Saudi Arabia's oil installations may be under threat from Islamic militants of the al-Qaeda network, but the facilities are not nearly as vulnerable as one might think, independent experts say.
Given that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, wields enormous influence over oil prices, the security of its wells, drilling stations and export terminals are a key concern to world markets.
But in western oil circles, specialists insist that protective measures have been taken to ensure that any attempted attack would fail to destroy crucial parts of the oil production and export system.
"The Saudis have installed exceptional defense systems. They've always done that, but they've heavily reinforced them in the past year," says Roger Diwan of PFC Consulting in Washington.
"There are huge exclusion zones around the installations, 100 to 120 kilometers (60 to 75 miles) in diameter, fortresses in the desert guarded by colossal means—satellites that detect anything that moves, helicopters, radar, the army, their own security forces.
"Their only real fear is internal sabotage, so they watch everything extremely closely."
Isolated in the desert and surrounded by numerous barriers, watchtowers and beaches of white sand in order to track footprints, the nerve centers are out of reach to potential attackers, according to those who have been able to visit the sites.
The 14,000 kilometers (8,700 miles) of pipelines that wind around the peninsula are at greater risk, but they are easily and quickly repaired.
"If a pipe bursts, we cut the valves, detach the broken part, bring in a trunk of tubing by helicopter and weld it together. The whole process can be done in 24 hours."
The head of Paris-based magazine PetroStrategies, Pierre Terzian, adds: "There are storage facilities, so [a broken pipeline] would have no impact on shipments, stocks are regulated while the repairs are being done.
"You would have to have a massive attack, on the scale of September 11 (2001 attacks on the United States) for it to have an impact. A bomb or a even a car bomb that blows up a security barrier would have no effect."
However, offshore in the Gulf, where the world's tankers dock at export terminals, the Saudis are most exposed.
The metallic platforms could be the target of suicide attacks by small boats, similar to the ones used off neighboring Yemen against the US destroyer Cole in 2000 or the French tanker Limburg in 2002.
In London Leos Drollas of the Center for General Energy Studies insists that the Saudis "have lots of patrol boats and I suspect, with American help, echo-finders to see that frogmen don't come."
But, he said, attackers "could take over a tanker, fill it with high explosives and try to ram the terminal. If they were to hit one of those terminals, you're hitting about four million barrels a day of oil exports. That would be a huge blow, the worst thing they could do."
Experts agree that even a small attack against Saudi oil infrastructure would immediately spark a rise in oil prices, "but that would be more psychological than rational," Roger Diwan says.
Last month, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi said his country had made "substantial efforts" to secure the country's oil installations.
"It would be difficult, if not impossible, for terrorists to reach them. . . . They are inaccessible to intruders."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/20/2005 6:17:34 PM ||
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âcould take over a tanker, fill it with high explosives and try to ram the terminal. No need for the explosives. A laden supertanker moving at speed has enormous kinetic energy. I did the calculations a while back, but I recall a laden supertanker moving at 20KPH hitting a stationary object is equivalent to a thousand pounds of TNT in a directional shaped charge placed on that object.
Police investigators were on Sunday searching for possible al-Qaeda links to a bomb attack in Qatar that killed one Briton and sent shockwaves across the tiny gas-rich Gulf state until now untouched by terrorists.
The explosion on Saturday night at a theatre popular with expatriates coincided with the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Qatar is home to the US Central Command base from which the invasion and subsequent US military operations in Iraq have been co-ordinated.
The attack was launched three months after a taped recording attributed to Osama bin Laden urged followers to step up attacks across the Gulf and follows a wave of violence in Kuwait in January.
Continued on Page 49
This article starring:
Jacques Chirac
Jonathan Adams
OMAR AHMED ABDULLAH
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Rob Dakers
SALEH AL UFI
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/20/2005 6:16:10 PM ||
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Al-Hayki said that the security authorities would rather complete investigations before accusing anybody for planning the blast, especially that no specific party has claimed responsibility for it yet.
Foreign embassies in Doha have tightened security procedures and called on their citizens to be more cautious.
A bomb blast occurred close to Doha Players' Theatre of the Doha English Speaking School late night. A British man was killed in theattack and at least a dozen people were wounded.
Qatari Interior Ministry said earlier Sunday that the suicide car bomber who carried out the attack was identified as an Egyptian citizen named Omar Abdullah Ahmad Ali.
This article starring:
OMAR ABDULLAH AHMED ALI
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Qatari Assistant Director for Security Brigadier Ahmad Al-Hayki
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/20/2005 6:14:21 PM ||
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Kuwait brushed aside Israeli claims that "secret contacts" were held between Tel Aviv and some Arab and Islamic countries including Kuwait. "We are used to these claims from the Israeli side which plants false news that are near to wishful thinking than reality," Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad Al-Sabah said in statements to daily Al-Rai Al-Aam newspaper Friday. "Our position is clear, no normalization, no contacts nor dealings with the Israeli side but until comprehensive and just peace prevails," underlined Al-Sabah. "This is a firm Kuwaiti position from which we will not deviate," he said.
Foreign undersecretary Khaled Al-Jarallah also denied any contact. "There were no contacts and will not be," he told the daily. Israeli foreign ministry director general had claimed the ministry was contacting Kuwait, Dubai, Oman, Bahrain, Chad, Morocco, Tunisia, Pakistan and Indonesia. Israeli foreign ministry spokesman also claimed the Jewish state was undergoing official "secret" contacts with these countries. He did not say where these contacts were taking place. However, the spokesman confirmed Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom's previous announcement that Tel Aviv was negotiating with 10 Arab countries, some of which are Gulf states.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Secret contact with Jooooooooooooo Doctors probably.
Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef, former deputy chairman of the Shoura Council and former secretary-general of Muslim World League, has said that women driving is not un-Islamic and could be introduced in the Kingdom gradually, beginning with cities such as Jeddah and Riyadh. In an interview with Arab News, Naseef also said that Saudi Arabia's reform programs were going well and he described the municipal elections as a good beginning. "Next time, there will be elections to regional councils and the Shoura Council. We don't know when but they will come," he said.
Dr. Naseef, who is also vice chairman of the King Abdul Aziz National Dialogue Center, emphasized the important place of women in Islam. "Women enjoyed equal participation in every field in the early days of Islam. Later people drifted away from Islamic teachings and denied women their basic rights but that should not be blamed on Islam," he said. "Depriving women of their rights should not be allowed. At the same time, women should be aware of religious teachings and should not behave in an un-Islamic way. Some things are indeed un-Islamic and create problems. These problems are present in the West which did not realize their danger until it was too late. We don't want the same thing to happen here," he added. Dr. Naseef continued, "The participation of women in elections, their membership of the Shoura and other things such as driving will come gradually. People are afraid that if they allow women to drive, it will create confusion but a gradual introduction is possible in order to avoid problems. It may not be a problem in Jeddah or even in Riyadh. In other areas, it may cause unnecessary confusion and dissatisfaction. There is nothing in Islam that prevents women from driving."
This article starring:
ABDULLAH OMAR NASIF
Muslim World League
Muslim World League
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Its OK with me as long as women place a large warning sign on their cars >>WOMAN DRIVER.
>:-]
Posted by: King Abdul ||
03/20/2005 2:36 Comments ||
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And whatever you do, brother Abdul, don't give them enough gas to make it across the border.
Posted by: Prince Nayef ||
03/20/2005 9:15 Comments ||
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It must be rather difficult to maintain the status quo with one jabbering "barefoot and pregnant" mullah on one side and about a dozen steely-eyed successful businesswomen on the other. "Go ahead and tell us how subservient we are, and watch us crash your stock market."
The head of Britain's foreign intelligence agency told Prime Minister Tony Blair that the case for war in Iraq was being "fixed" by Washington to suit US policy, a BBC documentary will claim on Sunday.
Back to form for the BBC, I guess.
Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, briefed Blair and a group of ministers on the United States' determination to launch the invasion nine months before hostilities began in March 2003, the Sunday Times reported, citing the BBC programme, which is due to be aired later in the day. After attending a briefing in Washington, he told the meeting that war was "inevitable", according to the weekly newspaper. "The facts and intelligence" were being "fixed round the policy" by US President George W. Bushs administration, Dearlove said. The allegations against Blair just weeks before an expected general election are likely to reopen a feud between the government and the British broadcaster.
That usually happens when one side tells the truth, and the other doesn't ...
The documentary argues that Blair had signed up to follow Bushs plans for regime change in Iraq as early as April 2002, The Sunday Times said. Robin Cook, Britain's former foreign secretary who resigned as leader of the House of Commons over Iraq, claimed that the threat of weapons of mass destruction was not the prime minister's true reason for going to war. "What was propelling the prime minister was a determination that he would be the closest ally to George Bush and they would prove to the United States administration that Britain was their closest ally," Cook tells the programme.
Sounds like a good reason.
That's always assuming you'd consider Robin Cook as a legitimate source...
"His problem is that George Bushs motivation was regime change. It was not disarmament. Tony Blair knew perfectly well what he was doing.
Regime change, another good reason.
"His problem was that he could not be honest about that with either the British people or Labour MPs, hence the stress on disarmament."
And whose fault is that? Perhaps if Labour had honored their commitment to 'human rights' when it came to Saddam, the British people would have understood the need for regime change.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Twelve years of UNSC demonstrated conclusively that the only way to disarm Iraq was to de-Saddamize Iraq. Some people are so sharp they'll cut themselves.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/20/2005 7:16 Comments ||
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#3
The problem with history is once writ, the only issue is what gets written next. Let the Left debate what might have been and let us concentrate on what gets written next.
#4
Excellent Phil. If it's true what a coup for the all-knowing, all-singing, all-dancing neocons. The BBC had better pray that their story is bogus, else BBCs time line is nearing an end. Taking down a broadcast network is nothing! Nothing NOTHING! BWWWWWWWWWH!
The US has decided to suspend military aid to Nicaragua until it destroys all Soviet-made SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles, which Washington worries could fall into the hands of terrorists, a government source said yesterday. Concerned by the whereabouts of missiles dating from the clash between leftist Sandinistas and contra rebels in the 1980s, the US last month sent a mission to Nicaragua to review President Enrique Bolanos' progress on his pledge to find and eliminate them. But Nicaragua had said it would destroy some but not all of the missiles. "Some US military air programmes have been frozen," Defence Minister Jose Adan Guerra told local media. The US embassy business attache, Peter Brennan, noted that Washington wants all the Nicaraguan missiles destroyed. The SAM-7s were purchased by the Nicaraguan Sandinista government between 1979-1990 to battle the US-backed contras.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/20/2005 12:08:08 AM ||
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This is worrisome. The Sandanistas have put themselves in positions and are ignoring their constitutional superiors. The elected government is too scared to call them on it. We may see a coup.
The last elected president of independent Chechnya lived and died in a nondescript basement on a street corner in this village of low, rolling plains and neatly gated courtyards a few miles north of the Chechen capital. Or perhaps he didn't.
The truth of exactly how Aslan Maskhadov died may never be known, in part because five days after footage was shown of his body sprawled in a pool of blood, Russian authorities blew up the house and reduced it to broken bricks and splintered lumber. Armed guards now stand sentry to make sure no one gets close enough to inspect the rubble. The owners of the house have been arrested, or have disappeared.
As for the body of the 53-year-old Chechen rebel leader, whom authorities blamed for attacks against military and civilian targets across Russia, no one has seen it, except on the brief video released by police. Authorities have invoked a new law that allows them to refuse to release the bodies of suspected terrorists.
Here in Tolstoy-Yurt, residents are by turns perplexed, disbelieving or fearful — mostly of the Russian troops who conducted rough house-to-house searches on the day Maskhadov was said have been killed. Police said the separatist leader, who served as Chechnya's president during a period of self-rule in the late 1990s, was found hiding in the basement of a local welder and was killed by a grenade when he refused to surrender.
"The people here generally disbelieve the official version that he was hiding here. The official version of the story is extremely suspicious, and ⊠it's possible that Maskhadov wasn't even killed here. But how can we say?" said Aslakhan Zakayev, who lives down the street from what had been welder Musa Yusupov's home.
"I have seen a lot of bodies in my life," said Ramzan Bolatiyev, the prayer leader at the local mosque. "The Maskhadov they showed on television was the body of someone who had been dead for several days. They brought him here. It was all staged, and that's why they blew up the house, so nobody could see there was no bunker and no 'special operation.' "
Beyond the usual conspiracy theories, the mystery over Maskhadov's death stems in part from early statements by Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov. He is considered the most powerful figure in Chechnya, and his security service has earned a reputation for kidnapping, torture and executions.
Immediately after Maskhadov's death, Kadyrov announced that the rebel had been accidentally shot by one of his own bodyguards during a siege by federal commandos. A few days later, Kadyrov said he was "just joking about the bodyguard," and that Maskhadov had indeed been felled by a grenade lobbed by federal forces into his bunker.
This was followed by reports in the Russian media, citing an unidentified source in Kadyrov's camp, that Maskhadov had been captured elsewhere, then interrogated and killed by Kadyrov's men. According to those reports, Maskhadov's body was transported to Tolstoy-Yurt two days later to spare Kadyrov the public wrath that would accompany the death of a man many Chechens regard as a hero.
The questions intensified when the wife of the owner of the house, Yakha Yusupova, was released from custody and vehemently insisted to Associated Press that no one had lived in her basement.
She said armed men came to the house March 8 and detained the family in the yard. A truck then drove up and something was unloaded — she suspects it may have been Maskhadov. Then, police warned her there would be an explosion, and there was, she said.
Neighbors said Yusupova disappeared shortly after her release from jail, and they were told she had gone to live with relatives in another part of Chechnya.
One neighbor, Aslan Isayev, said Yusupov had a nephew who was thought to have a connection to the rebels. "But you know, in Chechnya, many people have such relatives, and they can't sever relations with them, they can't refuse to give them shelter. It is against our traditions," Isayev said.
The Yusupov family, he said, is well-known in Tolstoy-Yurt. Yusupov's father, Azim, was a widely read poet; his uncle, Aziz, was a history and literature teacher who helped found a museum in honor of Leo Tolstoy, for whom the village is named. "No one in the village ever associated this family with any resistance activities. It is impossible to hide such things in a village," Isayev said.
"No one has seen the corpse of Maskhadov here," Aslakhan Zakayev said. "No one was allowed to go into the house. And after everybody left, after everything had been razed to the ground and reduced to rubble, they told us there was a bunker there. But they didn't allow us to go and look."
Still, the reports from other neighbors that Russian police conducted tense house-to-house searches on the day of the explosion suggest they were genuinely looking for the rebel leader.
Shamil Gabarov said police entered his house an hour or two before the first of two explosions at the Yusupov house and searched the basement.
"They told us it's a regular passport check, and they were trying to catch someone," Gabarov said. "They were obviously afraid that something was wrong. They were very jittery and scared."
Meeting with foreign journalists last week, Kadyrov, whose father, Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed in May by a bomb planted at a sports stadium, said he would have been happy to claim authorship of Maskhadov's demise.
"Maskhadov is not only an enemy of the people ⊠he is also my personal blood enemy," Kadyrov said. "And if I had killed him, I would have made a loud statement that very moment that I had just destroyed international terrorist No. 1, based on Russia's territory."
Across Chechnya, such sentiments are few. For most, Maskhadov's death ended not only all hopes for an independent Chechnya, but for any end to the republic's long separatist war. The pro-Moscow Chechen government had rejected Maskhadov's repeated calls for peace negotiations, and people now fear more radical elements will dominate the struggle.
Maskhadov "was the president, at the end of the day, at least to us, and killing him is an insult," said Anya Dadayeva, 53, a market worker.
A resident of the capital, Grozny, Maria Khardonova said: "He was a good man, a good president. He would walk up to the people and talk to them. It was a huge mistake that they killed him, and the worst thing is they're not giving back his body to his family.
"You see, when Maskhadov became president ⊠we thought there would be hope for our future. And the other day, when he was killed, the authorities tried to present it as a huge gift," she said.
"But I can tell you, I did not consider this a present."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/20/2005 6:29:50 PM ||
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Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev said Friday that rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov was not betrayed but tracked down by federal special services who had intercepted his telephone calls.
The Federal Security Service has said Maskhadov was killed by FSB commandos during a sweep in the Chechen village of Tolstoy-Yurt on March 8. It announced last week that it had paid a $10 million reward to "citizens" for providing information about Maskhadov's whereabouts. The FSB also confirmed its pledge to pay $10 million for the information leading to Basayev's capture or death.
"I often asked him to at least call from the town, but he wanted to speak from where he was, and I could not do anything with it," Basayev said in a statement on the rebel Kavkaz Center web site. "Generally speaking, they established his location through his phone, and there wasn't a betrayal."
Basayev claimed that the Kremlin tricked Maskhadov into making a flurry of phone calls by secretly inviting him to participate in negotiations.
Maskhadov, who was elected Chechen president in 1997, had pressed the Kremlin to enter peace talks. "In this situation it was necessary to get more operative information from envoys abroad, and he began using the phone. ... He was calling the military units of mujahedin in the mountains very often," Basayev said. "Initially, he used precaution and drove away from the village, but then he began receiving calls at home and even calling from home himself."
The head of the Moscow bureau of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television, Akram Hazam, told Interfax on Friday that Maskhadov's widow, Kusama, told him that her husband had prepared to meet with federal negotiators shortly before his death. "On March 5, he called his wife and told her that he was going to negotiations and that everything would be fine," Hazam said.
Unidentified FSB officials said on Channel One television Thursday that Maskhadov had spent the past five months in Tolstoy-Yurt but information about his location was obtained only in early March. The FSB officials also claimed -- for the first time since Maskhadov's death -- that commandos first slipped a stun gas into the bunker where Maskhadov was hiding. After the gas failed to take effect, they threw in grenades, killing Maskhadov, the officials said.
Earlier, authorities said the commandos immediately threw in grenades -- a statement that prompted criticism that Maskhadov could have been taken alive if gas had been used.
Basayev said the rebels were not discouraged by Maskhadov's death. They "met the death of Aslan calmly, I can even say with satisfaction, in the sense that it added to the resoluteness ... to continue fighting," he said.
Police killed two suspected rebels during a sweep Sunday in the town of Achkhoi-Martan in southwestern Chechnya, The Associated Press reported.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/20/2005 6:28:07 PM ||
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Posted by: ed ||
03/20/2005 15:11 ||
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#1
Oops! Looks like rigging the elections hasn't served you very well after all, eh Akayev? Want to try that election thingy again? Mebbe you can improve on the "Free and Fair" aspect a tad. Of course, now it's too late. They'd toss your ass like a rotten dictator tater...
It will be Spring in Switzerland, soon, asshole...
#2
So far the Kyrgyz protests instead of genuine pro-democracy revolts (like in Ukraine), seem to revolve instead around specific members of the political elite that objected to their own exclusion from the power-pie. Their protest are not united, and each elite excluded just tries to win the district he ran in, instead of having a common democratic vision. Unlike Georgia and Ukraine they couldn't agree even in choosing a leader among them.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday that the US had no plans to attack North Korea but reiterated that Pyongyang give up its nuclear programme, Xinhua reported. "We have absolutely no desire to attack North Korea. We have no reason to want to do so," Rice said in an interview to South Korean Internet news outlets. "We understand that North Korea is a sovereign state ... North Korea does not need to worry the US intends to attack it," she said. She urged Pyongyang to make a "strategic choice" to give up its nuclear programme.
The US could hold direct talks with North Korea on the nuclear issue within the framework of the six-party nuclear talks, she said at a joint press conference with her South Korean counterpart Ban Ki-moon. The US official made clear that there would be no direct US-North Korea talks outside the six-party talks because the nuclear issue was a regional one.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2005 10:23:03 AM ||
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"We aren't going to attack North Korea, because we don't have to. BWAHAHAHAHA!"
In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya. That was a significant new charge, the first allegation that North Korea was helping to create a new nuclear weapons state.
But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction. North Korea, according to the intelligence, had supplied uranium hexafluoride -- which can be enriched to weapons-grade uranium -- to Pakistan. It was Pakistan, a key U.S. ally with its own nuclear arsenal, that sold the material to Libya. The U.S. government had no evidence, the officials said, that North Korea knew of the second transaction.
Pakistan's role as both the buyer and the seller was concealed to cover up the part played by Washington's partner in the hunt for al Qaeda leaders, according to the officials, who discussed the issue on the condition of anonymity. In addition, a North Korea-Pakistan transfer would not have been news to the U.S. allies, which have known of such transfers for years and viewed them as a business matter between sovereign states.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: too true ||
03/20/2005 8:00:01 AM ||
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"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."
- - - Winston Churchill
"The truth has never been of any real value to any human being--it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths."
- - - Graham Greene
"There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously."
- - - Thomas Sowell
"It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right."
- - - Winston Churchill
(1) We're going to be in the GWOT for years, maybe a generation, and the other countries whose help we need aren't convinced of the threat. This sort of deception makes them less willing to work with us and trust us.
(2) A government that convinces itself that the ends *routinely* justify the means is one that won't have any scruples about infringing my own liberty either.
Posted by: too true ||
03/20/2005 9:06 Comments ||
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Maybe a better way to say it is this:
Churchill had a clearly defined war. He could justify deceipt because he was confident that everyone would know when the conditions that made deceipt possible were over and the rules of ethical behavior applied again.
Not so clear in the GWOT. So while I cut our leaders a bunch of slack, they don't get a blank check from me on this. I don't want them to be comfortable using deceipt routinely -- and I know how easy it is to rationalize bad behavior.
Posted by: too true ||
03/20/2005 9:09 Comments ||
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too true-
They could clone a hundred genius minds like yours and ya'll wouldn't do nearly as well. Let's have a little humility and better spelling.
#6
"...according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction..." Uh, huh. So, two disgruntled CIA agents are leaking classified information, which automatically gives them better credibility than the administration. I wonder if they are still employed by the CIA, or if they were recently fired as part of its elimination of corrupt, incompetant, and questionable personnel?
#7
sea cruise, I'm not saying I could do better - and I'm sure not saying I'm a 'genius mind'.
It's not a question of genius. It's a question of not losing our moral compass while we do what we need to do in this fight. It's a question of effectively fighting the Islamofascist bastards without becoming like them any more than we need to.
Remember, it's Islamacist doctrine that justifies routine lying to achieve ends.
Posted by: too true ||
03/20/2005 9:39 Comments ||
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#8
PS: I never could spell well .... LOL
Posted by: too true ||
03/20/2005 9:41 Comments ||
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#9
..so far I read this as a W. Post story. many possibilities....just one>person/s with an ax to grind leaks version 101 'Intel' with spin to embarrass...but of course it's difficult to refute (sources & methods) but conveniently will have ready-made drag with MSM.
Posted by: R ||
03/20/2005 10:06 Comments ||
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#10
I support the GWOT and this Administration, but I'm increasingly uneasy at the way they manipulate the press and the truth.
Left to its own devices, do you think the press would do a more responsible job of telling the "truth"? I've seen no reason to believe that.
It's a question of effectively fighting the Islamofascist bastards without becoming like them any more than we need to.
That's a old argument, deserving of retirement. We aren't "like them", regardless of our actions. Our society, our ability, and our prosperity proves that. We're simply dealing with our enemies in the manner in which they need to be dealt with, and if dealing with treacherous Islamofascists requires a bit more ruthlessness in the process, I say have at it.
#11
We aren't "like them", regardless of our actions.
REGARDLESS???? Are you saying anything goes in the name of protecting our way of life?
Because while I'm quite willing to explore where the boundaries are in an asymmetrical war against non- and quasi-state enemies, at some point we will become "like them" if we don't make a point of staying true to what makes us different.
There's a reason that every cadet at West Point studies the ethics of warfare - and it's not just out of historical curiosity.
We firebombed Dresden in WWII and that was probably the correct choice - but it was still a moral wrong. The lesser of two wrongs, but wrong nonetheless. I'm glad we did it, but God help us when we start arguing it was a good thing to do.
One of the things that makes us not "like them" is that our civilization, however 'post-Christian' in the eyes of many, is still informed by the doctrine of original sin and by the fallibility of even those who embrace redemption. The day that we, like the Nazis and the Islamofascists, are convinced that our cause justifies all actions taken in its name is the day we are already lost.
Posted by: Robin Burk ||
03/20/2005 14:52 Comments ||
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Robin Burk -- Easy there... I appreciate what you said, but let's clarify... Have you ever been on a battlefield during war? Commanded troops from the rear during war? Been responsible for any
aspect of conduct during war? Did B-a-R say what you've so quickly taken offense to?
Methinks not. Slowly re-read along with me...
"We're simply dealing with our enemies in the manner in which they need to be dealt with, and if dealing with treacherous Islamofascists requires a bit more ruthlessness in the process, I say have at it."
Hmmmm. That does not have a single thing in it which designates it as good or bad -- just that it is (apparently) sometimes necessary in war.
Your hair-trigger moral stance and sensitivity is noted. If you're merely worried, then point taken - we're all with you, I'd wager. We are not lost. If you say B-a-R implied more than he actually said, and we are in need of your moral oversight, well then, Thank you. HAND.
#13
We firebombed Dresden in WWII and that was probably the correct choice - but it was still a moral wrong. The lesser of two wrongs, but wrong nonetheless.
On this basis is ther anything in combat that is morally correct?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/20/2005 15:08 Comments ||
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#14
.com, BaR did indeed seem to me to be suggesting that we could "deal with them in the manner they need to be dealt with", without reference to any limits on that manner. If he wasn't then we agree on that and could argue (or not) about where to draw those limits.
I don't think you all are "in need of my moral oversight". I do have an opinion on the issue of what guidelines we should set for ourselves in this extended war we're fighting around the world and I think it's a topic that matters a lot to the future of our country.
Mrs. D., IMO there's a big difference between killing a combatant in - or out of - uniform, OTOH, and the indiscriminate firebombing of civilian populations OTOH. The former is a whole lot easier to justify than the latter. I understand why Churchill ordered the attacks on Dresden, including his stated desire to break the back of German morale. I'm scarcely alone among supporters of the Allies in that war to think that there was real guilt associated with that decision, even if it arguably was the least bad course of action he could take.
And just to be clear, I'm not second guessing our troops and the decisions of our officers on the battlefield. Y'all ought to know me better than that by now. (smile)
Posted by: Robin Burk ||
03/20/2005 15:37 Comments ||
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#15
Lol. Okay, I'll play another round...
Sorry, but I have NO idea who you are - sorry - nor would that impact my comments in this case.
You introduced the word "limits" and I don't recall B-a-R having tossed that notion aside... lessee... nope, didn't say anything either pro or con in that regard. Now comes the fun part. The PC part. The touchy-feely assumption that such must be addressed as an a priori presumes something not present: that limits unaddressed = limits discarded. Bullshit. You brought it up. so it's a point in question in your eyes, in your estimation, in your opinion. Sure, okay, fine: state that you agree with limits. You just went ahead and created a cliff and jumped the fuck off. Had zip to do with what B-a-R wrote. I still say you should take your trigger assembly to the gunsmith, heh.
I feel no need for direction from an external source regards conduct on the battlefield... given my age, it would be 35 years too late, anyway, you see.
How's that, Robin Burk that I've never heard of? We cool?
#16
.com, you are certainly cool. I OTOH am a geek but I'm cool with you ;-)
Posted by: Robin Burk ||
03/20/2005 16:19 Comments ||
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#17
There are an awful lot of suppositions about who knew what and what motivated whom here. There is only one important fact that the US misled China and the SKors on Pakistan's role. If true and I am sceptical it is, not least because Japan has taken a much harder line with the Norks recently and there is no indication they feel they have been mislead, then the US is under no obligation to tell China everything it knows.
Otherwise, not true's comments about misleading the press are completely irrelevant. This was a secret briefing to a non-friendly state China.
#18
Lol - and I started out a mere thug, then advanced to nerd - now I'm definitely a happy geek, too. Here are a few relevant WAV files to prove the point, lol! Apologies if you (and everyone else) has them all, already, heh.
#19
.com, she's this Robin Burk. They sure do make it hard to out some folks.
RKB, to me the choice of the least immoral thing among a set of immoral choices including inaction renders the alternatice chosen moral.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/20/2005 16:43 Comments ||
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#20
I suspect that one point that's been lost in all of this discussion is whether or not the Washington Post's report is true to begin with.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
03/20/2005 16:48 Comments ||
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#21
Well, in that case, don't listen to duckjob.wav, heh.
Lol! Didn't realize I was talking to a femalian. Apologies, if offended - with the wav files, lol!
You would have had a very hard time in Vietnam, Robin Burk. Surviving the ButterBar period took a skill not well known to occifers: listening to the enlisted folks. Those who were already Bird level - or who would make it to Bird - never figured it out. One of my best buds was an Arty Major (2 hearing aids, of course, lol!) who used to hit the Michelin plantations whenever asked by recon teams who found themselves trapped by phreakin' battalions of VC. $98 per rubber plant destroyed, heh. And I recall telling a 3-Bird panel to, pretty please, go fuck themselves with all due speed, after paying due respect to their rank, of course, back in those bad old days before you could trust the Occifer Corps. What I wouldn't give for a chance to be part of THIS US Military. Sheesh. Jealous kudos to you, heh.
#22
Mrs. D., I understand where you're coming from. And I never want us to flinch from the hard decisions or the tough actions.
I just don't want us to lose the ability to know when it should be a hard decision.
I think we're on the same page here.
Posted by: Robin Burk ||
03/20/2005 16:58 Comments ||
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#23
PhilF - Given the Wash Roast source, that is a problematic question.
According to The Modern Populist, old Dafna Linzer broke the US using UAVs to probe Iran for a year story... If that was an intentionally "leaked" story, perhaps Dafna (can I make fun of this, please?) is a good whatever. If not, then old Dafna (please?) is a typical Wash Roast asshole Staffer, no?
#24
.com, if I have any common sense at all it's because my uncles who stayed in for 20+ after WWII were all NCOs.
Yeah, I'm fortunate to make whatever little contribution I can in my current job. And even more fortunate to commute most days w/ my husband.
Posted by: Robin Burk ||
03/20/2005 17:10 Comments ||
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#25
Psssst, Mrs D - she's an RB Editor! Shit! I'm screwed!
Before I go I'd like to get just one last screed in. I know I'm about to be sink-trapped. I can feel it! The walls are closing in! I'm beginning to spin (CCW, of course)! Its' speeding up! I'm being swallowed by an inky darkness! I feel my life flashing before my eyes! Hey, wait a minute! That was too fast! Overs! I'm melting!
#28
"I suspect that one point that's been lost in all of this discussion is whether or not the Washington Post's report is true to begin with."
Given that it falls into the "Bush lied" genre, I'm extremely skeptical-- and I mean EXTREMELY. Anymore, after all we've been through, when the question comes down to "is Bush lying, or is the media?" my default presumption is that the media is the one doing the vast bulk of the lying. That presumption is rebuttable, but only with great effort.
Am I worried about the Administration playing fast and loose with the facts? Yeah, a little-- and that's all. I am VERY worried about our future, though, if our media doesn't rapidly start getting a helluva lot more honest than it's been throughout most of my lifetime; anymore, I consider the entire MSM a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party and so partisan that they will do ANYTHING-- including lying and inventing news stories-- to damage the Democrats' opposition.
So when I read something like this, my first suspicion is that it's a steaming load of bullshit-- a pile of carefully crafted propaganda designed to create a false impression for political purposes.
If the story develops further, and I start hearing heretofore-stalwart allies making VERY loud and VERY public complaints about being deceived by Bush & Co., then I might start thinking otherwise; but until I do, this is just another tall MSM tale.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/20/2005 17:50 Comments ||
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#30
Much more of this and I'm going to look very carefully at how I vote in 2006 and 2008
Yeah. Get so upset with what our government tells foreign nations in an attempt to defend us that you'll vote for the party that refuses to defend us for any reason.
And as others pointed out, the press is about as trustworthy as the propaganda arm of a hostile nation.
Which, as far as I'm concerned, many of them are.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/20/2005 18:03 Comments ||
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#31
Tempest, meet teacup.
Assume that the WaPo is a credible news source (as opposed to what they actually are: Pravda to the DNC's Politburo) and that everything in the article is true. The complaint then boils down to the fact that the administration did not use the term "Pakistan" when briefing parties to the 6-way talks.
The administration says they indicated that the materials were passed to Libya via A.Q. Kahn's nuclear black market (single sentence near the end of the article). The leakers claim that the administration didn't say "Pakistan". Those aren't mutually exclusive perspectives. Does anyone here actually believe that any of the representatives who were briefed are actually stupid / uninformed enough to fail to recognize that: 1. Kahn is a Pakistani; 2. Kahn operated with at least the indifference and likely the knowledge & approval of the Pakistani government; and 3. Pakistan must therefore be involved if A.Q. Kahn transferred nuclear materials to Libya? Me either.
The Chicom & SKor threats to withdraw are standard operating procedure. The SKors genuflect before their large expansionist red neighbor and before internal anti-US popular opinion while the Chicoms try to save their only lever against US interests in the region. Yawn, sound like business as usual to me.
One of the tip-offs that this is nothing more than a hit piece is the WaPoâs careful selection and blending of sources. E.g., omissions noted in retrospect in Porter Gossâ (presumably) public testimony before Congress versus rumors from those allegedly privy to the content of (presumably) classified briefings to parties to the 6-way talks.
The most disturbing aspect of this story is that the American pressâ collective desire to undermine our current administration is so strong that theyâll meddle in matters as serious as the proliferation of WMD in an attempt to embarrass Bush & Co. The sad thing is that the WaPo got the desired reaction even from some here.
#32
So Duby & America "lied" again, which is why foreign Govts/Intel, and espec the NOrkies themselves, admit to NK having nukes! The WOT and Radical Islam is ultim about saving Communism and Communist World Order/Socialist WOrld Order - its no longer enough for America and its Allies to merely "contain" the enemies of democracy.
France, Germany and Spain have sown the seeds of a new partnership with Russia at talks intended to save Moscow from isolation. The three countries said on Friday they were united in a commitment to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons. The talks with President Vladimir Putin produced a joint call for Syria to withdraw its forces from Lebanon and focused on areas on which they agreed, glossing over potential points of discord such as Chechnya and the state of democracy in Russia. Putin, French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero exuded harmony at a news conference - even on the question of Ukraine where a West-leaning president came to power early this year against Putin's wishes. "We are working very closely on the Iran question," Schroeder said, dismissing any suggestion of differences even though Russia has been supplying Tehran with nuclear technology, saying it is intended for civilian purposes.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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#1
It's more like talks to keep France, Germany & Spain from being irrelevant regarding Iran.
ââ¬Â¢ The latest: Seeking to overshadow a year of scandals at the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Sunday proposed the most sweeping changes in its 60-year history, saying they would better enable the world body to stop war, fight terrorists, combat poverty and protect human rights. The 191 members of the General Assembly will meet in six months to consider the proposals, which include:
ââ¬Â¢ Human Rights Council: This would replace the Geneva-based Commission on Human Rights and would possibly serve as a principal organ of the United Nations such as the Security Council. The U.N. has long faced criticism for allowing the worst-offending countries to use their U.N. membership to protect them from condemnation.
ââ¬Â¢ Security Council: The council would be expanded, but Annan did not endorse a specific plan, instead backing two options proposed in December. One would add six new permanent members to the current five-member board and the other would create a new tier of eight semi-permanent members.
ââ¬Â¢ When to act: Use of force should be guided by a set of clear principles, and it urged all states to accept that in cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, there is a "responsibility to protect" which requires action.
ââ¬Â¢ Security: Nations should approve a convention against terrorism by September 2006, based on a new definition. Nations should swiftly adopt a global treaty against nuclear terrorism, and negotiate a treaty to halt the spread of the highly enriched uranium and plutonium needed to make nuclear weapons.
ââ¬Â¢ Development: Rich countries should establish a timetable to reach the goal set 35 years ago of earmarking 0.7 percent of gross national product for development assistance by 2015. The United States has one of the lowest levels -- about 0.15 percent.
ââ¬Â¢ Poverty: Developing countries must adopt a program by 2006 to cut extreme poverty in half, ensure primary education for all children, improve health care and reverse the AIDS pandemic, all by
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/20/2005 9:47:23 PM ||
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#1
What Goo-fi should be asking Santa Claus for, on behalf of the UN, is relevance.
The security of America and other wealthy countries will for the first time be declared a key priority for the United Nations under reforms designed to restore confidence in the crisis-ridden international body. The reforms, to be announced tomorrow by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, will be seen as a concession to Washington after repeated clashes with President George W Bush over US foreign policy, including the war in Iraq. The UN Secretariat promises a "real re-launch — a fundamental manifesto" after criticism of its performance since the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq oil-for-food scandal. Mark Malloch Brown, the Briton newly appointed as the UN's chief of staff, said: "Reform really has to align the UN behind an agenda that includes a security system which can fully meet US concerns on terrorism." Abject surrender and obsequious pandering. I love it.
He said that the drive to cut poverty and tackle social problems in developing nations would be couched in terms of the threat to the security of the West. These clowns still don't get it. Those things should be done because they are the right things to do. And they should start doing them right. Enough corruption and pedophilia. I think they know it has to change but they haven't figured out to what it should change.
"For the first time since 1945, the UN is looking at what the world wants us to do," he said. "We need to offer something for everyone, something for The Sunday Telegraph reader as well as the struggling African." Chidyan Siku, Zimbabwe's ambassador to the UN, gave the proposals a cool reception. "My feeling, and the feeling of colleagues from developing countries, is that the Secretariat is trying to please America by slanting towards the strategic agenda of the North. That will not find favour with us," he said.
That's an indication you're part of the problem, not part of the solution, isn't it?
An official at the French mission said: "They may be going too far in trying to please Washington. The UN is not only about the US." Opposition from Zimbabwe and it's ally France. The old UN isn't gone yet.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/20/2005 8:15:55 AM ||
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#1
Well the G10 will not like this, good. :D
We will see if their is any substance to this.
#2
An official at the French mission said: "They may be going too far in trying to please Washington. The UN is not only about the US."
No, it's not "only" about the US; but it's damn well going to start being about us TOO, not just your precious Third World shitholes with their constant yammering for free handouts at our expense.
Either that, or the bloody UN is simply not going to BE, period.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/20/2005 9:37 Comments ||
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#3
I also have a feeling this mostly means a purge of some of the nepotistic bureaucratic cesspits that plague the UN. That is, if el dictator has two counsins, one of whom has a high school diploma and the other is feeble-minded, they will ask him to send the smarter one for the job, for a change. Seriously, right now, the average education for *delegates* to the general assembly is 5th grade. Literally. You just can't work with that.
#5
It's hard to imagine just how the UN could be a more miserably failed institution. It is amazing, since the flaws were there from Day One, that it almost / kinda / sorta worked for the first 30 years of its existence. That it has failed spectacularly for the last thirty years is absofuckinglutely indisputable.
How obvious does it need to be? For the Clueless Moonbats: Yo, it's the gigantic dead mouse on the world's kitchen floor. How putrid and rancid and vile does its corpse have to be before we finally ignore the claims of the chorus of Lilliputians that it is really a rose?
We should trust our own instincts, for a change -- bury it under a rose bush and move on, already.
#8
"...the drive to cut poverty and tackle social problems in developing nations would be couched in terms of threat to the security of the West."
In other words,same old s***,new paper bag. The cowboy and the rest of the Americans are so dumb that they will let us spend their billions just like we did before,only now we will say we're doing it to prevent terrorism.
Posted by: Stephen ||
03/20/2005 15:26 Comments ||
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#9
It's not the same old shit. Part of Annan's new program is that the wealthy nations will promise to give 0.7% of GDP to help "third world poverty".
In other words, in exchange for pious words from the UN about American security against terrorists, the US is expected to give about $75 billion per year to the organization which did such a marvelous job managing the Oil-for Food program.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste ||
03/20/2005 20:07 Comments ||
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#10
It's also a sneaky way of insinuating that American security is dependent on the UN.
#11
SDB - Is this where Bush does his best Jackson impersonation and says, "...now let's see them enforce it."?
I don't know if they still do it, or not, but this stinks in the same way that the United Fund used to come into our workplaces and tell us what our fair share was. And the pressure was on for company managers, groups leaders, et al, to extract 100% compliance, er, participation. Fuckers. I got in deep shit more than once for saying No.
I expect all of this sort of crap, Chirac's tax schemes, Kofi and this "reformed" UN expecting the US to conform to some Eurobureaucrat's idea of our "fair share" to be weaseled / insinuated, somehow, into existing global agreements, such as the WTO. In other words, I don't think they'll ever take No for our answer. We need to throw the UN out and, from there, sign nothing that isn't simple, clean as the driven snow, and as pure as rainwater with Everclear.
More than our bodily essences are at stake, here. Lol. Sorry to be so windy. Struck a nerve!
#12
Fear not, Bolton will hold Kofi's feet to the fire. I haven't been this delighted with our foreign policy since the days when Moynihan was ripping the UN morons a new arsehole every other week.
#13
I was frankly amazed he said these things. Its as if he said "We don't believe any of this shit, but we think Bush and the Americans are dumb enough to buy it and it will get them off our back."
#15
Well, after deducting the EU-calculated derivative based upon their respective negative GDP, their "fair share" is approx $1.95 and a bottle of Baden Reisling or Poully Fume, respectively.
#16
As dot-com suspected, that 0.7% number came out of the recent Madrid conference, where our European betters once again affirmed that the "root cause" of terrorism is world poverty, and that the only way for the First World to eliminate terrorism is to pay danegeld.
The chance of Bush and/or Congress agreeing to such a huge increase in foreign aid is negligible, of course. (Or at least it better damned well be negligible.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste ||
03/20/2005 20:52 Comments ||
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#17
Another part of Kofi's proposal is for the Security Council to come up with a formal set of rules for when any nation is permitted to go to war, and I suspect for everyone (i.e. the US) to formally agree that from now on they won't do it without UN approval.
Fat chance.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste ||
03/20/2005 20:53 Comments ||
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#18
a cut seems to be in order - call it "a lesson"
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/20/2005 20:55 Comments ||
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#19
Vetos cut both ways, lol.
We can do a better job. Put this failure out of our misery and start designing something that actually makes sense, has provisions for admittance - and expulsion, etc.
The value of the UN (lol!), NATO, the lot, needs some airing out and close examination. It's like cleaning out your wallet periodically. A card for a car repair in your old home city in another state can be safely discarded. So can many of our accumulated leeches agreements.
Everything of value will survive a sunset provision - it should be a standard clause in anything we sign onto.
The reforms, to be announced tomorrow by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, will be seen as a concession to Washington after repeated clashes with President George W Bush over US foreign policy, including the war in Iraq. Kofi Annan will present proposals for reform. The UN Secretariat promises a "real re-launch ⊠a fundamental manifesto" after criticism of its performance since the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq oil-for-food scandal.
Mark Malloch Brown, the Briton newly appointed as the UN's chief of staff, said: "Reform really has to align the UN behind an agenda that includes a security system which can fully meet US concerns on terrorism." He said that the drive to cut poverty and tackle social problems in developing nations would be couched in terms of the threat to the security of the West. "For the first time since 1945, the UN is looking at what the world wants us to do," he said. "We need to offer something for everyone, something for The Sunday Telegraph reader as well as the struggling African." Chidyan Siku, Zimbabwe's ambassador to the UN, gave the proposals a cool reception. "My feeling, and the feeling of colleagues from developing countries, is that the Secretariat is trying to please America by slanting towards the strategic agenda of the North. That will not find favour with us," he said.
An official at the French mission said: "They may be going too far in trying to please Washington. The UN is not only about the US."
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American ||
03/20/2005 2:10:17 AM ||
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The UN is not only about the US
No, it's about damaging and destroying the US.
And taking all our hard-earned money, since most of the rest of the world seems to think it just fell out of the trees.
Phooey on the Useless Nitwits. Move the worthless bastards to Paris. They deserve each other.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/20/2005 8:12 Comments ||
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A suspected member of Osama bin Laden's militant al-Qaeda network has been arrested as he arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Wednesday night.
The suspect has been identified as Alfiri Abdula Naser, a Saudi whose name was on a blacklist of individuals with possible terrorist links. He was detained upon disembarking from a commercial flight from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, immigration officials said. Naser has been described as a trainer in terrorist activities.
Immigration Commissioner Alipio Fernandez said Naser has been under questioning for several hours since Thursday to verify his connections with al-Qaeda. Government agents are also looking into the reason for Naser's visit to the country. Immigration officials said Naser was turned over to the Saudi Arabian Embassy to facilitate his deportation.
Continued on Page 49
This article starring:
ABU HAISHAM
Abu Sayyaf
ABU OMAR
Abu Sayyaf
ABU TARIK
Abu Sayyaf
ABU YASIN
Jemaah Islamiyah
ABU ZAID
Abu Sayyaf
AHMED SANTOS
Rajah Solaiman Revolutionary Movement
ALEX ALVARES
Abu Sayyaf
ALFIRI ABDULA NASER
al-Qaeda
Alfonso Cusi
AMILHAMSA AJIJUL
Abu Sayyaf
BOY NEGRO
Abu Sayyaf
Director General Arturo Lomibao
GAPPAL BANNAH
Abu Sayyaf
HILARION DEL ROSARIO SANTOS
Rajah Solaiman Revolutionary Movement
Immigration Commissioner Alipio Fernandez
Justice Secretary Raul M. Gonzalez
Prosecutor Peter Medalle
Abu Sayyaf
Balik-Islam
Rajah Solaiman Revolutionary Movement
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/20/2005 6:19:37 PM ||
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Chief Arturo Lomibao said Friday there is indeed a plan by the terror group Abu Sayyaf to sow terror during the Holy Week by bombing Catholic churches and shopping centers in Metro Manila and other urban areas.
But Lomibao assured that the police are on full alert and that strict security measures in public places are in place.
Catholic churches however are taking precautions as the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has ordered the tightening of security in the places of worship.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said Friday government security measures that are in place nationwide will thwart the Abu Sayyafâs threats of attacks during the Holy Week.
"I think the security agencies are doing a very, very good job of taking care of our security," Arroyo said in a media interaction in her visit to Lamitan, Basilan.
"I do not want to micromanage when the agencies are doing very good jobs. So, I have no directives to them. They know what to do," she said.
Meanwhile, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez Sr. revealed Friday that Baguio City is a target of terrorists.
Catholic churches across the country will be packed with people who will do the traditional Visita Iglesia and attend Lenten rites starting Sunday.
State Prosecutor Peter Medalle of the Department of Justice (DOJ), who has been handling cases against the terror group, earlier revealed that an informant told him about a plan by the Abu Sayyaf to conduct bombings in Metro Manila and other major cities nationwide.
Medalle said the bombing missions had been planned long before the failed jailbreak and takeover by detained Abu Sayyaf leaders and members of the Metro Manila Rehabilitation Center (MMRC) in Bicutan, Taguig, Metro Manila.
Twenty-three people, including three ranking Abu Sayyaf leaders and a policeman, were killed in the assault on the MMRC.
The deaths of the Abu Sayyaf leaders reportedly hastened the timetable for the bombings, Medalle said.
Lomibao said Catholic churches are not the only bombing targets of the Abu Sayyaf but also shopping malls.
Lomibao said Gamal Baharan alias Boy Negro, who supplied the explosive used to bomb a passenger bus last February 14 that killed four people and wounded 105 others, had revealed that five Abu Sayyaf members were ordered to bomb shopping malls in Metro Manila, particularly in the dry goods section where fire can easily spread.
Lomibao appealed to the public to remain calm but vigilant.
Cartographic sketches of wanted Abu Sayyaf members will be posted in public areas, he added.
Lomibao assured that there will be no persecution or unwarranted arrests of Muslims as the police crack down on suspected Abu Sayyaf members roaming the country.
Catholic churches in Metro Manila have tightened security for the Holy Week to ensure that no untoward incident would take place.
Monsignor Hernando Coronel, secretary-general and spokesman of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said Catholic churches have beefed up security personnel and assigned additional staffers to check suspicious-looking people who may attempt to sow terror.
He said in the Manila Cathedral alone, additional guards were employed to ensure the safety of parishioners.
Aside from additional security personnel, the cathedral will only have one entry and one exit for the churchgoers to prevent any terrorists from carrying out their devious plan.
Despite a threat to bomb churches, Coronel said it should not stop Catholics from attending Church activities on Holy Week.
"Take proper precaution just to be on the safe side," he said adding that instead of worrying about threat, Catholics should focus on Jesus Christâs passion, his death and resurrection.
"Let us also pray for peace and reconciliation in the country," he added.
Dagupan-Lingayen Archbishop Oscar Cruz appealed for sobriety and peace among supporters of the killed Abu Sayyaf leaders.
"My appeal is not only to the Abu Sayaff but to all those people who will play with the lives of others to think twice," Cruz said.
He said causing chaos will only cause more damage to the countryâs investment image. "If the lives of people will be wasted and properties are destroyed, the ones who will ultimately suffer will be us also," Cruz added.
State Prosecutor Peter Medalle said he got his information on the Abu Sayyafâs planned attacks during the standoff between police and ASG detainees at Camp Bagong Diwa early this week.
Press secretary and presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said "there is no reason for the public to be alarmed" security measures are in place and law enforcers are continuously working with local government leaders down to the barangay level.
"Having learned enough lessons from recent terror attacks, we are confident the terrorists will find it more difficult to break through the collective security shield. This protective shield can be strengthened through citizensâ vigilance and alertness," Bunye said.
Meanwhile, Secretary Gonzalez revealed that "Baguio City has always been a target" by terrorists.
"It has been raised during NSC meetings (National Security Council Meetings). I would not want to make it appear that the government is paranoid," Gonzalez said as he declined to give details on other possible areas to be attacked.
Baguio is a popular summer destination for local and foreign tourists. It also hosts a number of offices, including that of the summer hall of the Supreme Court and the Presidential Mansion.
Gonzalez declined to affirm a statement made by Medalle claiming that bombings may be carried out by the Abu Sayyaf on Catholic churches in Metro Manila during the observance of Holy Week.
"I would call that information as very raw, not A-1." Gonzalez added.
Meanwhile, Prosecutor Nestor Lazaro reiterated that the original plan of the detained Abu Sayyaf members had been to escape by overpowering guards during a court hearing set last Monday which was suddenly called off by the judge, an event he said which could have thrown off plans of the prisoners.
Lazaro added that information made available to them suggests that members of the group regularly received money from outside the jail averaging P5,000 a week. "We suspect the money was used for the attack, he added.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/20/2005 6:31:32 PM ||
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I thought everyone could use a laugh... or a sob...
FOREIGN workers in Iraq, including Filipinos, can look forward to a "safer'' time in the violence-wracked country once the United States military leaves, according to an anti-war activist representing Iraq's biggest labor union.
"Believe me, within two to three months all the criminals will be back in prison'' if the Iraqis are left alone to enforce the law, said Farouk Sadik Isma'al, foreign affairs secretary of the Southern Oil Co. Union, the labor union of Iraq's largest firm. Translation: He is a communist.
Isma'al was in Manila last week as a guest of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign (Philippines), which marked the second anniversary of the US "occupation" of Iraq on March 20.
"For 20 years, since the 1980s when Iraq was at war with Iran, we have plenty of foreign workers, especially from Philippines, and for this reason we like the Filipino people and would like to invite them to work with us,'' Isma'al said in an interview.
He said the continuing violence in his country was largely the work of criminals who were able to leave prison after Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was toppled. Your buddy Saddam *let* them out Isma'al.
Isma'al took part in a protest rally on T. M. Kalaw St. on Friday staged by militant groups demanding the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Anti-riot police prevented the protesters from going to the US Embassy.
In a forum at the University of the Philippines on Thursday, the Iraqi labor leader said that "if you want to help us rebuild our country, help us end its occupation by the United States and its allies."
Posted by: CrazyFool ||
03/20/2005 11:39:42 AM ||
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I thought this guy was buried under one of the endzones in the Meadowlands.
Posted by: Matt ||
03/20/2005 12:06 Comments ||
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I wonder if he wants the US to send all those Iraqi forces to the Phillipines to kill Moros.
#4
I heard the same mantra from th4e founder of Code Pink who was on Michael Medvid's show. For some reason the presence of U.S. forces causes Iraqis to bomb each other.
#5
This guy isn't a commie, he is a Baathist. No way a non Baathist would have ever been allowed to be the head of a union in Iraq. Now he may think like a commie but he is still loyal to Saddam and the Baath.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 ||
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The Pinheads of the EU-3 will not admit it. They can not and will not secure an agreement with Iran on enrichment. The MM's have a weapons program. Without enrichment it can't advance. Hence the resistance. We have already been down this road once with the NORKS. The EU can't learn from others mistakes and can't overcome their greed. The clowns.
#2
Lol. The US isn't buying their absurd little jests, but they still hope to rope-a-dope the rest and, by extending their "dialog" with the useful tools, isolate the US...
As if that will save them. Just as with the Old European "leaders", they still just don't get it: Bush ain't Clinton, nor is he any other previous President who blinked and faltered and paid false homage to faded faux alliances and "Special Relationships". He does what needs doing, boys. U're fooked.
Lebanon's Shia movement Hizb Allah has urged a new attempt to resolving Lebanon's political crisis, adding that only Israel would benefit from last night's bomb blast in Beirut. After meeting with prominent Mufti Mohammed Rashid Qabbani on Saturday, Hassan Nasr Allah, the Secretary-General of Hizb Allah stressed that "there are no grounds for a sectarian strife between Shia and Sunnis in Lebanon," Aljazeera reported. He also reiterated his rejection of calls for Hizb Allah to disarm, saying the movement's status was a strictly domestic matter. "It is a very dangerous incident," Nasr Allah said of an explosion early on Saturday in a Christian residential area that wounded 11 people and caused extensive damage. "Someone wants to increase tension and instability," he said, adding that "Israel is the beneficiary." But he stressed that he was not levelling any "premature accusations." Addressing reporters Nasr Allah also appealed to the anti-Syrian "opposition to sit down at a table to talk and to find a way out of the political crisis."
"We back any national dialogue that takes place ... We will not tire of calling for national dialogue," he said, adding, "there are no grounds for civil war, and we must not create grounds", Aljazeera television reported him saying.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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..adding that only Israel would benefit from last night's bomb blast in Beirut.
So, if Israel isn't behind some unfortunate event that Arabs suffer, then Israel is the one that ends up benefitting from it?
#5
Just so you know, in Czech, Nasrallah would mean something like 'shittin' out [al]lah'. Well, he's shi'te... one of these numerous proofs that god has a warped sense of humor...
The director of the CIA accused Iran yesterday of meddling in Iraq and said Syria was not working hard enough to stop militants entering the country to undermine Baghdad's efforts at stability. "I think it's fair to say that just about everybody who's been watching understands that Iran has been meddling in the affairs of Iraq," Porter Goss, CIA director, told the US Senate Armed Services Committee in a presentation on worldwide threats to US national security. "How that is going to work out in the future is a matter of some concern," he added. Goss also said that despite international diplomatic efforts, Iran was not being as open about its nuclear programme as it needed to be. "I also would say that their lack of candour, their lack of transparency on the subject of their nuclear programme causes people to have reasonable doubt about" their intent and capabilities, he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 ||
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Another official laying the groundwork for further action. Look for Bolton -- assuming he's confirmed -- to introduce UN resolutions calling for sanctions against Syria for interfering in Iraq.
Posted by: Jonathan ||
03/20/2005 0:31 Comments ||
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Lebanon's security commanders appear concerned that they will be the target of a backlash in wake of the withdrawal of Syria's military. Lebanese sources said security commanders have sought to lower their profile amid the end of the Syrian military and intelligence presence in Beirut. They said several security commanders have already left Beirut, with at least one of them departing the country. The biggest concern by the security commanders has been that they will be charged with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri or accused of abuse by victims of Lebanese or Syrian intelligence, the sources said.
On Thursday, Lebanon's security chief denied that his agency was connected to the Hariri killing in February. "All the heads of security institutions are ready for trial and accountability," General Security Directorate chief Gen. Jamil Sayed told a news conference in Beirut. "We have no secrets to be ashamed of."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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The Cave Trolls are leaving, and the Orcs are worried.
Lebanon faced new civil war fears after its anti-Syria opposition last night rejected a plea for unity talks issued hours after a bomb blast in a Beirut suburb. "President Emile Lahoud invites us to dialogue as though he is an independent when he is accused," Druze chieftain and key opposition leader Walid Jumblatt said after the pro-Syrian leader urged national dialogue.
Amidst mounting tension, UN chief Kofi Annan called for stability and said he was greatly disturbed by the bombing. Eleven people were wounded when the bomb exploded early in the day beneath a car in the Christian residential neighbourhood of Jdeide, causing extensive damage. Citing "exceptional circumstances," Lahoud called for dialogue between the country's anti-Syrian opposition and parties sympathetic to Damascus, an encounter he said was critical in order to "protect Lebanon". Lahoud's office later announced that the president would not attend a two-day Arab summit starting on Tuesday in Algeria "because of the situation" in Lebanon. The blast was the first serious incident since popular former premier Rafiq Hariri and 18 other people were killed in a huge bombing in Beirut on February 28, an attack that ignited public fury and stepped up calls for the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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That's a completely misleading headline for what the article is about... a civil war would be caused if the lebanese were fighting with EACHOTHER.... lebanese not willing to "negotiate" with a syria stooge is not civil war. Not to say civil war isn't possible... I just don't think it's in the cards.
Al Qaida has demonstrated a resiliency that has surprised the U.S. military leadership.
A study sponsored by the Defense Department said Al Qaida's resiliency has not been diminished by the international campaign against the Islamic insurgency movement. The report said Al Qaida has become more lethal than before its suicide strikes against New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.
Authored by Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, the report dismissed the Bush administration's assertion that Al Qaida's leadership and capabilities have been severely harmed. The study said that since the 2001 attacks Al Qaida carried out 15 suicide attacks in which 439 people were killed.
Pape also wrote a study in the summer of 2003, entitled "The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terror," sponsored by the Pentagon. The study reviewed suicide attacks from 1980 through 2003 and concluded that suicide strikes were not the work of fanatics.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/20/2005 6:26:06 PM ||
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We have thus far acted in two of the roughly dozen or so primary states in the Middle East in which Al Qaeda acts and draws support. Al Qaeda's resulting resilience shouldn't come as a suprise.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
03/20/2005 20:42 Comments ||
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Can someone go fetch Fred's pills? He's looking a little bit faint, here.
"Palestinian Authority security officials are using their weapons for criminal activities, including murders and killings, with the aim of scoring personal gains and accumulating fortunes. Some use their weapons to collect debts, serving as judges and enforcers of verdicts that were issued without trial.
"What's strange is that those who take the law into their hands are individuals or groups belonging to the PA executive branch. They have become saboteurs of the entire Palestinian society and epidemics that harm its fabric and weaken it."
This text was not taken from a booklet published by the Foreign Ministry or the IDF. Nor were these serious allegations made by a hard-line Likud minister or a Knesset member from one of the right-wing parties. Rather, they were made by Dr. Abdel Rahman Bsaisso, a renowned Palestinian researcher from the Gaza Strip affiliated with the ruling Fatah faction headed by PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Continued on Page 49
WASHINGTON, March 18 - The top Marine officer in Iraq said Friday that the number of attacks against American troops in Sunni-dominated western Iraq and death tolls had dropped sharply over the last four months, a development that he called evidence that the insurgency was weakening in one of the most violent areas of the country.
The officer, Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, head of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, said that insurgents were averaging about 10 attacks a day, and that fewer than two of those attacks killed or wounded American forces or damaged equipment. That compared with 25 attacks a day, five of them with casualties or damage, in the weeks leading up to the pivotal battle of Falluja in November, he said.
In a wide-ranging, 45-minute telephone interview from his headquarters just outside Falluja, General Sattler said temporary checkpoints set up by Marine patrols had disrupted insurgent activity.
He said that several hundred hard-core jihadists and former members of Saddam Husseinââ¬s government and security services were still operating in Anbar Province, but that the declining frequency of the attacks indicated that the rebelsâ⬠influence was waning.
"Theyââ¬re way down on their attempts, and even more on their effectiveness," General Sattler said.
Several senior military officials have noted, however, that many insurgents fled before or during the Falluja battle to fight elsewhere in Iraq. And although there are fewer lethal attacks in western Iraq, commanders say, remotely controlled bombs used against American and Iraqi forces in other parts of the country have become more deadly. Many bombs, for instance, are artillery shells strung together and buried under roadways.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a tour of Iraq and other Persian Gulf states this week that the number of attacks throughout the country had fallen to 40 to 50 a day - far fewer than in the weeks before the Jan. 30 elections but roughly the same number as a year ago.
Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that 12,000 to 20,000 hard-core insurgents were operating in Iraq. That is about the same range American intelligence officers have given since October.
"We still have a lot of work to do," acknowledged General Sattler, who will wrap up a seven-month command tour on March 27 and hand off to Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson of the Second Marine Expeditionary Force.
Snip
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/20/2005 12:10:56 PM ||
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Proposal for another "RB Law" or plural "Laws"...
Rationale:
An observation which may account, to some degree, for the fact that the NYT is fading fast as a credible source...
When the news is positive, and credit must be given to the Bush Admin - even if indirectly, there are numerous named sources quoted.
When the news is negative, and blame is being issued, three conclusions may be made without reading the article:
1) No Asshat Terrorists will ever be defined as such. Any absurd substitute (i.e. insurgents, militants, etc.) will do, just never call a spade a spade if they oppose the Bush Admin. To wit: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
2) The blame will, regardless of who did what, ultimately be laid at President Bush's feet, personally, if at all possible, or against an Admin official deemed to be an enthusiastic Bush Doctrine supporter, if at all possible. To wit: we will institute BDS as a StyleBook requirement.
3) The number of named sources will be inversely proportional to the ferocity of the attack upon, in order of editorial importance:
a) George W Bush
b) The Bush Administration
c) The Religious Right
d) Republicans
e) Conservatives
f) Red or Flyover State Citizens
h) Everyone "too stupid" to vote Dhimmicrap
To wit: All news is to be treated as a hand grenade:
1) If "Bad" get it as close to Bush as possible.
2) If "Good" keep it as far from Bush as possible.
Articles published or distributed by The New Yellow Times, Wash Roast, Boston Butt Probe, Asshole Press, Asshole French Press, Rooters, et al, may be graded into
1) Good News; recourse: spin only.
2) Bad News with blame elsewhere; recourse: spin only.
3) Bad News with fuzzy blame; recourse: seek out every semi-credible (desirable, not req'd) ex-official who will blame Bush.
4) Bad News with clear Chain of Command; W00t! BusHitler / American Hegemony cum Imperialism
The category into which the story will fall is inversely proportional to the number of credible named-source quotes in the item.
Corollary 1) The title and the article content need have no connection whatsoever.
Corollary 2) The emphasis will be placed upon the facts least flattering to the Bush Admin; i.e. the color of the wheel will be deemed more important than the physics and advancement of humanity its invention represents.
Corollary 3) Where no credible named-sources are quoted, the screech against the Bush Admin will be incoherent and deafening.
Corollary 4) "Reportage" regards the US Military:
a) Despite the deep and unrequited desire for massive US Military casualties, the US Military will be shown in a positive light - if no sinister motives can be extracted from the facts - and this unhappy requirement will be implicitly divorced and distanced from the Bush Admin in every manner possible.
b) Any actions which can be exploited due to the beloved "fog of war" or any actual misconduct, will be ruthlessly reported in the negative, above the fold, for as long as it takes to make the US public believe "Our good sons and daughters are being wasted / abused / brainwashed / murdered (choose best fit) by the evil BusHitler NeoConRelRightHateMongers" and smeared across everyone in uniform... or until subscription numbers take a nose-dive.
Moonbat Journalism 101.
I reiterate a point I made some time back:
Since the aforementioned entities have consciously chosen to manipulate everything within their power to the negative, and that includes editorial spin, columnists, op-ed selections, story placement and repeat rates, etc., they should be ignored - utterly - on the Good News stories and receive no credit, whatsoever, for publishing them. They deserve no association with Good News for it is reported as is only because it was beyond their power to distort it to their negative ends.
#3
Note also that the Good News article was buried published on a Saturday on an interior page. If the story went the other way, it would be on Page 1 on Sunday.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/20/2005 14:47 Comments ||
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#4
Did I miss the "once positive source will be refuted by three negative generalities from un-named sources - "They're way down on their attempts, and even more on their effectiveness," General Sattler said.
Which is WAY MORE THAN OFFSET BY -
First: Several senior military officials have noted, however, that many insurgents fled before or during the Falluja battle to fight elsewhere in Iraq. Second: And although there are fewer lethal attacks in western Iraq, commanders say, remotely controlled bombs used against American and Iraqi forces in other parts of the country have become more deadly. Vague generality, followed by really vague generality, third: Many bombs, for instance, are artillery shells strung together and buried under roadways.
How predictable! How despicable.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/20/2005 16:17 Comments ||
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#5
Great post,.com
Posted by: Matt ||
03/20/2005 17:17 Comments ||
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Two key Arab League players, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and Jordan's King Abdullah opt out of Monday's Algiers Arab summit. Both sending foreign ministers.
Middle East sources report summit falling apart over majority refusal to put Jordan king's "Beirut plus" upgrade of 2003 Saudi peace plan on agenda.
[Hashemite] Monarch accuses Egypt of last-minute reneging on promised backing. Saudi ruler refuses to sit in same room as Libya's Qaddafi, whom he charges plotted his assassination. Picky, picky, Soddie!
[-- Debkoids off --]
Something I found of interest about north Africa... Moroccan government started about 3 years ago teaching Western Berber dialect and its script (that looks somewhat like Phoenician Linear script, totally unlike arabic--think runes) on an elementary school level.
Tunisia is also emphasizing its Berber and Punic (Carthage) roots, although in somewhat subdued fashion.
Of course, The Master of Fembots, Muammar, declared many times in past few years that Lybians are Berbers and no stinkin'rabs. (I am sure he said it more politely, but that was what he meant).
Looks like some people're starting to think being called 'Arab' is an expletive.
Posted by: Sobiesky ||
03/20/2005 8:41:23 AM ||
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Cool news about the revival of Punic culture.
The Carthaginians worshipped Baal (Hannibal means 'beloved of Baal') and they had human sacrifice.
#2
MHW, well, they still do. Baal's name in Southern Mesopotamia was Sin, and he later became the main god of the Arabian pantheon. He was then called al Illah--the God. He was a moon god. That's why you see the crescent as Islamic symbol.
As for the human sacrifice, that did not change either, now did it?
Tunisian Ministry of Culture is not really emphasizing Punic roots, just sort of mentioning it the sense that they 've been there for a while, much longer than the invading barbars from eastern desert. What is more emphasized is the Berber cultural heritage.
You have to understand that in Arab countries the times before the Arab invasions are called the Age of Darkness because the Arab/muslim is that there were no real civilization and that it was Arabs who civilized the countries.
And now we have Tunisia saying "we are the descendents of Carthago, the people whose navy went as far as Sweden and England, who circumnavigated Africa and whose Phenician ancestors invented alphabet, glass and the first pigment for textile". We have Morocco trying to revive the original culture who has been vilified for centuries. With luck the Iraquis will start remembering that the Summerians had solved the second degree equation when the Arabs were still milking camels. And many Christain Lebanese have ever been saying "we are not Arabs but Phenicians".
Having people take pride on the achievemnts of their pre-islamic past is a step toward them looking at Arab conquest as a foreign invasion who only brought calamities and Islam as an instrument of domination and enrichement for the invaders. So this is a very positive development in the WOT.
#6
JFM, also, most of the North Africa and also ME was christian at the time of Mohammedan conquest.
Re Iraqis, I consider it highly ironic that they call the foreign jihadis 'Arabs'. Not foreign Arabs, just that, 'Arabs'. It is now becoming a term that kids are using as a qualifier of despicability, IOW a dirty word.
#8
...Muammar is right, his people are Berbers - but more importantly, they're also the desendants of the Barbary Pirates, who gave this nation such fits in its infancy. (The surviving Libyan royalty are the direct descendants of the Karamanli family, which ruled the old Kingdom of Tripoli off-and-on for centuries)
Interestingly enough, it was 200 years ago this month that a loopy US diplomat and seven Marines rattled their cage so badly that the Berbers backed off for almost a decade. There's a line in a song about it - something about 'to the shores of Tripoli"...*G*
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/20/2005 11:40 Comments ||
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Pappy, somehow I doubt that Iraqi kids have a feel for deconstructional process, let alone any knowledge in that regard. When adult Iraqis started using the label, it was undoubtedly a contraction of 'foreign Arabs', but now if you ask one "Are you Arab", you would get: "No, I am Iraqi".
#10
Three cheers for the History Dept. at Rantburg U.!
JFM, Sobiesky, one of my Eritrean friends (now a good Catholic, as it happens) recalls a family tradition of being Jews forcibly converted to Christianity by Constantine.
#11
Sobiesky, I suspect they are also rejecting the pan-Arabism that Saddam pushed.
Posted by: too true ||
03/20/2005 12:27 Comments ||
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#12
TW, color me skeptic. Here is why:
Constantin dies 327 CE.
4th Century CE â Christianity is introduced into the Axum dynasty in Ethiopia.
7th Century â With the spread of Islam, Ethiopia is isolated from most of the Christian world. The Beta Israel enjoy a period of independence before the power struggles of the middle ages.
9th Century â The earliest apparent reference to the Beta Israel appears in the diary of Eldad Hadani, a merchant and traveler claiming to have been a citizen of an autonomous Jewish state in eastern Africa inhabited by the tribes of Dan, Naftali, Gad, and Asher.
13th Century â The Solominic dynasty (which claims decent from Solomon and Sheba) assumes control. During the next 300 years (1320-1620), intermittent wars are fought between the Christian kings of Ethiopia and those of the Beta Israel, which finally result in the Beta Israel's loss of independence.
16th Century â Rabbi David B. Zimra, known as the Radbaz, issues a legal response in Cairo declaring that "those who come from the land Cush (Ethiopia) are without a doubt the Tribe of Dan..." He confirms that Ethiopian Jews are fully Jewish.
1622 â Christians conquer the Ethiopian Jewish Kingdom following 300 years of warfare. The vanquished Jews are sold as slaves, forced to baptize, and denied the right to own land.
#13
too true, Saddam was trying to resurrect a dead horse. His reason was that he wanted to create a clout of legitimacy for his expansive tastes. No one was really buying it.
#14
Understood, Sobiesky. But as an ideology, pan-Arabism claimed superiority over the individual countries. The jihadis do too, they just call it restoring the Khalifate. ;-)
Listening to the Iraqis take on the pro-insurgency Arabs at the BBC board and elsewhere, I think they've had it with all that crap.
Posted by: too true ||
03/20/2005 12:46 Comments ||
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Glenn Reynolds posted an email of a summary of a speech by Gen. Chiarelli, of the First Cavalry Division. The whole thing is worth reading, but I put some noteworthy excerpts below, with especially noteworthy bits italicized:
1. While units of the Cav served all over Iraq, he spoke mostly of Baghdad and more specifically Sadr City, the big slum on the eastern side of the Tigris River. He pointed out that Baghdad is, in geography, is about the size of Austin. Austin has 600,000 to 700,000 people. Baghdad has 6 to7 million people.
2. The Cav lost 28 main battle tanks. He said one of the big lessons learned is that, contrary to doctrine going in, M1-A2s and Bradleys are needed, preferred and devastating in urban combat and he is going to make that point to the JCS next week while they are considering downsizing armor...
...
8. Said bin Laden and Zarqawi made a HUGE mistake when bin laden went public with naming Zarqawi the "prince" of al Quaeda in Iraq. Said that what the Iraqis saw and heard was a Saudi telling a Jordainan that his job was to kill Iraqis. HUGE mistake. It was one of the biggest factors in getting Iraqis who were on the "fence" to jump off on the side of the coalition and the new gov't.
9. Said the MSM was making a big, and wrong, deal out of the religious sects. Said Iraqis are incredibly nationalistic. They are Iraqis first and then say they are Muslum but the Shi'a - Sunni thing is just not that big a deal to them...
...
11. Said that he did not lose a single tanker truck carrying oil and gas over the roads of Iraq. Think about that. All the attacks we saw on TV with IEDs hitting trucks but he didn't lose one. Why? Army Aviation. Praised his air units and said they made the decision early on that every convoy would have helicopter air cover. Said aviators in that unit were hitting the 1,000 hour mark (sound familiar?). Said a convoy was supposed to head out but stopped at the gates of a compound on the command of an E6. He asked the SSG what the hold up was. E6 said, "Air , sir." He wondered what was wrong with the air, not realizing what the kid was talking about. Then the AH-64s showed up and the E6 said, "That air sir." And then moved out.
12. Said one of the biggest problems was money and regs. There was a $77 million gap between the supplemental budget and what he needed in cash on the ground to get projects started. Said he spent most of his time trying to get money. Said he didn't do much as a "combat commander" because the the war he was fighting was a war at the squad and platoon level. Said that his NCOs were winning the war and it was a sight to behold.
13. Said that of all the money appropriated for Iraq, not a cent was earmarked for agriculture. Said that Iraq could feed itself completely and still have food for export but no one thought about it. Said the Cav started working with Texas A&M on ag projects and had special hybrid seeds sent to them through Jordan. TAM analyzed soil samples and worked out how and what to plant. Said he had an E7 from Belton, TX (just down the road from Ft. Hood) who was almost single-handedly rebuilding the ag industry in the Baghdad area...
So a lot of the old-fashioned military hardware like tanks, IFV's, and helicopters still proved useful, as did the practice of instilling NCO's with enough authority to deal with situations as they saw fit.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
03/20/2005 12:31:48 AM ||
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this is a f@#$$ing Retarded article the Iraqis are kicking american turky and boloni sandwich raised morons every day and the bodies that are spitting on they streets, are that of dead amerikan joes
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh yesterday expressed "deep concern" and "regret" over the US decision not to grant a visa to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. "Our government has clearly pointed out our very deep concern and regret over the US decision to deny a visa to a constitutionally elected chief minister of a state of our union," Manmohan Singh said in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament. "I share the concern that has been expressed in this matter on all sides of the House. When I came to know of the denial of visa to Modi yesterday, I immediately instructed our external affairs ministry to call the US ambassador and explain to them that we are greatly concerned and we greatly regret the decision that has been taken by the United States government." Modi was denied a visa on Friday on grounds of "serious violation of religious freedom", a reference to the alleged complicity of his government in the communal violence in Gujarat in 2002 in which hundreds of Muslims were killed.
A concept called "even-handedness", something not known in most parts of Asia.
Said Manmohan Singh: "The government has taken note of developments arising from the decision of the government of the United States of America to deny the request of Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi for a government visa. Honourable members of this august House would be aware of the fact that our foreign secretary yesterday summoned the deputy chief of the US mission in New Delhi to convey strong demarche on the decision of the US government.
I'll meet your demarche and raise you strongly worded message of condemnation.
"We have observed that this uncalled for decision (can) be traced to a lack of sensitivity and due courtesy to an elected authority. "The United States government has been clearly told of our concern at this development. We have also called for the urgent reconsideration of this decision by the US government."
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/20/2005 12:07:27 AM ||
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Baghdad - A conference of Iraq's Sunni Arabs on Saturday demanded to participate in drafting the country's constitution, due to be finished before August 15, despite their low voter turnout in elections earlier in the year.
A little late, eh?
"All groups within Iraq should contribute without exception in drafting the constitution, even the groups who've been out killing everyone who supported the constitution," said Ismail Al Dulaimi, a committeeman with the conference, which is being held under the auspices of Iraq's monarchist claimant Sharif Ali.
"Iraqi national and legal personalities should participate in writing the constitution," Al-Dulaimi said, adding that Sunni Arab participation in the constitution was needed to "meet the urgent demands of the Iraqi people to deal with this issue positively".
He also stressed the need for a timetable for US -led occupation forces to withdraw from the country's main cities.
Oh, that again.
Al-Dulaimi said this would help the formation of a constitutional government that could enter into talks with the occupier to withdraw completely in accordance with UN Resolution 1483, which affirms the territorial integrity of Iraq and the right of Iraqis to determine their own political future.
Also among the issues demanded by the Sunni committee was the release of all Iraqi detainees, a halt to all "arbitrary arrests" and bombing of cities, and the dissolution of all militias and the reconstitution of the defunct Iraqi army.
Squealing like a pig.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Reminds me of Mortimer Duke (Don Ameche) in "Trading Places" - "Turn those machines back on!"
#2
Everybody gets a say; what they'll have to get used to is that theirs is but one of many voices. I read 44% of Sunnis DID vote. Are they gonna cooperate?
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/20/2005 1:50 Comments ||
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#3
Brings to mind once again: "people in hell want ice water too."
We need a new cross needle meter that register sniveling and bleating in db. I could be called a Whingeometer.
#6
The Sunnis got something like 20 seats in the election. They screwed up big time in boycotting the election. Now they will just have to eat it and build on the 20 seats that they have. Start seeething and harming people and they will be cordoned off like a bunch of viruses in the bloodstream. The cluebat hit. Laearn from it.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/20/2005 11:55 Comments ||
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#7
Dont forget the pony! I'm sure they want a pony too!
Kenyan police said yesterday they had arrested a powerful Somali warlord and two members of Somalia's exiled parliament after a bloody brawl on Thursday among MPs over the deployment of regional peacekeepers in the shattered country. Warlord Musa Sudi Yalahow, who is also the Somali transitional government trade minister, was arrested in the Kenyan capital along with lawmakers Hussein Harale Adow and Maalim Mahamoud Mohammed, a police official said. The official, who asked not be named, said the three were arrested on suspicion of involvement and incitement in Thursday's fighting in the Somali parliament that left several people injured. "We are investigating whether they were involved in the fighting. We are still pursuing others," the officer said. The three were arrested after injured lawmakers lodged complaints.
The fighting broke out after more than 200 MPs gathered to debate the hotly contested issue of whether or not troops from Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya should participate in the force that is to be deployed by the regional InterGovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Television footage showed soberly-dressed lawmakers punching each other and hurling seats, books, tables and drinking glasses in all directions in the incident that observers said deepened divisions among the fractious Somalis.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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#1
Sounds like the Taiwanese legislature. There's nothing like an energetic exchange of views to clear the air. ;-)
After weeks of negotiations, the UN Security Council remains deadlocked on the next steps in Sudan where a 21-year civil war has just ended and a two-year conflict that has killed an estimated 180,000 people is still raging. The council is under mounting international pressure to act quickly but members are still divided over sanctions against the government and punishment for the perpetrators of atrocities. At the request of the United States, the council voted Thursday for a second weeklong extension of the UN political mission in Sudan. But many members including France, Algeria and Britain made clear they are fed up with the delays and want a vote next week on a new resolution. "The time has come now to adopt the resolution," said France's UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, stressing that the conflict in the western Darfur region is "very bad."
The US-drafted resolution would establish a broader UN mission and authorize a 10,000-strong UN peacekeeping force to monitor a peace accord ending the civil war between the government and southern rebels. It would also bolster efforts by the 2,200-strong African Union force in Darfur to promote peace. Council members agree on these provisions though diplomats are concerned that the large UN peacekeeping force will be deployed in generally quiet areas monitoring the north-south peace deal while the much smaller African force is struggling on its own in Darfur to help end a conflict that has forced over 2 million people to flee their homes. But it is primarily on the issues of sanctions and punishment for atrocities in Darfur that council members disagree. Conflict has engulfed Darfur since February 2003, when two non-Arab rebel groups took up arms against the Arab-dominated government to win more political and economic rights for the region's African tribes.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Palestinian leaders have rejected a Jordanian proposal calling for normalisation of relations between Arab states and Israel. Leaders from across the political and ideological spectrum said they opposed the suggestion, which calls for normalisation before ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and Syria's Golan Heights. The proposal is due to be presented to the Arab League summit in Algeria on Monday. "This would be a very grave concession," Sakhr Habash, a member of the Fatah central committee, said. "How could any Arab or Muslim leader embark on such a thing while Israel is still occupying our homeland and refusing to recognise our legitimate rights?" he said.
Speaking to Aljazeera.net on Saturday, Habash said any concessions to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would only make him want more. He described the Jordanian proposal as "amounting to a submission to Sharon's designs and American dictates". Habash, a former adviser to the late Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, criticised Arab officials who use Palestinian contacts with Israel as a pretext for normalising with the Jewish state. "I know some Arab leaders would argue we cannot be more royal than the king or more Catholic than the pope. However, the Arabs should remember we are under Israeli occupation - we are actually prisoners in Israel's hands."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Yet another opportunity passing the Paleos by again? These dorks are seemingly determined not to soil their record of repeatedly missing the boat.
More than 2,000 Shiites marched yesterday through Baghdad and some broke into the Jordanian embassy and raised the Iraqi flag atop it to protest the alleged involvement of a Jordanian in Iraq's single deadliest suicide bombing a February 28 attack south of Baghdad that killed 125 people. The protest came just two days after an influential Shiite leader claimed during Iraq's first National Assembly meeting that Jordan allegedly was not doing enough to prevent terrorists from slipping into Iraq.
At least 2,000 protesters converged on the Jordanian embassy after the Friday prayers at three Shiite mosques around Baghdad. They burned Israeli and Jordanian flags and shouted slogans against King Abdullah II. They chanted: "Take your embassy away! We do not want to see you!" and "There's no God but God, Abdullah is the enemy of God!" Three men in green camouflage, including one man wearing a black balaclava, were later seen on an embassy roof raising an Iraqi flag on a makeshift flagpole. Another flagpole with a crown that previously held the Jordanian flag was bare. Iraqi police and special forces gathered outside the embassy but failed to prevent demonstrators from reaching the building.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Saudi Arabia yesterday denied that Egypt had mediated between the kingdom and Libya to defuse a row over an alleged assassination plot targeting Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz. "Reports of mediation between Saudi Arabia and Libya, and that this mediation achieved its objective, are not true," the official Saudi Press Agency quoted a government source as as saying.
Saudi Arabia has accused Libya of plotting to kill Prince Abdullah in 2003, after he clashed with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi at an Arab summit. In December it recalled its ambassador from Tripoli and expelled Libya's envoy in Riyadh. Libya has denied the accusations. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Aboul Geit earlier said Egypt had been mediating to resolve the row, and Cairo's efforts had "realised their goal and some breakthrough has been achieved in the position between Libya and Saudi".
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 ||
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You know you're surrounded by yes-men when they let you go out in public dressed like that. "Lookin' good, Colonel dude. Sharp, very sharp."
Posted by: Matt ||
03/20/2005 10:46 Comments ||
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...Am I the only one who thinks he looks like Michael Palin as Arthur Gumby?...
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/20/2005 11:43 Comments ||
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Am I the only one around here who wished Mo had gotten lucky on this scheme? It would have destablized things for sure.... :)
#4
That would've put Nayef in charge... and accelerated the end of the House of Saud because he would've accelerated their support for Wahhabism abroad and abrogated most "cooperative" (lol!) arrangements between the US and SA in tracking money & Bad Guyz in and out of SA. Definitely a "destabilizer" for the "stable" M.E., lol!
I can almost see the ghostly outlines of the Republic of Eastern Arabia forming out of the Persian Gulf fog... Lol!
Leaders of the main opposition Awami League on Saturday criticized the BNP-led alliance government, who they said have turned secular Bangladesh into a fundamentalist country, reports UNB. "The Khaleda-led coalition government has resorted to repression on political opponents to cling on to power by force," Awami League presidium member Zillur Rahman said, adding the ruling party leaders are becoming increasingly arrogant and are devoid of any political courtesy or culture.
Referring to the claim of the Prime Minister that the country was now on road to development, Tofail said "there had been development only of the families of the Prime Minister and the ministers" under her regime. "If BNP decided that they would hold the election without reforming the caretaker government and in absence of Awami League, then it would be another farce election like the February 15, 1996," the AL leader said. Awami League general secretary Abdul Jalil accused Finance Minister Saifur Rahman and the Prime Minister of "hatching conspiracies to foil the development activities by making the country friendless" and claimed both of them violated the constitution.
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03/20/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said Bangladesh is becoming "quite troubling" and there is more that the USA and India could do. "There is more that we probably need to do on Bangladesh which is, I think, a place that is becoming quite troubling. So in the region, there is a great deal that we can do," she said in an interview with Raj Chengappa of India's leading magazine 'India Today'. As Chengappa asked on the South Asia region saying: "we're surrounded by failing states and problems, you know, whether you look at Nepal or Sri Lanka or Bangladesh and, of course, Pakistan. What is the sort of role you think India should be playing in the region?", Rice said there are several ways in which India, and then India and the United States together, can help in this region.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2005 00:00:00 ||
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The Claws of Death. Looks like she's been studying Rummy's techniques.
Posted by: Matt ||
03/20/2005 10:41 Comments ||
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"Yes, that is the preparatory position for the Face of Death using the Eagle Claws method. Very effective on slow-witted opponents who have forfeited their right to live." -Sifu Rummy
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.
Dr. 
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday that the US had no plans to attack North Korea but reiterated that Pyongyang give up its nuclear programme, Xinhua reported. "We have absolutely no desire to attack North Korea. We have no reason to want to do so," Rice said in an interview to South Korean Internet news outlets. "We understand that North Korea is a sovereign state ... North Korea does not need to worry the US intends to attack it," she said. She urged Pyongyang to make a "strategic choice" to give up its nuclear programme. 
The reforms, to be announced tomorrow by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, will be seen as a concession to Washington after repeated clashes with President George W Bush over US foreign policy, including the war in Iraq. Kofi Annan will present proposals for reform. The UN Secretariat promises a "real re-launch ⊠a fundamental manifesto" after criticism of its performance since the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq oil-for-food scandal.
Lebanon's Shia movement Hizb Allah has urged a new attempt to resolving Lebanon's political crisis, adding that only Israel would benefit from last night's bomb blast in Beirut. After meeting with prominent Mufti Mohammed Rashid Qabbani on Saturday, Hassan Nasr Allah, the Secretary-General of Hizb Allah stressed that "there are no grounds for a sectarian strife between Shia and Sunnis in Lebanon," Aljazeera reported. He also reiterated his rejection of calls for Hizb Allah to disarm, saying the movement's status was a strictly domestic matter. "It is a very dangerous incident," Nasr Allah said of an explosion early on Saturday in a Christian residential area that wounded 11 people and caused extensive damage. "Someone wants to increase tension and instability," he said, adding that "Israel is the beneficiary." But he stressed that he was not levelling any "premature accusations." Addressing reporters Nasr Allah also appealed to the anti-Syrian "opposition to sit down at a table to talk and to find a way out of the political crisis."
Lebanon's security commanders appear concerned that they will be the target of a backlash in wake of the withdrawal of Syria's military. Lebanese sources said security commanders have sought to lower their profile amid the end of the Syrian military and intelligence presence in Beirut. They said several security commanders have already left Beirut, with at least one of them departing the country. The biggest concern by the security commanders has been that they will be charged with the assassination of former Prime Minister 
Lebanon faced new civil war fears after its anti-Syria opposition last night rejected a plea for unity talks issued hours after a bomb blast in a Beirut suburb. "President 
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh yesterday expressed "deep concern" and "regret" over the US decision not to grant a visa to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. "Our government has clearly pointed out our very deep concern and regret over the US decision to deny a visa to a constitutionally elected chief minister of a state of our union," Manmohan Singh said in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament. "I share the concern that has been expressed in this matter on all sides of the House. When I came to know of the denial of visa to Modi yesterday, I immediately instructed our external affairs ministry to call the US ambassador and explain to them that we are greatly concerned and we greatly regret the decision that has been taken by the United States government." Modi was denied a visa on Friday on grounds of "serious violation of religious freedom", a reference to the alleged complicity of his government in the communal violence in Gujarat in 2002 in which hundreds of Muslims were killed.
Baghdad - A conference of Iraq's Sunni Arabs on Saturday demanded to participate in drafting the country's constitution, due to be finished before August 15, despite their low voter turnout in elections earlier in the year.
Kenyan police said yesterday they had arrested a powerful Somali warlord and two members of Somalia's exiled parliament after a bloody brawl on Thursday among MPs over the deployment of regional peacekeepers in the shattered country. Warlord Musa Sudi Yalahow, who is also the Somali transitional government trade minister, was arrested in the Kenyan capital along with lawmakers Hussein Harale Adow and Maalim Mahamoud Mohammed, a police official said. The official, who asked not be named, said the three were arrested on suspicion of involvement and incitement in Thursday's fighting in the Somali parliament that left several people injured. "We are investigating whether they were involved in the fighting. We are still pursuing others," the officer said. The three were arrested after injured lawmakers lodged complaints.
After weeks of negotiations, the UN Security Council remains deadlocked on the next steps in Sudan where a 21-year civil war has just ended and a two-year conflict that has killed an estimated 180,000 people is still raging. The council is under mounting international pressure to act quickly but members are still divided over sanctions against the government and punishment for the perpetrators of atrocities. At the request of the United States, the council voted Thursday for a second weeklong extension of the UN political mission in Sudan. But many members including France, Algeria and Britain made clear they are fed up with the delays and want a vote next week on a new resolution. "The time has come now to adopt the resolution," said France's UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, stressing that the conflict in the western Darfur region is "very bad."
Palestinian leaders have rejected a Jordanian proposal calling for normalisation of relations between Arab states and Israel. Leaders from across the political and ideological spectrum said they opposed the suggestion, which calls for normalisation before ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and Syria's Golan Heights. The proposal is due to be presented to the Arab League summit in Algeria on Monday. "This would be a very grave concession," Sakhr Habash, a member of the Fatah central committee, said. "How could any Arab or Muslim leader embark on such a thing while Israel is still occupying our homeland and refusing to recognise our legitimate rights?" he said.
Saudi Arabia yesterday denied that Egypt had mediated between the kingdom and Libya to defuse a row over an alleged assassination plot targeting Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz. "Reports of mediation between Saudi Arabia and Libya, and that this mediation achieved its objective, are not true," the official Saudi Press Agency quoted a government source as as saying.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said Bangladesh is becoming "quite troubling" and there is more that the USA and India could do. "There is more that we probably need to do on Bangladesh which is, I think, a place that is becoming quite troubling. So in the region, there is a great deal that we can do," she said in an interview with Raj Chengappa of India's leading magazine 'India Today'. As Chengappa asked on the South Asia region saying: "we're surrounded by failing states and problems, you know, whether you look at Nepal or Sri Lanka or Bangladesh and, of course, Pakistan. What is the sort of role you think India should be playing in the region?", Rice said there are several ways in which India, and then India and the United States together, can help in this region.
"Yes, that is the preparatory position for the Face of Death using the Eagle Claws method. Very effective on slow-witted opponents who have forfeited their right to live."
