deals with troublemakers and whistleblowers. Today the NSA said it had "no information to provide."
Maybe I'm just naive, but I'd hope that the NSA wasn't just limited to using psycho labels as means of 'dealing with troublemakers'.
Firing a government employee is nearly as difficult as teaching a Duroc to fly. I suspect NSA legal council has it's perverbial ducks in a row. Just my guess.
#9
Sorry, I didn't see your post, please delete mine. I hope they through this yahoo in prison for a long time. He isn't a patriot or a whistle blower he is just a nutjob blowhard. Too bad he didnât pull a Bill Burkett and go through the DNC. But this line is priceless: âAs far as I'm concerned, as long as I don't say anything that's classified, I'm not worried.â Well Russ you should have read your security agreement a little closer because a lot of what he talked about is classified. The AG can make a pretty good case just by showing the ABC interview and then reading the agreement that I am sure Russ signed when he got his security clearance. But I guess all that security and loyalty shit goes out the window if the current resident of the White House is a Republican.
#11
Nope. Some are prejudging him because he has a history of publicly and vehemently clinging to damning accusations of others that, upon investigation, are not backed by the facts.
For my part, the fact that he is or recently has been also under psychiatric treatment is at least potentially a separate issue, although the former may be the result of the condition for which the latter was necessary.
Posted by: too true ||
01/11/2006 13:09 Comments ||
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#12
Personally, I will withold judgement until Mr. Tice testifies before Congress when and if the
NSA hearings take place.
I am highly suspect of the negative prejudement comments being directed at him from repubs/cons in this site because there is a pattern to it.
Whenever there is a high profile critic of the Bush administration, which has the potential to be covered in the so-called MSM the RNC Slime Machine, kicks into gear attempting to
smear the person, undermine his credibility and assasinate his character. It happens EVERY time.
#14
No Bird brain I am âpre-judgingâ Russ Tice because he was diagnosed as a paranoid delusional and loon of the highest order. In the video that he broke several rules revealing sources and methods. NSA has a whole room (and a wall) dedicated to spies/leakers and I think Russ should have his picture up there for all to see. BTW Russ would have visited this room when he signed for his special clearances (aint that ironic).
#18
I am sorry I wasn't clearer: "Russell Tice has NO credibility.â I come to this conclusion because there are a lot more people involved in this operation and so far NONE of them seem to believe that this operation was illegal and the fact that Tice is a certified NUT. If I were looking for someone to defend my position I wouldnât choose someone who was diagnosed as paranoid delusional because (hold onto your tinfoil hat) they tend to imagine and make things up.
#19
But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.
Does anyone really think there are millions of potential terrorists on U.S. soil worth listening in on? I think not.
"Brian Tice: Sliced & Diced"
by: Brian Montpoli CBS NEWS
The same day The New York Times broke the story of the NSA eavesdropping without warrants, Tice surfaced as a whistleblower in the agency. He told ABC News that he was a source for the Times' reporters.
Tice was let go from the NSA last year. ABC News writes that he "is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department and the NSA in the post-9/11 efforts to go after terrorists."
Parts of this story has been around for a little while â On Jan. 5, The Washington Times noted that Tice wanted to testify before Congress, based on letters written by Tice from Dec. 16th, the same day the New York Times broke the spy story. But questions about Russell Tice's credibility are now taking center stage, as is so often the case in these kinds of stories.
When Tice was fired last May, Rebecca Carr of Cox News service tried to connect the dots. "The National Security Agency fired a high level intelligence official just days after he publicly urged Congress to pass stronger protections for federal whistleblowers facing retaliation," she wrote. It wasn't a clear cut case of whistleblower retaliation, however, as "Tice has been at the odds with the agency since he reported suspicions that a female co-worker at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), was a spy for the People's Republic of China."
(I guess so: "In June, 2003, the agency suspended his security clearances and ordered him to maintain the agency's vehicles by pumping gas and cleaning them. Last month, they ordered him to unload furniture at its warehouses.")
This is where it gets weird â or weirder, anyway: The NSA ordered Tice to undergo an unscheduled psychological evaluation. There, a "Defense Department psychologist concluded that Tice suffered from psychotic paranoia." Tice later wrote that he "did this even though he admitted that I did not show any of the normal indications of someone suffering from paranoia."
(There have been documented cases where government whistleblowers or troublemakers have been intimidated or persecuted through forced psychological testing.)
In light of all this, conservative bloggers are taking shots at Tice and Risen's story. Noting that "Russ Tice is a former NSA employee who was dismissed when a psychiatric evaluation found him to be mentally unbalanced," Stephen Spruiell of National Review Online excerpts an earlier post in which he wrote, "If Tice turns out to be one of the NY Times' anonymous sources for its NSA stories, didn't the Times readers deserve to know that its information came from a potentially unbalanced ex-employee with an ax to grind?"
**please note the statement in parenthesis above by the author and the last paragraph :
It says it all.The more things change, the more they stay the same..Especially for repubs/cons. Same bs tactics/different day.
I'm sure that you too do not think there is any reason to go after AQ.....
Posted by: Mark E. ||
01/11/2006 15:45 Comments ||
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#22
..yawn Whatever...troll.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
01/11/2006 15:48 Comments ||
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#23
Redacted by moderator. Comments may be redacted for trolling, violation of standards of good manners, or plain stupidity. Please correct the condition that applies and try again. Contents may be viewed in the sinktrap. Further violations may result in banning.
#24
Bird Dog I know you can't help it but can I point out something to you? Notice that Tice is the ONLY NSA employee to come forward and claim there is illegal activity going on? Trust me when I tell you there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of people working on programs just like this one and NONE of them have come forward claiming that there is illegal activity going on. Russ was diagnosed PRIOR to his claim that NSA was doing something illegal not after. So to summarize: First Russ thought the Agency had a spy, then the DIA was in cahoots, and finally (oh yeah I forgot) we was doing illegal wiretaps way back before those evil Bushitlerites took away my clearance. Calling Bill Burkett we have a playmate for you! Next Tice will claim to have recorded a conversation that will prove that Bush shirked his Guard service and strafed an elementary school while high on cocaine.
#26
Bird dog did not hijack the thread. The thread was about Mr. Tice. You may find BD's comments objectionable, but they were at least germane to the issue.
Now then:
BD, if you're hoping for hearing, well, keep hoping. And if hearings are done, they'll be done by the Joint Intel committees, and much of that will be done in private, so as to protect sensitive information.
What they're going to discover (I predict) is 1) Bush indeed has the authority to have the NSA do the programs they've done 2) No, the NSA did not engage in domestic spying and 3) some new legislation will be needed to tighten up the loose ends.
I point out to you that every country has a right to spy on its enemies in time of war. We are indeed at war (al Qaeda sez so), and we have two authorizing resolutions (one for Afghanistan, one for Iraq). The idea that the NSA isn't allowed to listen in on a phone/e-mail that is suspected to have a link with al-Qaeda is, frankly, laughable.
But I appreciate you Dems hammering this. Bush's approval rating has gone up, and I suspect it will go up some more :-)
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/11/2006 18:52 Comments ||
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#27
Bird dog did not hijack the thread. The thread was about Mr. Tice. You may find BD's comments objectionable, but they were at least germane to the issue.
An immigrant accused of conspiring to sell US intelligence secrets to Saddam Hussein's government told jurors on Tuesday he was secretly working for the US government and may be confused with his dead identical twin.
"I have served this country with all my heart," Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban said during opening statements delivered through interpreters in US district court.
"I refuse to say I am one person with my brother. I refuse to answer for him on his behalf, and the evidence will show that," he said.
Prosecutors said they would prove that Shaaban, 53, maintained multiple identities, intimidated a witness and tried to broker a $5m deal with the Iraqi intelligence service to sell the names of 60 US agents who were working in Iraq or who were to enter the country before the 2002 invasion.
"(Iraqi) intelligence officers found a person in the US who wanted to help the government of Iraq, and they found the defendant, Mr Shaaban," said Sharon Jackson, an assistant US attorney.
Shaaban was working as a truck driver and living in Greenfield, Indiana when he was arrested in March.
His trial began with jury selection on Monday and is expected to take three weeks. It will include testimony from a former agent for the Iraqi intelligence service, who claims he arranged for Shaaban to travel to Baghdad in November 2002 to discuss the deal face-to-face.
Prosecutors say negotiations broke down before the US coalition-led invasion toppled Hussein's regimen. The former Iraqi agent, who will not be named in court and will testify wearing a disguise, has since been captured and has received "financial assistance" from the US.
Shaaban, who is representing himself with the help of two standby public defenders, said he never entered Iraq and was stopped at the Syrian border.
He also said he was working to protect US troops deployed in the region.
Although the government identifies him as Palestinian, Shaaban said he is one of 24 children - including five sets of twins - born to a Lebanese mother and an Azerbaijani father.
Shaaban said he was sold as a child and did not know of his twin until the two were reunited years later in Moscow.
The twins moved to the US and both worked as truck drivers, with his twin later dying in Chechnya, he said.
Prosecutors said the tale of a twin is far-fetched. They planned to have experts testify that the fingerprints contained in two separate immigration files belonged to the same person.
A federal grand jury indicted Shaaban in March on charges of illegally procuring naturalisation and a driver's licence, acting as a foreign agent, violating sanctions against Iraq and conspiracy.
A later charge of witness tampering was added after prosecutors said he threatened another brother who lives in California and had agreed to testify against him.
If convicted, Shaaban faces up to 65 years in prison and more than $1.5m in fines.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/11/2006 03:36 ||
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An immigrant accused of conspiring to sell US intelligence secrets to Saddam Hussein's government told jurors on Tuesday he was secretly working for the US government and may be confused with his dead identical twin.
Been There / Done That / F**kin' Duh Dept. She needs a new Staff Slimer. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton called the Bush administration "incompetent" when it came to protecting the troops in combat and called the lack of adequate body armor for soldiers and Marines "unforgivable."
So far in Iraq, more than 2,100 American troops have been killed. Critics like Clinton, D-N.Y., say that many of these deaths are the result of inadequate body armor. A secret Pentagon study of 93 Marines who were killed in Iraq found that 74 died after they were hit by a bullet or shrapnel in the torso or shoulders â areas unprotected by the armor most are issued.
"We perhaps could have avoided so many of these fatalities with the right body armor," said Clinton, who recently wrote letters to Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee; and Francis J. Harvey, secretary of the Army, calling for an investigation into why troops were not being protected.
Clinton pointed to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney as the culprits. Some have said that supplying Marines and soldiers with armor that covers their sides is too expensive â costing about $260 for each person. Clinton said that considering the United States' defense budget was half a trillion dollars, the additional protection was affordable. She said the administration had refused to listen to people in the field like Paul Bremer, former ambassador to Iraq, who said the United States needed more troops in Iraq to pacify the country.
"This is Bush/Cheney policy. ⊠I've been one of the leading critics pointing out all the failures, the incompetencies," Clinton said. "I am just bewildered as to how this president and this vice president continue to isolate themselves from different point of views. He's [President Bush has] got three more years in office. Some of us wish this wasn't the case."
Congress recently passed a law to reimburse troops who purchased the armor themselves, but Clinton said not all of those people had been given their money.
"It's our duty to protect our men and women in uniform," said Clinton, who is rumored to be considering a run for the White House in 2008. "They are protecting us, our interest. They have been sent there by our president. The very least we can do is give them the very best body armor and armored vehicle."
The lack of adequate armor has been a hot topic during the war in Iraq. In 2004, a soldier confronted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a Q&A session in Iraq about the issue. The question turned out to be planted by a journalist. Recently, Howard Dean, former presidential candidate and president of the Democratic National Committee, called for Rumsfeld to resign.
The Defense Department and Army said that they needed more time to acquire the armor and that publicly discussing issues of body armor aided the enemy â claims that Clinton dismissed as out of hand.
She said it was now incumbent on the president to stand up for the men and women fighting overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The president speaks out strongly and even harshly from time to time about issues he thinks are important," Clinton said. "Let's hear him speak about men and women who wear the uniform of our country." Better ask the troops, since you can't seem to read fast enough to keep up with the BDS meme failure curve.
#3
Hillary could champion new body armor for all along with a 20% pay raise in 2007 and they'd still flip her the bird. Stupid they ain't. She's toast.
#5
I'm still trying to figure how we got through WWII without body army and with all those unarmored Jeeps and trucks.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2006 9:12 Comments ||
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#6
Hush, Fred. You're interfering in the good Senator's spotlight. She's had to keep her lip zipped lo these many weeks; "No comment" on NSA surveillance and secret Euro prisons. Finally she has a meme she can feed to the moonbats and you wanna rain on her parade.
#7
Fred,
"I'm still trying to figure how we got through WWII ..."
Several hundred thousand dead. Of course 70 pound body armor might have made things even worse at Tarawa and Omaha.
You know lady, if you wanted to reduce US sevice casualties you should have spoken up before Fallujha and recommended to place be leveled like St. Lo was in 1944. Damn civilian casualties. Did you? Piece of low level political grandstanding self centered positioning two bit hack.
#9
This is Hillary trying to stake out an anti-Bush position to attract the left wing in the primaries without engaging in actual anti-war rhetoric that will lose her the general. She's going to keep getting pushed farther and farther left by the party and here own gut desire to tear down the establishment '68.
#11
If the troops lacked body armor, the body count would be MUCH higher. I canât imagine that you could go into battle with one of those armor suits that eh XOD people wear or anything close to that. Still find it hard to believe any story of troops âlackingâ body armor when they are deployed to Iraq. Of course certain exception will be made in the case of a Pvt Cassini and their ilk. While I am far far from knowing, I checked a few sites and could find any body armor that was any better than what I was issued. If there was something better I might invest in some if I was deploying to the sandbox. P.S. HILLARY CLINTON CAN GO TO HELL!
The Justice Department's independent watchdog says it does not have jurisdiction to open an investigation into the legality of the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program.
Also Tuesday, the Pentagon referred a Democratic request for an internal review on the subject to the National Security Agency's inspector general.
In a three-paragraph letter, Justice's Inspector General Glenn Fine forwarded the request to the department's Office of Professional Responsibility, which reviews allegations of misconduct involving employees' actions when providing legal advice.
President Bush's decision to authorize the NSA to monitor -- without warrants -- people inside the United States has sparked a flurry of questions about the program's legal justification.
Bush and his top aides say the activities of the nation's largest spy agency were narrowly targeted to intercept calls and e-mails of Americans and others inside the United States with suspected ties to Al Qaeda.
But a growing chorus of legal experts from both parties are raising doubts about Bush's authority to order such monitoring on U.S. soil and questioning whether the White House should have sought changes in law.
Congress also plans to investigate. As part of its work, the House and Senate intelligence committees will soon hear from former NSA officer Russell T. Tice. The whistleblower told lawmakers in Dec. 16 letter that he had information about "probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts" involving the NSA director, the defense secretary and other officials as part of highly classified government operations.
ABC News reported Tuesday night that Tice claims to be one of the dozen sources who spoke to The New York Times about monitoring programs.
Over three dozen House Democrats -- led by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., a member of the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees -- have also requested separate investigations by Justice's inspector general, the Pentagon's inspector general and Congress' watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office.
A senior Defense Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not yet public, said the Pentagon's watchdog will not do a review because the NSA's inspector general is "actively reviewing aspects of that program."
Lofgren said she thought the Pentagon's watchdog was best suited for the work.
She and a number of her colleagues also wrote to Fine on Monday, saying his decision not to open an inquiry was wrong. Under the Patriot Act, the Democrats said, his office is designated as the "one entity responsible for the review of information and complaints regarding civil rights and civil liberties violations" by Justice officials.
Deputy Inspector General Paul Martin said neither the Patriot Act nor the law that governs all inspectors general gives Fine jurisdiction to look into the attorney general's actions concerning the electronic surveillance program. Issues dealing with that legal authority are "jurisdiction of the department's Office of Professional Responsibility," Martin said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/11/2006 00:31 ||
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#3
I call BS. This is just another chapter in the Impeach Bush At Any Cost charade. When this turns up zip, the DhimmiDonks will move on to the next red herring. Bastids, all.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
01/11/2006 2:04 Comments ||
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#4
Woulod be good if they could find the traitorous slime that leaked the story though.
But a growing chorus of legal experts from both parties are raising doubts about Bush's authority to order such monitoring on U.S. soil and questioning whether the White House should have sought changes in law.
Odd. An equally large -- and growing -- choir says the opposite. Their arguments tend to cite things like the Constitution, instead of resorting to slippery slope arguments and the assumption that Congress and the Courts are superior to the Executive.
Why didn't the reporter mention them?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
01/11/2006 8:58 Comments ||
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#8
"... a growing chorus of legal experts from both parties are raising doubts ..."
And this from Fox News.
I wonder if JD will similarly find it unable to investigate the leaks from NSA (or Congress).
Federal officials will begin installing steel pole barriers this month to stop drug and migrant smugglers from driving through what have been high-traffic corridors along sections of the Mexican border in Arizona and New Mexico. During the 2005 fiscal year, more than 2,700 vehicles, a record, crossed the border illegally through the Yuma sector.
The poles, which will be spaced about four feet apart, will be placed along two miles of border east of San Luis, Ariz. South of Yuma, in a little jag on the border. , and along a one-mile stretch west of Columbus, N.M. That's where Pancho Villa's raid was. , in areas frequented by smugglers using cars, pickups and vans. The barriers have previously been used near San Diego.
Officials say smugglers driving around the barriers will go into isolated terrain where they will be easier to catch. Additionally, the western side of the Arizona barrier will end where officials are extending an existing wall of corrugated metal to form a contiguous barrier.
The steel poles are 10 to 12 inches in diameter and 12 to 13œ feet long. Heavy equipment will hammer them about halfway into the ground. The poles will also be filled with solid resin. The barriers are expected to be able to withstand crashes of up to 40 mph faster than Mexicans drive, said Michael Gramley, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Yuma sector, which includes San Luis in southwestern Arizona. "This particular design has been put through many different tests, and it appears that it will be effective in preventing vehicles from being able to cross the international boundary and will be very durable if someone is attempting to vandalize them," Gramley said.
#1
I expect the smugglers to use motorcycles to get between the borders. Either that or get the Mexican military to come in and use a bulldozer on one.
The White House said on Wednesday that Iran has made a "serious miscalculation" by clearing the way to resume uranium enrichment and that intensive diplomacy was under way with European allies and others about what to do now. White House spokesman Scott McClellan, traveling with President George W. Bush on a brief trip to Kentucky, told reporters that if the European-led negotiations had run their course, then there was no other option but to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
Iran removed U.N. seals at uranium enrichment research facilities on Tuesday and announced it would resume "research and development" on producing uranium fuel, prompting angry reactions from Washington, the European Union and Russia. "I think that the Iranian regime has made another serious miscalculation by their latest actions, and we are engaged in some intensive diplomacy right now. We are talking with our European friends and others about how to move ahead and those discussions continue," McClellan said.
He said the international community had given Iran a chance to negotiate in good faith, but instead Tehran "is showing yet again that they are going to ignore the demands of the international community, and I think that's a serious miscalculation."
"We believe that if the negotiations have run their course and Iran is not going to negotiate in good faith, then there's no other option but to refer the matter to the Security Council," McClellan said. "If that happens then we would talk about what actions need to be taken at that time."
In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for the U.N. Security Council to consider action against Iran. Iran says its nuclear program is entirely peaceful. The U.N. nuclear watchdog has found no firm proof to the contrary.
#3
It is illogical for the US DemoLeft to argue that America must obey the world community but not those nations whom want Israel, a de facto member-state of the UNO, wiped off the map, nor want a specific Religion, i.e. Islam, to "rule the world" at the expense of all others. The Dems
silence in a Amer REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY WHERE NO LAW PREVENTS POLI LEADERS FROM TELLING VOTERS OR CONSTITUENTS THE TRUTH OF ANYTHING speaks volumes about the [hidden] agenda and patriotism of the Commie Clintons and the Clinton-led/centric US DemoLeft.
Inside CIA headquarters, a high-tech monitoring operation scores an intelligence coup, obtaining a close-up photo of an Iranian nuclear facility.
The source: an Iranian blog discovered in the vast labyrinth of the Internet, CBS News correspondent David Martin reports.
Elliot Jardines is this United States' first director for open source intelligence, an unusual job in a business that usually keeps its sources secret.
For Jardines, useful intelligence lies in plain sight.
"Pretty much anything we need is available through open sources," Jardines says.
Despite the secrecy most intelligence operations work under and the necessity to steal information from foreign governments, Jardines' department is different because the information his team finds is publicly available.
Jardines adds that Web pages, books, periodicals, TV news, radio, blogs, graffiti and bumper stickers yield useful intelligence.
Douglas Naquin runs the day-to-day monitoring of everything from Arab satellite networks to the latest from Cuba. Naquin tells Martin that he can access 500 stations at any one time and 20,000 total.
The department has three video libraries, a total of 24,000 tapes and DVDs. They include all the hostage and execution videos that terrorists put up on the Internet.
Jihadist Web sites are not likely to give away the whereabouts of a wanted terrorist like Abu Musab al Zarqawi or Osama bin Laden, but they do reveal other things about them.
"There's a lot of interest in 'Is Osama bin Laden losing market share?' if you will. How is he playing vis-a-vis Zarqawi," Naquin says.
He adds that, "Osama bin Laden hasn't said anything for months and so Zarqawi seems to be really taking up the mantle."
Even a T-shirt that depicts British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush beneath a "Wanted: Dead of Alive" sign can indicate trends in the Muslim world, Martin reports. Naquin says that the shirt, which has the phrase "No. 1 Muslims Enemy" written beneath the pictures, sold heavily in parts of Indonesia.
In an agency of spies, the notion that intelligence doesn't have to be stolen to be valuable takes some getting used to.
"One of the challenges that I have is to change the culture to value open sources more," Jardines says.
Jardines acknowledges that the traditional attitude throughout the agency is that if information was not stolen, it cannot be valuable.
"That's very much the old attitude," he says.
Intelligence is still a job of connecting the dots, but more and more of those dots are hiding in plain sight.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/11/2006 03:48 ||
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#1
All you CIA guyz and galz reading Rantburg right now, go hit Fred's tip jar.
#2
I'm forever the community skeptic, but open source information has never been discounted by the Clingons, only shrouded among other closely held data. In today's IC spirit of "glasnost" the heralding and sharing of Open Source is a relatively low cost public relations tool which illustrates Clingon willingness to share marbles and play nice. Elliot Jardines is a sharp young, happy-face who speaks well in front of the camera, and looks good in a $400. Jos. A Banks two button. All said, I'm glad they are, as Emeril Lagasse says, kicking-it-up-a-notch, and bright young people like Jardines appear to be in charge.
The U.S. military lawyer prosecuting Omar Khadr said Tuesday the Canadian teenager is no fresh-faced innocent who was making s'mores at al-Qaida training camps, but a terrorist who deserves to be convicted by a special military tribunal for killing a U.S. medic.
Chief prosecutor Col. Moe Davis blasted "nauseating" sympathetic portrayals of detainees like Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured after a July 2002 firefight.
Authorities could have sought the death penalty but didn't because Khadr was a juvenile, Davis said, breaking his silence on the case a day before the teen's first appearance at a pre-trial hearing that his lawyers tried in vain to stop.
"You'll see evidence when we get into the courtroom of the smiling face of Omar Khadr as he builds bombs to kill Americans," he said.
"I don't think it's a great leap to figure out why we're holding him accountable," added Davis, charging that Khadr and others picked up the tools of terrorism from al-Qaida.
"When these guys went to camp, they weren't making s'mores and learning how to tie knots."
Khadr, now 19, is expected to enter a plea Wednesday in a contentious tribunal that's proceeding despite motions filed by his defence lawyers and a pending decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on whether the system for foreign terror suspects is constitutional.
A member of a Toronto family with alleged ties to terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, Khadr is charged with murder and other counts arising from the death of medic Christopher Speer and has been held here at the U.S. military detention centre in Guantanamo Bay for the last 39 months.
Few have been allowed to see Khadr, who is nearly blind in one eye and has spent most of his time in isolation at Camp Delta, a barbed-wire enclave on the U.S.-controlled southeast coast of Cuba, near the historic naval base.
One of his American lawyers, Muneer Ahmad, called it "astounding, shameful and appalling" that the U.S. military is prosecuting the first-ever war crimes case of a juvenile, saying he has "reliable evidence" that Khadr has been tortured.
And he called on Canada to denounce the tribunal system set up by President George W. Bush, saying it allows confessions extracted by torture and doesn't afford anywhere near the kind of due process of criminal civil trials.
"Canada has a decision to make," said Ahmad, "either to publicly condemn the military commissions as fundamentally unfair . . . or to remain silent on the matter and complicit in the sham trial."
It was unclear whether Khadr's Canadian lawyer, Dennis Edney, would attend the hearing.
Ahmad, who saw Khadr on Monday, said he suffers from chronic health problems and has participated in hunger strikes but is in "reasonably good spirits given what he's been subjected to."
Khadr's lawyers and human rights groups closing monitoring the case say he's been constantly interrogated, shackled in painful stress positions for many hours until he's soiled himself and subjected to extreme temperatures.
Davis rejected allegations of widespread torture as standard tactics used on captured terrorists. The detention centre has been open for four years.
"Some of them describe (conditions) as being much better than what they ever had before."
He also vigorously defended the tribunal system for terrorism suspects captured in the Afghanistan war, saying "we've got nothing to be ashamed of."
"We want the world to see that we're extending a full, fair and open trial to the terrorists that have attacked us. We're extending rights to them that they've never contemplated."
The Khadr family has provoked intense debate in Canada. Each of the five Khadr siblings, all of whom are Canadian citizens, has at one time or another been separately accused or investigated for alleged links to terrorism.
Their father, Egyptian-born Canadian Ahmed Said Khadr, was an accused al-Qaida financier killed in a battle with Pakistani forces in 2003.
Davis referred to the family's connection to bin Laden, claiming the Khadrs always spent Tuesday's feast of the sacrifice, or Eid al Adha, with the terror mastermind.
"So I'm sure (Omar's) upset that he's here and not in Afghanistan."
Davis argued that the new threat posed by al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists has necessitated changes in military law, just as there were revisions for the Nuremberg trials of Nazis after the Second World War.
"Some say we're making up the rules as we go along but the law has to adapt to today's environment," said Davis.
"We're here to prosecute unlawful conduct, not persecute religious beliefs."
It's particularly galling, said Davis, that rights organizations are calling some 500 detainees the "patriots of Guantanamo" who are standing up for their rights, yet they delay their military tribunals by every means possible.
"I hate to quote Bart Simpson as an authority but damned if you do, damned if you don't. That's the situation that we face."
Only nine of the detainees have been formally charged with war crimes and three of the tribunals have been stayed pending the Supreme Court decision, expected by June.
There are a couple dozen other cases in the works, said Davis, with charges expected in the coming months. Some will likely be completely open, but others will be restricted in parts for security reasons.
Khadr will be formally represented by Capt. John Merriam, a U.S. army judge advocate with no trial experience, "even on charges of jaywalking," said Ahmad, who is asking that he be replaced by someone with more experience.
"It would be laughable if the stakes weren't so high," he said.
The tribunal is headed by Col. Robert Chester.
"Understand that the room is not a court and the presiding officer is not a judge and this is not a full and fair trial," said Ahmad. "No matter how they dress it up, the military commission is still a sham."
U.S. authorities say Khadr threw a grenade that killed Speer in an alleged al-Qaida compound. The teen was shot three times by American soldiers.
"Thanks to the American medics who stepped over their dead friend and tended to Mr. Khadr, he's alive today," said Davis.
Khadr was formally charged last November with murder, attempted murder, aiding the enemy and conspiracy. He's been designated an "unprivileged belligerent" who didn't have the right to wage war.
In what Ahmad has called a "crass political move," word of the charges came the same day the U.S. high court said it consider the tribunals faced by Khadr and eight others so far.
"The timing has not been at its best," admitted Davis. "In that particular case, it was already in the works."
Preliminary hearings took place for four of the men in 2004, including Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for bin Laden whose case sparked the Supreme Court challenge.
Khadr is expected to attend the hearing in his first public appearance since he was captured and then sent to Guantanamo in October 2002 just after he turned 16.
Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, a Yemeni, is also facing a pre-trial hearing on a conspiracy charge. U.S. authorities allege he provided protection to bin Laden and was a propagandist for al-Qaida.
Al-Bahlul is insisting he doesn't want the military-appointed defence lawyer and would rather defend himself.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/11/2006 03:26 ||
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Gov. Janet Napolitano has proposed spending $100 million in state money to fight illegal entry, including a crackdown on businesses that intentionally hire illegal aliens.
Arizona, the busiest illegal-entry point along the country's southern border, serves as a hub for smugglers who transport illegal aliens across the country.
Mrs. Napolitano, a Democrat up for re-election in November, is also asking the federal government to pay for more National Guard troops along the state's porous border.
"We are going to step up and protect our citizens when the federal government fails them -- but this is a federal problem, and we expect the federal government to do its part," Mrs. Napolitano told lawmakers on Monday, the opening day of the Legislature.
Mrs. Napolitano also has asked Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to invoke a law allowing the federal government to pay Arizona to station National Guard troops at the border. The state already has about 170 National Guard troops at the border, assisting federal and state officers.
She said further details on her illegal-entry curbs will be provided next week when she releases her budget. When asked about her plan to fine companies who intentionally hire undocumented aliens, Mrs. Napolitano said she is working with a Democratic lawmaker on legislation.
Five months ago, Mrs. Napolitano followed a decision by Gov. Bill Richardson, New Mexico Democrat, in declaring a state of emergency along the Mexico border. The move freed up $1.5 million in disaster funds to help Arizona border counties stop illegal aliens.
The money is designated for the Arizona's four border counties and the $1.5 million is part of $4 million set aside annually for disasters, such as fires or floods.
The counties will be eligible to apply for state money for a wide range of costs, from repairing border fences to paying for overtime for local law-enforcement agencies dealing with smuggling-related crime.
Even though illegal aliens provide the economy with cheap labor, Arizona and other border states shoulder huge health care and education costs for illegal aliens and their families.
Thousands gathered Monday in Phoenix to protest what they said was an anti-immigrant sentiment at the Legislature, which last year considered two dozen immigration proposals. Only a few became law.
Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl have introduced different bills to thwart illegal entry. Mr. Kyl's bill would authorize 10,000 new Border Patrol agents and require millions of undocumented aliens to return to their countries after five years. The McCain bill would allow illegal aliens to stay in the United States if they pay a fine and participate in a guest-worker program.
President George W. Bush denounced some Democratic critics of the Iraq war as irresponsible on Tuesday and he wanted an election-year debate that "brings credit to our democracy, not comfort to our adversaries"
In a speech, Bush made clear he was girding for battle with Democrats in the run-up to the mid-term congressional election in November, when he will try to keep the U.S. Congress in the hands of his Republican Party amid American doubts about his Iraq policy. "There is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate and it's even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas," Bush told the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
The president predicted more tough fighting and more sacrifice ahead in Iraq in 2006 but said he believed progress will be made against the insurgency and on the Iraqi political process and reconstruction. He also urged all governments to follow through on promised aid to Iraq, saying $13 billion had been pledged but not all of it delivered to date.
Bush, who has faced a barrage of criticism over his handling of Iraq, said Americans know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being handled "and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people." He added, "So I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy, not comfort to our adversaries."
Bush did not mention names, but aides said he was referring to Democratic Party chief Howard Dean, along with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, among others.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said it was irresponsible for Democrats to claim, as Dean, Reid and others have done, that Bush has no strategy for Iraq.
Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Bagogas Kennedy used Bush's argument against the president. "I wholeheartedly agree with President Bush about the need for accountability in the debate on the war in Iraq. 2006 must be the year when the American people demand that President Bush and other high government officials be held accountable for their mistakes," he said.
How about having the Dems held accountable for all the predictions that turned out to be wrong before the war? How about having the Dems articulating a plan as opposed to sputtering in opposition?
Reid said it was outrageous that Bush was using U.S. troops as a shield from criticism in an address to veterans and also had refused to address a recent Pentagon report on the inadequacy of body armour for American soldiers in Iraq. "Patriotic Americans will continue to ask the tough questions because our brave men and women in Iraq, their families and the American people deserve to know that their leaders are being held accountable," Reid said.
We're going to ask some tough questions of the Dems, if we can get to them.
California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, who was in Iraq in December, said he agreed with Bush's call for a reasoned discussion of the war and the need for constructive criticism. "But the administration cannot question the patriotism of those who disagree on war strategy and at the same time call for greater civility," Schiff said, adding, "We should be exploiting the divisions among our enemies, not among ourselves."
Oh, so that means you'll lay off the 'Bush Lied' meme -- oh, right, guess not.
Bush is trying to convince some sceptical Americans that his strategy for Iraq will work even as the U.S. death toll continues to mount nearly three years after the invasion to oust President Saddam Hussein.
The president also urged disaffected Sunni Arabs to join in the governing process in Iraq, saying "compromise and consensus and power-sharing are the only path to national unity and lasting democracy." "A country that divides into factions and dwells on old grievances cannot move forward and risks sliding back into tyranny," he said.
On concerns Iraqi security forces are engaging in torture against minorities, Bush called it "unacceptable" and said adjustments were being made in the way forces are trained.
aish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, the two leading Pakistan-based terror groups active in Jammu and Kashmir, are firmly linked to Al Qaeda and are unlikely to end their offensive against India, says a new book.
The US-based Lawrence Ziring writes in "Pakistan: Democracy, Development and Security Issues" that leaders of Jaish and Lashkar were also connected with the Harkat-ul-Ansar.
"Both the Jaish and the Lashkar are part of the same terror network, nor can they be separated from the Al Qaeda of bin Laden," says Ziring, the Arnold F. Schneider Professor of political science at the Western Michigan University.
His chapter in the book, "Terrorism in Historical Perspective", says: "In the vernacular of the Islamists and leaders like Maulana (Masood) Azhar, the jehadis will not end their operations against the Indian government unless (Jammu and) Kashmir is liberated.
"More recently, even that objective is reported to be limited. India itself is targeted, symbolised by Azhar's call to rebuild the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya."
Ziring adds: "Links between Jaish and Lashkar and the Binoria Madrassa in Karachi also ties the jehadis to the Taliban in Afghanistan and to Al Qaeda worldwide."
After extensively studying Lashkar literature, Ziring - who served as an adviser to the Pakistan Administrative Staff College and taught at Dhaka University - says in the book published by Sage that Indians and Pakistanis as well as foreigners can be found in jehadi ranks.
"There can be no mistaking their declarations to undo India on the one side and the US on the other.
"Lashkar proudly declares that its goal is to return India to Islamic rule."
While the Lashkar and several of its frontal organisations have been active in Jammu and Kashmir for over a decade, the Jaish was formed by Masood Azar after India freed him and two other terrorist leaders in exchange for the passengers of a Indian Airlines jet hijacked in 1999 from Nepal to Afghanistan.
Both groups are currently at the forefront of the insurgency in the Kashmir Valley and the Lashkar has also been blamed for attacks in other parts of India, including the terror strike on the Indian parliament in December 2001.
In the largest context, Ziring warns that there is every possibility of Pakistan itself getting Talibanised - as it gets sucked into Islamist ideology.
"The Talibanisation of Pakistan remains a distinct possibility even if the means of achieving that objective are subject to debate," he says.
Ziring also underlines Pakistan's role in the growth of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Islamic student militia whose regime was eventually overthrown by the US after 9/11.
"Lest it be forgotten, 100,000 Pakistanis, more or less, served in Afghanistan as mujahideen.
"Pakistan was the only actor capable of organising the Taliban movement, staffing it, paying it, training it, equipping it and deploying it.
"Moreover, Pakistan was the only country with a direct interest in drawing Muslims back to Afghanistan from the Arab states."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/11/2006 00:22 ||
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In the ever-more-amazing United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal, the arrest in Houston last Friday of South Korean businessman Tongsun Park brings us a step closer to understanding the origins of the largest humanitarian fraud in U.N. history. Not least, Park may be able to provide some answers to questions surrounding one of the top former U.N. officials with whom Park had dealings â the godfather of the Kyoto treaty, former potentate of the Canadian-power industry, and longtime eminence of U.N. policy, 76-year-old Canadian Maurice Strong.
Park is charged by New York federal prosecutors with acting secretly as an agent of Saddam Hussein's U.N.-sanctioned regime to try to influence to Saddam's advantage the shaping of the U.N. Oil-for-Food relief program for Iraq, which ran from 1996 to 2003. Park had not yet entered a plea as of Tuesday night. Allegations made against Park over the past year, some by federal prosecutors, some by Paul Volcker's U.N.-authorized probe into Oil-for-Food, are Byzantine. They involve tales of Park's trips in the mid-1990s to Baghdad, and his onward travel, allegedly carrying cardboard boxes of cash, plastic bags filled with cash, and paper bags filled with yet more cash. They also involve tales of Park's encounters with former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who has denied any wrongdoing.
But one of the most intriguing episodes in Park's alleged Iraq-related ventures, as recounted in a Sept. 7, 2005 report from the Volcker committee, involves a Jordanian bank check for $988,885, allegedly bankrolled by Saddam's regime, made out to "Mr. M. Strong," and delivered in August of 1997 by Park to Maurice Strong. When Strong endorsed this check, back in 1997, he was serving as a top aide to the newly promoted Secretary-General Kofi Annan, coordinating U.N. reform. Strong had just finished a stint in 1996 similarly advising Boutros-Ghali on reform issues. Asked last year by Volcker's team to explain this payment, Strong first denied any memory of the check. Then, when Volcker's investigators showed him his own signature on the cancelled check, he denied any knowledge of where the funds originally came from. Strong said he had done nothing wrong and that the check was meant solely to cover an investment Park wished to make in one of Strong's family-controlled companies, Canadian-based Cordex Petroleum Inc.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/11/2006 03:43 ||
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#1
Strong implications from Tongsun Park's arrest
Maximum pressure, roll 'em all up no matter where or high up it goes.
#2
Back in Park's first visible appearance "RICEGATE" the dems wouldn't let anybody investigate. Now we see the end cost of putting up with Dem corruption.
#3
If we want to really address these problems we need to revisit Jimmy's boy - his sec of treasury - you remember his scams including 2 worlds fairs.... and ... that Pakiwaki bank that financed the Pak bomb and ripped off O-bill-of-ladden making him radical...
There needs to be a purge of the corrupt from the dem cesspool.
January 07 2006 at 0635 UTC in position 13:43N - 049:09E, Gulf of Aden. One speedboat, yellow colour, about 15 meters length doing 21 kts chased a chemical tanker underway. Master raised alarm, sounded whistle, increased speed to maximum, took evasive manoeuvres; crew mustered and activated fire hoses. Boat came close and seeing crew alertness stopped the chase and moved away at 0740 UTC.
January 07 2006 at 0440 UTC in position 13:58.6N - 049:20.8E, Gulf of Aden. Four boats, white colour, about 15 meters length doing 15 kts approached a chemical tanker underway. Master raised alarm, increased speed and took evasive manoeuvres and boats moved away at 0505 UTC.
EFL. Here because of the effect on the oil producers of an international move to clean coal as a major energy source.
The first ministerial meeting of a controversial alliance promising economic growth with low carbon emissions has opened in Sydney. The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate aims to develop and promote technologies such as "clean coal", nuclear and renewables. Green groups say the body aims to emasculate the Kyoto Protocol.
hard to do when it never matured, sexually or otherwise ....
The meeting involves politicians and industrialists from Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the US. The Asia-Pacific partnership was announced in July, but this is the first time that ministers from the six countries have come together.
US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was due to be the highest-profile attendee, but withdrew a few days ago citing concerns over the Middle East in the wake of Ariel Sharon's illness.
Significant that it would have been Condi and not the Commerce Secty. Underscores the real stakes here.
Australia's Environment Minister Ian Campbell does not believe her absence will affect the gathering. "It certainly would have been fantastic if the US secretary of state could have been here," he said.
"But the meeting will be the culmination of an enormous amount of work by the six governments; and we're still very hopeful of constructive outcomes to deliver the two policy aims of robust, strong economic development, but within a framework of much lower greenhouse gas emissions."
The ideology
nice rhetorical thrust, that
behind the partnership is that emissions can be brought down effectively by developing and spreading new technologies.
It is a voluntary body without international commitments such as those contained in the Kyoto Protocol. Environmental groups believe the approach will achieve little.
Environmental groups believe many things, often before breakfast and simultaneously. A few are actually true.
"Voluntary agreements have been tried before and have failed to affect significant change," commented an NGO climate coalition in a joint statement co-ordinated by Climate Action Network Australia (Cana). "Without targets, timetables nor market-based incentives to encourage the deployment of already developed clean energy technologies, the Asia-Pacific partnership is an empty and meaningless shell that will not help us avoid dangerous climate change."
Australia and the US have both withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol
not quite - we never joined, formally
, claiming that meeting the commitments on greenhouse gas reductions that they agreed to at the Kyoto summit in 1997 would damage their economies.
They have found common ground with China, India and South Korea, all developing nations that resist the idea of binding targets on reducing emissions; while Japan, which remains committed to its Kyoto Protocol target, now has a foot in both camps.
Shiite and Sunni Arabs celebrated the Islamic feast of sacrifice Tuesday with calls for an end to the bloodshed that has wracked Iraq since last month's elections. Sunni Arabs tempered their appeals with renewed calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
In a day with no violence reported, Iraqis nationwide celebrated the opening of the four-day Eid al-Adha celebration with food, sweets and visits to relatives. Lambs were slaughtered and food was distributed to the poor.
"This Eid is a happy day for all Muslims, especially Iraqis. But it comes after painful events that happened in Karbala and Ramadi," said Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite.
He referred to the killings of more than 120 people in suicide bombings last week in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and at a police recruiting center in Ramadi. On Monday, suicide bombers infiltrated the heavily fortified Interior Ministry compound in Baghdad and killed 29 Iraqis - an attack claimed by al-Qaida in Iraq, a group with an avowed aim of starting a sectarian war.
Violence has increased since the Dec. 15 elections, with at least 498 Iraqis and 54 U.S. forces killed.
Al-Jaafari said despite the violence, Iraqi had made significant advances in 2005, citing a large turnout in Dec. 15 elections as one of the biggest achievements.
About 70 percent of Iraq's 15 million voters, including large numbers of Sunni Arabs, participated in the elections, although some Sunni Arab groups complained the vote was tainted by fraud - delaying the release of results.
"The wide participation of the majority I also consider to be an Eid celebration," al-Jaafari told Cabinet ministers visiting him. "Even in counties where security and stability are established, it is rare to reach such a rate of 70 percent which Iraq reached."
Eid al-Adha - one of Iraq's biggest holidays - concludes the pilgrimage to Mecca and is celebrated by Muslims worldwide. It commemorates Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his son in God's test of the patriarch's faith. At the last moment, God substituted a sheep for the son. The story is shared by all the great monotheistic religions - Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
Al-Jaafari's governing United Iraqi Alliance emerged with a large lead in the elections, far ahead of a Kurdish coalition and Sunni Arab groups but without the majority it will need in the 275-member parliament to avoid a coalition.
With final results expected next week, the Shiites, Kurds and some Sunni Arab groups have been talking about forming a broad-based coalition government.
Iraq's leading Shiite politician, United Iraqi Alliance leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, urged Sunni Arabs to stop complaining and accept the results.
"We call upon everybody to make the general interest of Iraq their top priority, away from sectarian or private interests. We also call on everyone to respect the will of the people as it is shown by the ballots. We call on everybody to stop screaming, shuffling the cards and forging the facts," al-Hakim said in an Eid message.
The cleric added that "national unity can be achieved when everybody recognize the facts" and "accepts their outcome. Any violation of this undoubtedly will lead to the continuation of chaos and drag the country to more disasters."
In Washington, President Bush, speaking at a gathering of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, also urged Iraqis to put aside their differences to form a government of national unity, warning that the country "risks sliding back into tyranny" if it dwells on old grievances.
A senior Sunni Arab politician giving a holiday sermon Tuesday denounced the suicide bomb attack in Karbala and said "Iraqis would live as brothers" if the occupier - the U.S.-led coalition - left Iraq.
Harith al-Ubaidi, of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accordance Front headed by Adnan al-Dulaimi, said in a sermon that Sunnis were "hand in hand" with Shiites against the attack outside a Karbala shrine.
"We also demand that the occupier get out, because he is the reason behind every crime," al-Ubaidi said at the Umm al-Qura mosque, Baghdad headquarters of the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, which is believed to have ties to insurgent groups.
Hundreds of worshippers demonstrated after prayers to denounce a raid on the mosque Sunday by U.S. troops. The mosque is in al-Adel, a rough Sunni Arab neighborhood where American journalist Jill Carroll, a 28-year-old freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped Saturday.
A U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said the raid was a necessary immediate response to the kidnapping based on a tip provided by an Iraqi citizen. The military said Sunday that six people were detained.
#1
Harith al-Ubaidi, of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accordance Front headed by Adnan al-Dulaimi, said in a sermon that Sunnis were "hand in hand" with Shiites against the attack outside a Karbala shrine.
#2
Were there any Americans at the Karbala shrine that day? I don't think there were any American casualties reported. So how could we be the cause of that one?
#3
"We also demand that the occupier get out, because he is the reason behind every crime," al-Ubaidi said at the Umm al-Qura mosque, Baghdad headquarters of the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, which is believed to have ties to insurgent groups.
Yep, when them Shiites get boomed, it's all Uncle Sam's fault. Check.
WASHINGTON -The Iraq war will likely cost the United States anywhere between one and two trillion dollars, despite earlier assurances by the White House that these expenses would be manageable, according to a new study co-authored by a Nobel Prize winning economist.
The research made public Monday by Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University, a 2001 Nobel Prize laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank, and economy professor Linda Bilmes of Harvard University, argues current official assessments of the war cost fail to consider key expenses likely to dog the US budget for years to come.
They include rising medical expenses to treat more than 16,000 wounded soldiers, accelerated depreciation of military hardware on the battlefield and the ripple effect on higher oil prices on the US economy, which in part can be blamed on the military venture. âEven taking a conservative approach, we have been surprised at how large they are,â Stiglitz and Bilmes wrote of the costs of the war. âWe can state, with some degree of confidence, that they exceed a trillion dollars.â
Throughout the study, the authors provide âconservativeâ and âmoderateâ estimates of expenses incurred by American society since the start of the war in March 2003.
According to a âconservativeâ assessment, the war will cost Americans at least 1.026 trillion dollars. Under a âmoderateâ assessment, the expenses will top 1.854 trillion. The United States has already spent 251 billion dollars in cash on combat operations in Iraq since the invasion was launched, and continues to fund operations there at about six billion dollars a month, according to congressional officials.
However, argue the economists, these figures fail to take into consideration disability payments to veterans over the course of their lifetime, the cost of replacing military equipment and munitions.
These are the direct costs and will be spread over time in a $2.6 trillion a year budget.
In addition, the cost of recruiting new soldiers has gone up dramatically, with the Pentagon paying recruitment bonuses of up to 40,000 dollars for new enlistees and special bonuses and other benefits of up to 150,000 dollars for current troops that re-enlist. âAnother cost to the government is the interest on the money that it has borrowed to finance the war,â the authors point out.
They estimate that direct budgetary costs of the Iraq war to the US taxpayer will be in the range of 750 billion dollars to 1.1 trillion dollars, assuming that the administration of President George W. Bush begins to withdraw troops in 2006 and maintains a diminishing presence in Iraq for the next five years.
If we've spent $251 billion in the two years of most intense combat to date, how're we getting to 1.1 trillion in the next five? Numbers must include a lot of 'replacement' costs.
But there are also economic costs likely to stretch out for years, the study warns. For example, to date, more than 3,200 US soldiers have suffered head or brain injuries that require lifetime care at a cost range of 600,000 to five million dollars per person. The economists calculate that over a 20 year-period this group alone will cost the United States 14 billion dollars in healthcare expenses and lost productivity.
That's 700 million a year, and that's if you include the lost productivity, a soft number.
The study points to the hidden costs of plucking reservists from their jobs and sending them overseas, rising costs of homeland security spurred by fears of new terrorist attacks, and multiple other factors.
We had fears of new attacks and increased costs for homeland security before we went to Iraq.
And they insist that higher oil prices, that went from 25 dollars a barrel before the conflict to around 50 dollars a barrel today and are affecting every facet of American life, can be partly blamed on the war. A âconservativeâ calculation provided by the study says 20 percent of the increase was due to the Iraq war. The âmoderateâ puts it at 25 percent.
And of course the resuscitating world economy didn't have anything to do with rising oil prices. And of course, rampant, uncountered terrorism would have driven oil prices higher than the current price. Any accounting for that? No? Didn't think so.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/11/2006 00:00 ||
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Pay $ 2,000,000,000,000. ( X )
See the end of western
civilization as we know it: (___)
Mahmoud Abbas says the US government has assured him that voting in a 25 January legislative poll would be allowed in East Jerusalem, despite Israel's objection to Hamas participating. The Palestinian president said on Monday: "Today I received American assurances that the campaigning and the elections will take place in Jerusalem." Abbas's announcement alleviated some fears that he was planning to call off the vote under pressure from members of his Fatah party, who were concerned that the popular Hamas group would embarrass Fatah at the polls.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2006 00:00 ||
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The Palestinian militants who kidnapped Australian man Brian Ambrosio last month say they are sorry they took him hostage. It appears the kidnappers from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are unlikely to be brought to justice.
In Paleostine? Fuhgeddaboudit.
The militants abducted Mr Ambrosio and a Dutch colleague when the foreigners were on their way to work at the American School in Gaza. The militants have told the ABC they made a mistake after planning the kidnapping for a month. After discovering that the men were not US citizens, the kidnappers released them unharmed on the same day they were taken hostage. "Their nationality was the main reason they were released - because they were not the nationalities we were after," one of the militants told the ABC.
Wanted to get their hands on some Great Satans, huh? Well, there are plenty of them running around. Doesn't matter that they're on the Paleos' side...
Heh. Not many Merkin neocons running 'round Gaza right now. There may actually be a neocon Paleo or two, who would like to live in peace -n- harmony, but they know enuff to keep their yaps shut.
While he was held hostage, Mr Ambrosio was forced to make a video calling for the release of the group's leader, who is in a Palestinian jail under American and British supervision. The militants say the Palestinian Authority is now spying on them. But a Palestinian Interior Ministry spokesman says the deteriorating security situation in Gaza means it is too hard to move against the kidnappers right now.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
The militants have told the ABC they made a mistake after planning the kidnapping for a month.
Yeah, that sounds about right for Palestinian "masterminds"...
The squat, four-wheeled Robot driving itself through densely wooded terrain looks too macho to be cute, but it's too small to be threatening (picture a cross between R2-D2 and a Jeep). "You start to associate personalities with each of them," says Mark Del Giorno, of his 'bots. But still, Del Giorno, the vice president for engineering at General Dynamics Robotic Systems, which built this machine for the Army, insists that he doesn't anthropomorphize his robots: "You realize that the âpersonality' comes from, say, the steering being a little loose. I guess I'm too close to the code to think of them as people."
#2
And now, boyz and girlz, dudes and dudettes, you all yet another reason amongst many for the Spetzlamists, 9-11, and why the Failed/Angry Left want America under anti-American American- and Global Socialism and OWG by 2020.
#3
At the risk of the mods jumping on me for promoting my online novel for the second time in a few days, the descriptions here are startlingly similar to ones in my fictional work - Autonomous Operation.
#5
I'm not old enuf to remember the oat eating mule, but young enuf to remember the M-274 A2, and it's various configs. I wonder how much of this plastic, computerized stuff will survive on a nuclear battlefield. Any guesses, comments?
#7
I'm a big proponent of the "1-2-3" approach as relates to robotic "brains". That is, robotic brains need to be designed like human brains, with a lower, mid, and higher brain function--but not all of them inside the body of the robot.
That is, put the critical support, diagnostic, navigation, and individual operations inside each robot. This is more than enough for that part of the brain to do.
For the "midbrain", put only a piece of the midbrain inside each robot, acting in parallel with the midbrains of its other team members. This way, they have a much more powerful virtual midbrain than could be fit into a single robot, to accomplish things such as working as a group and tactical goals.
The midbrain also contains "templates" for higher functions. For example, if it sees a "human" that is below three feet in height when standing up it is probably not a combatant. But that is different from a human on one knee, or a human half in a ditch, etc.
The real higher functions, such as judgement and problem solving, are done with very powerful computers available through a sat or radio network, nowhere near the battlefield. For example, if the standing human is less than three feet tall, but firing a weapon, what to do? This "higher" brain incorporates people as part of its problem solving mechanism.
This 1-2-3 system is designed to compensate for breakdowns anywhere in the system. No "break", temporary or permanent, should freeze up the whole system. Just the more of the system that is online, the more powerful the entire system is.
Put together, you have a large number of robots that act in concert, performing their mission while aware of their resupply/repair needs, which then automatically return to the rear as they are replaced by fully armed and fueled replacements, "keeping up the pressure" on the enemy constantly.
#8
Till the droids come ... lets just release 10s of thousands of RABID ferrets into the IRANIAN underground NUKE centers along with lots of coral snakes.
#9
Till the droids come ... lets just release 10s of thousands of RABID ferrets into the IRANIAN underground NUKE centers along with lots of coral snakes.
#10
Still waiting for the guys in the lab to finish developing the Hellbore...
Posted by: Patrick Phillips ||
01/11/2006 12:13 Comments ||
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#11
Ya idjits, this world already has "droid armies." Whadda ya call Fatah, al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Hizbullah, Hamas, the IRGC ... ? The pattern of abuse is identical and the lowest ranks are viewed as equally disposable. The difference? Our commanders would probably value their 'bots much more than those of the above organizations.
We are already up against 'droids. The deep religious programming brainwashing that allows these, once, human beings to become dispensible may as well be the nearly one million lines of code our side has written, they just happen to call their version "Quran 1.0"
#12
Anonymoose: Put together, you have a large number of robots that act in concert, performing their mission while aware of their resupply/repair needs, which then automatically return to the rear as they are replaced by fully armed and fueled replacements, "keeping up the pressure" on the enemy constantly.
IOW: Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
LONDON - Britain does not envisage military action against Iran, by Britain or any other country, Foreign Minister Jack Straw said on Tuesday after the Islamic Republic restarted nuclear fuel research work. âMilitary action is not on our agenda, I donât believe in practice it is on anyone elseâs agenda,â Straw told parliament.
Except for the Israelis, and perhaps the US, but certain on no one else's mind ...
âThis has to be resolved by diplomatic and other non-military means and thatâs what is on our agenda at the moment.â
Because that's worked well so far ...
Straw said he was concerned about Iranâs resumption of research into nuclear fuel and was consulting his EU colleagues on how hard to push for a referral to the United Nations Security Council.
Where, of course, nothing will happen.
âReference to the Security Council has always been on the agenda,â said Straw. âThe issue of whether we formally propose a referral to the Security Council will be a key subject for discussion when I meet my colleagues in the next few days.â
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/11/2006 00:00 ||
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I agree that no military action should be taken, apart from dropping a few hundred MOABs and bunker busters onto the Iranian nuclear facilities. Other than that, I am totally against any military action whatsoever.
#2
One thing you can say about Iran nowdays...they're not pussyfooting around when it comes to making those hard decisions to go forward in the quest to having The Bomb! At this point, it seems obvious, the US is employing the strategy of "walking softly and carrying a big stick" approach with Iran. But when are they going to put the little chip on lil bro Israel's shoulder?
SKEPTICS of Iraqi ties to al Qaeda appear prepared to argue that even if Saddam did have substantial connections to Ansar al Islam, the GSPC, and the Sudanese Islamic Army, these relations do not constitute ties to al Qaeda. But unless one is prepared to engage in an extremely legalistic parsing similar to that which has surrounded Abu Musab Zarqawi's relationship with Osama bin Laden, the issue is easy enough to resolve.
Ansar al Islam: As noted by the U.S. State Department, Ansar al Islam "is closely allied with al-Qa'ida and Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi's group." Al-Sharq al-Awsat reported in September 2001 that it was al Qaeda emissary Abu Abdul Rahman who provided Ansar al Islam with $300,000 in "seed money" at its inception. Al Qaeda's close involvement in the formation of Ansar al Islam was likewise demonstrated in an al Qaeda memorandum from August 2001 which was recovered in Afghanistan and reported by the New York Times in January 2003. It noted the existence of the "Iraqi Kurdistan Islamic Brigade" and urged the unification of the various Kurdish Islamist groups based around Shinerwe Mountain in northern Iraq into an enclave modeled after that of the Taliban. After the September 11 attacks, Ansar al Islam was to take on an even more ominous role. As the 2002 Patterns of Global Terrorism noted, "al-Qaida operatives in northern Iraq concocted suspect chemicals under the direction of senior al-Qaida associate Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi and tried to smuggle them into Russia, Western Europe, and the United States for terrorist operations."
GSPC: In the case of the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) and al Qaeda, the connection is even clearer. As Dr. Rohan Gunaratna documented in Inside Al Qaeda, following al Qaeda's falling out with Algerian GIA leader Antar Zouabri, "Osama's displeasure . . . prompted him to forge direct links with the head of the GIA's European network, Hassan Hattab." Following a final schism between bin Laden and Zouabri, "Al Qaeda severed all ties with the GIA leadership, denounced Antar Zouabri, and encouraged Hassan Hattab to break away and join GSPC." Jonathan Schanzer goes even further in Al-Qaeda's Armies, noting that the group was "responsible for financing, logistics, and planning attacks for al Qaeda" and that "since the late 1990s, an immense amount of GSPC activity was reported in Europe, both in support of the GSPC in Algeria, as well as the broader al-Qaeda network."
Nor are the group's actions in support of al Qaeda merely logistical in nature--in June 2003, ABC News reported that a plot by GSPC commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar targeting the U.S. embassy in Bamako, Mali had been thwarted by "a coalition of African anti-terror units." As if to clarify any lingering doubts, in October 2003, then-GSPC leader Nabil Sahraoui issued a statement declaring that the group "strongly and fully support Osama bin Laden's jihad against the heretic America as well as we support our brothers in Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Chechnya."
The ongoing connection between al Qaeda and the GSPC continues to play a role in the Iraqi insurgency: The U.S. military announced in June 2005 that roughly 20 percent of the suicide bombers were Algerian in origin. More recently, Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu was quoted as saying that three GSPC members arrested in December 2005 in southern Italy "are suspected of being linked to a planned new series of attacks in the United States."
Sudanese Islamic Army: The exact identity of the Sudanese Islamic Army is a bit more murky, but there are two likely possibilities. The first is that the Sudanese Islamic Army refers to bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network (called the "Islamic Army Shura" by the 9/11 Commission report) while it was headquartered in Sudan between 1991 and 1996--though this would seem somewhat counterintuitive given that both the Algerian GIA and later the GSPC were members of the Shura.
It is far more likely that the Sudanese Islamic Army are in fact members of the Sudanese Popular Defense Forces (PDF), which Dutch counterterrorism expert Ronald Sandee has described as a Sudanese "pro-government militia" that "was used to militarily support the power of the Khartoum regime, often taking the brunt of the fighting against SPLA, and later was used in the Numamai Mountains to fight against the Nure people." He notes that "we also see Sudanese who were trained in PDF camps turning up at the border with Israel."
Sandee quotes Sudanese President Omar Bashir as saying, "We now order the Popular Defense Forces and all the political and military leaders to now open all the military camps to be opened in estates and villages. No peace with the Jews or surrender to the Jews, for war is jihad, jihad is jihad." According to the 9/11 Commission, bin Laden "agreed to help [Sudanese political leader] Turabi in an ongoing war against Christian separatists in southern Sudan," activities that would have almost certainly resulted in a close alliance between al Qaeda and the PDF.
Dan Darling is a counter-terrorism consultant for the Manhattan Institute Center for Policing Terrorism.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/11/2006 00:29 ||
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#1
Go, Dan, go! If you (in a decade or, more likely, two) were to take over the CIA, I would certainly sleep soundly at night. Nor would i be miffed if, in the meantime, Sect't Rumsfeld tapped you as a special aide for terrorism background. Unfortunately, I don't have any influence... but if any Rantburgers do, Our Dan will be available as soon as he graduates (this June, right?) ;-)
#2
I agree, TW. The President should tap Dan now for his incredible ability to concisely educate others without missing any important details at the same time. He has skills that Goss and Rumsfeld certainly don't have. President Bush would know for sure he could trust he was getting an excellent straight assessment of intelligence from an unbiased outsider, especially with recent events in Iran and Israel. Dan is so informative and knowledgable, yet without being arrogant and condescending. I ranted and raved so much about Dan Darling, my husband asked if I was having an on-line affair!;) He now enjoys his postings after checking RB out. I don't have any influence but you never know who may be lurking.
AL-QAEDA leaders have circulated a 12-page list targeting oil and gas installations in the West and the Middle East.
It names specific targets in the US, Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, and claims that al-Qaeda could cripple the US economy by attacking its dependence on imported oil.
The document is one of several detailing new orders from the al-Qaeda leadership to emerge in recent days.
They followed the release of a video tape last month by al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in which he called on supporters to attack oil-related targets.
And a new strategy document currently being circulated says the terror network is in a similar position to the British during the Falklands crisis.
It even goes as far as to compare Al-Qaeda with Britain's Falklands War military commanders.
The campaign to reclaim the Islands is being used as a prime example of the kind of war al-Qaeda is fighting.
In a lengthy analysis of possible future strategies, al-Qaeda says its goal of evicting US and UK troops from Iraq and the Middle East is directly comparable to Britain's campaign to oust Argentinean troops.
It adds that only a sustained military onslaught can achieve the same
successful result.
Militant groups appear to be responding to the new orders, as oil pipelines in Nigeria have been subject a series of attacks by a previously unknown Islamic militant group.
They have led to drastic cutbacks in production by the world's eighth
largest exporter of oil.
Iraq's largest oil refinery was shut down last week because of the threat of attacks by insurgents.
Militants groups have also started to regularly target oil and petrol
tankers in Iraq with roadside bombs.
Security experts believe that the terrorists want to cause petrol
shortages in Iraq to move public opinion further against the presence of Coalition troops.
The damage and disruption caused by the Buncefield oil depot explosion in Hemel Hempstead has also been highlighted in subsequent Internet "chatter".
Jihadist Internet forums were quickly filled with messages of jubilation on the day of the Hemel blasts.
One correspondent - using the online name "Osama1" said: "God has made the petrol and gas stolen from Muslim countries burn in their faces."
Another suggested Buncefield was no accident, as Zawahari had just threatened the UK and called for attacks on oil installations.
Neil Doyle, terrorism expert and author of the book Terror Base UK said: "Al-Qaeda leaders had been calling for such attacks before the start of the Iraq war, but it seems they lacked manpower.
"The latest traffic suggests that is no longer such a problem and they are re-focussing on their long-term aim of sapping the will of the West by attacking its economic lifelines.
"Even though it was an accident, Buncefield has been held up as a graphic example of the damage and disruption that might be wrought."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/11/2006 00:16 ||
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#1
Killing the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg - as my mom used to always say.
The end result is that we will focus our energies on our Alaska, hybrids, fuel cell and other types of fuel. Then as we decrease our dependence on foreign oil - the Saudi Princes won't have all of that extra cash to build mosques and fill them with Jihad supporters or fund the terrorists. Soo...they win - they lose.
#3
It names specific targets in the US, Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, and claims that al-Qaeda could cripple the US economy by attacking its dependence on imported oil.
As an example of success this is really a stretch.
The Brits were overextended (badly so), the Argentines poorly led (badly so), and the weather was a major factor in virtually every op.
The Brits get a success mainly because their commandoes managed to take and hold S. Island against Argentinian troops that weren't half their equal (the Argies were also out of supply, cut off from any hope of reinforcement, and completely without air cover - the Brits ruled the skies), because the Brits managed to sink the Gen Belgrano (not really even all that credible a threat since it couldn't even find the sub that sank her and couldn't have outranged the Brit missiles with her guns), and because they managed, with difficulty, not to lose more ships than they had to to Argentine aircraft carrying outdated Exocets that shouldn't even have hit the British ships (if they'd had their AAM radars programmed correctly).
A great military victory the Falklands simply was not from the standpoint of most military historians. It may have seemed so, and been touted as such, at the time, but we've had more than 20 years to look back and analyze what really happened.
#9
A pretty good argument for SA running AQ.
Why. If SA is the only safe oil exporter they command golden prices.
AQ's policy is a definite aid to the SA oil barons.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Chad has demanded that neighbouring Sudan disarm Chadian rebels in its violent Darfur region as a condition for peace talks to end a growing dispute with Khartoum over rebel and militia raids in the border area. Chad accuses Sudan of sheltering and backing Chadian rebels who attacked the border town of Adre last month. It has declared a "state of belligerence" with Khartoum. The dispute is adding to insecurity in the Darfur region, where local militias backed by Khartoum have been raiding villages, occasionally straying over the border into Chad.
This year's Eid al-Adha, Islam's festival of sacrifice, will be celebrated amid a escalating war of words fought on the Internet between al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. On the eve of what is considered one of Islam's holiest days, which coincides with the end of the annual Haj pilgrimage, two prominent al-Qaeda leaders have both assailed the Brotherhood for what they say is it's betrayal of Islamist principles.
Millions of citizens and residents offered Eid Al-Adha prayers at the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the Prophetâs Mosque in Madinah yesterday. Sheikh 
Muslim cleric 
TEN alleged terrorists were on hunger strike in a Victorian prison in protest over a refusal to allow them to pray together. The men, devout Muslims who are being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day in the maximum security Barwon Prison at Lara, began the hunger strike this week. The 10, arrested in pre-dawn raids in November, are facing charges of being members of a terrorist organisation. 
When we left him Russ Tice was claiming that he got canned for trying to uncover a spy at first NSA and then DIA (he is not quite sure). Russ says that is how NSA âtakes care of troublemakers.â But Russ knew that he was on a holy mission to save the world from the evil Bushitler regime.... Now Russ has sealed his fate (I hope) but acknowledging he was the source of the story that ran in the NYT. I know I donât have the vast resources of the NYT but donât you think they would check out ole Russâs story and maybe his background? I watched the video and if the AG wants to lock him up he gave them ample evidence. I only hope that Bush and Gonzo donât flinch and let this guy off the hook. Trust me you throw a few jabbers in jail and they will stop.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton called the Bush administration "incompetent" when it came to protecting the troops in combat and called the lack of adequate body armor for soldiers and Marines "unforgivable." 
The White House said on Wednesday that Iran has made a "serious miscalculation" by clearing the way to resume uranium enrichment and that intensive diplomacy was under way with European allies and others about what to do now. White House spokesman Scott McClellan, traveling with President George W. Bush on a brief trip to Kentucky, told reporters that if the European-led negotiations had run their course, then there was no other option but to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
Gov. Janet Napolitano has proposed spending $100 million in state money to fight illegal entry, including a crackdown on businesses that intentionally hire illegal aliens. 
aish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, the two leading Pakistan-based terror groups active in Jammu and Kashmir, are firmly linked to Al Qaeda and are unlikely to end their offensive against India, says a new book.
In the ever-more-amazing United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal, the arrest in Houston last Friday of South Korean businessman Tongsun Park brings us a step closer to understanding the origins of the largest humanitarian fraud in U.N. history. Not least, Park may be able to provide some answers to questions surrounding one of the top former U.N. officials with whom Park had dealings â the godfather of the Kyoto treaty, former potentate of the Canadian-power industry, and longtime eminence of U.N. policy, 76-year-old Canadian Maurice Strong.
January 07 2006 at 0635 UTC in position 13:43N - 049:09E, Gulf of Aden. One speedboat, yellow colour, about 15 meters length doing 21 kts chased a chemical tanker underway. Master raised alarm, sounded whistle, increased speed to maximum, took evasive manoeuvres; crew mustered and activated fire hoses. Boat came close and seeing crew alertness stopped the chase and moved away at 0740 UTC.
The first ministerial meeting of a controversial alliance promising economic growth with low carbon emissions has opened in Sydney. The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate aims to develop and promote technologies such as "clean coal", nuclear and renewables. Green groups say the body aims to emasculate the Kyoto Protocol. 
Shiite and Sunni Arabs celebrated the Islamic feast of sacrifice Tuesday with calls for an end to the bloodshed that has wracked Iraq since last month's elections. Sunni Arabs tempered their appeals with renewed calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Mahmoud Abbas says the US government has assured him that voting in a 25 January legislative poll would be allowed in East Jerusalem, despite Israel's objection to Hamas participating. The Palestinian president said on Monday: "Today I received American assurances that the campaigning and the elections will take place in Jerusalem." Abbas's announcement alleviated some fears that he was planning to call off the vote under pressure from members of his Fatah party, who were concerned that the popular Hamas group would embarrass Fatah at the polls.
The Palestinian militants who kidnapped Australian man 
LONDON - Britain does not envisage military action against Iran, by Britain or any other country, Foreign Minister Jack Straw said on Tuesday after the Islamic Republic restarted nuclear fuel research work. âMilitary action is not on our agenda, I donât believe in practice it is on anyone elseâs agenda,â Straw told parliament.
Straw said he was concerned about Iranâs resumption of research into nuclear fuel and was consulting his EU colleagues on how hard to push for a referral to the United Nations Security Council.
