WASHINGTON Caspar Weinberger, the former Secretary of Defense for Ronald Reagan, has died after a brief illness. He was 88. Forbes magazine confirmed Weinberger's death to FOX News. Weinberger served as publisher chairman of the magazine and as a columnist there since 1988. He died at a hospital in Bangor, Maine.
Weinberger was a longtime confidant of Reagan, having served nearly seven years as the 15th defense secretary. Reagan also appointed him to posts on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the National Economic Commission.
Weinberger's death comes almost simultaneously to the death of another longtime Reagan compatriot, Lyn Nofziger, who died Monday at age 81 from cancer.
Weingberger was the engineer that made the winning of the Cold War work as SecDef - he brought the US Military back from the brink of death (where it was under Jimmy Carter), and laid the foundation for the profession capable military we now have 9and had back in 90-91 as well).
#3
We have much to be grateful for. Among many other things, that although we have our fair share of fools and weaklings, we have what seems to be more than our fair share of those who are wise and strong. Go well to your rest, Mr. Weinberger -- you've done well for us all.
#5
I met him once at West Point; I was lucky (and connected) enough to be one of the Cadets to have lunch with him and Ronald Reagan at a table in the mess hall. I recall that he was very nice to us plebes.
Posted by: Mark E. ||
03/28/2006 19:39 Comments ||
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Caspar Weinberger Jr:
He should be remembered as a world statesman, a great American patriot, the son said. What he did with Reagan really brought down the Soviet Union.
#7
It should not go unremarked that he was one of the leading members of the Churchill Society and had been honorarily knighted by the Queen
Posted by: mac ||
03/28/2006 22:45 Comments ||
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CAP was much more than Reagan's SoD. A brillant business strategist in addition to military. Let's hope there are more like CAP to come, it is sorely needed.
AUSTRALIAN troops heading for Afghanistan later this year will face one of the most hostile environments yet because of a growing insurgency by Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, a report has warned.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said the 200 members of the provincial reconstruction team (PRT) heading for the Oruzgan province of south-central Afghanistan could encounter attacks by the insurgents, plus suicide and roadside bombings.
ASPI analyst Dr Elsina Wainwright warned in the report released today that there would be considerable risk.
"This PRT deployment is altogether different from Australia's involvement in Afghanistan until now and it is one of most serious threat environments into which Australian non-Special Forces personnel have been deployed in recent years,'' she said.
"Australian troops will face an insurgency that could target international forces and there could be Australian casualties.''
Australia has a special forces task group comprising 300 Special Air Service Regiment, Commando and support troops in Oruzgan province, an area of considerable anti-government activity.
The Australian PRT, one of almost two dozen international PRTs working on reconstruction tasks throughout Afghanistan, will operate in the same province with a combined Dutch PRT and task group numbering some 1400.
The mission comes as the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) expands into Afghanistan's south, an area previously only lightly touched by coalition forces or the central government.
Dr Wainwright said the Australian PRT would have to deal with a conservative Pashtun population traditionally resentful of outside influences.
She said the insurgency remained a complex mix of Taliban remnants, some Pashtun tribesmen alongside al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters, some based in the Pakistan frontier provinces.
Insurgent activity has substantially increased over the past year with a fourfold increase in suicide attacks, doubling of use of improvised explosive devices and greater concentration on soft targets.
Dr Wainwright said successful US-led counterinsurgency operations seemed in part to have caused the insurgency's recent change in tactics, adopted from the Iraq insurgency.
She said the Dutch-Australian PRT would need a significant security emphasis.
"More robust mandates, rules of engagement and equipment will be required than in the north and west,'' she said.
"The PRT deployment also presents Australia with a number of operational challenges.
"Australian troops have not in the past been closely interoperable with Dutch forces and will likely be working more closely with them than with the Japanese in Al Muthanna in Iraq.''
``It will be essential for the Netherlands to have very robust rules of engagement to meet Australian needs. This will require tough decisions of the Dutch government.''
Dr Wainwright said all Dutch parliamentarians well remembered Srebrenica in Bosnia where Dutch peacekeepers with a limited mandate evacuated in the face of a Bosnian Serb advance, resulting in the massacre of 8000 Muslim men and boys.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/28/2006 00:59 ||
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Hundreds of people protested in Afghanistan on Monday against a court's decision to drop a case against a man who converted from Islam to Christianity,
"Whaddya mean, we can't dismember him?"
while an official said discussions were underway to determine when he would be released. Officials said the case was dropped Sunday partially because of concerns that Abdul Rahman is mentally unfit to face trial. The move also followed strong pressure from Western governments.
"The man's obviously unfit to stand trial in a court in a Muslim country! He's perfectly rational!"
Prosecutors have said they want doctors to examine Rahman, but they have not confirmed that he would be released.
"Doctor! Look at this!"
"By Gad, Dr. Mahmoud! Not only is his turban not too tightly wound, but... but... but he doesn't have a turban!"
"Nurse! Quick! Get the salts for Dr. Ahmed!"
Prosecutor Sarinwal Zamari said state attorneys were working on the case Monday and an announcement would be made later in the day. An Afghan official closely involved with the case told The Associated Press that the 41-year-old would be released, but authorities were debating how and when it would be done.
I'd suggest in the dead of night, under armed guard, on the tarmac, with engines running.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, had earlier said that a decision may be made by Monday and that Rahman would not have to remain in jail while prosecutors investigate whether to bring another case against him to the courts. Rahman is being held at Kabul's notorious high-security Policharki prison. He was moved there Friday after inmates at a police detention facility reportedly threatened him.
Just like the holy men did.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/28/2006 00:00 ||
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"...after inmates at a police detention facility reportedly threatened him."
Heh inmates in western prisons threaten rapists and pedophiles and hold religious converts in higher esteem. Looks like just the opposite in the ME.
The giant Buddhas of Bamiyan were destroyed on the orders of Osama Bin Laden, both as an act of provocation and as a "rehearsal" for 9/11, according to Christian Frei, director of the acclaimed Swiss documentary on the two figures carved into the side of a mountain more than 1,500 years ago. He said there was documentary evidence that Mullah Omar and the Afghans who lived in Bamiyan had been opposed to the demolition of the historic figures, described by UNESCO as the heritage of not only Afghans but all mankind.
Mullah Omar wasn't among the Afghans who lived in Bamiyan. They are, I believe, Hazaras, who're mostly Shiite, therefore apostates to the likes of Mullah Omar. Or at least heretics.
The 90-minute documentary 'The Giant Buddhas', was shown to a large and appreciative audience at Washington's National Gallery of Art on Sunday.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/28/2006 00:00 ||
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I believe that Taliban and Al-Qaeda formed an integrated entity. Pashto are the most slavishly Arabist peoples in the World. We should look at them as voluntary beasts of burden, for Arabs. Where I live, Arabs compete with Pakis for taxicab jobs. The master race in action.
You know nothing about Pashtouns so shut up. Mullah Omar could have been in awe when he saw an Arab but he was more or less the only one to feel like this.
I have visited Pashtoun sites some of them visited by Islamists and even between them the majority had little esteem for the Arabs. A recurring sentence was: "Pashtouns adopted Islam voluntarily. An Arab invasion would had not gone ten miles in Pashtoun land". In fact during the war against teh Russians most Pashtouns guerrillas would not allow Arabs to fight.
That is for the Islamists, then you have the traditionalists who basically say "We want Pashtunwali and not Shariah. This is Arab" (textual excerpt from a nationalist website).
And then you have Pashtouns who dream about democracy and talk about how the Hadj allows Arabs from Arabia to make Ze Big Bucks.
For the Taliban, these were Pashtoun boys who had been brainwashed since childhood in madrassas in Pakistan (often located out of Pashtoun areas). Even between them there was resentment about Mullah Omar's kneeling in front of Arabs.
BTW: Yesterday you also said stupid things about France's judiciary system. Cound you please turn seven times your tongue, or still better your keyboard, in your mouth before posting? Thank you in advance.
#3
Of course the sample I am basing for my harsh words about "Pashtouns are the most Arabist people in the world" is composed exclusively of Pashtouns with some class of net access and being able to write a minimum of English (even if at times is very broken English and interspersed with some Pashto), so you could argue that my sample is not representative. I agree about that but allow me to be sceptical about Pashtoons being in awe about Arabs.
Oh, while we are at it, while scanning archives I stumbled upon a post of none other than Golbodin Hekmatyar (posted before teh fall of the Taliban).
Germany has pledged 250,000 million euros to assist Afghan refugees in Pakistan at a time when the UN refugee agency is facing major budgetary constraints. "We are grateful to the German government for their generous donation," Guenet Guebre-Christos, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative in Pakistan, said on Monday. "Even though record numbers of Afghans have been repatriated in recent years, there are still about 2.6 million left in Pakistan, most of whom need basic services such as health and sanitation," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/28/2006 00:00 ||
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250 billion euros? That is generous. Either that, or the Daily Times needs better proofreaders...
March 28, 2006: Since the late 1990s, there have been rumors of North Korea operating a uranium mining operation in the Congo. Attempts to find out exactly what it happening have been unsuccessful. The main problem is that there is no government in the southern Congo, or at least not much government. Those government officials that do exist, are mostly interested in bribes and kickbacks. Same with the few police and soldiers to be found. As a result, there are outlaw operations everywhere. Bribes and gunmen have allowed outlaw mining and smuggling operations to extract thousands of tons of valuable materials. Cobalt ore is currently going for over $50,000 a ton, if you can get it out of the country without paying any taxes. UN peacekeepers can't touch these operations, as they are an "internal matter."
What is known is that the North Koreans have been in the Congo for over thirty years, mainly to provide technical assistance, and military training for former dictator Mobutu. The North Korean troops were soon joined by technical experts and traders, who eventually replaced the troops. Many believed that all this was just another effort by North Korea to raise hard currency any way it could. The CIA was able to keep an eye on the North Koreans, at least until the Congo sank into chaos and civil war in the late 1990s.
Which brings us to the Shinkolobwe mines, that produce very high grade uranium. In fact, America's first nuclear weapons used uranium from Shinkolobwe. But these mines were closed in 1960 (having been open since 1915). Then, in 1999, North Korean mining engineers showed up in the Congo, and stories spread that uranium mining was resuming at Shinkolobwe. If the North Koreans were there to help pull more uranium out of Shinkolobwe, it wasn't so that North Korea could build atomic bombs. North Korea had its own uranium mines. But the outlaw mining in Congo was very lucrative, and the North Koreans favored these shady operations. The area around the former Shinkolobwe uranium mines were already being worked by thousands of freelance miners. Whatever they pulled out of the ground, was sold to illegal brokers (usually Lebanese), and then smuggled out of the country. Local warlords took a cut, and provided security (from other gangsters, as well as the media, and any kind of law enforcement.)
There isn't a large black market for uranium, especially the unrefined ore. Counter-terrorist agencies from many nations are always on the lookout for any uranium trafficking. But there are Middle Eastern customers for uranium. Iranian merchants and government officials have been seen in Congo for over a decade. And the Middle Eastern connections of many of the ore brokers in the Congo gives counter-terrorist experts the willies.
If anyone really knows what's going on with the outlaw mining operations in the Congo, they aren't talking. Probably to protect their sources, and maintain some flow of information from the original "Heart of Darkness."
Posted by: Steve ||
03/28/2006 08:44 ||
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And the Middle Eastern connections of many of the ore brokers in the Congo gives counter-terrorist experts the willies.
Gives me the willies too. Any way we can contract with Halliburton for a quick, massive earthquake in the vicinity of those mines?
Posted by: Jonathan ||
03/28/2006 9:29 Comments ||
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Cobalt ore is currently going for over $50,000 a ton
?
I guess a late start is better than no start at all, assuming it's an actual start. I do hope the staff of the Grand Mosque in Mecca will be attending.
Nonsense. They'll be, um....washing their turbans that day.
The Ministry of Islamic Affairs and the King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue will organize short courses for imams throughout Saudi Arabia in order to spread a culture of dialogue and forgiveness, sources told Asharq al Awsat. The courses will include lectures by senior ulema in Saudi Arabia, including the Saudi mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz al Sheikh and members of the Senior Ulema Commission, aimed at advising imams to spread a culture of dialogue and accept divergent opinions, while shunning extremism.
Good choice. He's the guy that issued the fatwah against Valentine's Day...
This breakthrough step will involve a large numbers of imams and khateebs (those who lead the prayers at mosques) in different regions of the Kingdom. These sessions are part of a wider campaign by King Abdulaziz Center to spread a culture of dialogue, building on the recommendations of the first national dialogue in 2003, which stressed that Islam is a moderate religion that does not accept extremism and distinguishes between extremist attitudes and religious piousness, in addition to understanding that difference and intellectual diversity and sectarian pluralism are a fact of life and natural occurrences that ought to be exploited/used to construct a strategy to deal with others using dialogue and advice.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/28/2006 00:00 ||
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U.S. customs inspectors could be stationed by this fall at the largest seaport in the Bahamas, where the Bush administration is hiring a Hong Kong conglomerate to help detect nuclear materials inside cargo, a senior customs official said. Any such agreement will require approval by the Bahamian government. Diplomatic talks are expected to begin soon to put agents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the sprawling Freeport Container Port, just 65 miles from Florida's coast.
"We're now looking at going over there to begin discussions," Jayson Ahern, assistant customs commissioner for field operations, told The Associated Press on Monday. "It does require bilateral discussions with another country, but we're cautiously looking at being there by the fall."
A story last week by the AP described a no-bid, $6 million contract the administration is finalizing with Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. in the Bahamas, and generated criticism of the arrangement from some U.S. lawmakers and security experts.
It was no-bid because the Bahamian government told the U.S. government to give it to them. That part didn't get much play, I almost missed it last week
The administration has acknowledged the deal represents the first time a foreign company will be involved in running sophisticated U.S. radiation-detection equipment at an overseas port without American customs agents present.
Ahern was expected to testify at a Senate oversight hearing Tuesday on radiation detectors in the United States. On the eve of the hearing, Ahern said the Homeland Security Department intended to station U.S. inspectors in the Bahamas by spring under its port-security program, called the Container Security Initiative, but plans were delayed.
Some lawmakers said negotiations were overdue. The senior Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee said the decision was "absolutely the right thing to do." "If foreign governments and operators do not oppose U.S. security programs, then the Department of Homeland Security should be doing everything it can to deploy teams and secure foreign ports," said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi. "Unfortunately, all I see happening in this administration is feet-dragging and action only after bad decisions have been made public."
More likely it's the Bahamian government dragging it's feet.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. said: "The only thing missing from the advanced security formula in the Bahamas was the presence of U.S. customs agents. Now that it appears they will be added, it will be a large step forward for port security."
The pending diplomatic talks were confirmed by John Meredith, the group managing director for Hutchison's port subsidiary, which runs the Bahamas port.
"They are getting close to fixing up a deal between the Bahamas and the U.S.," Meredith told the AP. "If they want to put American people out there to have a look at it, that's fine. But people should respect also that you've got to have trusted partnerships, both with the private sector and with foreign governments."
The Bahamas contract is close to being finalized by the National Nuclear Security Administration, part of the Energy Department. It has said employees of Hutchison _ the world's largest ports operator _ will drive the towering, truck-like radiation scanner at the port under the direct supervision of Bahamian customs officials.
That's hardly handing over security to the Chinese, which is why this story died so fast
Any positive reading would set off alarms monitored simultaneously by Bahamian customs inspectors at Freeport and by U.S. customs officials working at an anti-terrorism center in northern Virginia. Under the contract, no U.S. officials would be stationed permanently in the Bahamas with the radiation scanner. Separately, there are no U.S. customs agents checking cargo containers in Freeport under the U.S. customs port-security program.
Last week, Thompson said he was concerned there will be inadequate oversight in the Bahamas. Citing the AP story, Thompson sought assurances from the administration over the no-bid contract and asked when U.S. customs inspectors might be sent there permanently.
That would be when the Bahamas sez "OK". After all, it's their country
Hutchison Whampoa is among the shipping industry's most respected companies and was an early adopter of U.S. anti-terror measures. But its billionaire chairman, Li Ka-Shing, also has substantial business ties to China's government that have raised U.S. concerns over the years.
Posted by: Steve ||
03/28/2006 15:03 ||
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Steve: That would be when the Bahamas sez "OK". After all, it's their country
And it's our imports. We could of course, put Bahamas out of business as an entrepot, by embargoing goods that go through there. Which is why they will let our Customs agents in. Or shut down for lack of business.
#2
This is completely a worthless politixal manuver.
There's a whole lot of water between the Bahamas and any US port and absolutely nothing to prevent loading from one ship to another at sea.
We did it in the navy, transshipping goods from one ship to another while far out to sea, there's absolutely no reason to beleve that anything "Inspected" by the Bahamas inspectors is any danger to the US.
And there's the big hole.
It's the stuff you load while in transit, AFTER leaving the Bahamas, and completely uninspected thats the danger.
Think, a ship thoroughly Inspected by this system would not be expected to carry anything harmful, so no furhter inspection delay is needed, (Yeah Right) that's an instant (And Huge) hole in the customs system right there.
Unless you're shipping several customs officials per ship (Each and every ship, with a completely random Customs Inspector "Lottery" to prevent a selected team from joining the crooks) or following each ship by uninterrupted helicopter flights 24/7, then there's effectively no inspection at all.
Lousy, lousy idea.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/28/2006 20:40 Comments ||
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Redneck Jim - You always say that. On every story about cargo. Same refrain - and no solution offered.
Every plan has holes in it - except the one I saw here about 2 months ago to shut down all airports and border crossings, build Customs & Immigrations islands offshore with airports and cargo docks where everything and everyone gets inspected, stem to stern, then loaded on barges with a crew of US Marshals or Customs agents riding shotgun to the mainland.
Didn't see anyone comment on it.
Or maybe offer the illegals a one-shot employment deal. Security Specialist. One is sealed up in every container at the foreign ports and check upon arrival to see if the right guy arrives asphyxiated. Think of it as an additional layer of security... Suicide Security and pay their families a cash award, like the Paleostinians get.
March 28, 2006: The Russian air force is buying 24 new Su-34 fighter bombers. This is the latest variant of the Su-27. The Su-34 is somewhat like the American F-15E, a high performance fighter modified to act as a very effective bomber. Aside from it's similarity to the F-15E, the Su-34 has one very distinguishing characteristic. The cockpit for the two man crew not only allows for tandem (side-by-side) seating, but is spacious enough for the pilots to stand up and, standing behind their seats, stretch a bit. There is also a toilet and cooking facilities back there as well. The cockpit itself is protected with 17mm lightweight armor. The canopy does not open, as the pilots enter via a hatch near the front landing gear. The cockpit is pressurized for operations under 33,000 feet (above that, they have to wear the usual flight gear). Although the Su-34 looks like a fighter, it's as heavy as a bomber (44 tons max) and can carry up to eight tons of weapons. It's 77 feet long, with a wingspan of 48 feet. By comparison, the F-15E is 36 tons, 64 feet long and with a 43 foot wingspan.
F-111 is 73 feet, 6 inches (22.0 meters) lond with a wingspan of 63 feet (19 meters) full forward; 31 feet, 11 1/2 inches (11.9 meters) full aft.
An even more lavishly equipped (with sensors) version is in development, to replace the Su-24 (for long range precision bombing.)
Posted by: Steve ||
03/28/2006 09:17 ||
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The Russians need to build an economy, not an air force. They still have the wrong people in charge.
#2
The cockpit for the two man crew not only allows for tandem (side-by-side) seating, but is spacious enough for the pilots to stand up and, standing behind their seats, stretch a bit. There is also a toilet and cooking facilities back there as well. The cockpit itself is protected with 17mm lightweight armor. The canopy does not open..
which means the Ruskies can't use the kitchen sink as a in a fight. engineers, can't trust 'em!
#5
The Russians need to build an economy, not an air force.
It seems sometimes they try to do both at the same time: a few years ago a local airshow I attend was scheduled to host a Russian demo team flying Su-27's (I believe). At the last minute the the show's sponser dropped the Russians, announcing in a very angry letter how they will never again even attempt to host a Russian team. Apparently the Russians were trying to extortnegotiate more and more money from the sponser as the date got closer.
#7
Wonder if the plane will someday be featured on a very special episode of Pimp Your Ride.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/28/2006 13:07 Comments ||
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Probably the same thing we'd come up with if we wanted to make a modern-day mediuum bomber like the 'vark. IIRC the Aussies still fly the F-111s. Great aircraft.
#9
" . . . and can carry up to eight tons of weapons."
That doesn't sound like much for a plane that big. Here's what www.fas.org has for the F-111 (a similar-sized plane):
"Up to four nuclear bombs on four pivoting wing pylons, and two in internal weapons bay. Wing pylons carry total external load of 25,000 pounds (11,250 kilograms) of bombs, rockets, missiles, or fuel tanks."
Posted by: Tibor ||
03/28/2006 14:52 Comments ||
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Real fighters don't need toilets or cooktops, that is more for long endurance flights ( Like a P-3 maybe), but bombers could, this whole airplane is a compromise and if you could lose that widow's hump, it might just be a pretty airplane, but IMHO, it's Fugly. Side by side seating is bomber stuff, also (think Intruders or BUFFS). I think anything the US has could wax it in a dogfight.
#11
Real fighters don't need toilets or cooktops, that is more for long endurance flights ( Like a P-3 maybe), but bombers could, this whole airplane is a compromise and if you could lose that widow's hump, it might just be a pretty airplane, but IMHO, it's Fugly. Side by side seating is bomber stuff, also (think Intruders or BUFFS). I think anything the US has could wax it in a dogfight.
Well if you try to perform some violent maneuvers like high G turns or loopings in a plane equipped with toilets you are going to understand the full meaning of "being in deep shit"
In the troubled region surrounding Iraq, a frequent question posed to the top U.S. military officer visiting the area was not when his troops will pull out of Iraq, but how long they will stay.
From the glittery king's palace in Saudi Arabia to the devastated slopes of the Pakistani mountainside and a staid Turkish symposium, Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sought last week to ease concerns about whether opposition to the war at home could pressure U.S. forces to leave Iraq before it is stable.
"I think it's fair to say that in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, there is a clear desire for the U.S. to stay with it until the job is done -- which, coincidentally, is how we look at it," Gen. Pace said Sunday as he left Istanbul for Washington.
On his first diplomatic-oriented trip since the fall, Gen. Pace traveled to three countries whose leaders are worried about the U.S. commitment to the Iraq war and the global war on terror. Failure to secure Iraq could inspire insurgencies in their countries and instability in the region, where terrorism is a familiar threat.
"I told them that from the U.S. military's viewpoint, we would stay with the mission until we got the job done," Gen. Pace said.
Those interests also at times conflict with strong anti-American sentiment in these Muslim countries, including Pakistan, where thousands protested the war during a recent visit by President Bush. Protesters were not evident during Gen. Pace's visit, but he often faced blunt questions about U.S. Middle East policies and progress in Iraq from both officials and the local press.
Gen. Pace said people in the countries wanted to know what the United States' plans are for Iraq and Afghanistan, for dealing with Iran's nuclear program and for aiding the fight against guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, in northern Iraq and Turkey.
Turks worry that if U.S. troops leave Iraq too soon, the country could crumble and allow Kurdish rebels in the north to create an independent state along the Turkish border.
The Saudis, meanwhile, are concerned that sectarian violence in Iraq will expand into Saudi Arabia, and that a weakened Iraq will allow Iran to gain a foothold there, said Rachel Bronson, a Middle East specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations.
In Pakistan, there are ongoing efforts to ferret out terrorists traveling back and forth across the mountainous Afghan border, where some think Osama bin Laden may be hiding and directing his al Qaeda network.
"These are three countries where it is easy to have misunderstandings just because of cultural differences ... language and interpretations of what is being said," Gen. Pace said. "So, I was really pleased to have the opportunity to go face to face with my counterparts."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/28/2006 00:42 ||
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Police searched business premises across Germany in connection with an investigation into the illegal export of equipment for Iran's controversial nuclear programme, prosecutors said Monday. One of the companies searched was believed to be a front for the illegal export of hydraulic pumps and transformer parts, which could be used in nuclear facilities, prosecutor Benedikt Welfens said. German law restricts the sale to Iran of such dual use equipment, which has applications in both military and civilian programmes. Seven persons, most of them of Russian extraction, are under investigation in connection with the illegal exports, which investigations showed reached Iran via Russia. Police seized data, a special cable ready for export and cash during last week's raid of 41 premises in 10 German states. Prosecutors said five or six firms were suspected of having supplied the front company with material, but only one is believed to have known the true destination. No arrests have been made so far in the case.
American intelligence agencies and presidential commissions long ago concluded that Saddam Hussein had no unconventional weapons and no substantive ties to Al Qaeda before the 2003 invasion.
But now, an unusual experiment in public access is giving anyone with a computer a chance to play intelligence analyst and second-guess the government.
Under pressure from Congressional Republicans, the director of national intelligence has begun a yearlong process of posting on the Web 48,000 boxes of Arabic-language Iraqi documents captured by American troops.
Less than two weeks into the project, and with only 600 out of possibly a million documents and video and audio files posted, some conservative bloggers are already asserting that the material undermines the official view.
On his blog last week, Ray Robison, a former Army officer from Alabama, quoted a document reporting a supposed scheme to put anthrax into American leaflets dropped in Iraq and declared: "Saddam's W.M.D. and terrorist connections all proven in one document!!!"
Not so, American intelligence officials say. "Our view is there's nothing in here that changes what we know today," said a senior intelligence official, who would discuss the program only on condition of anonymity because the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, directed his staff to avoid public debates over the documents. "There is no smoking gun on W.M.D., Al Qaeda, those kinds of issues."
All the documents, which are available on fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm, have received at least a quick review by Arabic linguists and do not alter the government's official stance, officials say. On some tapes already released, in fact, Mr. Hussein expressed frustration that he did not have unconventional weapons.
Intelligence officials had serious concerns about turning loose an army of amateurs on a warehouse full of raw documents that include hearsay, disinformation and forgery. Mr. Negroponte's office attached a disclaimer to the documents, only a few of which have been translated into English, saying the government did not vouch for their authenticity.
Another administration official described the political logic: "If anyone in the intelligence community thought there was valid information in those documents that supported either of those questions W.M.D. or Al Qaeda they would have shouted them from the rooftops."
But Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and who led the campaign to get the documents released, does not believe they have received adequate scrutiny. Mr. Hoekstra said he wanted to "unleash the power of the Net" to do translation and analysis that might take the government decades.
"People today ought to be able to have a closer look inside Saddam's regime," he said.
Mr. Hoekstra said intelligence officials had resisted posting the documents, which he overcame by appealing to President Bush and by proposing legislation to force the release.
The timing gives the documents a potent political charge. Public doubts about the war have driven Mr. Bush's approval rating to new lows. A renewed debate over Saddam Hussein's weapons and terrorist ties could raise the president's standing.
"As an historian, I'm glad to have the material out there," said John Prados, who has written books on national security, including one that accuses the administration of distorting prewar intelligence. He said the records were likely to shed new light on the Iraqi dictatorship. Some of the documents, also included in a new study by the United States military, already have caused a stir by suggesting that Russian officials passed American war plans to Mr. Hussein's government as the invasion began.
But Mr. Prados said the document release "can't be divorced from the political context."
"The administration is under fire for going to war when there was no threat so the idea here must be to say there was a threat," he said.
That is already the assertion of a growing crowd of bloggers and translators, almost exclusively on the right. So far they have highlighted documents that refer to a meeting between Osama bin Laden and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Sudan in 1995; a plan to train Arab militants as suicide bombers; and a 1997 document discussing the use of "special ammunition," chemical weapons, against the Kurds.
But the anthrax document that intrigued Mr. Robison, the Alabama blogger, does not seem to prove much. It is a message from the Quds Army, a regional militia created by Mr. Hussein, to Iraqi military intelligence that passes on reports picked up by troops, possibly from the radio, since the information is labeled "open source" and "impaired broadcast." No anthrax was found in Iraq by American search teams.
"No offense, but the mainstream media tells people what they want them to know," said Mr. Robison, who worked in Qatar for the Iraq Survey Group, which did an exhaustive search for weapons in Iraq.
The document release may help the president, he said, but that is not the point. "It's not about politics," Mr. Robison said. "It's about the truth."
The truth about prewar Iraq has proven elusive. The February 2003 presentation Colin L. Powell, the secretary of state at the time, to the United Nations appeared to provide incontrovertible proof of Iraqi weapons, but the claims in the speech have since been discredited.
Given that track record, some intelligence analysts are horrified at exactly the idea that excites Mr. Hoekstra and the bloggers: that anyone will now be able to interpret the documents.
"There's no quality control," said Michael Scheuer, a former Central Intelligence Agency specialist on terrorism. "You'll have guys out there with a smattering of Arabic drawing all kinds of crazy conclusions. Rush Limbaugh will cherry-pick from the right, and Al Franken will cherry-pick from the left."
Conservative publications have pushed for months to have the documents made public. In November, Mr. Hoekstra and Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked Mr. Negroponte to post the material.
When that request stalled, Mr. Hoekstra introduced a bill on March 3 that would have forced the posting. Mr. Negroponte began the release two weeks later.
Under the program, documents are withheld only if they include information like the names of Iraqis raped by the secret police, instructions for using explosives, intelligence sources or "diplomatically sensitive" material.
In addition, the intelligence official said, known forgeries are not posted. He said the database included "a fair amount of forgeries," sold by Iraqi hustlers or concocted by Iraqis opposed to Mr. Hussein.
In previous Internet projects, volunteers have tested software, scanned chemical compounds for useful drugs and even searched radiotelescope data for signals from extraterrestrial life.
The same volunteer spirit, though with a distinct political twist, motivates the Arabic speakers who are posting English versions of the Iraqi documents.
"I'm trying to pick up documents that shed light on the political debate," said Joseph G. Shahda, 34, a Lebanese-born engineer who lives in a Boston suburb and is spending hours every evening on translations for the conservative Free Republic site. "I think we prematurely concluded there was no W.M.D. and no ties to Al Qaeda."
Mr. Shahda said he was proud he could help make the documents public. "I live in this great country, and it's a time of war," he said. "This is the least I can do."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/28/2006 01:14 ||
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#1
This is the same NYT that did such a bang-up job informing us of Stalin's terror.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/28/2006 7:39 Comments ||
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#2
Noo... Saddam had no unconventional weapons...
Then what did he gas the Kurds with?
And what beginning with V and ending with X did the UN arms inspectors say they found once years ago before they were expelled by Saddam (thus breaching the terms of the Ceasefire of Gulf War 1 and providing a window for the US to declare war perfectly legitimately)
#3
Technically, the US didn't need to issue a new declaration of war. Saddam's action invalidated the ceasefire he agreed to, thus rendering the state of war once again in to effect.
#4
its correct that there has already been cherry picking by both sides. But those tidbits can then be analyzed and put in context. Im skeptical of all the first reports, but I think over the long run this enterprise will be very informative.
#9
"NYT pooh-poohs layman's efforts on Iraqi documents"
Then the "layman's efforts" must be doing a damn fine job to have the NYT running scared like this.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/28/2006 14:10 Comments ||
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#10
Anything with John Prados name on it in terms of political context can and should be taken with a large grain of salt.
He has been on an anti-secrecy/CIA tear in all his writings. Prados (whom I know from back when he was a wargame designer) begins with the premise that the CIA/Intel is always up to no good, and that secrecy is bad. On top of that he appears to be a victim of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
From there its pretty easy to see why his opinion is questionable - he's borderline tinfoil hat in his conspiracy assumptions of the motives of others.
#11
... an anti-secrecy/CIA tear in all his writings.
... begins with the premise that the CIA/Intel is always up to no good, and that secrecy is bad.
... Bush Derangement Syndrome.
... borderline tinfoil hat in his conspiracy assumptions of the motives of others.
Sounds like great bullet points on a resume for a NYT columnist.
The U.S. government is making public a huge trove of documents seized during the invasion of Iraq, posting them on the Internet in a step that is at once a nod to the Web's power and an admission that U.S. intelligence resources are overloaded.
Republican leaders in Congress pushed for the release, which was first proposed by conservative commentators and bloggers hoping to find evidence about the fate of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, or possible links to terror groups.
The Web surfers have begun posting translations and comments, digging through the documents with gusto.
"Let's unleash the power of the Internet on these documents," said House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Michigan. "I don't know if there's a smoking gun on WMD or not. But it will give us a better understanding of what was going on in Iraq before the war."
The documents' value is uncertain -- intelligence officials say that they are giving each one a quick review to remove anything sensitive. Skeptics of the war, suspicious of the Bush administration, believe that means the postings are either useless or cherry-picked to bolster arguments for the war.
The documents -- Iraqi memos, training guides, reports, transcripts of conversations, audiotapes and videotapes -- have spurred a flurry of news reports. The Associated Press, for instance, reported on memos from Saddam Hussein in 1987 ordering plans for a chemical attack on Kurds and comments from Hussein and his aides in the 1990s, searching for ways to prove they didn't have weapons.
Hoekstra said it took months of arguing with intelligence officials before he and John Negroponte, the new Director of National Intelligence, agreed to make the documents public. None contain current information about the Iraqi insurgency, and U.S. intelligence officials say they are focusing their limited resources on learning about what's happening on the ground now.
There are up to 55,000 boxes, with possibly millions of pages. The documents are being posted a few at a time -- so far, about 600 -- on a Pentagon Web site, often in Arabic with an English summary.
Regardless of what they reveal, open-government advocates like the decision to make them available.
It's a "radical notion," said Steve Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists government secrecy project, which tracks work by U.S. intelligence agencies. That "members of the public could contribute to the intelligence analysis process. ... That is a bold innovation."
Champions of the Internet as a "citizen's media" embraced the step, too.
"The secret of the 21st century is attract a lot of smart people to focus on problems that you think are important," said Glenn Reynolds, the conservative blogger at Instapundit.com and author of "An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths."
"It's kind of like a swarm. It's a lot of individual minds looking at it from different angles. The stuff that's most interesting tends to bubble to the top," he said.
A self-described Iraqi blogger translated one of the documents for the American blog pajamasmedia.com -- a September 15, 2001, memo from the Iraqi intelligence service that reported about an Afghan source who had been told that a group from Osama bin Laden and the Taliban had visited Iraq.
Some remain doubtful, suspecting that the administration only releases information that puts President Bush and his arguments for war in a good light. The Iraq Survey Group found no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction after the war, and the September 11 commission reported it found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
"I would bet that the materials that they chose to post were the ones that were suggestive of a threat," said John Prados, author of the book, "Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War."
Prados, an analyst with the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research institute, dismissed the documents: "The collection is good material for somebody who wants to do a biography of Saddam Hussein, but in terms of saying one thing or the other about weapons of mass destruction, it's not there."
One of several conservative blogs devoting attention to the release, Powerline.com, set up a separate page to catalog its findings and news reports on what the documents reveal.
"These documents are going to shed a lot of light on a regime that was quite successful in maintaining secrecy," said John Hinderaker, one of three men who run the site. "Before the first Gulf War, Saddam was perilously close to getting nuclear weapons and people didn't know it. The evils of the regime will be reflected."
But he also cautioned the optimistic. "When you're dealing with millions of pages of documents," he said, "it's a big mistake to think you can pull out one page or sentence out of a document and say 'Eureka, this is it.'"
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/28/2006 00:54 ||
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Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld delivered harsh words to war critics yesterday, saying some view al Qaeda operatives as victims, not the enemy that has killed Americans repeatedly.
In a speech to military officers at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., he also criticized previous administrations -- without naming them -- for failing to take on Islamic terrorists despite a series of attacks, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
"Before September 11, 2001, there was somewhat of a misunderstanding in America about terrorists, and in some circles, I suppose, there really is today," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "Even today, some folks view terrorists as criminals, not as combatants. Some even consider them victims."
He said that during the 1980s and '90s, "the West was ambivalent how to counter extremist ideology and that type of aggression, and as a result, terrorists became increasingly emboldened. We should have learned the timeless truth that weakness is provocative."
Mr. Rumsfeld then listed the history of terrorist attacks on Americans, most occurring during the Clinton administration. The report submitted by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States chronicled deep disagreements among the CIA, White House and Pentagon on how to deal with al Qaeda.
The Clinton national security team never agreed on any attack plan, and not one military operation was initiated against al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, the commission said. The Pentagon's updated defense strategy paper, released a few weeks before Mr. Bush took office, did not list al Qaeda as a stand-alone threat. It lumped terrorism into a group of threats along with illegal drugs and piracy.
In President Bush's first eight months in office before September 11, Mr. Rumsfeld focused on organizing his staff and transforming the armed forces. The administration had no immediate plan to attack al Qaeda. During Mr. Rumsfeld's Senate confirmation hearing, neither al Qaeda nor Afghanistan was mentioned.
Without naming the Bush administration's political critics, the defense secretary said some blame the United States for terrorists' atrocities.
"From time to time, one hears the claim that terrorist acts are reactions to particular American policies. That's not so," he said. "Their violence preceded by many years' operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their violence will not stop until their ideology is confronted."
Filmmaker Michael Moore is among the more prominent critics on the Left who said al Qaeda's September 11 attacks were the result of past U.S. actions around the world. Rep. John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a decorated Marine war veteran who is the most prominent Democrat to call for an immediate troop pullout from Iraq, has said the U.S. presence there is "fueling terrorism, not eliminating it."
Mr. Rumsfeld told the war college audience, "They say that a retreat from Iraq would provide an American escape from the violence. However, we know that any reprieve would be short-lived. ... The war that the terrorists began would continue, and free people would continue to be their targets."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/28/2006 00:41 ||
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#1
What we now call "terrorism" started prior to the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. It's involved large numbers of Muslims, a few Germans, both blacks and whites in Africa, and Communists around the globe dating back to the early '20's. Carter's timidity against the Iranian "revolution" gave the impression that the United States was weak, unwilling to fight against terrorism, and an easy target. Until 2001, the terrorists were right.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/28/2006 16:40 Comments ||
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I saw the first and part of the second episode of this series. I only saw part of the second because I couldnt stand the LLL direction it was going. I liked the first show and thought it to be kind of a military version of 24. In the second episode we get a bitter taste of the LLL koolaid when an agent opines: Why do they build churches here where they are not wanted? Also the evangelicals being rescued are more concerned with the church building than their safety. Also the wives of the Unit strong-arm a new recruits wife into accepting base quarters rather than living off post. They also want to force this woman to meet a Senator against her will because she is from her home state. The woman doesnt want to because: I didnt vote for her.
Now I have the deepest respect for SpecOps, I thank God that they are on our side, and those that make it are among the bravest people I have ever met. But with all due respect to the SgtMaj he sounds awfully silly spouting off the LLL talking points in an interview. Granted he may have an opinion contrary to the Presidents but I am sure he can put it is his words and not those of Michael Moore, George Soros, and the MoveOn crowd. Also SgtMaj if you are advising a series how about not portraying EVERY negative stereotype about the military and maybe accentuate A positive aspect. Sorry but this guy sounds like he took a long pull on the LLL koolaid pitcher. Some quotes from the article:
The reasons of this administration for taking this nation to war were not what they stated.
For the first thing, our credibility is utterly zero.
Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed in which no one in the U.S. really cares about those people.
The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It's about vengeance, it's about revenge, or it's about cover-up.
I believe in the good and the decency of the American people, and they're starting to see what's happening and the lies that have been told.
#2
I would have dismissed comments like this out of hand from just about any other source, but a guy like this does have a lot more credibility than just about any other source, so I have to pause a minute and question my beliefs. Not change those beliefs, at least not yet, but question them, and look for some similarly credible sources to restore those beliefs.
And I thought the program on rescuing the church kids was amazingly timely, in view of the rescue of the peaceniks from Iraq last week, and their lack of any kind of gratitude.
#4
s I said I respect these men, but I think the SgtMaj does everyone a dis-service by not using his own words and simply parroting the LLL fever swamp. The show had promise but weaving in stereotypes and LLL talking points turn me cold.
#5
Why do they build churches here where they are not wanted?
Here's a clue the writer appaernly did not have.
"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world" (Matt. 28: 19-20).
Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine
or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."
(Romans 8:35)
#7
This so called SGM is nothing but LLL pissed off peice of SH*T. It sounds just like he has been talking W.Clark.Just another little sawed off PISS ANT!!!!!!!!!!
#8
Why do they build churches here where they are not wanted? Also the evangelicals being rescued are more concerned with the church building than their safety.
Never heard words or comments like that uttered in my time in the community. Have not seen the show yet. Appears it might be a "wave off."
#9
His rhetoric is what gives it away. If these were the private thoughts of a wizened military man -- as portrayed in the story -- the language would be more temperate. But the over the top tone marks it as nothing more than the rantings of another moveon moron.
#10
Glenmore: I would have dismissed comments like this out of hand from just about any other source, but a guy like this does have a lot more credibility than just about any other source, so I have to pause a minute and question my beliefs.
This is a TV show. What happens in a TV show is written by scriptwriters. The people on TV shows are actors reading lines from scripts. If you want to re-examine your beliefs based on what military people say, I think anti-war veteran websites would be a better place to look.
#11
ZF - I disregard what TV show characters say, but the article was referring to what the technical advisor to the TV show, a retired Sgt. Major, was saying.
I don't give a whole lot of weight to NCOs with just 1-2 enlistments, but retired lifers ....
Same thing with officers - with the exception that the political aspirations of senior officership (Col. & above) reduces their credibility.
#12
Glenmore, I would also give the SgtMaj his due if his comments weren't taken directly from the LLL moonbat talking points. Its obvious from the show that they are taking a LLL moonbat path and it also seems apparent that the SgtMaj fits right into that agenda. FYI there is a fair share of LLL moonbat liberals in uniform and retired.
#13
I read Haney's book ("Inside Delta Force") which was pretty interesting. But in the last chapter he describes this bizarre sequence of events in which he hunts down some bad guys in the jungles of central America-- only one of the bad guys turns out to be an American soldier Haney knew, who, ya see, must have been set up by the CIA yada yada yada.
Posted by: Matt ||
03/28/2006 19:33 Comments ||
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The United States is faring poorly in its effort to counter ideological support for terrorism, in part because the government does not communicate effectively, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday.
Rumsfeld made the remark in response to a question from a member of his audience at the Army War College, where he delivered a speech on the challenges facing the country in fighting a global war on terrorism.
"If I were grading I would say we probably deserve a `D' or a `D-plus' as a country as to how well we're doing in the battle of ideas that's taking place in the world today," Rumsfeld told his questioner. "I'm not going to suggest that it's easy, but we have not found the formula as a country" for countering the extremists' message.
Rumsfeld's audience consisted of more than 300 war college students and faculty members.
He said the Al Qaeda terrorist network and affiliated Islamic extremists are the most brutal enemies the United States has ever seen.
Rumsfeld cited several examples of vicious terrorist assaults, including the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and warned that unless the terrorists are stopped they will continue to seek the means to launch even deadlier attacks on the West in the years ahead.
"The enemy we face may be the most brutal in our history," Rumsfeld said. "They currently lack only the means not the desire to kill, murder millions of innocent people with weapons vastly more powerful than boarding passes and box cutters," he added, referring to the terrorists who hijacked the airliners Sept. 11.
It was Rumsfeld's first visit to the war college in his more than five years as secretary of defense.
Earlier in the day he stopped at Shanksville, Pa., to see for the first time the place where hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field on Sept. 11, killing all 40 passengers and crew shortly after hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The government's Sept. 11 Commission report said the hijackers crashed the plane as passengers tried to take control of the cockpit.
On a walking tour of the site among rolling hills and meadows, Rumsfeld paused in front of several rows of angel-shaped figures on rods that bear the names of the passengers and crew who died aboard the airliner. In brief remarks, Rumsfeld said he wanted to pay his respects at "the place where America really started to fight back."
At the spot where Flight 93 plowed into the earth, Rumsfeld laid a wreath and bowed his head for a moment.
In his speech at the war college , Rumsfeld described the Shanksville site as a place where "a group of ordinary airline passengers gave their lives in extraordinary defiance of foreign hijackers and in defense of our country's capital."
Rumsfeld said progress is being made in the global War on Terror, particularly in making it more difficult for terrorist groups to recruit, train, raise money, establish sanctuaries and acquire weapons. But he stressed that more needs to be done.
"The strategy must do a great deal more to reduce the lure of the extremist ideology by standing with those moderate Muslims advocating peaceful change, freedom and tolerance," he said.
Rumsfeld noted that his audience included an Afghan military officer and one from Iraq.
"We welcome you and are proud to stand with you in the cause of freedom," the defense secretary said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/28/2006 00:40 ||
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#2
"They currently lack only the means - not the desire - to kill, murder millions of innocent people": ergo the DemoLeft wants Washington to take over everything and anything vv deficit-happy SOCIALISM, while failing overseas. Americans can fight and die for newfound global empire, just NOT govern nor control either itself as a country nor its own new Empire. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, iff Bill was himself, he wouldn't believe himself nor trust himself ERGO VOTE/LISTEN TO HIM!?
#3
But the US did very well against Soviet aggression. Why? Because Communism was accepted as a moral evil. Islamism - which is the essence of Islam - is treated as an instrument for democraticization.
Question: what's wrong with the Muslim world? Answer: a handful of extremists are attempting to hijack the noble faith. If you believe otherwise - as I do - then you are very much in the minority.
Look, Wizard, Islam isn't treated as an instrument for democratization - that's manufactured bullshit you crafted out of whole fantasy cloth so you can make your asinine self-aggrandizing argument. It's simplistic tripe worthy only of a grasping simpleton trying to sound self-important.
The effort to democratize would've been made regardless of what brand of barbarity existed. It's the American way. That Islam has held sway in the shitholes of the world for centuries where the current grief is centered is one of the obstacles we are trying to overcome.
It's simple. Try to stay with me... An effort is being made to divide Islam, to give those who would choose peace from those who choose war, rather than having to fight the whole 1.2 billion, or whatever the number is, at once. Maybe it will work. Maybe it won't. It's certainly worth a shot. Any part of that elude you? You don't like it? Tough, fuck off.
You have no answers, just pontification and severe mental and gastric indigestion.
You are a pretentious ass. That certainly diminishes whatever you might, otherwise, contribute.
#6
Because Communism was accepted as a moral evil.
That's too simplistic a description of what happened and doesn't do justice on the ideological war being waged: On the ideological level you were confronting communism with capitalism and collectivism with calls for freedom, even if you sometimes pretended you didn't see what allies of yours were doing. You may have been hypocritical quite often, but ideologically atleast you were clear.
But modern-day America seems unwilling to confront religious fascism with a true and clear embrace of its opposite, which is secularism, unwilling to battle faith-driven murderers with humanistic reason. Even today you get to hear American conservatives insult secularism and humanism, dismiss separation of church and state, insult Europe for being supposedly "over-secular" (whatever the hell that means). A natural disaster happens, and your president calls for "A Day of Prayer".
Prayer to what god? A prayer to Poseidon of the angry seas, a prayer to Allah who punished America for its infidel ways, or a prayer to a Yahwe that simply repeated its Sodom and Gomorrah example? Which one of these you think is gonna help you in your war?
Even in Afghanistan and Iraq you failed to insist that the new constitutions should contain an iron wall of separation between mosque and state, that the new constitutions should *enshrine* secularism as a fundamental characteristic of the state. You merely made do with weak and ineffective calls at "religious freedom" -- ones that are meaningless when put alongside other constitutional passages that name Sharia as a source of law.
The Iraqi constitution is even less secular than it was under Saddam. Can you imagine invading a country during the Cold War, and having the regime you install use an even more communist constitution than the one it had previously? No? And yet that's exactly analogous to what occured in Iraq.
Arguing whether Islam is merciful or violent is utterly irrelevant. Why should we choose interpretation of Islamic scripture as our battlefield? The various Mullahs and Imams are gonna end up on top if we choose such a battlefield.
I don't give a damn whether Islam is peaceful or not -- either way it doesn't have the slightest bit of right to impose upon my life, any more than any other theistic fairy tale does. The "peaceful" Christianity doesn't have any right to try and limit my reading habits any more than the "violent" Islam does.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/28/2006 5:16 Comments ||
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#9
With arguments such as yours, Robert, how can I do aught but hang my head in humble acknowledgement of an intellectual and moral defeat in your hands?
#10
Aris- you free from National Service yet matey? Any more pics??
Posted by: Howard UK ||
03/28/2006 5:33 Comments ||
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#11
Not yet but soon. Early May. And I do have some photos from my time in Samos that I've not posted. Will get around to posting them in my livejournal eventually I'm sure, but I'm not in any hurry.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
03/28/2006 6:17 Comments ||
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#13
Just a thought... If the enemy is using the 24-hour news cycle to his advantage, wouldn't it make sense for us to have 24-hour press offices in the White House, DoS, and DoD? Instead of one press conference a day, have three? Have guys in the press center 24/7 that can give substantive answers to questions , not just deflect questions until the first team comes on duty at 8:30 AM?
I think that at least if we did that, we could get up from a D- to a C.
#14
I'm used to barracking for the other side of an Aris attack but this time Katsaris, I gotta hand it you, you make sense.
All of what you just said is spot on.
We should be sticking up for secularism against fascist religion.
But we're not.
Why? Multiculturalism is one reason. We have a fifth column who use our legal system and internal political fault lines against us and it has worked to limit the range and expression of foreign policy.
We have imported the enemy within.
Another reason is if we are too forwardly secular we might alienate the moderates and yes we'd have to fight the whole 1.2 billion at once: a fight which could only end one way. Glowing craters.
Meanwhile, #4 that was unnecessarily harsh response. Make your point but you don't need such an ad hominem attack to go with it. Logic and facts are enough.
#15
What gets me is that Father Superior keeps coming back, calling us all barbarians, vowing never to return, then repeats the cycle.
Yeah, we Americans refuse to kick religious people in the face; we actually acknowledge that people have faith, and don't treat it as a disease. How horrible!
Europe has no room to lecture us. Europe's rabid secularism has done how much to protect it from radical Islam? Where, exactly, are people putting forward blasphemy laws? Where, exactly, are their ghettoes effectively run under sharia?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/28/2006 7:36 Comments ||
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#16
#4 sounds like someone with a history. Someone who's been spending time with the ladies. Someone who's away from home.
#17
Part of the problem is the old guard in your own services don't understand the media. From the Mudville Gazette -
What do you think the future holds for milblogging?
The Navy has a great approach to blogging, can't cite chapter and verse but essentially a simple disclaimer on the site regarding "views expressed are those of the author", no OPSEC or Privacy Act violations, and off you go. If the Army adopts a similar policy (they won't, if for no other reason then it's the Navy policy, and thus reeks of sea air) they will benefit from the best possible PR they could ever hope for (or pay big bucks to civilian PA firms for! - but that's another miserable failure story for another day...) If not, see "more from bitter extremists" comment above.
Maybe if you apply a 2x4 on the side of the CoSA, you can get him to pay attention to one of your more effective means of communications with the people in this war.
#18
15# (snigger) I've noticed that pattern too :)
It has been recurring for years now. Europe is no example to hold up - their Islamist problem is worse than the US though not worse than Britain.
Still, we should really be sticking secularism up their craw, it's their weak point. Absence of science rationality and logic are their weak point.
Getting them to admit you cannot prove or disprove metaphysical theories (ie religion) and thus while free to have personal faith have no right to impose that belief system on others... that would win the war overnight. When they accept that all else flows from that. Then sharia as a legal system evaporates as does the need to colonise.
But we're never going to get them to understand this so better just nuke em I reckon! and stop buying their oil. Gas, methanol/ethanol, non-ME oil is the way to go. Brazilian cars run on methanol no reason ours can't.
#19
Hey! We all have to agree with broadcaster Dennis Prager, that Islamism is a greater threat than Nazism and Communism ever were. Get that Texas school marm airhead, Karen Hughes, out of public diplomacy, and put Dennis in charge.
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/dennisprager/2006/03/28/191502.html
#20
I wonder how Verlain in Iraq's press conference went yesterday -- he mentioned they were discussing opnely correcting the more egregious errors of fact promulgated by the local and international news media.
#21
Still, we should really be sticking secularism up their craw, it's their weak point. Absence of science rationality and logic are their weak point.
You're assuming they care. The reality is, they don't. Rationality and logic are tools to ferret out answers; they already have all the answers.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/28/2006 9:12 Comments ||
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#24
Good point RC. From the Islamist point of view our weaknesses are our spiritual vacuum (especially in Europe), societal division (stemming from years of multiculti and all that implies), and lack of political will (probably closely related to the first two). Why does he need science, rationality, and logic? His own people are conditioned from milennia of tyranny to respond meekly to his threats. His analysis consists solely of finding the cracks in our social and political structures that he can exploit to drive wedges and pry bars into and wrench the whole thing apart. After that, he doesn't give a crap. Agriculture? Infrastructure? Education? Infant mortality? None of that matters as long as everyone faces the qibla once a day and prostrates himself to Allah.
The legacy of Islam can be seen across North Africa, through the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia and to the Indus valley before 1900. Desertfication. Starvation. Depopulation. Only Western techniques reversed the trend. But that's just a thin overlay. The same process is occurring in the Sahel right now as the Muslims consolidate their hold. What's going on in sub-Saharan Africa is what happens to the whole world if they win.
#25
The "peaceful" Christianity doesn't have any right to try and limit my reading habits any more than the "violent" Islam does.
Nice diatribe of a pro-EU guy. EU the place where politically incorrect blogs get closed, where there is legislation restricting free speech, wherte the failed constitution (the one Aris was partisans of) allowed to legislate against free speech and where there are propositions of law afor banning critics agsint Islam.
So Chruistianism doesn't ahev the right to restrict Aris speech but he through the EU wants to have the rifght to restrict other people's thoughts.
#26
Amongst all the major religions, Islam is the only one that does not allow anyone to leave it freely.
It is a cult of the coercers and the coerced.
Islam must be reformed or eradicated.
Its that simple.
Mainstream Christianity faced this same choice in many smaller waves, and reformed from within, and later from the outside.
Islam, with its access to the destructive powers of modern weaponsry will not be allowed the same slow timetable, and has no mechanism for internal reform. The only hope lies in external pressures.
The west, both secular and religious, will either fight Islam, forcing its destruction or reform, or succumb to its coercion.
Time to choose is coming, for Islam and for the West.
#27
1. During the cold war, we clearly identified communism as the enemy - NOT anything that wasnt free market capitalism. In fact we worked closely, sometimes publicly, sometimes not, with a range of non-Communist leftists, including Social Democrats, Christian Socialists, etc. And we certainly didnt decide to make our own society less collectivist at the time - in fact that was a time when organized labor was particulalry strong, and when the new deal welfare state was widely accepted. By analogy, theres no reason we should not work with moderate muslims, and no reason to become more secularist at home - at least no WOT reason.
Prager - ive met him, at a Jewish Community event where he was speaker. He didnt impress me all that much, though hes a clever speaker.
I suspect we did well against Communism partly cause the situation was different - we could play on historical eastern european hatred of the Russians. And cause we had enough in common culturally to understand. And cause we were willing to put pretty serious resources into it.
#28
" Islam is the only one that does not allow anyone to leave it freely."
"I. Laws of Constantine the Great, October 18, 315: Concerning Jews, Heaven-Worshippers,* And Samaritans
We wish to make it known to the Jews and their elders and their patriarchs that if, after the enactment of this law, any one of them dares to attack with stones or some other manifestation of anger another who has fled their dangerous sect and attached himself to the worship of God [Christianity], he must speedily be given to the flames and burn~ together with all his accomplices.
Moreover, if any one of the population should join their abominable sect and attend their meetings, he will bear with them the deserved penalties."
#30
I would like to challenge your argument on a number of points, Aris.
But modern-day America seems unwilling to confront religious fascism with a true and clear embrace of its opposite, which is secularism, unwilling to battle faith-driven murderers with humanistic reason. Even today you get to hear American conservatives insult secularism and humanism, dismiss separation of church and state, insult Europe for being supposedly "over-secular" (whatever the hell that means). A natural disaster happens, and your president calls for "A Day of Prayer".
Prayer to what god? A prayer to Poseidon of the angry seas, a prayer to Allah who punished America for its infidel ways, or a prayer to a Yahwe that simply repeated its Sodom and Gomorrah example? Which one of these you think is gonna help you in your war?
First of all, secularism has two meanings: hostility to religion and neutrality in religion. The vast majority of American conservatives embrace the latter if not the former - regardless of what you may believe, no one is calling for the imposition of a theocracy in the United States. Indeed, the very type of conservative coalition that currently exists in the US would render such a system impossible - if a theocracy were set up in the US, which religion would be the state church? As far as far as calling for a day of prayer in the wake of a natural disaster, this is part of a long tradition of civic religion (also termed ceremonial Deism) in the US that has been an element of American culture for over 200 years. It isn't going away any time soon and the vast majority of Americans seem to support it, so if you see it as being every bit as oppressive as a Salafist theocracy I would suggest you reevaluate your sense of perspective here.
As far as fighting religious fascism with "humanistic reason," if as you admit such things have proven thoroughly unimpressive here in the West, why do you see it working out so well in the Islamic world? Or what basis? I am always extremely suspicious of arguments that the US must remove openly religious conservatives from the public sphere in order to best win the war on terrorism, it sounds too much like a sleight-of-hand for those for whom Christian conservatives protesting against abortion in the US will always be more of a threat than the Islamists in London planning to do far more than just protest to implement their political agenda.
Even in Afghanistan and Iraq you failed to insist that the new constitutions should contain an iron wall of separation between mosque and state, that the new constitutions should *enshrine* secularism as a fundamental characteristic of the state. You merely made do with weak and ineffective calls at "religious freedom" -- ones that are meaningless when put alongside other constitutional passages that name Sharia as a source of law.
Except that the US didn't write the constitutions for either Iraq or Afghanistan, the people of both nations with our input. This is kind of a key difference Aris. Contrary to all the self-styled "anti-imperialists," the US doesn't think of its own society as being a utopia (I certainly don't) and we aren't going to force people of Iraq or Afghanistan to conform to what we think is best for them. It's their countries now and they're free to be as stupid and uncivilized as they want to be - that's the risk you take with a democracy and if you want things to be run perfectly all the time, then you want a dictatorship that'll make sure that the dumb rabble will never make any mistakes. We can advise, we can lobby, and we can push, but at the end of the day unless you want a real good old-fashioned empire the US is going to have to defer to the will of the people in both Afghanistan and Iraq as far as what they want their countries to look like.
The Iraqi constitution is even less secular than it was under Saddam. Can you imagine invading a country during the Cold War, and having the regime you install use an even more communist constitution than the one it had previously? No? And yet that's exactly analogous to what occured in Iraq.
Except that "religious" or "Islamic" isn't synonymous with what "communist" meant during the Cold War in this current conflict anywhere except online. As I've noted before, the administration has a far more charitable view of Islam than many of its supporters one encounters online in that they believe that since the Middle East and much of the Islamic world has been the Weimar Republic for the last 80 years and subject to a Saudi-sponsored totalitarian indoctrination campaign for at least the last 30 allows for some mitigating circumstances as far as just how crazy their political, religious, and social views are. A lot of people disagree with this, including many Rantburgers, but those aren't the presuppositions that the administration is working under because they believe at the end of the day that Islam is compatible with democracy and that bin Laden isn't correct when it comes to the Koran.
Arguing whether Islam is merciful or violent is utterly irrelevant. Why should we choose interpretation of Islamic scripture as our battlefield? The various Mullahs and Imams are gonna end up on top if we choose such a battlefield.
I don't give a damn whether Islam is peaceful or not -- either way it doesn't have the slightest bit of right to impose upon my life, any more than any other theistic fairy tale does. The "peaceful" Christianity doesn't have any right to try and limit my reading habits any more than the "violent" Islam does.
If reading habits are all you're worried about, I would seriously doubt you understand what is at stake here. As far as choosing the interpretation of Islamic scripture as our battlefield, from a purely tactical perspective doesn't it make more sense to engage the most dangerous aspects of Islam (Salafism, Khomeinism) rather than declaring war on the religion as a whole (in the name of secular humanism no less! I can't wait to see the support that idea is going to generate ...) and more or less vindicating everything that bin Laden has said. I'm not nearly bloodthirsty enough to want to go to war with a billion people all at once, particularly when so many of them have shown such an amazing willingness and bravery to fight and die alongside our own troops in Iraq and Afghanistan against al-Qaeda. Are we going to force all of the Kurds to adopt secular humanism or die too?
Bottom line is even if you think that Islam as a whole is irredeemable and has to be gotten rid of, there are excellent tactical reasons if nothing else than not declaring a general religious war that would force the vast majority of Muslims to openly side with bin Laden, including a not-inconsiderable number of governments. Believing that Islam as a whole is the enemy means that we're outnumbered by over 600,000,000 (even more than that in the case of Greece) and whenever one is outnumbered it stands to reason that strategy and tactics should always be a major consideration before extending resources or widening the field of battle, particularly widening it as far as some people seem to want it to in pursuit of what I think will be an extremely dubious cause.
As to the substantive point of the article, the US is losing the propaganda war because most of the national press corps can't separate national security from domestic politics with their all-encompassing desire to go after Bushitler and most of planetary press corps believes that the US (and Israel) are the source of most of the world's problems and the administration has done everything it can to insulate rather than explain the war to the general public in our country, let alone internationally. Most people still aren't making the connections between Basayev and Abdur Rehman (assuming they even know who either is) and al-Qaeda so they can't even begin to conceive of the threat, let alone the slow but steady progress we are making against it. As a result of this status quo, why the hell is it remotely surprising that the Osamanauts, who are quite adept at getting their message out through means fair and foul, are winning the PR war?
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/28/2006 11:58 Comments ||
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#31
Well, I for one have come to the realization that NO religion is correct. Every one is a manmade attempt at control of the people. Therefore, in order to allow more people to find the right path, assuming there is such a path, the spread of all religions should be prohibited. Mostly, religions only aggrandize those considered pious. They also provide a platform for accumulating funds which can be misused, thus making for a higher standard of living for some. Religions also provide a community among believers in which various activities can flourish. Beyond that, religions are practically useless. They do, however allow one to close his mind forever.
Not something I'd aspire to.
#32
Liberalhawk:
Old Spook is correct. Medieval Scholasticists as Aquinas advocated extermination of abandoners, but did so without textual sanction. Old Spook didn't use the connective "was," because he was referring to the present. The Muslim extermination edict is in the Bukhari Hadith, and is a direct quote from the phony "prophet" Muhammad. If the West was out of the way, all Islamic capital punishment laws (Had) would be enforced in earnest.
Western governments need to consider the life and liberty of willing members of Western Civilization, and use any and all means to neutralize Muslim aggression.
LH:
Tell me something. What prevents you from setting aside a few hours to read the Bukhari Hadith? It has been posted at the MSA's USC website since 1999. If you want a basic understanding of the second most important text in Islam, then read only parts: 52,57,81,82,83,84. If you had posted the above on Sept. 12, 2001, then I would have understood your ignorance. Not today. Jump hoops!
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/
#34
Aris, calling people's religions "theistic fairy tales" is hardly the kind of tolerance we're looking for in the Middle East or elsewhere. It seems that your idea of secular is to be disdainful of all religions. Secular does not mean athiestic, Aris.
#35
Dan Darling:
I have read most of your published articles. I am as aware as you that the founders of Constitutional Secularism were: Catholics and Protestants. There was a bloody period in the 16th C that has been referred to as "The Age of Wars of Religion." In the interests of universal peace, it was agreed that no single religion should dominate a State. Secularism was a compromise among competing faiths that actually constitutionalized State protection of religions.
The following should also be said. On the separationist' (church-state integration) charges against GWB's "faith based initiatives," the White House is supporting public goals - feeding the poor, etc - by using willing church enterprises. Even the Geldof group has admitted that church charities are better as getting aid to Africa's poor, and he has used them. Southern Baptists should be the first to complain about Muslim jihad-zakats (terror-aid). Our Muslim's overseas"charities" are anti-religion (especially Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism) and terror-based, and directed at feeding and arming jihadis. That warrants State intervention.
#36
I'm going to be blunt for all the islam is a religion of peace morons.
No other religion calls for the murder of anyone that leaves it. You can quote past history of misguided rules but the bottom line is, no other book demands this. None. And if you don't know what century muhamhead was born in or a surah from a hadith keep this in mind, your opinion is just that.
The bloody history of muhamhead's desert cult was formed in murderous blackmail and his only peaceful time, tolerance, was when he was out manned in mecca before they threw his ass out.
Both Buddha and Christ were firm in their calls for peace. muhamhead on the other hand required his followers to murder.
"Time to choose is coming, for Islam and for the West."
#37
As can be seen later on the Church did correct these (the Scholastics) - and call them out as "Errors", marking them as unacceptable. They are counter to the New Testament and have been identified as such. Long ago. Christianity (Catholicism) has corrective mechanisms built-in. Ever read up on the many Councils the Church has called - the 3 most notable were the Council of Nicea, the Council of Trent and the second Vatican council ("Vatican II").
On top of that there are many societal and governmental limitiation upon religion in general that preclude such things from being done int the west. Not so in Islamic nations.
Here's a good example: The Council of Trent (19th council) happened almost 500 years ago to reform the inner life of the Church in response to the protestant movments and various heresies. Did the Church behead all who left it? No. Here's something I bet you didn't know: a safe-conduct was issued for Protestants who desired to come to the council.
Could you imagine such a thing EVER happening in Islam as it stands today?
Where is the process for such a thing in Islam?
Thats the central isssue: not what Christianity has done in the past - its not a threat to behead those who leave, not now nor much any time since the reformation.
The issues - issues that you do NOT address, that you keep changing the subject away from - are:
Islam officially sanctions the routine killing of unbelievers and apostates, its in their accepted canon (the Hadiths). Can Islam reform or must it be eradicated?
The case for reform is not good - and hope for reform is slim. There are NO internal mechanisms in Islam to allow reform - its a religion that at its core has an immutable "exact word of Allah" at its core - i.e. God wrote the Qu'ran and nobody is allowed to change it.
This is contrasted by the "inspired" texts of Christianity, or the Traditions and Torah of Judiasm that admit to God's inspiriation in the writing but that they were written by men. All other texts are anciallry and open to doubt and error (especially ones that you quote, which were civil laws, not Church dogma).
So Islam has no solid internal source for reform. Leaving only external pressures.
And thats where my stance comes from. the West will impose reform on Islam or it will succumb to it. Islam seems structurally incapable for being reformed from within.
Its up to the Islamists to decide: do they force the West to eradicate them or do they change under pressure from the West.
And under the blade (or nuclear warhead) of a would-be Saladin, wether or not you are secular or Christian is of little distinction or import. you either submit to their coercion and convert (and there's no going back) or you die.
#38
Bah, accidentallly hit send before I checked it with preview - typos and blew the em close tag. Sorry for the formatting and any unreadability (dyslexia).
#39
Style accepted, comments clear and worthy.
This debate should be going on in Congress or the UN, but the nature of politics is to remain atop at any cost. Bird shit floats too.
#40
Its time for some blame-Clinton info, if we are talking about rising Muslim jihad expectations. It was his government that ignored Muslim-Bosnia's oppression of Christian Serbs and Croats, causing the reaction to that ethnic-cleansing. Please read the following article from 2000. Yes, the author is the same CAIR leader who is now a jailed terrorist. Notice how the terrorist celebrates the "Islamization of Muslims" which meant non-Muslims had to accept Islamic public education in Bosnia, or leave. I had already strongly opposed the intervention in Kosovo, but reading this article caused me to adopt a war on Islam posture:
http://www.youngmuslimscanada.org/biographies/display.asp?ID=2
Note-Most Westerners have been brainwashed into believing that Euro-Muslims were happy with Clinton-NATO's obscene protection of the Islamofascist entities of Bosnia and Kosovo. This link should remove all doubt concerning the aggressive ends of Islamofascism. Tragically, the percentage of Euro-Muslims has doubled since this article was written. In large sections of France, over half of all babies are born to Muslim parents. Do the math. Once Muslims reach 20% of any European State, in context of delusionary dhimmism and indulgence of immigration invasion, that country is finished. In the case of France, Muslims will be in control of that country's strategic rocket forces. Then, Europe is over.
During the Kosovo insanity, a Serb friend -anti-Slobo - showed me photos of Orthodox Cathedrals and Monasteries in that province. He said that the national interveners (in the armistice, it was agreed that Kosovo was integral to Serbia-Montenegro) were protecting hundreds of years of Orthodox heritage. When the Islamofascists took over, 100% of the holy sites were destroyed. Lesson: if we indulge Muslim aggression by moral retreat, they will take license to advance.
Ranjit Kumar Gupta was police commissioner of Calcutta (now Kolkata) and then inspector general of police, West Bengal, from 1971 to 1977. He is credited with wiping out the Naxal terror from the state in the '70s. In 2004, he published his book The Crimson Agenda: Maoist Protest and Terror, on the spread of leftwing extremism in the country. Gupta, now 85, tells Sumanta Ray Chowdhury how the ideology and strategy of the Maoists have changed through the years.
What is the strategic significance of the recent attacks?
Considering the progress the Maoists have made in different states in recent times, incidents like these were bound to happen. I had predicted such incidents in my book.
How different are today's Maoists from the Naxalites you combated during your tenure?
The changes are many. The followers of Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal were not trained in sophisticated guerrilla warfare, which the present day Maoists are. The Naxals I faced used rudimentary country-made weapons, but today the Maoists have access to all kinds of modern weapons and explosives. Most importantly, today they are better organised.
Has there been any major ideological shifts among the Maoists over the years?
The basic tactic remains the same, which is capturing power in the cities from bases in villages. But although they call themselves Maoists, in reality they are following the tactics of Che Guevara. Probably, they call themselves Maoists because Mao Zedong succeeded and Guevara failed. A new feature is the introduction of caste politics. Even in my times they used to play the caste card in certain pockets, but it failed in West Bengal. But now the caste strategy is far more effective and is working in Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.
Has the Maoist movement in India gradually transformed itself from a typically urban phenomenon to a strong rural movement?
Not really. Maoists still have a strong urban presence, but they are underground. They will surface once they become fully successful in establishing firm bases in the villages.
Will the Maoists in India establish tie-ups with terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and Jaish-e-Mohammed?
An ideological link-up will never take place as groups like Al-Qaeda and Jaish-e-Mohammed are fundamentalist organisations whereas the Maoists have social and economic agenda. It is possible when it comes to arms, but even here, considering the type of explosives and weapons the Maoists use and their method of guerrilla warfare, it is evident that they are in touch with the LTTE and the Maoists in Nepal. In northeastern India, they are largely involved in the narcotics-against-arms business via Myanmar.
What is the solution to the problem?
There should not be a military solution to the problem. Neither is banning the organisations a solution. The government should identify villages where the Maoists are yet to firm up their bases. The government should go for full-fledged economic and social development in these areas. By these steps the Maoists will be isolated from the public. Only then should police action against the Maoists follow.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/28/2006 01:01 ||
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#1
Iff memory correctly serves, me remembers Mao himself instructed his Marxism-Leninist cadres that the poor and uneducated are prime for Communism and Socialism becuz they are "blanks".
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz's Central Working Committee on Monday formally approved the planned return of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif before the next general elections under a 'London Declaration'.
The committee also decided that the issue of party members resigning from parliament would be taken in consensus with the joint opposition. All committee members unanimously agreed the former premier returned to Pakistan before general elections - irrespective of whether the elections were held in 2006 or 2007. Sharif's return date will be announced soon. The committee also issued a 'London Declaration' demanding the establishment of a neutral government 90 days before general elections. President General Pervez Musharraf must not have any role in an interim government, it said. PML-N will not enter any dialogue with the present government, it added.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/28/2006 00:00 ||
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U.N. Security Council powers held out hope on Monday for agreement this week on a statement to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions, but a deal still appeared elusive before a forthcoming ministerial meeting.
Russia, backed by China, opposes heavy Security Council involvement on Iran, fearing it would lead to punitive measures. Moscow last week proposed gutting a large part of the draft that asks Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment efforts, which could produce weapons-grade fuel. Tehran says its nuclear research is for peaceful purposes, while the West believes it is a cover for bomb making.
On Thursday, the foreign ministers of the five council powers and Germany are due to meet in Berlin to hammer out strategy and try to break any remaining impasse on the statement.
Britain's U.N. ambassador, Emyr Jones Parry, told reporters: "We need to agree on the text and if possible to have it ready for adoption. If we can finish it before Thursday, we will." But he cautioned that the five were only "edging forward."
"We're looking now at a mix of different comments on basic texts," Jones Parry said. "We've made a bit of progress but we have quite a lot more progress to make."
#1
"We've made a lot of progress" - on the best likely method of surrender, as we want to give the Mullahs their nukes and Regional-Global Empire/Caliphate while pretending they have no intent to threaten us afterwards.
#7
This is why I could never be a diplomat. I'd probably say something like: "Why don't we kick this statement around some more. I need a good show of diplomacy right up until our late-April pre-emptive strike."
March 28, 2006: When American troops found themselves fighting Iraqi terrorists in towns and cities, pundits predicted that Americans would suffer the same dismal fate of the Russian army, which got beat up real bad by Chechen irregulars in the 1994-6. But there was no replay of the Russian disaster in Iraq. The Americans proved very effective at street fighting. And one of the reasons was the U.S. Marine Corps project to interview Chechens who had fought the Russians in the early 1990s. The marines conducted their interviews in 1998, and modified their urban combat tactics to deal with the Chechen methods that had tripped up the Russians so badly. The U.S. Army also got in on this, with the result that, even though the Iraqis tried to use some of the Chechen tactics, they quickly found out that the Americans were not reacting like the Russians.
In 1994, the major problem the Russians had was not the clever tactics of the Chechens, but that the Russian troops were poorly trained and led. That was not the case with U.S. forces in Iraq or Afghanistan. But the Chechen tactics were well thought out, and implemented skillfully, and to great effect. The Chechens were more efficient, and led, than most Iraqis U.S. forces encountered. In fact, Chechens have served as mercenaries for Middle Eastern leaders for centuries. American troops have encountered Chechen fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, and killed them.
Posted by: Steve ||
03/28/2006 08:47 ||
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Got to love it.
Side note: Chechen fighters are often outsider muslims from other countries. We wish the Russians good luck.
BOMBERS are being paid hard cash to launch attacks on British troops in southern Iraq, according to military commanders.
Officers say British soldiers are facing a new wave of roadside bomb attacks as a result of the financial incentives.
Yesterday, the commanding officer of the Royal Scots, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Bruce, said soldiers in and around Basra were facing an increasing danger from roadside bombings.
He said high levels of unemployment meant that the offer of cash from insurgents to mount attacks was proving attractive to some parts of the population.
"For the people who are planting the bombs there may be a not insignificant financial motivation," he said. "There is a fair amount of dissatisfaction, there is an awful lot of unemployment and if an individual is offered money to plant a device, and perhaps even more money if the device is successful, then I think that is a motivation."
He said financial motives were likely to be behind the filming of some attacks. "I think that is why so many of these attacks are videotaped, because if it ends up in the international media, it proves the attack has been successful and the financial rewards will be even greater."
Lt-Col Bruce would not put a price on the bombings, but other officers have suggested that payments begin at about $50 (£29) for a successful attack, a huge sum in a country where the average wage before the war started was barely £11 a month.
The Royal Scots, who are based in Edinburgh, are on a six-month tour of duty in Iraq and are expected to return in May. They are mainly involved in escort duties and force protection, escorting convoys in and around Basra and providing protection for senior officers in Baghdad.
Ministers have insisted that British troops will only leave Iraq when Iraqi security forces are capable of taking over responsibility for maintaining order, but there appears to be little sign of an easing in the security situation.
Although there have been no deaths from enemy action this month, Lt-Col Bruce said British troops still faced dangers.
"It is busy at the moment," he said. "It is pretty consistently busy. There is a steady threat, mainly coming from roadside bombs and that is certainly what keeps us on our toes."
Speaking from his base south of Basra, he said the nature of the attacks was unpredictable.
The focus of the insurgency moved around, with Al Amarah - where British forces have faced some of the fiercest opposition - now quiet in comparison to Basra.
"The emphasis tends to shift," he said. "We see the frequency and concentration of attacks shifting. I don't know whether they have become more intense down south or if they have just moved around."
He said it was hard to judge how much success British forces were having. "There is a basic background level [of violence] and it would be nice if we could say we were making inroads, but what we are really trying to do is to work with the Iraqis to make inroads into it."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/28/2006 01:37 ||
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Hamas' only Christian cabinet appointee has declined the invitation to become the Palestinian Tourism Minister, but he didn't say why.
He gave up death-cults for Lent.
Tanas Abu Aitta was tapped to be the token Christian member of the 24-member Islamic government. But the 57-year-old Bethlehem businessman, who ran as an Independent candidate in January elections, has bowed out, a Hamas spokesman said on Sunday. The spokesman was quoted as saying that Hamas would look for a Christian replacement for Abu Aitta.
Abu Attia gave no reason for not joining the Hamas government, but his uncle, former Palestinian Tourism Minister Mitri Abu Aitta, said his nephew had "private reasons" for not accepting the appointment. At first Abu Attia thought Hamas would form a unity government with Fatah, Mitri Abu Aitta in a telephone interview. Later, when Hamas decided to form the government alone and it was clear he would be the only Christian, Tanas Abu Aitta changed his mind, said Mitri Abu Aitta. In the past there were at least two Christians in the parliament, he said. Christians account for less than 10 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to the CIA World Fact book. But in Bethlehem - the birthplace of Jesus -- they represent a much higher percentage.
Tourism -- one of Bethlehem's main industries -- dropped off drastically during the first years of the Palestinian uprising, which began in September 2000. But the last year saw an upswing in visitors, officials have said. Hamas officials have said they will introduce strict Islamic law in the Palestinian territories, something that would give Christians and non-Muslims inferior status. But Mitri Abu Aitta said there has been no change in Bethlehem since Hamas' sweeping victory in parliamentary elections. "The Christians here are very important part of the Palestinian community. There is unity [between Christians and Muslims] within the local community," said Mitri Abu Aitta.
Hamas ascendancy to power has complicated the peace process, Mitri Abu Aitta admitted. He is still hoping that P.A. Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will be able to resume negotiations with the Israelis toward a final agreement. Hamas has refused to negotiate with Israel, and Israel has said that it will not negotiate with a Palestinian government that does not recognize its existence and abandon terrorism. "Unfortunately we have to wait and see how things are going," Mitri Abu Aitta said. The Palestinians have suffered badly economically, he said. "We hope it will be better."
#1
Tanas Abu Aitta was tapped to be the token Christian member of the 24-member Islamic government. But the 57-year-old Bethlehem businessman, who ran as an Independent candidate in January elections, has bowed out, a Hamas spokesman said on Sunday. The spokesman was quoted as saying that Hamas would look for a Christian replacement for Abu Aitta.
Quotas in "Palestine"? Some of their best friends are Christians? One's just as good as another?
#3
trailing wife : many Palestinian Christians have come here. Unfortunately their cause here has been taken up by wingnutz like David Duke. They can't get a break.
Hasan Khreishi, deputy Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Monday called for Hamas to be removed from the EU list of terrorist organizations and for continued support for the Palestinian Authority.
"Starvation will push the Palestinian people into alliances you do not wish. A hungry man is an angry man," Khreishi told the annual preliminary session of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly (EMPA) which opened in Brussels Monday.
He condemned the "killings, the kidnappings at the checkpoints" by Israel and called for the publication of an EU report on discrimination against Palestinians in Jerusalem and for European companies to boycott projects such as a tram link between Israeli settlements and Jerusalem.
Moroccan parliament Speaker Abdelwahad Radi said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continued to be one of the most important obstacles to better relations between the western and the Muslim world: "We will have to talk to each other in order to achieve good neighbourliness. This conflict does not only hold our region hostage, but the entire world."
Josep Borrell, President of the European Parliament and EMPA, in his opening remarks said that relations between Europe and the Muslim world would pose the most important challenge for Europe in the years to come. On the cartoons furore, Borrell recalled that the EMPA presidium was among the first to deplore them and to call for calm.
Turkish representative Zeynep Uslu said freedom of expression was an essential value, but not a limitless freedom, something the Court of Human Rights had also stated.
"Freedom of expression must be exercised with respect for religions," she said.
With a certain religion getting much more respect than others...
EMPA brings together members of parliament from the 25 EU member states, the ten Euromed partner countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Palestinian Authority, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey) and members of the soon-to-be-League-of-Dhimmis European Parliament.
#2
They don't want to do what's necessary to get removed from the terrorist list, but they want to be removed anyway. The EU should say "NO" quite loudly and publically, and should stick by it.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/28/2006 19:04 Comments ||
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Hamas called on Monday for talks with Western powers to try to reach a just peace in the Middle East but showed no sign of softening its stance on Israel as it presented its government to the Palestinian parliament. Hamas prime minister-designate, Ismail Haniyeh, told parliament that the new government, expected to win a vote of confidence on Tuesday or Wednesday, would be ready for a dialogue with the quartet of mediating powers.
The quartet - the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations - has said Hamas, winner of Palestinian elections in January, must recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept past peace agreements or risk losing vital aid.
The parliament session came on the eve of elections in Israel, where the main issue is a plan by interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to withdraw from remote Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank while expanding the largest blocs. The people have the right to struggle against the occupation, Haniyeh said. But he added: Our government will be ready for a dialogue with the quartet ... to look into all ways to end the status of struggle and to achieve calm in the region. Our people are in need more than any other nation on earth for peace, for security and stability. Our government will not spare any effort to achieve a just peace in the region.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/28/2006 00:00 ||
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An interview in french, subtitled in adequate english (though a couple of parts are not translated correctly, IE "many muslims in France" become 8 millions, "o%" becomes 10% for German iranian oil), of an iranian opposition leader; this comes from an israeli teevee.
IIRC, he's the founder of the website http://www.iran-resist.org/.
Interesting bits about the euro-iranian oil links, but I don't knwow what knowledgeable people here will do of his view of Amadi as a simple frontman, or on regime change.
#1
Wait until millions of angry Iranian workers protest the mullah swine this May Day. Transport workers helped bring down the evolving Allende tyranny in Chile. History repeats.
#2
"The most popular regime in the contemporary history of the world."
These people are all lunatics.
Just say no to nukes.
Bomb now, bomb often, bomb till they spit of Allan. faster please.
The world's key powers will seek this week to reach agreement on a strategy that will build up pressure on Iran.
This could lead to sanctions being imposed by the summer unless Teheran halts the most dangerous parts of its nuclear programme.
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, along with foreign ministers from the United States, France, Germany, Russia, and China will meet in Berlin on Thursday at a gathering designed to finalise a United Nations call on Iran to comply with international demands, and to agree the steps that will follow if Teheran refuses.
Russia has been the main obstacle to western attempts to isolate the regime, as Moscow fears that the crisis could escalate and endanger its large commercial interests in Iran.
But senior diplomats said western countries would try to exploit Russia's desire to host a successful G8 summit in St Petersburg in July to secure support from Moscow.
"It is very important for Vladimir Putin to show achievement at the summit. The G8 is an obvious moment to exert pressure," said one senior western source. "If we get the Russians' agreement, the Chinese will probably follow their lead."
Iran says its nuclear programme is entirely "peaceful", and says it only wants to build facilities to enrich uranium in order to make fuel for nuclear reactors to generate electricity. But the west believes that this technology will be used to make fissile material for bombs.
Teheran has defiantly restarted its enrichment programme, and is quickly perfecting the techniques needed to make enriched uranium.
After weeks of frustrating talks in New York, western officials are careful not to predict success in Berlin. But it is unlikely that foreign ministers would have been summoned to Berlin unless there was a good chance of an agreement.
The US and Israel have refused to rule out the use of force to try to stop Iran's nuclear programme. But Mr Straw is convinced that the most powerful tool against Iran is "maintaining international consensus".
The first step could be a non-binding "presidential statement" from the UN Security Council.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/28/2006 02:08 ||
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#1
About as effective as Ted Kennedy's "immigration reform".
#2
Don't get me started on that, FG9048! I read what the Judiciary Committee did in the Senate yesterday. Ima still seething.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/28/2006 11:44 Comments ||
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#3
most powerful tool against Iran is "maintaining international consensus".
I must have missed something - have the mullah's begun to give a shit what anyone else thinks?
Military strikes against Iran's nuclear sites would not destroy the Islamic republic's uranium enrichment activities, which could be easily moved and restarted, a senior Iranian official said on Monday.
"You know very well ... we can enrich uranium anywhere in the country, with a vast country of more than 1 million 600 square kilometers," said Aliasghar Soltaniyeh, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
"Enrichment can be done anywhere in Iran," he told a panel discussion on the possible use of military force to destroy what the West fears is Iran's atomic bomb program.
Soltaniyeh said that after Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear power plant at Osirak in 1981, then Iraqi-leader Saddam Hussein bombed Iran's Bushehr plant.
The Security Council then passed a resolution condemning the attacks and making it illegal for countries to strike nuclear facilities.
But Soltaniyeh said those U.N. documents were "just pieces of paper" today to the United States and Israel.
Soltaniyeh said Iran was hiding nothing from the world and that all of its nuclear fuel facilities were known to the U.N. nuclear watchdog. But he hinted that threats of possible military action against Tehran could change that.
"Any threat or potential threat will create a very complicated situation," he said, adding that Iran would never give up its enrichment program.
A retired U.S. Air Force colonel and well-known war gaming expert told the conference the United States was under increasing pressure to use military force to destroy Iran's atomic sites and would make a decision on this option soon.
Iran has completed a 164-machine "cascade" of centrifuges to enrich uranium at its Natanz plant and is expected to begin testing it soon, diplomats in Vienna say. Operating such a cascade would not enable it to fuel any atomic weapons but would enable Iran to master the difficult art of uranium enrichment.
"I think we may be looking at a (U.S.) decision in six to nine months," said Sam Gardiner, a military strategy expert who has taught at the U.S. Army's National War College.
"I say before the November elections there will be a serious decision made in the United States," he said.
Gardiner said that while Washington supported European and Russian efforts to use diplomacy to pressure Iran to abandon its nuclear enrichment program, U.S. officials were skeptical about the efficacy of sanctions or other diplomatic weapons.
Washington also believes the U.N. Security Council will fail to agree on a course of action against Tehran, he said.
Tehran insists its nuclear program is aimed solely at the peaceful generation of electricity. However, it hid its uranium enrichment program, which could produce fuel for nuclear power plants or weapons, from U.N. inspectors for nearly two decades.
Gardiner said a U.S. operation aimed at destroying Iran's nuclear facilities would take less than a week and would not use any of the forces currently stationed in Iraq.
"This is an operation that would not take more than five evenings to do," he said, adding that it would probably use Stealth bombers to bomb the facilities.
But Gardiner said all his war-gaming and analysis had led him to the conclusion that Ambassador Soltaniyeh was right and the military solution would not destroy Iran's nuclear program as the know-how would remain.
"I don't think U.S. policymakers understand that the military option won't work," he said, adding that continued diplomacy was the only way to resolve the issue.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/28/2006 02:07 ||
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#1
"...a vast country of more than 1 million 600 square kilometers..."
We'll have to do something about that. How about if it was reduced in size to say, 100 square kilometers, and was renamed "Persia"?
Ummm, No.
You require a pretty big building, (Or many small ones near each other) electricity, heavy equipment (Transport trucks, forklifts, lead shielding, etc) good roads to deliver all the equipment, Air conditioning (Needed for quality control) Large quantities of pure water, and some pretty airtight seals to prevent "Accidents".
Try running your Nuclear program in tents in the desert, we'll allow that (And laugh while we watch)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/28/2006 21:13 Comments ||
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#5
I don't care whether we destroy the program or not, just so long as we set it back. I'm willing to keep hitting it periodically until all 1 million 600 square kilometers are pounded to dust. But that's just me, a small ember of The Great Satan.
Zacarias Moussaoui was an Al Qaeda operative who had numerous problems within the terrorist organization but was supported by Osama Bin Laden despite numerous concerns of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, according to testimony Monday at his death penalty trial.
Monday afternoon, the jury heard a summary witness report from information that was provided by Khalid Sheik Mohammed. The summary witness substitution was read to the jury since Shaikh Mohammed is in detention and not able to appear in court.
The report, which was agreed to by both the defense and the prosecutor, was filled with additional details about Shaikh Mohammed 's planning for the 9/11 attacks which included the revelation that 34 men knew about the 9/11 or "planes operation" before the strikes.
According to statements from Shaikh Mohammed, provided to interrogators, Shaikh Mohammed acknowledged that Moussaoui was to be part of a second wave of attacks after the initial 9/11 operation. "Moussaoui was recruited as part of a second wave of attacks," a member of the federal public defender read to the jury.
Moussaoui during his nearly 3 hours of testimony detailed how he had "personality problems," with Al Qaeda members. According to the report, Shaikh Mohammed said Moussaoui had "a problematic personality" and was "a problem from the start."
The report from Shaikh Mohammed contradicted testimony provided by Moussaoui earlier Monday that he was to fly a plane into the White House as part of the 9/11 operation.
According to the statement Shaikh Mohammed said that the original 9/11 plan called for the use of Arab operatives and the second wave of attacks was to include Al Qaeda members with French, Malaysian and Canadian passports so they would draw less scrutiny.
Potential targets for the second wave of attacks included hitting the tallest building in California and potentially the Sears Tower, as well as a subway attack and a strike against a nuclear powerplant.
Shaikh Mohammed said planning for the second wave was difficult because he was surprised by the security response of the U.S. officials after the attacks.
He further realized the use of Malaysians would be more difficult since the home address and true name of a Malaysian national, "Yazid Sufaat" was found in Moussaoui's possession when Moussaoui was arrested in August 2001.
Sufaat provided a letter to Moussaoui saying that he was an employee of Infocus Tech.
The report said that the 9/11 mastermind was frustrated that Moussaoui called senior al Qaeda planners over the phone numerous times in August of 2001 and that he also sent Shaikh Mohammed a detailed email about how his flight training was going.
This included eight calls to Ramzi Binalshibh in Germany who lived with several of the 9/11 hijackers in Hamburg, Germany and wired money to Moussaoui in Oklahoma.
Moussaoui's problems with Shaikh Mohammed began in 2000 on a three-week trip he took to Malaysia. During this trip, he met several members of the southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah, a group linked to Al Qaeda and mentioned to one of their members, Faiz Bafana, that he wanted to fly a plane into the White House. When Shaikh Mohammed and Mohamed Atef, Al Qaeda's military chief found out that Moussaoui told Bafana about this, they were upset.
Moussaoui further outraged Shaikh Mohammed since he was freelancing operations in trying to secure four tons of ammonium nitrate for Jemaah Islamiah. Moussaoui told the jury that after a "review" by senior Al Qaeda members he was recalled to Afghanistan and ended up in an Al Qaeda school in Pakistan, "Then I was approved." he said.
"At that point Bin Laden put you back in as the pilot of the fifth plane?" lead prosecutor Robert Spencer asked Moussaoui. "That's correct." Moussaoui responded.
Asked by defense Attorney Gerald Zerkin if he was in contact with other members of his crew for the operation Moussaoui said: "Because of what happened in Malaysia, I lost a lot of time I was in a hurry."
Intelligence summaries and depositions from some Al Qaeda members have shown that Moussaoui acted strangely.
Hambali, a Jemaah Islamiah leader met Moussaoui in Malaysia and "concluded that based on his conduct Moussaoui was crazy. "Cuckoo," a defense brief filed in 2003 and read to the jury noted.
During the Malaysia trip, Moussaoui sought $10,000 for flight training from Hambali and Faiz Bafana. Both men are currently in detention overseas. The two men eventually decided to give Moussaoui $2,000 so he would leave the country.
"I discussed with Hambali, and Hambali said, 'Just give him $2,000 And let him leave Malaysia,'" Bafana mentioned in a deposition which was showed to the jury in the first week of the trial.
Shortly after he left Malaysia, Moussaoui began to make plans to head to the U.S., despite this according to Shaikh Mohammed, Moussaoui "would never have been a replacement [for 9/11] even if one of the hijackers had pulled out of the operation."
Although he was arrested three weeks before 9/11 Moussaoui did practice secrecy which prosecutors say led to the 9/11 attacks.
The prosecution is contending that if Moussaoui had not lied to the FBI the attacks may have been prevented. A line in the 9/11 Commission report concluded of Moussaoui, "Moussaoui can be seen as an al Qaeda mistake and a missed opportunity."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/28/2006 00:49 ||
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#1
Shaikh Mohammed said planning for the second wave was difficult because he was surprised by the security response of the U.S. officials after the attacks.
...They were surprised? Sheesh, these guys were dumber than we thought.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/28/2006 20:15 Comments ||
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Interpol said the Al Qaeda terrorist group is preparing to engage in biological warfare in urging countries to enact legislation allowing police to investigate scientific activity that can result in the manufacture of a bio-terrorist weapon.
Ronald Noble, secretary-general of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), told a conference in Singapore that captured terrorist suspects have admitted that their groups are plotting potential biological attacks.
There is enough evidence to show that Al Qaeda is preparing to engage in biological warfare, Noble said.
It cant be that we as a world community have to wait for a September 11 type of attack in bio-terrorism before we prepare, Noble told government officials, police and health experts attending the Asian Terrorism Workshop.
Institutions that are engaged in any bioscience need to make sure that the controls they have in place are sure that only legitimate scientific investigative activity is going on, he said.
Police forces worldwide need to be trained, Noble said. They need to know how to investigate bio-terrorism-related cases and how to handle such an attack.
Representatives from 26 Asian countries are attending the three- day conference.
The law enforcement officers were encouraged to coordinate moves aimed at warding off bio-terrorist attacks or days may past prior to the realization that such a calamity has already occurred.
Unlike other forms of terrorist acts where the impact can be felt almost instantaneously in the aftermath, we may not realize that a biological attack has occurred until perhaps days or even weeks later, said Ho Peng Kee, Singapores senior minister of state for law and home affairs.
By that time, the terrorist may already have fled the country or succumbed to the biological agent, and all the valuable investigative leads may have disappeared, Ho noted in a keynote address.
The after-effects of a bio-terrorist attack may be far more widespread in this age of easy air travel, he warned, transcending borders and impacting different continents.
Ho called on countries to reach out to one another and increase their level of cooperation and exchange of information.
Time is of the essence, he said. Networks must be established and strengthened in times of normalcy so that we are resilient enough to confront and overcome crises.
The Al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a terrorist group blamed for a spate of attacks and plots throughout Southeast Asia, has relied on bombings, including suicide bombers. A manual discovered in the Philippines in 2003 however indicated interest in acquiring chemical and biological agents.
Singapore passed a law in 2005 carrying a life-imprisonment term for anyone using biological agents for non-peaceful purposes.
As a close ally of the United States, the city-state regards itself as a prime target of terrorists and has uncovered JI plans to attack its infrastructure, transport facilities, the US and Israeli embassies.
The US has been urging Asian countries to enact tougher laws against bio-terrorism.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/28/2006 00:38 ||
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#1
All for the false prophet and the religion of satan.
#2
The Colorado serial bomber used everyday items combined with sophisticated detonators that allowed an aerosol can to spray particles in a large area. This could be devastating with biological or chemical agents in a NCAA arena or any place large groups of people are.
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.
WASHINGTON Caspar Weinberger, the former Secretary of Defense for Ronald Reagan, has died after a brief illness. He was 88. Forbes magazine confirmed Weinberger's death to FOX News. Weinberger served as publisher chairman of the magazine and as a columnist there since 1988. He died at a hospital in Bangor, Maine.
Hundreds of people protested in Afghanistan on Monday against a court's decision to drop a case against a man who converted from Islam to Christianity, 
Germany has pledged 250,000 million euros to assist Afghan refugees in Pakistan at a time when the UN refugee agency is facing major budgetary constraints. "We are grateful to the German government for their generous donation," Guenet Guebre-Christos, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative in Pakistan, said on Monday. "Even though record numbers of Afghans have been repatriated in recent years, there are still about 2.6 million left in Pakistan, most of whom need basic services such as health and sanitation," he added.
The Ministry of Islamic Affairs and the King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue will organize short courses for imams throughout Saudi Arabia in order to spread a culture of dialogue and forgiveness, sources told Asharq al Awsat. The courses will include lectures by senior ulema in Saudi Arabia, including the Saudi mufti 
Police searched business premises across Germany in connection with an investigation into the illegal export of equipment for Iran's controversial nuclear programme, prosecutors said Monday. One of the companies searched was believed to be a front for the illegal export of hydraulic pumps and transformer parts, which could be used in nuclear facilities, prosecutor Benedikt Welfens said. German law restricts the sale to Iran of such dual use equipment, which has applications in both military and civilian programmes. Seven persons, most of them of Russian extraction, are under investigation in connection with the illegal exports, which investigations showed reached Iran via Russia. Police seized data, a special cable ready for export and cash during last week's raid of 41 premises in 10 German states. Prosecutors said five or six firms were suspected of having supplied the front company with material, but only one is believed to have known the true destination. No arrests have been made so far in the case. 
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz's Central Working Committee on Monday formally approved the planned return of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif before the next general elections under a 'London Declaration'.
U.N. Security Council powers held out hope on Monday for agreement this week on a statement to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions, but a deal still appeared elusive before a forthcoming ministerial meeting.
Hasan Khreishi, deputy Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Monday called for Hamas to be removed from the EU list of terrorist organizations and for continued support for the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas called on Monday for talks with Western powers to try to reach a just peace in the Middle East but showed no sign of softening its stance on Israel as it presented its government to the Palestinian parliament. Hamas prime minister-designate, Ismail Haniyeh, told parliament that the new government, expected to win a vote of confidence on Tuesday or Wednesday, would be ready for a dialogue with the quartet of mediating powers. 
