For those of you who missed the beginning of the brouhaha, this Wikipedia article shows all the original Danish cartoons about Mohammed, as well as some of the controversial follow-on newspaper front pages. Surprisingly (at least to me) the article also discusses, with links, the large variety of hateful cartoons printed in various newspapers throughout the Muslim Ummah, not just the Arab countries.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington on Friday condemned caricatures in European newspapers of the Prophet Mohammad, siding with Muslims who are outraged that the publications put press freedom over respect for religion.
By inserting itself into a dispute that has become a lightning rod for anti-European sentiment across the Muslim world, the United States could help its own battered image among Muslims.
"These cartoons are indeed offensive to the belief of Muslims," State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper said in answer to a question. "We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable."
"We call for tolerance and respect for all communities for their religious beliefs and practices," he added.
Major U.S. publications have not republishing the cartoons, which include depictions of Mohammad as a terrorist. That is in contrast to European media, which responded to the criticism against the original Danish newspaper that printed the caricatures by republishing the offensive images themselves.
Well, folks, here it is. Bush has now passed up a golden opportunity to highlight the oppressive nature of Islam in favor of pushing his religious agenda. I have long complained about the ongoing erosion of the separation of church and state being brought about by this administration. More lately, I have decried how Bush's own overemphasis on religiosity has become a new flavor of Kool-Aid that the White House is drinking, which is obliging them to avoid outright criticism of Islam.
Welcome to the logical conclusion. Our freedom of speech is being sacrificed on the altar of Bush's own religious obsession. Few better occasions will present themselves when it comes to vividly demonstrating the immense danger of repressive Islamism. Instead, there is an incredibly inappropriate and damaging attempt at conciliation right when Islam most needs to be tarred with its own intransigence.
The wrongs of Islam must be thrust into its own lap. For the West to continually be obliged to correct and assuage the constant threat of Muslim radicalism is both foolish and ineffectual. At some point, Islam must be made responsible for cleaning its own house of the violent jihadists. Instead, we are treated to the ugly spectacle of our government pandering to the absolute worst that Islam has to offer.
Our government is required to clearly identify the enemies of our nation and ensure that they are thwarted on all fronts. To be required to show the least respect for a religion that constantly depicts Americans as pigs, dogs and monkeys while restraining our own right to retaliate in kind is simply insane. Bush is drinking the Kool-Aid of moral relativism and attempting to place Islam in the category of religions that are acceptable as they stand.
Islam must not be viewed as anything less than a political ideology until it comprehensively renounces violent jihad and its desire to install universal sharia law upon an unwilling global population. Until these two important changes come about, Islam is our enemy and any succor given to them is simple treason.
I am eager to see how fellow Rantburgers interpret this latest fiasco in the global war on terror. I am completely disgusted.
#1
Zenster, I suspect this action has more to do with maintaining coalitions than with faith-based initiatives. Bush's proposals on faith-based initiatives had to do with finding better ways to aiding the underclass, whose needs are served better by religious charities than by the government.
State is saying this for purposes of maintaining good relations with muslim-majority allies. I understand your skepticism about initiatives that seem to blur the boundary between church and state but I don't think that's the dynamic at work here.
Posted by: Jonathan ||
02/03/2006 13:56 Comments ||
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#2
I also disagree with Zenster, particularly since implementing the measures he lays out would be very short-sited given our allies in the new governments of Iraq and Afghanistan. That said, I think this is a horrible mistake, since the basic lesson here is that if you don't want your religion to be made fun of, be violent. Yeah, cause that message won't empower extremists at all ...
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 14:26 Comments ||
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#3
State is saying this for purposes of maintaining good relations with muslim-majority allies.
Johnathan, I appreciate your calm approach to this, admittedly, divisive issue. Our freedom of expression goes to the core of what differentiates democracy from theocracy. To knowingly deprecate the rightful actions of American citizens in pursuit of ameliorating relations with countries that consistently repress their populations goes directly against the grain of being committed to democracy.
It is exactly these sort of seemingly innocuous concessions (see Britain and their constant appeasement of Islamic sensibilities), that will eventually reveal themselves to be the death of a thousand cuts. No one of these slight concessions can be identified as any sort of actual tipping point. The real fulcrum lies in how Islam's political ideology marches under the false colors of religion. Islam seeks to upset the checks and balances of democratic rule by demanding unwarranted respect for its own tenets above and beyond those of other religions. This is what is being done here and this ugly scenario will be repeated endlessly until we are reduced to dhimmitude. Now is the time to draw a line in the sand.
We are witnessing the Titanic collision of cultures that grant the freedom to offend greatly with a putative religion that takes great offense at the least slight. To tolerate this endless taking of offense without finally ridiculing it for the thin-skinned eggshell morality that it is does a great disservice to us all.
Until our government finally wakes up and begins to distinguish between true religions and Islam's political ideology we will merely slide into a cesspit of self-imposed hobbling that claims more American blood and treasure each day.
#5
That said, I think this is a horrible mistake, since the basic lesson here is that if you don't want your religion to be made fun of, be violent. Yeah, cause that message won't empower extremists at all ...
Dan Darling, I believe you have things inverted. Islam was already violent, long before anyone started poking fun at them. In fact, it is the constant face-making and incendiary rhetoric spewed forth by Islam that has most likely resulted in people finally becoming fed up and showing their disrespect for such immature squalling.
What is called for here is a side-by-side publication of the European cartoons with the much more degrading and propagandistic filth that is daily printed in the Arab press.
While I concur that it would be to needlessly alienate the infant governments of Iraq or Afghanistan, it is far more important to protect our democratic freedoms and make it clear why they are more deserving of protection when faced with constraining them for the sake of appeasing an oppressive and tryannical doctrine.
Dan Darling, I believe you have things inverted. Islam was already violent, long before anyone started poking fun at them. In fact, it is the constant face-making and incendiary rhetoric spewed forth by Islam that has most likely resulted in people finally becoming fed up and showing their disrespect for such immature squalling.
What is called for here is a side-by-side publication of the European cartoons with the much more degrading and propagandistic filth that is daily printed in the Arab press.
While I concur that it would be to needlessly shortsighted to alienate the infant governments of Iraq or Afghanistan, it is far more important to protect our democratic freedoms and make it clear why they are more deserving of protection when faced with constraining them for the sake of appeasing an oppressive and tryannical doctrine.
#7
good God, Zenster. I know you pride yourself in your ability to bash Bush in a manner that you feel is so subtle that none of us are aware, and I'm not sure what sort of satisfaction you get out of that - but hey - do your own thing.
In this case, you just look excessively alarmist and silly.
Far from proving that this is evidence that freedom of speech is being sacrificed on the altar of Bush's own religious obsession - this is an adult diplomatic response from the President.
I don't think the Europeans should back down, but these cartoons are offensive - just like are cartoons of blacks with big lips or Jews with hook noses eating babies or piss Christ exhibits.
I recently bought Danish and I applaud Europe standing behind their right to freedom of speech - but your over reaction to Bush's diplomatic response just shows your own bigotry - not his.
#8
By inserting itself into a dispute that has become a lightning rod for anti-European sentiment across the Muslim world, the United States could help its own battered image among Muslims.
Seems to me that it's the Muzzies that need to do something about their image, and not via hiring a PR firm either. (hint: disowning the extremists among them would be a start)
#10
I, for one, am just glad to see Bush take the opposite side of the argument from the Europeans for once.
Besides, we'd all be pretty pissed if some Arab magazine printed a bunch of blasphemous cartoons - Jesus sodomizing goats, Mary blowing Clinton, etc. Not as extreme as the Muslims, but hey, it is pretty gratuitous.
#11
This has infinitely more to do with State traitors wanting to ensure their retirements than anything Bush has said or done.
Bush could bother to clean out State, of course, but I shudder to think what the reaction to that would be. The CIA can't keep secrets out of hatred for Bush; State would be practically running a publishing house in its eagerness to destroy him.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/03/2006 15:20 Comments ||
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#12
Besides, we'd all be pretty pissed if some Arab magazine printed a bunch of blasphemous cartoons - Jesus sodomizing goats, Mary blowing Clinton, etc. Not as extreme as the Muslims, but hey, it is pretty gratuitous.
They already do this.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/03/2006 15:21 Comments ||
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#13
This is an interesting question. I don't recall the, then current, administration apologizing to the Vartican or the Missouri Synod for financing Piss Christ. Why should they be commenting on religious issues now? And at the price of eroding freedom of the press?
The government should be expressing support and admiration for PM Rasmussen's stand in favor of Freedom of the Press. The government of the United States should have little or nothing to do with religion, including the Branch Davidians.
If our "Arab allies" want to go to war over cartoons, I'm ready to support the use of whatever level of force is required. Hanna-Barbera '08.
#14
I'm seeing some real hypocrisy here. Yesterday some (including myself) were outraged at the Ted Tolls cartoon and were bitterly criticizing the WAPO for publishing it.
"We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable."
Maybe it's just me, but I don't see an apology in that statement. I see a plea for civility. Isn't that a good thing?
Posted by: SLO Jim ||
02/03/2006 15:40 Comments ||
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#16
I think this administration is doing its damndest to avoid a full out civilizational war if it can do so.
It's a goal I support, if we can manage it. But that's not up to us alone .....
Still, I know what the alternatives will otherwise be and they are not ones I would take up lightly, or until we did our best to avoid having to use them.
Interesting take on this from the European point of view, at least some Europeans....
On the "dreadful mistake bit". Of course we Europeans (I am Belgian) have only ourselves to blame but Americans have to understand how fearful we are becoming of this violent minority in our midst. Muslims are already a majority in the lowest age groups in several large European cities. The potential for civil war is clearly there and what is even more worrysome is the dedication of most our governments to appeasement.
For the US State dept to seize this opportunity to burnish its image with the "muslim community" was only to be expected however and I am pretty sure that this is exactly the kind of noise our governments would want to hear from the US at this stage. So no harm done to us in any case. It will gain you zero goodwill from the fanatics, but it will not harm us. I do hope however that nobody at State dept really thinks that the fanatics have to be appeased and that those caricatures should not have been published. *That* would be a mistake of the first magnitude.
#19
Goodness, I used to live in Overijse! Lovely bedroom community... very proud of their champagne grapes, and had one of the area's best wine shops in the grocery store. The king and his court live on the far side of the forest in Tervuren, in much bigger houses. ;-)
#20
I agree with Nimble: Until we're at the point of completely taking our gloves off diplomatically, saying anything about this matter on our govt's part is lose/lose. It's only been a few months that Bush has even begun using the work Islamic in connection with terrorism, so the diplomatic gloves are still very much on.
They should have just taken Mark Twain's (or was it someone else?) advice and kept their collective mouth shut.
#21
I recently bought Danish and I applaud Europe standing behind their right to freedom of speech - but your over reaction to Bush's diplomatic response just shows your own bigotry - not his.
My own bigotry? Do tell. I guess you missed out when I said that "the better man" had won the election.
Appeasement is simply the absolute most stupid thing we can be doing right now. To paraphrase .com, we are apologizing for our strengths right when we should be demonstrating how such power derives from democratic administration of government.
The president is perfectly within his rights to say that, he, himself finds the cartoons to be tasteless or offensive, but to position America's administration in defense of such a blatant attack upon the freedom of the press is worse than stupid.
I make no bones about my dislike for Bush's continual erosion of the separation of church and state. It is highly amusing that none of you ever notice how I refuse to support the idiotic calls for impeachment or war crimes prosecution being made against Bush.
I do not seek to subtley bash Bush. I just want our country's essential foundations intact.
#22
More lately, I have decried how Bush's own overemphasis on religiosity has become a new flavor of Kool-Aid that the White House is drinking, which is obliging them to avoid outright criticism of Islam.
First of all, Bush didn't make these comments - but so eager you were to drive home your belief that Bush, like billions of others world wide who have faith in something beyond themselves, should instantly be discounted as a crazy loons, that you chose to ignore that.
Look around Zenster. There are churches, synagogues, and mosques on every other street corner and they are attended by more people than not. And they are all just one step away from the koolaid,right? Every single one of them. If it's not bigotry, then I guess we have different definitions for the word. But then you are stuck in the "what I believe is the only truth" mode.
Bigots are people who through their ignorance paint entire populations with one wide brush.
These cartoons are offensive. I didn't hear you defending Ted Tolls the other day for his cartoon - but that's different, cause he offended you - right?
#24
Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable."
I think this is the part of the statement that has me troubled. It's missing the "By anyone". Just a strange "in THIS manner" (caps mine).
Where's the "just as demanding the destruction of Israel is not acceptable"? Or, "Arab cartoons denagrding jews or Israel are not acceptable."?
Why is only "this" (the Danish cartoons) unacceptable and not the behaviour of islamology?
The Muslim Brotherhood must be rolling on the floor. The US has submitted to islam. A fine result for weeks of work. And the seething masses will remain mad enough to explode.
I'm puzzled. Why no demand of reciprocal "respect"? Why are they off the hook and only we responsible for our behaviour.
We've been no less provoked or insulted or "hurt".
#25
Why is only "this" (the Danish cartoons) unacceptable and not the behaviour of islamology?
Good point H, but I still think that this was an appropriate diplomatic response. Should the Danish apologize? NO. Do the muslims need to learn to deal with it if they want to join the west? Yes.
Just yesterday we were all applauding the Joint Chiefs for responding to the highly offensive Ted Tolls cartoon. Yet today we are all in a tizzy because the state department has also called for civility. I don't get it.
#26
2b - we should have said nothing, or note only that violence isn't a civilized response. Dissent? yes. Boycott? fine. Killing an innocent? Only Islam finds that an acceptable option on first try, and it's written for them to find. I spit upon their "lost dignity" and outrage if that is their standard behavior. Should I apologize next for calling Mumia a cop-killer?
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/03/2006 19:27 Comments ||
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#27
Excellent point, Frank. You are right, it would have been better if the State Department had mentioned that the Muslim response of head chopping and murder was a threat to civilization. But it's State. What did we expect? I agree that the best response would have been no response.
I'm just ticked at Zensters effort to use this lame opportunity to declare it as proof that Bush is insane for being willing to acknowledge his faith in God.
#29
But I do know how bad an overt civilizational war could get, and I know that provoking one is a key aim of the Islamacists. So I have some sympathy for administration officials who are not inclined to play along with the Danish muslims try to get one started today.
I was referring to religion in general, not Islam specifically. The lesson here is that if you're sufficiently violent, you're above criticism, which isn't the right one to send. The implication here is that if some Jews went out and vivisected some European editorialists (to use one example), they would stop calling Israel fascist, colonialist, and so on and so forth. That isn't the kind of message that any free society wants to send.
What is called for here is a side-by-side publication of the European cartoons with the much more degrading and propagandistic filth that is daily printed in the Arab press.
Maybe, but the Arab press, a lot of which is state-run or state-controlled, is almost exclusively the province of the looney bin. We've seen that demonstrated time and time again.
While I concur that it would be to needlessly alienate the infant governments of Iraq or Afghanistan, it is far more important to protect our democratic freedoms and make it clear why they are more deserving of protection when faced with constraining them for the sake of appeasing an oppressive and tryannical doctrine.
I was referring here to your comments that "Islam must not be viewed as anything less than a political ideology until it comprehensively renounces violent jihad and its desire to install universal sharia law upon an unwilling global population. Until these two important changes come about, Islam is our enemy and any succor given to them is simple treason," not to the issue of the cartoons. Taking such a position openly, I would argue, would needlessly alienate our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cartoon issue is another thing altogether and I don't see why the State Department should be getting involved in any of this to begin with, no more than they should get involved in Piss Christ or any other religious issues.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 19:40 Comments ||
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#31
What is called for here is a side-by-side publication of the European cartoons with the much more degrading and propagandistic filth that is daily printed in the Arab press.
Now there is a solution we can all agree on. Agree also with #28, well said.
We don't need to sink to their level. I don't think ramping up pictures of Mohammed **&^ing a goat to make them understand our wondeful western world is helpful.
#32
We will sink to their level before this is over. That's how wars like this are won. And it's a war like that they want. And if it's war they want, then by our God, it's war they shall have.
#33
I think the comment by the State Dept. is nothing more than another manifestation of the PCism that is endemic in Washington. Talk of theocracy in the USA is the hobby horse of the militant secularists. The operative word here is "militant". Militant wants to impose their points of view an all the rest by force. Islamists, militant athiests and secularists, and militant Christians.
That said, it is pointless to intentionally set out to offend. Or did the Danes really think their snarkiness would not be noticed? The West must enforce freedom of expression - even tasteless expression. I just hope that we will enforce it on worthwhile issues, not on juvenile cartoons. We need to avoid the clash of civilizations - if possible. And the Muslims need to get a life. They will not be able to force the west to kowtow to their 7th century ideas.
In the final analysis, we may get the war that NS and I have been predicting.
#35
The Ted Tolls cartoon was offensive. The Danish Mohammad cartoons were offensive. The cartoons in the Arab News were offensive. The difference is that the Muslim response to the Mohammad cartoons has been highly disproportionate.
Thousands of Muslims who have never even seen the cartoons are marching about looking for Danes to lynch. Countries with free speech are being demanded to apologize for it. Danish businesses that have nothing to do with cartoons are being punished. Innocent Europeans are at risk of serious harm on the streets of Muslim countries.
The Muslim world will never get respect by acting like a bunch of barbarians everytime a book or cartoon in the west offends them, while at the same time relentlessly attacking innocents in office buildings, in nightclubs, on trains, in schools, and on subways without so much as a protest. The lessons of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King are lost to them. They are doomed -- self doomed.
#36
I'd let this war start over cartoons if that's what they want to start it over. Exactly what was offensive about them? Nothing, except to the muzzy sensibility. So it's really a dhimmitude issue. One day they will push their sh!+ too far and they've come close to it this week. They'd better get the message.
#37
Well said, Nimble. I will spend my last coin, give my last ounce of strength, and sigh my last breath if the actual war the Islamists wnat truly comes in order to rid this earth of the scourge that is Islam.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/03/2006 20:37 Comments ||
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#38
First of all, Bush didn't make these comments - but so eager you were to drive home your belief that Bush, like billions of others world wide who have faith in something beyond themselves, should instantly be discounted as a crazy loons, that you chose to ignore that.
And where did I say that Bush actually made these comments? My title line refers to Bushs faith based sandbag because I find his administrations constant focus upon religion to be at odds with proper governance of our nation. Does anyone here actually believe that the state departments statement was not vetted by the White House prior to issue? Ill ask that people note the complete lack of any correction in position by the Oval Office.
As to discounting all people of faith as crazy loons, that is you putting words into my own mouth. Please point out where I have ever said such an ungenerous thing. If you cannot, then feel free to retract your false accusation. What I seek is the appropriate separation of church and state. The Bush administration has done more to undermine this vital separation than any other presidency in history. I believe that freedom of religion is one of the things that has made America the great nation it is. The tampering that has been going on is intolerable.
Look around Zenster. There are churches, synagogues, and mosques on every other street corner and they are attended by more people than not. And they are all just one step away from the koolaid,right? Every single one of them.
Thats horsesh!t, and you know it. Again, you are trying to put intolerant words into my mouth. One more time, you can provide quotes by myself indicating such a stupid stance or retract them now. If I had such a low opinion of religion, why would I support freedom of religion so vigorously? Your presumptions are nothing short of insulting.
Bigots are people who through their ignorance paint entire populations with one wide brush.
Remember the beatings I used to take here for defending the moderate Muslims? No? Too effing bad for your short memory. My own position is changing due to the repeated lack of condemnation by moderate Muslims of their jihadist brethren. .com has put forth extremely persuasive arguments regarding how it is moderate Muslims who are funding the jihadists through donations and how the radical Muslims have to come from somewhere. Yet, somehow I still manage to rail against all of the truly intolerant morons here who want to initiate nuclear war against Islamic countries. Yeah, thats real bigotry all right.
These cartoons are offensive. I didn't hear you defending Ted Tolls the other day for his cartoon - but that's different, cause he offended you - right?
No, its not any different. Did you even bother to read my words yesterday?
Come on folks. Anyone see some similarities between the Mohammad cartoons and this one? Toles' cartoon is tasteless and ill thought out, at best. I find it offensive and, yet, remain glad that I live in a country where such drivel can be published without fear of retribution.
Want to make your displeasure felt? Boycott all papers that carry Toles' cartoons. That's how we do it in America. Hit 'em in the pocketbook.
Toles has stepped on his own d!ck, as I'm sure he'll soon find out. I'll add that the generals were well within their rights to protest such callous disregard for our fallen troops.
Note how the first line draws direct comparison to the Mohammed cartoons? Toles has the right to draw his cartoons, too. Just as I have the right to not read his work. I dont know what your problem is, 2b, but you really need to do your homework before attacking me like this.
I'm just ticked at Zensters effort to use this lame opportunity to declare it as proof that Bush is insane for being willing to acknowledge his faith in God.
Where in He|| have I ever called Bush insane? Quote it or retract it. I maintain that Bushs obsession with religiosity represents a strong conflict of interest in his ability to fulfill his official duties. Too often significant issues revolving around the separation of church and state are being blurred or outright eroded by Bush policy. I find this reprehensible and make no bones about it.
One more time If we had a Muslim president who was putting in place legislation so preferential to Islamic religious organizations, all of your would be howling bloody murder. Enough of you are Christians that, since its not your ox being gored, you could care less what is being done in the name of your religion, so long as it is favorable.
I say that Bush seeks to put in place religious commandment where strictly legal jurisprudence should reside. I say it is a mistake and, further, that it goes against the ultimate welfare of America as a healthy pluralistic nation. Towards that end, it is extremely dubious, if not stupid, to award any greater respect to offended Muslims than they are showing through the routinely offensive cartoons published by them.
At some point, the cognitive dissonance of the Muslim world must be dumped back in their laps. The longer we delay, the greater the upset will be when it finally happens, and happen it must. We are doing nobody any favors by putting it off.
#39
The lesson here is that if you're sufficiently violent, you're above criticism, which isn't the right one to send
Dan Darling, I think there's some confusion here. I agree completely with the above statement. It's for that reason that I refuse to show any quarter to Muslim intolerance for free speech. By allowing ourselves to be cowed, in the least way, by Muslim outcry only encourages further encroachment by them upon our liberty.
Britain's slow downward spiral into dhimmitude should serve as a warning to all of us what awaits any appeasement of eggshell thin Muslim sensibilities.
For all their easily offended sensibilities, Muslims may as well be skinless individuals living in a sandpaper world. I've had my fill of their whingeing and they can go p!ss up a rope.
I was referring here to your comments that "Islam must not be viewed as anything less than a political ideology until it comprehensively renounces violent jihad and its desire to install universal sharia law upon an unwilling global population. Until these two important changes come about, Islam is our enemy and any succor given to them is simple treason," not to the issue of the cartoons. Taking such a position openly, I would argue, would needlessly alienate our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dan, I am obliged to disagree. One of our only hopes for rallying the American people into real resistance against Islamist hostility is to paint Islam in its true colors. It is a violent religion that seeks to dominate the remaining world by force and that is a significant threat to our culture.
When Islam properly renounces violent jihad and forceful imposition of sharia law upon the entire world, only then should they be awarded the status of a peaceful religion. Until then, they are a political ideology and if hearing that that angers other Islamic countries, tough noogies.
The cartoon issue is another thing altogether and I don't see why the State Department should be getting involved in any of this to begin with, no more than they should get involved in Piss Christ or any other religious issues.
Exceptionally well spoken, Dan. I could not agree with you more.
#41
So, 2b, no quotes or cites to support your scurillous fabrications? Then kindly ram your false accusations where the sun don't shine ... with walnuts!
#5
Hey, the cartoon is a win-win for everyone. The muzzies see it as justice for blasphemizing the Profit (BPUH) and the rest of the world sees it as what Muzzies do when they get offended by ink on a page.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/03/2006 17:18 Comments ||
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To Dutch lawmaker Bert Bakker, a plan to send 1,700 of his country's soldiers into one of Afghanistan's most dangerous provinces looks like an operation "with a high risk of exploding in our face."
He fears Dutch soldiers being tarred like American troops for sending captives off to secret prisons, he said in an interview. He worries that the Afghan mission could agitate restive Muslim immigrants at home. And he is convinced his country's soldiers are being dispatched on a mission impossible.
On Thursday, Bakker will lead a fight in the divided Dutch parliament to keep his country's troops out of the force that NATO plans for southern Afghanistan.
An overwhelming defeat in parliament could bring down the Netherlands' coalition government. But the debate is more than a Dutch political brawl; it has become a test of the transatlantic alliance's efforts to find new missions and credibility in the post-Cold War era, and a referendum on President Bush's war against terrorism.
U.S. officials consider the vote a crucial measure of allies' willingness to share the risks and costs of stabilizing troubled nations and combating terrorism.
"It has been a long debate, but I think there's a growing awareness in both the public and the parliament about how important this mission is not only for Afghanistan but for NATO and all of us," said Chat Blakeman, charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy here.
"If NATO takes itself seriously, we need to be an organization that's relevant," said Gen. Dick Berlijn, the Netherlands' top military commander. "We need to be able to respond quickly to any crisis without 1 1/2 years of long debates."
In London, delegates from nearly 70 nations and international bodies pledged $10.5 billion to help Afghanistan fight poverty, improve security and crack down on the drug trade, officials said at the end of a two-day conference on the nation's future, the Associated Press reported.
The Dutch debate comes as NATO is attempting to assemble a new rapid-reaction force drawn from member nations for deployment to international trouble spots.
In signs of the importance of the Dutch decision, high-level lobbyists came calling in The Hague this week: U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan met with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende. U.S. Marine Gen. James L. Jones, the top NATO military officer, met with members of parliament in a closed session. Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah and Defense Minister Rahim Wardak were among a score of witnesses Monday at a day-long hearing before a key parliamentary committee.
Senior Dutch government officials who favor participation in the NATO mission were encouraged Wednesday when the leader of the country's biggest opposition party, the Labor Party, hinted that he was softening his opposition to the deployment.
NATO has about 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, operating as the International Security Assistance Force. Most are in relatively stable northern and western areas of the country, where they conduct peacekeeping patrols and take part in reconstruction. Now the alliance is proposing to send 6,000 additional soldiers to parts of the south where the Taliban and al Qaeda insurgency is focused.
The plan is for those troops to operate separately from the primarily U.S. combat units fighting in Uruzgan and other southern provinces under the name Operation Enduring Freedom. More than 250 Dutch special forces personnel now work with American counterparts fighting insurgents.
If the deployment is approved, the Netherlands would send 1,500 to 1,700 troops for the NATO mission. That would include the forces who would take part in reconstruction projects, as well as airmen and crews for Apache helicopters and F-16 fighter jets assigned to help protect the reconstruction teams.
British, Canadian and Australian forces are also scheduled to participate in the NATO-led reconstruction effort in southern Afghanistan.
As the Netherlands debates the proposal, suicide bombings and other attacks have rocked rugged Uruzgan province, where Dutch troops would be deployed. It is a stronghold of the Taliban and the home ground of its leader, Mohammad Omar.
Critics of the mission say that even if the Dutch force's primary mission is reconstruction -- the building of schools and digging of wells -- it will inevitably be drawn into combat with the insurgents.
Opponents also express concern that Afghans will not make a distinction between U.S. forces fighting Taliban insurgents and NATO troops whose primary mission is meant to be humanitarian.
"The two operations will always be blurred," said Bakker, a leader in the left-of-center D66 party, which is part of the governing coalition but opposes the deployment.
"There were some unfortunate incidents," said Berlijn, the Dutch military chief, referring to abuses of prisoners at U.S.-run prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We all have to deal with some of that negative fallout." But he added, "If we don't join the operation, it will give the Taliban another year to regenerate."
Dutch officials have imposed major conditions for taking part in the operation: No prisoners captured by Dutch soldiers would be sent to Guantanamo Bay, and Uruzgan Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan would be removed from office. Dutch officials allege that Khan, a militia leader, is corrupt and an obstacle to security.
Abdullah, the Afghan foreign minister, said here Monday that Afghanistan has agreed to the demands concerning prisoners. During the parliamentary hearing, however, Afghan officials provided no specific answer about Khan.
The Dutch debate is driven as much by internal politics as international military concerns. A majority of Dutch citizens oppose the deployment, according to opinion polls, though the gap has narrowed slightly in recent weeks.
The Dutch government and military remain in the shadow of the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where in 1995 lightly armed Dutch troops acting as U.N. peacekeepers stood by as Bosnian Serb forces rounded up and massacred as many as 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
The Dutch government collapsed over the ensuing scandal, and subsequent governments enacted laws that encourage the kind of debates now underway over Afghanistan.
As the Netherlands approaches elections in 2007, Bakker's D66 party has led the opposition to the deployment. "It's a mixture of concern and party politics," said Rudy Andeweg, a political scientist at the Netherlands' Leiden University. "The party needs to do something to attract attention."
At various points in the debate, D66 has threatened to pull out of the government if it sends additional troops to Afghanistan. The loss of the coalition member could force the government's collapse.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:20 ||
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D66 has threatened to pull out of the government if it sends additional troops to Afghanistan. The loss of the coalition member could force the government's collapse
The Dutch and this arguement are exactly why AQ is moving forces to Afghanistan. As the country transitions to a NATO controlled area AQ will pick the weakest nation to hammer. Recent history, the Balkans, have shown the Dutch to surrender when in doubt. Imagine the clout AQ would have if they captured a Battalion of Dutch like the Serbs did? I just don't think AQ will be as nice as the Serbs were to them.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/03/2006 7:47 Comments ||
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No prisoners captured by Dutch soldiers would be sent to Guantanamo Bay
There's a big implicit assumption in that statement, the self-evident falsity of which renders the entire thought meaningless.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - The Dutch parliament on Thursday overwhelmingly supported the deployment of up to 1,400 troops to southern Afghanistan, the premier said, reaffirming the country's central NATO role and ending more than a half year of political turmoil.
No vote was held specifically to send the troops, but Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said the deployment had widespread support. Generally, in the Dutch parliament, no formal vote is taken once the parties have made their positions clear. "The mission can go ahead. I will confirm that to the Cabinet tomorrow (Friday)," he said.
The proposal to send the troops to the troubled Uruzgan province had run into vocal opposition, including from one of the three parties in the governing coalition, but the turning point came when the opposition Labor Party swung behind the mission earlier this week. "This mission has a chance to succeed. It will be hard, slow-going, and there will be setbacks," Labor party leader Wouter Bos said during the final debate, signaling his party's support.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/03/2006 00:00 ||
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NATO staggers on for at least another 6 months.
Mustafa Mohamed Mustafa, a legislator from the Muslim Brotherhood, stood on the Egyptian parliament's tiered floor, pulled out a copy of the constitution and waved it at the speaker, Fathi Sorour, who belongs to the ruling party of President Hosni Mubarak.
It was a sign, under parliamentary rules, that he wanted to speak, and he did, criticizing the government for allowing an old French aircraft carrier to pass through the Suez Canal on its way to India's shores to be dismembered for scrap metal. Environmental groups said the ship, loaded with tons of asbestos, posed a pollution hazard.
Sorour, with the backing of the parliamentary majority held by Mubarak's National Democratic Party, expelled Mustafa "because of his insistence on speaking in a loud voice" and the desire to "preserve order in the chamber." The entire Brotherhood bloc, 20 percent of parliament, walked out.
Last weekend's uproarious session put on display Egypt's new political reality: the emergence of the Brotherhood, formally banned under Egypt's restrictions on religiously based parties, as the country's only vibrant opposition force. It is an experiment watched closely not only in Egypt, which has been ruled by a succession of military leaders for more than 50 years, but also around the Middle East, where Islamic political groups are using the wedge of elections to enter mainstream politics.
The Brotherhood has long been the model for Islamic political movements and has close ties with the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, which won last week's Palestinian legislative elections. Though the Brotherhood formally renounces violence in Egypt, it provides outspoken support for Hamas's armed campaign against Israel's occupation of the West Bank.
In Egypt, the Brotherhood has tried to quickly position itself as a mainstream reform party. Its parliamentary program reads like a high school civics book. It promotes freedom of speech, which means an end to Egypt's quarter-century-old emergency laws that prohibit gatherings of more than five people and permit prosecutions on such vague grounds as besmirching the country's image. It also promotes the independence of unions and professional organizations, transparency of government transactions, a crackdown on corruption and freedom for political prisoners. The Brotherhood is not pressing for Islamic-oriented social changes, such as mandatory use of veils by women or a ban on alcohol.
"No one needs be afraid of us," said Essam Erian, a top Brotherhood official. He pointed out that the group was cooperating with other political parties and pro-democracy movements to forge a strategy of street demonstrations and propaganda to promote reforms. "We want to be more than a voice," Erian said. "We want to take action."
In month-long legislative elections last November and December, running its candidates as independents to skirt the government's ban on its political activity, the Brotherhood won 88 of 454 seats. It put up only 130 candidates so as not to alarm Egyptians, the group's leaders said. Secular opposition parties barely made a dent at the polls.
After the elections, the Brotherhood attracted criticism from a number of parties that otherwise have nothing in common. Gamal Mubarak, the president's son and leading candidate to succeed his aging father, said the group's emergence was "having negative repercussions on the electoral and political process."
He suggested the ban on religious parties might be enforced. "The question of how we should deal at the political and legal levels with attempts to circumvent the national consensus banning religious parties is on the table," Mubarak told the state-run Roz al-Yusef newspaper. "The group has no legal existence, so from the legal point of view we must deal with it on that basis."
On Jan. 6, Ayman Zawahiri, an Egyptian fugitive who is Osama bin Laden's top aide, issued a video message from hiding in which he attacked the Brotherhood for being an unwitting tool of U.S. policy in the Middle East. "That is the truth of the political game America is playing in Egypt, through presidential and parliamentary elections, to exploit the masses and their love for Islam," he said. "They said they won 30 seats, now they say they have won 80, and in five years' time they will say 100. And so goes strategy to concede them some space."
A few days later, Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian who leads al Qaeda in Iraq, also attacked the Brotherhood. In an Internet audio message, he asked: "How can anyone choose any other path but that of jihad? I appeal to the Islamic party: Abandon this strategy which is a losing one for Sunnis."
Erian responded with irony, calling the critics of the Brotherhood "a strange alliance."
The Brotherhood is hobbled in parliament by the ruling party's two-thirds majority. Mubarak's party not only can pass any legislation it wants, it can make constitutional changes. The Brotherhood can use the body as a forum, as it did in the case of the French ship. It returned to the floor of parliament after Mustafa issued a pro forma apology.
In lieu of legislative clout, the Brotherhood peppers committees with requests for information. Last week, it demanded a report on torture from the defense committee. It also presented the Interior Ministry with a questionnaire on the status of 30,000 detainees it considers held illegally. As part of a pan-Egypt charm offensive, the parliamentary bloc formally wished Christians a Merry Christmas.
The Brotherhood's disciplined presence has forced one change. Parliament used to hold morning and evening sessions, but ruling-party delegates regularly missed the late-night meetings. Because votes can be held no matter how many delegates are absent, the Brotherhood's insistence on attending all sessions with a full delegation forced the ruling party to curb its absenteeism, and parliament voted to move the night sessions to the afternoon.
Brotherhood members come and go from the parliament chamber to meet the five-times-a-day prayer requirement. The other night at the close of a session, several were on their knees praying in a lounge decorated in ersatz ancient Egyptian style, with a statue of a pharaoh at one end.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:51 ||
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After WW2, Venezuela and Cuba indulged political-Marxism. (Few are aware that Cuban President Batista was the first Latin leader to include Communists in his Cabinet). The result of this indulgence? Communist organizations embraced both political- and revolutionary-Marxism, a policy continued in the "doble cara" (two-faced) practices of Central American Communists in the Seventies. Fortunately, US governments of those days chose to support repression of Communists and, although the Castro tyranny sneaked into power in Cuba, Communist expansion was effectively contained.
Why has the current US regime embraced political-Islam to the point of both coercing Egypt's secular government to legalize the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood and to releasing two-thirds of the 19,000 MB animals that they had locked up on Sept. 11, 2001. The dogmatic basis of this inclusivism is: let them vote and those of the "noble faith" will come to embrace Western values, and adopt friendly attitudes to America. Reality dictates asking: where is the evidence that inclusivism either has worked, or can possibly work? Subsidized political-Islam is a disaster, as the cartoon contraversy has revealed: given indulgence, Muslims will take license to embrace jihad terror. Sanctioned revolutionary-Islam, whose terrorists expand bloody operations, combined with subsidized political-Islam, which works to defeat counter-terror, is a recipe for catastrophe. Chamberlain is dead; Chamberlainism lives and thrives.
#2
NaziFartus - Geez you're the ass-end of a one-trick pony.
Egypt was and is a tyranny. Mubarak didn't lock up MuzBros for us - he did it for himself.
Yes, Bush is trying to liberalize the M.E. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. No one has ever tried any of this before. And you know what? He has to try, whether you like it or not. Apparently that fact is just too deep for you to comprehend.
There's what you "know", which consists of carefully selected factoids from the books you advertise you're reading or your favorite websites, piled up as some sort of altar of truth, and then there's the shit you pull out of your ass and present as the conclusion. It's far less compelling to those who do not share your illness than you obviously hope.
Three things are absofuckinglutely certain:
1) Many of your posts, when the cherry-picked nuggets are sifted, analyzed, and set aside, reveal a core that's solely obsessed with laying the entire world's ills and blame at Bush's feet. What absurd drivel. It's BDS of a particularly twisty-curvy variety, but BDS nonetheless.
2) The world was seriously fucked up looong before Bush ever came on the scene - and he has done and will do infinitely more to unfuck it than you. This will be true for all eternity.
You don't think that the anguish that drives your ad hominem tangents, is plain and obvious? If you have lost a family member in the SLOG, then you might want to question the status quo ante: limited war in the face of a mortal enemy that is both strengthening every day, and broadening in its reach. So you refuse to read editorials which question whether democracy can work where would be embracers are programed to believe that only their deity may legislate. That wouldn't leave you with much reading material these days.
If you are passionate about counter-terror, then get out of the subjective spin swamp and posit something that will work. The Germans, the Japanese, the Russians could - and did - change after defeat and ideological collapse. I believe this enemy cannot. Bush-freedom is: a salient, their salient.
If the cartoon-rage reaches your neighborhood, then you might channel your bellicosity against the real enemy.
#4
Ok, can somebody tell me what a SLOG is? I know the answers to some of Mr. Farkus' questions (anguished because he's concluded that "fry 'em up" is likely to be the only workable response in the end, impatient with ignorant asses because he's met so many of them, knows from personal experience more than Mr. Farkus' fave editorialists, and anyway has a business to run between posting to Rantburg and dating Vegas chorus girls...) But even after googling, that SLOG thingie has me stumped.
Makes me think.. The M.E. seems to have gone through more psychological, impact and information-sharing changes in the past 2 years than they have experience in the past 2,000.
Even the rabble in remote caves have access to their neighbours sons friends internet reach to the outside world. Facts seem to be leaking in, some places. The screaming, gun-firing mobs can see themselves on tee-wee at night right along with and what must seem horrid juxtaposition eventually general news stories. Stories from more civilized parts.
The previously unheard-of thought (faint hope) of human rights is taking spark. Mind you, when the women of Palestine learn their first object lesson of democracy campaigners and politicians lie to get your vote (oh, by Allah, why the surprise? ) and find they dont get the freedoms and riches promised; there may be a few surprises for Hamas in future. Never underestimate the power of a women angered at being lied to. Remember Mum?
The cartoon furor may help. Give it time for the sight of their own reactions to come back via the same internet community. Faint hope. Some are starting to see it now. Iraqs comments intrigued a call for calm.
The slowly, slowly and unrelenting introduction to real dignity that Bush and America (an coalitions) seem to have been effecting in Afghanistan and Iraq may yet prove to be the most useful card in the deck. Self-pondering is starting to happen. May I venture miraculous if trend continues?
The tragic sinking of the Al Salaam provides a timely juxtaposition of justifiable rage and a clearer target for the true anger.
As the learnings of the last 2 years have catapulted change in the ME, there is now an abrupt upswing in access to media to a much larger audience, faster than ever before blogs and reasonable discourse available as never before and perhaps this mirror will effect change for the better. Sooner rather than too late, I hope. But it comes.
#6
May the Powers-that-are grant your vision comes true in a human, rather than Godly, time frame, Dorothy/Hupomoger Clans9827. That's a much better idea than the total war that the Islamic world seems to be working to call down upon itself. I'll click my heels together, too, even if my shoes aren't silver. ;-)
#8
Pappy, I hope CaziFarkus is not banned. He is knowledgeable, articulate and adds to the discussion, even if some do not find his stridency palatable. Also as much as I dislike Aris and his Greek snobbish attitude, I found him articulate and hope he wasn't banned. Boris was another matter.
Posted by: ed ||
02/03/2006 23:37 Comments ||
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Two top Egyptian officials called on Hamas to recognize Israel, disarm and stop threatening Hosni's rule honor past peace deals Wednesday, the latest sign Arab governments are pushing the militant group to moderate after its surprise election victory.
Separately, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official said that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has told Egyptian officials he would hold off on asking Hamas to form the next Palestinian government until Hamas renounces violence. The Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, cited Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as saying that Abbas had made the decision after a meeting with Egyptian leader
Hosni Mubarak.
Suleiman could not immediately be reached to verify the statement. But earlier, he told journalists in Cairo that Egypt intends to tell Hamas leaders that they must recognize Israel, disarm and honor past peace deals. Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections in a landslide last week.
Mubarak's spokesman, Suleiman Awaad, also called on Hamas to recognize peace deals with Israel. Former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat "was able to change his position. There is nothing that prevents smart leaders from changing their positions to behave accordingly," Awaad said.
Hamas is under growing international pressure to renounce its violent ideology and recognize Israel's right to exist as a condition for receiving millions of dollars in foreign aid the lifeline of the Palestinian economy. Western powers have said they will not fund a Hamas-led Palestinian government otherwise.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the group was still trying to determine whether Abbas had indeed posed such conditions. "President Abbas said on different occasions that he respects the result of these elections, and all the developments that followed the elections," he said.
And in Damascus, a senior Hamas official said the group would not change its policies toward Israel. "These conditions could not be accepted and the U.S. president should accept reality and facts ... He should deal with Hamas as it is," said Moussa Abu Marzouk, the deputy head of Hamas' political bureau. The Hamas statement from Damascus came before the Egyptian officials' comments were made public.
In Cairo, Suleiman cautioned that it may take time to try to change the militant group's positions and may not work. "Nobody will talk to them before they stop violence, recognize Israel and accept (peace) agreements," Suleiman said. "These are radical people. But we have to try to convince them to change their position. It's still difficult to make them change 180 degrees ... This might take six months or more. We will try."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:26 ||
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Last night the BBC and ITV were among those who used fleeting images of the cartoons in news bulletins as a worldwide furore threatened to provoke violence and a trade boycott of European goods. The broadcasters' move came just hours after Europe's trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, appealed to editors not to publish the cartoons, saying they were "bound to offend".
The BBC emphasised that the images were broadcast "responsibly", "in full context" and "to give audiences an understanding of the strong feelings evoked by the story".
The British Council of Muslims said it thought the BBC was acting responsibly in its "sensitive" use of the images. A spokesman said: "I think the BBC have a good journalistic reason to show the images. I would hope most British Muslims would recognise that whereas some of the newspapers are publishing the cartoons with a view to attacking Islam, the BBC is reporting how the story is developing, which is an entirely different matter." A spokeswoman for ITV News said it was showing the image "in the context of it being a news story".
#1
If the images were fleeting then the BBC offering cannot be considered as unbiased reporting, but only as appeasement. Unless someone can look at the images for long enough to fix them in their mind, they cannot form an opinion about them. But of course the BBC knows this, and they also know that the medium is the message. Hence, they didn't give the usual warning - "Some viewers may find images in this report disturbing" - because the images were of harmless cartoons rather than death and suffering, and so there would have been a surreal clash between the warning and the actual content of the report, the net effect of which would have been to make the BBC appear as ridiculous as the Muslim protestors themselves. No doubt they're pleased with themselves for managing to show the images "responsibly", but as usual it's pretty clear whose side they're on.
Posted by: Ban The BBC ||
02/03/2006 0:59 Comments ||
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"The British Council of Muslims said it thought the BBC was acting responsibly in its 'sensitive' use of the images."
Ah, now we get to the crux. It's ok to print the forbidden depictions of Mohamed if done with 'sensitivity'. Religious hypocrites. It is either wrong or it is not-otherwise, this is really about Islam demanding that others adore their deity.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea's spy agency said Thursday that North Korea was not currently producing counterfeit currency, apparently contradicting U.S. allegations that have become the latest obstacle in nuclear disarmament talks with the communist country.
The South's National Intelligence Service briefed lawmakers in a closed session amid an escalating standoff between Washington and Pyongyang over the North's purported counterfeiting and other illicit activities that have drawn new U.S. sanctions. During the session with lawmakers on parliament's intelligence committee, the spy agency said North Koreans were arrested in the 1990s for counterfeiting but that it had no evidence of the North making fake money after 1998, said Im Jong-in, a legislator with the ruling Uri Party.
Asked whether the North is currently printing counterfeit money, the agency said: "It's not the case," Im told reporters after the briefing. "North Korea circulated counterfeit currency in the 1990s," National Intelligence Service spokesman Choi Jae-keun told reporters after the briefing. "The government has serious concerns regarding the issue of the North's counterfeiting and is closely following the situation."
President Bush said at a news conference last month that North Korea was counterfeiting U.S. money and was being warned to stop doing so.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/03/2006 00:00 ||
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SoKo's admit nothing until they can launder the rest of the payoffs. "...and is closely following the situation." Good ruck.
#2
we need to withdraw oh so fast.... as a demonstration of US F.U. if nothing else
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/03/2006 0:12 Comments ||
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Amusingly contradicted by the article just below... But the South Koreans don't want to have to deal with what will come out when the NKorean government finally falls, so they pretend, like ltle children. A foolish, if understandable, impulse.
From East-Asia-Intel, subscription
Chinas security police arrested a close aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il in Macau earlier this month apparently on suspicion of money laundering. Kang Sang-Choon, Kim's chief of staff, was detained on Jan. 11 in connection with circulating forged U.S. currency and money laundering, reported the DailyNK, citing Japanese diplomatic sources. Must have been in a cash flow bind. I would think that flunkies would be doing the heavy laundering.
The arrest appears to have been the result of close cooperation between Macao Chinese authorities and U.S. undercover agents with the Treasury Department and the CIA working together. Now there's a coalition!
Kang, 66, is a deputy chief of the Workers' Party organization and guidance department, one of the North's most powerful offices. He is also in charge of managing Kim Jong-Il's private funds and private necessities, according to North Korean defectors. Ohhhh...big fish in a Macau rainbarrel.
The arrest took place while Kim was making an official visit to China. The news of the arrest did not surface, however, while North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was visiting southeastern China, including Shenzhen, just above Hong Kong, and Guangchou, and it's believed Chinese authorities did not brief him on what was going on at the time. They were busy getting anthracite and uranium mining agreements before they popped the news to Kimmie.
The arrest, however, intensifies the pressure on Kim either to call a halt to the counterfeiting or to move ever closer to China, with which he and his top economic officials made a deal for trade, aid and investment while in Beijing. Oh, the pressures of state....
"Although the background for arrest is under verification, considering the timing of his arrest, it is presumed that the arrest may be connected to the counterfeit money and money laundering through Macao Bank," a source was quoted as saying. Insert Master of the Obvious pic here.
The South Korean spy agency said it had some information about Kang's arrest, but refused to reveal details, saying they were in the process of verifying the information. "We can say no more!"
But a government official said the arrest by the Chinese security police might indicate Beijing's willingness to crack down on North Korea's illicit financial activities through banks in Macau, possibly under U.S. pressure.
The U.S. Treasury in September forbade American banks from doing business with a Macau-based Chinese bank, Banco Delta Asia, accusing it of laundering money for North Korea and abetting other illicit activities such as counterfeiting and smuggling. Banco Delta Asia has cut off transactions with North Korea, which is believed to have hindered Pyongyang's cash flow and had a devastating effect on the economy, which reportedly relies on illicit activities for at least 40 percent of its gross domestic product. Slowly tightening the screws on all fronts. Now if SKor can keep from enabling Norks, the regime could fall, or be replaced with something with a bit of humanity.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/03/2006 00:00 ||
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Does this mean we should be on the lookout for Kodos?
Posted by: bruce ||
02/03/2006 7:15 Comments ||
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This "laundering" is really passing counterfeits. Probably part of the reason Kimmie took the train. I wonder if he has intermodal cars.
A NEW Zealand newspaper has published controversial cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Mohammed.
The Dominion Post, a Fairfax-owned Wellington newspaper, published the cartoons today, saying its decision was in the interests of press freedom.
"It's important for our readers to see what the fuss is about and to make up their own minds. Ours is a secular society based on western ideals of tolerance and open debate, even if that may occasionally offend," said Tim Pankhurst, Dominion Post editor and Commonwealth Press Union chairman.
"We do not wish to be deliberately provocative but neither should we allow ourselves to be intimidated. If we allow Christianity and more particularly the Catholic Church and the Pope to be satirised, and we do, should Islam be treated differently?" he asked. The cartoons depict Mohammed in various poses, including one in which he is wearing a bomb in his turban.
New Zealand Federation of Islamic Associations president Javed Khan said the decision by The Dominion Post to publish the cartoons could have "serious repercussions" for New Zealand's economy.
The federation holds the national contract to certify meat slaughtered to traditional Islamic requirements.
"We won't call for a boycott, and we don't want to see one, but news gets around the world pretty quickly. Muslims will make their own decisions and as you know, they've taken drastic action against Denmark," he told the Dominion Post.
What has been widely described as a new battle in the continuing culture wars between Islam and the secular west began in September when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten commissioned cartoons of Mohammed in a deliberate affirmation of its right to free expression.
The row smouldered for several months before being reignited by re-publication of the drawings in Norway and France, prompting outrage among Muslim faithful, a campaign of consumer boycotts and death threats from militants against nationals of the three countries.
Violence is widely feared in parts of Europe and the Middle East after Muslims around the world expressed fury at the 12 drawings and some religious leaders called for a day of protests against the countries in which they appeared.
#1
Rage has stepped up a bit in the last 24 hours. The "injured feelings" rabble in now calling on Al Qaida to strike Denmark immediately and anyone else they feel up to.
Al Qaida's popularity is back through the roof - just what they needed after the darn protests at suicide bombing muslims. Bin Laden - back on top in the charts.
#2
Hupomoger Clans9827, I suspect Al Qaeda is not geared up to respond with immediate atrocities aimed at the multiplicity of targets the protesters demand. And anything less than immediate feedback will not satisfy the mobs. Thus, Al Q. becomes visibly a failure, and bin Laden's star will once again fade. I don't see how they can win this one, unless the entire West bows in dhimmitude. Of course, I do tend to be overly optimistic...
Opposition party Christian Democrat CD&V is demanding a parliamentary commission investigate the controversial export of a machine to Iran that can be used in the production of nuclear weapons.
A report from the intelligence service's supervisory authority, Committee I, indicated on Wednesday that the federal security service VS-SE had made crucial errors handling the incident.
The CIA tipped off the Belgian security service about the looming export of an isostatic press in November 2004 to Iran by the Temse-based company Epsi.
The press is listed under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but it was exported to Iran despite the CIA request for Belgian authorities to intervene.
The Committee I report lodged in the Senate earlier this week indicated that the VS-SE ignored the tip and withheld crucial information from Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinx.
The incident cost the job of the security's service's chief, Koen Dassen, who tendered his resignation on Tuesday night.
Despite the report's tabling in the Senate, the CD&V still claims there are unanswered questions. The party's Senators said it remains unclear whether a permit was issued for the press. The CD&V stressed further during a Senate debate on Thursday that an investigation by a parliamentary commission would shed more light on the matter.
#1
Hakuna matata mate. During the ill-fated inspection regimes of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM)in Iraq, hundreds of tones of weapons manufacturing hardware was discovered that had been shipped in from all over Europe.
PARIS (Reuters) - Denmark said on Friday it could not apologize for cartoons in a Danish newspaper depicting the Prophet Mohammad as outrage spread across the Muslim world from the Middle East to countries in Asia.
More European newspapers published the cartoons on Friday, arguing freedom of speech was sacred, but angry Muslims staged violent protests against jokes they consider "blasphemous."
"Neither the Danish government nor the Danish nation as such can be held responsible for drawings published in a Danish newspaper," Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after meeting with Muslim envoys in Copenhagen.
"A Danish government can never apologize on behalf of a free and independent newspaper," he said. "This is basically a dispute between some Muslims and a newspaper." Yep, I'd agree with that assessment. Heck, as others here know, they do it all the time in cartoons to the Joooos and Christians.
SNIP
Up to 300 hardline Islamic activists in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, went on a rampage in the lobby of a building housing the Danish embassy in Jakarta.
Shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest), they smashed lamps with bamboo sticks, threw chairs, lobbed rotten eggs and tomatoes and tore up a Danish flag. No one was hurt. Guess they haven't learned the fine art of seething and gun sex, yet, eh?
SNIP
Mona Omar Attia, Egypt's ambassador to Denmark, said after a meeting with Rasmussen that she was satisfied with the position of the Danish government but noted the prime minister had said he could not interfere with the press. What's a female doin' "representin'" Egypt? Guess they're a little more liberal than their recent elections showed, eh?
"This means the whole story will continue and that we are back to square one again. The government of Denmark has to do something to appease the Muslim world," Attia said. The gov't has to appease the Muslims? How 'bout you start appeasing us, by not blowing us up every chance you get?
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Yuri Thamrin said the dispute was not just between Jakarta and Copenhagen.
"It involves the whole Islamic world vis-a-vis Denmark and vis-a-vis the trend of Islamophobia," he said. There's that word again...Islamophobia....literally "the fear of Islam". Nope, I don't think we're afraid of ya, and if you keep it up, we'll show you how "fearful" we really are.
Posted by: BA ||
02/03/2006 10:55 ||
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"The government of Denmark has to do something to appease the Muslim world . . . "
French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, has dismissed claims by some of his party colleagues that rap music fuelled suburban rioting in France. Mr de Villepin told French radio that he wanted to avoid finger-pointing about the origins of the unrest.
But he said that the courts should deal with lyrics that overstepped the mark. About 200 MPs have urged the justice ministry to prosecute seven rap groups over allegedly provocative lyrics. A probe has begun into one group.
Speaking on French radio, Mr de Villepin said: "I very much wish during this period - it is one of my primary responsibilities - to avoid any sort of confusion or finger-pointing."
"Is rap responsible for the crisis in the suburbs? My answer is no," he said. "When one writes a song, when one writes a book, when one expresses oneself, do we have a responsibility? Yes," he added.
'Crude art'
Almost 9,000 cars and many public buildings were burnt in three weeks of unrest across the country. The violence began in October after the accidental deaths of two teenagers who were reportedly being chased by police.
Mr de Villepin said songs that violate hate laws would be dealt with The campaign to prosecute rappers is led by MP Francois Grosdidier, a member of Mr de Villepin's governing UMP party.
"Sexism, racism and anti-Semitism are no more acceptable in lyrics than in written or spoken words," he said earlier this week. "This is one of the factors that led to the violence in the suburbs," he added.
Mr Grosdidier lodged a complaint with the justice ministry, urging action against seven rap groups. The document was supported by many UMP parliamentarians.
Prosecutors have begun an inquiry into a song entitled FranSSe, in which rapper Monsieur R calls France a prostitute. Monsieur R says the song is a diatribe against French leaders who have neglected ethnic minorities, not an attack on France in general.
"Hip hop is a crude art, so we use crude words. It is not a call to violence," he told French television.
#1
According to what I've read from more knowledgeable people in various forums, the artists targeted were somehow mainstream (if hardcore), and are not the "underground" rap that is so prevalent in the 'hoods.
There was excerpts from theses underground raps featured on Radio-courtoisie, an alternative conservative/rightwing radio : awful!... "there is a coming civil war, we'll burn everything, we'll win it", "fight the cops, kill them", "put whitey back at his place, f*** his wimmen", "christians will pay, the gold the Pope has around his neck, don't forget he stole it from the muslims",... theses are not songs, theses are propaganda pieces, hammered into the empty skulls of the lowlives. Battlecry.
Note that the "mainstream" hardcore rap is not bad either; one of theses wonderful artists showcased by the fnac (a cultural products retail network that leans leftward) sez he p***es on Napoleon and de Gaulle, that listener mustn't forget to f*** France into exhaustion (recurrent image, the West is a woman that is to be taken by force by the manly non-white/muslim, while its original populations are devirilized and feminized),... that guy is from ex-Zaire/RDC, and he lives in Belgium, so I guess he has all the right to judge us this way.
Rap is big in France, bigger than in the USA, I'd say (you have country, for example), it is the main commercial music, listened to by both the youths and the "youths", and its omnipresent message is to spit on society, spit on authority, denigrate western culture, denigrate western wimmen (sluts, all of them!), etc, etc...
Very strange, many ethnic frenchs listen to this; of course, the only alternative is pop sang by androgyneous singers. So, the choice is either indulge in ethno-masochism, or to identify oneself with an umanly image.
#2
That's the nature of rap lyrics, a5089. On this side of the pond the Gangsta rappers (who your French rappers copy) are equally vicious and nihilistic, although merely racist and sexist, not religionist. Probably doesn't make you feel better to know that, though.
Spains top law enforcement official said Thursday he removed a key prosecutor from his job for failing to obey orders in important cases, including one involving al-Qaida suspects due to be released from jail soon because of a backlog in the courts.
During his 26 years at the court which deals with terrorism cases and crimes against the state he has waged a dogged fight against the armed Basque separatist group ETA, prosecuting major cases against it.
Three conservative newspaper editorials in El Mundo, La Razon and ABC and an association of victims of ETA attacks also charged that the government got rid of Fungairino to pave the way for such talks with ETA and a possible peace deal to end the 30-year-old conflict in the Basque region. The government already has offered ETA negotiations if it renounces violence.
"Patience has a limit," Conde-Pumpido said at a news forum with politicians and reporters.
This is because under Spanish law, a person who is convicted of a crime and appeals only has to serve half the jail sentence if the appeal is not ruled on before the sentence reaches that halfway point.
By now, some of those 11 are at or near the halfway point of the jail time they must serve and the severely backlogged Supreme Court has yet to rule on their appeals, meaning Spain has to release them. Two already have been released for this reason.
But Fungairino failed to warn the Supreme Court in the recent case, the attorney general said.
Fungairino, 59, is something of a character in Spanish legal circles.
He said the only thing he watched on television were BBC documentaries.
The newspaper El Pais reported Thursday he also upset the attorney general recently by failing to advise him of a judges warning that the probe into the Madrid attacks was going so slowly that some suspects might by law have to be released from custody before a trial could be held.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 01:26 ||
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Osama bin Laden's propaganda chief, believed to have been killed in a US missile strike on a remote Pakistani village in mid-January, studied electronics at German universities in the 1990s. Intelligence agents think he organised the distribution of bin Laden's video messages and trained al-Qaida to use the Web.
Moroccan-born Abdul Rehman Al-Misri al Maghribi, 35, studied electronics for over three years at the German universities of Cologne and Krefeld in the 1990s before moving to Afghanistan in 1999 where he made contact with bin Laden.
He is believed to have helped equip al-Qaida with modern computer technology and given it a high level of expertise in using the Internet, enabling the group to spread its message across the Web without being tracked by intelligence agencies.
Maghribi, known as Mohamed Abateh to German authorities, helped bin Laden distribute the videotape messages in which the terrorist leader regularly threatens the West, according to intelligence agents.
The missile strike on the village of Damadola in Pakistan's remote Bajaur tribal region was launched from an unmanned drone aircraft controlled by the CIA, according to media reports. It was aimed at al-Qaida's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, who wasn't hit. Abateh is believed to have been his son-in-law.
At least 18 civilians were killed in the attack. Media reports quoting Pakistani intelligence sources said the attack also killed three other militants including an al-Qaida bomb expert with a $5 million bounty on his head.
Abateh travelled to Germany in 1996 and was given a residence permit. He only became known to authorities as a result of testimony by Jordanian crown witness Shadi Abdallah, a former bin Laden bodyguard detained in Germany.
While at university, Abateh joined a group of young Muslims and became increasingly radical, eventually deciding to join bin Laden in Afghanistan, according to Abdallah, who travelled with him.
After arriving, Abateh was taken to bin Laden in Kandahar and the two were seen together constantly after that. Abateh built up close contacts with a secretive production company, al-Sahab, which according to US and German intelligence agencies produced most of the propaganda videos relating to the 9/11 attacks.
However, there is no evidence of his death. Shortly after the missile attack, villagers carried the bodies of the militants into the mountains, probably to prevent US forces from identifying them.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 01:22 ||
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#1
darn. The headline made me think the Propaganda Chief was being interrogated in Germany.
Duplicate: Phil's right, I've posted it myself once. Sorry Dan :-)
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:38 ||
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#1
This article is a year old and has been posted before (more than once I think).
Otherwise, I bet the novel doesn't include how the Kurds rebel and throw out the Turks from the southeastern third of the country and join the United Kurdistan Federation.
#2
"Crazy" and "Turkey" are slowly becoming synonyms.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/03/2006 13:29 Comments ||
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#3
"And in days of old, Ronald reagan took to spreading disease and pestolence over the entire globe. It was only Super Mulla. Defender of the 72 vestile virgins - who was able to stand up to his evil. "
From Le Figaro, the main French conservative paper whose opinions can generally be assumed to mirror that of Chirac's party.
On the Near [Middle] East, Iran and Syria, on these three perilous issues, Europe displays a policy of steadfastness, which increasingly resembles that of the United States. Never, during George W. Bush's second term, has the EU been so in tune with US diplomacy. Following Hamas's victory, whose scale it failed to predict, the EU has adopted a defensive posture, agreeing, as Washington demanded, to brandish threats of financial sanctions in order to bring pressure to bear on the Islamist party.
Within the Twenty-Five, the "tough" - that is, intransigent - line easily prevailed, even on France's part, some observers in Brussels noting a "change" of policy here. Hamas has acknowledged this, condemning the "blackmail" of the United States and Europe, without distinction, following the meeting of the Quartet (the United states, the EU, Russia, and the United Nations) in London, which revealed the convergence of viewpoints between US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the EU's diplomatic chief, Javier Solana.
Still in London, the EU and the United States yesterday established a "six-way" agreement with Russia and China to bring Iran before the UN Security Council. This pressure on Iran, consistent with Washington's wishes, comes a month after the condemnation of Syria, urged by Paris and Washington. "There is at present between the United States and Europe a convergence of interests, of common fears, and a realization that nothing can be achieved separately," one European diplomat observed. The end of the Ariel Sharon era, the approach of the elections in Israel, Iran's nuclear programme, and Hamas's victory create a context of uncertainty favourable to transatlantic relations. "It is impossible to say whether Europe or the United States influences the other more, but ultimately these common positions seem to be the only effective kind, particularly in the Near East, where they have long been lacking."
Though they remain deeply divided over Iraq, the United States and the EU have decided during the past year and more to tone down their disagreements. "We are in a context of general readjustment in the Middle East," according to Dr Richard Whiteman, of London's Chatham Institute. "On the US side, the Iraqi venture obliges Washington to moderation. On the European side, the EU knows that it cannot perform a role in the peace process in the Near East and influence Israel without having the United States at its side."
On the European scene, the role performed by Angela Merkel, keen to intensify ties with Washington, is another new factor, which is causing the scales to tip towards the United States. "On both sides of the Atlantic, there is a real desire to avert conflicts, but on both Iran and Hamas, disagreements are still possible in the coming months with regard to way kind of sanctions to adopt," according to Charles Jenkins, Europe specialist at the Royal Institute of International Relations.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:29 ||
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Several newspapers in Europe entered the fray by publishing some or all of the caricatures, including the French daily France-Soir, Germanys Die Welt, Italys Corriere della Serra and La Stampa, and Spains Catalan daily El Periodico, even as Denmarks government scrambled yesterday to repair the damage to its relations with the Muslim world.
The 12 cartoons, first published by Danish daily Jyllands-Posten last September, have sparked a debate on where to draw the line on freedom of expression, as Muslim anger over the drawings continues to swell.
Some said they were printing the cartoons in support of Jyllands-Posten, while others said they were used to illustrate articles on the dispute.
Muslim outrage over the images depicting the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) has boiled over into a diplomatic crisis threatening Danish relations with the Muslim world. Islam considers any image of the Prophet (PBUH) blasphemous.
Danish flags have been burnt, ambassadors have been recalled, products have been boycotted and threats of violence have been issued against Scandinavians in Muslim countries in recent days.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has repeatedly refused to apologise for the papers publication of the cartoons, saying that would constitute meddling in press freedoms. He has however apologised if Muslims were offended.
After announcing a diplomatic offensive to resolve the row, Rasmussen yesterday said his government had also launched a media offensive in Muslim nations.
We have to recognise that this is not only an issue between Denmark and a series of Arab governments. This is very much something that has spread to the streets in Arab countries, he said. It is therefore important to come in direct contact with the Arab people, he said.
Yet despite Copenhagens efforts, Syria announced that it had recalled its ambassador to Denmark, while Chechen guerrilla leader Shamil Basayev threatened a response to the cartoons. And in Russia, the Orthodox Church and the Mufti Council, which represents 23 million Muslims, condemned European newspapers for reprinting the drawings.
The French foreign ministry distanced itself from a reproduction of the cartoons by the newspaper France-Soir. The ministry condemned all that hurts individuals beliefs and religious convictions but underlined that France is a respectful and tolerant country that cherishes freedom of speech.
Jyllands-Posten offices in Aarhus and the capital Copenhagen were again targeted by bomb threats yesterday and evacuated, media reports said. Nothing was found in both offices after a similar threat on Tuesday.
The world press freedom watchdog Reporters without Borders, based in Paris, defended the newspapers. Freedom of the press also exists for viewpoints that shock the majority of the population, RSF head Robert Menard told France Soir.
In Copenhagen, security police met Islamic leaders in a bid to calm reactions. Dalil Boubakeur, head of the French Muslim Council, denounced the publication of the drawings as a provocation. Burhan Kesici, a leader of Germanys Turkish community, said they reduced Islam to two or three terrorists.
Thousands of Palestinians protested against Denmark this week, and Arab ministers called on it to punish Jyllands-Posten. Saudi Arabia has recalled its ambassador from Copenhagen and Libya has closed its embassy.
The Danish-Swedish dairy product maker Arla Foods, with annual Middle East sales of almost $500m, said it might have to cut 140 jobs due to the boycott. We are losing around 10m kroner ($1.8m) per day at the moment, a spokeswoman said. The worlds biggest maker of insulin, Denmarks Novo Nordisk , said pharmacies and hospitals in Saudi Arabia had been avoiding its products since Saturday.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:26 ||
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#3
I am thoroughly ashamed at the UK media for not showing these pictures. There is no doubt whatsoever that they are "in the public interest" - a phrase they use to justify publishing saucy upskirt snaps of royals / celebrities. I can only conclude that fear of provoking a reaction has prevented them being published. This is cowardice of the highest degree.
(quick, somebody give me some rhetoric, I need to vent, bigtime...)
#4
Surprisingly, the Beeb showed them last night - in context (patronising f*cks). I also woke to the sound of a crazed Mullah on the 6 o'clock radio news this a.m. proclaiming a day of much angriness at the infidel. Grrr..
Posted by: Howard UK ||
02/03/2006 6:02 Comments ||
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Grrr
Lol, H...
I've never understood the Western penchant for apologizing for our strength and achievements. Especially to sorry pathetic losers who've chosen to be sorry pathetic losers. Boggle.
#6
I've never understood the Western penchant for apologizing for our strength and achievements. Especially to sorry pathetic losers who've chosen to be sorry pathetic losers. Boggle.
Precisely! .com, I'll be interested to see your opinion regarding the administration's support for the Muslim position on these long overdue and well earned cartoons. I've started a thread about the faith based sandbag that has caused all of this.
Since September 11, the European-U.S. partnership in the war on terror has generally been strong. Even countries vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq, such as France and Germany, have been cooperating with the US. In fact, John McLaughlin, the former CIA director, described the relationship between the CIA and its French counterparts as "one of the best in the world. What they are willing to contribute is extraordinarily valuable." But if Europe is really America's ally, how come it does not include Al Qaeda on its list of terrorist organizations?
More importantly, why doesn't anyone seem to care? Indeed, it is common knowledge that the Lebanese Shia terrorist group Hezbollah is not part of the EU's list. This is a matter of controversy -- Israel wants Hezbollah included but France has resisted, saying the group fulfills a "social function." But nowhere is Al Qaeda mentioned.
Following the September 11 attacks, the European Union formulated an official list of terrorist organizations. Groups such as the Basque separatist organization ETA, "the external security arms of Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad", the real IRA, and the Orange Volunteers were placed on this list, which obliges member states to seize their assets. But there was no mention of Al Qaeda and this was three months after the attacks in New York and Washington DC. The most recent EU list of December 2005 includes now 48 groups (they removed Hezbollah altogether) but still no Al Qaeda.
As a comparison, Al Qaeda is of course included in the US State Department list as well as the UK and Australia ones, which seems only natural and common sense. So, how come the European Union does not consider Al Qaeda a terrorist entity?
Even though the EU has a different definition of terrorism than the US, there's no way Al Qaeda could not fit it. Europeans have been historically lenient towards what they assume to be "freedom fighting" groups or "mostly social" entities such as Hezbollah. But Al Qaeda cannot be considered either a freedom fighting group, except if one assumes that they are liberating the ex Caliphate, or a social group. But still the EU would not have it; Al Qaeda does not seem to fit its definition of a terrorist group.
The reason behind this is that Osama Bin Laden's organization is much more a franchise than an organized entity. Al Qaeda is a loose collection of different terror networks and therefore cannot be construed as one group per se. This argument does not hold water because Al Qaeda always had a centralized command, a clear hierarchy.
Interestingly enough, this issue has not really been on the table: for instance the latest available State Department report on Patterns of Global Terrorism does not mention the EU's omission. While Hamas and Hezbollah's potential inclusion to the EU list got a lot of coverage and rightly so, Al Qaeda got none whatsoever.
Regarding Hamas, the US lobbied with the help of some European allies to include the Palestinian terrorist group in that list, overcoming France's refusal. It would be wise for American diplomacy and Congress to tackle this issue and pressure the European Union to add Al Qaeda to its terrorist list. Over four years after the bloodiest terrorist attacks in history, it's well past time.
The man jailed for life for the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004 insisted in court on Thursday the Prophet Mohammed sanctioned the use of violence. Dutch-Moroccan Mohammed Bouyeri, 27, spoke for almost two hours and thirty minutes in the high security Amsterdam-Osdorp courthouse.
Bouyeri, who cannot receive another sentence under Dutch law, opted to make a personal speech. It was expected it would contain some fireworks. But observers afterwards agreed it was too long and confusing. Bouyeri did not address the prosecution's contention about the existence of a terrorist organisation, or the central role he allegedly played in it. Journalists in court estimated 70 percent of his speech consisted of citations taken from a range of writers, including Michael Ignatieff and Jessica Stern. Bouyeri gathered the material from the prison library.
Dressed in a traditional Arabic garment with a red and white scarf on his head, Bouyeri began his address with a Muslim confession of his faith in Arabic. A translator interpreted his words for the court. "Comparing me to Osama bin Laden does the man a great wrong and extends me too much honour I don't deserve," Bouyeri said. "But it fills me with me with honour, pride and joy that you see me as the standard-bearer of Islam in Europe," he told the prosecution.
The French government deported a Malian involved in autumn rioting on Thursday the first expulsion stemming from the weeks of violence that swept across France's troubled suburbs and was preparing to send home another six foreigners. The deportation of the man made good on promises issued by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy during three weeks of car burnings, riots and other violence that began Oct. 27. "I was widely criticized for saying ... that I would apply the law by expelling those (foreigners) who participated in the riots," Sarkozy said on LCI television. "Well, a first one took an airplane to Mali today."
That's one more deportee than Tony Blair has managed...nice work, Nico.
Sarkozy said six other foreigners convicted of crimes were about to be deported, explaining the delay as a result of long legal procedures "because we are in a state of law."
... and the Bad Guyz are as happy to wage law as they are to wage war.
At the height of the crisis, Sarkozy said he had asked local authorities to immediately deport 120 foreigners arrested during the unrest, a plan that raised concerns among human rights groups.
"Deport them? Merely for rioting and destroying property? Come, now! Be reasonable!"
Most of the other cases were dropped because the suspects were minors or faced the prospect of double punishment for their roles in the violence, Sarkozy's spokesman, Franck Louvrier, told The Associated Press.
#1
Nice try France, but not enough. While the fires burned cars at the rate of 500 to 600 a night you have decided to deport a Malay? No possible threat of an economic embargo or political uproar here. I just hope they are testing the water and more are to follow, but somehow I doubt it.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/03/2006 7:33 Comments ||
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Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/03/2006 9:39 Comments ||
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#4
Actually, 49 Pan, I see this (as small as it is) as a turn for the better for France (in addition to the whole cartoon story). As we say in the south "Git 'er done!"
Posted by: BA ||
02/03/2006 9:52 Comments ||
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#6
BA, Living in Kentucky, git'er dun means just that, not "well we'll throw one out and see how it goes". When we muck a stall we get all the horse crap out of the stall, not just one road apple. You point is taken and I agree one is better than none, and thats a great place to start, but France has got to see the long game in this and not hide from this. They lost millions in the riots, got imbarased in the worlds eye, and a large population of France was at risk during the riots. They must deal with it or br forced to live it over and over.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/03/2006 13:46 Comments ||
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#7
Let this be the trickle that presages a torrential flood. Europe's only hope is to rapidly evict all who refuse to assimilate. World War II has already showed us their way of dealing with this when all restraint is lost.
#8
49pan, I agree with ya (from here in GA), but for France that is "git 'er done" in my mind. I was actually surprised to hear Chirac talk tough about nukes (in defense of France) the other day, and I'm more surprised they didn't form a committee to study how they can go about understanding the muslims honestly. That being said (I'm not French), maybe it should "Wee, wee. Joan-es-see-qua, vee geet her dawn."
Posted by: BA ||
02/03/2006 15:08 Comments ||
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CIA Director Porter J. Goss told a Senate committee yesterday that unauthorized leaks of classified information about agency activities have caused "severe damage" to the CIA's operations and that journalists who report leaks should be questioned by a grand jury.
Appearing alongside Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte for an annual briefing on global threats for the Senate intelligence committee, Goss and other intelligence officials also defended the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program.
Regarding disclosures about CIA detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects at secret sites abroad, Goss, the former chairman of the House intelligence committee, said that "the damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission." He added: "It is my aim and it is my hope that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information. I believe the safety of this nation and the people of this country deserves nothing less."
The annual briefing sparked a fierce partisan battle over President Bush's widening claims of executive power, centered on the recently disclosed program of warrantless eavesdropping on the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States suspected of communicating with terrorists overseas. Democrats charged that the White House has politicized the handling of intelligence by launching a week-long public defense of its efforts while refusing to divulge to Congress details of the program's reach.
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate panel, invoked the reliance on questionable intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war and alleged a "disturbing pattern" by the administration "to selectively release intelligence information that supports its policy or political agenda, while withholding equally pertinent information that does not."
Rockefeller, one of the few members of Congress briefed on the spy program, asked "whether the very independence of the U.S. intelligence community has been co-opted . . . by the strong, controlling hand of the White House."
The charges provoked a withering response from Republicans, led by committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who said Democrats were minimizing the threat of terrorism for political gain.
"I am concerned that some of my Democrat colleagues used this unique public forum to make clear that they believe the gravest threat we face is not Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, but rather the president of the United States," Roberts said. He added that Democratic senators were under "marching orders" to attack Bush aides "and now members of our intelligence agencies."
Yesterday's hearing was the first in a series of likely partisan scuffles over the National Security Agency spying program that will follow the White House's aggressive defense of the program's necessity and constitutionality, capped by Bush's State of the Union address on Tuesday.
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales is scheduled to appear as the sole witness Monday at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which may schedule more hearings on the topic in coming weeks. The Senate intelligence panel is scheduled to hear Feb. 9 from Gonzales and Negroponte's deputy, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, and hold a second closed meeting the following week.
Under questioning by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Negroponte said Bush and Vice President Cheney authorized that disclosure of the program be limited to eight members of Congress: House and Senate leaders and the chairman and ranking member of each chamber's intelligence panel.
Rockefeller said the information provided on the NSA's largest surveillance effort in the United States hardly amounted to briefings, particularly in contrast to details that Bush and top aides have publicly released in claiming its success at thwarting terrorist attacks.
"This rationale for withholding information from Congress is flat-out unacceptable and nothing more than political smoke," he said. "What is unique about this one particular program, among all the other sensitive NSA programs, that justifies keeping Congress in the dark?"
Negroponte's review focused on well-known threats to the United States -- al Qaeda and terrorism in general, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, particularly in Iran and North Korea.
Negroponte said al Qaeda's most probable form of attack continues to be conventional explosives, although the terrorists remain "interested in getting chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials or weapons."
He said that if al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab Zarqawi eludes capture or death and continues his attacks, he could "expand his following . . . much as [Osama] bin Laden expanded al Qaeda in the 1990s."
Negroponte said Iran does not have a nuclear weapon or the key ingredients to build one. He made public the intelligence community's revised assessment that the country is further from achieving that capability than previously believed.
Negroponte said that on its current path, Iran "will likely have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon within the next decade." One year ago, Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress that Iran was within five years of the capability to make a nuclear weapon. The new judgment is based on how soon Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for the core of an atomic bomb.
Negroponte also said yesterday that North Korea's claims of a nuclear arsenal are "probably true." In the past, the CIA has assessed that the country had enough nuclear material for two or more weapons.
Negroponte warned that Central Asian republics, some of which host U.S. forces, remain plagued by repression and other problems and that one or more might collapse, paving the way for terrorist activity.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 01:03 ||
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#1
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate panel or one of his staff members is one of your leaks. He devised this plan last year to "get Bush" over intelligence gathering by manufacturing issues.
The Rockefeller's are not worth the powder to blow them to hell.
#2
Oncce upon a time the Rockefellers were rich idealists. Gov. Nelson Rockefeller raised New York State's taxes outrageously, but gave us the nation's best roads and education system, among other things. This younger generation just wants power and to pour its bile on those it dislikes.
#3
The Rockefeller family seems to have their hand in a little of everything. Besides the World Trade Center, which was blown on Bashar Assad's birthday, they donated the land for the United Nations building...are you lurking, AQ? They also played a part in relocating Palestinians when Israel was formed in 1948, and even have scrolls stored in the basement of the Rockefeller Museum in Israel. Tales of legendary Temple treasure supposedly buried to conceal it from the Romans, the locations inscribed the ancient map in one of the Dead Sea scrolls, prompted the Palestinians to demand the return of these scrolls as part of the peace deal. The Museum is in the the pre-1967 borders. David Rockefeller seems to be in the position to do most anything, but is not under the scrutiny elected officials are. Google the family...their extensive holdings and influence sure puts them in the position to control and leak at will.
#4
"What is unique about this one particular program, among all the other sensitive NSA programs, that justifies keeping Congress in the dark?"
Now that Russ ("I think Bush probably broke the law here") Feingold is on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I'm sure the administration will be much more willing to share sensitive information with congress.
#5
Rockefeller, one of the few members of Congress briefed on the spy program, asked "whether the very independence of the U.S. intelligence community has been co-opted . . . by the strong, controlling hand of the White House."
Uh, I was always under the impression that the President was akin to being the CEO of the Executive Branch, so he should "control" the Executive Branch agencies, correct? Of course, I was taught this by reading the Constitution here in the "deep red" South, so whadda I know?
Negroponte said that on its current path, Iran "will likely have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon within the next decade." One year ago, Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress that Iran was within five years of the capability to make a nuclear weapon. The new judgment is based on how soon Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for the core of an atomic bomb.
Note that that timeline depended on IRAN producing the uranium. Now that AQ Khan has been outed, maybe they can just buy some of the black market. The gov't was blamed for 9/11 for not "connecting the dots" or "thinking outside the box" on unconventional attacks, but that is just stuck on stupid to ignore the nuclear black market these days. I'm no nuclear engineer, and I'm sure it's extremely hard to transport, but I seriously doubt it can't be done, especially by goons as "devout" as the Mad Mullahs(tm).
Posted by: BA ||
02/03/2006 10:15 Comments ||
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Right on,BA. Negroponte is apparently another career diplomat "stuck on stupid" for only looking at state sponsored threats. Creating National Intelligence was necessary, but I hope he has lots of oversight.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's hearings are usually held behind closed doors, open only to people with top-secret security clearances or clearances so secret their names can't even be revealed.
But today its Democratic members made the most of their first chance to grill administration officials and the intelligence community on the secret domestic surveillance program enacted by President Bush shortly after 9/11 terror attacks.
The program was known only to the intelligence officers who administer it, the administration members who OK'd it, and the eight members of Congress who were informed but sworn to secrecy.
Secrets are hard enough to keep in Washington. So the revelation of a clandestine spying program kept quiet for four years has been a political focus in Washington since it was leaked to the New York Times late last year.
The hearing opened with National Intelligence Director John Negroponte's slow monotone, describing worldwide threats of nuclear peril from Iran and North Korea to how al Qaeda is sustaining itself both in Iraq and elsewhere.
Sen. Ron Wyden , D-Ore., cut Negroponte off in mid-sentence as he described the internal NSA and administration checks on the domestic spying program.
"That's not good enough," Wyden snapped. "You're asking us to trust you. Ronald Reason put it well, 'Trust but verify.' And the American people and Congress can't verify."
Most Democrats and Republicans such as intelligence committee member Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, and Judiciary Committee Chair Arlen Specter have raised questions about the secrecy of the program and the fact that it circumvents the Foreign Intelligence Security Act, which requires warrants for domestic wiretapping from a secret court.
Democrats walked a fine line in their criticism, trying to criticize the program without appearing soft on national security matters. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., for instance, said today he is not opposed to the wiretapping, but to the secrecy with which the program was enacted and conducted.
For their part, Republicans forcefully defended the program. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., zinged off some excellent one-liners about the need for secrecy regarding the program.
"I can tell you how many people have been saved by this program," he said, when Gen. Hayden of the Department of National Intelligence declined to say how many people were saved from death at the hands of terrorists by the program. "It's everybody who was on the Brooklyn Bridge when it would have been blown up."
Caught in the middle were the intelligence community representatives, who generally declined to comment on the program at all, saying they could elaborate later today when they met in a closed hearing.
Today's hearing marked the first of several shots senators will have at the political appointees who approved and administer the NSA program. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will likely undergo a similar haranguing next Monday when he goes before the Senate Judiciary committee.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:50 ||
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#1
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., for instance, said today he is not opposed to the wiretapping, but to the secrecy with which the program was enacted and conducted.
Well how the phuque else is surveillance going to be conducted? With full knowledge of the parties being watched? With there being a public declaration that surveillance of so-and-so kinds of communications is in effect?
These people complaining about clandestine monitoring of foreign communications need to pull their heads out of their asses.
#2
I think we need to see some arrests of Congressmen and Senators or staffers who have leaked info. Maybe these asstards will wake up when they get perp walked out of the capitol.
#3
Well said, SPoD. I'd give $500 to see Pelosi and Schumer perp walked down the steps. I'd give $1000 to see them get rowdy and the LEO rap them a few times with the stick.
Posted by: mac ||
02/03/2006 5:45 Comments ||
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#4
Wyden is a self gatifying fool on some platform designed to keep himself in the press. Just as soon as he thinks he can get traction as the defender of civil rights the Pentagon will release a case like Brooklyn bridge with details and send this guy and all his followers to the bottom of the pool. Boy the next two years will be fun.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/03/2006 8:27 Comments ||
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#5
I always think of how this was used in the past (most phone companies during previous wars willingly tapped lines to listen for spies). He!!, I can hear my neighbors' conversation each night on our baby monitor. Cell phones may be a lil' more difficult, but should be same principle as cordless phones in the house. And, like others are stating, they're not worried that Papa John's asked you to "hold, please" when you first call for pizza...just calls placed to overseas (known) phone #s. It's not like the guys at NSA have nothing better to do.
Posted by: BA ||
02/03/2006 10:04 Comments ||
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#6
Perhaps all monitored calls need to be prefaced with an announcement:
"Beep Beep BOOP!! This call is being monitored by the United States National Security Agency. Transcripts of your conversation may be recorded and distributed to agencies that are part of Homeland Defense. The Democratic Party wishes you to know that they disapprove of these taps and respect your right to plot to kill Americans. We now return you to your terroristic conspiracy ..."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that the Pentagon had not done a good job in the information war against enemies like al Qaeda, saying US personnel felt constrained partly due to fear of criticism in the media.
''This is an area that we don't do well -- we know we don't do well,'' Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing yesterday, referring to information operations and psychological warfare aimed at foreign peoples and enemies.
''How do we compete in this struggle in a way that can counter the ability of the enemy to lie, which we can't do, (and) the ability of the enemy to not have a free media criticizing them? You don't see much criticizing of them.'' A debate is under way in America over what is permissible for the US government to do to spread its message to foreign audiences as it engages in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and in what it calls a global war against terrorism.
The US military command in Iraq is investigating a military program that funneled money to some Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American articles. The Pentagon in 2002 closed its Office of Strategic Influence after reports that it planned to plant false news stories with foreign media outlets.
''We're not going to lose wars or battles out there. The only place we can lose is if the country loses its will. And the determinant of that is what is played in the media,'' Rumsfeld said.
''And, therefore, the terrorists have media committees, and they plan it. And they manipulate and manage to influence what the media carries throughout the world. And they do it very successfully. They're good at it.'' But Rumsfeld said the risk of being criticized by the US news media had a chilling effect on the US military.
''And they (defense personnel) say, oh my goodness, if you do anything in that area, you get penalized because there's bad press, there's bad news, someone doesn't like it, there's a congressional hearing, the newspaper has it on the front page because it's about the media and the media likes to write about the media,'' Rumsfeld said.
''And our people are chilled and reticent and uncomfortable,'' Rumsfeld added.
A document signed by Rumsfeld that was made public last week acknowledged that information spread by the Pentagon to influence foreign audiences increasingly seeps back home and is ''consumed by our domestic audience.'' The Pentagon is prohibited from targeting American audiences with these ''psychological operations.'' The Pentagon said the ''psychological operations'' information was truthful. But the research organization that obtained the document through the Freedom of Information Act described it as propaganda planted overseas that inevitably made its way back to the United States.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:16 ||
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#1
let's face it, AQ has kicked our tails in the information war. We've already lost it. What needs to be done is to educate the public as to who is in control of our media and where their sympathies and funding lie.
There needs to be another news source - either a paper or a TV station that represents American interests. Fox isn't as bad, but it seems to me that all Fox ever does is hype the same stuff that the anti-American crowd hypes - but asks it in the form of a question.
"Did President Bush break the law with spying?"
"Is America losing the war in Iraq"
"Should America bring it's soldiers home from Iraq?"
"Should Ward Churchill be protected for unpopular speech?"
You rarely see them proactive in hyping the good stuff going on - documentaries of the improvements in Iraq, just like CNN it's all IED's all the time. They touch on the Oil for Food scandals or the Nancy Pelosi/ John Murtha connections - but only with qualifiers, like...the GOP does it too... that weaken the story.
They are stuck in the old mode. Americans are hungry for a good source of news. Someone will make a fortune if they can provide it.
#2
Its unfortunately a problem with our senior uniform military. They still haven't learned that all wars are two front. There and at home. They refuse to fight the one at home. The narrow focus and "I don't want to be bothered by that" attitude unfortunately makes the sacrifices, of the men and women under them, for naught. They just don't get it and won't till someone with more balls than Rummey get around firing some of the "good o'boys" club. Then and only then will it get attention. Second, no President should be permitted to avoid using the power of DoJ to the maximum if and when anyone in the media crosses the line "providing aid and comfort". There is no right to scream FIRE in a crowded theater, there is no right to engage in treason in time of war.
#3
I recall my father who served with the 2nd Marine Division in WWII use to joke that their fire team was composed of three men; one to shoot, one to loot, and one to take pictures. One of the bill payers in the Army's downsizing and 'modernization' has been the uniformed combat photographer. DoD decided to let the slack be picked up by the MSM. Great move. Napoleon said: "Morale is to the physical as three is to one". Time to rethink who takes the pictures and how they get to the public. Of course, this is when the CoS of the Army basically directs the troops effort on blogs, to be shut down. [Don't get technical. The company commanders don't want to spend the time to read the fine print, its just easier to shut them down.]
#4
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that the Pentagon had not done a good job in the information war against enemies like al Qaeda..
It's so bad how could you argue with Rumys assessment.
just to add little more to one aspect of this.
1) Left unchallenged the MSM has religiously planted their anti-war anti-Bush agenda in almost every story without fail every day.
2) And surprise surprise, A-Q and its cousins release VIDEOS and MEMOS on a regular basis showing their handy work...suicide bombers, kidnappings, snipers, IEDs, VIBEDS etc.
>unfortunately most of these go largely unanswered in an any effective way.
[eg DOD anti terrorist vids or the capture splodydopes etc.]
3) A good starting point would be killing the policy of letting MSM media whores like Kevin Sykes embed with our Armed Forces.
If the Pentagon is serious, it seems that Mil-blogs and the soldier/reporter embeds are a real good starting place.
The system may need adjustments and fine tuning but from what I've see they are tremendous testimony for our side, America side.
A pool of patriotic soldier/reporters could be encouraged and supported by the Pentagon instead of the aimless non policy of basically turning it over to the "MSM".
#6
On the complete other other end of the DOD's propaganda war, I doubt if any of us have a problem with the DOD publishing dis-information or slanted information to help our side, afterall it's WAR.
Here's another example of a great war correspondent!
All Activity - Simple View from Oct. 14, 2005 to Nov. 14, 2005 for
Date Type To/From Name/Email Status Details Action Amount
Oct. 31, 2005 Payment To bill roggio Completed Details -$200.00 USD
#8
"But Rumsfield says that the risk of being criticized by the U.S. media had a chilling effect on the U.S. military. It makes our people
chilled, reticient and uncomfortable."
Does anyone have any proof that this is true?
Have any studies been done to verify it?
What is sounds like is Bush administration propaganda to kill off dissenting opinions about
his "GWOT".
Posted by: Common Sense ||
02/03/2006 16:43 Comments ||
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#9
Oh yeah, CS, that's the ticket...It's BB all the time. I, for one, can think of 1 specific incident where the MSM "chilled" the military's action...the one where 1 of our boyz tapped the Islamonut who was laying on the floor shot with a bomb under him and moved (our troops thought he was dead or incapacitated enough to not move). This specific grunt's buddy had just been killed by the same action...jihadis playing opossum (or 'possum in the red states) with a bomb underneath and set it off when he bent down to check the jihadi. Thing is, our troops probably are checking their stats and getting them medical attention to boot!
Posted by: BA ||
02/03/2006 20:54 Comments ||
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I meant to add, the MSM was all over that one, second guessing our boys (who BTW, in my mind, are being extremely merciful) about putting this goon down! Having MSM guys embedded with our troops, second guessing their ROEs in front of the entire country (especially when the jihadis are burning innocents and beheading captives on the internet) is beyond the pale!
Posted by: BA ||
02/03/2006 20:56 Comments ||
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#11
#8 - Studies? Yes, CS! That's the ticket! Come back in two (mebbe three) years when the "studies" have been completed!
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/03/2006 21:03 Comments ||
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#12
Bobby, you may be on to something. Maybe we can apply for a grant to study that, lol!
Posted by: BA ||
02/03/2006 21:20 Comments ||
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WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush next week will request a $439.3 billion Defense Department budget for 2007, a nearly 5 percent increase over this year, according to senior Pentagon officials and documents obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
The spending plan would include $84.2 billion for weapons programs, a nearly 8 percent increase, including billions of dollars for fighter jets, Navy ships, helicopters and unmanned aircraft. The total includes a substantial increase in weapons spending for the Army, which will get $16.8 billion in the 2007 budget, compared with $11 billion this year.
Senior defense officials provided the totals on condition of anonymity because the defense budget will not be publicly released until Monday. The figures did not include about $50 billion that Bush administration officials said Thursday they would request as a down payment for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007. The administration said war costs for 2006 would total $120 billion.
The budget plan continues administration efforts to transform the military into a more efficient, agile fighting force, while also making investments in new technologies that will better equip troops to fight the global war on terror. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld would not provide any details of the budget Thursday but called it appropriate, adding: ``We have been able to fund the important things that are needed. It is a sizable amount of money.''
The budget proposal represents the fifth year in a row that spending on weapons has increased, after years of cutbacks during the 1990s. It also provides funding for 42 Army Brigade Combat Teams as part of the ongoing effort to increase the number of combat units from 33. The expansion would allow soldiers to spend two years at their home station for every year they are deployed to a war front.
Overall, the Army would receive $111.8 billion, including $42.6 billion for personnel. The Army National Guard would receive about $5.25 billion for personnel, and the Army Reserves would receive $3.4 billion. The Army's key weapons program, the Future Combat System, will be funded at $3.3 billion, and there will be $583 million to buy nearly 3,100 more heavily armored Humvees. The budget also includes nearly $800 million for 100 Stryker transport vehicles, built by General Dynamics Land Systems.
During a speech Thursday, Rumsfeld said the Pentagon is learning to do more with less. ``We are finding ways to operate that department in ways that are considerably more efficient and more respectful of taxpayers' dollars,'' he said. ``We are getting much more for the dollar today than we were five years ago.''
In other budget programs, the Air Force will receive about $2.2 billion for the F-22 fighter - slashing the 2006 total nearly in half. The drop in funding, however, is actually a contract restructuring that would return that money - and more - over the long run by stretching out the program for an additional two years and buying four more planes. The new plan calls for buying 20 of the aircraft, built by Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, each year in 2008, 2009 and 2010, rather than 56 in the next two years.
The Navy will receive about $2.5 billion for the next Virginia Class submarine, built by Electric Boat in Connecticut and Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia, and there is $360 million in the budget for development of the new CH53K heavy lift helicopter, built by Connecticut-based Sikorsky Aircraft for the Marine Corps.
Other programs in the budget include:
$5.6 billion to support a wide variety of programs to address the multiple needs of military families, including child care, family counseling, tuition assistance and family centers.
About $1.8 billion for 81 Army Black Hawk and Navy Hawk helicopters.
$1.3 billion for five of the new Joint Strike Fighters.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/03/2006 00:00 ||
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QUESTION: Yes? Can you say anything about a U.S. response or a U.S. reaction to this uproar in Europe over the Prophet Muhammad pictures? Do you have any reaction to it? Are you concerned that the violence is going to spread and make everything just --
MR. MCCORMACK: I haven't seen any -- first of all, this is matter of fact. I haven't seen it. I have seen a lot of protests. I've seen a great deal of distress expressed by Muslims across the globe. The Muslims around the world have expressed the fact that they are outraged and that they take great offense at the images that were printed in the Danish newspaper, as well as in other newspapers around the world.
Our response is to say that while we certainly don't agree with, support, or in some cases, we condemn the views that are aired in public that are published in media organizations around the world, we, at the same time, defend the right of those individuals to express their views. For us, freedom of expression is at the core of our democracy and it is something that we have shed blood and treasure around the world to defend and we will continue to do so. That said, there are other aspects to democracy, our democracy -- democracies around the world -- and that is to promote understanding, to promote respect for minority rights, to try to appreciate the differences that may exist among us.
We believe, for example in our country, that people from different religious backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds, national backgrounds add to our strength as a country. And it is important to recognize and appreciate those differences. And it is also important to protect the rights of individuals and the media to express a point of view concerning various subjects. So while we share the offense that Muslims have taken at these images, we at the same time vigorously defend the right of individuals to express points of view. We may -- like I said, we may not agree with those points of view, we may condemn those points of view but we respect and emphasize the importance that those individuals have the right to express those points of view.
For example -- and on the particular cartoon that was published -- I know the Prime Minister of Denmark has talked about his, I know that the newspaper that originally printed it has apologized, so they have addressed this particular issue. So we would urge all parties to exercise the maximum degree of understanding, the maximum degree of tolerance when they talk about this issue. And we would urge dialogue, not violence. And that also those that might take offense at these images that have been published, when they see similar views or images that could be perceived as anti-Semitic or anti-Catholic, that they speak out with equal vigor against those images.
QUESTION: That the Muslims speak out with equal vigor when they see -- that's what you're asking?
MR. MCCORMACK: We would -- we believe that it is an important principle that peoples around the world encourage dialogue, not violence; dialogue, not misunderstanding and that when you see an image that is offensive to another particular group, to speak out against that. Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images or any other religious belief. We have to remember and respect the deeply held beliefs of those who have different beliefs from us. But it is important that we also support the rights of individuals to express their freely held views.
QUESTION: So basically you're just hoping that it doesn't -- I'm sorry I misspoke when I said there was violence, I meant uproar. Your bottom line is that both sides have the right to do exactly as they're doing and you just hope it doesn't get worse?
MR. MCCORMACK: Well, I --
QUESTION: You just hope it doesn't escalate.
MR. MCCORMACK: I gave a pretty long answer, so --
QUESTION: You did. I'm trying to sum it up for you. (Laughter.)
MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah. Sure.
QUESTION: A couple of years ago, I think it was a couple of years ago when, I think it was the Syrians and the Lebanese were introducing this documentary about the Jews -- or it was the Egyptians -- this Administration spoke out very strongly about that and called it offensive, said it was --
MR. MCCORMACK: I just said that the images were offensive; we found them offensive.
QUESTION: Well, no you said that you understand that the Muslims found them offensive, but --
MR. MCCORMACK: I'm saying now, we find them offensive. And we certainly understand why Muslims would find these images offensive.
Yes.
QUESTION: One word is puzzling me in this, Sean, and that's the use of the word "unacceptable" and "not acceptable," exactly what that implies. I mean, it's not quite obvious that you find the images offensive. When you say "unacceptable," it applies some sort of action against the people who perpetrate those images.
MR. MCCORMACK: No. I think I made it very clear that our defense of freedom of expression and the ability of individuals and media organizations to engage in free expression is forthright and it is strong, you know. This is -- our First Amendment rights, the freedom of expression, are some of the most strongly held and dearly held views that we have here in America. And certainly nothing that I said, I would hope, would imply any diminution of that support.
QUESTION: It's just the one word "unacceptable," I'm just wondering if that implied any action, you know. But it doesn't you say?
MR. MCCORMACK: No.
QUESTION: Okay.
MR. MCCORMACK: Yes.
QUESTION: Do you caution America media against publishing those cartoons?
MR. MCCORMACK: That's for you and your editors to decide, and that's not for the government. We don't own the printing presses.
QUESTION: Sean, these cartoons first surfaced in late September and it's following this recent election with the Palestinian Authority. The EU mission was attacked or held, in effect, by Hamas yesterday near Gaza City. And the tact of some of these European newspapers, again, are to re-publish -- these cartoons. Is the election mood -- is this what is possibly fueling this and what is our media response to this, a la, what Katherine Hughes may or may not do versus international State Department and government media to the Muslim world, including Indonesia, Asia, and the Middle East?
MR. MCCORMACK: I don't think your colleagues really want me to repeat the long answer that I gave to Teri, so I'd refer you to that answer.
QUESTION: All right.
MR. MCCORMACK: Yes, George.
QUESTION: Getting back to your next question, nobody doubts the right of newspapers, et cetera, to print such drawings as appeared in Europe, but is it the responsible thing to do -- or is it -- or would it be irresponsible to do what the European newspapers did because of the sensitivities involved?
MR. MCCORMACK: George, we, as a Government, have made our views known on the question of these images. We find them offensive. We understand why others may find them offensive. We have urged tolerance and understanding. That -- all of that said, the media organizations are going to have to make their own decisions concerning what is printed, George. This is -- it's not for the U.S. Government to dictate what is printed.
QUESTION: You're not dictating -- everybody knows you can't order people not to --
MR. MCCORMACK: Right.
QUESTION: -- print this or that, but you might have on your hands the same kind of problem that the Europeans find --
MR. MCCORMACK: You're right, you're right.
QUESTION: -- now. So, I just thought that there might be a word or two saying -- you know, that -- you know, you should do your best not to incite people because this -- you're dealing with deeply-held beliefs.
MR. MCCORMACK: You're right. You're right. You are dealing with deeply-held beliefs and certainly, we have talked about the importance of urging tolerance and appreciating differences and to respect the fact that many of -- millions and millions of people around the world would find these images -- these particular images offensive. But whether or not American media chooses to reproduce those images is a question for them, for them alone to answer, not for us.
Passed as received. This ignores the count of wounded (much higher than in earlier wars as we save lives on the battlefield) but it's still funny ...
If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq Theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per l00,000. The rate in Washington, D.C. is 80.6 per l00,000. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capital, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you have in Iraq.
Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington, D.C.
#4
There's something wrong with the DC stats; not sure what, but maybe that 80.6/100,000 is the annual rate and not the monthly rate, or maybe it's per million. Even when New Orleans was the leader in that category I don't think we got over a couple of murders a day, or about 8/100,000 per month.
#5
In the late 80s, the Royal Navy was sending doctors to GW U's hospital in D.C., to get experience in dealing with 'combat' wounds. For all I know, they still might.
#6
Ahhhh ... lotp is on to something here. However, he has missed a salient point: next door Prince George's County has seen a giant growth in homicide -- 72 in 2000, 173 in 2005 (the record-breaking year). What's happening? D.C. criminals and degenerates have moved out of the capital into fertile grounds. But wait. Why hasn't the homicide rate exploded in Montgomery County, also next door to D.C.
Well, I cannot say because it is a truth that cannot be spoken.
#7
The 2002 Murder rate for Washington, DC: 45.8 (highest in nation). LotP's story gives the firearms death rate (firearms murder, suicide and accidents). In addition, Washington DC has about 550,000 residents, giving an annual death rate from firearms of about 440 people. Last year in Iraq, just over 844 US Service members died, or about 700 due to combat. Using a figure of 160,000 US troops in Iraq gives a violent death rate of 440/100,000 or near 10 times the Washington DC homicide rate.
Posted by: ed ||
02/03/2006 10:46 Comments ||
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#8
Pappy, all the services send their doctors to DC, Detroit, Los Angeles or wherever gangs and drugs intersect to get trauma lifesaving experience.
Posted by: ed ||
02/03/2006 10:49 Comments ||
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#9
Last year in Iraq, just over 844 US Service members died
Posted by: ed ||
02/03/2006 10:51 Comments ||
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#10
Well, I didn't write the piece, but I think that the firearms death rate is a useful fgiure to sue for DC. Unless Ed is prepared to say that he knows how to distinguish combat deaths due only to enemy bullets from deaths in combat which might include riccochets etc., that is the best parallel number we have.
#11
D.C. Area Slayings Climbed In 2005
Pr. George's Set Record; District at 20-Year Low
By Allison Klein and Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 2, 2006; A01
The Washington region saw a rise in bloodshed in 2005, largely fueled by a spike in slayings in the D.C. suburbs, most dramatically in Prince George's County.
It was a reversal of the trend in the 1980s and 1990s, when the District gained notoriety as the country's "murder capital" during the crack wars of those decades. The District still has the largest share of area killings, with 194 slayings in 2005, close to 2004's total of 198.
Across the region, there were 466 homicides in 2005, compared with 420 in 2004 -- a rise of about 11 percent. About half of those slayings have been solved.
It was the first time the District has recorded fewer than 200 homicides in consecutive years since the mid-1980s. At the same time, the total in Prince George's climbed from 148 to 173, a grim record for the county. The Washington Post's analysis of homicide figures combines statistics from municipal and county police departments within the boundaries of a county.
Nationally, homicides in such large metropolitan counties as Prince George's and Fairfax are increasing, while cities the size of the District are seeing a slight drop, according to the latest preliminary FBI crime data.
In suburban Virginia, killings in Fairfax more than doubled in 2005, from 11 to 24. In 2004, Fairfax -- with a population of more than 1 million -- had the lowest homicide rate in the country among large jurisdictions.
Last year's Fairfax killings did not arise from any new or unusual motives: 17 were committed by people who knew their victims from domestic situations or ongoing feuds, police statistics show.
In Montgomery County, homicides remained about the same, with 19 last year and 18 in 2004.
Washington area counties that have had very small number of homicides saw increases in 2005 as well. Arlington had five and Howard logged four; each had just one in 2004. Southern Maryland was the only part of the suburban region that had a decrease.
In addition to having the highest number of killings, the District also tallied the highest homicide rate in the region: 35 per 100,000 residents. Across the country, cities similar to the District -- with populations of 500,000 to 1 million -- had an average homicide rate of 13.5 per 100,000 in 2004.
Prince George's, with a population of 850,000, had a rate of 20 per 100,000, and Fairfax had a rate of 2 per 100,000.
D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey and Prince George's Police Chief Melvin C. High expressed frustration with the homicide numbers.
"We are not where we want to be in terms of violent crime," High said. "But we are very focused on it. "
Ramsey said he was disappointed that the city's homicide rate didn't drop more substantially last year, but said he felt police were successful at keeping them below 200. "I was hoping we would have a bigger dent in homicides," Ramsey said. "At the same time, last year represented a 20-year low in murders."
The Washington area had its share of shocking crimes, both deadly and nonfatal, in 2005.
In the District, Donte Manning, 9, was fatally shot as he played outside his Northwest Washington apartment building in March. That same month, D.C. Cabinet member Wanda R. Alston, 45, was stabbed to death inside her home by a neighbor. A 46-year-old woman, Dorine Fostion, was slain by a stray bullet in August as she watched television in her Southeast Washington apartment. Also that month, a mother was charged with beating, suffocating and drowning her 6-year-old son in their Southeast apartment.
In August in Prince George's, three men were sleeping outdoors in Langley Park when someone slashed their throats, killing two of them. Two months later, Yvette Cade, 31, was doused with gasoline and set on fire, allegedly by her husband, at a crowded Clinton T-Mobile store. And in June, Prince George's Sgt. Steven Gaughan, 41, was fatally shot by a man after a routine traffic stop near Laurel.
In Fairfax, Nathan Cheatham, 27, went on a Christmas morning rampage and killed his mother and three other people before shooting himself at a sprawling Great Falls home.
Of Montgomery's 19 slayings, the youngest victim was 15-year-old Rockville High School freshman Kanisha "Missy" Neal, who was stabbed by a girl her age after a football game in September.
Another notable killing happened in October, when Shohreh Seyed-Makki, 54, was found fatally beaten in her Potomac home. Police arrested her 23-year-old son but later dropped the charges. The case is unsolved.
In May, a knife-wielding woman stabbed a shopper at a Nordstrom in a mall and then attacked a second woman on an escalator. Neither attack was fatal.
Gangs' Reach Grows
As happened elsewhere in the country, gangs, especially Mara Salvatrucha, expanded their presence in the Washington area and were linked to several high-profile crimes, including two attacks in August in Montgomery, which left six teens wounded and led to a dozen arrests.
Later that month, 19 alleged MS-13 members were indicted on federal racketeering charges in six killings and four attempted killings in suburban Maryland in 2003. One of the incidents was in Montgomery, the rest in Prince George's.
After two gang-related homicides in Fairfax, county police obtained funds to add four more investigators to their gang unit. They also started more programs to help steer youths away from gangs before they join.
Gang activity has also spread to such lower-crime areas Loudoun and Howard, where police say it continues to be a concern even though violent gang crime is low. In Loudoun, authorities recorded 28 gang-related crimes through June, all but 10 graffiti. In Howard, police documented 57 incidents related to MS-13 and identified 55 MS-13 members who have been involved in criminal activity.
In Prince George's, where there were eight gang-related homicides last year, violence not related to gangs was most pronounced. Overall, violent crime there increased about 13 percent, with robberies, assaults and carjackings up from 2004.
Property crime in Prince George's decreased 3 percent, pushing total crime down by almost one percent.
Most of the homicides were near the dangerous District-Prince George's border, across which criminals have routinely slipped back and forth. Several months ago, city and county police agreed to work together to target border crime.
Prince George's police found little to connect the killings in their county other than the general categories of guns and drugs. The majority of the victims -- 124 -- were black. There was an increase in the number of Hispanics killed, from 19 in 2004 to 26 last year.
The majority of the killings happen after two men argue and one or both pull out guns, police said. In an effort to cut crime, High has hired more officers for the understaffed department, targeted "hot spot" crime areas and upgraded technology.
Ultimately, High said, crime is as much a social problem as a police issue. "As density grows, that creates issues," High said. "It comes down to rage, tremendous human rage."
Outside experts and former police officials have said they believe that crime-prone populations in the District moved to the county in the last decade.
The migration began in the early 1990s as people tried to escape the city's high rate of violence. Others moved because the city knocked down several public housing buildings over the years, and the problems followed them, the experts and former police officials have said.
"When you have gentrification, there is another word that goes along with that: displacement," said Andrew Karmen, a criminologist and sociology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "People bring their problems with them where they settle."
That also happened in New York in the 1990s, when the city was wrestling with huge crime waves. Officials in Upstate New York, including those in Albany, Rochester and Buffalo, complained of having to deal with displaced criminals, Karmen said.
Ramsey credits better computerized tracking and analysis of crime and more targeted enforcement for helping drive down the District's number of killings in recent years. In 1997, a year before Ramsey became chief, the city recorded 301 killings. Overall city crime dropped about 7 percent last year.
"When you look at what is going on in the region and other cities, for us not to go up is good," Ramsey said. "I see progress."
Despite the overall drop, there have recently been increases in two of the city's most serious crime categories: robberies and killings. The spikes prodded police officials early last month to declare a crime emergency, which suspended portions of the police union contract. Commanders now have greater flexibility in setting officers' schedules to respond to crime spikes. Ramsey said he expects to lift the emergency in coming days because the spate of deadly violence and robberies appears to have ebbed.
Varied Crime Challenges
The only area in the suburban region where homicides dropped was in mostly rural Southern Maryland. In fast-growing Charles County, for example, the number of killings fell from seven to five, the majority related to a domestic issue. At the same time, auto thefts increased by 44 percent, making that and robberies the biggest crime challenge.
In Anne Arundel, where homicides remained about steady from 2004 to 2005, police have been confronting the arrival of the drug methamphetamine. In Annapolis, police say Hispanic immigrants have increasingly been the targets of robberies.
In Frederick, police say the biggest problem is traffic violations.
In Alexandria, police noted an increase this year in robberies, most of which were commercial. The city had its share of crime last year, notably a January knife attack on several elderly patients, allegedly by an employee of the retirement home where they lived; the September stabbing of three police officers in Old Town, allegedly by a T.C. Williams High School honor student; and the shooting of a Washington Wizard player in a carjacking attempt.
Loudoun residents have been facing a theft problem. They "have a tendency to keep their doors open and not lock their cars and leave their purses in their cars or their iPods in their cars," sheriff's spokesman Kraig Troxell said.
And Northern Virginia was home to one of the region's most-followed crimes: the cell phone bandit's bank robberies. On Nov. 4, Candice Martinez, 19, robbed an Ashburn Wachovia bank, the last of four area banks she hit. Video footage released by Loudoun authorities showed Martinez chatting on her cell phone during the heist, leading to her nickname. Martinez and her accomplice, Dave C. Williams, pleaded guilty.
In the Prince William area, including Manassas and Manassas Park, the number of homicides rose from 9 in 2004 to 13 in 2005. Prince William County police would not comment on the crime.
#12
LotP, I used the 700 combat death figure to distinguish deaths from accidents and suicides (obviously likely by firearms). I was trying to state that the chances of being killed in combat in Iraq is 10 times as likely to being murdered in Washington DC, or 5.5 times as likely as dying by firearms (from all causes) in DC, not 25% lower as is stated.
Now, if you wanted to break down the DC figures for the 18-35 year old male demographic vs the Iraq servicemen demographic, then you will get something more equal.
Posted by: ed ||
02/03/2006 11:10 Comments ||
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#13
There is no reason for ordinary residences and businesses to be in Washington, D.C. This is not to say that they should all be thrown out; but that the government should slowly and methodically buy up properties as they became available, and convert them to parks until such time as they were needed for parking or government buildings.
The concept it to have a national capitol for the federal government, optimized for performance, security and public interaction. By eliminating privately owned properties, the entire city is opened up to greater city efficiency than is possible in the typical city.
For the most part, POVs could be prohibited in much of the city, replaced with all sorts of better transportation means.
Endless problems would be solved, and Washington, D.C. would be restored as the crown jewel of our country.
#14
Ed,
Your last comment brings up something I've been wondering about: Actual combat deaths are approx 100 less than last year. However non-combat deaths almost doubled, causing the overall deaths to remain about the same.
Does anyone have any insite as to why non-combat deaths have gone up?
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
02/03/2006 11:44 Comments ||
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#15
The statistics are bad.
According to the email, there have been 2112 deaths in 22 months.
Average US soldier population in Iraq was 160,000
2112 / 1.6 = 1320 deaths per 100,000
1320 deaths / 22 months = 60 deaths per MONTH per 100,000
DC has had 188 murders so far this year, 11 months. http://www.safestreetsdc.com/
Population of D.C. is around 550,000 http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108620.html
188 deaths / 5.5 = 34.2 deaths per 100,000
34.2 deaths / 11 months = 3.1 deaths per MONTH per 100,000
I thought the joke was funny, but reality is what it is.
Posted by: Richard A. Ostergard ||
02/03/2006 12:02 Comments ||
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#17
Washington D.C. is by far a black majority city and the vast majority of those murders are black on black crimes.
Everyone knows that to the Bush administration and Republicans in general, that the social/economic conditions black americans & the value of black lives doesnt amount to a hill of beans, especially since over 90% of blacks voted against Bush. Look at how Bush responded to the black victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Makes one wonder what those black americans killed in the line of duty in Iraq thought of President Bush's "mission of spreading democracy to the middle east", while neglecting the homefront in such a callous manner.
Posted by: Common Sense ||
02/03/2006 12:11 Comments ||
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So noncombat deaths increased by 20 in 2005. In addition, Jan 2005 shows 51 noncombat deaths, when a helicopter crash killed 31, accounting for all the increase.
Posted by: ed ||
02/03/2006 12:11 Comments ||
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#19
Yeah Common Sense. Chances of committing murder are proportional to voting for the Democratic Party. Save a life. Vote Republican.
Posted by: ed ||
02/03/2006 12:16 Comments ||
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#20
The life you save may be yours.
Posted by: ed ||
02/03/2006 12:17 Comments ||
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#21
Well, look who's back. "Common Sense" today is it?
Could you at least pick one tag and stick with it so you don't look like a total pussy?
#22
#17 Washington D.C. is by far a black majority city and the vast majority of those murders are black on black crimes. Everyone knows that to the Bush administration and Republicans in general, that the social/economic conditions black americans & the value of black lives doesnt amount to a hill of beans, especially since over 90% of blacks voted against Bush. Look at how Bush responded to the black victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Makes one wonder what those black americans killed in the line of duty in Iraq thought of President Bush's "mission of spreading democracy to the middle east", while neglecting the homefront in such a callous manner.
Posted by: Common Sense 2006-02-03 12:11
Oh for pheuchs sake! The American (thats American with a capital "A") citizens both Democrat and Republican will be paying for Katrina and the below sea-level, "chocolate city" blundering politicians and welfare whiners for decades to come. Don't blame the President, or socio-econ "I ain't got my 40 acres 'ner my mule,'ner my repreterpations" ...and don't question the patriotism of anyone in uniform. They are volunteers last time I checked. Get a bloody life or move to bloody Libera and be happy.
#23
Common Sense, Did Washington DC and New Orleans have the lowest murder rates in the nation under Clinton? Or did the first 'black President' also disregard the homefront in such a callous manner?
We have a Federal system and mayors are responsible for their cities, and Governors are responsible for their states and the Federal Government is expected to bail them out after they screw things and take the heat? Not likely.
#24
ed said: Now, if you wanted to break down the DC figures for the 18-35 year old male demographic vs the Iraq servicemen demographic, then you will get something more equal.
Agree with ed. I'd like to see a chart done for all males 18-30 and compare violent AND accidental deaths in US v/s Iraq. I also suspect that if you used DC stats and only compared deaths of of males 18-30 for accidents and violence in Iraq v/s those in DC - DC would be the winner.
You could also do it nationwide - and then break by city or by rural v/s urban.
#28
no, because Cassini and Left Angle still make people spit....changes the nym, but the song remains the same
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/03/2006 17:14 Comments ||
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#29
Don't be an ass, Mr. Sense -- nobody thinks anything-on-anything murder is anything but tragic. The question is, are those throwing the deaths in Iraq statistics at the Bush administration putting those numbers in any sort of persective, and clearly they are not. You aren't either, despite the opportunities presented by this discussion.
#30
The MSM are lefties and vote democrat. The blacks in urban areas also are democrats. Yet, the MSM will not run stories about black on black crime.
It's a bullshit cluster the size of Jupiter.
The United States is engaged in what could be a generational conflict akin to the Cold War, the kind of struggle that might last decades as allies work to root out terrorists across the globe and battle extremists who want to rule the world, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.
Rumsfeld, who laid out broad strategies for what the military and the Bush administration are now calling the "long war," likened al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin while urging Americans not to give in on the battle of wills that could stretch for years. He said there is a tendency to underestimate the threats that terrorists pose to global security, and said liberty is at stake.
"Compelled by a militant ideology that celebrates murder and suicide with no territory to defend, with little to lose, they will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs," Rumsfeld said in a speech at the National Press Club.
The speech, which aides said was titled "The Long War," came on the eve of the Pentagon's release of its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which sets out plans for how the U.S. military will address major security challenges 20 years into the future. The plans to be released today include shifts to make the military more agile and capable of dealing with unconventional threats, something Rumsfeld has said is necessary to move from a military designed for the Cold War into one that is more flexible.
He said the nation must focus on three strategies in the ongoing war: preventing terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, defending the U.S. homeland and helping allies fight terrorism. He emphasized that these goals could take a long time to achieve.
Indeed, the QDR, mandated every four years by Congress, opens with the declaration: "The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war."
The review has been widely anticipated in Washington defense circles because of the dramatic changes in the U.S. military's global role since the last review in 2001. Adding to the high expectations is the fact that Rumsfeld and his team have now been in place for more than four years.
The QDR strategy draws heavily on lessons learned by the military from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worldwide campaign against terrorism, shifting the Pentagon's emphasis away from conventional warfare of the Cold War era toward three new areas.
First are "irregular" conflicts against insurgents, terrorists and other non-state enemies. Iraq and Afghanistan are the "early battles" in the campaign against Islamic extremists and terrorists, who are "profoundly more dangerous" than in the past because of technological advances that allow them to operate globally, said Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England in an address on Wednesday.
The QDR also focuses on defending the U.S. homeland against "catastrophic" attacks such as with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Finally, it sets out plans for deterring the rising military heft of major powers such as China.
The strategic vision outlined in the QDR has won high marks from defense analysts for diagnosing the problems the U.S. military will likely face. However, it is less successful in translating those concepts into concrete military capabilities, the analysts say.
The review does not dramatically change the "force construct" -- the set of world contingencies that the U.S. military is expected to be able to deal with. The most important change is the recognition that U.S. forces may have to carry out long-term stability operations, or surge suddenly to a world hot spot. There are not "huge tectonic shifts," said Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an address Wednesday.
The strategy does call for devoting resources to accelerate a long-range strike capability directed at hostile nations, and for new investments aimed at countering biological and nuclear weapons -- such as teams able to defuse a nuclear bomb. But it makes relatively minor adjustments in key weapons systems, with the biggest programs such as the Joint Strike Fighter and the Army's Future Combat Systems escaping virtually unscathed. This leaves less room for investments in innovative programs and forces to address the types of problems that the QDR identifies, analysts say.
"A lot of tough choices are kicked down the road," said Andrew F. Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
One of the toughest battles facing the United States, Rumsfeld said yesterday, is recognizing the seriousness of the terrorist threat and the immediacy of fighting the nation's enemies. He said the task facing Western nations could be arduous, as terrorists operate in numerous countries around the world, hidden, and with the willingness to wait long periods between attacks. Military leaders and officials in the Bush administration have taken to calling the global war on terrorism the "long war," which defense experts say is a recognition that there is no end in sight.
"Dealing with the issue of terrorism and extremism is going to take a long time," said Robert E. Hunter, senior adviser at Rand Corp. and a former ambassador to NATO. "But we have to define success. You're never going to get rid of all terrorism."
Rumsfeld said he does not believe the war will end with a bang but, instead, with a whimper, "fading down over a sustained period of time as more countries in the world are successful," much as how democracy outlasted communism in the Cold War. He added that the early decades of the Cold War also brought confusion and doubt.
"The only way that terrorists can win this struggle is if we lose our will and surrender the fight, or think it's not important enough, or in confusion or in disagreement among ourselves give them the time to regroup and reestablish themselves in Iraq or elsewhere," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 01:18 ||
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#1
"The only way that terrorists can win this struggle is if we lose our will.."
A very distinct possibility. And we all know who are all working hard to bring this about.
#2
As much as I admire Donald Rumsfeld, the notion that we are facing a group of irrengulars with no territory to defend is udder cow caca. These irregulars are well funded by nationals and nations -- most notably Saudi Arabia and Iran -- out of the enormous oil wealth on which they sit. The war would probably be a lot shorter if we declared war and seized the oil fields, and at least would give some hint of how strong the terrorist threat is without their strongest backers.
#3
If we just took the oil, it would not reduce the number of Muslims substantially. Until we are willing to do so, either through the long term impoverishment the Perfesser proposes through stealing their oil, or nuclear annihilation we're still going to have a lot of terrs. I wouldn't mind either, but I'm not sure much of the country feels the same way. Yet.
A far more effective means to destroy the islamofascists is to enact an inflation adjusted oil import duty that assures that imported oil costs at least 50 US$ (2006).
#4
Perfesser:
The oil fields were discovered and developed by Anglo-American interests. Local sovereigns were recognized - and positioned - only as concession-holders. The koranimal cannot accept notions of sovereignty that is not prescribed in his fabricated "recitation" (quran) from his non-existent deity, which his dogma driven mind causes him to accept as the only authority. I believe that we should no longer accept their sovereignties, and effect possession and control over the oil patch. A typical Persian Gulf well is 15 times as productive, on a daily basis, as those in California and Texas. They are ours to take. And they are held by wild animals with global-imperial ambitions. They want us; ergo we slaughter them first. I detect a pretext in the above. Let's Roll!
#5
SA:
How about this: we make them do our killing for us.
Rummy:
If "liberty" itself is at sake, then why fight a long war in its defense when we don't have to? Impose perceivable futility on this enemy - and the human costs wouldn't be that large to do that - and their will to make war will collapse. Islamofascists need to fear abject defeat.
#7
lotp:
You sound canonical. What stops you from believing that the Muslim script - Quran mandate - reveals a global-genocidal threat to Western Civilization?
#10
"Because I for one want both to surivive this conflict and to come out of it with my soul and our culture as intact as we can manage."
That's an admirable sentiment, however, it does not appear that it is realistic, or even likely to go that way.
So why prolong the agony for us and the fantasy for them? A savage assault that reduces the worldwide Muslim population by 30-50%, combined with multi-generational sanctions and supervision would shatter their perceptions of superiority.
In the long run it will also save more lives. I can foresee a point at which we snap, and out of survival reflex we anhialate (sp?) the lot of them.
When Osama bin Laden suggested in his latest audio message that Americans should read a particular book, its sales spiked, and columnists couldn't resist the flip comparisons to Oprah.
But the idea of an Osama reading club is no joke at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. Since last fall, about 10 professors have been gathering periodically to talk about bin Laden's own writings and speeches. They aren't experts on the leader of Al Qaeda, but whether they teach about Islam, Judaism, terrorism, or political science, they all have a stake in knowing more about him.
"There's been so little careful reflection on how bin Laden thinks," says Volney Gay, director of Vanderbilt's Center for the Study of Religion and Culture, the sponsor of the interdisciplinary group. "For most of us, the media presentations ... have been 30- or 40-second summaries, [but] it struck us that he couldn't have all that power if he were simply a sociopath.... What he did was monstrous, but ... he can't be stupid."
Participants emphasize that the point is not to sympathize with bin Laden or elevate his statements as classic texts. Rather, they compare it to studying Hitler's "Mein Kampf."
"To me, as a citizen and as a human being, we have to think about the Holocaust, we have to think about terrorism, [and] universities have to throw their muscle behind these topics," Mr. Gay says. The group hopes to offer a panel discussion for the public this spring.
Until recently, it hasn't been easy for people to access bin Laden's words, partly because of government efforts to restrict the spread of his messages after 9/11.
Richard McGregor, assistant professor of Islamic studies, found some Arabic and English texts on the Internet, but he says he had to comb through much that was poorly edited or not well verified. This semester, they'll be using "Messages to the World," a new collection of bin Laden's statements.
The first step was facing the personal discomfort.
"[The texts] are oftentimes a defense of terrorism; [you're] looking into the face of mythical, massive, worldwide religious war. And at points it's stark and violent," Mr. McGregor says.
As they look through an academic lens, discussions are always respectful, but the fact that the group includes people from various countries and religious backgrounds makes for some weighty moments, says Melissa Snarr, an assistant professor in the Divinity School.
"To try to read something that's so inflammatory from those multiple perspectives creates a kind of wealth of conversation and honesty that is intriguing, but also teaches you about the depths of international conflict," she says.
(Photograph) 'For people in various Islamic countries who live in bad economic situations ... we can begin to have an insight into the appeal of this figure.' - Richard McGregor, assistant professor of Islamic studies at Vanderbilt University
COURTESY OF STEVE GREEN
Most Americans know only about bin Laden's threats to the United States and other Western powers, but he also addresses internal Middle East issues and rages against rulers such as those in his native Saudi Arabia.
"There is significance in these texts for the Islamic world, long term," McGregor says. "What are these societies supposed to do with this movement, which is revolutionary? [Bin Laden] argues that nonreligious forms of government are illegitimate and ... should be overthrown."
While bin Laden's arguments are also offensive because "he's got so much blood on his hands," McGregor adds, his language is straightforward and designed to persuade a particular audience that they are fighting a "just war" against an oppressive invader.
"For people in various Islamic countries who live in bad economic situations ... or civil societies that are barely functioning ... we can begin to have an insight into the appeal of this figure," he says.
Students are starting to look for such insights, too. Bin Laden's texts are being used in courses not only at Vanderbilt, but also at other schools such as Emory University in Atlanta and the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
Professor Snarr covers religious terrorism in one of her classes, and she sees many parallels between the rhetoric of bin Laden and that of extremist Christian groups.
Paul Hill, who murdered a doctor who performed abortions, made similar "just war" arguments, she says.
For her students in the Divinity School, "their first reaction is deep disappointment that religion can be used in these ways," Snarr says.
But they want to understand how religion, nationalism, and violence intersect, so they can foster reconciliation and healing, she says.
Katherine Carroll, an assistant dean and political scientist who's teaching a class on terrorism at Vanderbilt, recently joined the discussion group - in part to keep up with her students' fascination with Al Qaeda.
"The idea that Osama bin Laden ... is only acting because he hates the West and hates our freedom, and it's not anything more complicated than that - that's not plausible to the vast majority of my students," she says. "At least they want to decide for themselves if that's the case, by looking at his speeches, by reading about him."
She looks forward to learning more about the religious references in bin Laden's texts - that is, if she can keep up with the reading.
"When you're reading terrorism for your job and reading it in your spare time, sometimes you just can't take it any more," she says with a laugh.
The other source of humor for the group? Speculating whether they might get themselves into trouble with the Department of Homeland Security.
"[When] we were downloading off the Internet ... I was joking that I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up on a watch list," Snarr says. "It is more of a joking level because all of us can justify it within the work we do, but ... especially since the news of the wiretapping came out, it makes you think about the preparation you do for teaching in ways you haven't necessarily thought of before."
Among the texts examined by a group of Vanderbilt professors is a December 2004 statement by Osama bin Laden addressing Muslims within and outside Saudi Arabia. Originally posted on the website of the Global Islamic Media Front, it condemns the ruling dynasties in places such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and alleges that conspiracies are at work at several levels.
The following excerpt summarizes a common historical perspective in Islamist thought, says Vanderbilt's Richard McGregor, though at points it's a paranoid one, in his judgment:
"These oppressive, traitorous ruling families in the region today, who persecute every reform movement and impose upon their peoples policies that are against their religion and their worldly interests, are the very same families who helped the Crusaders against the Muslims a century ago. And they are doing this in collaboration with America and its allies. This represents a continuation of the previous Crusader wars against the Islamic world. The extent to which the Zionist-Crusader alliance controls the internal policies of our countries has become all too clear to us. For when it comes to American intervention in internal affairs, where do we start?"
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:22 ||
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" [you're] looking into the face of mythical, massive, worldwide religious war. And at points it's stark and violent," Mr. McGregor says.
At first I thought this was another moonbat "they need hugs" type study. But it looks as if they are looking at it as a study and just might swing some at Vandy to the right. Hopefully it will stay out of politics and stick with the "Know your enemy" and study him for the violent leader he is.
When you're reading terrorism for your job and reading it in your spare time, sometimes you just can't take it any more," she says with a laugh.
Here we need to cut to another study on the effects of liberalism, the liberal press, and combat stresses placed on our soldiers. If she thinks studying it is tough try a year, or three, fighting it.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/03/2006 7:28 Comments ||
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If Ms. Carroll has difficulty dealing with just reading about terrorism, then it would make sense that supporting American's fight against it would come naturally to her.
Senior planners for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have presented him with confidential recommendations for the first overhaul of his policy office since the Cold War.
Some officials fear the overhaul will dilute the power of the civilian subordinate office within the policy office that oversees special operations, the lead force in tracking and killing al Qaeda terrorists.
Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, and Ryan Henry, his chief deputy, spearheaded the study designed to make the policy-writing shop within Mr. Rumsfeld's office, which had been run by Douglas Feith, more compatible with fighting terrorists and to interact with the increasingly powerful U.S. combatant commanders around the globe. Mr. Feith was a key architect of the Iraq war.
Mr. Rumsfeld takes a keen interest in policy development, choosing an "iterative" process whereby the plan matures and changes through research and discussion.
A senior defense official, who confirmed the study's existence, said it is "very premature" to speculate on specific changes, but he added "the secretary always has a sense of urgency."
The policy bureaucracy under Mr. Feith has played a prominent role in the war on terror. It devised a key objective in the war of denying territory as the best way to stop al Qaeda. It also developed the blueprint for vastly increasing Special Operations Command's power and numbers, and augmented plans for war and post-war operations in Iraq.
But to some, the policy shop's structure has one foot in the Cold War. Principal offices for overseeing policy in Europe and Asia -- International Security Policy and International Security Affairs respectively -- were set up under President Reagan. And some officials complain of poor liaisons between policy and the new undersecretary of defense for intelligence.
"The idea is that a lot of the organization for policy is stuck, despite our best attempts, more or less in the Cold War," the senior defense official said.
The source declined to provide specific options but did say one focus is "a way to align the undersecretary of intelligence and special operations."
The policy shop oversees commandos through the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict (SOLIC). That post is now held by Thomas O'Connell, a former commando.
The office has limited influence with Mr. Rumsfeld, according to defense officials who say it had little involvement in the soon-to-be released Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The QDR contains significant new programs for special operations, yet most of the initiatives came not from SOLIC, but from U.S. Special Operations Command (SoCom) in Tampa, Fla., the sources said.
Some in the defense establishment fear the Edelman study is a route to abolishing SOLIC altogether and putting policy oversight closer to Mr. Rumsfeld's office.
Mr. Rumsfeld takes a special interest in SoCom, and frequently discusses missions with Gen. Doug Brown, who heads the organization.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:15 ||
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"... the secretary always has a sense of urgency."
Ugh. Given what my boss's "sense of urgency" does to my schedule, I can only imagine what it means to Rummy's underlings.
Not that his job isn't a wee bit more important than my boss's...
WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress sent President Bush a second five-week extension of the Patriot Act as Senate negotiators worked to close a deal with the White House on renewing the antiterrorism law with some new civil liberties protections. ``We need the Patriot Act,'' said Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter. ``I'm prepared to work on it further to improve it.''
Sixteen provisions of the 2001 law were to have expired last Dec. 31, but Congress extended them until Friday after Democrats and a handful of Senate Republicans demanded an avenue of appeals when the FBI makes demands for people's financial and other private records.
The Senate voted 95-1 Thursday night to extend the current law unchanged through March 10 and give negotiators more time to reach a deal. Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., a longtime opponent of the Patriot Act, cast the sole vote against the extension. The House passed it Wednesday. Several Republican and Democratic officials involved in negotiations said that agreements had been reached on several issues but that others needed more time.
Earlier in the week, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, one of the negotiators who helped block the act's renewal last year, told reporters almost all of his concerns had been worked out with the White House. He and Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., want parts of the act to be rewritten in several areas, including giving banks, libraries and Internet service providers the right to appeal when the FBI seeks financial and other records of their customers and clients.
Wonder if the mob gets to do the same.
Senate Democrats and four libertarian-leaning Republicans had blocked a final vote on a measure negotiated by the White House that would have made permanent most expiring provisions. The Republicans were concerned about excessive police powers.
The law makes it easier for federal agents to gather and share information in terrorism investigations, install wiretaps and conduct secret searches of households and businesses. At issue are 16 provisions that Congress wanted reviewed and renewed by the end of last year.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/03/2006 00:00 ||
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Officials at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have added a new weapon to their armory: a high-powered machine gun that can fire more than 50 rounds a second.
The weapon, unveiled Thursday, is a six-barrel Gatling gun called the Dillon Aero M134D. An undisclosed number of the guns will be mounted on vehicles and elsewhere at the lab.
"What we want to do is equip our protective force with the capability that will leave no doubt about the outcome," said Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Lab critics questioned the wisdom of putting such a powerful gun at the lab, which is across the street from suburban homes. They say the real problem is that the lab site, which is relatively small at 1 square mile, is not a good place for nuclear materials.
State and local officials have criticized the federal government for not providing more Homeland Defense funding to local police and emergency departments...The National Nuclear Security Administration defended Sandia's efforts to obtain a more capable grenade launcher but agreed the lab should have sought an American-made product first.
A former Iraqi general alleges that in June 2002 Saddam Hussein transported weapons of mass destruction out of the country to Syria aboard several refitted commercial jets, under the pretense of conducting a humanitarian mission for flood victims.
That's one of several dramatic claims made in the book by former Iraqi General Georges Sada: "Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein." Since the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Sada has served as the spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and continues to serve as national security advisor. He is the former vice marshal of the Iraqi Air Force. Sada was interviewed at the headquarters of Cybercast News Service on Jan. 30.
Sada contends that Saddam took advantage of a June 4, 2002, irrigation dam collapse in Zeyzoun, Syria, to ship the weapons under cover of an aid project to the flooded region.
"[Saddam] said 'Okay, Iraq is going to do an air bridge to help Syria," Sada recounted. Two commercial jets, a 747 and 727, were converted to cargo jets, in order to carry raw materials and equipment related to WMD projects, Sada said. The passenger seats, galleys, toilets and storage compartments were removed and new flooring was installed, he claimed. Hundreds of tons of chemicals were reportedly included in the cargo shipments.
"They used to do two sorties a day," said Sada. "Fifty-six sorties were done between Baghdad and Damascus."
Sada said he obtained the information from two Iraq Airways captains who were reportedly flying the sorties. "They came immediately and they told me," said Sada.
This is not the first time that the possibility of a transfer of WMDs from Iraq to Syria has been raised. Two years ago, U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, (R-Kan), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence acknowledged that "there is some concern that shipments of WMD went to Syria." No details were forthcoming. The claims have also been made by the U.S.-based Reform Party of Syria.
Sada told Cybercast News Service that he has not been debriefed by U.S. officials regarding his allegations that Saddam smuggled WMDs to Syria. He anticipates, now that his book has been released, that he will be meeting with U.S. officials regarding the information.
U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, plans to meet with Sada to discuss the allegations. "The chairman has read General Sada's book and talked to Retired Col. (David) Eberly," said Jamal Ware, communications director for the committee. "He will meet with General Sada to hear first-hand him laying out the case that this transferal may have happened."
There is "no doubt" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, according to Eberly. He adds that Sada's book is "evidence" of that. Eberly's F-15E jet was shot down on Jan. 19, 1991, the third day of the first Persian Gulf War. He credits Sada with saving his life after the Iraqi general refused an order from one of Saddam's sons to execute Eberly and 23 other pilots who had been taken as prisoners of war.
"Qusay (Hussein) had ordered [Sada] to execute all the pilots," Eberly said. "But Georges wouldn't do it. He argued that the rights accorded to prisoners under the Geneva Convention were inviolable." Eberly said Sada was arrested on Jan. 25, 1991, by the Iraqi Republican Guard and held prisoner. Sada said Saddam eventually changed his mind about the executions, probably because he realized the killings would galvanize world opinion against him.
Hoekstra believes details on pre-war Iraq are "cloudy" and that more should be done to gain a "clearer sense of what was happening in pre-war Iraq," Ware said. "A lot of people reached deterministic conclusions, but there is evidence that still needs to be checked before final conclusions [are made] on WMD and Saddam Hussein's connections to terrorists."
Hoekstra is pushing for the declassification of select documents and debriefing of relevant officials from Saddam Hussein's regime. "All these things are critical elements," said Ware.
David Kay, who as head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), led the CIA's hunt for WMD in Iraq until December 2003, made headlines in January 2004 when he asserted that pre-war intelligence on Iraq's WMD had been "almost all wrong." Kay added that he himself had previously believed there were WMD in Iraq, and that intelligence from various countries like Germany and France indicated the same thing.
In October 2004 Kay told National Public Radio (NPR) that "There is no evidence of any transfer of weapons material to Syria, and certainly not of weapons, in the lead-up to the Gulf War, although that's an area that will always have some ambiguity because the Syrians, to say the least, have not been cooperative in running down any leads in Syria.
"The bulk of the evidence really points to -- that things did go to Syria, but they weren't weapons of mass destruction or weapons material," Kay added. He said there is "no evidence" that Iraq ever produced any large amounts of chemical nerve agents after 1991. "In fact, all the evidence is just the opposite," he told NPR.
Kay was succeeded by Charles Duelfer, whose 1,500-page October 2004 report on WMD bore many similarities.
"There were no WMD stockpiles; my conclusion, Charles Duelfer's conclusion," Kay said. He and Duelfer asserted that Saddam's regime maintained a vague intention to resume WMD production at some point and for that reason had attempted to hold on to "intellectual capital" related to the programs.
Those conclusions were made in spite of the congressional testimony in 2002 from Iraqi nuclear scientist Khidhir Hamza, who suggested Iraq might have a nuclear weapon by 2005. Hamza defected to the U.S. from Iraq in 1994.
Richard Butler, former head of the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq, gave similar testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "What there is now is evidence that Saddam has reinvigorated his nuclear weapons program," Butler said. He also reported that Iraq had an extensive chemical weapons program and had tested various ways to deliver biological weapons.
After hearing the testimony from Hamza and Butler, Sen. Joseph Biden, (D-Del.), head of the Foreign Relations panel, commented that "one thing is clear: These weapons must be dislodged from Saddam, or Saddam must be dislodged from power."
Approximately a month later, Hamza was accused by former employer David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, of deliberately distorting his credentials and making inaccurate statements on nuclear programs. The accusation was echoed by five other Iraqi nuclear scientists, both pro-war and anti-war.
In a now-famous speech just three months after Hamza's testimony, President Bush asserted that "if the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:48 ||
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Since the Hamas victory in the Palestinian legislative elections last week, the Islamic fundamentalist group has come under international pressure to remove any calls for Israel's destruction from its charter.
The problem is that asking Hamas to remove such passages would be like demanding that Marx and Engels drop their calls for overthrowing capitalism and establishing a classless society from "The Communist Manifesto," or asking America's Founding Fathers to forswear life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
When the document was written in August 1988, I was covering the territories for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, crisscrossing the West Bank and Gaza to document the first intifada that had erupted in December the year before. For the first few months of the uprising, Palestinian Islamists were missing in action from the clashes with Israeli forces. On more than one occasion, supporters of Yasser Arafat's secular Fatah movement mocked the Islamists for sitting in the mosque and plotting the restoration of the caliphate, while contributing very little to the immediate struggle.
The creation of Hamas was the Islamists' answer to such criticisms, and its charter was crafted as a religious repudiation of the secularist Palestine Liberation Organization leaders who were willing to reach a territorial compromise and accept the presence of an infidel Jewish state on what Islamists view as holy Muslim land.
In its charter, Hamas made three main arguments to justify an all-out, unrelenting struggle "to raise the banner of Islam over every inch of Palestine." The first such argument is that Jihad, holy war, becomes an individual duty when "enemies usurp part of a Muslim land." This idea was first introduced by Hassan El-Bana, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the early 20th century. In recent years, it was honed by Al Qaeda to become one of its main theological tenets.
The second argument is that the land of Palestine, all of it, "is an Islamic Waqf, consecrated for the future of Muslim generations until Judgment Day." In other words, territorial compromise is not only politically wrong but also religiously forbidden. It is heresy. Furthermore, any agreement that recognizes non-Muslims' right of to the land of Palestine is "null and void," the charter said. The third argument is that the occupation of Palestine is more intolerable than that of any other Muslim land conquered by infidels, both because it is the third holiest site to Islam "the navel of the globe and the crossroads of the continents" and because it is occupied not by any infidels but by Jews.
The charter is peppered with antisemitic expressions, including a reference to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," an early 20th-century forgery that outlines a Jewish conspiracy to run the world. In the Hamas charter, Jews are referred to as "Nazis," "the worst war criminals" and as an omnipotent global power that "took control of the world media" and stirred revolutions worldwide to "reap the fruit" of collapsed societies.
Some Hamas leaders recently said that the charter is "not the Koran," implying that the document could be altered, but there is no evidence that it no longer expresses the terrorist group's views. In fact, the beliefs and views expressed in the charter were reiterated numerous times in public statements, speeches, pamphlets and articles issued by the organization's leadership in the 17 years that passed since it was authored. And although several Hamas leaders recently said that the organization is not calling for Israel's destruction, none of them is willing to say that the struggle against Israel will stop at the 1967 borders. "Palestine means Palestine in its entirety from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River, from Ras Al-Naqura [on Israel's northern border] to Rafah," Mahmoud Zahar, the Islamic group's leader in Gaza, in an interview this week with Al-Manar, a Lebanese satellite television station. "We cannot give up a single inch of it. Therefore, we will not recognize the Israeli enemy's [right] to a single inch."
Even after taking several diplomatic and public steps to accept Israel's existence, the PLO took a decade to abolish the anti-Israeli articles in its 1968 charter. In 1989, Arafat first referred to these articles as "caduc," the French term for "obsolete," but only in 1998 did the Palestinian National Council officially delete them from its charter.
Asked how long it would take for international pressure to make Hamas change its charter, a panel of experts at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy this week unanimously replied: "Don't hold your breath."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:17 ||
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#1
Sniff, sniff - just like our dear friends the Russians vs. America, and now MadMoud proclaiming that Iran will never give up its right to uranium-enrichment. The MSM/Left > its only Uranium ergo Iran has no WMDS.
LONDON - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday that a Hamas-led Palestinian government must commit to non-violence, recognition of Israel and acceptance of existing peace agreements if it is to maintain its level of financial support.
Speaking for the Quartet of would-be peace-making nations after their meeting in London, Annan also said Hamas must set up a government that is committed to the rule of law, to tolerance, reform and sound fiscal management. It was "inevitable that future assistance to any new government would be reviewed by donors against that government's commitment" to such principles, Annan said.
Yup, that oughta do it. Veal or lamb for lunch?
Shortly after Annan spoke, the Al-Arabiya satellite channel in the Middle East reported that Hamas had rejected demands to disarm and recognize Israel.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, addressing the same news conference, said the new government has "an obligation ... to speak to the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a better life and for a peaceful life.
"That peaceful life, the Quartet has reiterated, can be achieved only through a two-state solution that recognizes the right of Israel to exist; that is commited to non-violence; that undertakes the obligations of the road map," she told reporters.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/03/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Must recognize Israel.... If Hamas doesn't know where Israel is located they can look it up on the UN map. /s
Manila, 3 Feb. (AKI) - Lasting peace will only come to the Philippines' restive, mostly Muslim Mindanao region, if the country's Muslims are granted their full rights, no matter what the outcome of this weekend's talks between the government and separatist rebels, experts say. "The biggest stumbling block to peace in Mindanao remains the feeling amongst our Muslim brothers that they are [treated] as second-class citizens both politically and economically," says Jose Bayani Baylon, a Manila-based political analyst.
"We needs our own state or else!"
Saturday's "informal" meeting in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia is the seventh between representatives of the Manila government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) since formal talks were broken off by former Filipino president Joseph Estrada. Both sides have in recent weeks said that they are close to signing an agreement that will end the 40-year-long conflict which has claimed an estimated 120,000 lives.
40 years this go-around, the United States was fighting their great grandfathers when we ran the place. I think they were fighting the Spanish before that. They just don't play well with others
Much of the optimism derives from the apparent resolution of the issue of the so-called "ancestral domain" - territory which Muslims have historically regarded as theirs, but which is now mostly inhabited by Christians.
The population of Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines archipelago was almost wholly Muslim or animist until the Manila government started after World War II to encourage people from other regions to migrate there. Today Muslims make up a mere 18 pecent of the island's population. "In part this [position] is due to the Manila-centric policies of [successive] governments, but it is also due to the corrupt practices of Filipino Muslim political leaders over the years," says Baylon.
The failure of past accords between Manila and the MILF's predecessor, the Moro National Liberation Front, don't augur well for the current round of talks, Baylon says. "Add to this the growing militancy of Islam in the country, which is the only [mostly] Catholic nation in Asia, and you have the ingredients for a highly volatile situation," he says.
Mindanao's separatist tendencies are rooted in a profound sense of Muslim alienation, agrees Zainudin S. Malang, director of Mindanao's Bangsamoro Center for Law and Policy.
They alienate pretty much everyone...., oh, that's not what he meant?
Research has shown that Muslims are systematically shut out of jobs or study opportunities on account of their faith. Results of a study carried out by the Philippine Human Development Network, showed that 55 percent of Filipinos think that Muslims are more "prone to run amok", that Muslims are probably terrorists or extremists (according to 47 percent of the sample group surveyed).
"Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" by William and Mary Morris: Amok is "a variant spelling of amuck -- actually much closer to the Malayan word 'amoq,' from which it is derived. The word was originally used to describe the actions of Maylayan tribesmen who, frenzied by hatred and hashish, would rush furiously into hand-to-hand combat." And these would be the ancestors or relatives of the Philippine muslims
"Pro-independence sentiments arise out of a lack of feeling of belonging, of being outcasts, of being second class citizens to whom concessions are only made grudgingly," says Malang. "Prejudice by the largely Christian 'body-politic' rears its ugly head in the media, and other sectors of civil society." As for the latest attempt to end the fighting, Malang said he believes that signing a peace agreement will be the easy part, but that it would be very hard for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to "sell" the deal to a the largely hostile population.
Muslims meanwhile remain inadequately represented in the two-house parliament, where out of 236 members of Congress, only 12 are Muslim. There are no Muslims in the Senate. Mindanao is among the poorest regions in the Philippines with most of its meagre external investments coming from abroad rather than from other parts if the country.
You have the right to remain dead. Anything you might have had to say wasn't worth listening to anyway. You have the right to a shallow grave. You have the right to be wrapped in pigskin and tossed casually into that grave. You have the right to have dirt shovelled in your face. You hae the right to now remain forecer silent.
Baylon is a Muslim apologist, sort of a Filipino Ward Churchill.
Mindanao was not mostly Muslim in 1945; it has been receiving Christian settlers for hundreds of years. All its major cities were Christian early last century.
Philippine Muslims are not deprived; they are ignored, for good reasons. They typically do not welcome business investment in their areas. What they really want is free land and tribute, essentially.
Their "ancestral domain" is populated with millions of Christian settlers.
The hard sell here is going to be the Christian majority in Mindanao. There are a lot more of them than Muslims, and they are feisty.
Amok is common to all Malays, which includes both Christian and Muslim Filipinos. Amok is well known among Christians.
AL QAEDA-linked Muslim militants are plotting fresh attacks in Manila almost a year after blowing up a bus in the capital's financial district, killing four people, a state prosecutor said Friday.
Justice Department prosecutor Emmanuel Velasco said the latest plot was uncovered with the help of a former Abu Sayyaf member who turned state witness during a trial last year that ended with death sentences for an Indonesian and two Filipinos for their role in the Feb. 14, 2005 bus bombing.
"Their plan is to strike on or before February 14 to show they are still a force to reckon with, to say that even if our people are in jail, we can strike," Velasco told The Associated Press.
He refused to disclose details of the plot, but said three would-be attackers were identified by the witness, Gappal Bannah, through surveillance photographs. He said he had filed a case of rebellion against them and was waiting for a judge to issue arrest warrants.
Abu Sayyaf guerrillas, hiding in the remote jungles of the southern Philippines, are notorious for ransom kidnappings and bomb attacks, which have targeted Filipinos and Americans.
The group, which numbers about 300 men, is on a US list of terrorist organizations and Washington has offered rewards for information leading to the capture of its leaders.
Scores of militants already have been killed or arrested in US-backed military operations.
Later this month, about 250 American troops will start month-long military training of Filipino soldiers on southern Jolo Island, a guerrilla stronghold.
The Abu Sayyaf had claimed responsibility for the Feb. 14, 2005 bombing in Manila's Makati financial district, as well as two other bomb attacks in two southern towns the same day, in retaliation for a military offensive.
An Indonesian man, Rohmat, who confessed to membership in the regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, was sentenced to death last year for the attack, along with two Filipinos, Gamal Baharan and Abu Khalil Trinidad.
Authorities say several dozen Indonesian militants have been training Abu Sayyaf guerrillas in bombmaking.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 01:44 ||
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BUSHEHR (IRNA) -- The Iranian Army is completely prepared to respond to any threat or violation of the country's air space despite being under sanctions, Defense Minister Brigadier-General Mostafa Mohammad Najar assured here Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters at the end of his visit to an airbase in the southern city of Bushehr, home to the country's first nuclear power plant, the minister expressed satisfaction over the high capability and readiness of the country's air force. Stressing the importance of guaranteeing security for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, Najar said that "any attack against Iran's peaceful nuclear facilities would receive a quick and decisive response by the country's armed forces."
He praised the army's significant role in the eight-year, Iraqi-imposed war against Iran (1980-1988), stressing that its forces are ready to protect the country's borders with the same revolutionary fervor as in the early days of the Islamic Revolution of Iran.
The Iran-Iraq war lasted nearly eight years, from September of 1980 until August of 1988. It ended when Iran accepted United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 598, leading to a 20 August 1988 cease-fire. Iran suffered some 300,000 KIA and another 500,000 WIA. Not much to celebrate or crow about I'd say.
#1
Headline shoudl read "Iran Air Force prepared to meet Allan" They have few aircraft, they barely fly them, and they aint getting any new ones. At this point I bet the Mexican Air Force could take them in a straight up fight.
As of 2000 it was estimated that only 40 of the 132 F-4Ds, 177 F-4Es and 16 RF-4E. Phantoms delivered before 1979 remained in service. At that time, approximately 45 of the 169 F-5E/Fs delivered are still flying, while perhaps 20 F-14A Tomcats of the 79 initially delivered were airworthy. Another 30 F-4s, 30 F-5s and 35 F-14s have been cannibalized for spare parts. One report suggested that the IRIAF can get no more than seven F-14s airborne at any one time. Iran claims to have fitted F-14s with I-Hawk missiles adapted to the air-to-air role.
Russia and Iran enjoy a close military sales relationship, and have taken steps for the Russians to sell modernized air defense systems to Iran. In February 2001 a spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry stated that "Iran hopes for ongoing military-technical cooperation with Russia. Our country plans to modernize Iranian Air Defense and it will ask Russia to sell some air defense systems in support of that."
An unknown number of "new" Su-25s were delivered to the Iranian Revolution Guards Corps Air Force (IRGCAF) in 2003. Where these Frogfoots originate from is unclear.
In July 2003 Chengdu Aircraft Industrial Corporation (CAIC) unveiled the new Super-7 or Chao Qi fighter plane to the public. The new Super-7 is an all-purpose light fighter, required to have all-weather operation capabilities, be capable of performing the dual tasks of dogfight and air-to-ground attack, and have the ability to launch medium-range missiles. Mass production of the fighter will not begin until two and a half years of research are completed. The plane is being produced to be sold abroad to developing nations. China already has received orders from Iran and some African countries.
There have been reports of some 10 F-8Ms "Finback", 7 Tu-22Ms, 19 MIG-27s, and several MIG-31s (Russia's most modern fighter aircraft, US$40 million ) being present in Iran, but these are not confirmed.
#5
heavy
Not really. The Phoenix weighed 1000 lbs each and the F-14 carried 6 of them. A Hawk weighs 1400 lbs. I bet the range sucked compared to a Phoenix.
Posted by: ed ||
02/03/2006 12:56 Comments ||
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#8
...Against crack air superiority units like the 1st and 33rd Fighter Wings, (and the 1st will have at least two squadrons of F-22s within a few months) the survival time of the IRAF will be measured in minutes. The vast majority of the aircraft will never leave the ground - they will die in their shelters or on their ramps, possibly with just enough warning to die very, very terrified. Those that somehow do get airborne will be in uncoordinated groups with no command and control, with no idea where the USAF is or where they are coming from.
Their only warning will be the Slammers and Sidewinders that kill them.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/03/2006 19:11 Comments ||
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#9
Mexico has an Air Force?
(Other than their drug smuggling plane, I mean.)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/03/2006 19:53 Comments ||
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#10
As the Iranian father of asymetric warfare, I challenge the Mexican flying infidels to a dual at 20,000 feet! Bring your stinkin' badges.
Posted by: General Salami ||
02/03/2006 20:23 Comments ||
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CAIRO, Egypt - As Iran's top nuclear negotiator pushed back against international pressure over its uranium enrichment - threatening to block international weapons inspectors - bus drivers in Tehran were ratcheting up pressure from within.
The Sherkat-e Vahed trade union representing the Iranian capital's bus drivers have been on strike since Friday after at least 300 union members from the Tehran bus company and their families were arrested by the regime's security forces. Their efforts received some international attention yesterday with the State Department and Human Rights Watch both issuing harsh statements condemning the forceful crackdowns of the strike leaders. Those statements followed a letter last month from America's largest union, the AFL-CIO urging President Ahmadinejad to release leaders of the union arrested in December.
Earlier this week, a spokesman for the families of bus drivers detained in Evin Prison, Gholamreza Mirzaie, said, "Some have violated the sacred family union by arresting wives and the children of our drivers and in some cases the kids and the mothers were beaten ... This is totally unacceptable and we have tolerated this far and we will not let them violate our families' rights."
The roots of the strike go back to May 9, when the leader of the trade union, Massoud Osanlou, made his first demand for back wages not paid, more benefits, and increased pay. For this act of defiance he was badly beaten by anti-riot police and hospitalized.
According to a January 3 letter from the AFL-CIO's president, John Sweeney, to President Ahmadinejad, "Between March and June 2005, at least 17 workers, including Mansour Osanloo were fired." Seven more leaders were arrested in September protesting the failure to pay back wages. On Friday, the regime made its boldest move yet and arrested scores of potential strike leaders and their families.
An opposition news outlet, Rooz online, reported this week that between 300 and 400 workers have been arrested in the latest crackdown. In one particularly brutal case, security forces raided the home of Yaghub Salimi, another member of the union on January 28. He was not home, but his wife and 2-year-old daughter were. According to Human Rights Watch, Mr. Salimi said his daughter sustained facial injuries from the attack. Nonetheless, opposition figures in Iran say plans will proceed with its planned strike.
"The attempts of these Iranian workers to seek the redress of legitimate grievances and the right to collectively bargain have been met by the Iranian Government with arrests, threats, and intimidation," the State Department yesterday said in a statement.
A spokesman living in America for the Iranian opposition constitutional referendum movement, which has been monitoring the strike closely, Pooya Dayanim said that there are plans underway now for the entire union of 17,000 to go on strike Friday in solidarity with their co-workers now in prison. "The workers in Iran are denied the most basic of human rights. The right to work, to earn a living, and be able to negotiate their salaries. The fact they are asking for labor rights and being tortured and detained and their infant children are being dragged with them to prison is a dramatic example of human rights violations in Iran," he said.
Iran's clerical regime is supremely confident, has a firm grip on power and is ready to retaliate against attacks by America or Israel with missiles or by activating terrorist allies, according to the latest US intelligence assessment.
In his first public address on the threats facing the US, John Negroponte, its national intelligence director, delivered an implied rebuke to those in Washington hoping the West can engineer regime change in Teheran.
But as the International Atomic Energy Agency's governing body prepared to vote on a resolution to report Iran to the UN Security Council, Mr Negroponte suggested there was no imminent threat of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Teheran "probably" did not have an atomic bomb or the fissile material to make one, he said. But the risk Iran could make or buy a nuclear device and mount it on its missiles was "reason for immediate concern", he added.
Mr Negroponte told the Senate's intelligence committee: "Iran already has the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East. And Teheran views its ballistic missiles as an integral part of its strategy to deter and, if necessary, retaliate against forces in the region, including United States forces."
Washington's neo-conservatives drew heart from President George W Bush's veiled call in Tuesday's State of the Union address for the Iranian people to rise up against the mullahs.
But Mr Negroponte's analysis highlighted the difficulties of confronting Iran, politically or militarily.
"The regime today is more confident and assertive than it has been since the early days of the Islamic Republic. Several factors work in favour of the clerical regime's continued hold on power," he added, citing Teheran's "generous public spending" funded by record oil revenues as one of them.
He also noted that the Iranian-backed Hizbollah group in Lebanon "has a worldwide support network and is capable of attacks against US interests if it feels its Iranian patron is threatened".
Mr Negroponte said Iran's involvement in Iraq was a "particular concern" but added: "Teheran's intentions to inflict pain on the United States in Iraq have been constrained by its caution to avoid giving Washington an excuse to attack it, also the clerical leadership's general satisfaction with trends in Iraq, and Iran's desire to avoid chaos on its border."
While Washington's hawks believe America needs to be more confrontational towards Teheran, Bush administration officials are speaking with great caution. In particular, they are hailing the diplomacy that has won the support of Russia and China in hauling Iran before the UN Security Council.
Stephen Rademaker, the acting assistant secretary of state for security and non-proliferation, said that America's patience had "paid off".
He added that America was still hoping Iran would prove to be a textbook example of how to deal with a crisis through "effective multilateralism".
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:39 ||
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#1
The Iranian tyranny has so many internal enemies, that the US intelligence apparatus has no doubt benefited from information given by innumerable walk-ins. In that context, targeting can be effective to the point of neutralizing the enemy, quickly. I believe that 2 weeks after the attacks begin, Ahmadnejad will be hanged from a lamppost.
#4
Mr Negroponte said Iran's involvement in Iraq was a "particular concern" but added: "Teheran's intentions to inflict pain on the United States in Iraq have been constrained by its caution to avoid giving Washington an excuse to attack it, also the clerical leadership's general satisfaction with trends in Iraq, and Iran's desire to avoid chaos on its border."
Pain avoidance may be the key Ponte, but they're still in dire need, and loooong overdue for a good arsss whoop'n.
#5
"Engineering regime change from within" has got to be one of the sillier notions around. It has long been noted that revolutions come exclusively from the middle classes, in that the wealthy can buy exemption from the rules, and the poor do not have the resources to do much of anything.
But pushing the middle classes so hard that they are forced to revolt just tears a country apart. Iran would have to be like Zimbabwe before there would be a chance for a revolution.
So what we are really focusing on in Iran is to split the Persians from the Kurds, Arabs and Baluchs. An entirely different concept, and one that even on its own might not cause "regime change" in Persian Iran, just deny them many of the resources they need to be obnoxious.
But laying the groundwork for this isn't easy. We must convince the Iranian Kurds to join with the Iraqi Kurds, in a "greater Kurdistan" either inside Iraq or possibly creating enough inertia to form their own country.
Then we must make it up to Iraq by inviting the Iranian Arabs to join with the Iraqi Shiites in the South, enlarging Iraq.
The Baluchs are most problematic, in that they are probably not able to exist as an independent nation. For this reason, we would encourage Pakistan to grab Iranian Baluchistan, which would solve much of the Baluch problem in the region.
All told, the bottom line is the partitioning of Iran.
But the only way that the international community would accept this notion would be as a "national death penalty" against Iran for aggressively using a nuclear weapon (hopefully unsuccessfully), which would sway all of the nuclear powers to such a radical solution as partitioning.
Stripped of its oil and reduced in stature, Persia would no longer be a regional threat, but could become a true partner in the Middle East.
#6
Doesn't everyone know those Mullahs are magical, and have fairy dust that will allow outdated 30 year old American equipment, and miscellaneous equipment from other places stand up to our current technology. Ayatollah Khomeni made a 100 years supply of fairy dust before he descended into the firey regions! Iran can't loose ;)
#7
According to the current issue of Scientific American, any idiot (Mullahs included) can build a Hiroshima-type bomb if they can get the Highly-Enriched Uranium (HEU). This type of A-Bomb was not even tested, because the physicists KNEW it would work.
Nagasaki-type (implosion) bombs require much less HEU (or plutonium) but are MUCH harder to build.
I believe there are Rantburgers more knowledgable than I, so..... did I get it right?
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/03/2006 20:41 Comments ||
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#8
Regime Change in Iran will take ten decades. A thorough trashing will take six weeks, if we do it right. I don't want to be at war for another century, Mr. President, I'm an impatient old fogie, and I want it over yesterday! Just blast everything apart until they live lives lower than road-kill, and they'll quieten down and be nice doggies. If that doesn't work, turn the place into a glass parking lot. You can drill through glass. With directional drilling, you can capture 99.9% of the oil from the least radioactive areas. And radiation decays. People don't come back from being blasted into atoms. The few that survive will understand that messing with the US is a definite way to shorten your lifespan - immediately.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/03/2006 22:51 Comments ||
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#9
controlled triggereing to condense the mass is the trick, Bobby - hard to do without highly accurate triggers, et al. If I was one of these rogues, I'd make sure I tested at least one. The blackmail (which is what they all want) power is much higher with an acknowledged workable nuke
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/03/2006 23:30 Comments ||
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Waving a fist at the world's superpower is an extraordinary gamble, but for the mullahs and revolutionaries that run the Islamic republic, the latest in a series of standoffs between Tehran and the West seems more like a game than cause for serious political concern. The game goes something like this: One side ups the ante on the nuclear issue, saber-rattling that Iran's nuclear ambitions are a threat to the free world; the other side laughs it off, insisting that it seeks nuclear energy purely for the generation of electricity. The latter capitalizes on Iranian nationalism, claiming the imperialists are depriving Iran of its rights under international law and, perhaps most important, before God.
On Tuesday, the pressure on Iran increased as the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, along with Germany, agreed to report Tehran to the council over Iran's decision to recommence uranium enrichment. While critics say uranium enrichment is a crucial step toward building nuclear weapons, the Iranians categorically deny any interest in doing so, noting that such weapons are contrary to the tenets of Islam.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fiery brand of rhetoric and his curious disdain for diplomacy are a gift to Iran's critics. He has famously denied the Holocaust and asked why the state of Israel could not be moved to Europe or North America. Back home, however, his pronouncements are unremarkable. Such talk is standard fare in official Iranian circlesas is mandated lip service to the fate of the underdog Palestinians. In fact, the president's comments hardly merited mention in most Iranian papersdespite the hysteria they sparked in editorial pages throughout the West.
This fall, a video circulated on the streets of Tehran that showed Ahmadinejad in conversation with a ranking cleric, Ayatollah Javadi-Amoli, about the president's recent appearance at the United Nations. In the video, Ahmadinejad announced that a light surrounded him when he took the podium, and that, for almost half a minute, the leaders of the world didn't blink. Though his office later denied the veracity of the video, calling it a work of "montage," the pious president has on many other occasions invoked images of judgment and divine intervention. His message is clear (and it's not so far from his American counterpart's): God is with him.
Revelations aside, in his first five months in office the new president has largely followed through on his campaign promises to fight corruption and redistribute the country's wealth. It is not uncommon to see him on state television opening a hospital in an impoverished part of the country, while weeping women thank God, the president, and any number of bystanders. He has promised to reduce university costs, to raise government salaries by 20 percent, and to create a fundstill bogged down in parliamentthat would cover the cost of getting married and help young people buy homes. This is populist economics par excellence, courtesy of the country's petrodollars, and despite some concerns about inflationary tendencies from voices within the country, he seems to be pleasing his overwhelmingly religious, working-class support base. Never mind the fact that his election has left some investors nervous and that Tehran's stock market has plunged $10 billion* in the meantime.
The fears that Ahmadinejad's victory would presage a return to the draconian social mores of the revolutionary period have not been realized. Since the election, little has actually changed in the streets of the capital. On posh Africa Avenue, the arrests and interrogations of cavorting teenagers have decreased. Rumors of impending crackdowns on veiling have not materialized. Sure, Western music has, in principal, been banned, and some published books are "under review"but for most, these are little more than symbolic gestures. That's not to say that Ahmadinejad and company do not want to take Iran back to the days of the Islamic revolution; they would probably love to, but they realize that they would risk fracturing the astonishing consensus they have built on the nuclear issue.
The regime has been extraordinarily effective in galvanizing support from Iranians across the political spectrum on the nuclear issue. Nuclear energy has become intimately linked to the national character, heralded as an inalienable right. Newspaper editors have been warned against deviating from the official line in their treatment of things nuclear, while melodramatic TV programs promote the merits of nuclear energy and, by extension, independence, on a daily basis.
And what of the reformist politicians Western pundits love to wax lyrical about? In his modest office at Tehran University, Hamid Reza Jaleipour, a strategist with Mosharekat, the country's largest reformist faction, told me, "Our hands are tied, we can't even move." Other than foiled presidential candidate and former parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karroubi's attempt to launch a newspaper and satellite channel (the latter already blocked), little initiative has been taken to reinvigorate a reformist camp that is devastatingly out of touch with the majority of the Iranian people. Outside Iran, the exiled Mujahideen Khalq Organization, which is probably the largest opposition bloc, is more of a cult than a viable political alternative. And within Iran, external support, especially from America, would be the kiss of deathimmediately delegitimizing any opposition group.
So, how far can the regime afford to push the nuclear issue? Plainly, it believes it can manipulate oil prices at will and seems to think that clutch trading partners Russia and China, which have preached moderation until now, will protect its interests in the end. Importantly, Tuesday's "reporting" to the security council is short of a more substantive "referral," and Iran's nuclear dossier will not be considered by the council until March. Negotiations about outsourcing enrichment to Russia will continue, and if it comes down to it, some of the more intransigent members of the regime are already saying that Iranians have survived sanctions beforethey can most certainly weather them again.
In the meantime, Iranians know that a U.S. or Israeli military strike would spell disaster for the aggressors, doing little more than setting back progress at reactor sites and effectively rallying public opinion in Ahmadinejad's favor, both within Iran and around the region. Because Iran is located in a dangerous neighborhoodand currently ringed in by the United Statesmost Iranians wonder why they should give up nuclear capabilities. In the end, any consideration of available options must take into account Iran's trump cards, oil, Afghanistan, and Iraq most prominent among them.
Ultimately, Washington must use economic or security-oriented carrots; the stick will not work here. Last week, Ahmadinejad met with Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. In an impossibly kitsch, baroque gilded room, the two ideologues reiterated their commitments to one another, the turbaned cleric and the modestly dressed president providing a seductive photo-op. The message of their meeting was clear. As if turning their backs to the West, they proclaimed: We're starting our own club. And we're doing just fine without you.
Correction, Feb. 1, 2006: This piece originally misstated the drop in the Tehran stock market as $10 million. The correct figure is $10 billion.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:33 ||
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#1
I think Pat Robertson is onto something....it would be so much cheaper. Could have had Mugniyeh and Assad last week, too.
#2
"Outside Iran, the exiled Mujahideen Khalq Organization, which is probably the largest opposition bloc, is more of a cult than a viable political alternative"
But...but...I just read somewhere that their an "Exile Group".
#3
There is a large labor movement in Iran. The Ayatoilets repress free association. Billionaire former head toilet - Rafsanajani - has used Basiji gestapo to strike break at his firms, which he bought through proceeds from sweetheart self-dealing. Check out these pics of last years' May Day rally:
http://www.sedayekargaran.com/photo.htm
Basijis broke up Rally:
http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?
Language=EN&Index=991219229
Basij owned company doesn't pay its workers.
http://regimechangeiran.blogspot.com/2006/01/widespread-workers-protest-in-iran.html
Remember the Chilean Truckers. They served red Salvador on a plate.
Denouncing Iran's nuclear activities, the Bush administration expressed confidence Wednesday that the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency would report the controversial program to the Security Council.
"The message that is going to be sent very clearly to Iran is that they have crossed the line," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said as the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors completed its findings.
"We expect that measure to pass and so Iran will find itself before the Security Council," McCormack said.
He said the report, drafts of which were circulating at the State Department, raised "troubling questions" about linkages between Iran's enrichment activities and a military program.
"You do that because you want to create a nuclear weapon," McCormack said.
While U.N. inspectors have been unable to go to all suspected Iranian facilities, McCormack said, "we are seeing more and more indications" that Iran's enrichment activities have the intended purpose of building a nuclear weapon.
The spokesman rejected threats by Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, to halt U.N. inspections and resume large-scale enrichment of uranium.
"If followed through (they) would take Iran in just the opposite direction that this world is calling on them to go," McCormack said.
He also denounced Iran as "the central banker for terrorism in the Middle East."
Undersecretary of State Robert G. Joseph said in a speech Wednesday that Iran was trying to build a delivery system that would allow it to threaten nuclear strikes against its neighbors in the region and well beyond.
Joseph, the senior arms control official at the department, said, "A nuclear-armed Iran could embolden the leadership in Tehran to advance its aggressive ambitions in and outside of the region, both directly and through terrorist supports."
He spoke at the annual dinner of the Washington council of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."
"We cannot accept a nuclear-armed Iran," Joseph said.
Under an agreement reached this week with Russia and China, the IAEA will send the dispute to the Security Council but will defer for at least five weeks any action against Iran, such as diplomatic or economic punishment, if Iran refuses to resume negotiations or reverse course.
President Bush discussed Iran in a telephone call Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and thanked him for Russia's offer to divert enrichment activities to Russia in an effort to keep an eye on the process and make sure they are designed for civilian use.
"They both agreed that it was important to stay in close contact as we move forward to address this issue," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "I think both leaders have a shared concern about Iran developing a nuclear weapon under the guise of a civilian program."
The administration wants Russia to take a tough line on Iran at the United Nations, and officials have suggested Russia, for geographic reasons, has at least as much cause for concern as the United States.
But Russia is conflicted, wanting also to preserve its commercial and military ties to Iran.
Bush's conversation was one of many approaches the administration has made to Russia.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:09 ||
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DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syria will exchange ambassadors with Iraq after a new Iraqi government is formed, Syria's official news agency reported Thursday, marking the first time Damascus has set a time frame for restoring full diplomatic ties with Baghdad after a 23-year break.
Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa said Syria wished to have "the closest relations with Iraq based on historical and geographical ties," according to SANA. "After the formation of the new Iraqi government, (Syria and Iraq) will exchange ambassadors, and delegations from both countries will make visits to strengthen cooperation in all fields," al-Sharaa told a visiting delegation of Iraqi journalists, according to SANA.
"And we hope our Iraqi brothers can restrain those Americans," he added anxiously.
Syria broke relations with Baghdad in 1982 after accusing Iraq of inciting riots by the banned Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. Commercial ties improved in the last few years of Saddam Hussein's regime before he was overthrown in 2003. The two countries maintain only interest sections in each other's capitals. There have been talks in the past year between Syria and Iraq on restoring diplomatic ties and exchanging ambassadors but no date has been set for opening embassies and appointing ambassadors.
The announcement comes at a time Syria is feeling increasingly frightened isolated, particularly over last year's assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/03/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
perhaps our Iraqi friends can explain "hot pursuit" better than we can?
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/03/2006 0:16 Comments ||
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A politicial crisis that has been brewing since seven weeks ago came to an end on Thursday with ministers of the country's mainstream (!) Shiite Muslim groups Amal and Hezbollah declaring that they would resume taking part in cabinet meetings. MP Hassan Khalil of Amal read a statement on behalf of the five Shiite ministers saying that the executives would resume attending the sessions on basis of a declaration, made earlier in the day, by Prime Minister Fuad Al-Sanioura during a parliament session, affirming that the government would always call the resistance as resistance. The remark was intended to assuage fears by Hezbollah as a result of a UN resolution that referred to the resistance as a militia.
"We appreciate restoration of sovereignty as a result of the liberation of the land and the resistance is credited for this achievement," the prime minister had told the legislators, alluding to the liberation of southern Lebanon, in 2000, from Israeli occupation as a result of the resistance, led by Hezbollah. "We have always called the resistance as resistance and we have always referred to it as the national resistance and we will always call it the Lebanese national resistance," Al-Sanioura stressed.
Although the officials' decision may defuse high tension in the politicial atmosphere in the country, political observers forecast follow-up heated debates on several controversial issues namely the UN resolution 1559 and the nature of the ties with neighboring Syria.
And a peek into Leb politix:
Hezbollah is represented in the 24-seat cabinet by Mohammed Feneish who serves in the energy portfolio. MP Trad Hmadeh is loyal to the Islamic organization. Amal is represented by Foreign Minister Fawzi Sallouk, Minister of Agriculture Talal Al-Saheli and Minister of Health Mohammed Jawad Khalifeh.The cabinet was formed in July following parliamentary polls, held in May and June, only a month after withdrawal of the Syrian forces from the country.
See also the post on the fabricated cartoons in p.4.
Some analysts dont understand why it took so long to the Muslim street to react to the publication of the Muhammad cartoons by a Danish daily, on September 30 last year.
Today (4 months later) the crisis intensifies and hit the whole Muslim world. No one is asserting that four months ago, the publication of the litigious cartoons didnt provoke any reaction: on October 14, 5 000 angry Muslims demonstrated in Copenhague; two weeks later, some Muslim countries began to protest. Egypt first (on November 2) and, a few days later, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). And then, all the story came down.
But, from the intelligence we collected this last days, we might conclude that this quietness was just an appearance. Those few weeks were used by the Muslim Brothers to mobilize their troops worldwide and to organize the global protest movement which began a few days ago. A movement which compelled many Muslim states to denounce Denmark, Norway and now Europe.
The crisis is now open and huge. Thats exactly what expected the Muslim Brothers. It helps them to kill several birds with one shoot. In Europe, the Brotherhood wants to go ahead with the project of a law against blasphemy. But it wants also to strengthen their position by infiltrating the traditional Muslim organizations. More: by using the street as a lever, the Brothers put the Arab governments under a high pressure, and they push them to react. So, they dig the gap between the Western world and the Muslim world.
This will help their own political agenda. In this particular context, the crisis will very likely deepen in the coming days, and a terrorist evolution is possible. Weve seen such an evolution in the Satanic verses affair, years ago (publishers and translators were killed or wounded) , or, more recently, with the assassination of Theo Van Gogh, in Amsterdam in November 2004.
For the Muslims Brotherhood, it would be a good news as they want to impose the communautarism model vs integration. This plan is not exactly new. In November 2001, searching the house of the banker Yussef Nada (who admitted to be one of the Muslim Brotherhood leader in Europe), the Swiss police found some documents extremely interesting regarding the international strategy of the Brotherhood. A strategy of entrism and penetration aiming to target the most sensible parts of the immigration, the youth and the students, and to radicalize them.
#1
I was just wondering out loud to my wife this morning: who's behind this sudden "outrage"? It's so obviously contrived and planned - like the "spontaneous" second Pali intifada.
#2
I googled the institute putting out this article. Its based in Brussels, a member of the American Chamber of Commerce there, and its president is considered an expert on North African terrorist groups. His preferred language is French, which explains the quaint language used in the article. ;-) Good post, a5089.
Sara Ahmad's voice quavers slightly as she recalls the summer evening nearly 18 months ago when her older brother, Babar, an IT professional, came over for dinner.
The following day Ms. Ahmad answered a knock at the door to find two policemen standing outside on her leafy suburban street. "They said he'd been arrested on a extradition request to the U.S.," recalls Ahmad, a doctor. "I was completely shocked."
Their dinner together was the last time she's seen her brother.
Charged with running websites hosted in the U.S. that promoted and supported Islamic militancy, Babar Ahmad is still in British custody. He has appealed the extradition order and Britain's High Court will hear the case on Feb. 20. The proceedings will test the ability of Western governments to put on trial Islamic radicals who use the Internet as a key recruiting and organizational tool.
"In the last couple of years the use of the media by militants has grown in sophistication," says Gary Bunt, author of Islam in the Digital Age and a lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Wales. "It's very difficult to know what can be done," he says.
But while the U.S. government pursues those who operate websites that allegedly encourage terrorism, some argue that the authorities should instead concentrate on shutting down the sites themselves as soon as possible to limit their impact.
"Leaving sites up ... for the convenience of content analysts and translators doesn't save lives," argues A. Aaron Weisburd, who runs a website monitoring jihadists' use of cyberspace. "Such monitoring did nothing to prevent the Internet from being used as the principal means to build support for the jihadists in Iraq, who in turn kill American service men and women."
Observers caution, however, against overstating the significance of such sites.
"Measuring the impact of this material is problematic," says Bunt. "People sympathetic to this material might express it in different ways. It certainly doesn't mean that everyone who reads these sites goes off and does jihad."
Ahmad's case illustrates how seriously the U.S. is taking such websites. His extradition warrant accuses him among other things of helping to run azzam.com, one of the earliest and most high-profile English-language pro-jihad websites, which for a time was run by an Internet Service Provider (ISP) headquartered in Connecticut. A federal grand jury in the U.S. indicted Ahmad in October 2004 on four charges, including that of providing material support to terrorists and conspiring to kill persons in a foreign country. If found guilty, he faces life imprisonment.
U.S. Homeland Security official Michael J. Garcia called the indictment "a significant development in our efforts to target those who are alleged to equip and bankroll terrorists via the Internet."
The extradition request describes how websites allegedly run by Ahmad also told Muslims in the West how to send money, volunteers, and equipment such as night-vision goggles to the Taliban and Chechen rebels.
"Muslims must use every means at their disposal to undertake military and physical training for Jihad," says one passage posted on azzam.com, now shut down, quoted in the extradition warrant. "Someone who is not able to fight at this moment in time due to a valid excuse ... can start by the collection and donation of funds."
Weisburd argues that such pro-jihad sites represent an immediate and growing threat. His own website, "Internet Haganah" encourages concerned individuals to pressure legitimate Internet companies, often based in the US or Britain, to close jihadist sites that use their servers to distribute material that incites violence.
"Causing websites to be removed, to be set back up again somewhere else, keeps the bad guys busy online," Weisburd says. "The busier they are, the more opportunities we have to locate them and their associates."
But as fast as Weisburd can get the sites taken down, others spring up. And the conflict is evolving in other ways, too.
While the sites Ahmad was accused of running focused on supporting distant conflicts against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan or the Russians in Chechnya, a new generation of websites aim to encourage Muslims to carry out attacks within the US and Europe.
In December, the Al Safinat Internet forum posted a detailed guide in Arabic to carrying out attacks within America against economic and oil-related targets as part of Al Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri's "bleed until bankruptcy" strategy of defeating the US.
One reader suggested that the document, which included detailed maps and plans of the Trans-Alaska pipeline, be made into a single electronic PDF file so that the information could be easily distributed and acted upon to "inflame the final war between them and us, and lead to their downfall."
"The strategy is certainly being taken seriously on the Web and is generating research traffic," reported SITE Institute, a Washington-based independent research body that first spotted the post. Canadian energy firm BC Hydro has reportedly increased its security in response to the posting.
As governments plan measures against those using the Internet to incite jihadist attacks and spread radical ideology, they risk coming under fire for inflaming feelings of fear already endemic among many Muslims in the West.
"If Babar Ahmad is suspected of anything he should be tried in the UK," says Inayat Banglawala, spokesman of the Muslim Council of Britain. "We believe that if his extradition goes ahead it will radicalize many young people and make them feel that they are being treated unjustly in the country in which they were born," he says.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 01:20 ||
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An expert on global terrorism says there are now up to 40 groups around the world trying to imitate al-Qaida and virtually all of them are intent on attacking the United States and its allies. Rohan Gunaratna spoke to Middle East specialists and journalists in Washington.
Rohan Gunaratna is the head of terrorist research at the Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore and a senior fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Gunaratna has studied terrorism for two decades and is the author of the best-selling book, Inside al-Qaida: Global Network of Terror.
The native of Sri Lanka has interviewed more than 200 terrorists in dozens of countries and he says there are now terror groups around the world that are trying to act like al-Qaida.
"Al-Qaida has morphed from a group into a movement," he said. "Today, in place of al-Qaida, we have 30 to 40 different groups from Asia, Africa and the Middle East seeking to emulate al-Qaida. Al-Qaida has influenced these groups operationally and ideologically."
Gunaratna says because these organizations are scattered, security and intelligence services must monitor and respond to multiple threats as the terror groups employ classic al-Qaida tactics such as suicide bombings and multi-target attacks.
He says the threat of terrorism has increased significantly since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
"We have seen many of these local jihad groups that traditionally believed in local jihads, are now believing in the global jihad," he said. "Today they are not only fighting their local governments and non-Muslim populations, but also the United States, its allies and its friends. This is the single biggest development we have seen in the international terrorism landscape in the past four years."
Gunaratna says after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, most al-Qaida members fled to Pakistan and Iran.
He says about 100 al-Qaida members and their families, including four sons and two wives of Osama bin Laden, are currently in Iran.
Gunaratna says the porous nature of many borders in the Middle East, and a common cause, has encouraged terrorist groups to cooperate with each other.
"Today we are seeing a greater exchange of personnel, a greater exchange of technologies and ideas across these groups," he added. "Today it really does not matter whether you are al-Qaida, or whether you belong to any other organization. The main interest is that you believe in the global jihad and this is largely a post-Iraq invasion development."
Gunaratna says al-Qaida's main objective remains the same. It is to create its own Islamic states wherever Muslims live throughout the world.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:24 ||
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Ayman al-Zawahri's ability to produce a video-taped message soon after escaping a US air strike suggests he is in close touch with al-Qaeda's propaganda arm, a US counter-terrorism official said on Monday.
The official noted that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden used audiotape to communicate his own latest message earlier this month, while Zawahri was able to quickly disseminate a videotape of himself.
"That would suggest that Bin Laden is in a more isolated location," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Zawahri videotape was aired by al-Jazeera television on Monday less than three weeks after a January 13 air strike in Pakistan that was directed at Zawahri but killed 18 other people.
Pakistani officials have said four or five foreign militants, including several top al-Qaeda figures, were believed killed in the attack, but have produced no hard evidence of it.
"At this point it's still unclear who may or may not have been killed," the counter-terrorism official said.
Zawahri referred in his message to the air attack on the village of Damadola, saying it was carried out "under the pretext of wanting to kill me and my four companions."
"The entire world has discovered the extent of American lies," he said.
Communications from top al-Qaeda leaders like Zawahri and bin Laden are dated by references they make to real world events such as the air strike.
Past messages have often contained allusions to events that were months, if not years in the past, leaving the impression that al-Qaeda's leaders were hiding in remote, inaccessible areas.
However, the counter-terrorism official said it was no surprise that, having survived the air strike, Zawahri would try to get his message out as quickly as possible.
"Part of it is an effort to assure the al-Qaeda rank and file that he is alive, but one cannot and should not minimize the propaganda aspect to this," the official said.
The Zawahri message seeks in part to tap into the public anger aroused in Pakistan over the air strike.
"What it also shows is that he is still fairly well plugged into the al-Qaeda propaganda apparatus," the official said.
"It demonstrates that the al-Qaeda propaganda effort is still functioning, given the fact that he was able to produce a video and disseminate it in short order," he said.
Zawahri has issued at least seven public statements over the past year, making him the public face of al-Qaeda, the official said.
Bin Laden, on the other hand, had been silent for the more than a year before his latest audiotape surfaced on January 19. In it, Bin Laden threatened new attacks on the United States, but also offered a truce.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/03/2006 00:14 ||
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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.
Last night the BBC and ITV were among those who used fleeting images of the cartoons in news bulletins as a worldwide furore threatened to provoke violence and a trade boycott of European goods. The broadcasters' move came just hours after Europe's trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, appealed to editors not to publish the cartoons, saying they were "bound to offend". 
The French government deported a Malian involved in autumn rioting on Thursday the first expulsion stemming from the weeks of violence that swept across France's troubled suburbs and was preparing to send home another six foreigners. The deportation of the man made good on promises issued by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy during three weeks of car burnings, riots and other violence that began Oct. 27. "I was widely criticized for saying ... that I would apply the law by expelling those (foreigners) who participated in the riots," Sarkozy said on LCI television. "Well, a first one took an airplane to Mali today."
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's hearings are usually held behind closed doors, open only to people with top-secret security clearances or clearances so secret their names can't even be revealed.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush next week will request a $439.3 billion Defense Department budget for 2007, a nearly 5 percent increase over this year, according to senior Pentagon officials and documents obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
The United States is engaged in what could be a generational conflict akin to the Cold War, the kind of struggle that might last decades as allies work to root out terrorists across the globe and battle extremists who want to rule the world, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress sent President Bush a second five-week extension of the Patriot Act as Senate negotiators worked to close a deal with the White House on renewing the antiterrorism law with some new civil liberties protections. ``We need the Patriot Act,'' said Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter. ``I'm prepared to work on it further to improve it.''
LONDON - U.N. Secretary-General 
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syria will exchange ambassadors with Iraq after a new Iraqi government is formed, Syria's official news agency reported Thursday, marking the first time Damascus has set a time frame for restoring full diplomatic ties with Baghdad after a 23-year break.
A politicial crisis that has been brewing since seven weeks ago came to an end on Thursday with ministers of the country's mainstream 
