ONE of Britains most senior military strategists has warned that western civilisation faces a threat on a par with the barbarian invasions that destroyed the Roman empire.
In an apocalyptic vision of security dangers, Rear Admiral Chris Parry said future migrations would be comparable to the Goths and Vandals while north African "barbary" pirates could be attacking yachts and beaches in the Mediterranean within 10 years.
Europe, including Britain, could be undermined by large immigrant groups with little allegiance to their host countries a "reverse colonisation" as Parry described it. These groups would stay connected to their homelands by the internet and cheap flights. The idea of assimilation was becoming redundant, he said.
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#3
ONE of Britains most senior military strategists has warned that western civilisation faces a threat on a par with the barbarian invasions that destroyed the Roman empire.
Actually the 'Goths' speak Spanish this time. While the politicians spend their gold and men fighting along the Euphrates, its the slow and continuous flow of bodies across their immediate border which will in time do them in.
Just like Briton 1,500 years ago, the central government that provides comfort, economy, and civilization will send a note which will recall the Legions and tell the locals that their defense is their problem from here on in.
Normally we should celebrate our national trait of seeing a funny side to the most trying predicaments.
However, the amount of pleasure given to certain people by the failure of the police raid on a house in east London on June 2 is deeply disturbing. The police acted on intelligence, and this raid was (we were told) the result of an operation lasting for some time.
The approach taken seems to have been less Dirty Harry than previously, following the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes 11 months ago. Despite this, a man was shot.
He and his brother seem to have been suspected of making a weapon that would have released toxic gases, and possibly killed scores of people in a confined space such as a Tube train. They have been released without charge, and yesterday treated us to a quite troubling press conference.
#1
Question: Who has received more sympathy from the British press, survivors of 7/7 or those arrested on June 2nd?
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
06/15/2006 8:13 Comments ||
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#2
Hope it's worth it, Britons, spending 500,000+ pounds a year surveilling each released detainee in hopes they don't go all jihad in the London Tube.
Posted by: ed ||
06/15/2006 9:08 Comments ||
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Yesterday my husband Paul Belien, the editor of this website, was summoned to the police station and interrogated. He was told that the Belgian authorities are of the opinion that, as a homeschooler, he has not adequately educated his children and, hence, is neglecting his duty as a parent, which is a criminal offence. The Ministry of Education has asked the judiciary to press charges and the judiciary told the police to investigate and take down his statement.
It appears that the Belgian authorities are again considering prosecution the second time in barely two months. This time the claim is not that my husband posted allegedly racist texts on this website but that he is failing his children.
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#1
I read it, at first glance it seems a way to eliminate "Religious Schools" such as Madrasses(sp) but will also apply to the religious nuts who train their children to follow such as Jim Jones and drink the nice Kool-Aid so we can all go visit God.
But It's painted with so broad a brush as to simply take away all "Parental Rights"
Seems a misguided "Good" idea, needs work.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/15/2006 18:23 Comments ||
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#2
Hey, homeschooling is a major offence against the State.
A week old, but interesting anyway. He gets it, obviously. Note the first hit I got when googling it to find the english version was of course a scornful rebutal ("Racist! Zionist!") by the french Moderate Muslim forum oumma.com...
By Daniel Ben Simon
Even two weeks later, the Jewish merchants of the Jewish Quarter were still on edge. Some of them still had fearful memories of the band of black youths dressed in black who launched an attack on the Rue des Rosiers, waving heavy baseball bats as they threatened the merchants to crack their skulls. For several long minutes, dozens of members of the Tribu KA marched down the Jewish street, shouting anti-Jewish slogans. The owner of the Jewish bookshop located where the street begins related this week that the youths shouted "Death to the Jews." The falafel stand owner said that they threatened to "fuck all the Jews."
Rue des Rosiers is at the very heart of the Jewish neighborhood of Le Marais, which has recently begun to attract members of the city's homosexual community. Actually, in people's minds, Le Marais is now more strongly associated with gays than jews, I'd say, but that's just my impression. But then again, I'm not parisian, thanks God.
Thousands of Jews were forcibly removed from their homes here 60 years ago by the Vichy authorities and were sent to transit camps, from which they were deported to death camps. The memories are still fresh, and the Jewish residents of this neighborhood still carry the scars from that era when the skies of France darkened.
#1
He is sure the Muslim immigrants have declared war on France with the intention of bringing it to its knees.
Maybe a celebration of the 24th of August will bring to the muzzies attention what can happen to minorities in France if the people feel they and their way of life are threatened.
Update: Just received an e-mail from a credible source who encourages Cpl. Beliles defenders to keep up the pressure.
I just got off the phone with [a source in the Pentagon]. The Cpl. reported to me that they were all VERY appreciative of the support and that this was a Brass decision He said they were already getting calls and that it was helping, but they needed to get a lot more to make a difference. It really is helping the Marines to know that they are not alone and that not everyone hates them He said these calls were making everyones day.
I have emailed The Sweater Kittens and offered to assist them with any legal representation (should it be required) and highly suggest that the Milbloggers and others make this a STRONGLY CONTESTED issue with the USMC Pentagon bureaucrats for the next week or so. Evidently, according to what Im being told, how this situation turns out will have far reaching implications within the USMC and with the Marines who are forward deployed. It seems they are discussing a possible new PC Policy now for the Marines.
This sucks and Im willing to go to the mat to fight on this. If we dont, were going to be overrun with a level of PC that will completely destroy the Constitution.
Heres the contact info from todays Vent:
Commandant of the Marine Corps
Phone: (703) 614-1034
Fax: (703) 614-2358
comrel@hqmc.usmc.mil
Tonight on CNN: The Military Celebrates Dangling Intestines
Posted by: Matt ||
06/15/2006 16:48 Comments ||
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I called the phone number and reminded the Marine Corps that you don't surrender the Constitution when you sign up; also, that it is an American tradition to make up insulting songs about the enemy; and pointed out the "greater good" aspect of the persecution of the corporal is the same rationale given by Judas Iscariot and Benedict Arnold for their actions. Oh, and I suggested they review Dante's Inferno for the section of Hell reserved for betrayers of trust.
#4
Matt: I can almost see some newsbunny wilting in the Georgia sun, with the 250' towers in the background, going on breathlessly about the violent lyrics. "One last thing, Aaron, we're starting to investigate reports of trainees being encouraged to chant about killing and blood on the bayonet assault course."
They couldn't leave out all the spin, of course....
PRESIDENT BUSH delivered an important demonstration of American support for Iraq's new democratic government in his visit to Baghdad yesterday. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki represents the best and maybe last hope see? that a national government can stem sectarian bloodshed, defeat Islamic terrorist organizations and die-hard defenders of Saddam Hussein, and make economic recovery possible. He has formed a unity cabinet, appointed a well-qualified defense minister and spelled out the right agenda, including an imminent campaign to pacify Baghdad with tens of thousands of Iraq's newly trained troops. But Mr. Maliki desperately needs international help to turn the tide of violence and chaos. Mr. Bush's appearance, and his assurance that America "will keep its word," should reassure Iraqis who have feared that the United States would precipitously withdraw rather than defend the country's first truly democratic government.
U.S. support, of course, cannot be unqualified, and it certainly cannot ensure success: Mr. Bush rightly told Mr. Maliki that "the future of your country is in your hands." The president spoke of the decisions the Iraqi cabinet must make, which include how to neutralize the militias maintained by several of the coalition's parties and whether and how to revise the constitution so as to share oil revenue fairly and prevent Iraq's breakup into sectarian ministates. If those decisions are wrong, or don't get made in the coming months, there will be little the Bush administration can do to rescue the country or the U.S. mission.
But what Mr. Bush can do is give the government some precious time by continuing to provide American troops and aid to a regime that is nowhere near able to defend itself or rebuild the country on its own. In Baghdad yesterday and in an administration conference at Camp David on Monday, the president didn't talk about any drawdown of U.S. troops, despite long-standing Pentagon plans to cut the U.S. force from 130,000 to as few as 100,000 by the end of this year -- and mounting pressure in Congress to go through with the cut regardless of the consequences.
If Democratic leaders such as Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) had their way, almost all U.S. troops would be out of Iraq by the end of 2006 -- a blow that Mr. Maliki's government almost certainly could not survive. Mr. Bush's willingness -- at least for now -- to resist such politically expedient demands may not rescue Iraq's fledgling political system; it may be that nothing can at this point. But he is -- correctly and courageously -- using what remains of his personal political capital to give Iraqi democracy a chance.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/15/2006 06:36 ||
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WAPO has been dabbling in fair reporting for the last 3 months. I don't know what they are up to, but I think they see the NYT going down the crapper and are looking for a backup plan in case the GOP retains a majority this year and a GOP prez in 2008.
#3
The WaPo is a liberal institution, no question about it, but it's run by grownups for the most part. The NYT, on the other hand . . . well, "Pinch" Sulzberger and Howell "Moose" Raines and whoever replaced Raines aren't grownups.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/15/2006 11:12 Comments ||
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I find myself in agreement with the WaPo editorial page, more often than not.
#5
I wouldn't go as far as Liberalhawk, but I would say that it's rare for me to come away from a WaPo editorial with the opinion that they're a bunch of hacks. They're liberal, but they're pretty honest.
Within a few hours of those arrests from the -- what was the phrase? -- "broad strata" of Canadian society, I had a little flurry of emails from radio and TV producers inviting me to toss in my two bits. But my two bits on Toronto is pretty much the same as my two bits on London and Madrid and Bali, and that's quite a mound of quarters piled up over the past five years. What's to say? The best summation is a line I first quoted in 2002, when a French oil tanker was attacked off the coast of Yemen. Back then, you'll recall, the French foreign minister was deploring American "simplisme" on a daily basis, and M. Chirac was the principal obstructionist of the neo-con-Zionist-Halliburton plan to remake the Middle East. If you were to pick only one Western nation not to blow up the oil tankers of, France would surely be it.
But they got blown up anyway. And afterwards a spokesman for the Islamic Army of Aden said, "We would have preferred to hit a U.S. frigate, but no problem because they are all infidels."
No problem. They are all infidels. In the scheme of things, launching a plot to behead the Prime Minister of Canada would not seem to be an obvious priority. No doubt they would have preferred to behead the President of the United States. But no problem. We are all infidels.
The multicultural society posits that each of its citizens can hold a complementary portfolio of identities: one can simultaneously be Canadian and Jamaican and gay and Anglican and all these identities can exist within your corporeal form in perfect harmony. But, for most Western Muslims, Islam is their primary identity, and for a significant number thereof, it's a primary identity that exists in opposition to all others. That's merely stating the obvious. But, of course, to state the obvious is unacceptable these days, so our leaders prefer to state the absurd. I believe the old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between a New York traffic light changing to green and the first honk of a driver behind you. Today, the definition of a nanosecond is the gap between a Western terrorist incident and the press release of a Muslim lobby group warning of an impending outbreak of Islamophobia. After the London tube bombings, Angus Jung sent the Aussie pundit Tim Blair a note-perfect parody of the typical newspaper headline:
"British Muslims fear repercussions over tomorrow's train bombing."
An adjective here and there, and that would serve just as well for much of the coverage by the Toronto Star and the CBC, where a stone through a mosque window is a bigger threat to the social fabric than a bombing thrice the size of the Oklahoma City explosion. "Minority-rights doctrine," writes Melanie Phillips in her new book Londonistan, "has produced a moral inversion, in which those doing wrong are excused if they belong to a 'victim' group, while those at the receiving end of their behaviour are blamed simply because they belong to the 'oppressive' majority." If you want to appreciate the forces at play among Western Muslims in societies enervated by multiculturalism, Londonistan is an indispensable read. "It is impossible to overstate the importance -- not just to Britain but to the global struggle against Islamist extremism -- of properly understanding and publicly challenging this moral, intellectual and philosophical inversion, which translates aggressor into victim and vice versa."
That's true -- although I wonder for how long even our decayed establishments can keep up the act. After the London bombings, the first reaction of Brian Paddick, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was to declare that "Islam and terrorism don't go together." After the Toronto arrests, the CSIS assistant director of operations, Luc Portelance, announced that "it is important to know that this operation in no way reflects negatively on any specific community, or ethnocultural group in Canada." Who ya gonna believe? The RCMP diversity outreach press officer or your lyin' eyes? In the old days, these chaps would have been looking for the modus operandi, patterns of behaviour. But now every little incident on the planet is apparently strictly specific unto itself: all jihad is local.
The other day, listening to an interview on America's National Public Radio with the mayor of Toronto, I was laughing so much I drove off the road. David Miller warmed up with a bit of boilerplate Islamoschmoozing: "You know, in Islam, if you kill one person, you kill everybody. It's a very peaceful religion. And they're as shocked as Torontonians are. And . . ."
Renee Montagne, the anchorette, instantly spotted the ghastly breach of PC etiquette and leapt in: "Well, they sort of are Torontonians," she pointed out.
"Sorry," gulped the mayor, hastily re-smothering Muslims within the great diversity quilt. "They're shocked as every Torontonian is . . ."
Thereafter, Ms. Montagne expressed bafflement that these allegedly alleged fellows would have wanted to commit a terrorist atrocity in what was, compared to the Great Satan next door, "a very open society, very liberal immigration policy, very good social services."
Mayor Miller agreed: "More than half of the people who live in Toronto, including myself, were not born in Canada. And I think that's why Canada works."
"Although it didn't work in this case," Ms. Montagne pointed out, somewhat maliciously.
"Well, we don't expect these kinds of occurrences, exactly because of our public services, because of diversity," blah, blah. Insofar as there's any relation between jihadists and "good social services," the latter seem to attract the former -- at least in the sense that Ahmed Ressam, Zac Moussaoui, the shoe-bomber, the tube bombers, etc., were all products of the Euro-Canadian welfare system. But go ahead, pretend that these guys were upset about insufficient "social services," that they wanted to behead Stephen Harper to highlight the fact that wait times for the beheaded at the Toronto General are now up to 18 months, and they don't always reattach the right head. It's easy to scoff that a chap who can be bothered blowing up the Canadian Parliament must be insane, but, if you were a jihadist sitting in the cave back in the Hindu Kush listening to Renee Montagne and David Miller, wouldn't you conclude that they're the ones who are nuts? The Islamic Army of Aden PR guy seems by comparison to have a relatively clear-sighted grasp of reality.
Melanie Phillips makes a point that applies to Britain, Canada and beyond: "With few exceptions, politicians, Whitehall officials, senior police and intelligence officers and academic experts have failed to grasp that the problem to be confronted is not just the assembly of bombs and poison factories but what is going on inside people's heads that drives them to such acts." These are not Pushtun yak herders straight off the boat blowing up trains and buses. They're young men, most of whom were born and all of whom were bred in London, Toronto and other Western cities. And offered the nullity of a contemporary multicultural identity they looked elsewhere -- and found the jihad. If we try to fight it as isolated outbreaks -- a suicide attack here, a beheading there -- we will never win. You have to take on the ideology and the networks that sustain it and throttle them. Does David Miller sound like a man who's up to that challenge? A reader in Quebec, John Gross, emailed me to distill the mayor's approach as: "Don't get mad, get even . . . wimpier."
Well, if Hizzoner wants to make himself a laughingstock, what's the harm? Only this -- that the more rubbish spouted by officials in the wake of these events, the more the averagely well-informed person will resent the dissembling. In that sense, Mayor Miller, M. Portelance, commissioner Paddick et al. are colluding in the delegitimizing of the state's institutions. That doesn't seem like a smart move.
One final thought: Miss Phillips is one of Britain's best-known newspaper columnists. She appears constantly on national TV and radio. No publisher has lost money on her. Yet Londonistan wound up being published first in New York, and its subsequent appearance in Britain is thanks not to Little, Brown (who published her last big book) but to a small independent imprint called Gibson Square. I don't know Miss Phillips's agent, but it's hard not to suspect that glamorous literary London decided it would prefer to keep a safe distance from this incendiary subject.
That's how nations die -- not by war or conquest, but by a thousand trivial concessions, until one day you wake up and you don't need to sign a formal instrument of surrender because you did it piecemeal. How many Muslims in Toronto sympathize with the aims of those arrested last week? Maybe we could use a book on the subject. But which Canadian house would publish it? And would the faint-hearts at Indigo-Chapters carry it?
#3
It's Darwin in action. Islam is strong and has a goal in mind that is funded, aggressive and ruthless and on the move. Liberal societies are weak, passive and dying. One is a predator one is prey.
#4
My thoughts, exactly. They're on the move only because they see us as weakened (rotting from the inside and decadent in their eyes), and they're probably right about it. And, again, the prize is Europe, while the USA are the ennemy standing in the way of the caliphate.
#5
The sad thing is that if you were to call the NY Slimes or CNN and tell them that 'Muslims fear repurcussions from the blowing up of the -famouslandmark- tomorrow' they would likely run with that type of headline and also send reporters out to -famouslandmark- to tape the event.
Many of us can see the clear and present danger arising from within our own countries but you and I both also know that many of us do not recognize those threats. Were these folks born that way or were they in fact just trained out of believing their natural sight?
It's all too easy to point out how fooked-up O'Canada and EU-Europe has become but in fact the virulent plague, the Holy Doctrine of multiculturalism, 'victim' group think, PC etiquette, and diversity-uberalis is alive and entrenched in our Universities, Law schools, Courts, Government and media right here at home in the good ole USA.
With Marines being accused of war crimes, the blogosphere is doing what it does best: scrutinizing the reporting. In this case, the site Sweetness & Light has been on Time magazine's case for what appears to be justifiable concerns over its reporting of the Nov. 19 Haditha incident, in which Marines are under investigation for killing two dozen innocent Iraqis.
Time first broke the story on Haditha in March, four months after the incident -- a delay which too few of the Marines' more ardent accusers (such as Rep. John Murtha) failed to question. One of Time's key sources who had taken footage of the aftermath was represented only as a "journalism student." It has since been learned that this eyewitness was Taher Thabet al Hadithi.
Here's how Time reporter Aparisim Ghosh described Mr. Hadithi: "[H]e's a young local man ... He brought the tape to Hammurabi Human Rights... and they brought it to us once they found out that we were inquiring about this."
In fact, Mr. Hadithi is middle-aged and a co-founder of the Hammurabi Organization. The Associated Press has described him as an "Iraqi investigator." Either Mr. Hadithi misrepresented himself to Time, or Time chose not to mention his association with the previously unknown Hammurabi Organization in its original article on the incident.
Then there's the timing issue. Mr. Hadithi says he witnessed Marines going house to house killing Iraqis, and videotaped the aftermath the next day. This raises the question of why Mr. Hadithi, or the Hammurabi Organization, waited at least two months before bringing his tape to the attention of the mainstream media, especially since Hammurabi proclaims itself a human-rights group. Nor did Hammurabi's other founder, Abdul-Rahman al Mashhadani, mention the alleged massacre during an interview with the Institute for War and Peace in December.
In a June 4 article, Time acknowledged Mr. Hadithi's connections to the Hammurabi Organization, and this time labeled him a "budding Iraqi journalist and human-rights activist." The article concludes, "If there is any beneficiary at all of the tragedy, it is Hammurabi...which is flooded with new volunteers and free to do its work more aggressively."
Time has had to correct its earlier contention that it received the video from Human Rights Watch, which Time identified as working with the Hammurabi Organization. Human Rights Watch, as Time now acknowledges, has no association with Hammurabi, raising yet another question: Just what is the Hammurabi Organization? More to the point, did Time adequately vet its founders for conflicts of interest before printing their story and putting our troops at greater risk?
Time has also had to correct its reporting that "one of the most damning pieces of evidence investigators have in their possession, John Sifton of Human Rights Watch told Time's Tim McGirk, is a photo, taken by a Marine with his cell phone that shows Iraqis kneeling -- and thus posing no threat -- before they were shot." Mr. Sifton has now admitted to Time that he has no firsthand knowledge of this mysterious photo.
As counter-evidence goes, Time's misreporting unfortunately does little to clear up what happened in Haditha. But as a case-in-point lesson in how the media can artfully angle a story, it's evidence enough.
Pakistans claim that it has completed investigation into the underground nuclear network of A.Q. Khan, the so-called father of its nuclear bomb, came just when the US had started to mount fresh pressure on Islamabad for direct access to the disgraced Khan.
"KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN!!!"
Now, influential Pakistanis are rallying behind Khan and also stepping up efforts to restore his glory amidst some alarming reports that Khan is seriously ill, maybe nearing his end.
He's got a 'heart condition'. Could stop beating at any time
Khan has been under virtual house arrest since February 2004 when he confessed to having passed nuclear secrets and material to a number of countriesIran, North Korea and Libya. In recent days, Syria too has been added to that list. The US has been insisting from the beginning that it should be allowed to talk to Khan but the Pakistan government has been equally consistent in refusing to comply with that request. Obviously, Islamabad fears that Khan, if allowed to talk directly to any outside interlocutor, might disclose information that would show complicity of both the Pakistan government and the military in his clandestine nuclear proliferation activities.
The utmost that Pakistan was willing to do for the Americans was to entertain written questions from addressed to Khan and then ask its intelligence agency to pass the questionnaire on to Khan for a reply, which would be communicated to the questioner. The preference for this circumlocutory route is another indication that Islamabad is desperate to ensure that nothing that embarrasses should come from the horses mouth and Khan will in all probability die with a pillow over his face all the secrets of his nefarious activities, which included flirting with Al Qaeda.
Pakistan wants the world to forget the misdeeds of Khan while its people continue to regard him in high esteem. If the Pakistani dictator, Gen Pervez Musharraf had not pardoned Khan for his proliferation sins he would have faced an uncontrollable public fury. Islamabad has also told the world that after smashing the nuclear smuggling network of Khan no proliferation activity has originated from Pakistan. But British media, quoting European Union intelligence, had reported as recently as May that the nuclear underground network was still alive and kicking.
Some members of Pakistans national assembly (Parliament) are now trying to get direct access to Khan, not to seek another confession or any other details about his nuclear activities but ostensibly to find out the real state of his health and the conditions in which he is living. Adding mystery to the whole episode has been the Pakistani governments order barring even his daughter, Ayesha, from seeing him in his palatial house in an exclusive suburb of Islamabadone of the many properties in and out of Pakistan that Khan owns.
A ban on other visitors, friend or family members, to Khans palace was imposed long time ago. Lately, a high wall around his compound has been erected so that neither he can see beyond his gate nor anyone outside his house can peep in. More security men have been detailed to guard his bungalow.
These security measures have closely followed on the heels of an announcement by the Pakistan government that it has completed the investigation into Khans clandestine business and the last of the 12 persons arrested after the discovery of Khan secret nuclear network has been released. That last person to be freed was one Mohammed Farooq, arrested in December 2003. No details were given; it was not known when exactly he was released. Despite his release, Farooq, an associate of Khans at the Khan Research Laboratory, has been asked to stay indoors in his Islamabad house and not to talk to anyone. It is not known whether he was found guilty of any charge.
Pakistan has maintained that its investigation into the Khan affairs has been thorough and has been found satisfactory by both the US and the UNs nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. That can hardly be the case or else the US would not have been asking Islamabad for direct access to Khan. In any case, nothing much is known about the results of the thorough investigation. Since no one in Pakistan has been punished for running the nuclear black market, should it be assumed that it was a one-man enterprise?
Pakistans thorough investigation has not impressed everyone in the US. As recently as May 19, days after Pakistan had closed the Khan investigation and completed a thorough job, David Albright had told the US Congress that Pakistan had supplied incomplete information and Islamabad ought to provide direct access to Khan. The US is anything but fully satisfied with the way Pakistan has handled the Khan investigation case. The US certainly understands that Pakistan will not provide direct access to Khan, taking shelter behind the pretext of national sovereignty and sentiments.
The US interest in talking directly to Khan is, however, not to embarrass the Pakistani government or its military. It is to know what exactly transpired between Khan and Iran. According to Pakistan government Khan has admitted that he supplied nuclear weapon designs to Libya. The Americans are quite sure that he must have supplied the same to Iran too. Conformation of that from Khan would be the clinching evidence that Irans nuclear programme is not peaceful as it claims.
Sadly, the Americans can only wring their hands in anger and frustration for their inability to get access to Khan. Way back in 1975 when Khan was working as a metallurgist in a Dutch uranium firm, Urenco, he had attracted CIAs attention for his illegal activities. The Dutch government was also aware of this but when it tried to arrest him it was the CIA which asked the Dutch not to touch him as they (the CIA) were monitoring him to know the extent of his network. This disclosure was made recently by the then Dutch Prime Minister, Ruud Lubbers. Well, the bird flew home to Pakistan with full blueprints of uranium enrichment and other necessary information to set up worlds biggest and most dangerous nuclear proliferation network.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/15/2006 12:44 ||
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The Dutch government was also aware of this but when it tried to arrest him it was the CIA which asked the Dutch not to touch him as they (the CIA) were monitoring him to know the extent of his network.
Herewith is document #2322, obtained during recent raids following the strike on Zarqawis HQ)
From the desk of Abu Yassin al-Noobei, Al Qaeda #1 in Iraq as of 11:17 AM this morning.
Greetings in these trying times. Thank you for the many encouragements and gifts, especially the box of delicious dates, although I must note that one of the dates has been beeping softly since I opened the package. If this is some manner of insect, I request that you refrain in the future from
Tarry a moment; theres a plane overhead; wonder if its a
(Rest of document is burned)
(Captured document #2323J)
From under the desk of Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, Al Qaedas #1 man in Iraq as of 14:41 this afternoon
In the name of Allah the merciful and peaceful, I bring you news of pitiless vengeance. Victory is near! Thanks to the bombs of the Crusaders Satan curse their on-board guidance systems - Zarqawi has been delivered to heaven, after a brief detour through a window frame. I know all the joyous martyrdoms have made for a hectic week. Personally, my face aches from smiling and my teeth hurt from all the cake, and I have a cramp in my hand from all the paperwork. (On behalf of HR, I would request that you cut down on the number of wives, as it makes pension disbursement rather complicated.) At the risk of dampening your commendable ardor, however, I would request that everyone refrain from glorious dying for a few weeks while we regroup.
This does not mean we are not winning. Some people look at a man who has been gravely wounded and see him as half defeated; I look at him and say he is half martyred.
Nevertheless, there are issues that need to be addressed.
The Crusaders have made several dozen raids since Zarqawis release from mortal concerns, and each raid leads to more. I must repeat: stop printing out Google Maps and leaving them around. At least clear your browser history, brothers.
You may have read reports that Al-Zarkawi had in his position a tiger-skinned negligee at the time of his glorious. This is Infidel propaganda. He was a man of highest moral standards. The suggestion that he made his bride, whom he nobly made full with child when she was 14, wear such a sinful garment is meant to weaken your spirit, and make you think of slim dark-eyed ripe women draped in the clothing of wild beasts, lips parted, exhaling the softest perfume of
All warriors must take three cold showers a day, not two.
Making a whistling sound with a descending pitch in my presence was funny the first time. We all had a good laugh. It is hereby forbidden.
Our attempts to win the hearts and minds of impoverished Iraqis are not helped when you buy the extended warranty on a car you intend to explode.
Finally, patience is our ally. We need not defeat the Americans, only outlast them. Have they not abandoned every battlefield they ever entered? Besides Germany, Japan, Korea, Kosovo and Afghanistan, of course. But just as they left Somalia when their Democrats took power, so will they leave Iraq when the criminal Zionist Bush regime is replaced by a slightly less criminal, albeit equally Zionist, Democratic regime. The Democrats wish to quit the war and return to their important issues, such as permitting men to marry, have a child with the cloning of cells, and then abort it. Such a people cannot fight; they can only beseech the United Nations to send Danes to frown from great distances. And I need not remind you that no one was ever killed by a 226 kilogram laser-guided Dane.
Patience, my brothers. All we need to do is saw off enough heads, and they will lose theirs without the blade touching their tender throats. Now if you will excuse me, I need to speak with my bodyguards. One of them is making that whistling sound again. If I told them once, I told them
(document ends)
Posted by: Steve ||
06/15/2006 10:43 ||
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Wow! I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything. Funniest thing I've read in quite a while.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/15/2006 13:42 Comments ||
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#2
And I need not remind you that no one was ever killed by a 226 kilogram laser-guided Dane.
We can fix that.
A big cast concrete number, like used in Panama City Miniature golf courses, 6x Great Dane with a GPS. Course yur glide ratio is gonna be for S*it, but hey strap some fins on it and the psyco damage could be huge.
The dust having settled -- 500-pound bombs can raise, and even manufacture, a lot of dust -- it is time to give the devil his due. To understand the diabolical genius of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, that pornographer of violence, begin with this:
He was a primitive who understood the wired world, and used an emblem of modernity, the Internet, to luxuriate in gore. But although he may have had an almost erotic enjoyment of the gore, it was also in the service of an audacious plan. And he executed it with such brutal efficiency that he became, arguably, the most effective terrorist in history.
That appellation still suits Osama bin Laden because, as the animating mind behind 9/11, he pulled the world's superpower into a war that provided the occasion for Zarqawi's rise to world prominence. Still, Zarqawi set out to prove that a central premise of the U.S. intervention in Iraq was -- is -- false. Or perhaps it is more precise to say that he decided to make it false. But if he could falsify it, it never was quite true.
The premise was that Iraqis are primarily nationalists and only secondarily sectarians. Zarqawi's wager was that explosives, used with sufficient cruelty, could blow that premise to smithereens. He may have succeeded. If so, the February bombing of the Askariya shrine, although the blast itself killed nobody, may have been the most deadly explosion since the planes hit the twin towers, because it provoked sectarian violence that may now constitute a social firestorm.
A firestorm occurs when a fire becomes so hot that rising heat pulls in cold air, an influx of oxygen that feeds the fire. A firestorm is self-perpetuating because, in effect, the fire becomes its own fuel. If Iraq's sectarian violence has reached that point, Zarqawi had made himself somewhat superfluous.
It is sometimes charged that journalism, which considers the phrase "good news'' an oxymoron ("We do not report the planes that land safely''), is missing the good news from Iraq. But so pervasive is the violence, and hence so dangerous has Iraq become for journalists, that The Wall Street Journal, hardly a hostile observer of the U.S. undertaking in Iraq, thinks the bad news might be underreported.
Even the good news often has a dark cast to it. At last -- 25 weeks after the voting -- the Iraqi parliament has produced a full government. But its first task is to conquer itself: It must end the sectarian violence by people wearing government uniforms, in the military and police.
It is frequently said that protracted terrorism has an atomizing effect on a polity, reducing civil society to so much human dust. In Iraq it may be having the opposite effect: Rather than disaggregating Iraqis, the force of the explosions -- especially the one on Feb. 22 that demolished the dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra -- seems to have blown them together, ruinously, into furious Sunni and Shiite blocs.
Just in May, just in Baghdad, sectarian violence killed 1,400 -- and that figure does not include victims of car bombs. It speaks depressing volumes about the U.S. predicament that the new idea is to ... conquer Baghdad. On April 20, the Iraq War became as long as the Korean War. This Friday the war will be as long -- 1,185 days -- as U.S. involvement in the Second World War was when U.S. troops captured the Ludendorff railway bridge at Remagen and became the first foreign troops to cross the Rhine since Napoleon's in 1805. And Baghdad beyond the Green Zone is a war zone, which accounts for the flight from the country of many educated and mobile Iraqis.
But it did not take three years of Zarqawi and terrorism and sectarian violence to turn Iraqis into difficult raw material for self-government. For that, give another devil his due: Saddam Hussein's truly atomizing tyranny and terror did that. On June 20, 2003, just 72 days after the fall of Baghdad, The Washington Post reported this vignette from Fallujah:
"Military engineers recently cleared garbage from a field in Fallujah, resurfaced it with dirt and put up goal posts to create an instant soccer field. A day later, the goal posts were stolen and all the dirt had been scraped from the field. Garbage began to pile up again.''
An Army captain asked, "What kind of people loot dirt?'' There are many answers to that question. Here is one: A kind of people who are hard to help.
Getting lost in the weeds. The point is that Iraq was a country cowed by tyranny. Thanks to a US effort similar to that for Germany in the 1940's, they have been liberated and have formed a democratic government.
Nothing lasting or profound in here but yada, yada, yada.
Death in war is rarely even dramatic in its circumstances. The sudden blast, here not there; lingering pain, too short to be taken home, but long enough to be agony. What nobility there is comes from the cause, the choice that the soldier has made.
Few causes have been worse than that of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaedas commander in Iraq. His goal was a society of command and control; his means were murder and chaos. He did not lead from the front. He never contemplated strapping on the martyrs bomb belt himself, or even engaging in a firefight. The famous video outtake of him having to be instructed in the use of the weapon he heroically posed with may have embarrassed him, but it accurately reflected his own program and vision of himself. The pudgy mastermind was not made to fight, even to murder; he intended to command, once the Americans and ordinary Iraqis were out of the way. But they did not get out of his way, and death came for the arch-bomber.
Continued on Page 49
Terrorist-infested Ramadi in the wild west of Iraq is for U.S. troops the meanest place in the country, "the graveyard of the Americans" as graffiti around town boast. There is no better place to observe American troops and the fledgling Iraqi army in combat. That's why I came. When military public affairs asked where I wanted to be embedded, I told them, "the redder, the better" (red means hostile). So they packed me off to Camp Corregidor in eastern Ramadi with the 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). The 506th's official motto is "Currahee," Cherokee for "stands alone." But they're better known as the "Band of Brothers" so dubbed by author Stephen Ambrose and HBO (although the term originally applied to just one company in the regiment)... (much more good stuff at link, including photos)
#1
That sounds like just what those guys need. A f*cking reporter following them around taking pictures of dead people to be used against them in a media campaign back home.
#2
In the vast majority of cases, Bigjim's right on the money - most MSM types are actively seeking ways to aid the enemy through their coverage. Fumento's one of the very few good guys, though.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
06/15/2006 1:10 Comments ||
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#3
it's a good read, in spite of the date it's been up for a couple of days.
Posted by: DanNY ||
06/15/2006 8:08 Comments ||
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#5
I read this article and was not terribly surprised by the Arab tactics. They love that gun and run MO. If I were the commander I would be setting ambushes every day until eventually the swamp would be drained. But it seems the CO has to/must let the Iraqis take care of security. I hate to admit this but it does sound hauntingly like a no-win scenario. Anyone doubt that if pressed these soldiers could clean out that town in a good afternoon? Sound like we need to put those Arab sensitivities aside and kick some Jihadi ass.
More ink equals more blood, claim two economists who say that newspaper coverage of terrorist incidents leads directly to more attacks.
It's a macabre example of win-win in what economists call a "common-interest game," say Bruno S. Frey of the University of Zurich and Dominic Rohner of Cambridge University.
"Both the media and terrorists benefit from terrorist incidents," their study contends. Terrorists get free publicity for themselves and their cause. The media, meanwhile, make money "as reports of terror attacks increase newspaper sales and the number of television viewers."
The researchers counted direct references to terrorism between 1998 and 2005 in the New York Times and Neue Zuercher Zeitung, a respected Swiss newspaper. They also collected data on terrorist attacks around the world during that period. Using a statistical procedure called the Granger Causality Test, they attempted to determine whether more coverage directly led to more attacks.
The results, they said, were unequivocal: Coverage caused more attacks, and attacks caused more coverage -- a mutually beneficial spiral of death that they say has increased because of a heightened interest in terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001.
One partial solution: Deny groups publicity by not publicly naming the attackers, Frey said. But won't they become known anyway through informal channels such as the Internet?
Not necessarily, Frey said. "Many experiences show us that in virtually all cases several groups claimed responsibility for a particular terrorist act. I would like the same rule that obtains within a country: Nobody can be called a criminal -- in our case a terrorist -- if this has not been established by a court of law."
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/15/2006 22:17 ||
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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.
