October 4, 2003
I report, you decide ... but this just feels right to me. (Winds of Change)...
October 5, 2003
The Washington Post has an intelligent, measured editorial aboutDavid Kay's report. This is the best coverage yet that I've seen on the report from the major media, and it doesn't surprise me that the Post was the newspaper that got there first. It makes an important point that hasn't really gotten the attention it deserves: our prewar intelligence was faulty, not faked, but we'd better figure out how to get it fixed....
Here's more from David Kay ... information that doesn't seem to be getting a lot of play elsewhere, but explains that we were right in going to war. "We now have three cases in which scientists have come forward with equipment, technology, diagrams, documents and, in this case, actual weapons material, reference strains and botulinum toxin that they were told to hide and that the U.N. didn't find," he said Sunday....
October 6, 2003
Well, it's about time this administration started taking some action to win the peace. So far, while the Bush team is making all the right moves overseas, they've done a piss-poor job communicating back home. They've allowed the I-ANSWER stooges to occupy all the bandwidth, although Instapundit points out that this is now changing, too. The memo, which outlines working groups to coordinate anti-terrorism efforts, economic development, political affairs in Iraq and the creation of clearer messages to the media, is “a recognition by everyone that we are in a different phase now”, Rice told the Times in an interview Sunday....
I'm wondering if someone shouldn't be losing their job over this story: While President Clinton was trying to broker an elusive peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the FBI was secretly funneling money to suspected Hamas figures to see if the militant group would use it for terrorist attacks, according to interviews and court documents...Several thousand dollars in U.S. money was sent to suspected terror supporters during the operation as the FBI tried to track the flow of cash through terror organizations, the FBI said in a rare acknowledgment of an undercover sting that never resulted in prosecutions. "This was done in conjunction with permission from the attorney general for an ongoing operation, and Israeli authorities were aware of it," the bureau said. One of the FBI's key operatives, who has had a falling out with the bureau, provided an account of the operation at a friend's closed immigration court proceeding....
CNN.com - WTC bomber loses appeal - Oct. 6, 2003 I have nothing to add here....
October 7, 2003
I have to admit, at first this pissed me off, and it's still irritating me. However, it is worth a read, and Dionne is trying to introduce constructive criticism, which is encouraging. I think this is based on a couple of mistaken notion, however, chief among them that there actually was a post-9/11 consensus. Domestically, that may have been true -- maybe. If so, it was short-lived. Dionne is incorrect to say that the Afghanistan phase of the war received near-unanimous support, however. We were regaled with history lessons about how the British became lost in their Afghanistan entanglement, and how it was the Russian version of Vietnam in the 1980s. World reaction was decidedly more mixed. As Merde in France has repeatedly documented, French opinion was that we got what was coming to us, and our focus on Afghanistan should have been diplomatic rather than military, and our approach...
October 8, 2003
The "chocolate makers" have dropped their plans to create a military organization outside of NATO. Apparently, France, Germany, Beligium, and that military powerhouse Luxembourg decided that their combined might would only challenge the Junior ROTC in Berkeley. Instead, they plan to create a military "planning" cell. Do these guys have any clue about how that sounds during a war on Al Qaeda? No, apparently not. (Via Merde in France)...
October 9, 2003
I'm sure this all started with a directive that a certain percentage of all screeners had to pass their tests. From there, it's easy to get to this point. I mean, even if they weren't given most of the answers, how hard is it to answer questions like these: One question asked "How do threats get aboard an aircraft?" The possible answers were (a) In carry-on bags; (b) In checked-in bags; (c) In another person's bag; and (d) All of the above. The correct answer is (d). A second question asked why it is important to screen bags for improvised explosive devices (IEDs). A possible answer: "The ticking timer could worry other passengers." The right answer: "IEDs can cause loss of lives, property and aircraft." Chuck Schumer said that the questions "appear as if they were written by Jay Leno's gag writer," but that seems unduly harsh ... to Jay...
October 12, 2003
The Washington Post proves that it is the leading voice in American politics in a well-written, thoughtful analysis of the Iraq front of the war on terror. The debate over intervention was fraught precisely because many people understood that Saddam Hussein was not an imminent danger. We argued nonetheless that the real risk lay in allowing him to defy repeated U.N. disarmament orders, including Resolution 1441, the "final opportunity" approved by unanimous Security Council vote. As noted endlessly in the blogosphere, and acknowledged in the Post's editorial in a more passive way, the Bush administration never argued that Saddam represented an "imminent" threat. In fact, in Bush's State of the Union speech earlier this year, and in the speech he delivered to the UN, he argued that the United States and the civilized world could not afford to wait until the threat was imminent. That was the whole "preemption" controversy....
October 13, 2003
Colleen Rowley, the FBI agent who blew the whistle on the bureau's lack of follow-up before 9/11 -- mostly due to political correctness concerns -- wrote a tedious and silly op-ed in Sunday's Star Tribune. James Lileks, who has a regular column and feature in the Strib (the Back Fence), fisks the hell out of Rowley. Rowley's article is another of those vague, unsupported complaints about how dissent is being stifled in John Ashcroft's America that seem to find themselves on the pages of major newspapers on almost a weekly basis. It would be delicious satire if these idiots actually had a sense of humor. (via Instapundit)...
October 14, 2003
Osama's son plays an increasignly important role in al-Qaeda, according to today's Washington Post, and is being protected by Iran: Saad bin Laden, one of Osama bin Laden's oldest sons, has emerged in recent months as part of the upper echelon of the al Qaeda network, a small group of leaders that is managing the terrorist organization from Iran, according to U.S., European and Arab officials. The younger bin Laden speaks English and is computer literate, two rare qualities among al-Qaeda, and so his influence is even more pervasive than his family name would indicate. Saudi Arabia wants him extradited from Iran, but negotiations have gone nowhere: Similarly, Saudi Arabia, which in recent years has tried to thaw relations with its larger and more powerful neighbor across the Persian Gulf, is trying, unsuccessfully, to persuade Iran to extradite Saad bin Laden and others suspected in the Riyadh bombing. Saudi officials...
Negotiators from outside the governments of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority reached a peace agreement, but one with no weight whatsoever as Israel strongly denounced the effort: Coming at a time when Middle East peace prospects are at a low ebb, the 50-page draft agreement was reached during the weekend in Jordan by the two delegations, which include current Parliament members and former cabinet members from both sides. But the proposal has no official blessing, and the Israeli government immediately denounced it, calling it irresponsible freelance diplomacy. "The public rejected these same political figures," Limor Livnat, Israel's education minister, said of the Israeli delegation, led by left-wing politicians. "In no democratic country would this be acceptable." The Palestinian Authority did not immediately comment, though the Palestinian team included senior political figures with close ties to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Put into terms that we might relate to, it would...
With all of the debate about how long we should be staying in Iraq, and the UN demanding that we leave so that the Iraqis can take care of themselves, Gallup cut out the middlemen and just asked the Iraqis what they want. A novel approach, to be sure, but one that the UN apparently never bothered to try. The Gallup poll found that 71 percent of the capital city's residents felt U.S. troops should not leave in the next few months. Just 26 percent felt the troops should leave that soon. Bear in mind that Baghdad is part of the Sunni Triangle, where you could expect to find significant hostility to the US presence that eliminated the Sunni minority's hold on power (to the extent it was Sunni-based, anyway). Gallup's polling did not include areas outside the Sunni Triangle, where you would expect approval for the US occupation to...
The AP reports that the coalition has captured another senior terrorist in Iraq, this time from Ansar al-Islam, which is tied to al-Qaeda: The arrest of Aso Hawleri, also known as Asad Muhammad Hasan, late last week in the northern city of Mosul has not been announced. Larry Di Rita, chief spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, told reporters, "I'm not in a position to confirm" Hawleri's capture. Hawleri was taken by soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division, said a defense official, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity. The officials said Hawleri is thought to be the third-ranking official in Ansar al-Islam, most of whose fighters were believed to have fled their stronghold in northern Iraq before U.S. forces invaded in March. U.S. and Kurdish forces destroyed the group's main base in the early weeks of the war. Ansar al-Islam claimed responsibility for the car bombing in...
October 15, 2003
Breaking news: a bomb attack in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 3 American officials who were apparently touring to monitor progress on the peace process. [Saeb] Erakat offered his condolences and condemned the attack. "These people were here to help us," Erakat insisted, saying an attack on what he described as U.S. monitors was not in the interest of the Palestinian people. "I don't think this was a deliberate attack against the Americans." Obviously, some of the "Palestinian people" felt it was in their interest to attack Americans. Would that be the Hamas-led "Palestinian people"? The Islamic Jihad "Palestinian people"? Or the al-Fatah "Palestinian people" who report to Yasser Arafat and blow people up as a sideline? "We offer to have an immediate, joint Palestinian-American investigation committee to investigate the matter," Erakat said. Perhaps we should have a US delegation meet up with Erekat and Arafat. I nominate...
There is no other way to describe this but as a diplomatic victory for the Bush administration: France, Russia and Germany on Tuesday dropped their demands that the United States grant the United Nations a central role in Iraq's reconstruction and yield power to a provisional Iraqi government in the coming months. The move constituted a major retreat by the Security Council's chief antiwar advocates, and signaled their renewed willingness to consider the merits of a U.S. resolution aimed at conferring greater international legitimacy on its military occupation of Iraq. If passed, the new Security Council resolution would effectively reject the obstructionism of Kofi Annan and the French. Jacques Chirac seems to have gotten the message that France, if the US ceased negotiating, would be revealed as a pretender to real power. The Bush administration refused to incorporate the French, Russian and German demands for a timetable for the transfer...
Via Oxblog, more on the bombing from Haaretz: The blast went off around 10:15 A.M. Wednesday as a three-car U.S. diplomatic convoy drove near a gas station on the outskirts of the town of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, along the main north-south road. Both the militant Islamic Jihad and Hamas movements denied responsibility for the attack. Witnesses at the scene said a silver Cherokee jeep used by American diplomats was completely destroyed by the blast. Parts of the vehicle were strewn in a 30-meter radius around a crater created by the explosion. If Islamic Jihad and Hamas are denying responsibility, what about the al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade, a division of Yasser Arafat's al-Fatah faction? They've been known to plant bombs as well. My guess is that, unlike other attacks in the area, no one will be in a rush to claim this one as their own. As Oxblog...
October 16, 2003
The Washington Post excoriates Democrats for their irresponsibility regarding the rebuilding of Iraq and their intransigence in supporting proper funding: But political pressure doesn't excuse irresponsibility, and what's emerging in the Democratic Party is a gaping responsibility gap...On the wrong side is the rest of the Democratic field. Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and John Edwards (N.C.) say they won't vote for the funding because Mr. Bush hasn't come up with enough of a long-term plan or done enough to get allies on board. This righteous position may make them, or their voters, feel better, but the security of U.S. troops and the long-term interests of both Iraq and the United States still depend on improving Iraqi daily life. The candidates do not seem to realize that the rebuilding of Iraq is crucial to the overall effort to eliminate terrorism, and that trying to do it on the cheap will...
The Dissident Frogman, an excellent bilingual blog, has an outstanding post about what's happening in Iraq, and how little of this gets out via the traditional, "independent" media: At the risk of repeating myself, I heard almost daily on France-Info's broadcast: "Yet another US casualty in Iraq." The Coalition is wiping out Saddam's SS and the Al-Qaeda skuzzballs by the hundreds. I never heard : "Yet another hundred of SS and terrorist skuzzballs eliminated in Iraq." The Coalition has completed 13,000 reconstruction projects, including 1,500 schools as of October the first -- and I'll assume this number includes the 330 that were rebuilt by the 101st Airborne with Saddam's money -- and "the teachers earn from 12 to 25 times their former salaries." I never heard: "Yet another school rebuilt and reopened in Iraq." There are 240 hospitals and more than 1200 clinics open, a pharmaceutical distribution that has gone...
October 17, 2003
As if it hadn't been burned enough with the 'get-Arnold' campaign John Carroll waged the past few weeks, the LA Times has demonstrated atrocious journalistic standards in its editorial section yesterday. The story concerns General Jerry Boykin, the man in charge of finding al-Qaeda leaders and Saddam Hussein, and the man Rumsfeld just nominated as deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence. General Boykin is a fervent Christian who feels God is calling the US to fight against Satan, and who regularly shares this opinion with others, when asked to do so. For instance, according to William Arkin, the Times' military affairs analyst, Boykin has been quoted as follows: In June of 2002, Jerry Boykin stepped to the pulpit at the First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow, Okla., and described a set of photographs he had taken of Mogadishu, Somalia, from an Army helicopter in 1993. The photographs were taken shortly...
Instapundit directed me to a Balloon Juice post about the Senate conversion of $10 billion in Iraqi reconstruction into a loan. A loan. Iraq currently struggles under almost $200 billion in debt, most of it to France and Germany for Saddam's military hardware. Prior to this, the Bush administration had been working towards agreements to retire some or all of this debt, efforts which may or may not have ever been successful. They would have allowed the Iraqi people to avoid shouldering the cost of their own prison and bleeding themselves dry to pay back Saddam's enablers and co-conspirators. The 51 senators who committed this embarrassment have made this nightmare a certainty now. Not only that, but now they will have to pay for their own liberation, after 12 years of being starved almost into genocide by the Western nations, ahead of investing in their own indepedence, their own security,...
Votes > Roll Call Vote" href="http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=108&session=1&vote=00389">Find out who voted for oppressing the Iraqis and undermining our efforts to get their debts forgiven....
In the middle of this story about General Boykin apologizing for offending Muslims, a Saudi official makes the following statement: Asked about the general’s church comments, Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign affairs adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, told reporters Friday: “If true, outrageous. I thought they were insensitive. I thought they were unbecoming of a senior military official, and certainly unbecoming of a senior government official.” Of course, there has been no comment forthcoming, other than participating in a standing ovation, for these comments from a Prime Minister of an Islamic nation: Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Thursday told a summit of Islamic leaders that "Jews rule the world by proxy" and the world's 1.3 billion Muslims should unite, using nonviolent means for a "final victory." ... The prime minister, who has turned his country into the world's 17th-ranked trading nation during his 22 years in power, said Jews...
October 18, 2003
Recent public statements seem to indicate that the Saudis may increasingly be specifically targeted in the war on terror, as the FBI starts talking about the Saudis more as suspects than allies: John Pistole, assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, told a Senate hearing recently that the bureau has raised concerns with the Saudi government that paying legal bills and bond for Saudis being questioned in the terror probe could influence their testimony. ``To us, that is tantamount to buying off a witness, if you will. So that gives us concern if the government is supplying money for defense counsel,'' Pistole said. A year ago, this probably would have been buried ... the fact that the FBI has started talking about this tells me that the Saudis aren't cooperating as much as the government would like. If more stories such as this start popping up in the news, it...
I read an excellent and, as advertised, depressing short essay by Roger Simon titled Could It Be More Depressing? I wrote this back in response. As a 40-year-old man who has studied 20th century history, I had always felt that the world in general had learned its lesson about anti-Semitism, and while general hatred of Jews may exist, it mainly existed in repressive Muslim societies. One of the benefits of liberating Iraq would therefore have been an opportunity for Arabs and Jews to work together in a mutually beneficial relationship, as a model for the region that could transform the Middle East. Unfortunately, while the radicalization of some moderate Muslims was to be expected, the Western response to anti-Semitic actions and speech has left me profoundly disappointed. Jacques Chirac blocks an EU resolution protesting Mahathir's remarks, while France convulses with more anti-Semitic violence than its seen since WWII. American media...
David Brooks has an excellent editorial in today's New York Times regarding the reconstruction loan. He separates the Democrats into three groups, and suggests a fourth for a man who's in a class all to himself: First, there are the Nancy Pelosi Democrats. These Democrats voted against Paul Bremer's $87 billion plan for the reconstruction of Iraq. ... Their hatred for Bush is so dense, it's hard for them to see through it to the consequences of their vote. ... Saddam Hussein would be jubilant in Pelosi's Iraq. He has long argued that America is a decadent country that will buckle at the first sign of trouble. If the Pelosi Democrats had won yesterday's vote, the Saddam Doctrine would be enshrined in every terrorist cave and dictator's palace around the world: kill some Americans and watch the empire buckle. The second group would be the Evan Bayh Democrats, who would...
Some facts about the massive amount of debt facing the Iraqi people underscore the despicable nature of the Senate decision to convert reconstruction funds to further debt: Iraq's overall financial burden, according to the CSIS figures, is $383 billion. Based on these figures, Iraq's financial obligations are 14 times its estimated annual gross domestic product (GDP) of $27 billion--a staggering $16,000 per person. Measured by the debt-to-GDP ratio, Iraq's financial burden is over 25 times greater than Brazil's or Argentina's, making Iraq the developing world's most indebted nation. Bear in mind that all of this debt was accumulated under the auspices of Saddam Hussein, a great deal of it was accumulated during the sanctions, and a lot of it is owed to Arab nations. These governments, who have protested the war by loudly proclaiming brotherhood with the Iraqis, have been curiously silent on debt forgiveness for their brethren. (Also, as...
The AP attempts to explain Syria's UN vote supporting the latest resolution on Iraq: The Syrian vote was "to ease the atmosphere with America and to be in harmony with the European position," said Syrian analyst Jad al-Karim Al-Jubai. He added the U.N. vote could win Syria support from Europe in the event of a confrontation with Israel and the United States. Syria, whose army is considered weak in the face of advanced Israeli weaponry, has not responded with force to the Israeli air raid on what Israel said was a Palestinian militant base. Syria complained to the U.N. Security Council, where any response is stalled because of the threat of an American veto. Al-Jubai said Syria did not seek a military confrontation with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites), and "went to the United States primarily to circumvent the possibility of military escalation" by Israel. Syria,...
What a surprise -- Kofi Annan won't send more staff to Iraq: A day after the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted the U.S.-backed resolution, spokesman Fred Eckhard said Secretary-General Kofi Annan isn't prepared under current conditions to send back more than 500 international staffers who were ordered to leave after the bombings in August and September. "The security situation does not permit us to send any additional staff into Iraq," Eckhard said. What do you think of the UN's service to the Iraqis so far? After one bombing -- to which they were vulnerable because they hired former [heh] Baathists as security guards for their compound -- the UN mission packed up and went home. The terrorists chased Kofi Annan out of Iraq once before, and yet we still hear protests that we should let the UN run the reconstruction. And now they won't come back because of the "security...
October 19, 2003
Demosophia has written a series of essays this weekend that put today's struggle against "terrorism" in a historical context, and comes to a conclusion that many of us already understand: We are not fighting a "War on Terrorism," as some now call it. That's a misnomer, because suicide terrorism is not a movement, but simply a method that has always been one of the favorites of totalitarianism either seeking power, or on the verge of losing it. What we are involved in now is but the most recent stage in a war against Liberalism's ancient enemy. And it is far from won. Demosophia doesn't stop there. He predicts that the new conflict between traditional Liberalism and Totalitarianism 3.0 will create new political divisions and obscure or eliminate the old. In this there is ample precedent, at least in British politics. Prior to World War I, the Labor movement was a...
Once again, I have to ask the question: is it a smart idea to bestow sovereignty onto the Palestinians? Seventy-five percent of Palestinians support the suicide bombing at an Israeli restaurant two weeks ago in which 21 people, including four children, were killed, a Palestinian survey showed Sunday. The survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which questioned 1,318 respondents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (news - web sites), also showed that 85 percent of Palestinians support a "mutual cessation of violence by both sides." The poll found considerable anti-American feeling among Palestinians. Just over 95 percent of respondents said the United States was "not sincere" when it says it seeks to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Unfortunately, I think we are all too sincere about the two-state solution, which after all is mandated by UN resolutions which we supported, or at least allowed...
Jacques Chirac has locked up that all-important Psychotic World Leader endorsement: MALAYSIAN Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has thanked French President Jacques Chirac for blocking a European Union declaration condemning his comments last week that Jews "rule the world by proxy," news reports said today. Chirac, backed by Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, stopped the EU from ending a summit on Friday with a harshly worded statement deploring Mahathir's speech, which also included suggestions that Jews get "others to fight and die for them." Lest we forget, Chirac is the head of state of the European nation that leads the West in anti-semitic violence. Guess he knows on which side his bread is buttered. I guess we all do. The report quotes University of Paris Professor of French Literature, Eric Marty, who wrote in LeMonde, "There has been no voice of political authority ready to say simply that there is nothing...
Remember Joseph Wilson? He's the one who has been screaming that top Bush officials outed his wife as a CIA covert agent. But according to Joel Mowbray, Wilson may be more connected than is known to anti-war partisans -- specifically the Saudis: The Middle East Institute, officially on the Saudi payroll, receives $200,000 of its annual $1.5 million budget from the Saudi government, and an unknown amount from Saudi individuals — often a meaningless distinction since most of the ‘‘individuals'' with money to donate are members of the royal family, which constitutes the government. MEI's chairman is Wyche Fowler, who was ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1996 to 2001, and its president is Ned Walker, who has served as both deputy chief of mission in Riyadh and ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Also at MEI: David Mack, former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and deputy assistant secretary for NEA; Richard...
October 20, 2003
Fareed Zakaria wrote an impassioned but wrong-headed essay for MS-NBC calling for the Bush Administration to fire General Jerry Boykin over the story that the LA Times gave NBC late last week: President Bush’s commission on public diplomacy recently noted that in nine Muslim and Arab nations only 12 percent of respondents surveyed believed that “Americans respect Arab/Islamic values.” Such attitudes, the commission argued, create a toxic atmosphere of anti-Americanism that cripples U.S. foreign policy and helps terrorists. To address the problem the commission suggested a major reorganization of the American government, hundreds of millions of dollars of funding and the creation of a new cabinet position. I have a simpler, more urgent suggestion: fire William Boykin. Zakaria, a writer whose work I respect, starts this essay off with the ludicrous suggestion that the only reason that Muslims and Arabs have an overwhelmingly negative view of Americans is that we...
A very intriguing Michael Ramirez cartoon about our short attention spans....
October 21, 2003
Brian Mulroney, Canada's Prime Minister from 1984 to 1993, writes in support of US action in Iraq and the need to reform the UN: Although the reality of pre-emptive action is new, so was the terrorist strike on America. What is also new is the suggestion that Security Council approval is--and has been--a sacrosanct precondition to action against a hostile state. The historical record is to the contrary. In any event, I would never have agreed to subcontract Canada's international security decisions and our national interest to 15 members of the Security Council. This would be a surrender of national sovereignty to which I'd never consent. Mulroney strikes at the heart of the anti-war argument of requiring the UN to agree to action: it is tantamount to surrendering our sovereignty and foreign policy to Britain, France, China, and Russia. Agreement at the UN Security Council would have been wonderful, but...
October 23, 2003
I assume the apologies will be forthcoming: A Senate investigation has found no evidence that the Bush administration pressured CIA analysts to tailor their intelligence to suit the White House's views on the threat posed by Iraq. ... However, no current intelligence analysts came forward to the committee to back up that charge. And the White House says the intelligence it received on Iraq was unbiased and accurate. "None (of the analysts) have indicated any intimidation," said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. As QandO observes, we still need to find out why our intelligence data was off, and how we can improve it in the future. Maybe now that the finger-pointing and screeching can come to a close, we can move forward in that area....
Strange Women Lying in Ponds returns from vacation with an insightful post about Churchill as the hinge of history in the 20th century: It is perhaps easy to view Churchill's staunch leadership through WWII as an inevitability; as a case of the right man being in the right place at the right time, etc. This is Churchill the Noble, the Invincible, given moral authority by his role as leader of an island nation that was Europe's last bulwark against the successful establishment of a Nazi empire throughout the Continent. Here he is a symbol of courage under fire, of a morally ascendant Great Britain defying an evil and militarily superior invader. The irony is that, had history turned out as Churchill would have liked, this image of him never would have come to pass. SWLIP reminds us that in order to avoiding repeating history, we have to know and understand...
A free Iraq fires a warning shot acrossFrench and German bows: Ayad Allawi, the current head of Iraq's U.S.-appointed governing council, said he hoped German and French officials would reconsider their decision not to boost their contributions beyond funds already pledged through the European Union. "As far as Germany and France are concerned, really, this was a regrettable position they had," Allawi said. "I don't think the Iraqis are going to forget easily that in the hour of need, those countries wanted to neglect Iraq." Oddly enough, it turns out to be the same countries that wanted to continue to leave Iraqis oppressed and tortured in Saddam's grip, and the same countries who funneled billions of dollars in cash and equipment to sustain their prison. Who'd a-thunk it? (via QandO)...
That this article can run in the New York Times without a hint of irony is simply unbelievable: Two decades after Syria ruthlessly uprooted militant Islam, killing an estimated 10,000 people, this most secular of Arab states is experiencing a dramatic religious resurgence. ... The widespread sense that the faith is being singled out for attack by Washington has invigorated that appeal, at a time when the violence fomented by radicals had tarnished political Islam. In Syria, some experts attribute the sudden openness of the phenomenon to a far more local fear. The hasty collapse of the Baath government next door in Iraq stunned Syria's rulers, particularly the fact that most Iraqis reacted to the American onslaught as if they were bored spectators. Maybe Neil MacFarquhar has been living under a rock for the past 20 years, but Syria hasn't been "ruthlessly secular" -- Syria has been a major sponsor...
October 25, 2003
Instead of blaming the US, a UN panel scolds the UN for security mistakes that led to the bombing of their facility in Iraq: The panel, chaired by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, issued a report Wednesday citing extensive security failures before the Aug. 19 truck bombing that killed 22 people, including top U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, and injured more than 150 others. ... The panel criticized the United Nations for shunning protection from U.S.-led coalition forces and for ignoring "credible information on imminent bomb attacks." Kofi hasn't quite smelled the coffee yet: But Annan -- speaking to reporters after returning from a donors conference for Iraq in Madrid -- sidestepped a question on whether he deserved blame for the security failures cited by the U.N.-appointed panel, saying he needed more time to study the report. I wonder if the report itself mentioned that employing Saddam's former security...
The British government has warned travelers to expect a fresh set of terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia: Britain raised its warning Friday against travel to Saudi Arabia, saying terrorist attacks were imminent. "We advise British nationals against all but essential travel to Saudi Arabia. We believe that terrorists may be in the final phases of planning attacks," the Foreign Office warning said. The US isn't issuing any specific warnings: A U.S. counter-terrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said American authorities were unaware of any recent intelligence that would lead to new alerts in Saudi Arabia. Instead, U.S. officials have received a steady stream of information in recent months suggesting Al Qaeda operatives in the kingdom were close to mounting an attack....
The Post, inexplicably, links to this two-month-old story on its main web page: Abu Shanab was killed Thursday along with two bodyguards when an Israeli military aircraft fired three to six missiles at his car on a crowded street in central Gaza City. About 30 bystanders were injured in the attack, Palestinian hospital authorities said. I gathered this was not a breaking news story when I read this: Senior Israeli military officials warned that they would continue targeting Palestinian militant leaders if the government of Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas did not move aggressively to arrest them, confiscate their arms, destroy their weapons workshops and dismantle their organizations. Oddly, if you replace Abbas with Qurei in this story, you wouldn't be able to tell this story was written August 22. By the time you read this, the Post will likely have corrected its web site, but it was strange to see...
This article on the highly critical report on UN security failures in Iraq, which led to the bombings in August and September and UN's complete retreat, contains a very revealing quote from Kofi Annan: The panel criticized the United Nations for shunning protection from U.S.-led coalition forces — the only source of security in Iraq — and for ignoring "credible information on imminent bomb attacks in the area." It also accused the United Nations of violating its own security rules. Annan said the United Nations' security system worked well for the past 50 years. "But the world has changed, and we will have to change our way of doing business to be able to protect our staff around the world," he said. Hasn't that been President Bush's argument all along -- that the security arrangements that kept the peace for 50 years won't work now and must be adapted to...
Oddly enough, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune printed this heartfelt and common-sense essay on the necessity of a security fence between the Israelis and the Palestinians: In fact, it is easier to pass from the West Bank to Israel than from the United States to Canada simply because there is no border, not even a white picket fence. The Israeli public finds this lack of a border troubling, to say the least, especially because fenced areas in the Palestinian territories have been surprisingly quiet. The Gaza Strip is a case in point: No suicide bomber has ever come out of the Gaza Strip because the entire area is fenced. People who oppose the building of the fence, especially here in the US, do not really understand the political implications or the motivation for the fence: For all its faults, Sharon's government didn't want to create this border. By building this fence the...
22% ... that's Gray Davis territory, isn't it?
October 26, 2003
David Broder gets ridiculous in his op-ed piece in today's Post: When the Democracy Corps team asked whether voters in those three states wanted a Democratic nominee "who opposed the Iraq war from the beginning" or one "who supported military action against Saddam Hussein but was critical of Bush for failing to win international support for the war," voters in all three states chose the second alternative. Dean's position was preferred by only 35 percent of the likely voters in the New Hampshire Democratic primary -- fewer than supported it in Iowa or South Carolina -- while 58 percent chose the alternative. The myth behind this poll is that there is absolutely no practical difference between these two positions; the first is equal to the second. France (and Germany) would never have supported military action against its client-state, Saddam's Iraq. Chirac explicitly said so in February, sticking a knife into...
I'll bet they are: Hamas said Sunday it is ready to talk to the Palestinian prime minister about halting attacks on Israelis, even though the Islamic militant group participated in a deadly attack on a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip two days earlier. ... Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, who took office on Oct. 5, has repeatedly said that he wants to reach a cease-fire in hopes of ending more than three years of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel has said, however, it will not begin negotiations until all Palestinian security forces are placed under one command and begin cracking down on militants. Until the Palestinian Authority agrees to consolidate all security forces under a single government control -- in other words, no Fatah, no al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, etc -- and start taking police and/or military action against terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Israel won't...
October 27, 2003
Over 40 people died in four separate attacks overnight in Baghdad, including one particularly despicable attack using a Red Crescent vehicle: Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling of the U.S. Army confirmed that the attack on the Red Cross compound was a suicide bombing. "Initial indicators, and we're trying to confirm this, but we have eyewitnesses that say that the truck was, in fact, a Red Cross-Red Crescent truck, carrying the explosives -- like a panel van, a little bit larger," Hertling said. ... Red Cross officials vowed to continue their work in Iraq despite the attack. Good for them -- they do good work and are neutral in all conflicts. Normally this would keep them from being targeted in armed conflict, but as the UN has learned, no respect is given for neutrality: "Maybe it was an illusion to think people would understand after 23 years that we are unbiased. I...
Iran and Syria cranked up the proxy war in Lebanon again as Hezbollah attacked Israeli positions for the first time in two months: Lebanese security officials said Hezbollah forces unleashed a volley of rockets and mortar shells at the Israeli military outposts of Roueissat el-Alam, al-Samaka and Ramtha inside the Chebaa Farms area. Hezbollah said in a statement in Beirut that its guerrillas attacked the three Israeli positions with rockets, scoring "direct hits." ... Israeli military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israeli fighter jets attacked Hezbollah targets in response to the attacks on the Chebaa Farms army outposts. "The jets hit several Hezbollah points," the officials said. Western nations talk about asymmetrical warfare as if the concept has just been realized in the past couple of years. Israel has been fighting asymmetrical warfare like this for decades. Note when the pious Hezbollah militants chose to stage this attack:...
October 28, 2003
I am lucky enough to know an individual who has given service to his country for decades, and is now putting his life on the line for us in Iraq. He's included me along with several of his friends and family on a broadcast e-mail list, where he periodically updates us on progress from his perspective. I'm going to modify just a couple of items in here to protect his privacy, but otherwise leave this unedited. Because of its length, you'll need to click the link below to read it. I find his courage and his faith humbling in the extreme, especially since I know what a fine human being he is. May we have faith in him and his comrades in the same measure....
Continue reading "A Message from the Front" »
Michelle Goldberg tweaks the noses of her compatriots on the left for absolute incoherence and foolishness on Iraq: "We've made a giant mess," said Johnson, a handsome man who wore his long snowy hair in a ponytail and had a sparkling stud in one ear. "I would hate for the Bush administration to halfway fix things and then leave, and then blame the Iraqis if things go wrong. Once you go to somebody's house and break all the windows, don't you owe them new windows?" Why, then, was he marching at an End the Occupation rally? "I don't agree with all the people here, believe you me," he said. But his own sign? He glanced at it, startled, and explained that someone had handed it to him. "I didn't even look at it," he said. "I was just waving it." If there is a more damning anecdote regarding the knee-jerk...
October 29, 2003
The Army charged a colonel with assault during an interrogation of an Iraqi detainee: Lt. Col. Allen B. West says he did not physically abuse the detainee, but used psychological pressure by twice firing his service weapon away from the Iraqi. After the shots were fired, the detainee, an Iraqi police officer, gave up the information on a planned attack around the northern Iraqi town of Saba al Boor. But the Army is taking a dim view of the interrogation tactic. An Army official at the Pentagon confirmed to The Washington Times yesterday that Col. West has been charged with one count of aggravated assault. A military source said an Article 32 hearing has been scheduled in Iraq that could lead to the Army court-martialing Col. West and sending him to prison for a maximum term of eight years. Col. West's defense is that the Iraqi was never in any...
In an article on a proposed new cease-fire, CNN doesn't seem to understand simple concepts of time and causality: In a previous cease-fire -- declared unilaterally by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- the militant offshoot of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement -- ended August 21. The groups, all of three of which have been declared terrorist groups by the U.S. State Department, declared the seven-week-old cease-fire over after a senior Hamas leader was killed in an Israeli missile attack. The Israeli attack followed a terrorist bus bombing in Jerusalem that killed 20 people. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bus bombing. So Hamas and Islamic Jihad declared the cease-fire over after the Israelis killed a senior Hamas leader. But the Israelis killed him after the bus bombing that killed 20 Israeli civilians, and that bombing was done by ... Hamas...
If you haven't yet had a chance to read it, I highly recommend this post from 10/28. It's an e-mail from a friend of mine serving in Iraq. It's long and detailed but highlights the successes of our mission there, as opposed to the litany of the real setbacks we hear about in the media to the exclusion of anything else....
October 30, 2003
The UN ... the organization that supposedly holds all international prestige in dealing with terrorism and liberation ... is bugging out of Baghdad: International organizations continued their exodus from Iraq, with the United Nations announcing it was withdrawing staff from Baghdad following this week's string of car bombings in the capital and attacks against coalition troops. ... The U.N. decision to pull its remaining international staff out of Baghdad was announced on Wednesday, two days after a deadly suicide car bombing at the Baghdad headquarters of the Red Cross. "We have asked our staff in Baghdad to come out temporarily for consultations with a team from headquarters on the future of our operations, in particular security arrangements that we would need to take to operate in Iraq," U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said. She said it was not an "evacuation" and staff in the north would remain. Saddam's Fedayeen have scored...
Read this post from Andrew Sullivan on the latest meme from the media -- that Bush promised us an easy aftermath in Iraq. For those of us who paid attention to what Bush said, this is a ridiculous idea, but it's getting play lately. I won't excerpt Sullivan's post, as it's just easier to read the whole thing there. It's good....
American military commanders are using confiscated Hussein funds to speed the reconstruction of Iraq: The speed and ease with which reconstruction money is being handed out by the military here contrasts sharply with the delays and controversy surrounding the handling of major reconstruction funds by the Pentagon and U.S. Agency for International Development. The fact that the money comes from seized Iraqi assets, the Saddam Hussein regime's overseas bank accounts and cash stockpiles found in palaces and the walls of government buildings in Iraq has provided a fortuitous loophole. Since the money was not appropriated by Congress, officials of the U.S.-led occupation government in Iraq believe that it does not have to be disbursed under the usual contracting regulations. The money for most military projects in Iraq goes through something called the commander's emergency response program. About $100 million has been allocated so far and the 101st Airborne Division, which...
Normally, I'd say that anyone who has to make a public statement like this has a blinding grasp of the obvious ... but seeing as how he's French: A U.S. pullout from Iraq (news - web sites) would be "catastrophic," French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said Thursday, urging countries to take a strong united stance to stabilize Iraq. ... When asked whether he could envision the United States pulling out of Iraq, de Villepin responded, "Obviously, a pullout from Iraq today would be catastrophic and would absolutely not correspond to the demands of the situation.["] De Villepin managed to say all this without his characteristic statements about unilateralism or demands that the UN be put in charge. Seeing as how the UN is high-tailing it out of Baghdad, that may be too ridiculous even for the French. (Hard to believe.)...
Remember that post I wrote about ten hours ago or so about the discretionary fund available to American commanders in Iraq? Well, fugeddaboutit. Instapundit reports that the program has been canceled: Yes, it was the most powerful tool commanders have had. But as of now, it has been cut off. LTG Sanchez has informed all the resource managers this past week that the funding is done and there will be no more. All of our humanitarian projects we had going are now stopped and some projects (including those in the troubled Sadr City) are put on hold. Given the utter disorganization of CPA, the battalion commanders here were making a significant impact. We fixed schools, sewage, markets, and got trash picked up. We put thousands of people to work. Now it's over, at one of the most critical times in this fight. Everyone on the line is dumbfounded over this...
November 1, 2003
In my mind, this Palestinian woman is lucky to be alive: A Palestinian woman expresses her anger after Israeli Defence Forces detonated an explosive belt they found in her house, destroying the ground and first floor of the building, in the village of Hizmeh near Jerusalem(AFP/Atta Hussein). The link will take you to the picture; there is no corresponding story, just the caption, which I've quoted in full. Power Line has a few pertinent thoughts on this, and I'll add my own: I think the Israelis need to detonate ALL confiscated explosives in the dwellings they find them. Perhaps that will send a message to the 75% of Palestinians who think that bombing Israeli civilians is a peachy idea. Maybe that will impress upon them that they have a personal stake in stopping the terrorism and getting rid of the leadership that's keeping them destitute and dislocated. One last thought...
I don't know how I missed this, but this is just another outstanding entry by Chris Muir. The sickos called 9-11, and we're still answering. Way to go, Chris!...
November 2, 2003
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune exercises little or no editorial control when purchasing fallacious stories from the NY Times: Two decades after Syria ruthlessly uprooted militant Islam, killing an estimated 10,000 people, this most secular of Arab states is experiencing a dramatic religious resurgence. Ruthlessly uprooted militant Islam? Really? Who's been hosting Islamic Jihad and Hamas for the past 20 years or so? Who's been co-sponsoring Hezb' Allah with Iran for 20 years? Read the entire article and see whether any of these groups, or Syria's support for them, are even mentioned in passing. This is an atrocious piece of writing, and for the Strib to republish it demonstrates their commitment to left-wing memes and mediocrity in general. This was my original post when this story first ran in the NY Times....
The Washington Post published a thoughtful and balanced piece on whether Muslim troops can remain loyal to the US: Military sociologist Charles Moskos is traveling to Iraq this month to poll troops about morale issues. He plans to ask whether Muslim soldiers seem to have their hearts in fighting fellow Muslims, and whether the troops trust Muslims in their ranks. "I'll ask, 'How do you feel about having a Muslim in your tent?' " Moskos said. A black Christian Army chaplain based in this country said some of her fellow soldiers feel "tension" with Muslims in their units, many of whom are also black. "They say, . . . 'Can we really trust them?' " In past wars, this concern over disloyalty in a diverse military has come up again and again. Most famously, the Japanese formed a unit to themselves in World War II and became the most decorated...
Make no mistake about it: European anti-Israel sentiment is directly linked to centuries-old European anti-Semitism, and they're falling back on their old tropes of the secret Jewish conspiracy behind all the world's woes. Israel was founded as a way for Jews to escape the "gentle" clutches of genocidal Europeans, and now the same Europeans, less than 60 years removed from the gas chambers of Auschwitz, are ready to ethnically cleanse Asia Minor of the same Jews they failed to kill in Europe.
November 3, 2003
Gregory Djerejian at the Belgravia Dispatch has a spot-on analysis of today's Washington Post article on Tariq Aziz and France's role in ensuring war was the only option: Aziz has told interrogators that French and Russian intermediaries repeatedly assured Hussein during late 2002 and early this year that they would block a U.S.-led war through delays and vetoes at the U.N. Security Council. Later, according to Aziz, Hussein concluded after private talks with French and Russian contacts that the United States would probably wage a long air war first, as it had done in previous conflicts. By hunkering down and putting up a stiff defense, he might buy enough time to win a cease-fire brokered by Paris and Moscow. Djerejian asks: And, it begs the question, is this the behaviour of an "ally"? If, on the cusp of a conflict, where the U.S. has amassed some 200,000 troops on the...
Buried deep within the Washington Post is this bit of very good news (via Power Line): The CIA has seized an extensive cache of files from the former Iraqi Intelligence Service....The records would stretch 9 1/2 miles if laid end to end, the officials said. They contain not only the names of nearly every Iraqi intelligence officer, but also the names of their paid foreign agents, written agent reports, evaluations of agent credentials, and documentary evidence of payments made to buy influence in the Arab world and elsewhere, the officials said. It's time for many luminaries on the world stage to start coughing nervously and updating their resumes. This not only promises to embarrass international figures, but will completely undermine domestic arguments that Bush could have worked harder to get more international support. My guess is that the list is heavy on French and German names: The officials declined to...
Posting messages in a forum where prior notice of attacks have been revealed before, Islamofascists have stated that several US cities will be attacked in the near future: A new message was posted in the last few hours by the Jeddah-based al-Qaeda-linked Al-Islah (Reform) society calling on Muslims to flee New York, Washington and Los Angeles in advance of major al Qaeda attacks in those cities. ... “The Jews rule the Pentagon by remote control and (are the cause) of Muslims being killed in every corner of the world. The United States should therefore expect more blows.” The message is signed on behalf of the al Bayan (The Threat) movement by “your warrior brother, Abul Hassan al Khadrami”. So far, nothing has been reported on CNN's web site. DEBKAfile gives background information on the forum and the history of al Khadrami. (via Little Green Footballs)...
November 4, 2003
The Washington Post, whose editorial pages are generally clear-thinking on the war even when critical of the Bush administration, descends into self-contradictory babble in today's ultimately pointless second editorial: TWO MONTHS after the Bush administration embarked on an effort to attract greater international support for its mission in Iraq, it faces the latest surge of violence on the ground from a position that is more isolated than ever. Did I miss something? Has someone withdrawn from the established Coalition? Didn't Bush just get a unanimous resolution from the Security Council affirming the Coalition's mission in Iraq, something that the Clinton administration never did in the Balkans (where, by the way, we still have troops)? How is the Bush administration "isolated", let alone more isolated than ever? Rather than look for further help from India, Pakistan or Russia, or even NATO allies, the Bush administration has abruptly embraced a new strategy...
November 7, 2003
Josh Chafetz reprints his speech on OxBlog from the Oxford debate on the Iraq War, in which he participated yesterday: I must begin with a word of apology for my lack of preparation. Not only was I just asked yesterday to speak, but I was also laboring under the apparent misapprehension that we would be addressing the resolution that "This House believes that we are losing the Peace." Yet I find that the honorable gentleman who has just spoken in the affirmative [Jeremy Corbyn, MP] has talked about the war - about Vietnam, oil, Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair, international law, weapons of mass destruction, sanctions, and so on. While these are all issues worthy of serious discussion, I must confess to being somewhat baffled at how these normative questions bear on the empirical resolution that I was told we were to debate. Read the entire speech. It reminds us of...
November 8, 2003
Reuters reports that US forces have captured 12 terrorists involved in the rocket attack on the Baghdad hotel last month: In overnight raids U.S. troops captured 12 people suspected of involvement in a deadly attack last month on a Baghdad hotel where U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying, a top commander said Saturday. The suspects appeared to have links to the former regime of ousted president Saddam Hussein, said Brigadier General Martin Dempsey, commander of the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division. I doubt that this will get a lot of play here, since it's Saturday and most people aren't watching the news. [What's your excuse? -- I have no life, that's why. Oh, and the First Mate is sick today, and Notre Dame is playing.] "Based on multiple sources who provided human intelligence, the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Armored Division conducted a raid overnight in western Baghdad...
I find it odd indeed that very little notice has been taken of this story from London's Sunday Times (reported by AFP): Britain's internal security service MI5 sought in 2001 to plant eavesdropping devices inside the walls of a London embassy belonging to one of its main allies, London's Sunday Times newspaper reported. ... "For four months from September 2001, MI5 infiltrated the embassy, stole codes used by embassy staff for sending secret messages, and planned to plant listening devices and remove documents," the Sunday Times said. The question is which one of Britain's "main allies" MI-5 penetrated. The composition of the Coalition limits the possible targets. The Sunday Times is enjoined from releasing that information, but offered tantalizing clues. This is from Cronaca, who had access to the original article: The Official Secrets Act prevents The Sunday Times from identifying the country concerned, but its leader has visited Tony...
November 9, 2003
You can thank the obstructive diplomacy of Jimmy Carter for this new analysis: The CIA has told Congress that it believes North Korea has mastered the technology of turning its nuclear fuel into functioning weapons, without having to prove their effectiveness through nuclear tests. The report goes beyond previous public CIA statements that North Korea built one or two weapons in the early 1990s -- a figure many intelligence experts believe has risen in the past few months. Carter insisted on a diplomatic solution that allowed North Korea simply to affirm that it wasn't pursuing nuclear weapons in exchange for all sorts of technical assistance. Even at the time when he was pursuing that fruitless policy, Kim Jong-Il already had a device or two and now can build as many as they like, while starving their people or herding them into labor camps. It's yet another reminder of the feckless...
The US government appears to be losing faith in the Iraqi Governing Council and may be considering alternatives: Increasingly alarmed by the failure of Iraq's Governing Council to take decisive action, the Bush administration is developing possible alternatives to the council to ensure that the United States can turn over political power at the same time and pace that troops are withdrawn, according to senior U.S. officials here and in Baghdad. The United States is deeply frustrated with its hand-picked council members because they have spent more time on their own political or economic interests than in planning for Iraq's political future, especially selecting a committee to write a new constitution, the officials added. "We're unhappy with all of them. They're not acting as a legislative or governing body, and we need to get moving," said a well-placed U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They just don't...
I've updated my post on the MI-5 scandal in Britain that's been handled very, very quietly. I hope I'm just being paranoid. I don't think so....
November 10, 2003
It's difficult to understand Israel's thinking when it commits to lopsided prisoner swaps with terrorist groups: About 400 Palestinians and several dozen prisoners from Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, Sudan and Libya would be released in exchange for Israeli businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers, all captured in October 2000. I have always believed that negotiating with terrorists on this basis is a sure way to incentivize them to continue their operations, especially in 400-1 ratios. The plan may fail anyway, as there is strong disagreement over terms: However, Nasrallah has said the deal would not go through without Samir Kantar, a Palestinian from Lebanon. Kantar stormed an apartment in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya in 1979, killing a man and his daughter. Another daughter died when her mother smothered her while trying to hide. ... Mohammed Fneish, a Hezbollah legislator, said the group would try to...
November 11, 2003
Blackfive (The Paratrooper of Love) has a good post about the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 and why putting the UN in charge of Iraq is suicidal. He excerpts two articles from the Chicago Sun-Times and the Sydney Morning Herald, detailing the lawsuit being filed against the UN and the Dutch. He titles it, "Clark Would Bring In the UN," but in fairness it should be titled, "Every Democrat Running for President Would Bring In the UN." Blackfive has a good blog, too -- check it out. (via Instapundit)...
The Strib published a counterpoint to its one-note, relentless campaign targeting President Bush from West Point graduateJohn Nerdahl: So the reasons for confronting Iraq was never just about WMD, Saddam's threat to the United States or his tyrannical regime. It's almost laughable that Saddam's overthrow is somehow illegitimate because, as the Star Tribune editorial noted, our nation is not equally willing to invade other tyrannical countries like Zimbabwe or Burma. Or that being in Iraq is somehow not about combating terrorism. Or that we are witnessing another Vietnam. Where is your intellectual honesty, objectivity and reasoned perspective? Your underlying motivation to get President Bush becomes obvious as you continue to obsess and "wring your hands" over such irrelevant and absurd analogies. Three cheers for Nerdahl for taking his argument directly to the source -- and at least one cheer for the Strib for printing it. As much as I disagree...
November 12, 2003
If you haven't yet done so, be sure to drop by Electric Venom and let Venomous Kate know how much you appreciate the sacrifice that her and her husband are making for his defense of our freedoms. Her husband is about to be shipped out but is in limbo at the moment, and Kate's feeling the stress. Multiply that by all of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who put their lives on the line every day for us, and think about how awe-inspiring it is that the best of our young men and women are compelled to sacrifice so much to keep us from harm. Just drop by and say thank you. She can use the support....
November 14, 2003
Tony Blair gives an interview to the muscularly-named Stryker McGuire and demonstrates why America is blessed to count Blair and the British as our friends and allies. MS-NBC published some excerpts: Blair on leadership in the face of popular dissent: Firstly, on the really big issues, you owe people your leadership. There is no point in doing a job like this unless you do that. I believe passionately in the cause to which I have committed myself. ... There is a resurgent anti-Americanism. Now I happen to think that is wrong and misguided, but it is our job to go out there and show it is misguided, which is why I think it is important that President Bush is coming. Blair on progress and the seeming lack of it against terror: There is a stage at which when you begin to fight back, the conflict can sometimes seem even more...
November 15, 2003
The Senate Intelligence Commitee has evidence, much of it developed during the Clinton administration, that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have been working together for over a decade. I'm not going to excerpt it; read the whole thing. Then, ask yourself this: When did Rockefeller's staff write that partisan memo, and if it was after October 27, why do you think the Democrats are suddenly desperate to make the Bush administration look like it's lying? Maybe because this information (and more on its way from the Iraqi Intelligence Service's files) will pull the rug out from under anti-war candidates like Howard Dean and John Kerry?...
November 16, 2003
Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine takes on anti-Americanism and makes a no-apologies stand against it: Pardon me, but I'm going to take a very dangerous and contrarian and by some views shrill, right-wing, illiberal stance and I'll take your barbs and the Guardian's with pride: I'm pro-American. Let me say that again, because I am one and because I was attacked and damned near killed because I am one (and yes, that matters): I am pro-American. This quote came from a previous Jarvis post, but he builds on this thought and expands on it: Let's be very clear: Just as anti-Semitism led directly to the Holocaust, anti-Americanism led directly to September 11th. Demonizing the people of this country made it acceptable to some and a goal for some to see fanatics murder thousands of us, just as demonizing Jews made it acceptable for fanatics to murder millions of them. I'm not...
November 17, 2003
Today's Washington Post carries a story about creative thinking in opposition to the insurgency emanating from the Tikrit area and how it's allowed the Coalition to gather better intelligence, as well as more cooperation from local Iraqis: Frustrated by a persistent insurgency, the U.S. military has surrounded ousted president Saddam Hussein's birthplace with concertina wire, issued identification cards to all male residents and begun controlling access to this wealthy enclave of Hussein relatives on the outskirts of Tikrit. In order to pass through the wire and military checkpoints, all males have to present their ID cards. No card, no access, either in or out of Auja. The result is a much clearer picture of the town's residents, mostly wealthy Hussein backers and family, and better face-to-face contact with more sympathetic Iraqi leaders around the area. It avoided the intrusive and dangerous door-to-door searches that would have otherwise been necessary to...
So my challenge is this: Link to a different argument in the
WS article each day and put your own thoughts on it in your blog. Skeptical? Good! Post about that. Because whether this memo is true or false, either way it is a huge story and deserves much more press than it's currently receiving. Keep going every day until we start to get some firm answers about the veracity and reliability of this data.
November 18, 2003
Blogosphere Challenge, Part 2: Osama's Peace with Saddam. One of the constant themes of the anti-war media blitz was that Osama and Saddam were enemies due to Saddam's secularism (or skin-deep Islamism prior to the first Gulf War) and Osama's fanatical Islamist beliefs.
The UN, which purports to be the only agency that can restore democracy to war-torn areas, is abandoning its efforts in Afghanistan after the death of a French aid worker: The U.N. refugee agency began pulling foreign staff out of large swaths of southern and eastern Afghanistan (news - web sites) on Tuesday in the wake of the killing of a French worker, a decision that could affect tens of thousands of Afghan returnees. ... The withdrawal of international staff follows a series of attacks on the United Nations in recent days, including the drive-by killing of Bettina Goislard, a 29-year-old UNHCR worker, as she traveled through a bazaar in a clearly marked U.N. vehicle in the city of Ghazni, 60 miles southwest of the capital. That same day saw a bomb attack on a U.N. vehicle in eastern Paktia province. And on Nov. 11, a car bomb exploded outside...
Slate (no friend of the Bush administration) has picked up the story of the Hayes memo and the Saddam/al-Qaeda connection in two articles today; the first revisits the thread of the Prague-Mohammed Atta visit, and the second deals directly with the apathy of the press regarding the Feith memo. (via Croooow Blog) Edward Jay Epstein retraces the investigation into Mohammed Atta's travels prior to 9/11, specifically the Czech intelligence report -- never repudiated by the Czechs -- that Atta met with Iraqi officials known to be IIS operatives: The reason there had been joint Czech-American interest in the case traced back to the December 1998 when al-Ani's predecessor at the Iraq Embassy, Jabir Salim, defected from his post. In his debriefings, Salim said that he had been supplied with $150,000 by Baghdad to prepare a car-bombing of an American target, the Prague headquarters of Radio Free Europe. (This bombing never...
November 19, 2003
Taking a further look into Stephen Hayes' report on the Feith memo, we can see that Osama and Saddam spent the years between their initial rapprochement and the 1998 embassy bombings building the relationship between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi Intelligence Services (IIS). In 1998, as tension was building between Saddam and UNSCOM, Iraq's upper echelons were escalating contacts with the terrorist group: IN ADDITION TO THE CONTACTS CLUSTERED in the mid-1990s, intelligence reports detail a flurry of activities in early 1998 and again in December 1998. A "former senior Iraqi intelligence officer" reported that "the Iraqi intelligence service station in Pakistan was Baghdad's point of contact with al Qaeda. He also said bin Laden visited Baghdad in Jan. 1998 and met with Tariq Aziz." 11. According to sensitive reporting, Saddam personally sent Faruq Hijazi, IIS deputy director and later Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, to meet with bin Laden at least...
LA Times publishes a featured analysis today that reviews al-Qaeda's effectiveness and strategy in the wake of 9/11. Not surprisingly for the LA Times, it focuses on the negative: "Al Qaeda as an ideology is now stronger than Al Qaeda as an organization," said Mustafa Alani of the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London. "What we are witnessing now is a major shift in Al Qaeda's strategy. I believe it is successful. Now they are not on the defensive. They are on the offensive." Large-scale terrorist groups never go on the defensive, unless you get them all trapped in a building, SLA-style. By their nature, they operate as distributed networks. This was true even prior to 9/11. It's not as if the entire group arrived in Kenya and Tanzania to bomb our embassies; they operate in cells. A U.S.-led assault on Al Qaeda has left...
There may be some in the blogosphere who are foolish enough to underestimate the Politburo Diktat, but not me, and this post is one reason why. The Commissar makes a point about commitment to victory by using a particularly apt historical analogy: Da, Comrade, Great Patriotic War. That was war. Commissar not understand Americans. Are they at war? Did enemies kill 3,000 citizens in one morning? How does America want to win war? Sit around campfire, on Peace Rug, sing Kumbaya? In Great Patriotic War, Soviet Union lost 20 million in four years of war. 5 million a year. 400,000 a month. 13,000 per day. 500 per hour. Comrades, by this scale, America has been at war in Iraq for about one hour. Now you talk "exit strategy?" Read the entire post. The Commissar has a terrific blog, both in content and style. And no, I'm not sucking up to...
November 20, 2003
Stepping away from the first Weekly Standard article for today, Stephen Hayes writes a powerful rebuttal to both the Pentagon non-response response and the naysayers in the mainstream media using it to justify their inaction (via Power Line): IF THE INTELLIGENCE REPORTING in the memo was left out of earlier "finished intelligence products" because the reporting is inaccurate, it seems odd that it would form the basis of briefings given to the secretary of Defense, the director of Central Intelligence, and the vice president. And it would be stranger still to include such intelligence in a memo to a Senate panel investigating the potential misuse of intelligence. If, on the other hand, the information in the Feith memo is accurate, it changes everything. An operational relationship between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, as detailed in the memo, would represent a threat the United States could not afford to ignore....
Blasts rocked Istanbul in another twin set of bombings this morning, killing at least 15 and injuring hundreds in attacks aimed at British interests: Two blasts have rocked Istanbul, killing at least 15 people and devastating both the HSBC Bank headquarters and British consulate in an apparent suicide attack the government has linked to Islamist militants. Turkish television, quoting city health officials, said that besides the 15 killed, 320 people were injured. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the strikes on Thursday bore "all the hallmarks of the international terrorism operations practised by al Qaeda and associated organisations". While Turkey has strong Western connections and is the only Islamic democracy operating in the Middle East, it is ruled by an Islamist party at the moment, making Turkey an odd target, especially since Turkey refused to militarily support the Coalition, inflicting an embarrassing diplomatic setback to George Bush just weeks after Bush...
The UN, which has consistently been AWOL in the war on terror, reports on al-Qaeda capabilities: Some members of al Qaeda most likely possess portable surface-to-air missiles and may use them to target military transport planes, a U.N. report says. The threat was among several findings detailed in the report by the United Nations' al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee which also cited a shifting of the terror network's strategy, a move towards "softer" targets and a warning the group was working towards a biological or chemical attack. Gee, I wonder where they might have gotten chemical or biological weapons?? The report also identifies Iraq as "fertile ground" for al Qaeda, which receives the "funds it needs from charities, deep pocket donors, and business and criminal activities, including the drug trade." Iraq was fertile ground for al-Qaeda, as British and American intelligence knew for years. The report will be published...
November 21, 2003
Finally, some of the mainstream media has taken an interest in the Feith memo, as reported by Stephen Hayes in the Weekly Standard. Unfortunately, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball wrote a report that seemed to care more about the fact that the Weekly Standard is owned by Rupert Murdoch than in the evidence at hand. Here's the second paragraph: CASE CLOSED blared the headline in a Weekly Standard cover story last Saturday that purported to have unearthed the U.S. government’s “secret evidence of cooperation” between Saddam and bin Laden. Fred Barnes, the magazine’s executive editor, touted the magazine’s scoop the next day in a roundtable chat on “Fox News Sunday.” (Both the Standard and Fox News Channel are owned by the conservative media baron Rupert Murdoch.) [bold emphasis mine -- CE] “These are hard facts, and I’d like to see you refute any one of them,” he told a...
November 22, 2003
Continuing on the Blogosphere Challenge on the Feith memo, the last part deals with Iraqi/al-Qaeda connections after 9/11, which would be the biggest impetus for America to include Saddam's removal as an integral part of the war on terror. Hayes continues: Several reports indicate that the relationship between Saddam and bin Laden continued, even after the September 11 attacks: 31. An Oct. 2002 . . . report said al Qaeda and Iraq reached a secret agreement whereby Iraq would provide safe haven to al Qaeda members and provide them with money and weapons. The agreement reportedly prompted a large number of al Qaeda members to head to Iraq. The report also said that al Qaeda members involved in a fraudulent passport network for al Qaeda had been directed to procure 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports for al Qaeda personnel. The analysis that accompanies that report indicates that the report fits...
November 23, 2003
Hayes, in the summary of his original article on the Feith memo, makes the following observation: CRITICS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION have complained that Iraq-al Qaeda connections are a fantasy, trumped up by the warmongers at the White House to fit their preconceived notions about international terror; that links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been routinely "exaggerated" for political purposes; that hawks "cherry-picked" bits of intelligence and tendentiously presented these to the American public. The Bush Administration has not been the only target for this criticism. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News (the Weekly Standard is also owned by Murdoch) was the subject of a rather notorious study that purported to show that its viewers tended to be extraordinarily misinformed on the war on terror. One of the points that claimed to demonstrate the ignorance of Fox News viewers was the result that around 70% of them thought that...
November 24, 2003
Someone please explain to me again why we want to give sovereignty to people who produce children's toys such as these:...
In the final paragraphs of his Weekly Standard article, Stephen Hayes notes that the Feith memo really just skims the surface of the contacts between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda. Hayes notes another possible connection: The memo contains only one paragraph on Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi facilitator who escorted two September 11 hijackers through customs in Kuala Lumpur. ... Other intelligence reports indicate that Shakir whisked not one but two September 11 hijackers--Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al Hamzi--through the passport and customs process upon their arrival in Kuala Lumpur on January 5, 2000. Shakir then traveled with the hijackers to the Kuala Lumpur Hotel where they met with Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of the masterminds of the September 11 plot. The meeting lasted three days. Shakir returned to work on January 9 and January 10, and never again. In this case, the US has intelligence reports of Iraq...
November 27, 2003
President George Bush flew into a hot zone in order to spend Thanksgiving in Iraq: President Bush made a Thanksgiving Day visit to Baghdad, appearing before delighted soldiers taken completely by surprise. After appearing before some U.S. troops in Baghdad and the Iraqi Governing Council, Bush left Baghdad at about 8 p.m. Iraq time, or noon EST. Air Force One stayed on the ground for just two-and-a-half hours, the White House said. I can't tell you how outstanding it is to see a commander-in-chief spending a family holiday with the troops that he has, wisely or foolishly, put into harm's way. Obviously, this visit could not be announced to either the troops or the press before it was made. Here's how the troops found out: Iraq's U.S. civil administrator L. Paul Bremer told the soldiers he wanted the most senior person in the room to read the president's Thanksgiving proclamation...
November 29, 2003
Andrew Sullivan posts this e-mail from a soldier at the Thanksgiving celebration in Baghdad where President Bush made his appearance: Mr. Sullivan, I was present for the surprise visit by the President. It was truly wonderful to be there, and my buddies and I really are grateful that President Bush would take a real risk to come see u. He flew about 12 hours to spend 2 hours with us, he served food to the troops, but he never got a chance to eat himself, at least not until he got on the plane, I'd imagine. For 2 hours, the President walked amongst us, not a receiving line where we came to him, stiff and formal, but coming to us, reading our names on our uniforms and greeting us by name. He looked me in the eye when he shook my hand, he joked with some, whispered to others, spoke...
November 30, 2003
It amazes me, but some people insist that military action in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror. News stories like this tend to disprove it: American forces have captured three members of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s terrorist network in northern Iraq (news - web sites), a U.S. military commander told The Associated Press on Sunday. If confirmed, it would be the first disclosed detention of al-Qaida militants in Iraq. About 10 members of Ansar al-Islam — an Islamic group U.S. officials believe has al-Qaida links in northern Iraq — also have been arrested by U.S. troops in the past seven months, said Col. Joe Anderson, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. There are two explanations for al-Qaeda to be in Iraq. One: they were there all along, as our intelligence indicated, or they are coming to Iraq to fight American...
December 1, 2003
Glenn at Instapundit directed readers to this extremely interesting story at the New York Times: For two years before the American invasion of Iraq, Mr. Hussein's sons, generals and front companies were engaged in lengthy negotiations with North Korea, according to computer files discovered by international inspectors and the accounts of Bush administration officials. The officials now say they believe that those negotiations — mostly conducted in neighboring Syria, apparently with the knowledge of the Syrian government — were not merely to buy a few North Korean missiles. Instead, the goal was to obtain a full production line to manufacture, under an Iraqi flag, the North Korean missile system, which would be capable of hitting American allies and bases around the region, according to the Bush administration officials. So much for Saddam not being a threat to America and its interests! And would we have found out about this without...
Every time this idiot involves himself in international politics, I thank God he only served as President for four years. While appearing in Geneva, Jimmy Carter managed to blame Bush for Mideast violence, blame Jews for their own destruction, and argue for rewarding terrorism with territory, all in one speech (from the Jerusalem Post, via Power Line): Former US President Jimmy Carter unleashed a fierce attack against the Israeli and American governments in his speech at the Geneva Initiative's ceremony in Switzerland. ... In Geneva, Carter said Israel's settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the security fence are the main obstacles to peace. He called repeatedly for the return of Palestinian refugees to the territories, beyond what is called for in the Geneva Initiative. ... Carter said that is of equal importance that Palestinians renounce violence against Israeli citizens, but he said this must happen in exchange...
Steven den Beste at USS Clueless captures my thinking exactly, in explaining to an Iranian about why and how America goes to war: It's not a question of my nation making a decision whether people will die. Islamic militants made that decision. America's only decision now is who will die, and where and when. If we stand by idly and passively, then it will be Americans who die, whenever and wherever the Islamic extremists choose to kill them, probably in huge numbers. We don't consider that acceptable. That's surrender. That's not going to happen. Instead, we're attempting to take control of events, in hopes that we can minimize the total number of deaths caused by this war. That's why we've embarked on the highly risky and unprecedented strategy we're following. If we were only concerned with minimizing American casualties and if we didn't care about anyone else, then every major...
December 3, 2003
Jim Hoagland, in today's Washington Post, deflates the myth of popular insurgency in Iraq with the reality of the motives of this gang of thugs, using an entertaining metaphor: Think of the worst divorce case you have ever heard about, and then imagine the embittered ex-spouses armed with Kalashnikovs and bombs instead of legal motions over alimony and property, and you get some sense of what Iraq's Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are going through right now. Other motives are also involved. Those so inclined can emphasize the religious fanaticism of the jihadists who have taken the battlefield in Iraq or the Arab fervor stirred by foreign occupation. I grant that both exist, and come back to the fundamental force of this counterrevolution: The warring Arab Sunnis of Iraq want the money. And they want to regain the privilege of dominating the country's other population groups. Hoagland underscores the mercenary/power motivation...
December 5, 2003
Christopher Hitchens, a liberal in the classic sense, has been a supporter of the war on terror and the Iraq war all along. As he has done during the run-up and aftermath of the war, Hitchens takes the left to task for its obtuseness: The truly annoying thing that I find when I am arguing with opponents of the regime-change policy in Iraq is their dogged literal-mindedness. "Your side said that coalition troops would be greeted with 'sweets and flowers!' " Well, I have seen them with my own eyes being ecstatically welcomed in several places. "But were there actual sweets and flowers?" Literal interpretations of predictions seem to be a one-way street, as Hitchens notes in his closing: There were predictions made by the peaceniks, too, that haven't come literally true, or true at all. There has been no refugee exodus, for example, of the kind they promised. No...
December 6, 2003
I heard about this editorial in yesterday's New York Post and it certainly tells a different story about the Patriot Act than our erstwhile Democratic presidential candidates, and a certain ex-Vice President as well. Ed Koch, former Democratic mayor of New York City, and Rep. Peter King (R) of New York wrote: THE brutal attacks of 9/11 brought home to the American people what should have been clear to our nation's leaders years before that fateful day: We are at war with Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and their radical Islamic terrorist allies throughout the world and within our borders. It is a war that threatens our national survival. Yet, listening to an increasingly shrill chorus of political voices, Americans could almost conclude that the real threat to our country comes not from bin Laden and al Qaeda but John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act. It seems like a wide...
December 9, 2003
Hugh Hewitt moderated a debate this evening that was a lot more illuminating than that of the Democrats. Hewitt hosted Frank Gaffney and Grover Norquist, the latter of which was one of the subjects of the former's article in FrontPage.com's new article, A Troubling Influence. The article delineates in great detail the extent of the influence that radical Islamists have had on conservative circles, including but not exclusive to Grover Norquist. I haven't read the article in detail -- I plan to do so over the next day or so -- but I had read stories about the article and I was familiar with the general themes. The accusations are deeply disturbing. As Power Line capsulizes it: The thesis of Gaffney's article is that Norquist has worked on behalf of, and together with, an American fifth column of Islamists and Islamist organizations. According to Gaffney, Norquist has successfully sought to...
December 10, 2003
A suspected associate of Zacharias Moussaoui, and apparently he's talking: Authorities in Minneapolis on Tuesday arrested and jailed a man suspected of associating with the Al-Qaida terrorist network and having knowledge of some of the activities of Zacarias Moussaoui, a law enforcement official said. The official said the detainee has confirmed some of investigators' suspicions about Moussaoui, who was arrested while learning to fly a Boeing 747 jet at an Eagan flight school two years ago and now is the subject of the only U.S. prosecution related to the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The jailed man, whose name was withheld, has described Moussaoui's activities at an Al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan several years ago, the official said. So far, the arrest has been kept pretty lo-profile. The suspect's name does not appear on the list of prisoners being held at the Minneapolis jail, and his arraignment proceedings were sealed. We...
Surprise, surprise! The Defense Department doesn't want to contract with French, German, or Russian companies in the rebuilding of Iraq: France, Germany, Russia and China -- countries that strongly opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq -- are not on a Defense Department list of countries eligible to compete for $18.6 billion worth of contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq. Countries that either participated in the Coalition effort in the war or supported it -- including Britain, Australia, Spain, Italy, Poland, Turkey and Japan -- are on the list, which was in a memo posted on the Pentagon Web site Tuesday. Be prepared to hear a whole lot of blathering from leading Democrats on this issue for the next few weeks, demanding that the Bush administration quit insulting our "friends" and to quit making the list unilateral. However, if they do, the Bush administration can point out that 63 countries are...
December 11, 2003
Yasser Arafat hinted at recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, according to a transcription of an interview with Henry Siegman, which this article describes as an "American Jewish activist": Israel would receive sovereignty over the Western Wall — a remnant of the Second Temple compound — and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, "because we recognize and respect the Jewish religion and the Jewish historical attachment to Palestine," according to the transcript. Asked about Israel as a Jewish state, Arafat said that it was up to Israel to define itself, as long as it was democratic and guaranteed the rights of minorities. Arafat included the reference to democracy and the rights of minorities to appeal to American and EU audiences, but left unspoken the tripping point of refugee return, through which Arafat hopes to establish a Palestinian primacy in Israel. Dore Gold, a Sharon adviser, makes this...
Continue reading "Would You Buy a Used Car from This Man? Or This One Either?" »
The Commissar writes an open letter to Ariel Sharon, warning of the same tactic that Yasser Arafat is pushing by stealth, but that Thomas Friedman appears to espouse openly -- the "one-state" solution: To start, watch out for a certain reporter/worldbeater, friend of Saudi royals, ... da, the anti-zhid himself, Thomas Friedman. ... He and that Palestinian hottie, Diana Butto, are chatting, oh-so-earnestly, about "one state solution." Da! What if Palestinians say, "No problem. Israel exists. From Jordan to Mediterranean. All of historical Palestine. Is good country. We fly Star of David flag over our homes. NOW GIVE US VOTE." What will happen then? Do you think America would allow the Palestinians to exist within a Greater Israel without a vote? Of course not, and we shouldn't. But what will that lead to? It leads to the overthrow of Israel as we know it, replaced by yet another Arab thugocracy...
December 12, 2003
During this entire political campaign, we have been told over and over by the Democratic presidential candidates that Bush's failure to allow the UN to control the reconstruction of Iraq dooms the post-war to failure. The US does not have enough legitimacy, according to the Democrats, to implement a peaceful and successful rebuilding of a nation. However, the UN has proven yet again that they are not capable of doing the job -- now they want to abandon Afghanistan, where they are in charge: The United Nations may be forced to abandon its two-year effort to stabilize Afghanistan because of rising violence blamed on the resurgent Taliban, its top official here warned Friday in an interview with The Associated Press. ... "Countries that are committed to supporting Afghanistan cannot kid themselves and cannot go on expecting us to work in unacceptable security conditions," Brahimi said. "They seem to think that...
President Bush got support for his Iraqi rebuilding contract policy from an unusual source earlier today: Countries that opposed the U.S. decision to invade Iraq (news - web sites) have no right to protest U.S. initiatives restricting reconstruction contracts to allies, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States, said Friday. Bandar said he thought it was "amazing" that war opponents now "feel they have a right to share in the pie" of reconstruction contracts. He said even more dangerous than terrorists themselves are those who say they condemn terrorism but don't actively fight it. There is a well-known saying in diplomatic circles that states, "Those who wish to join the feast must help to set the table." Had the Axis merely sat on the sidelines and not gotten involved -- like Canada -- that would be bad enough. But France, Germany, and Russia actively...
December 13, 2003
Walter Mondale and Zbigniew Brezinski, Vice President and national security advisor during the Carter administration, appeared in the Twin Cities yesterday to speak at Macalaster College, along with William Perry, Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration. With this line-up, you wouldn't expect a Bush love-in, and you'd be correct: Former Vice President Walter Mondale accused President Bush on Friday of forcing democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan "at bayonet point" — an approach creating more enemies for the United States than friends and doing little to prevent terrorism. The administration's policies are at odds with six decades of foreign policy through Democratic and Republican administrations aimed at forming international coalitions to address national security problems, Mondale said. ... "I cannot understand why the current administration believes that throwing all this out the window — to be replaced by what I see to be their radical, unilateral, go-it-alone, in-your-face approach —...
December 14, 2003
Before I flipped on the news and found out about Saddam Hussein's capture, I was preparing to write a post about a new article in the Telegraph regarding a hard connection between Iraq and 9/11: Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist. Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. ... In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the...
Today's capture reminded me of a scene from Tolkien, although it's not the Lord of the Rings, it's from The Silmarillion. I suppose it may be a bit silly to use this as a reference to Saddam Hussein, but it sounds oddly familiar to his capture. This passage comes from the chapter titled Of The Voyage of Earendil and describes the capture of Morgoth, who was Sauron's leader during the First Age of Middle Earth: ... and all of the pits of Morgoth were broken and unroofed, and the might of the Valar descended into the deeps of the earth. There Morgoth stood at last at bay, and yet unvaliant. He fled into the deepest of his mines, and sued for peace and pardon; but his feet were hewn from under him, and he was hurled upon his face. Then he was bound with the chain Angainor which he had...
Power Line has an important post on the Telegraph story regarding the training of Mohammed Atta by the Iraqi Intelligence Service, and why the story is not getting any attention from major US media outlets. In order to understand why the Washington Post, for example, does not appear anxious to look into this claim, Hindrocket notes the following exchange during an on-line chat this morning: Annapolis, Md.: Will the Post be looking into the story reported by the Telegraph about connections between Abu Nidal, Mohammad Atta and Saddam Hussein? Very likely to be untrue, but would be immensely significant if true. And there's no mention on the Post's Web site about it yet. Robert G. Kaiser: If we put every rumor and story in the British press (not to mention many others around the world) on the Web site, you'd be dizzy--and no wiser. The Post does not print other...
December 15, 2003
Afghans today took a dramatic step towards building a peaceful, modern democratic society by starting a consitutional convention: A landmark constitutional convention began in Afghanistan on Sunday with solemn prayers, the songs of children and a stirring speech by the nation's former king, who echoed the aspirations of his war-weary countrymen with a call for unity and peace. Some 500 delegates -- from village mullahs to Western-educated exiles -- were gathered at a huge tent in Afghanistan's battle-scarred capital, Kabul, to hammer out a new constitution in a traditional loya jirga, or grand council. The meeting, which is expected to take several weeks, is being conducted under tight security, as Taliban terrorists are still a threat. Even the delegates are being searched prior to entry. One of the interesting issues the loya jirga must confront is womens' rights in a new Afghanistan. Women under Taliban rule were notoriously oppressed, unable...
Power Line's essay is a grim reminder of the dark days in modern American history when defeatists held power and America was in full retreat in global politics. While the post-office careers of both Mondale and Carter demonstrate the forgiveness that makes America great, it also demonstrates the historical amnesia that constantly puts America in danger.
Eric Alterman seems to have a lot of trouble with reality these days. Over at Altercation, he speculates on the "real" cause of the war in Iraq: I wonder if we went to war in part the way we did because Powell was too sick to mount a fight and did not have the courage to resign. It’s just a hypothesis, but you know, the course of the early Cold War had a great deal to do with FDR’s various secret maladies. Just a thought…. Well, yes, it's just a thought, but it's a stupid, malicious thought, and not terribly well-connected, either. FDR was President, and so the "secret malady" theory at least has some sense to it. (If you're not familiar with this quasi-conspiracy meme, FDR was dying while he negotiated with Churchill and Stalin regarding postwar Europe and seriously dropped the ball due to failing stamina and intellect....
December 16, 2003
Mark Steyn, in another brilliant column, serves up a damning indictment of the creaky and increasingly sclerotic United Nations: For months the naysayers have demanded the Americans turn over more power to the Iraqis. Okay, let's start by turning Saddam over to the Iraqis. Whoa, not so fast. The same folks who insisted there was no evidence Saddam was a threat to any countries other than his own and the invasion was an unwarranted interference in Iraqi internal affairs are now saying that Saddam can't be left to the Iraqi people, he has to be turned over to an international tribunal. You can forget about that. The one consistent feature of the post-9/11 era is the comprehensive failure of the international order. The French use their Security Council veto to protect Saddam. The EU subsidises Palestinian terrorism. The International Atomic Energy Agency provides cover for Iran's nuclear ambitions. The UN...
Perhaps coincidentally -- or perhaps not -- US forces rouded up 78 "insurgents" in an extended raid Monday night and Tuesday morning: American soldiers arrested a rebel leader and 78 other people during a raid north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Tuesday. ... At 4:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, troops from the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division arrested Qais Hattam, described as the No. 5 fugitive on the division's list of "high value targets," said Capt. Gaven Gregory of the 4th Infantry's 3rd Brigade. I suspect that as Saddam's interrogation continues and the materials found on him are evaluated, we will see more and more of these operations. During that period, the "insurgents" will be forced to speed up missions, making more and more mistakes and allowing us to either kill or capture them in greater numbers. Keep your eyes open....
Despite his would-be Presidential opponents' dire warnings, Bush's get-tough policy with the Axis of Weasels appears to be bearing fruit for the Iraqi people: U.S. special envoy James A. Baker III won German and French agreement Tuesday to work for Iraqi debt relief, but Washington did not say whether it would lift the ban on firms from those nations bidding for lucrative reconstruction projects in Iraq ... "Germany and the United States, like France, are ready not only for debt restructuring but also for substantial debt forgiveness toward Iraq," German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's spokesman Bela Anda said in a statement after talks with Baker. The German statement indicated that the United States also was prepared to relieve debt, and that levels would be decided by the Paris Club of creditor nations. ... France, keen to carve a role in aiding Iraq, said Monday the Paris Club could strike a debt...
December 18, 2003
Kofi Annan today demanded a larger and more specifically delineated role in the reconstruction of Iraq, and requested a meeting with both the Iraqi Governing Council and the Coalition: Annan, clearly frustrated that Iraqi Governing Council or the U.S.-led coalition running the country have not given him specific answers, said it was time to sit down with representatives from both bodies. "It has to be a three-way conversation," the secretary-general said. "Once we have that, I will make a judgment." Make a judgment on what? Annan won't even allow a UN presence in Iraq because he claims that the Baghdad area is too dangerous for UN personnel. Before anyone takes the UN seriously, they will have to demonstrate some backbone in dealing with security issues in Iraq. The last thing the Iraqis and the Coalition needs is to hand over authority to the UN and then watch them bug out...
December 19, 2003
Today's editorial in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune asserts that, as Dean says, America is no safer after the capture of Saddam Hussein: We don't have a dog in the Democratic presidential fight, but we do know that front-runner Howard Dean, like him or not, is getting beaten up unfairly for telling an unpleasant truth: The capture of Saddam Hussein hasn't made America safer. It was an excellent piece of work, it may make Iraqis safer, and it may help protect American forces in Iraq. But the capture does nothing directly to secure the United States from the danger posed by terrorism. That's because the war on terrorism has nothing to do with Iraq. Saddam was an ogre who can legitimately be charged with crimes against humanity, genocide and assorted other nasty behaviors. But there's no evidence he was an international terrorist, and that's not likely to change no matter how many...
Strange women lying in ponds may be no basis for a system of government, but Strange Women Lying In Ponds is a great basis for blogging. Brant takes on the inimitable (we hope) Robert Fisk, in his strangest column on the war to date: We have captured Saddam. We have destroyed the beast. The nightmare years are over. If only we could have got rid of this man 15 years ago -- 20 years ago -- how warm would be our welcome in Iraq today. But we didn't. In large part, Fisk can thank himself for that. 15 years ago, would Fisk have supported American military action against Saddam? If you have read his dispatches on this war, writing constantly about the supposed military setbacks the Coalition kept suffering in that three-week sacking of Iraq, how the bombs kept killing children in the streets of Baghdad (without even considering the...
In yet another breakthrough based on materials found with Saddam Hussein, ABC News reports that Coalition intelligence services have identified moles working for Saddam within the Coalition Provisional Authority: Among the documents found in Saddam's briefcase when he was captured last weekend was a list of names of Iraqis who have been working with the United States — either in the Iraqi security forces or the Coalition Provisional Authority — and are feeding information to the insurgents, a U.S. official told ABCNEWS. "We were badly infiltrated," said the official, adding that finding the list of names is a "gold mine." Would someone at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune like to send a reporter to cover this and inform their editorial board of this development? (via Politburo Diktat)...
Despite the blatherings of our local broadsheet, the Iraq war and the capture of Saddam Hussein paid off in a spectacular way today: Libya has tried to develop weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles in the past, but has agreed to dismantle the programs, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday in simultaneous televised speeches. Bush said Libya's leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, had "agreed to immediately and unconditionally allow inspectors from international organizations to enter Libya. "These inspectors will render an accounting of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and will help oversee their elimination," Bush said. Gadhafi approached US and British officials in March to discuss the disarmament of Libya. Does anyone remember what was going on in March? And does anyone want to hazard a guess as to why Libya approached Bush and Blair, rather than the UN? It's because with the Anglo-American...
December 20, 2003
It was just a matter of time before this started happening: Iraqi sources with contacts among former and current security officials estimate that about 50 senior figures in Hussein's intelligence, military intelligence and internal security organizations have been gunned down in recent months. There has been an even larger toll among neighborhood party officials, such as Taee, who are blamed for having informed on the local community during Hussein's rule, these sources said. Neither the morgue nor officers in Iraq's new police force -- who concede they have little interest in probing these deaths -- have tallied the figures. But the phenomenon is citywide, according to a survey of police stations, with numbers varying widely from one district to another. It is difficult to blame the victims of Saddam's regime for taking matters into their own hands after 35 years of brutal oppression. After all, one way to make sure...
Media recognition of the stunning diplomatic victory of Bush and Blair -- and even Gadhafi -- in Libya's trilateral disarmament agreement yesterday comes slow. Most of the major newspapers covered it as a news story, although both local Twin Cities newspapers buried it. Editorial boards mostly ignored it, with a couple of major exceptions. For instance, the Daily Telegraph in the UK had no problem proclaiming it as a major vindication of the Bush/Blair global strategy in the War on Terror: The stick has been applied, now a carrot must be offered as an incentive to other rogue nations, like Iraq. As for Mr Bush and Mr Blair, with Saddam captured and Libya tamed, it cannot be denied they have had brilliant end to a difficult year. The world is gradually becoming a safer place. Both their approval ratings should reflect that. The title of this piece is "A Safer...
December 21, 2003
Gaddafi chose Bush and Blair not because he has some love for the Anglo-American alliance, but because he understood that
defying them put him in mortal danger. And while it is true that Gaddafi has been trying to rehabilitate his
image since Lockerbie, the development of his WMD program -- in conjunction with Iran and North Korea -- demonstrates his
intentions of wielding doomsday power over North Africa and the Middle East. Iraq and Saddam Hussein's downfall changed all the equations, and while Gaddafi may be the first to understand it, he will not be the last.
The capture of Saddam Hussein continues to accrue benefits to the Coalition: Acting on intelligence gleaned from the capture of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), U.S. troops rounded up dozens of suspected rebels during two days of raids in towns where loyalty to the deposed president remains strong, officials said Sunday. Two Iraqis were killed. Smashing down doors, troops went house to house in Fallujah, a center of resistance west of Baghdad, early Sunday. Troops of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment blockaded Rawah, near the western border with Syria, for a sweep dubbed Operation Santa Claws, the U.S. Army told Associated Press Television News. The continuing nature of these operations indicates a snowball effect from intelligence gleaned from the documents captured along with Saddam, if not directly from Saddam himself. His documents clearly gave the Coalition a good idea of the insurgency leadership structure and identification of these...
December 23, 2003
The French have discovered that looking in from the outside on the Libya deal makes them appear less than dominant in foreign affairs: Dominique de Villepin, the foreign minister, took his hat off to London and Washington's "exemplary" diplomatic efforts over the past few months that led to the Libyan leader Col Gaddafi's surprise announcement on Friday, calling it a victory for "the entire international community". But he was forced to admit in Le Figaro that France knew nothing of the nine months of secret negotiations. "We were not kept informed," M de Villepin said. His disclosure underlined the continuing mistrust in relations between the English-speaking powers and France, which made much of its opposition to war in Iraq. It seems that even the French are starting to see that its obstinacy in opposing all things American may have cost it an inordinate amount of influence on world affairs: Even...
US forces continued apprehending Iraqi insurgents by the dozens after Saddam Hussein's capture today, including several leadership figures: U.S. soldiers arrested dozens of rebel suspects Tuesday, including several associates of a former aide to Saddam Hussein who is believed to have a leading role in Iraq's insurgency. A U.S. task force in Baqouba, 30 miles northwest of Baghdad, arrested five Iraqis, including one suspected of recruiting guerrillas, said Maj. Josselyn Aberle of the 4th Infantry Division. ... In an earlier raid in Baqouba, U.S. troops detained a former Iraqi army colonel suspected of recruiting ex-Iraqi soldiers to fight the U.S. military. ... Near Fallujah, to the west of Baghdad, a military statement said troops captured "26 enemy personnel including two former Iraqi generals and an Iraqi Special Forces colonel." More evidence, I suppose, of how Saddam's capture has not made America any safer....
Many people express their confusion over the meanings of the Homeland Security Alerts. Like any good blogger, Zygote-Design is here to help with a handy translation of Tom Ridge's text: Your awareness and vigilance can help tremendously, so please use your common sense and report suspicious packages, vehicles, or activities to local law enforcement. Normal person translation: Enjoy your Christmas holiday but everything you encounter could kill you. Packages of death, vehicles of death and even activities of death. Merry Christmas from all of us here at the Department of Homeland Security who will be whisked away to an impenetrable mountain fortress at the slightest hint of trouble while you die en masse in the streets of your concrete graveyards. Being in the government is cool. Sheesh ... for a man who just found out that his wife is having a boy, Zygote sure can be cynical! Be sure to...
Remember how a few of the Democrats complained recently about Bush's lack of attention to nuclear material that had not been tracked after the fall of the Soviet Union? Somehow, this story won't make them very happy: A Russo-American team of nuclear specialists backed by armed security units swooped into a shuttered Bulgarian reactor and seized 37 pounds of highly enriched uranium, in a secret operation intended to forestall nuclear terrorism, U.S. officials said Tuesday. ... It was the third time since last year that U.S. and Russian authorities have teamed up to retrieve highly enriched uranium from Soviet-era facilities. U.S. authorities have begun stepping up such joint operations with the Russians. In August 2002, a team from the two countries retrieved 100 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from an aging reactor in Yugoslavia. The second uranium seizure took place three months ago, when 30 pounds was removed from Romania. It...
December 24, 2003
I wanted to write a brilliant column rebutting the buzz that Libya's deal was in essence no better than we had with North Korea in 1994 and would wind up being as large a failure as Carter's "trust us" capitulation proved. Even Frank Gaffney seemed pretty skeptical last night on Hugh Hewitt's show. However, before I had a chance to do my research [IOW, open up a can of Diet Rite Red Raspberry and opine madly], I found this brilliant post by Jon at QandO: Needless to say, the Agreed Framework was not the success we'd hoped it would be. In the end, it amounted to a deal whereby our side agreed to provide North Korea with sizable concessions, while North Korea agreed to pretend they weren't working on a nuclear weapons program. Fortunately, we appear to have learned from the Agreed Framework. The deal with Libya succeeds in exactly...
In France, there are travelers who are likely highly annoyed to be kept from being home at Christmas -- but may be lucky to be alive: The French government has canceled three Air France flights to Los Angeles, California, because of fears of a possible terrorist attack, the French Interior Ministry said Wednesday. Air France flights 68 and 70 from Paris to Los Angeles and Flight 382 to Los Angeles via Cincinnati, Ohio, were listed as canceled Wednesday afternoon. The decision came after consultation between U.S. and French authorities, a senior U.S. official said. News of the cancellations came as U.S. officials said a high volume of good-quality intelligence indicated that the al Qaeda terrorist network wants to attack the United States during the Christmas holiday. No one will know for sure if these flights had been compromised by terrorists unless authorities were lucky or well-informed enough to capture specific...
December 26, 2003
David Fromkin, who wrote a terrific book on Middle Eastern history over the past century titled "A Peace to End All Peace" (on my book list on the left, and you should buy it), wrote an article for today's Los Angeles Times which intends to warn the US about repeating Britain's mistakes in Iraq: When the war ended, in 1918, the victorious British found themselves in possession, among other things, of the three Ottoman provinces that were later merged to form a single unitary state that was to be called Iraq. In 1918 and 1919, its hour of triumph, the British Empire garrisoned the Middle East with an army of a million men. No other significant military force in the region could dispute Britain's mastery. Iraq's future seemingly was for Britain to determine. It is from Britain's experience in that respect that Americans entering the year 2004 have so much...
The Washington Post explains in more detail why the capture of Saddam Hussein has started to cripple the insurgency, and how American strategy had already impacted the insurgency even before that: Senior U.S. officers said they were surprised to discover -- clue by clue over six months -- that the upper and middle ranks of the resistance were filled by members of five extended families from a few villages within a 12-mile radius of the volatile city of Tikrit along the Tigris River. Top operatives drawn from these families organized the resistance network, dispatching information to individual cells and supervising financial channels, the officers said. They also protected Hussein and passed information to and from the former president while he was on the run. At the heart of this tightly woven network is Auja, Hussein's birthplace, which U.S. commanders say is the intelligence and communications hub of the insurgency. The...
December 27, 2003
The Los Angeles Times published an editorial today which reminds us that good intelligence and pre-emption can keep terrorist strikes from appearing, and that the lack of hard evidence of a terrorist mission does not mean one did not exist: Most national security intelligence is elusive, a connecting of dots — intercepted telephone calls, overheard conversations, confessions by people who know fragments of a plan. The result may be an unprovable negative: an event that does not occur. Thus it was when U.S. officials warned French counterparts about hints that an Air France plane would be used to attack Los Angeles on or around Christmas. The French heeded American requests and canceled six flights, and Los Angeles celebrated a peaceful holiday. Some inconvenience resulted, but how could security personnel have failed to act? The use of commercial airliners as bombs to kill thousands of people on 9/11 demands that credible...
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told reporters that al-Qaeda's Christmas Eve target was not Los Angeles, but the Vatican: Terrorists planned to attack the Vatican with a hijacked plane on Christmas Day, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said in a newspaper interview published Saturday. ... "A hijacked plane into the Vatican," Berlusconi is quoted as saying. "An attack from the sky, is that clear? The threat of terrorism is very high in this instant. I passed Christmas Eve in Rome to deal with the situation. Now I feel calm. It will pass." He added, "It isn't fatalism, but the knowledge of having our guard up. If they organized this, they will not pull it off." Of course, Islamofascists could consider the Vatican as the center of the Crusader world, but if so, it shows a stubborn defiance of history and common sense. The Vatican's direct influence on warmaking has declined considerably...
Poland has long had my admiration. Before France threw in with the colonies, Polish lovers of freedom allied itself with our Founding Fathers -- names like Kosciusko should be as much a part of our national lexicon as Lafayette -- and despite being overrun and torn apart for centuries, Poland has always retained a burning love of freedom and self-determination. Earlier this week, Ralph Peters wrote an excellent column about this aspect of Polish history, and the unfortunate treatment they are receiving from the US after giving us the best of their support: But the Poles never gave up their belief in their country - or in freedom. During our own revolution, our first allies were Polish freedom fighters such as Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kosciusko. (Paris only joined the fight when it looked like we might win. And France intervened to spite Britain, not to help us.) Throughout the...
December 28, 2003
The insurgency in Iraq and global pressure to end the civil occupation are forcing the Coalition to abandon key goals in order to meet a summer deadline to transfer sovereignty back to the Iraqis, according to the Washington Post: The United States has backed away from several of its more ambitious initiatives to transform Iraq's economy, political system and security forces as attacks on U.S. troops have escalated and the timetable for ending the civil occupation has accelerated. Plans to privatize state-owned businesses -- a key part of a larger Bush administration goal to replace the socialist economy of deposed president Saddam Hussein with a free-market system -- have been dropped over the past few months. So too has a demand that Iraqis write a constitution before a transfer of sovereignty. With the administration's plans tempered by time and threat, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, and his...
December 30, 2003
The Los Angeles Times translated reams of documents seized after the fall of Saddam Hussein and reports that Syria ran extensive smuggling operations on behalf of the Iraqi dictator's regime, designed to undermine UN sanctions: A Syrian trading company with close ties to the ruling regime smuggled weapons and military hardware to Saddam Hussein between 2000 and 2003, helping Syria become the main channel for illicit arms transfers to Iraq despite a stringent U.N. embargo, documents recovered in Iraq show. The private company, called SES International Corp., is headed by a cousin of Syria's autocratic leader, Bashar Assad, and is controlled by other members of Assad's Baath Party and Alawite clan. Syria's government assisted SES in importing at least one shipment destined for Iraq's military, the Iraqi documents indicate, and Western intelligence reports allege that senior Syrian officials were involved in other illicit transfers. Iraqi records show that SES signed...
December 31, 2003
The Los Angeles Times concludes its two-part series on documents discovered in Baghdad which clearly delineate how the international community assisted Saddam Hussein in avoiding the effects of the UN-imposed arms embargo. Today's installment focuses on Polish arms dealers and how they evaded their own government to sell military hardware to Iraq, via (as in yesterday's article) Syria: Desperate for missile technology in the summer of 2001, Iraq's arms brokers and spies homed in on the military scrap yards of this former Soviet Bloc nation. They operated out of this town, scavenging and assembling decades-old parts that were shipped to Syria, then trucked across deserts and mountains toward Baghdad. Documents were forged and lies were told in an elaborate network built to evade United Nations sanctions. The shipment of up to 380 missile engines from Poland was critical to Saddam Hussein's covert program to extend the range of his new...
January 1, 2004
The US, in cancelling at least one of the several international flights grounded during the holiday, acted on specific intelligence and not just names from passenger manifests, national security sources told the AP: U.S. authorities were acting on intelligence information — and not just suspicious passenger names — when they boarded a British Airways jet on New Year's Eve at nearby Dulles International Airport, a national security official said Thursday. Meanwhile, the security concerns affected the same British Airways scheduled flight again on Thursday, when the airline canceled one of its three daily flights from Heathrow Airport to Washington. Thursday's decision was based on security advice from the British government, a spokesman for the airline said. I think terrorist groups were either trying very hard to make a statement over the holidays, or they were engaging in a counter-intelligence mission to uncover spies and moles within their organizations. Regardless of...
January 3, 2004
The California Yankee notified me of a notable development: the US Supreme Court has agreed to consider an appeal of a case that, up to now, doesn't appear to exist. California Yankee provides plenty of background on the case, discussing what is known and what isn't, and why this case involving a Muslim illegally in the US should cause us concern. Take a look at this; it certainly looks like a problem to me....
January 4, 2004
After teetering on the brink of collapse, the loya jirga in Afghanistan has almost miraculously reached agreement on a new constitution, giving men and women equal rights and striking a balance between a strong presidency and Parliamentary oversight: Just a day after warning that the meeting, or loya jirga, was heading toward a humiliating failure, chairman Sibghatullah Mujaddedi announced that last-ditch diplomacy had secured a deal. ... The charter was amended to grant official status to northern minority languages where they are most commonly spoken, an issue which had brought the meeting close to collapse. ... After the new draft was circulated, the 502 delegates gathered under a giant tent in the Afghan capital rose from their chairs, standing in silence for about 30 seconds to signal their support for the new charter. Is it perfect? Not really; Islamist factions insisted and received provisions for Afghanistan to be an Islamic...
January 6, 2004
Two international air carriers insist that they will not comply with US requirements to have armed sky marshals on board designated flights: The decisions by South African Airways and Thomas Cook Airlines, the charter flight arm of Europe’s second biggest travel firm, deepened a dispute over a move Washington sees as essential to outwitting al-Qaida and other extremist groups. ... German-owned Thomas Cook Airlines, which flies to Orlando, Fla., from Britain and also flies through U.S. airspace to the Caribbean, ruled out using marshals in any circumstances. “Thomas Cook Airlines has not changed its policy that if presented with a sky marshal on any of our routes, the flight would be canceled,” it said in a statement. South African Airways, which has 28 return flights a week to Atlanta and New York, also said it would not for the time being meet U.S. demands. Without trying to sound too jingoistic...
The Jerusalem Post is reporting in its latest edition that diplomatic talks have quietly begun between Israel and Libya aimed at normalizing relations (may require free registration): Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's bureau chief, Ron Prosor, met with a Libyan representative in Paris two weeks ago to talk about opening a dialogue between the two countries, Channel 2 reported Tuesday night. ... Kuwati newspaper A-Siyasa, meanwhile, reported Tuesday that a high-ranking Israeli delegation is expected to visit Libya in the near future with the aim of laying the ground for the signing of a peace agreement. According to the paper, Israeli and Libyan officials met last Friday in Vienna in the presence of a senior American diplomat and agreed to send an Israeli delegation to Libya in the near future. If true -- and the Kuwaiti newspaper seems to be confirming it -- this could be a blockbuster development for a...
German air security seems questionable after a Saudi man was arrested after arriving in Boston with firecrackers in his carry-on luggage: A Saudi man was charged yesterday for having firecrackers in carry-on luggage on a plane from Germany to Boston amid United States warnings of a possible attack bigger than the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane strikes. US officials in Boston said that Essam Mohammed Almohandis, 33, of Riyadh had "three small firecracker-type explosive or incendiary devices" in his carry-on luggage on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt on Sunday. The Saudi first told authorities that the tubes in his bag were "artist's crayons," then claimed not to know what the devices were and said that his wife had packed his bag. He is being held for arraignment and faces 10 years in prison. What could the man have done with firecrackers? Depending on the size of the charge, he could...
January 8, 2004
A new reader of CQ in San Diego sent me an e-mail that asked if I had a link to a website that had updated casualty counts. I didn't, but it seems to me that I should -- so, in the Battleships section, I've added a link to this site at Lunaville. The data appears correct and the sources are solid....
January 9, 2004
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia threatened Israel with the bomb -- the population bomb, that is: Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said Thursday that if Israel unilaterally imposed a new boundary with Palestinian areas he would respond by pushing for a single Arab-Jewish state — a move that could spell disaster for Israel. A single country including Gaza, the West Bank and Israel would mean that the Jewish state would soon have an Arab majority. That would force Israel to choose between giving Palestinians the right to vote and risk losing the country’s Jewish character, or becoming a minority-ruled country like apartheid South Africa. Of course, this has always been the idea behind the Palestinian offensive against the existence of Israel. The Palestinians have a higher birth rate and at some point will outnumber the Israelis. When that happens, all they need to do is recognize Israel not as...
January 10, 2004
If it does turn out to be chemical or biological weaponry, however, it won't make a bit of difference if it dates back to the Iran-Iraq War of the 80s. The UN resolutions required Iraq to account for and destroy
all nuclear, chemical, and biological weaponry, not just those created after 1991. These mortars, if proved to be WMDs, would prove that Iraq continued to possess and hide prohibited weaponry in defiance of the UN.
In a 60 Minutes interview to be aired tomorrow, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill alleges that the Bush administration planned the invasion of Iraq in early 2001: "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," O'Neill told CBS, according to excerpts released Saturday by the network. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap." ... In the book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting asked why Iraq should be invaded. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,'" O'Neill said. Of course, this being an election year, Democrats have something...
January 12, 2004
I'm puzzled by this piece in tomorrow's Washington Post that tells the story of former Ba'athists in Iraq and how difficult life has become, now that their privileges have been revoked: Less than a year ago, Ismael Mohammed Juwara lived high in the food chain of President Saddam Hussein's Iraq. He was a secret policeman feared and respected among his comrades and in his hometown, enjoying a cornucopia of privileges from the government. ... Now, as he scrapes out a living by selling diesel fuel illegally, he is a pariah in the new Iraq. "We were on top of the system. We had dreams," said Juwara, a former member of the Mukhabarat, the intelligence service that reported directly to the now-deposed president. "Now we are the losers. We lost our positions, our status, the security of our families, stability. Curse the Americans. Curse them." The entire article consists of several...
January 15, 2004
It's amazing what you find when you start looking around the home ... dustbunnies, missing socks, and terrorist training camps: Saudi authorities have discovered a number of camps outside Saudi cities used for training al-Qaida militants to carry out terror operations, an Interior Ministry official said Thursday. Two militant figures killed in terror sweeps last year — Turki Nasser al-Dandani and Yosif Salih Fahd Ala'yeeri — commanded the camps, the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. More camp leaders are being sought, the official said. The Saudis, who at first kept minimizing Saudi involvement in 9/11 and al-Qaeda, changed their tune dramatically last May when al-Qaeda killed dozens of Saudis in a car-bomb attack. Since that time, they've been motivated to actually look around for the terrorists. I imagine that they were shocked, shocked! to find terrorist infrastructure right there in the heart of radicall Wahhabi country....
January 18, 2004
The Daily Telegraph, normally a sensible if not terribly supportive newspaper, gets itself curiously confused on the meaning of diplomacy: The capture by the United States of thousands of centrifuges on board a German-owned vessel, the BBC China, en route to Libya has raised suspicions in Washington and London that Col Gaddafi offered to abandon his weapons programme after threats from America, rather than the lengthy British and American diplomacy vaunted by Tony Blair. The Telegraph story focuses more on the refusal of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to answer questions about the seizure, but its recitation of a false tautology is a little disappointing. Gaddafi responded to both threats and promises, because that's what diplomacy entails. If the Telegraph feels that diplomacy is only showering money and compliments on other nations that express desires to kill you by, say, bombing your airlines and nightclubs frequented by your military personnel, then...
January 21, 2004
Does anyone remember the stories of Taliban-led Afghanistan, where kites were outlawed and officials roamed the streets looking for men with no beards? Apparently the French remember them all to well and are about to adopt some of the same tactics: France’s plan to bar religious symbols from state schools took a further confusing turn by Wednesday after the education minister said a proposed ban on Muslim veils could also outlaw beards and bandannas if they were judged to be a sign of faith. ... Education Minister Luc Ferry made the surprising statement about disciplining bearded students on Tuesday in a National Assembly legal committee hearing about the draft law on the ban due to be debated next month. Discussing the plan to remove Islamic headscarves from state schools, he told a communist deputy who asked about a pupil with a beard, “As soon as it becomes a religious sign...
A German trial of an alleged al-Qaeda accomplice was halted when a surprise witness implicated the Islamic government of Iran in the 9/11 attack on the United States: On what had been the eve of his widely expected acquittal, the trial of the second person charged by German authorities as an accomplice of the Sept. 11 hijackers was thrown into turmoil Wednesday after prosecutors disclosed the existence of a surprise witness purporting to link Iran to the hijackings. The mysterious witness, who goes by the name Hamid Reza Zakeri and claims to have been a longtime member of the Iranian intelligence service, is said to have told German investigators that the Sept. 11 plot represented what one termed a "joint venture" between the terrorist group al-Qaida and the Iranian government. German authorities are skeptical of this assertion, according to the article, saying that the two-year delay in relating this connection...
Months after the suicide of a British government scientist threw into doubt Anglo-American claims of WMD possession by the Iraqis and touched off accusations of a murder conspiracy to silence the analyst, the BBC admits that it has an unbroadcast interview with the late David Kelly in which he insists that Iraq had WMDs and posed an immediate threat: The weapons expert slashed his wrists near his home in Oxfordshire, southern England, in July 2003 after being exposed as the source of a claim by a BBC reporter that the prime minister's team inflated the threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, to justify war. One week before senior judge Lord Hutton delivers his report on Kelly's death -- a judgment that could be critical of ministers -- the BBC said it would broadcast later Wednesday an interview it recorded with Kelly in October 2002, which it has never shown....
January 22, 2004
Anti-war demonstrators claiming to "support the troops" despite their protests may have trouble explaining this report from the UK's Black Watch: The commanding officer of the Black Watch yesterday blamed the Government's reluctance to be seen preparing for war for equipment shortages suffered by troops in Iraq. While careful to make clear that the Government's decision to wait until the last minute was understandable, Lt Col Cowan said it was partly forced on it by anti-war feeling among its own backbenchers. "As a result, many items of equipment were not available in the right numbers, in the right place, in the right working order at the time they should have been and I think that is widely acknowledged," he said. London, you may remember, hosted several large anti-war demonstrations in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Due to a certain lack of intestinal fortitude among members of Tony Blair's...
January 23, 2004
The US has discovered an al-Qaeda cell in the troublesome city of Fallujah, and is rounding up as many of its members as it can find: The U.S. military is fighting to uproot a suspected cell of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network in the staunchly anti-American town of Fallujah, a military official said Thursday. Two Egyptians and an Iraqi, all believed to be couriers among al-Qaida terrorists and financiers, were arrested Sunday in a Fallujah apartment building where slogans supporting bin Laden were written across a wall in sheep's blood. Capt. Scott Kirkpatrick, of the Army's 10th Mountain Division, who led the raid, said the men were found with al-Qaida literature and photos of bin Laden, believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed roughly 3,000 people. Kirkpatrick said the U.S. military doesn't know how big the al-Qaida cell in Fallujah is, "but...
Big Trunk from Power Line has an
outstanding post based on a report of a little-known Marine battle in Baghdad. If you don't get goose bumps thinking about the heart and courage of these Marines, check for a pulse. You may be dead.