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sunday, november 16, 2003
The America-hating Morlocks at Democratic Underground are running a poll with the topic “Who Is Most Evil?” The choices are Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and ... you guessed it ... George W. Bush. Now guess who’s running away with the lead? Who is most evil? (Hat tip: Jheka.) Here’s how the troglodyte who started the poll sets it up: Osama - doing what he can to fight an evil nation that once helped his lot fight another evil. At this time, the results are: Osama, the brave fighter against the evil America: 30% (Yes, that adds up to more than 100%. What do you expect from these barely literate mooks?)
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, head of the terror gang’s bureau in Damascus, gave a speech in Beirut to a group of Lebanese legislators, Cabinet ministers, and Muslim clerics, urging Al Qaeda and the other Islamofascist groups not to attack Saudi Arabia—when they could be killing Jews or Americans instead: Hamas: Attack Israel, Iraq not Saudi Arabia. (Hat tip: zulubaby.) During a speech in the Lebanese capital Beirut, Mashaal urged Arab and Islamic militant groups "to stop tampering with our internal peace and security. This is not the arena for military confrontation."
Mark Steyn is concerned that President Bush’s London visit isn’t going to turn out well: All this just for a photograph with the Queen? Having successfully reinvented himself as an easygoing Crawford rancher, Bush has nothing to gain by palling around with royalty. Besides, he always looks like a goofball in white tie. Adam Yoshida, however, thinks the trip could turn out to be a golden opportunity to discredit the “anti-war” loonies: From Out the Azure Main. A skillful public relations campaign is needed to merge the enemy in the minds of the American people. If the protests are sufficiently violent and the President stands properly opposed, the images will not fail to create in the minds of many people an indelible link between the protestors and the terrorists. This will be especially true if the conservative elements of the media can work hard at playing up the worst excesses of the protests.
Newsweek interviews Arafat’s latest puppet prime minister Ahmed Qurei, who makes the stunning revelation that—he’s Arafat’s puppet! and he plans to do absolutely nothing to stop the terrorism! Imagine my surprise. A Ceasefire: ‘The First Step.’ What happens if a bomb explodes in Jerusalem tomorrow and the Aksa brigades take credit?
I couldn’t agree more with this op-ed piece by Arno Weinstein, about the outrageous and suicidal “Geneva Agreement” negotiated by the Israeli left with unreconstructed Arab terrorists: The Geneva Conspiracy. Imagine this: a group of Americans, say presidential candidate Howard Dean, Senators Ted Kennedy, Fritz Hollings and Robert Byrd, go to the wilds of Pakistan and meet with the lieutenants of Usama bin Laden. They carry with them a “peace” proposal hammered out with various al-Qaida supporters in the United States calling for the unilateral withdrawal of American forces from all Islamic countries. They present the proposal to terror agents representing bin Laden, work out the kinks and arrive at an agreement aimed at ending the conflict between al-Qaida and the United States. What would the overwhelming majority of Americans say? In unison, the outcry would be: “Treason!” In the United States this sort of seditious activity is covered by the Logan Act, which prohibits unauthorized citizens from interfering in the relations of the US with foreign governments. Someone needs to let Thomas Friedman know about the Logan Act, because in today’s op-ed for the New York Times he cluelessly applauds the Geneva agreement, having learned absolutely nothing about Arab rejectionism and double-dealing from the Oslo disaster: Wanted: Fanatical Moderates.
Arabic TV station Al Arabiya, eager to do their part to help kill Americans, is airing (over and over, no doubt) a new audiotape supposedly from Saddam Hussein—you remember him? the one the loony left always describes as a “secular” dictator?— calling for jihad: Alleged Saddam Tape Urges 'Road of Jihad.' The speaker, who sounded like the ousted Iraqi leader, told Iraqis that the "road of jihad (holy war) and resistance" is the only one to make the "armies of the unjust occupation leave our country."
Pakistan is rounding up the usual suspects again, and al-Reuters calls these Islamofascist murderers “activists:” Pakistan Holds Muslim Militant Head and Activists. ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan rounded up dozens of Islamic activists, including a militant leader, in raids across the country after three outlawed militant outfits that had regrouped under new names were banned, police said on Sunday.
Yes, it’s true. The al-Reuters all-quagmire, all the time news service makes me want to vomit sometimes, and this astonishingly calloused headline is a perfect example of their emetic effect: U.S. Troops Pull Bodies from Iraq Chopper Wrecks. saturday, november 15, 2003
As the Saudis grudgingly, belatedly take baby steps toward reforming the hatred and Dark Ages insanity that dominates their educational system (not to mention their entire society), the Associated Press says that “extremists” in Saudi Arabia are not happy about it: Extremists Decry Saudis' Reform Moves. RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - A new child's textbook has sketches of boys and girls together — normal classroom fare in many countries but criticized by extremists here as a government scheme to teach children to rebel against the precepts of Islam.
A bizarre award ceremony in Dubai honored Egypt’s Al-Azhar University as the International Holy Quran Award’s “Islamic Personality of the Year,” for spreading the peaceful, tolerant message of Islam: Al Azhar feted for teaching tolerance. Al Azhar University in Cairo was last night honoured as the Dubai International Holy Quran Award's 'Islamic Personality of the Year' by General Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Defence Minister. Here’s an LGF search page for Al-Azhar, chock full of entries showing Islamic scholars from this pit of jihad ideology calling for holy war against the West, praising suicide bombers, and hosting huge anti-American demonstrations featuring people like the one in this photo:
The Palestinian Authority held a rally in the town of Tulkarem on Friday, honoring Sirhan Sirhan—the Fatah mass murderer who infiltrated Kibbutz Metzer and cold-bloodedly slaughtered five people, including a mother and her two children: PA pays tribute to Metzer terrorist. Sirhan, a resident of the Tulkarem refugee camp, cold-bloodedly murdered Revital Ohayon, 34, and her two sons, Matan, five, and Noam, four inside their home. He also killed Tirza Damari, 42, and Yitzhak Dori, 44, the kibbutz secretary before escaping back to the West Bank.
Here’s some good news that shows our officials may not be sound asleep after all; inmates at Texas’s 114 prisons are being watched for ties to Islamic terrorist groups after a video was intercepted showing a Muslim imam spewing anti-American hatred: Inmates monitored for possible terrorist links. "Our interest is the security of our institutions and the safety of the public," John Moriarty, inspector general of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, told the Austin American-Statesman. "We have had some successes. That's about all I can say."
Here’s a great resource for the e-warriors of the blogosphere: Media Contact Information. (Hat tip: Kyle.) This link is going into the “Never Forget” section of our right sidebar.
A shady group of British peace creeps is planning to electronically stalk President George W. Bush during his visit to the UK: Chasing Bush. Isn’t that lovely. Maybe they’d also like to help Al Qaeda build their car bombs.
In an enlightening and prescient essay written nearly ten years ago, Martin Kramer identifies the roots of Muslim antisemitism, following the Hizb'Allah bombing of the Jewish center in Buenos Aires: The Jihad Against the Jews. The Islamic fundamentalist position has now been thoroughly penetrated by classic European anti-Semitism. This has been facilitated by the fact that so many fundamentalist thinkers of the present generation have spent time in the West, collecting advanced degrees at the universities of London and Paris. There they internalized the anti-Semitism of the extreme Left and Right, and they now retail a comprehensive indictment of the Jews which goes far beyond anti-Zionism. Their tales of unbridled Jewish power enjoy even more credibility among their listeners at home, since they can claim to have seen and experienced it firsthand. They wax persuasive when they declare that an international Jewish conspiracy stands behind Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, or the fall of the Muslim-owned Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
Earlier today I wrote about a disgustingly biased list of “the worst terror attacks since 9/11” at CNN’s web site, based on a Reuters story that did not mention a single attack committed by Palestinian Arabs in Israel. Now it seems that CNN has removed the page, although a link to it still appears at the top of their Middle East index. Even though it’s gone, I should mention that at Dhimmi Watch, Robert Spencer pointed out another problem with the list: it never mentioned the word “Islam” or “Muslims,” even though every single act of terror it described was perpetrated by Islamic groups.
I don’t usually do this, but a reader sent me the complete transcript of the secret memo published by the Weekly Standard, and since their web site is still off line I’m going to mirror the article here, because it’s incredibly important news. ____________________________ Case Closed The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies. According to the memo--which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered points--Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which in some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the source. This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis. The relationship began shortly before the first Gulf War. According to reporting in the memo, bin Laden sent "emissaries to Jordan in 1990 to meet with Iraqi government officials." At some unspecified point in 1991, according to a CIA analysis, "Iraq sought Sudan's assistance to establish links to al Qaeda." The outreach went in both directions. According to 1993 CIA reporting cited in the memo, "bin Laden wanted to expand his organization's capabilities through ties with Iraq." The primary go-between throughout these early stages was Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, a leader of the al Qaeda-affiliated National Islamic Front. Numerous sources have confirmed this. One defector reported that "al-Turabi was instrumental in arranging the Iraqi-al Qaeda relationship. The defector said Iraq sought al Qaeda influence through its connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al Qaeda with training and instructors." One such confirmation came in a postwar interview with one of Saddam Hussein's henchmen. As the memo details: 4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later with al Qaeda. The first meeting in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and al Qaeda was brokered by al-Turabi. Former IIS deputy director Faruq Hijazi and senior al Qaeda leader [Ayman al] Zawahiri were at the meeting--the first of several between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al Qaeda would sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief in a safe house. The report claimed that Saddam insisted the relationship with al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam made a personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under scrutiny from foreign probes. A decisive moment in the budding relationship came in 1993, when bin Laden faced internal resistance to his cooperation with Saddam. 5. A CIA report from a contact with good access, some of whose reporting has been corroborated, said that certain elements in the "Islamic Army" of bin Laden were against the secular regime of Saddam. Overriding the internal factional strife that was developing, bin Laden came to an "understanding" with Saddam that the Islamic Army would no longer support anti-Saddam activities. According to sensitive reporting released in U.S. court documents during the African Embassy trial, in 1993 bin Laden reached an "understanding" with Saddam under which he (bin Laden) forbade al Qaeda operations to be mounted against the Iraqi leader. Another facilitator of the relationship during the mid-1990s was Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. Abu Hajer al-Iraqi). Abu Hajer, now in a New York prison, was described in court proceedings related to the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as bin Laden's "best friend." According to CIA reporting dating back to the Clinton administration, bin Laden trusted him to serve as a liaison with Saddam's regime and tasked him with procurement of weapons of mass destruction for al Qaeda. FBI reporting in the memo reveals that Abu Hajer "visited Iraq in early 1995" and "had a good relationship with Iraqi intelligence. Sometime before mid-1995 he went on an al Qaeda mission to discuss unspecified cooperation with the Iraqi government." Some of the reporting about the relationship throughout the mid-1990s comes from a source who had intimate knowledge of bin Laden and his dealings. This source, according to CIA analysis, offered "the most credible information" on cooperation between bin Laden and Iraq. This source's reports read almost like a diary. Specific dates of when bin Laden flew to various cities are included, as well as names of individuals he met. The source did not offer information on the substantive talks during the meetings. . . . There are not a great many reports in general on the relationship between bin Laden and Iraq because of the secrecy surrounding it. But when this source with close access provided a "window" into bin Laden's activities, bin Laden is seen as heavily involved with Iraq (and Iran). Reporting from the early 1990s remains somewhat sketchy, though multiple sources place Hassan al-Turabi and Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden's current No. 2, at the center of the relationship. The reporting gets much more specific in the mid-1990s: 8. Reporting from a well placed source disclosed that bin Laden was receiving training on bomb making from the IIS's [Iraqi Intelligence Service] principal technical expert on making sophisticated explosives, Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed. Brigadier Salim was observed at bin Laden's farm in Khartoum in Sept.-Oct. 1995 and again in July 1996, in the company of the Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti. And later more reporting, from the same "well placed" source: 10. The Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti, met privately with bin Laden at his farm in Sudan in July 1996. Tikriti used an Iraqi delegation traveling to Khartoum to discuss bilateral cooperation as his "cover" for his own entry into Sudan to meet with bin Laden and Hassan al-Turabi. The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other IIS officers met at bin Laden's farm and discussed bin Laden's request for IIS technical assistance in: a) making letter and parcel bombs; b) making bombs which could be placed on aircraft and detonated by changes in barometric pressure; and c) making false passport [sic]. Bin Laden specifically requested that [Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed], Iraqi intelligence's premier explosives maker--especially skilled in making car bombs--remain with him in Sudan. The Iraqi intelligence chief instructed Salim to remain in Sudan with bin Laden as long as required. The analysis of those events follows: The time of the visit from the IIS director was a few weeks after the Khobar Towers bombing. The bombing came on the third anniversary of a U.S. [Tomahawk missile] strike on IIS HQ (retaliation for the attempted assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait) for which Iraqi officials explicitly threatened retaliation. 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 twice, first in Sudan and later in Afghanistan in 1999. . . . That visit came as the Iraqis intensified their defiance of the U.N. inspection regime, known as UNSCOM, created by the cease-fire agreement following the Gulf War. UNSCOM demanded access to Saddam's presidential palaces that he refused to provide. As the tensions mounted, President Bill Clinton went to the Pentagon on February 18, 1998, and prepared the nation for war. He warned of "an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers, and organized international criminals" and said "there is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein." The day after this speech, according to documents unearthed in April 2003 in the Iraqi Intelligence headquarters by journalists Mitch Potter and Inigo Gilmore, Hussein's intelligence service wrote a memo detailing coming meetings with a bin Laden representative traveling to Baghdad. Each reference to bin Laden had been covered by liquid paper that, when revealed, exposed a plan to increase cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda. According to that memo, the IIS agreed to pay for "all the travel and hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden." The document set as the goal for the meeting a discussion of "the future of our relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The al Qaeda representative, the document went on to suggest, might provide "a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden." Four days later, on February 23, 1998, bin Laden issued his now-famous fatwa on the plight of Iraq, published in the Arabic-language daily, al Quds al-Arabi: "For over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." Bin Laden urged his followers to act: "The ruling to kill all Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it." Although war was temporarily averted by a last-minute deal brokered by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, tensions soon rose again. The standoff with Iraq came to a head in December 1998, when President Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox, a 70-hour bombing campaign that began on December 16 and ended three days later, on December 19, 1998. According to press reports at the time, Faruq Hijazi, deputy director of Iraqi Intelligence, met with bin Laden in Afghanistan on December 21, 1998, to offer bin Laden safe haven in Iraq. CIA reporting in the memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee seems to confirm this meeting and relates two others. 15. A foreign government service reported that an Iraqi delegation, including at least two Iraqi intelligence officers formerly assigned to the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan, met in late 1998 with bin Laden in Afghanistan. An analysis that follows No. 18 provides additional context and an explanation of these reports: Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17, and #18, from different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of meetings between al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. None of the reports have information on operational details or the purpose of such meetings. The covert nature of the relationship would indicate strict compartmentation [sic] of operations. Information about connections between al Qaeda and Iraq was so widespread by early 1999 that it made its way into the mainstream press. A January 11, 1999, Newsweek story ran under this headline: "Saddam + Bin Laden?" The story cited an "Arab intelligence source" with knowledge of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. "According to this source, Saddam expected last month's American and British bombing campaign to go on much longer than it did. The dictator believed that as the attacks continued, indignation would grow in the Muslim world, making his terrorism offensive both harder to trace and more effective. With acts of terror contributing to chaos in the region, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait might feel less inclined to support Washington. Saddam's long-term strategy, according to several sources, is to bully or cajole Muslim countries into breaking the embargo against Iraq, without waiting for the United Nations to lift if formally." INTELLIGENCE REPORTS about the nature of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda from mid-1999 through 2003 are conflicting. One senior Iraqi intelligence officer in U.S. custody, Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah, "said that the last contact between the IIS and al Qaeda was in July 1999. Bin Laden wanted to meet with Saddam, he said. The guidance sent back from Saddam's office reportedly ordered Iraqi intelligence to refrain from any further contact with bin Laden and al Qaeda. The source opined that Saddam wanted to distance himself from al Qaeda." The bulk of reporting on the relationship contradicts this claim. One report states that "in late 1999" al Qaeda set up a training camp in northern Iraq that "was operational as of 1999." Other reports suggest that the Iraqi regime contemplated several offers of safe haven to bin Laden throughout 1999. 23. . . . Iraqi officials were carefully considering offering safe haven to bin Laden and his closest collaborators in Nov. 1999. The source indicated the idea was put forward by the presumed head of Iraqi intelligence in Islamabad (Khalid Janaby) who in turn was in frequent contact and had good relations with bin Laden. Some of the most intriguing intelligence concerns an Iraqi named Ahmed Hikmat Shakir: 24. According to sensitive reporting, a Malaysia-based Iraqi national (Shakir) facilitated the arrival of one of the Sept 11 hijackers for an operational meeting in Kuala Lumpur (Jan 2000). Sensitive reporting indicates Shakir's travel and contacts link him to a worldwide network of terrorists, including al Qaeda. Shakir worked at the Kuala Lumpur airport--a job he claimed to have obtained through an Iraqi embassy employee. One of the men at that al Qaeda operational meeting in the Kuala Lumpur Hotel was Tawfiz al Atash, a top bin Laden lieutenant later identified as the mastermind of the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole. 25. Investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 by al Qaeda revealed no specific Iraqi connections but according to the CIA, "fragmentary evidence points to possible Iraqi involvement." The analysis of this report follows. CIA maintains that Ibn al-Shaykh's timeline is consistent with other sensitive reporting indicating that bin Laden asked Iraq in 1998 for advanced weapons, including CBW and "poisons." Additional reporting also calls into question the claim that relations between Iraq and al Qaeda cooled after mid-1999: 27. According to sensitive CIA reporting, . . . the Saudi National Guard went on a kingdom-wide state of alert in late Dec 2000 after learning Saddam agreed to assist al Qaeda in attacking U.S./U.K. interests in Saudi Arabia. And then there is the alleged contact between lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. The reporting on those links suggests not one meeting, but as many as four. What's more, the memo reveals potential financing of Atta's activities by Iraqi intelligence. The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the Sept. 11 hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief in Prague, [Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir] al Ani, on several occasions. During one of these meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS finance officer to issue Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office. And the commentary: CIA can confirm two Atta visits to Prague--in Dec. 1994 and in June 2000; data surrounding the other two--on 26 Oct 1999 and 9 April 2001--is complicated and sometimes contradictory and CIA and FBI cannot confirm Atta met with the IIS. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross continues to stand by his information. It's not just Gross who stands by the information. Five high-ranking members of the Czech government have publicly confirmed meetings between Atta and al Ani. The meeting that has gotten the most press attention--April 9, 2001--is also the most widely disputed. Even some of the most hawkish Bush administration officials are privately skeptical that Atta met al Ani on that occasion. They believe that reports of the alleged meeting, said to have taken place in public, outside the headquarters of the U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, suggest a level of sloppiness that doesn't fit the pattern of previous high-level Iraq-al Qaeda contacts. Whether or not that specific meeting occurred, the report by Czech counterintelligence that al Ani ordered the Iraqi Intelligence Service officer to provide IIS funds to Atta might help explain the lead hijacker's determination to reach Prague, despite significant obstacles, in the spring of 2000. (Note that the report stops short of confirming that the funds were transferred. It claims only that the IIS officer requested the transfer.) Recall that Atta flew to Prague from Germany on May 30, 2000, but was denied entry because he did not have a valid visa. Rather than simply return to Germany and fly directly to the United States, his ultimate destination, Atta took pains to get to Prague. After he was refused entry the first time, he traveled back to Germany, obtained the proper paperwork, and caught a bus back to Prague. He left for the United States the day after arriving in Prague for the second time. 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 the pattern of Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration: References to procurement of false passports from Iraq and offers of safe haven previously have surfaced in CIA source reporting considered reliable. Intelligence reports to date have maintained that Iraqi support for al Qaeda usually involved providing training, obtaining passports, and offers of refuge. This report adds to that list by including weapons and money. This assistance would make sense in the aftermath of 9-11. Colin Powell, in his February 5, 2003, presentation to the U.N. Security Council, revealed the activities of Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Reporting in the memo expands on Powell's case and might help explain some of the resistance the U.S. military is currently facing in Iraq. 37. Sensitive reporting indicates senior terrorist planner and close al Qaeda associate al Zarqawi has had an operational alliance with Iraqi officials. As of Oct. 2002, al Zarqawi maintained contacts with the IIS to procure weapons and explosives, including surface-to-air missiles from an IIS officer in Baghdad. According to sensitive reporting, al Zarqawi was setting up sleeper cells in Baghdad to be activated in case of a U.S. occupation of the city, suggesting his operational cooperation with the Iraqis may have deepened in recent months. Such cooperation could include IIS provision of a secure operating bases [sic] and steady access to arms and explosives in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion. Al Zarqawi's procurements from the Iraqis also could support al Qaeda operations against the U.S. or its allies elsewhere. The memo further reported pre-war intelligence which "claimed that an Iraqi intelligence official, praising Ansar al-Islam, provided it with $100,000 and agreed to continue to give assistance." 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. Carl Levin, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, made those points as recently as November 9, in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday." Republicans on the committee, he complained, refuse to look at the administration's "exaggeration of intelligence." Said Levin: "The question is whether or not they exaggerated intelligence in order to carry out their purpose, which was to make the case for going to war. Did we know, for instance, with certainty that there was any relationship between the Iraqis and the terrorists that were in Afghanistan, bin Laden? The administration said that there's a connection between those terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. Was there a basis for that?" There was, as shown in the memo to the committee on which Levin serves. And much of the reporting comes from Clinton-era intelligence. Not that you would know this from Al Gore's recent public statements. Indeed, the former vice president claims to be privy to new "evidence" that the administration lied. In an August speech at New York University, Gore claimed: "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass destruction." Really? One of the most interesting things to note about the 16-page memo is that it covers only a fraction of the evidence that will eventually be available to document the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. For one thing, both Saddam and bin Laden were desperate to keep their cooperation secret. (Remember, Iraqi intelligence used liquid paper on an internal intelligence document to conceal bin Laden's name.) For another, few people in the U.S. government are expressly looking for such links. There is no Iraq-al Qaeda equivalent of the CIA's 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group currently searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. Instead, CIA and FBI officials are methodically reviewing Iraqi intelligence files that survived the three-week war last spring. These documents would cover several miles if laid end-to-end. And they are in Arabic. They include not only connections between bin Laden and Saddam, but also revolting details of the regime's long history of brutality. It will be a slow process. So Feith's memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee is best viewed as sort of a "Cliff's Notes" version of the relationship. It contains the highlights, but it is far from exhaustive. One example. The memo contains only one paragraph on Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi facilitator who escorted two September 11 hijackers through customs in Kuala Lumpur. U.S. intelligence agencies have extensive reporting on his activities before and after the September 11 hijacking. That they would include only this brief overview suggests the 16-page memo, extensive as it is, just skims the surface of the reporting on Iraq-al Qaeda connections. 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. Shakir got his airport job through a contact at the Iraqi Embassy. (Iraq routinely used its embassies as staging grounds for its intelligence operations; in some cases, more than half of the alleged "diplomats" were intelligence operatives.) The Iraqi embassy, not his employer, controlled Shakir's schedule. He was detained in Qatar on September 17, 2001. Authorities found in his possession contact information for terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 embassy bombings, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and the September 11 hijackings. The CIA had previous reporting that Shakir had received a phone call from the safe house where the 1993 World Trade Center attacks had been plotted. The Qataris released Shakir shortly after his arrest. On October 21, 2001, he flew to Amman, Jordan, where he was to change planes to a flight to Baghdad. He didn't make that flight. Shakir was detained in Jordan for three months, where the CIA interrogated him. His interrogators concluded that Shakir had received extensive training in counter-interrogation techniques. Not long after he was detained, according to an official familiar with the intelligence, the Iraqi regime began to "pressure" Jordanian intelligence to release him. At the same time, Amnesty International complained that Shakir was being held without charge. The Jordanians released him on January 28, 2002, at which point he is believed to have fled back to Iraq. Was Shakir an Iraqi agent? Does he provide a connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11? We don't know. We may someday find out. But there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans. Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.
CNN has published a Reuters compilation of the worst terror attacks since 9/11. And you probably know what I’m about to write. Not one attack by Palestinian Arab terrorists in Israel is listed. This is, purely and simply, lying by omission.
Arsonists torch Jewish school near Paris. Fire gutted the Merkaz HaTorah Jewish secondary school in the Paris suburb of Gagny in the Seine-Saint-Denis region Saturday morning at 3am. There were no injuries.
Car Bombs at Turkey Synagogues Kill 20. ISTANBUL, Turkey - Twin car bombs exploded outside Istanbul synagogues filled with worshippers during Sabbath prayers Saturday, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 257, officials said.
friday, november 14, 2003
The Weekly Standard has published a secret memo detailing cooperation between Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein—but their web server has been brought to its knees by a link from the Drudge Report, so you can’t read it yet. When their host manages to pull it together, Stephen Hayes’ article will be here: The Saddam-Osama Connection. (Hat tip: Robert Crawford.) UPDATE: Rantburg has a complete transcript of the article, and it’s incredibly damning for the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Subcommittee—especially Carl Levin and Jay Rockefeller, who have been claiming that there is no link even as they were in possession of documents proving the link.
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema has revoked terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui’s right to represent himself, for reasons of sheer moonbattitude: Moussaoui Loses Right to Represent Self. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said Moussaoui's latest motions "include contemptuous language that would never be tolerated from an attorney and will no longer be tolerated from this defendant." I sense a military tribunal in Mr. Moussaoui’s future.
It’s Friday evening, I’ve had a glass of Italian Barolo in honor of the brave Italian soldiers who are showing the UN the meaning of courage and valor, and I think it’s time for a funny dog picture.
Someone please let David Pryce-Jones know that in this otherwise excellent evisceration of the always execrable Robert “Hit Me Again!” Fisk, he gets the definition of “fisking” completely wrong: The dangers of Fisking. (Hat tip: Melanie Phillips.) In the www arena where the world speaks invisibly to itself, a new word has appeared: ‘fisking’, meaning the selection of evidence solely in order to bolster preconceptions and prejudices. Just as cardigans or mackintoshes are named after an inventive individual, so fisking derives from the work of Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent of the Independent, stationed these many years in Beirut. LGF reader “scaramouche” provides the correct definition of the verb to fisk: Parsing an article sentence by sentence to expose the writer's inherent biases and misperceptions; named for British LLL journalist Robert Fisk, noted for his hyperventilating articles that display an often tenous grasp of reality.
The slimiest of the Saudi shills, Adel al-Jubeir, was rapidly dispatched to the US for some frantic damage control, following reports that the Royal Family was opening dialog with Al Qaeda to renew their protection payoffs. Of course, the Saudis deny it. Today al-Jubeir said the Riyadh bombing may have been a mistake; the terrorists may have thought they were killing infidels. Asked about the theory that the bombers made a mistake, Jubeir said: "That may very well be the case. The compound used to house employees from Boeing Corporation up until about five years ago. These employees hailed from many different countries including Europe and the United States and Arab countries." Al-Jubeir also blamed Al Qaeda on the Egyptians: Saudi Arabia has been a significant source of recruits for al Qaeda, providing 15 of the 19 hijackers who attacked the United States and killed some 3,000 people in September 2001. And he took a few moments from his busy schedule of justifying and shifting blame to attack Ariel Sharon and equate the Israelis with Hamas and Islamic Jihad: "We hope that trend will continue and will put some rationality and some sanity into the actions of the Israeli prime minister and his government, as well as the actions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad with regard to suicide bombings," he added. (Of course, the Saudis are one of the primary sources of Hamas’ funding, but no one at the press conference bothered to ask al-Jubeir about that.) Meanwhile, back in the land of the oil parasites, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca is dropping broad hints that you know who was responsible: Makkah Imam Equates Riyadh Bombing With Israeli Terror. Dr. Saleh Bin Humaid, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Makkah and chairman of the Shoura Council, compared the actions of the suspected Al-Qaeda bombers who carried out the attack last week to Israeli terror in Palestinian territories.
According to columnist Uri Dan, Yasser Arafat has a dream. He dreams of seeing a Democrat in the White House: Arafat Stalls Peace in Hope Bush Loses. (Hat tip: Steven Zak.) November 14, 2003 -- JERUSALEM - Yasser Arafat is playing for time - for 2005, to be exact, when he hopes a Democratic president will bring him back to center stage in the Mideast. Terrorists everywhere share this dream; in August the “spiritual leader” of Hizb'Allah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, also declared his affinity for the donkeys.
Jihad. We’ve all seen Islamic spokesmen on American TV, telling us we have a “misunderstanding” of the word; that in the peaceful religion of Islam, jihad is really an inner struggle for personal improvement, and has nothing to do with “holy war” or violence. Perhaps those spokesmen would like to explain the naked aggression and love of violence and war that MEMRI exposes in this new article about a Palestinian schoolbook for the eleventh grade, approved by the Jordanian Ministry of Education in 2003: 2003 Palestinian Authority Textbook Calls for Jihad and Martyrdom. (Page 208): "Islam is Allah's religion for all human beings. It should be proclaimed and invite [people] to join it wisely and through appropriate preaching and friendly discussions. However, such methods may encounter resistance and the preachers may be prevented from accomplishing their duty ... then, Jihad and the use of physical force against the enemies become inevitable ... The concept goes like this; Islam is the perfect realization of human life, and Muslims must bring the message to all unbelievers. If the unbeliever refuses to accept Islam, there’s only one way to proceed—murder: (Page 208): "Islam is Allah's religion for all human beings. It should be proclaimed and invite [people] to join it wisely and through appropriate preaching and friendly discussions. However, such methods may encounter resistance and the preachers may be prevented from accomplishing their duty… then, Jihad and the use of physical force against the enemies become inevitable… But jihad has nothing in common with the evil type of war practiced by infidels; jihad is a noble sort of murderous activity, sanctioned by Allah himself: "Jihad is an Islamic term that equates to the term war in other nations. The difference is that Jihad has noble goals and lofty aims, and is carried out only for the sake of Allah and for His glory… [By contrast] wars by other nations are mainly waged because of wickedness, aggression, love of domination, expanding influence, looting properties, murder, and the fulfillment of ambitions and desires, such as the war that the Western countries waged to exploit Islamic countries for imperialistic purposes, to control their Muslim citizens and to rob their resources and richness…" And what about those few misguided souls who attempt to leave Islam? (Page 155): "The logical reason for executing a person who abandons Islam is the following: There is nothing in Islam that comes in contrast to human nature. Whoever joins Islam after recognizing its truth and after tasting its sweetness and then abandons it - is in fact rebelling against truth and logic. Like any other regime, Islam has to protect itself therefore this punishment [execution] awaits the person who abandons it, because he is spreading doubt about Islam… Ladies and gentlemen and infidels of all persuasions—say hello to the Religion of Peace™.
A French newspaper has quoted sworn testimony from an unnamed former soldier from the Democratic Republic of Congo, saying that a representative of Al Qaeda bought two bars of enriched uranium from the Congolese opposition at a meeting in Hamburg in 2000: Congo rebels sold Al-Qaeda uranium. (Hat tip: Merde in France.) The man "described a meeting which took place on March 3 in (the German city of) Hamburg between some Congolese men and an Egyptian by the name of Ibrahim Abdul," the newspaper said. UPDATE: The mention of “uranium 138” in this article is probably a typo; there’s no such thing. They probably mean “uranium 238.”
The loony left’s tiresome mantra is that we should immediately pull our soldiers out of Iraq, and let the United Nations handle the untidy mess. Then all the countries of the world will start to love us again, like they did in those long lost days of yore. Just one problem with this “idea.” The United Nations is scared of their own shadow: U.N. Says Full Return to Iraq Still Uncertain. NICOSIA, Cyprus (Reuters) - A top U.N. official involved in deciding when staff should fully return to Iraq said Friday it was hard to envision such a move until security improved.
Flaming hoops—they’re not just for Palestinian police.
A Palestinian boy jumps through a blazing ring during a rally of the militant Hamas movement in Gaza City on November 14, 2003.
Amir Taheri has a chilling article at the National Review on Iran’s indisputable preparations for nuclear war: Recipe for Disaster. (Hat tip: scaramouche.) After the revolution, Iran's national defense doctrine has been based on the assumption that it will, one day, fight a war with the United States plus its Arab allies and Israel.
Here’s another heaping helping of victimhood, paranoia, antisemitism, and anti-Americanism, brought to you by our allies in the War on Terror, the oil ticks of the House of Saud: Israel, America & Al-Qaeda. (Hat tip: USMC VV.) People are being killed in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The victims are always Muslim men, women and children. It is always Muslim property that is being destroyed. The criminals perpetrating these outrages are Israel in Palestine, America in Afghanistan and Iraq and Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia.
thursday, november 13, 2003
An interesting (and depressing/maddening) op-ed on Israel’s lopsided prisoner exchange deal with Hizb'Allah, by Neill Lochery at the National Post: Why Israel negotiates with terrorists. Sadly, it appears the war is not over for the Hezbollah and Palestinian prisoners which Israel is about to unleash back into the free world. The brutal reality is that of those to be released a sizeable majority will carry out additional attacks against Israelis. Of the last group of prisoners let go by Israel -- as a goodwill gesture to the then-Palestinian prime minister, Abu Mazen -- some six have been involved in serious crimes since their release, including several in organizing suicide bomb attacks against Israeli cities. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that Israel can expect a wave of terror in the coming months from those it has agreed to release. One wonders what the attitude of the families of the future bereaved will be when they learn the attack was carried out by someone Israel released from prison.
Bassem Khafagi, former community affairs director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and founding member of the Islamic Assembly of North America, has been sentenced in his bank and visa fraud case after pleading guilty, and will be deported to Egypt: Former head of Islamic charity sentenced in fraud case. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Zatkoff sentenced Bassem Khafagi, formerly of Ann Arbor, to 10 months of time already served in prison. Khafagi, 41, pleaded guilty Sept. 9.
At Arab News, they’re as insane as ever, still obsessing over the evil Jewish World Conspiracy like a country full of mental patients: What US Should Do to Be Friends With Muslim World. It is well known that America has for decades been working with Israelis against the Muslims. The reason is the vast wealth found in the Muslim world and the need to control it. The Zionists misled America into believing that it would never achieve what it seeks except by force and injustice. They misled them into believing that in order to be safe and escape America’s wrath, the people of the developing world would submissively agree to share with it whatever they have. Articles like this are why I never fall for the “signs of moderation” the Arab News prints from time to time, to lull the kuffar into a sense of complacency; these people are just completely nuts.
By coincidence, I happened across two excellent posts on the subject of “chickenhawks”—the insulting ad hominem flung at pro-defense people by the loony left. 1) Armed Liberal at Winds of Change: Chickenhawks And Other Interest Group Politics. I had an "aha" moment about the chickenhawk debate this morning. 2) Tom McMahon’s Guide to Name Calling on Military Issues.
From the Piney Woods Journal in Louisiana, here’s a story showing how the September 11 attacks continue to affect the US economy and countless small businesses, in unexpected ways: Bosch selling nursery. (Hat tip: Jetstorm.) The Bosch Pine Tree Nursery, a few miles outside Jonesboro, Louisiana, once named in the top four producers in the southeast, is up for sale. Over 600 acres of prime land, hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, buildings and seedlings are now on the market.
Earthshaking news from the LGF Department of CSS Coding: if you use the <blockquote> tag in a comment, to indent a quote from an article or another comment, you no longer need to surround each paragraph with its own <blockquote> to maintain the font size. Those of you who are using this tag will know what I’m raving about, and will probably breathe a sigh of relief. (Contextual selectors; they’re not just for web weenies like me.)
Daniel Pipes writes about the epochal shift in American Middle East policy: Bush the radical. "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe."
In another message thread at the Young Muslims UK forum (linked earlier for their whining about South Park), a member suggests signing a petition to stop President Bush from visiting Britain—and another member mocks the petition and makes an alternate suggestion: assassination. (Hat tip: Bill Jefferson.) I think we’ve discovered the British version of ClearGuidance (known as “Islam on Crack”). Another thread compares the banning of Muslim headscarves in German schools to Kristallnacht.
Iran warned the United Nations that declaring Iran in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty could lead to “unpredictable consequences.” The United States wants the board to declare Iran in violation of its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which would require it to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions.
The gentle, peaceful souls at Nazimedia UK gloat and laugh about the Italian soldiers killed in Iraq: Bomb at Italian base in Iraq kills six. (Hat tip: Robert Hinkley.) Even the pig TV is full of lot of injured civilians.
An Islamist web forum has posted an interview with a man identified as Abu Salma Al-Hijazi, an Al Qaeda “commander,” who threatens a huge attack during Ramadan that will kill more than 100,000 people. In regard to rumors about a large-scale attack against the U.S. during the month of Ramadan, Al-Hijazi said that "a huge and very courageous strike" will take place and that the number of infidels expected to be killed in this attack, according to primary estimates, exceeds 100,000. He added that he "anticipates, but will not swear, that the attack will happen during Ramadan." He further stated that the attack will be carried out in a way that will "amaze the world and turn Al-Qai'da into [an organization that] horrifies the world until the law of Allah is implemented, actually implemented, and not just in words, on His land... You wait and see that the balance of power between Al-Qai'da and its rivals will change, all of a sudden, Allah willing."
A group called Young Muslims UK is completely bent out of shape about ... wait for it ... South Park: Complain Against Mockery Of Prophets In South Park On Channel 4. (Hat tip: James.) The episode of South Park broadcast on 10th October 2003 at 11.40 pm featured the Prophets Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon them) portrayed as ridiculous super-heroes struggling to defeat David Blaine! It's not funny and it's not clever! Notice: even as they whine and seethe about how offended and degraded they are by an episode of South Park, they use bigoted hate speech to describe non-Muslims—kuffar.
In late October, Democrats in Washington DC hosted a delegation of Palestinian Fatah leaders. (“Fatah” is Arabic for “Conquest.”) MEMRI has reports from the Arab press on what these creeps said when they returned to the Middle East—and it’s about what you’d expect: MEMRI: Latest News The London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat reported that "this is the first invitation for leaders from a Palestinian faction that carries out 'armed struggle' and martyrdom operations against Israeli targets inside Israel and in the Palestinian territories."
The Washington Post has a piece today decrying the arrest and deportation of illegal immigrants from countries that pose a security risk to the US: Groups Decry Immigration Rule. (Hat tip: Laxmi.) The last two paragraphs are classic WaPo “liberalism at any cost” writing: Nishat Islam, 21, bade goodbye to her husband, Mohammad Junaid, this May for what he assumed would be day-long registration. It turned out that Junaid had an outstanding deportation order from 1997. (He came to this country as a teenager.) He was shackled and detained in the Sussex County prison. Three weeks ago the federal government took him to the airport and put him on an airplane to Karachi, Pakistan. The guy was in the country illegally for 6 years, but his wife (and WaPo) still cries that they “followed the rules...” wednesday, november 12, 2003
The Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party has declared its goal of turning Malaysia into an Islamic hellhole, with amputations and stoning and dhimmi status for non-Muslims: Muslims seek Islamic state. GOMBAK, Malaysia — Malaysia's biggest opposition party yesterday declared its goal of forming an Islamic state, with punishments such as stoning and amputation for criminals and a ban on non-Muslims becoming prime minister. ...
Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, the Guantanamo Bay translator arrested on his return from Egypt for possession of classified documents, has been indicted by a grand jury. BOSTON - A former Guantanamo Bay translator arrested after he was found with classified documents at Logan International Airport was charged Wednesday with gathering defense information and making false statements.
Despite CAIR’s best efforts to hype the numbers, a new FBI report shows that Jews are about 6 times more likely to be the targets of anti-religious “hate crimes” than Muslims. What the report doesn’t say: how much of that anti-Jewish bias is from Muslims: Jews bigger target of anti-religious bias in US than Muslims. Attacks against Jews and Muslims accounted for more than 76 percent of all anti-religious hate crimes in 2002, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual report, which compiles data from more than 12,000 law-enforcement agencies from across the United States. But you wouldn’t know that Jews are the main targets of religious “hate crimes” from this ABC News story about the same FBI report, which focuses almost exclusively on crimes against Muslims and mentions the statistics on bias against Jews only in passing: FBI Reports Hate Crimes Down in 2002. (Hat tip: Mark J.) Hate crimes were down sharply in 2002 following a spike the year before that was blamed in part on anti-Muslim and Middle Eastern sentiment after the Sept. 11 attacks.
LGF correspondent and dumpster diver Iowahawk has been digging around in the trash bins of the Universal Press Syndicate, and came up with the first draft of the Ted Rall excrescence we wrote about earlier today: ___________________________ WHY WE KILL JARHEADS by Red Thrall NEW YORK--Dear Recruit: Thank you for joining the noble and popular Iraqi resistance forces. You have been issued an AK-47 rifle, rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a copy of the Chicago Reader with the gay escort service ads removed, and an address where you can pick up supplies of bombs and DVDs of "Bowling For Columbine." Please let your cell leader know if you require additional paper mache materiel for constructing giant Cheney puppets. And make sure you check the correct dependent levels on your W-2 form, for there are serious 2003 tax consequences for under-withholding. You are joining a broad and diverse and fragrant coalition dedicated to one principle: Get Outta Da Bushes! Our leaders include generals of President Saddam Hussein's secular government as well as fundamentalist Islamists... and special guest general Sean Penn! We are Sunni and Shia, Iraqi and foreign, Arab and Kurdish. It takes a nation to hold us back. We are Flintstones Kids, 10 million strong... and growing! Our turn-ons include long walks on the beach and direct action against Chimpy the Resident. Though we differ on what kind of future our country we are fighting side by side because there is no dignity under the brutal and oppressive Bass Weejun of the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority or their Vichyite Tom Delay Texas bug exterminator lapdogs on the Governing Council, headed by embezzler Ahmed Chalabi and his Halliburton gang of Enron swindling WASPs who cannot see the simple beauty of run-on sentences. Because we destroyed our weapons of mass destruction, we were unable to defend ourselves against the American invasion. Oops, sorry guys -- "our bad." Now our only option is guerilla warfare: we must kill as many Americans as possible at a minimum risk to ourselves. That, or maybe we can reapply to Berkeley grad school if we retake the GRE. I heard the Kaplan course helps. Anyhoo, as the Afghan resistance to the Soviets and the American's own Revolution -- once headed by the Artist Formerly Known As Prince -- have proven, it will only be a matter of time before the U.S. occupation forces become demoralized by side projects with Sheila E and Apollonia, and become weird Jehovahs Witnesses. As casualties and credit card expenditures rise, the costs will outweigh the economic and political benefits of occupation. Soon the American public will be getting late fees from CapitalOne, and a mounting five-year price tag of $500 billion, not to mention probably 4,000 gazillion dead crackers from Oklahoma, plus all those harassing dinnertime calls from collection agencies, and the midnight repo men. It's not a reasonable price to pay to get our 2.5 million barrels of oil flowing to the West each month. This net increase, of just 0.23 percent of total OPEC production, and dividing by the remainder of $1.789 for Phillips 66 89 Octane for a 426 Hemi with .202 heads and a a 335/360 cam with a 727 Torqueflite/ Dana 60 spool and a 10.15 dial-in, will not reduce U.S. gasoline prices. At an average of 35 attacks each day, with a standard deviation of 6.2, how long will it take for an American soldier travelling in the opposite direction at 2000 furlongs per fortnight to figure out that he wants to run home to his increasingly angry mommy? It is inevitable. Our goal is to make that day come sooner rather than later. It is no easy thing to shoot or blow up young men and women because they wear American uniforms. Indeed, the soldiers are themselves oppressed members of America's vast underclass of retarded brainwashed white trash dopes. Many don't want to be here, yet do not understand they have the moral imperative to frag their mercenary Killbot masters who do the bidding of Dick Cheney's oil cabal of neo-con Shriners from the Crab Nebula. Unfortunately, we can't help these innocent U.S. soldiers. Damn these infernal neo-cons, forcing us to kill our would-be lumpenprole friends! They are victims, like ourselves, of the bandits in Washington, and their lapdog Fritos Banditos of Mexico. Nor can we disabuse them of the propaganda that they are force fed from Fox News and "Blogs". We regret their deaths, but we must continue to kill them until the last one has gone home to America, with a lovely parting gift of Turtle Wax. Hey, them's the breaks oppressors. In recent months we have opened a second front, against such non-governmental organizations as the United Nations (news - web sites) and Red Crescent. A typical response of the Bush junta to these actions was issued by Oreo house mammy Condoleeza Rice: "It is unfortunate in the extreme that the terrorists decided to go after innocent aid workers and people who were just trying to help the Iraqi people." STFU, bee-yotch! True, many aid workers are well intentioned. However, their presence under American military occupation tacitly endorses the invasion and subsequent colonization of Iraq. They are mere pod people like in "Invasion of The Body Snatchers" and their efforts to restore "normalcy" deceive weak-willed Iraqi civilians into thinking that Americans are popular here. Well, they are so totally not popular, and I heard Afghanistan tell Sudan yesterday that she saw America hanging out at the mall with Spain! Uh huh, Spain. What a loser. In this vein we must also take action against our own Iraqi citizens who choose to collaborate with the enemy. Bush wants to put an "Iraqi face" on the occupation. If we allow the Americans to corrupt our friends and neighbors by turning them into puppet policemen like Lambchop or Willie Tyler and Lester or the Swedish Chef, our independence will be lost forever. If someone you know is considering taking a job with the Americans, tell him that he is engaging in treason and encourage him to seek honest work, like blowing up hotels or penning a hard-hitting intellectual comic strip for Baghdad Scene, the leading weekly guide to the capital city's hottest nightlife and gallery happenings. If he refuses, you must kill him as a warning to other weak-minded individuals. Dude, I was just shittin' ya -- just go ahead and kill him anyway. Take to heart this warning of Cuban revolutionary Desi Arnaz: "The gringo oppressor has a lotta 'splaining to do!" If the Americans are right about us, and we enjoy no popular support, we deserve to be annihilated. Fortunately, the U.S. has adopted Israeli-style retaliatory bombing, splattering us all over the sidewalks and pretending it has the upper hand. Well nyah nyah nyah. We meant to do that. To victory!
Two Al Jazeera employees have been detained by coalition forces in Iraq, for having prior knowledge of a car bombing in Baghdad: Al-Jazeera cameraman, driver accused of having knowledge of Iraqi blasts. (Hat tip: whaledog.com.) Coalition military officials in Baghdad said they understood some journalists had been detained but had no details. Now why in the world would they suspect something like that?
Greyhawk at the Mudville Gazette has set up a web ring for military bloggers, with the slogan “Free Speech From Those Who Help Make It Possible:” MilBlogs.
Like a spoiled hyperactive child, Ted Rall is continuing to act out his hatred for America in print, getting more and more outrageous as he is more and more ignored. His latest excretion is the foulest he’s written yet; reading this ugly thing is like crawling through a sewer in Damascus: WHY WE FIGHT. (Hat tip: bobby.) Dear Recruit: Notice that he published this piece yesterday: Veterans Day. Universal Press Syndicate should cancel this bastard’s contract.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad say they’re willing to talk about a new phony cease fire agreement with the new Palestinian puppet prime minister—but they’d prefer to continue killing Jews: Hamas, Jihad consider new Hudna. Adnan Aspur, a Hamas spokesman in the West Bank, has announced that the organization is prepared to consider a new Hudna (temporary ceasefire).
New York Times pessimism about American war efforts is not a recent phenomenon; the CounterRevolutionary went to the New York Public Library and found an incredible stash of negativity—in New York Times articles about the occupation of Germany following World War II. Great work, Eric.
Robert Spencer’s appearance on the Michael Medved radio show (mentioned yesterday) has been rescheduled for 1 pm Pacific time, 4 pm Eastern, this coming Monday, November 17. Mark it on your calendar.
Al-Qaeda threat to Bush during Britain trip. (Hat tip: scaramouche.) LONDON : Al-Qaeda terrorists using the cover of anti-war protests are a real threat to the safety of US President George W. Bush during his state visit to London next week, Britain's most senior policemen have warned.
A big LGF cheer for Silvio Berlusconi, who makes the United Nations and the International Red Cross look like the cowardly weenies they are: Italy to Keep Troops in Iraq Despite Deaths. The killings looked likely to revive anti-war sentiments in Italy, where some opposition parties have demanded a troop withdrawal. But Berlusconi, grappling with Italy's biggest international tragedy since assuming power three years ago, said the country should stand firm.
Iranian “president” Mohammad Khatami is optimistic that the United Nations will give Iran the time they need to build nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a report obtained by Reuters Monday it had found no evidence of a secret arms bid but that Tehran had dabbled in activity often associated with bomb-making, such as plutonium production. After all, what’s a little plutonium among friends? Nobody’s perfect!
Trying to make sure the flow of money from the Saudis doesn’t dry up, Hamas condemned the Riyadh bombing today: Hamas Condemns Riyadh Bombing as Harmful to Islam. Right; “harmful to Islam” because, after all, it didn't kill any Jews. GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas, a Palestinian faction that has spearheaded a suicide bombing campaign against Israelis, joined international condemnation on Wednesday of a suicide attack in Riyadh that Saudi Arabia blamed on al Qaeda.
Waiting in my Inbox this morning was this odd little note, sent via our contact form from an IP address in Iran, with the subject: “MODIFYING & appologize from IRANIAN.” DEAR SIR! Oh, I won’t forget! Persian GOLF. Gotcha. |
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al-Qaida May Be Behind Turkey Attacks (AP)
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