Enjoying the fruits of freedom and liberty which our
veterans fought and died to provide you?
Or standing firm in Washington to protect them for our children and grandchildren?
Only you can decide.
Ill be standing with our veterans and patriots in Washington, DC.
DanNY
--------------------------------
This is the one many of you have been waiting on. On 15 September we will rally on The Mall at 0900 hrs on 7th Street between Madison and Jefferson. We have many notable speakers joining us that day, so dont be late. After our program is completed, we will head over to line A.N.S.W.E.R .s route to the Capitol. We are permitted from 7th to 10th on Pennsylvania Ave., and our allies in the DC Chapter of Protest Warriors have been granted the permit for the Navy Memorial, which is directly across the street from us. Many of you will remember the treatment the Lone Sailor received at the hands of Code Pink back in January. We will not let that happen again.
As A.N.S.W.E.R. and their allies in the hate-America crowd stumble by, we will treat them to some good old-fashioned, red-blooded American free speech. Remember, the days are still warm, and we will be outside, so bring water and light snacks. Parking will be severely limited, so be prepared to access the Metro if possible. The Navy Memorial stop will put you two blocks from the rally and directly across from the counter-protest site. Motorcycles can be parked on any of the numbered streets west of 7th.
Buses will disgorge their passengers at 4th Street on The Mall. Marshals and team leaders will be at all locations to ground-guide and provide security. A.N.S.W.E.R. and the Iraq Vets for Peace (all 12 of them) are planning to stage a die-in on the Capitol grounds. They plan to use photos and names of our brave warriors who have been killed in action as props. Multiple Gold Star family members have expressed outrage that anyone would use their family members images without permission. Be prepared to let the miscreants know how we feel about that. Bring your outside voices and all the heart I know you each possess. This is the one-two punch, my brothers and sisters. We may not knock them out, but we will knock them down (metaphorically speaking, of course!). Our warriors are winning over, killing, and capturing terrorists. We must let those who do not know they have a voice hear us. It is an obligation we all bear.
Join us on September 15th to let the world know how we feel!
--------------------------
Okay, Eagles. Were less than a week out from our first mission and less than two weeks from the second. We have moved Heaven and Earth and expended untold man-hours to get the logistics done. It is now up to each and every one of you to ruck up and support these missions at whatever level you are capable of. For some of you, that will mean showing up at one or both events. For others, that will mean supporting the missions from afar; either by faxing the letter we have posted or calling your members of Congress. Some of you will donate funds so that the events can be paid for. We need you to support us at whatever level you can.
To quote Winston Churchill, Sometimes it is not enough to do your best; sometimes you must do what is required. This is that time.
To put it in military terms, the infantry will be on the ground, and we need artillery and air support, as well as supply. We have to count on each other, because we do not have much chance of receiving any measurable press coverage. We have done more with less , though. It is not for any reason other than we have promised to BUY OUR TROOPS SOME TIME. We want them to come home, but as victors to the heroes welcome they deserve.
We have all promised not to let this generation be treated as our brothers from Vietnam were. They are winning, and we must support them until the fight is done. They are doing their part. Now we must each do a little bit more than our part. I look forward to standing with those of you with whom I stood in March and meeting those who have joined us since. I consider it a great honor to be counted among your number. I have promised never again to be silent in the face of anti-American propaganda, whatever the cost. I know you have, too. I am not trying to build bridges to these people who call themselves peace activists while hurling the insults baby-killer, war criminal, and bomb thrower at us. I fully intend to defeat them at every turn, and with your help I can. Thank you for entrusting me with your standard; Ill see you in Washington , DC. Manchu.
Chris Hill
National Director of Operations
Gathering of Eagles
Posted by: DanNY ||
09/07/2007 07:28 ||
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#1
We have all promised not to let this generation be treated as our brothers from Vietnam were.
#2
Everytime the anti-War folks protest the public opinion polls for the war and the troops go up. Maybe instead of a counter protest you should ensure lots of camera (video and still) are there and the protest is well documented.
#3
We have been mounting counter protests to the moonbats all across the country from Maine to Hawaii since March. Not just these big events but on the local level at every 'peace vigil' we can. The public response has been overwhelmingly in our favor.
Having them monopolize the media just reinforces the lie that a majority of Americans want to surrender. Putting ourselves out there as supporting the troops and their mission shows Americans that there are others who share their beliefs. I think our efforts have played some small part in the polls showing increasing support for the war effort.
See for your self, come join us!
DanNY
Posted by: DanNY ||
09/07/2007 11:48 Comments ||
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PATROL BASE WILSON, Afghanistan -- More than five years after international forces rolled into Afghanistan, there is much debate about whether or not they're losing ground to a resurgent Taliban.
For Brig-Gen. Guy Laroche, Canada's top commander in Afghanistan, the answer is a firm No. As his military convoy bumps over a road where Canada lost its first soldier to a roadside bomb, Laroche sweeps his arm toward the far-off mountains. "There used to be 300 Taliban in this area,'' he said. "Now, they don't have the numbers for a face-to-face fight.''
As his crew keeps a close watch on every bump in the road and every person they pass, Laroche suggests the deadly bombing campaign of the Taliban is their last gasp. "We'll never completely get rid of the Taliban,'' he said. "This is their home.''
But he said the insurgent force has been severely damaged and left unable to mount an effective fighting force. He suggested that's why the Taliban have resorted to the improvised explosive devices -- including suicide bombings -- that have taken the lives of 38 Canadian soldiers.
Despite the bombs, stability is being restored. "Now you see families and children who've come back,'' Laroche said as a group of waving small children ran alongside the convoy. "A year ago you didn't see that.''
Meanwhile in Kandahar City, Afghan authorities paraded four suspected Taliban detainees for the media Thursday, claiming the Pakistani natives were would-be suicide bombers. Although the four deny any plan to blow themselves up, they admitted they easily crossed the border into Afghanistan with jihad -- holy war -- on their mind. "When Americans captured Afghanistan, we saw they were beating people, killing people, and from that time we had this idea of jihad,'' one of the young men, 24-year-old Mohammed Shohaib, said through an interpreter.
Shohaib said they received 12 days of training in Pakistan, including suicide bombing. Despite the urging of an Afghan official, however, Shohaib said they had no plans to carry out suicide missions. "We came here to fight with guns, with weapons, not to blow ourselves up,'' he said.
Afghan authorities have long maintained that Pakistan is a source of many of the insurgents wreaking havoc in their country.
In this case, the four young men said they were arrested by Afghan intelligence officers within hours of arriving in Kandahar city, but many others like them aren't caught.
A year ago, Canadians took a lead in NATO's largest offensive to date in Afghanistan, Operation Medusa. The mission was to drive the Taliban out of the Zhari and Panjwaii districts of Kandahar province _ the extremist movement's ideological heartland. But the insurgents have returned, and so have the Canadians.
At Patrol Base Wilson, a sparse checkpoint along the highway west of Kandahar city, a patrol convoy rolled out as night fell Wednesday. This once-sparsely staffed outpost in one of the most dangerous regions of Afghanistan has seen major reinforcement since the Van Doos regiment arrived last month.
Chief Warrant Officer Pete Marchand says the highway is a key trade route through the region _ and one the Canadians are determined to secure. "It's a really important route and we want to make sure that security and development can continue in Afghanistan, so we have to secure this route,'' Marchand said. "The Taliban is trying to terrorize everybody. They're trying to terrorize us with IEDs but they will not achieve that,'' Marchand said. "We're going to make sure the Afghan people can live safely.''
The patrol base is a joint operation between the Canadians and the Afghan National Police, a ragtag group that is largely under-paid, under-staffed and under-trained. The youngest of the machine-gun-wielding police appears to be about 15. He jokingly points his gun at an out-of-place visitor.
"There's a lot of work to do and it's going bit by bit,'' said Marchand.
Laroche is more blunt. "We know we can't leave them alone right now,'' he said.
#1
As his crew keeps a close watch on every bump in the road and every person they pass
The effort to portray routine vigilance as negatively as possible... is so revealing of the agenda. I love how the reporter is just scratching to find any cloud at all on the silver lining.
Posted by: N Guard ||
09/07/2007 15:25 Comments ||
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#2
"We came here to fight with guns, with weapons, not to blow ourselves up,''
They all say that. Wretched fools they. If we could only get it through to them that we actualy value their lives more than their islamic masters, and offer a better life for them to boot, we might get some where.
How do you deprogram an entire culture?
Posted by: N Guard ||
09/07/2007 15:29 Comments ||
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#3
they received 12 days of training in Pakistan, including suicide bombing
How can the West stand up to that? It's hopeless. We should surrender immediately, abase ourselves and hope they are merciful.
Posted by: NYT editors ||
09/07/2007 15:33 Comments ||
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#4
Well, let's see. It starts off with...
there is much debate about whether or not they're losing ground to a resurgent Taliban.
...and then proceeds to say that, basically, the "resurgent" Taliban is getting it's ass kicked.
Sorry, CTV guy, I know you're disappointed. Maybe you'll get kidnapped and get to hear their side of it....
(SomaliNet) Ten-day conference over uniting the forces against the Somalis government began in the Eritrean capital of Asmara on Thursday as top Islamist officials attended that congress. About 400 delegates including the expelled parliament members, key leaders of the defeated Islamic Courts, Somali Diasporas and international representatives gathered the meeting which is the first of its kind to call an immediate withdrawal of the Ethiopian forces from the war-ravaged country.
The supreme leader of the ousted Islamic Courts Union Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys appeared before the congress underlining that Somalia needs to be liberated from the Ethiopian occupation. Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed who Washington described as moderate cleric has also delivered his speech at the congress calling on Ethiopian government to pull its troops from Somalia. This conference is to form an effective political party to unshackle the country from the trap of the colony, said Sheikh Ahmed.
He also condemned the US policy in the horn of African and its support to the Ethiopian invasion to Somalia. Sheikh Ahmed, the exiled leader, said the conflict will only remain in Somalia it will also spread to whole region as well and security risk will get high as long as Ethiopian troops stay in Somalia.
The Asmara conference which the Somali government described it as nonsense came week after the reconciliation congress in Mogadishu ended in failure and deepened the political crisis. Earlier, the Islamic leaders condemned the Mogadishu congress as fruitless saying that peace can come only when Ethiopia withdraw Somalia. The internationally recognized Somalia government failed to restore peace in the capital blamed the Islamic movement for the daily Iraqi-style attacks which put Mogadishu into deadly violence in recent months.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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Clarification: Not the government of Qatar, but a symposium of mostly usual suspects doing the debate thing. Beneath the notice of serious people, except as an indication of the extent of 9-11 fatigue.
A majority of the participants at Qatar Foundations Doha Debates yesterday felt that it is time to negotiate with Al Qaeda. The motion is resoundingly carried, declared Tim Sebastian, chair of the Doha Debates as the voting results appeared on the screen. The motion for the day was: This House believes it is time to talk to Al Qaeda.
Speaking for the motion was Terry Waite, a well-known hostage negotiator, who himself was taken captive in 1987 while negotiating for the release of Western hostages in Lebanon. He was joined by Asad Durrani, former head of the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence. Panelists on the other side were Laith Kubba, former spokesman for the Iraqi Prime Minister and Adam Holloway, British MP and member of the House of Commons Defence Committee.
Those who supported the motion argued that it is time to give dialogue a chance since military actions failed to contain Al Qaeda. Terrorism is a symptom of more deep-rooted issues and it manifests itself as an extreme reaction to the mistakes committed by the West in the Islamic world. So it is important to address the root causes rather than treating the symptoms.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Oh, look. It's Terry Waite. Thank you for removing any doubt that this man is a total fuckin idiot...
An Islamic political party is being set up in Finland; organisers hope to gather the necessary 5,000 signatures for official registration, and to field candidates in next year's municipal elections. The new party's chairman Abdullah Tammi said at a press conference held on Thursday that the aim of the new party is to promote healthy habits, and the Islamic lifestyle. For all Finns.
One of the goals of the party is to end the sale of alcoholic beverages at Finnish grocery stores and kiosks. Sales through the Alko stores would not be affected. That's the next step.
The party also wants to make it possible for Muslim children to opt out of music classes and excursions to swimming pools, which Tammi says go against the Muslim faith. The party further wants legislation that would sanction Halal slaughter and the religious circumcision of boys. The circumcision of females is step 2.
Asked if the party wanted Sharia law to be implemented in Finland, Tammi said that such a move would be "fantastic". I bet he practically levitated.
He noted that the purpose of the law is to prevent crime in advance. Crimes like "apostasy"
However, he was quick to add that the party is not seriously seeking a dominant position in Finnish politics or the building of an Islamic society here. According to Tammi, the group does not have any contacts with any international Muslim organisation; he emphasised that it has emerged from the needs of Finns. Yes, the Finns are demanding a Finnish Islamic Party. Can you not hear their cries??...???
The organisers of the press conference were native-born Finnish converts, but the group hopes to get supporters from all ethnic groups.
Finnish Muslims have only quite recently established an umbrella orgnaisation for various communities - the Finnish Islamic Council. The Council's chair Anas Hajjar did not directly wish to comment on whether an Islamic political party might bring together the roughly 40,000 Muslims living in Finland. A good many Muslims are already active in other political parties. Very active, no doubt.
A similarly cautious view was taken by Abdi-Hakim Yasin Ararse, vice-chairman of the Islamic Society of Finland, who welcomed the idea in the sense that all Muslim problems are common. As with Hajjar, the Somali-born Yasin was nevertheless unsure whether an Islamic political grouping was the best means of promoting Islamic culture and the position of the Muslim faith in Finland. He noted that the Finnish Islamic Council sought contacts and cooperation with all political parties. "You are hereby cordially invited to cooperate with our desire to ban alcohol and establish Sharia in Finland. Please RSVP so that we may identify our sycophantic friends and the enemies of Islam."
The fruits of "Soft Power" are deadly, and all too real.
Reinfeldt made sure that no journalists attended that meeting.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt met on Friday with ambassadors from twenty Muslim countries for talks surrounding the publication in a Swedish newspaper of a caricature of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. The envoys are not reported to have called for Sweden to change its laws to protect against the desecration of the Muslim prophet. After a meeting with his Muslim colleagues on Thursday, the Egyptian ambassador indicated that the group wanted to see "action, not just nice words."
But Reinfeldt said that the ambassadors did not present a list of demands at government offices in Rosenbad. "There were no demands in that sense. We had a very positive dialogue," said Reinfeldt. "Nothing on paper, anyway. Just a little chat with the usual representitives of dictatorships, autocracies, and terrorist states. Please, no questions concerning the state of current Swedish-totalitarian arms deals negotiations."
The ambassadors agreed earlier in the week to condemn the publication, which they described as a "humiliating action", and to hand over a letter to the government pointing out the importance of reaching a long-term solution. "We reject all forms of violence, psychological as well as physical," Iran's ambassador told TT after the meeting. As he carefully daubed his blood-encrusted paws with a silk handkerchief.
"Diplomacy needs to be employed for issues such as this. It is my view that the Swedish government has handled this situation well. Causing offence does not belong to the concept of freedom of speech," he added.
Reinfeldt said that he had "explained how Swedish society works and that we don't have elected representatives making editorial decisions", adding that "this is an open country, a tolerant country".
The Prime Minister also noted that the ambassadors had thanked him for calling the meeting. "We agreed that the best way to deal with this issue is through dialogue. We pointed to the importance of the fact that we are using dialogue as a starting point to quell tensions," said Reinfeldt. And there's no need to guess where we'll find the "ending point".
Lars Vilks' caricature was published on August 18th in local newspaper Nerikes Allehanda. Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and the 57-nation Orgaization of the Islamic Conference have all lodged official protests and demanded punitive action. The sides are lining up nicely.
The Ministry for Foreign Affairs is advising Swedish citizens to exercise caution when travelling to the Middle East. "Swedes are advised to take care and stay up to date with media reports," said spokeswoman Anna Björkander. What? The Ministry for Foreign Affairs didn't get the memo from the Persian ambassador?
(AKI) The top international official in Bosnia, Miroslav Lajcak, warned local leaders on Thursday they must choose between isolation or European integration and would have to accept the consequences of their political choices. Im here today to tell you that you have to make a collective decision whether you want integration or isolation, Lajcak told a joint session of both chambers of Bosnian parliament, attended by leaders of main political parties.
The Slovak diplomat said political atmosphere in Bosnia was poisoned by negative rhetoric, mutual accusations and absence of a desire to find solutions for its burning problems." Lajcak's warning followed more than a year of futile efforts by the international community to force local Muslim, Serb and Croat leaders to reach an agreement on police and constitutional reforms. These are the main preconditions for Bosnia being allowed to begin pre-entry talks with the European Union. He noted that no progress had been made in the past year in implementing reforms to aid Bosnia's integration in Europe and appealed to local politicians to return to normal, constructive policy which would be useful to everyone.
Lajcaks appeal came after local Muslims and Serbs, the countrys two biggest ethnic groups, last week rejected his proposal for police reforms, which would reduce power of entities police and strengthen the security forces on country level.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
D *** ng it, was it DEBKA? that reported that 00's of smuggled Iranian/Islamist fighters = terror proxies were hiding in Bosnia, or was it Kosovo???
#2
Russia has both extreme oil leverage over the East, and popularity for their anti-Islam ideas. The East-Euro missile campaign won't go anywhere.
I use Firefox, so please cut and paste this copy of the Bosnian's "Islamic Declaration." (1970/1990)
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/documents/islamic-declaration.pdf
#4
I use Firefox, so please cut and paste this copy of the Bosnian's "Islamic Declaration." (1970/1990)
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/documents/islamic-declaration.pdf
Why does your use of Firefox preclude you being able to post a link? I use Firefox and have no difficulty.
Posted by: Natural Law ||
09/07/2007 9:29 Comments ||
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#5
McZoid, in Firefox one has to actually type out the HTML code Fred lists below the button thingies, instead of just clicking on Fred's convenient buttons. (I found it baffling for quite some time after I changed over from Internet Explorer.)
Thusly for links
a href=' 'link title/a
only with the appropriate angled parenthesis (or whatever they're called)enclosing the bits on both sides of the link title. The trailing daughters smile proudly now when they see me doing it, but perhaps someone here knows how to show it without having key bits go invisible. ;-)
I'm surprised. I thought for sure he'd be back in Hong Kong by now.
Disgraced Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu was arrested in Colorado late Thursday after he failed to show up for a court appearance related to a felony theft conviction.
When it became apparent that Hsu had fled the state, California authorities sought the assistance of the FBI.
FBI agents took Hsu into custody at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction, Colo., said FBI spokesman Joseph Schadler.
California Attorney General spokesman Gareth Lacy said Hsu's lawyers told prosecutors Hsu arrived by charter jet at the Oakland airport about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday local time and then wasn't heard from again. When it became apparent that Hsu had fled the state, California authorities sought the assistance of the FBI, whose agents arrested him Thursday night on charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, Schadler said. Once he is returned to state custody, the federal charges will be dismissed, Schadler said.
#3
I think it's routine that if the feds catch a fugitive who fled across state lines, and they get him back to the state where he's wanted, they drop the federal charges. The feds only get into it only because the state authorities can't act outside their borders.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/07/2007 8:28 Comments ||
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#4
Hsu is going to pull the "I'm too sick to testify" routine for as long as he can get away with it.
At this point, the smart thing for Republicans is to ask the Dems (again and again and again, month after month) to write to Hsu and ask him to reveal what he knows about he bundled sources (for the good of the country).
#5
Hey, Norman. Hillary Clinton called. She wants to know if there's anything you need. Extra sheets in your cell? Maybe a nice new belt? Spare shoelaces?
#12
UPDATE: The Grand Junction Sentinel reports that Hsu was captured after getting sick on an Amtrak train: Disgraced Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu was arrested in Grand Junction tonight, after he failed to show up for a court appearance in California related to a felony theft conviction. FBI agents took Hsu into custody around 7 p.m. at St. Marys Hospital FBI, spokesman Joseph Schadler said in a statement. Hsu was traveling on an Amtrak train when he became ill. Grand Junction paramedics were summoned to the Amtrak station near downtown about 11 a.m. Thursday to treat a patient, Battalion Chief Robert Ferguson said. The patient, whom Ferguson said he found out eight hours later was a fugitive, was not in great pain, Ferguson said.
Maybe not in great pain, but hes gonna be in a world of hurt.
Checking the Amtrak schedule, he must have been on the California Zephyr, which runs from Northern California through Colorado (with a stop in Grand Junction) and ends up in Chicago
#13
Was he taking a train because he figured the FBI would be watching the airports? Maybe getting sick and then getting caught was not part of the plan. This could be fun.
Posted by: Abu Uluque6305 ||
09/07/2007 12:48 Comments ||
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#14
That makes the most sense, Abu. But it's the least fun. This guy is about as close as anybody gets to a Ludlum novel life. Let's enjoy. Popcorn?
#15
Run Hsu through the wringer. If some of that "bundled" money comes from China, drop the hammer on him and force the democrats to open up their books.
Anyone out there still doubt that all major political campaigns should have set amounts of strictly federal funding? Lobbying and campaign funding are two of the most poisonous entities in American politics.
#21
St. Mary's hospital...I know it only too well. My brother died there at the ripe old age of 43. On the brighter side, I've had neices and nephews born there too.
I wish they could waterboard this Hsu bastard. If he isn't a Chicom operative, then I'm a leprechaun. (and no I do not care for Lucky Charms).
Using images of children in combat camouflage, a coalition of US anti-war groups is airing about $500,000 in ads against Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and three other senators from his party facing re-election next year, urging them to "bring our troops home."
Because our troops are children, certainly not adult enough to choose to serve and sacrifice.
The ads come as official Washington turns its attention to a series of assessments on progress in Iraq that will culminate with a report next week from Gen. David Petraeus, the US military commander in Iraq. Sponsored by Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, the ads will also target Republican Sens. Norm Coleman, Susan Collins and Pete Domenici. The ads are scheduled to run for 10 days and will appear frequently on broadcast stations in the four senators' home states and nationally on cable. The ads depict children in fatigues in a training camp as an announcer says: "How long will Republican senators keep us stuck in Iraq? Should we start training our children now?"
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
HOTAIR > Video allegedly depicts AQ assassinating Dubya??? ALso, HUFFINGTON POST/OTHER > USA ABSOLUTELY UNREADY FOR NEW ATTACK, be it 9-11-style airliner or Nuke-WMD Terror, espec for post-attack "environmental consequences".
#2
They're not their troops; they wouldn't have any troops, just natural-disaster relief folks.
Provide for the national defense; it says so right there in the Constitution.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/07/2007 6:36 Comments ||
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#3
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I guess the left is more into "promoting the general welfare".
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/07/2007 6:38 Comments ||
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#4
I guess the left is more into "promoting the general welfare".
#5
I guess the left is more into "promoting the general welfare".
For values of "general welfare" that involve robbing from the productive and giving to the unproductive.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
09/07/2007 8:36 Comments ||
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#6
Pre-18th Century - In the name of God(TM).
19th Century - In the name of the People(TM).
20th Century - In the name of the State(TM).
21st Century - In the name of the Children(TM).
Translation: Submission (which by the way happens to be what the word Islam means)
#7
Question is, where in the world did they get the video of child-soldiers? Somalia? Sudan? Any of the Middle Eastern nations? Palestine (oops, no, their kids strap on bombs too)?
Let's see...what do all these nations have in common? I just can't place my finger on it.
Posted by: BA ||
09/07/2007 10:51 Comments ||
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Democrats are torn between confronting Republicans or whining reaching out to them as they plot their floor strategy on the war and await the Iraq assessment of Army Gen. David Petraeus.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) came out on Wednesday in favor of holding a vote on a bipartisan Iraqi withdrawal bill. Meanwhile, the partys left wing renewed calls for a pullout and announced a new campaign to block funds for arming and training the Iraq Security Forces.
The bipartisan legislation, authored by Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and John Tanner (D-Tenn.), would order Bush to draft plans to withdraw from Iraq but not require them to be implemented. Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.) and two other Republicans have signed on as cosponsors.I would like to see us move forward on that, Hoyer said. The president ought to come up with a plan for withdrawal.
Idiots. No doubt an office deep within the Pentagon has a withdrawal plan already assembled. I bet they have ten of them. That's what people at the Pentagon do, plan.
But Democratic liberals have criticized the plan for providing cover to Republicans on the Iraq issue. At a marathon news conference, members of the Out of Iraq caucus said that weapons meant for the Iraqi military are winding up in the hands of the militias.
We are merely training factions in a violent power struggle, said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the lead windbag sponsor of the bill to block training funds. Waters also raised questions about Petraeus, who has been lauded by most lawmakers, saying proper procedures were not followed when he oversaw the training of Iraqi forces.
Because if you can't do something perfectly the first time, you should never do it.
Democratic liberals said they remain opposed to Abercrombies plan, which they prevented from coming to the floor in July.
With Republican support for the war holding firm, Democratic leaders have come under pressure to take a more bipartisan approach to make progress on the war. That would mean dropping demands for a firm timeline for withdrawal.
'Making progress on the war' would mean supporting the President until the job is done, but that's not what they want to do.
But there is also intense pressure from liberal advocacy groups to hold firm to a date-certain for withdrawal.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she supports Abercrombies bill, even though she rebuffed his efforts to get the bill to the floor in the final days before the August break. She indicated that she is now developing plans to bring it to the floor. We probably will take it up with another piece of legislation that Im not about to announce right now, Pelosi said at a Wednesday afternoon news conference.
Depending on the weather and a reading from the entrails of a chicken.
That is one of the most definitive predictions Pelosi has made about a floor strategy on the Iraq issue. Beyond that, she said, shes seemingly waiting to hear from Petraeus before settling on what legislation to pursue.
Pelosi said shes been encouraging Democratic representatives to employ any personal relationships theyve developed with Republicans to find bipartisan ideas for Iraq legislation. But if we cant find that [common] ground, well have to stand our ground, Pelosi said.
By 'bipartisan ideas', she means finding ways to get Republicans to sign on to a withdrawal.
Abercrombie sent Pelosi a letter signed by Democratic and Republican cosponsors, urging her to bring it to the floor as a bipartisan solution. It is clear that it is time to develop a post-surge strategy, the letter said.
Why don't we let the President do that since it's his job.
Also Wednesday, House Defense Appropriations Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) said he wont begin work on the Iraq supplemental spending bill until October or November, and he will not roll it into the regular defense spending bill. He is to include withdrawal language, but said he is also seemingly waiting to hear from Petraeus before deciding what that will be.
Meanwhile, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) sent a letter to the White House to protest President Bushs criticism of Congress while attending a conference in Australia. He said it violated the principle that partisanship ends at the waters edge.
That just about floored me. It's okay when Dhimmicrats galavant 'round the world taking pot-shots at Mr. Bush. Sez so in the Dhimmis playbook.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
ION, MALABAR Five-Nation NAVEX indicative of future ASIAN NATO??? APEC Confab > Dubya also seeking broad pan-Asian-Pacific agreement on trade and terror. *Move along boyz, once again clearly the WOT > NOT ABOUT GLOBAL GUMMINT.
#4
Han Solo: Let him have it. It's not wise to upset a Wookiee.
C-3PO: But sir, nobody worries about upsetting a droid.
Han Solo: That's 'cause droids don't pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose. Wookiees are known to do that.
Chewbacca: Grrf.
C-3PO: I see your point, sir. I suggest a new strategy, R2: let the Wookiee win.
#5
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she supports Abercrombies bill, even though she rebuffed his efforts to get the bill to the floor in the final days before the August break.
So, ya sayin' that San Fran Nan was fer da bill before she was agin' it? Who knew she was so closely related to that gelatin mold and came down with Kerry-itis?
Posted by: BA ||
09/07/2007 10:48 Comments ||
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A federal judge struck down a key part of the USA Patriot Act on Thursday in a ruling that defended the need for judicial oversight of laws and bashed Congress for passing a law that makes possible "far-reaching invasions of liberty."
U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero immediately stayed the effect of his ruling, allowing the government time to appeal. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said: "We are reviewing the decision and considering our options at this time."
The ruling handed the American Civil Liberties Union a major victory in its challenge of the post-Sept. 11 law that gave broader investigative powers to law enforcement.
The ACLU had challenged the law on behalf of an Internet service provider, complaining that the law allowed the FBI to demand records without the kind of court supervision required for other government searches. Under the law, investigators can issue so-called national security letters to entities like Internet service providers and phone companies and demand customers' phone and Internet records.
In his ruling, Marrero said much more was at stake than questions about the national security letters.
He said Congress, in the original USA Patriot Act and less so in a 2005 revision, had essentially tried to legislate how the judiciary must review challenges to the law. If done to other bills, they ultimately could all "be styled to make the validation of the law foolproof."
Noting that the courthouse where he resides is several blocks from the fallen World Trade Center, the judge said the Constitution was designed so that the dangers of any given moment could never justify discarding fundamental individual liberties.
He said when "the judiciary lowers its guard on the Constitution, it opens the door to far-reaching invasions of liberty."
Regarding the national security letters, he said, Congress crossed its boundaries so dramatically that to let the law stand might turn an innocent legislative step into "the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values."
He said the ruling does not mean the FBI must obtain the approval of a court prior to ordering records be turned over, but rather must justify to a court the need for secrecy if the orders will last longer than a reasonable and brief period of time.
A March government report showed that the FBI issued about 8,500 national security letter, or NSL, requests in 2000, the year prior to passage of the USA Patriot Act. By 2003, the number of requests had risen to 39,000 and to 56,000 in 2004 before falling to 47,000 in 2005. The overwhelming majority of the requests sought telephone billing records information, telephone or e-mail subscriber information or electronic communication transactional records.
The judge said that through the NSLs, the government can unmask the identity of Internet users engaged in anonymous speech in online discussions, can obtain an itemized list of all e-mails sent and received by someone and can then seek information on those communicating with the individual.
"It may even be able to discover the web sites an individual has visited and queries submitted to search engines," the judge said.
Marrero's lengthy judicial opinion, akin to an eighth-grade civics lesson, described why the framers of the Constitution created three separate but equal branches of government and delegated to the judiciary to say what the law is and to protect the Constitution and the rights it gives citizens.
Marrero said the constitutional barriers against governmental abuse "may eventually collapse, with consequential diminution of the judiciary's function, and hence potential dire effects to individual freedoms."
In that event, he said, the judiciary could become "a mere mouthpiece of the legislature."
Marrero had ruled in 2004, on the initial version of the Patriot Act, that the letters violate the Constitution because they amounted to unreasonable search and seizure. He found free-speech violations in the nondisclosure requirement, which for example, disallowed an Internet service provider from telling customers their records were being turned over to the government.
After he ruled, Congress revised the Patriot Act in 2005, and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals directed that Marrero review the law's constitutionality a second time.
Something that the courts believe is their prerogative since the 60s. You know the whole concept of a 'Living Constitution', also known as making it up as we go along. That's why they ignore the specific words of the 14th Amendment and authorize discrimination based upon the color of one's skin when it serves a 'noble' purpose.
Lawyers boycotted courts across Pakistan on Thursday in a renewed campaign to force President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to step down, as pressure mounted ahead of the planned return of the civilian leader he ousted in a coup eight years ago. Lawyers were at the forefront of a campaign against military rule that led to the judge's reinstatement, and on Thursday began a new round of protests.
Perv should be worried about this. The Pak Supreme Court and its Chief launched the current round of troubles, and they may yet bring him down.
Courts in major cities including Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, Islamabad and Rawalpindi were largely deserted and lawyers hoisted black flags, witnesses said. In Lahore, about 500 lawyers wearing black armbands marched on a road chanting slogans against Musharraf. Dozens of lawyers rallied in Quetta chanting ``Go Musharraf, Go!''
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Senior (JUI-S) leader Pir Abdur Rahim Naqshbandi announced on Wednesday that he would contest the upcoming presidential elections, with JUI-S MNA Qari Gul Rehman as his covering candidate. We will contest the presidential elections, since General Pervez Musharraf is a liberal man and we are representatives of mosques and madrassas, Gul told Daily Times.
He said if all opposition parties, particularly the Muttahida Majlise-Amal (MMA) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, united against Musharraf, he would not stand a chance. We will defeat Musharrafs pride with our humility, Qari said. I have also written a letter to MMA President Qazi Hussain Ahmad seeking his support and permission to contest the election, he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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Fifty tribal elders from North and South Waziristan, who had boycotted the Pak-Afghan joint peace jirga held in Kabul last month, have been convinced to participate in a smaller joint jirga. A senior official of the Interior Ministry said that the smaller jirga, consisting of 25 members each from Pakistan and Afghanistan, was likely to meet this month and that the names of the participants were being finalised. The smaller jirga was constituted by the Joint Peace jirga in Kabul to monitor and oversee the implementation of its decisions and recommendations. It is also to expedite the ongoing process of dialogue for peace and reconciliation with the Taliban as well as plan and facilitate the convening of the next Joint Peace jirga. Interior Ministry Additional Secretary Imtiaz Qazi said that the participation of the elders in the meeting of the smaller jirga would help improve law and order in the tribal belts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Imtiaz said that the meeting of the Joint Peace jirga in Kabul was very successful and that the tribal elders had missed that opportunity by boycotting the meeting.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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The government has decided to give negotiations a chance to secure the release of 240 soldiers including seven officers from the custody of the Mehsud tribe in South Waziristan, a senior government official told a select group of journalists on Thursday.
They're trying to put off getting their asses handed to them by the Mehsuds again. The Mehsuds, meanwhile, are even more puffed up than usual. Look for their demands to get more extravagant.
It is a difficult situation and a different environment. We do not want to inflame the whole area ...
"Our army sucks. It's only good for handing out guns to jihadis."
Negotiations are continuing ...
"We're desperate to come up with some sort of a deal, 'cuz we got nuttin', nuttin' to back up anything we say."
We need to give some time to political talks, the official said,
"How much time?"
"30, maybe 40 years."
...adding that it had been decided at the highest level that the situation was hopeless should not be allowed to aggravate. But we have all options to get the army men released ... the situation cannot be allowed to linger on.
"Certainly not longer than 40 years. That's the absolute tops."
He said the troops were captured because they exercised restraint and complacency together.
That means they stuck their soft little hands in the air and dropped their guns.
He said the Americans and NATO forces were failing in Afghanistan because they had insufficient troops and collusion with those who had stakes in drug trafficking and gunrunning.
This is known as "changing the subject."
NATO forces and the Americans cannot succeed in Afghanistan until they take the Taliban on board, he said.
We reported 40 turbans dead today. How many did the Pak army account for?
Without naming any country, the official did not rule out any foreign hand in the suicide bombings in Pakistan and said there were foreign and local vested interests that were creating a perception that Pakistans law enforcement agencies were not capable of handling the internal security situation.
They always fall back on that mysterious "foreign hand" to account for their internal troubles with extremists. I doubt they consider the Arabs running operations from Chitral as "foreign hands," which means they're talking, as usual, about India, which for the most part doesn't really give a crap about what goes in in Pakistain - only about what comes oozing out over the line of contraol.
He said that there was cross-border movement, but it had considerably reduced.
"Really. It's down to just about nothing. It'll dry up all the way, come the Brutal Afghan Autumn."
He linked the suicide bombings with the tribal situation. The linkages are mostly in NWFP and also in other parts of the country.
"Which ones?"
"Pretty much all of them."
He said the government could choke the supplies to the tribal areas but it would be a last resort.
He said if the army was not present in the area, the Americans or NATO forces would have moved in to attack militants in the tribal areas.
Instead of waiting for them to cross into Kunar and Paktia.
Doing is the main problem. There are people here who supported the Taliban. Money and ethnic linkages are there. If we do not do it, someone else will do it, the official said, adding that it was a situation where Pakistan could not refuse to handle the militants.
Instead, they're pretending to do it. That'll stay the heavy hand of retribution for another few months.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Taliban
#1
"Doing is the main problem. There are people here who supported the Taliban. Money and ethnic linkages are there. If we do not do it, someone else will do it."
Well, whatever 'it' is, I blame Bush. He's consistently refused to take the Taliban on board.
(AKI/Asian Age) - Terrorism suspects Imran Khan and Kaleem, alias Rafiq, have claimed that the perpetrators of last month's deadly blasts in Hyderabad are still present in the city. The twin bombings there on 25 August killed at least 42 people and wounded more than 60, according to police. Khan and Kaleem made this startling revelation while they were subjected to narco-analysis tests in Bangalore over the past two days. Bangalore Forensic Science Laboratory director B.M. Mohan said a narco test was conducted on Kaleem on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Imran, a bank executive, had undergone the test. Imran reportedly admitted that he had stored 10kg of the explosive RDX in his house and passed on to others. RDX, used by the military and industry, can also be used as a component of many plastic bonded explosives used in nuclear weapons.
Kaleem confessed to having provided logistical support and SIM cards to the terror cell. He and Khan two also told forensic experts who conducted the tests that there could be more attacks in Hyderabad. "They spoke about the twin blasts too," said Mohan, adding: "There are many similarities in their separate confessions. We will submit them to the Hyderabad cops." He said experts will decide whether to conduct one more narco test after four days. "I have to check up whether they talked about Shahid or Hamza," he said. "I can tell you that they gave very useful information."
Shahid reportedly heads the Bangladesh module of Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence and is in charge of all jihadi activities in south India. He is suspected to be hiding in Riyadh. Kaleem has been in judicial custody for the last two years.
Bangalore police reportedly also want to conduct giggle juice narco analysis tests on Khan and Kaleem to know more about the December 2005 attack on the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore. The second round of tests could take place on Friday or Saturday.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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(Xinhua) -- Terrorism is spawned by al-Qaeda, foreign terrorists and some elements of Taliban, and Pakistan must get rid of them, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said on Thursday.
Like you're doing with the Mehsuds, Perv?
Musharraf made the remarks at a TV program at the President's House here on Thursday. Although the army was mainly for meeting the external threats
... and not very good at that...
but it was also the duty of the army to counter the internal threats, Musharraf said.
Barring the establishment of a competent internal security force. But the army's no great shakes, either.
He added that the army could be withdrawn from Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) if there was an assurance that all foreign terrorists would leave the area and there was a complete end to militancy.
If you exercise sovreignty over the country, the army is garrisoned where you need to put it, not withdrawn from where local bad guys declare no-go areas. There's no other country in the world that would put up with that situation.
Lebanon.
Whoops. My bad. No other functional country.
Musharraf vowed that Pakistan would not be allowed to become a soft state where foreign terrorists could seek a safe haven.
Then his lips fell off. Pakistain just happens to be crawling with domestic and foreign terrorist cooties. It's World Terror Central. Each and every major act of international terrorism in the past six years (at the very least) has had a Pakistain connection.
He said a holistic strategy was pursued to counter extremism and combat terrorism, and there were some misguided elements opposing the government's policy to make Pakistan a secure and prosperous country.
"Holistic." Is that a synonym for "convoluted, counter-intuitive, and ineffectual"?
A four-pronged strategy had been adopted in dealing with the malaise. Terrorism was being dealt with a strong military force
Like in either Wazoo...
while extremism tackled through a prudent approach, Musharraf said,
That's not even a sentence. I'm not even sure it's a sentence fragment.
adding that a political strategy was aimed at weaning away the people from extremists and isolating them, coupled with administrative and development steps to overcome the menace of extremism and terrorism.
Still haven't gotten to the point where you're willing to kill just as many of them as they want to kill of your side, and just as ruthlessly? That tells me you're still trying to work your backroom deals to keep some of them in your pocket as tools to torment your neighbors.
Musharraf warned that obscurantist views were spilling over into the settled districts which must be stopped.
He's still using present tense to describe things that should be in past imperfect.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
#1
Perv knows if he gets rid of the militants the US/West would not need him anymore.Its in his interest to make the West scared so he can stay in power!!!
Posted by: Paul ||
09/07/2007 6:54 Comments ||
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#2
It goes way beyond that. The turbans represent Pakistain's most effective means to project state power. Their army's pretty much useless and their air force is plagued by Inshallah maintenance. They've got nukes, but everybody else who has any has more.
The Pak oligarchy's self-image is that of subtle, genius-level masterminds, pulling strings of plausible deniability. Their objectives are to establish suzerainity over Afghanistan and to break up India, first taking the chunks that are Muslim for themselves, then imposing Islam on the remnants. Somewhere in the process they intend to reabsorb the Babus of Bangla.
The Pak oligarchy's actuality isn't nearly as subtil as they think it is. Anyone who deals with them comes to realize within a week that they lie for the sake of lying, even if it's to their tactical or strategic disadvantage; it's so much a cultural characteristic by now as to be pretty much unconscious. They're clumsy and they're crude and any martial qualities they might have started out with in 1947 have by now been eroded by their penchant for awarding themselves land grants, business interests, and government sinecures. The Spartans avoided the easy life; the Punjabis use their military as a method of seeking it.
As a result, they stiffen their ranks with Pastoons, which brings with it another set of problems. In Pashtunistan ignorance is considered a virtue, brutality something to be admired. And of course there's the religion thing; they take it much more seriously than the whisky-drinkin' pseudo-Brits of the Punjab elite. That makes for real fierce warriors and such - viz., the Mehsuds - but modern armies work because of technology and discipline. A love of explosives and the willingness to bonk your head on the floor five times a day whilst bowing toward Mecca aren't the same thing.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 10:40 Comments ||
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#3
Anyone who deals with them comes to realize within a week that they lie for the sake of lying, even if it's to their tactical or strategic disadvantage; it's so much a cultural characteristic by now as to be pretty much unconscious.
Welcome to the downside of taqiyya. Much like cheating in chess, your wins don't rely upon skill so much as seizing the opportunity to cheat. Allowing yourself to cheat destroys all development of genuine ability.
So it is with taqiyya. Allowing oneself the lax morals and ethics that countenance taqiyya breeds up a dependence upon unfair advantage which stifles intellectual development and the achievement of excellence. Over-reliance upon plausible deniability inculcates a fatal sloppiness inherent in avoiding signature grade work. Taqiyya represents the ultimate in lack of personal responsibility. Transposed to a national level, one gets the mayhem and chaos currently known as Pakistan. Small wonder they are a hub of international terrorism. Little else could arise from such a philosophical cesspool.
The U.S. military's claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends. Reductions in violence form the centerpiece of the Bush administration's claim that its war strategy is working.
Therefore any claim of success must be vigorously refuted.
In congressional testimony Monday, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is expected to cite a 75 percent decrease in sectarian attacks.
But he's probably lying.
According to senior U.S. military officials in Baghdad, overall attacks in Iraq were down to 960 a week in August, compared with 1,700 a week in June, and civilian casualties had fallen 17 percent between December 2006 and last month. Unofficial Iraqi figures show a similar decrease. Still, the WaPo was able to find room for disagreement, in its quest to be fair and balanced.
Others who have looked at the full range of U.S. government statistics on violence, however, accuse the military of cherry-picking positive indicators and caution that the numbers -- most of which are classified -- are often confusing and contradictory.
"Liars and thieves, the lot of 'em!"
"Let's just say that there are several different sources within the administration on violence, and those sources do not agree," Comptroller General David Walker told Congress on Tuesday in releasing a new Government Accountability Office report on Iraq.
"Really. There are i's that are undotted, t's uncrossed, and big piles of numbers that don't come out identically with other big piles of numbers, some of them random."
Senior U.S. officers in Baghdad disputed the accuracy and conclusions of the largely negative GAO report, which they said had adopted a flawed counting methodology used by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Many of those conclusions were also reflected in last month's pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. Oh, so some folks think the violence is less than indicated?
The intelligence community has its own problems with military calculations. Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."
"If it went in the side of the head, it was suicide. And if it came straight down, into the top of the head and out the feet, the victim was smote."
"Depending on which numbers you pick," he said, "you get a different outcome." Analysts found "trend lines . . . going in different directions" compared with previous years, when numbers in different categories varied widely but trended in the same direction. "It began to look like spaghetti." So some trends are down, compared to last year, when they were all up?
Among the most worrisome trends cited by the NIE was escalating warfare between rival Shiite militias in southern Iraq that has consumed the port city of Basra and resulted last month in the assassination of two southern provincial governors.
This is known as "red on red," and it's number 26 on the scale of military concerns. To be classified as red on red, the bullet has to enter the forward left quadrant of the head, either directly over or immediately to the left of the eye.
According to a spokesman for the Baghdad headquarters of the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), those attacks are not included in the military's statistics. "Given a lack of capability to accurately track Shiite-on-Shiite and Sunni-on-Sunni violence, except in certain instances," the spokesman said, "we do not track this data to any significant degree."
"You might say that we don't care enough to track it, because the victims mean nothing to us. Besides, the Brits kept telling us they had everything under control and we should be more like them. That's why I bought his monocle and swagger stick."
Attacks by U.S.-allied Sunni tribesmen -- recruited to battle Iraqis allied with al-Qaeda -- are also excluded from the U.S. military's calculation of violence levels. How about the Police and Iraqi Army 'attacks', are they counted?
Attacks by allied tribes are known as "blue on green" violence, though sometimes they are referred to as "blue on puce" by the don't-ask-don't-tell community. To be classified as blue-on-green/puce the bullet must enter the head in the forward right quadrant, either directly over or immediately to the right of the eye. In the event of muliple bullet holes, only the second largest is counted, to preserve the grading curve.
The administration has not given up trying to demonstrate that Iraq is moving toward political reconciliation, neither has the WaPo deviated from its' 'quagmire' meme. Testifying with Petraeus next week, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker is expected to report that top Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders agreed last month to work together on key legislation demanded by Congress.
He's a liar, of course. Karl Rove is making him say that. You can see the steel bars attached to his lips through the back of his head.
If all goes as U.S. officials hope, Crocker will also be able to point to a visit today to the Sunni stronghold of Anbar province by ministers in the Shiite-dominated government -- perhaps including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, according to a senior U.S. official involved in Iraq policy. The ministers plan to hand Anbar's governor $70 million in new development funds, the official said.
But they probably won't take that bribe. They'll probably all be killed by the Iraqi equivalent of the Minutemen.
But most of the administration's case will rest on security data, the whole point of the surge according to military, intelligence and diplomatic officials who would not speak on the record before the Petraeus-Crocker testimony. Several Republican and Democratic lawmakers who were offered military statistics during Baghdad visits in August said they had been convinced that Bush's new strategy, and the 162,000 troops carrying it out, has produced enough results to merit more time.
This article starring:
Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker
Comptroller General David Walker
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/07/2007 06:44 ||
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#1
Wonder if WaPo will take the same tack on violence in DC? Can we really believe the numbers reported by the inept and corrupt DC public safety officials, staffed largely through influence and graft rather than merit? Shouldn't tourist be warned to stay away [just as the State Department warns American tourist to other exotic and strange foreign locations]? Not that tourism is important to the economy of DC, we just want a consistent standard.
#2
I will take the trend that the media would have reported increases in violence left and right if it had happened. In fact violence so decreased it seems they were forced reluctantly to say things in Iraq are getting better even if this means possibly helping Bush.
#3
This is the pursest form of idiotic Beltway bubble-blowing. As in almost all cases to date, the administration bears a heavy responsibility for allowing this b.s. to go on and have any traction at all due to their ineptness at framing an issue and simple invisibility in the daily grind of countering disinfo and bad analysis.
The "benchmark" nonsense is the most egregious, esp. the political side of course. Utterly irrelevant to how a great power pursues its national interests in a grueling and long-term test of wills with barbaric adversaries.
#4
Why would the main stream media conspire with Petraeus to not report the violence? Because they are all over Iraq covering the violence there daily, aren't they?
Israel is "fully prepared" for the possibility of a conflict in the North, defense officials said late Thursday, after Syria alleged it had fired on a pre-dawn IAF flight over the coastal city of Latakia.
The IDF officially refused to comment on reports from Syria that its air defenses fired on a formation of IAF warplanes that entered Syrian airspace from the Mediterranean. In addition, fears mounted that Hizbullah would use the escalating tensions along the Golan Heights as an excuse to initiate its own conflict with Israel.
Despite these fears, troops and tanks were not massing in the North, and the top defense brass carried on with their regular schedules, attempting to broadcast an air of "business as usual." The IDF's Northern Command released a statement reassuring northern residents that there was "no cause for concern." Syrian Vice President Farouk Shara, speaking in Italy, said his country was not interested in being drawn into a war with Israel.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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A senior Hamas official announced on Thursday that his organization would not allow the Red Thingy Cross to visit kidnapped IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Schalit, Army Radio reported. "If Israel knows where he is located, they might blow the place up in order to bring about his death and end the whole affair," he said.
He added that Hamas had received no new offers to free Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Schalit, but that there was movement on the issue and that other officials were mediating between the two sides after the Egyptians stopped their mediation efforts. The comments came after an Associated Press report on Wednesday that Cpl. Gilad Schalit's kidnappers "may permit" International Committee of the Red Thingy Cross representatives to visit him - a report that the ICRTC later denied. ICRTC officials have constantly demanded that Schalit be allowed visitors and to send messages to his family, but these requests have been denied, Bana Sayeh of the ICRTC's east Jerusalem office said on Wednesday.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under:
#1
Next time, take all of the land you want until you find him.
#6
Betcha he's dead, that's the reason you "Can't" talk to him.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/07/2007 12:06 Comments ||
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#7
Yup, RJ. Were Shalit the proverbial goose that laid the golden egg, the Palestiniansin their genocidal gleestill could not but kill him just as quickly. I will be astounded if Shalit emerges from this alive. Nor will his corpse be remotely fresh, either.
#8
Believe it or not, he's still alive and being held in Gaza. At least he was as of the first of July. The paloes broke his hand so badly that he needed surgery. A few weeks prior to that, they released an audio tape of Shalit pleading for a prisoner exchange (obviously at gunpoint with a read script).
As to why the paleos haven't killed him yet, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe they think the Israelis will cave? Seems unlikely.
The Foreign Ministry has in recent days exchanged "strong words" with the Norwegian embassy in Tel Aviv over a diplomatic document the embassy sent back to Oslo calling for criticism of Israel for allegedly using torture in prisons, diplomatic officials in Jerusalem said Thursday night.
Kind of amazing, isn't it: the merest allegation of the JoooozZionists Israelis permitting torture is enough to elicit paroxysms of apoplexy in all the proper thinkers, such as Norway, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Watch and the Dhimmicratic Party. For some strange and unexplained reason, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollahk, the Egyptian police, the Mad Mullahs, et al., do much worse things to people in their custody and one doesn't hear a peep.
The Norwegian state radio network NRK reported Thursday it had obtained a secret diplomatic document from the embassy urging action by "expressing our concern that torture is still practiced in Israel." According to NRK, the embassy's concern stemmed from a report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel claiming that prisoners were sometimes beaten during interrogation, held in painfully tight handcuffs and suffered isolation, threats, humiliation and sleep deprivation.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Global Jihad
#1
PNG the entire Norwegian embassy staff for being too stupid to do their jobs.
#3
. . . Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollahk, the Egyptian police, the Mad Mullahs, et al., do much worse things to people in their custody and one doesn't hear a peep.
Add to that the governments of:
Sudan (vs the blacks)
Saudi Arabia (vs anyone they don't like)
Lebanon (vs the palis)
Worse than Israel? Anyone who would say so is clearly antisemitic. And a lot of people would.
Iran said on Thursday it had struck a deal with Russia on a timetable for the start-up of the Islamic states first nuclear power plant, but an official in Moscow said negotiations with Tehran were still under way.
Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani was quoted by the state broadcaster as saying good agreements had been reached with Moscow for the inauguration of the Russian-built Bushehr plant, without giving details on when it might happen. The timing of the power stations launch is significant as it is viewed by the United States as an important element in a nuclear drive which the West suspects is a front for developing atomic weapons.
In Moscow, the contractor building the plant in southwestern Iran said talks were not yet finished. The negotiations are still under way and we do not yet have results from that so I am not confirming this information, said Irina Yesipova, a spokeswoman for Atomstroiexport. Russia has repeatedly delayed the Bushehr plant which under a previously announced schedule was due to be started up in September 2007.
A Russian sub-contractor has since said there is no chance of it happening before autumn 2008. Moscow has traditionally been seen as Tehrans closest big-power ally but the delays to Bushehr have chilled relations. For the inauguration of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, we have reached good agreements with Russia, Larijani was quoted as saying by the web site of state broadcaster IRIB.
In these agreements, the timetable for the on-time provision of nuclear fuel and the inauguration of this plant has been specified, he said in the Iranian city of Qom. Moscow says there is no evidence that Tehran has the capability to make nuclear weapons, but ties have been strained by what Russian officials say are millions of dollars in missed payments for Bushehr.
Iranian officials say they have made the proper payments and that Moscow is delaying due to pressure from the West. Russian nuclear officials say that nuclear fuel would have to be sent to Bushehr, a project initiated by Iran in the countrys southwest in the 1970s, at least six months before the reactors start. Analysts have speculated that Moscow could be adapting its policy towards Tehran or that the Kremlin is using Bushehr as a bargaining chip in a wider diplomatic game.
But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last week he believed Russia was committed to finishing work as planned on the Bushehr power station. Russia has defended its nuclear cooperation with Iran, saying it anchored Tehran into talks about its nuclear programmeme and helped keep it under the scrutiny of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora urged Syria on Thursday to step up its efforts to prevent arms smuggling into Lebanon, echoing a request made by the U.N. in June after it investigated security along the two countries' shared border.
The U.N. resolution that ended last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah banned weapon transfers to the Iranian- and Syrian-backed militant group, but the Lebanese and Israeli governments have criticized alleged violations by Syria. "We've always expressed the necessity for serious border control and suitable efforts by our brothers in Syria to control these borders," said Siniora, following a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo. "The continuation of the (current) situation is subjecting Lebanon to the illegal smuggling of more goods, weapons and individuals."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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MP Walid Jumblatt said that Lebanon's Speaker Nabih Berri has information or trying to predict that something shocking is going to happen in Lebanon about 10 days prior to the presidential election date.
The Democratic gathering leader disclosed the above during an interview on LBC TV on Kalam el Nas talk show program with Marcel Ghanem "If I exercise my democratic right by voting in an election of a president based on 50% + 1 member of the parliament there could be assassinations, an uprising or Beirut could be shut down" Jumblatt told Ghanem on Thursday evening. When asked about Berri's initiative Jumblatt said " I suspect Berri's initiative is filled with assassinations."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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The Saudi Embassy in Beirut on Thursday accused the Iranian News Agency Mehr of distributing forged information alleging that Ambassador Abdul Aziz Khoja had participated in a plan to assassinate Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The embassy statement termed the report "mere fabrications aimed at misguidance."
It said Khoja contacted Nasrallah's political assistant Hussein Khalil and the party's ex-MP Mohammed Berjawi to "enquire about the reason for such fabricated reports and accusations and they stressed that Sayed Hassan Nasrallah has no information about what has been said."
The embassy, according to the statement, was informed that Hezbollah "appreciates the ambassador's stands and his role, respects his openness and is keen on him as well as on the continuity of his role."
Khoja left Lebanon amidst threats
The Saudi Arabian ambassador to Lebanon, whose government is leading supporter of Lebanon's parliament-backed government, has left Beirut on August 17 in the face of attack warnings, a senior Lebanese official said on August 25. According to the reports, Ambassador Khoja left Beirut after the Saudi Embassy had formally notified the Lebanese Foreign Ministry of a threat of attack against the ambassadors residence, his person, the embassy or other Saudi interests in Lebanon.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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The first round of DNA tests conducted on Fatah al-Islam's terrorist mastermind Shaker Absi did not match him, media reports said. The report on OTV came as a surprise to the Palestinian Scholars Association (PSA).
Used a double, did he?
Sheik Ali Youssef, a PSA member, on Thursday said the Association did not yet receive any official DNA outcome. "I was shocked at the news that preceded the final results," Youssef told LBC's Naharkom Saeed talk show.
Absi's wife on Monday identified his corpse at the public hospital in the northern town of Tripoli.
Who identified her?
"I'd know those ankles anywhere!"
However, the daily An Nahar on Thursday, citing judicial sources, said state Prosecutor Saeed Mirza has not yet received the final DNA results that would determine the fatality's identity. The sources said further forensic DNA testing would be conducted before a definite answer is given.
An Nahar also said Thursday that the death of Fatah al-Islam's spokesman Abu Salim Taha has not been confirmed. Youssef backed up An Nahar's report, saying Abu Taha's fate remains unknown after his wife, who went to a Tripoli morgue to identify him, said that the corpse was not that of her husband.
Absi's wife identified the corpse as that of her husband Shaker Absi, hospital manager Nasser Adra told reporters on Monday. He did not disclose further details. Absi was killed along with 31 fellow terrorists in a major showdown with the Lebanese Army that ended the Nahr al-Bared battle which broke out on May 20.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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Syria accused Israel of bombing its territory on Thursday and warned it could respond, but Israel Radio carried a denial there had been an air strike. The official Syrian news agency said there were no casualties or damage and that Syrian air defenses fired on the incoming planes shortly after midnight. Israel Radio, quoting an unidentified military source, said there had been no air strike on Syria. But a military spokesman told Reuters: "We're still checking."
The Syrian news agency SANA said the aircraft "infiltrated Syrian airspace through the northern border coming from the direction of the Mediterranean and headed towards northeastern territory, breaking the sound barrier." It added: "The Syrian Arab Republic warns the government of the Israeli enemy and reserves the right to respond according to what it sees fit."
Local residents said they heard the sound of five planes or more above Tal al-Abiad area on Syria's border with Turkey, around 160 km (100 miles) north of the Syrian city of Rakka. An Israeli military source earlier said the air force had been carrying out a major exercise this week. Israeli aircraft routinely train over Turkey, a Muslim country friendly with Israel.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Two spooks on a sneak & peek got lit up, so they dropped their linger tanks and skedaddled.
In its harshest condemnation of Israel since last summer's war, Human Rights Watch charged that most of the Lebanese civilian casualties came from "indiscriminate Israeli air-strikes," according to a report to be released Thursday.
In a statement issued before the report's release, the human rights organization said there was no basis to the Israeli claim that civilian casualties resulted from Hezbollah guerrillas using civilians as shields. Israel has said it attacked civilian areas because Hezbollah set up rocket launchers in villages and towns.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Didn't Lebanon just destroy a refugee camp and slaughter hundreds of terrorists? As for proof of
Hizbollah use of human shields, I saw ample proof of missiles being launched from civilian areas.
Two weeks ago Lebanon's army chief General Michel Suleiman tied to clear Syria's name from any affiliation with Fatah al-Islam to please the Hezbollah-led pro-Syrian opposition. Today General Suleiman did it again by saying that the army victory in Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp against the Fatah al-Islam terrorists is a continuation of Hezbollah's victory in the July war against Israel.
Hezbollah declared at the end of the war that it won and called it a 'divine victory.' Suleiman's declaration will sure again please Hezbollah and all the pro-Syrian allies , despite the fact that the majority of the Lebanese strongly feel that Lebanon was the biggest loser in the July 2006 war, since 1280 Lebanese were killed against 160 Israelis, over 1 million Lebanese were displaced and 110,000 homes were destroyed...add to this the devastation to the infrastructure and the Lebanese economy.
Suleiman's timing is also very significant , since the pro-Syrian opposition has called for a consensus on the president that will replace Emile Lahoud, before the election day ( September 25) set by Speaker Nabih Berri. Suleiman's name has been mentioned on different occasions as a consensus candidate but surely his last statement about the alleged victory of Hezbollah will not go well with the anti-Syrian majority and many may accuse him of being pro-Syrian and thereby eliminate him as a candidate. The last thing the parliament majority needs is another Emile Lahoud , whose aim is to please Syria at Lebanon's expense and whom the Syrian president calls " my personal representative in Lebanon".
In any case in order to consider Suleiman as a candidate the Lebanese constitution has to be amended, a move that the March 14 allies consider to be very unlikely. Usually government employees and Suleiman is one, have to resign 2 years prior to running for presidential post according to the constitution.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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Though Wednesday's arrests of three radical Islamists preparing terror strikes in Germany was dramatic, many of the tactics and habits the suspects have demonstrated while under surveillance are not particularly new to terrorism investigators. Indeed, one of the main assets counter-terrorism officials file away from each attempted or executed strike are shared similarities that raise their chances of heading off future attacks before they happen. Highlights from the article below. More details at link.
o Among the biggest trends in terror: there are more lone wolves. "Increasingly, you're not dealing with organizations, groups, or even cells any more, but rather one or several individuals who are out there taking action in an isolated fashion,"
o One increasingly common aspect in many plots, the NYPD report notes, is the frequent presence of converts.... "In politically incorrect language, they don't look like Muslims to most people
o one of two German converts arrested, a 28-year-old being identified as Fritz Martin G., was the leader of the busted cell. He is believed to have converted and come under the influence of extremists in the southern city of Neu-Ulm, whose large militant community has concerned officials for years. Investigators say the operational cells were formed after the trio had undergone training in Pakistan by the radical Islamic Jihad Union, and received periodic logistical support as they advanced their plot from a score of people also being sought.
o "the key": a particularly intense meeting, training session, or combat stint that pushes young extremists over the threshold of talk, and into a mind-set where action becomes a must... trips to Pakistan to meet with or receive instruction from extremists there can also serve the purpose. So, too, can intensive stints in radical religious and indoctrination centers in places like Syria
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/07/2007 07:10 ||
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#1
one of two German converts arrested, a 28-year-old being identified as Fritz Martin G., was the leader of the busted cell. He is believed to have converted and come under the influence of extremists in the southern city of Neu-Ulm
Which should put to rest any remaining claims the "islamists" act out of alienation, in reaction to "racism" or some sort of socio-economic disenfranchisement. Fritz, whatever he calls himself these days, chose to join the cult and once he joined decided to carry out its nihilistic injunctions. Did he join a psychopathic death cult because of a pre-existing psychopathology or did the death cult reprogram him into apocalyptic murder after false promise of "peace" (and virgins, must not forget the rape enticement)? Frankly, I could care less. But whatever Fritz was he was not a muslim immigrant or child of muslim immigrants, that class of strangers who claim boundless entitlement, endless deference and holy grievance.
one of two German converts to Islam arrested, a 28-year-old being identified as Fritz Martin G., was the leader of the busted Islamistcell. He is believed to have converted to Islamand come under the influence of muslimextremists in the southern city of Neu-Ulm.
Fox News sez the same. Gonna be a neat trick for Binny to rise from the dead and speak to us.
Posted by: linker neu ||
09/07/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Doubles and Photoshop, undoubtedly. Watch for re-used films with a new black beard "Shopped" on, and spliced among doubles/lookalikes current photos.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/07/2007 11:30 Comments ||
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Partly due to low value of the US $ right now. But partly geopolitics. We'll see how much pressure the Saudis choose to put on Iran via their production levels.
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.
Meanwhile in Kandahar City, Afghan authorities paraded four suspected Taliban detainees for the media Thursday, claiming the Pakistani natives were would-be suicide bombers. Although the four deny any plan to blow themselves up, they admitted they easily crossed the border into Afghanistan with jihad -- holy war -- on their mind. "When Americans captured Afghanistan, we saw they were beating people, killing people, and from that time we had this idea of jihad,'' one of the young men, 24-year-old Mohammed Shohaib, said through an interpreter. 
Disgraced Democratic fundraiser 
Lawyers boycotted courts across Pakistan on Thursday in a renewed campaign to force President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to step down, as pressure mounted ahead of the planned return of the civilian leader he ousted in a coup eight years ago. Lawyers were at the forefront of a campaign against military rule that led to the judge's reinstatement, and on Thursday began a new round of protests.
Fifty tribal elders from North and South Waziristan, who had boycotted the Pak-Afghan joint peace jirga held in Kabul last month, have been convinced to participate in a smaller joint jirga. A senior official of the Interior Ministry said that the smaller jirga, consisting of 25 members each from Pakistan and Afghanistan, was likely to meet this month and that the names of the participants were being finalised. The smaller jirga was constituted by the Joint Peace jirga in Kabul to monitor and oversee the implementation of its decisions and recommendations. It is also to expedite the ongoing process of dialogue for peace and reconciliation with the Taliban as well as plan and facilitate the convening of the next Joint Peace jirga. Interior Ministry Additional Secretary Imtiaz Qazi said that the participation of the elders in the meeting of the smaller jirga would help improve law and order in the tribal belts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Imtiaz said that the meeting of the Joint Peace jirga in Kabul was very successful and that the tribal elders had missed that opportunity by boycotting the meeting.
The government has decided to give negotiations a chance to secure the release of 240 soldiers including seven officers from the custody of the Mehsud tribe in South Waziristan, a senior government official told a select group of journalists on Thursday. 
(AKI/Asian Age) - Terrorism suspects Imran Khan and Kaleem, alias Rafiq, have claimed that the perpetrators of last month's deadly blasts in Hyderabad are still present in the city. The twin bombings there on 25 August killed at least 42 people and wounded more than 60, according to police. Khan and Kaleem made this startling revelation while they were subjected to narco-analysis tests in Bangalore over the past two days. Bangalore Forensic Science Laboratory director B.M. Mohan said a narco test was conducted on Kaleem on Wednesday.
(Xinhua) -- Terrorism is spawned by al-Qaeda, foreign terrorists and some elements of Taliban, and Pakistan must get rid of them, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said on Thursday. 
MP Walid Jumblatt said that Lebanon's Speaker Nabih Berri has information or trying to predict that something shocking is going to happen in Lebanon about 10 days prior to the presidential election date.
The first round of DNA tests conducted on Fatah al-Islam's terrorist mastermind Shaker Absi did not match him, media reports said. The report on OTV came as a surprise to the Palestinian Scholars Association (PSA).
Syria accused Israel of bombing its territory on Thursday and warned it could respond, but Israel Radio carried a denial there had been an air strike. The official Syrian news agency said there were no casualties or damage and that Syrian air defenses fired on the incoming planes shortly after midnight. Israel Radio, quoting an unidentified military source, said there had been no air strike on Syria. But a military spokesman told Reuters: "We're still checking."
In its harshest condemnation of Israel since last summer's war, Human Rights Watch charged that most of the Lebanese civilian casualties came from "indiscriminate Israeli air-strikes," according to a report to be released Thursday.
