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China-Japan-Koreas
Foreign Ministry US of Linking with S. Korean ship Sinking
2010-05-23
Straight from the KCNA!
Pyongyang, May 21 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Friday denouncing the United States for pulling up the DPRK, absurdly asserting that the sinking of a south Korean warship was an attack made by north Korea and challenge to the international peace and security.

This betrays the intention of the U.S. to stir up the atmosphere of international pressure upon the DPRK by backing the Lee Myung Bak group of traitors of south Korea, the statement said, and went on:

This indicates that the U.S. is invariably pursuing a hostile policy towards the DPRK to isolate and stifle it.

As the DPRK had already clarified, it has nothing to do with the case. The DPRK has always abided by international law but the U.S. made such absurd assertion which reminds one of a thief crying "Stop the thief!"

The fabrication of the case and the "results of the investigation into it" are, in the final analysis, nothing but a farce orchestrated by the group of traitors with the approval of the U.S. and under its patronage.

The U.S. claimed that there was hardly any side which was ready to do so except north Korea and that the cause of the sinking of the warship was most likely a torpedo attack by north Korea even before the announcement of the results of the investigation, paying lip-service to scientific and objective investigation. From the very day the case occurred, the U.S. branded the DPRK as a "suspect" and led the investigation into the case in that direction.

Prompted by its miscalculation that the DPRK would yield to its sanctions, the U.S. chose to shun dialogue and negotiations under the signboard of strategic patience. The DPRK and the U.S. were in negotiations over the issue of holding another round of talks in New York in the wake of the Pyongyang bilateral talks held in December of 2009. This was part of the efforts to finally revive the framework of the six-party talks according to the third phase proposal made by China, the host country of the talks.

But the Obama administration of the Democratic Party which was defeated by the Republican Party in the by-election to the Senate that took place in January after it was criticized for being weak in the foreign policy again made a switchover to a hard-line policy, totally derailing even the process for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula by linking the DPRK with the above-said case.

It is the intention of the present U.S. administration to suffocate the DPRK politically and economically by internationalizing the sanctions against the latter and use south Korea as a servant for executing its Asian strategy. The U.S., however, should know that it is not so easy to pull the wool over the eyes of the world people.

They vividly remember upbeat and "persuasive" U.S. Secretary of State Powell reading top secret information about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq for 70 minutes at the meeting of the UN Security Council held in February of 2003. It was with such unprecedented lie that the U.S. justified an armed invasion of Iraq and it is still not free from such disgraceful fallout. Should the U.S. tell another lie on the Korean Peninsula and let its running dogs strain the situation, they will have to pay a price incomparably dearer than what the U.S. has done for the Iraqi war.

The U.S. and its vassal forces will witness only the reality of prospering socialist Korea quite contrary to what they had dreamed for such a long time.

It is the invariable policy of the DPRK to realize the denuclearization of the peninsula and protect the stability and peace of the region but it will not allow any slightest act to infringe upon its sovereignty and right to existence.
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Fifth Column
Harry Belafonte Calls Black Republicans 'Tyrants'
2005-08-08
Atlanta (CNSNews.com) - Celebrity activist Harry Belafonte referred to prominent African-American officials in the Bush administration as "black tyrants" at a weekend march, and he also compared the administration to Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. Belafonte, a featured speaker at Saturday's march in Atlanta commemorating the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act, previously ignited a political controversy in 2002 when he likened then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to a "house slave."

At Saturday's civil rights march, Belafonte said the Bush administration has been "rather dismal" for the lives of black Americans. The march, which featured prominent civil rights groups and labor union representatives, was intended to drum up support for extending and strengthening the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Belafonte used a Hitler analogy when asked about what impact prominent blacks such as former Secretary of State Powell and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had on the Bush administration's relations with minorities.

"Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich. Color does not necessarily denote quality, content or value," Belafonte said in an exclusive interview with Cybercast News Service. "[If] a black is a tyrant, he is first and foremost a tyrant, then he incidentally is black. Bush is a tyrant and if he gathers around him black tyrants, they all have to be treated as they are being treated," he added. When asked specifically who was a "black tyrant" in the Bush administration, Belafonte responded to this reporter, "You." When this reporter noted that he was a Caucasian and attempted to ask another question, Belafonte abruptly ended the interview by saying, "That's it."

Another prominent celebrity marcher at Saturday's civil rights march also employed Nazi analogies to the GOP and conservatives. Civil rights activist Dick Gregory mocked the existence of African-American conservatives in America. "They (black conservatives) have a right to exist, but why would I want to walk around with a swastika on my shirt after the way Hitler done messed it (the swastika symbol) up?" Gregory said in an interview with Cybercast News Service. (The swastika was an ancient symbol generally regarded an emblem of strength and luck before the Nazi Party adopted it in 1920.) "So why would I want to call myself a conservative after the way them white racists thugs have used that word to hide behind? They call themselves new Republicans," Gregory said.

Gregory trashed the United States, calling it "the most dishonest, ungodly, unspiritual nation that ever existed in the history of the planet. As we talk now, America is 5 percent of the world's population and consumes 96 percent of the world's hard drugs," Gregory said.
Gregory also accused President Bush of stealing the 2004 presidential election. "They didn't win, and I got that from the white press. At four o'clock [on Election Day 2004], that evening, the white press said from the exit polls that [Democratic presidential nominee John] Kerry had won by a landslide and then three hours later something funny happened," Gregory said of Bush's eventual election victory.

Asked why approximately ten percent of African-Americans typically vote for Republican presidential candidates, Gregory responded, "I have no idea. You have to ask them. That's like asking me about a woman having a baby. Go ask her, I don't know."

And even more goodness, EFL: "They all need to be locked up because they are all criminals and they are all thieves," said Judge Greg Mathis, the star of the syndicated television program "The Judge Mathis Show." Mathis made his remarks to an enthusiastic crowd assembled in Atlanta to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Participants are launching a two-year campaign to extend and strengthen key aspects of the act when it expires in 2007. "It is indeed criminal to steal an election and within two years run up a federal deficit of half-a-trillion dollars, send our young people over to Iraq to die for an unjust war. What they are doing is criminal," Mathis said to loud cheers.
Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California appeared at the march and noted that minorities may not have had full voting rights in the last two presidential elections. "Some changes have to be made so we don't have a repeat of 2000 and 2004 where there was intimidation and discrepancies at the polls," Pelosi told Cybercast News Service during the voting rights march. "In the state of Ohio, where they had fewer voting booths and long lines in minority neighborhoods and no lines and many voting booths in white neighborhoods, that the balance is not what it should have been," she added.

U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) echoed the accusation of many at the march that Bush was an illegitimate president. "The last two elections were stolen. They were stolen and so we will not rest until we reclaim our democracy and this is what today is all about," Lee told the crowd gathered. Lee also called the war in Iraq "unnecessary, immoral and illegal" and added "our nation was lied to in order to justify this invasion and occupation."

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) made it clear who the marchers were directing their anger at on Saturday. "We are here to take on President Bush, [Vice President] Dick Cheney. We are here to take on [House Majority Leader] Tom DeLay. We are here to take on the new appointee to the Supreme Court, John Roberts," Waters said from the podium to cheers from the crowd.

Musician Stevie Wonder addressed the marchers demanding that the Voting Rights Act be extended and strengthened. "Having to demand that we have a bill that will guarantee the voting rights of all American citizens forever is ridiculous," Wonder said. He also read the lyrics of an upcoming song to be released in September. "At this time we have a choice to make. Father God is watching while we cause Mother Earth so much pain. It's such a shame. Not enough money for the young, the old, the poor, but for war there is always more," Wonder said.

The Bush administration was also targeted by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who declared that the president's "record against human rights, civil rights, economic rights, is absolutely terrible."

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) said America was being ruled by the "Bush mentality," where "crony capitalism" was supreme.

Jesse Jackson said the Voting Rights Act extension is critical because "the same old enemies of civil rights and voting rights will always keep up their ugly activities. "Race baiters and discriminators may go underground, but they never move out of town," Jackson said.
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International-UN-NGOs
A Top Kofi Annan Aide Insults Israeli Leader
2004-12-30
Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, yesterday urged that Secretary-General Annan fire his top adviser, Lakhdar Brahimi, for his anti-Israel tirades.

Mr. Brahami recently likened Prime Minister Sharon to an assassin, adding to a series of statements that embarrassed the secretary-general, who is trying to position himself as a player in the peace process between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs.

In a phone call to a top U.N. official this week, Mr. Gillerman said that the latest anti-Israeli screed by Mr. Brahimi in Europe should be grounds for firing him, the ambassador told The New York Sun yesterday.

Speaking on Belgian radio and to the Belgian senate last week, Mr. Brahimi compared Mr. Sharon to an assassin, urged Europeans to increase their pressure on Israel, and said that the world is too accepting of "cynical and ridiculous" Israeli positions on peace with the Palestinian Arabs, according to a report by Agence France-Presse that was translated from the French.

Because Mr. Annan and many other top officials were out on vacation this week, Mr. Gillerman said he spoke with the head of the Asia-Pacific division, Geir Pederson, a Norwegian who is increasingly involved in issues related to the Middle East. He has asked Mr. Pederson to relay his message to Mr. Annan. A U.N. official who asked not to be named confirmed that the conversation took place, but refused to comment on it.

For the second time this month, a U.N. spokesman yesterday distanced Mr. Annan from Mr. Brahimi's words, saying Mr. Brahimi spoke "in his personal capacity." He added that Mr. Annan's views on the Middle East "are well known."

The U.N. issued a similar statement two weeks ago after Mr. Brahimi told an Arab audience that America professes to promote human rights in the Arab world while at the same time ignoring Israeli human rights violations.

"We've had enough," Mr. Gillerman told the Sun. After the incident in Dubai two weeks ago, Mr. Annan promised him in a private conversation that Mr. Brahimi would not repeat such statements, the ambassador said. A week later a similar sentiment, which Mr. Gillerman described as "bigoted," was publicly expressed in Europe.

Mr. Brahimi has been a prominent player in Mr. Annan's diplomatic team in postwar Afghanistan, where he has served as the secretary-general's special representative, as well as in Iraq, where he helped shape the first sovereign government last summer.

After returning from Iraq, Mr. Annan announced that Mr. Brahimi has accepted a role as an undersecretary-general, one of the highest-paid positions at the U.N., serving "as a member of the secretary-general's senior staff" and advising Mr. Annan "on a wide range of issues, including situations in the areas of conflict prevention and conflict resolution."

As a former top official of the Arab League, Mr. Brahimi, an Algerian national, is considered by the U.N. to be an expert on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. Mr. Annan is said to have relied heavily on many occasions on Mr. Brahimi's advice on Middle East issues.

In his latest visit to Washington, where he met Secretary of State Powell and Condoleezza Rice, who has been nominated by the president to replace Mr. Powell, Mr. Annan stressed the need for deeper U.N. involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, according to sources on both sides of that issue. America has urged the U.N. to be more even-handed in its approach to the Middle East; it is seen by Washington as heavily pro-Arab.

Whether related to the Washington visit or not, after Mr. Annan returned last week, his chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, announced he would retire. In conversations with the Sun, several diplomats and U.N. officials named Mr. Riza, as well as Mr. Brahimi, as the most anti-Israeli officials in Mr. Annan's inner circle.

According to AFP, Mr. Brahimi, in an interview conducted in French on Belgium's RTBP radio last Friday, said, "You must condemn Mr. Sharon when he assassinates people, but you keep quiet just like you keep quiet when he uproots more than a million trees in the orchards of Palestine."

He urged European listeners to be much more aggressive in pressuring Israel. "A return of peace will not happen all by itself," he said. "It will happen only with a totally different European attitude."

A day earlier, Mr. Brahimi addressed the Belgian senate, where he said that the root of international terrorism is related mostly to the Arab-Israeli conflict, according to AFP. "What is being done to solve this problem? Not enough," he said.

"The international community has too easily accepted the cynical and ridiculous viewpoint of the Israeli prime minister, who considered the late president Yasser Arafat the only person responsible for insecurity in Israel and for the plight of his own people," Mr. Brahimi told legislators.

"In fact, the Arab states have essentially abandoned the Palestinians in recent years and Europe has not yet used the considerable political influence it enjoys to advance peace," he added. "European states and public opinion do not condemn loudly enough the grave violations of the most elementary human rights in Palestine."
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Europe
Michael Ledeen: Europe's Ritual Dance
2004-11-30
The European "solution" to the threat of Iranian atomic bombs bids fair to join the "peace process" as the most boffo running gag in the history of show biz. Every few months, the elegantly dressed diplomatic wizards from London, Paris, and Berlin race across a continent or two to meet with Iranians dressed in turbans and gowns, and after some hours of alleged hard work, they emerge with a new agreement, just like their more numerous counterparts engaged in the peace negotiations. The main difference is that the peace-process deals seemed to last for several months, while the schemes hammered out with the mullahs rarely last more than an hour a week or two. Otherwise, it's the same sort of vaudeville routine: a few laughs, with promises of more to come.
"Oh, charades! I love charades!"
The latest Iranian shenanigan may have set a record for speed. On Monday they announced they had stopped the centrifuges that were enriching uranium. On Tuesday they asked for permission to run the centrifuges again. The Europeans sternly said no. The next scene will be at Turtle Bay, with brief interruptions for somewhat off-color remarks about sexual harassment at high levels (so to speak) of the United Nations.

No serious person can believe that the negotiations are going to block, or even seriously delay, the Iranian race to acquire atomic bombs. The European posturing is the Western counterpart of the Iranian deception, a ritual dance designed to put a flimsy veil over the nakedness of the real activities. The old-fashioned name for this sort of thing is "appeasement," and was best described by Churchill, referring to Chamberlain's infamous acceptance of Hitler's conditions at Munich. Chamberlain had to choose between war and dishonor, opted for the latter, and got the former as well. That is now the likely fate of Blair, Chirac, and Schroeder. They surely know this. Why do they accept it?
Chirac and Schroeder do it out of habit. They can't conceive of the idea of Islamic nukes destroying Paris or Berlin, and there's all that lovely money to be made before crunch time comes, far down the road on somebody else's watch. They assume they'll always Realpolitik themselves onto the winning side, and for some reason they never conceive that the Merkins will be the winning side — from their standpoint the odds are too long. I'm not sure what Blair's doing; perhaps he's giving it one last good, honest effort before coming to the conclusion that the ayatollahs need to be assisted to the trashbin of history...
They accept it for many reasons, of which two seem paramount: They have huge financial interests tied up with the Iranian regime (billions of dollars worth of oil and gas contracts, plus other trade agreements, some already signed, others in the works); and Iran is the last place in the Middle East where they can play an active diplomatic role. This is particularly acute for France, which knows it will long be a pariah to free Iraqi governments, and views Iran as its last chance to thwart America's dominant role in the region.
Not all is hopeless. There are alliances to be made under the table with the Soddies and Egypt and a possibly resurgent Libya. There are North African alliances to be built with Algeria as the keystone. There's Turkey to be toyed with, shown the Europrize but never allowed to quite touch it. And Jacques should keep in mind that memories in the Middle East are all very short term or very long term, with a big blur in the middle; five years after the Merkins are gone, there's every chance that La Belle France could be riding high again in Baghdad.
Sad to say, there is no evidence that the Europeans give a tinker's damn either about the destiny of the Iranian people, or about Iran's leading role in international terrorism, or about the Islamic Republic's joining the nuclear club. They are quite prepared to live with all that. I think they expect Iran to "go nuclear" in the near future, at which point they will tell President Bush that there is no option but to accept the brutal facts — the world's leading sponsor of terrorism in possession of atomic bombs and the missiles needed to deliver them on regional and European targets — and "come to terms" with the mullahcracy.
They're making the assumption the U.S. will be willing to "come to terms" with a fundamental disruption to the balance of power in favor of Islamism, when the U.S. is engaged in a war with that very Islamism. Their political bedrock involves a world without major war in its future (or its present). Their recurrent attempts to redefine the WoT as something other than a real war is a symptom of that. If it's akin to the war on drugs or the war on poverty or the war on AIDS, then there's no Anzio involved, no Tarawa, and no Dresden. There's only "provocations," "aggressions," and "responses." Their current level of indignation with the U.S. is because we're no longer playing by those rules, having inconsiderately received another Pearl Harbor before they've gone through September, 1939.
In other words, as the editorialists at the Wall Street Journal have wryly commented, the real goal of the negotiations is to restrain the United States, which, left to its own devices, might actually do something serious.
If Europe had still been negotiating with Hitler in late 1941, I suspect we'd have gotten much the same reaction after Pearl Harbor: suck up the casualties, go to the negotiating table, and don't upset the apple cart. Things will come out in the end.
If President Bush found a way to prevent Iran from acquiring atomic bombs, it might well wreck the Europeans' grand appeasement strategy. There is certainly no risk that the United Nations will do anything serious, which is why the Europeans keep insisting that it is the only "legitimate" forum for any discussion of the Iranian nuclear menace. At the same time, I rather suspect that the Europeans, like many of our own diplomats, would be secretly pleased if someone else — that is to say, Israel — were to "do something" to rid them of this problem.
I agree. It would change everyone's negotiating position, of course, but it would also damage Israel's "legitimacy," as the Osirak raid did at the time. The Übereuros' fear, though, is that the U.S. will "do something," which would add to a basically unbroken string of successes since the Reagan administration, with the glaring exception of the Europhile Clinton years. Apres we thumped Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and a few other fairly rabid states decided to join the U.S. side to greater or lesser extents, because they had visions of similar scenes taking place in their own countries. After the fall of Baghdad, Libya decided to hang up its own nuclear pretensions and Syria briefly came around before Teheran jerked the Boy President's chain. Enthusiasms have cooled as we've become bogged down in the minutiae of occupation, but they'll fire up again if we deliver a thorough thumping to the ayatollahs. Eventually the enthusiasm will remain or the mad dogs and mullahs will find themselves moving up the list. That points to an eventual naturally developing American sphere of influence, which the Euros see as a zero-sum game.
When they whisper that thought to themselves in the privacy of their own offices or the darkness of their own bedrooms, they mentally replay the Israeli bombing of the nuclear reactor in Osirak, Iraq, in 1981, an attack they publicly condemned and privately extolled. They would do the same tomorrow, sighing in relief as they tighten the noose around Israel's neck. Rarely has the metaphor of the scapegoat been so appropriate: the burden of our sins of omission loaded onto the Israelis, who are then sacrificed to atone for us all.
I'd call that thinkful wishing at this point. Like the press's vision of generals, they're fighting the last war, rather than the next one. If they really do think that way, they're looking at process, rather than result. Iran's one of the two axes of terrorism and knocking down the ayatollahs would fundamentally swing the balance of power our way, to the Euros' zero-sum detriment. A world without ayatollahs leaves only a very naked Soddy Arabia to push terrorism. The remainder of the bad guy world is either dependent on the princes — like Chechnya and Paleostine — or ineffective on the larger world stage — like the Liberation Tigers or Lashkar e-Taiba.
This may seem sheer wishful thinking, but wishful thinking is an important part of foreign policy. The idea that "we don't need to do anything, because so-and-so will do our dirty work for us" has in fact been central to Western strategy in the Middle East for quite a while.
That's worked well, hasn't it?
For example, it was practiced by Bush the Elder in 1991 at the end of Desert Storm, when the president openly mused that it would be simply wonderful if the Kurds and Shiites overthrew Saddam Hussein. They tried it, foolishly believing that if things went badly the United States would support them. But Bush the First was quite serious about his wishful thinking, and stood by as Saddam slaughtered them — the scapegoats of the hour — by the tens of thousands.
That raised enough problems to be overcome in the runup to the most recent war. And it's put local populations on their guard against trying the same thing. So the end result was detrimental to our interests. Better not to talk about it if you don't intend to help it succeed.
Similar wishful thinking is now at the heart of European — and probably a good deal of American — strategic thinking about the Iranian nuclear project. That it is a disgusting abdication of moral responsibility and a strategic blunder of potentially enormous magnitude is both obvious and irrelevant to the actual course of events.
It's like banging yourself on the thumb with a hammer. You don't set out to do it. Only when the hammer's on its way do you actually realize you're doing it. And only in rare instances are you able to stop it before you cause yourself considerable pain. Maybe the phenomenon needs a title, something like "The Law of Stupefied Momentum."
I do not believe Israel will solve this problem for us, both because it is militarily very daunting and because successive Israeli governments have believed that Iran is too big a problem for them, and if it is to be solved, it will have to be solved by the United States and our allies. Whether that is true or not, I have long argued that Iran is the keystone of the terrorist edifice, and that we are doomed to confront it sooner or later, nuclear or not.
I don't see it as the keystone, but as one of two parallel and occasionally allied axes. I certainly agree with the rest of the statement, though. Iran is more militarily powerful than Soddy Arabia, especially with its own nuclear program, but not as diplomatically and culturally intricate a problem. So I'd guess it'll be sooner, rather than later.
Secretary of State Powell disagreed, and he was at pains recently to stress that American policy does not call for regime change in Tehran — even though the president repeatedly called for it.
Along with the people in the streets. The argument against taking on Iran militarily is collaterally killing people who support us. Once the iron hand's removed, of course, they'll tend toward the Franco-European approach, since on the surface it's a more rational and humane approach to governance, but we can't hold that against them. Israel's going to do the same thing, assuming peace is ever achieved with the Paleos. It's entirely possible both Iran and Israel will be Francophile nations 30 years from now, assuming there's still a France.
And the president is right; regime change is the best way to deal with the nuclear threat and the best way to advance our cause in the war against the terror masters. We have a real chance to remove the terror regime in Tehran without any military action, but rather through political means, by supporting the Iranian democratic opposition. According to the regime itself, upwards of 70 percent of Iranians oppose the regime, want freedom, and look to us for political support. I believe they, like the Yugoslavs who opposed Milosevic and like the Ukrainians now demonstrating for freedom, are entitled to the support of the free world.
It's certainly something to try before expending the men, money, and resources that'll be involved in war. But I think ultimately it's going to come down to war, and it'll probably happen next year.
Even if you believe that a nuclear Iran is inevitable, is it not infinitely better to have those atomic bombs in the hands of pro-Western Iranians, chosen by their own people, than in the grip of fanatical theocratic tyrants dedicated to the destruction of the Western satans? And maybe it isn't inevitable. Faster, please.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
No Way Out
2004-05-26
Meet Hassan Abbasi, a well-known Iranian political scientist, longtime top official of the Revolutionary Guards, and currently "theoretician" in the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (how does one get a job description like that, I wonder) and the head of the National Security and Strategic Research Center. Abbasi holds special responsibility for North American affairs.

Apparently morale is very low in the ranks of the Basij, the group of fanatical thugs that do the regime’s dirty work in the streets, things like beating up women whose scarves show too much hair, rounding up student protesters, and so forth. Friends of mine in Iran tell me that Basiji are becoming convinced that the regime’s days are numbered, and they are understandably discouraged.

There is plenty of evidence that Iranians are utterly contemptuous of the regime, and are not afraid to demonstrate it. When the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof went to Iran a few weeks ago, he was astonished to meet Iranians in all walks of life who attacked the regime and told him he could use their names. And on May 18, the well-known university professor, Hashem Agajari, told an Iranian judge that he would not appeal his death sentence (for blasphemy, having said that the people should not be "apes to follow blindly whatever the mullahs say"). "Free me unconditionally or carry out the sentence," he said. As iran-press-service.com dryly remarked, Agajari had been banned for ten years from professional activities, "but (the court) did not say if the bans would take effect before or after the application of the death sentence."

Meanwhile, an outspoken journalist, Ensafali Hedayat, went on a hunger strike to protest his 18-month prison sentence for "insulting regime leaders and writing propaganda against the Islamic Republic."

Such demonstrations of contempt have strained the nerves of the regime’s leaders, especially the judges. On May 25th, for example, Judge Mohseni-Ezhei attacked yet another journalist, Isa Saharkhiz, by "throwing two glass bowls at his head and then biting him on the lower abdomen."

So, last Sunday, Abbasi set out to restore the Basiji’s enthusiasm for the Islamic Revolution. Speaking at the Technical College of Tehran, he made some amazing statements. "The infidels — Western countries and America — are the sworn enemies of God and Muslems and any action taken to terrorize them or frighten them is considered holy and a source of pride." Abbasi went on, "Lebanese Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas have all been trained by these hands," that is, Iranian hands.

Thus far, the usual jihadist rhetoric, although the specific confirmation of Iran’s intimate links to three of the world’s most lethal terrorist organizations was a bit unusual. But then he went on with a megalomanical vision that bears some attention. "We intend to withdraw $53 billion of Iranian and Arab investments from the U.S.A. and thus cause instability [in] its economy, we take pride that our actions have brought 1/9 of the budget deficit in America’s economy this year and we shall keep up with our economic actions." The claim to have caused nearly ten percent of the American deficit probably refers to the rise in oil prices. But this was only the beginning of his promise to bring America to its knees.

"We have identified some 29 weak points for attacks in the U.S. and in the West, we intend to explode some 6,000 American atomic warheads, we have shared our intelligence with other guerilla groups and we shall utilize them as well. We have set up a department to cover England and we have had discussions regarding them[;] we have contacted the Mexicans and the Argentineans and will work with anyone who has an axe to grind with America."

Let’s not quibble over the details, since I doubt Abbasi would be inclined to reveal chapter and verse about specific Iranian operations. His list of potential South American allies omits Venezuela, which actively cooperates with the terror masters, and the figure of 6,000 warheads targeted by Iranian-backed saboteurs is beyond the pale, even for a mullah. But when an official as authoritative as Abbasi tells the regime’s loyalists in a closed meeting that Iran is sabotaging our economy and organizing terrorist attacks on our territory, you can take that to the bank.

Iranian operations inside the United States are of course an old story — enemies of the revolution were killed here in the early 1980s — and Iranians may even have been involved in the September 11 attacks. According to CNSNews.com, documents from the U.S. District Court in south Florida cite a government informer (and former Colombian drug smuggler) that his erstwhile partner in the drug business, an Iranian named Mehrzad Arbane, told the informer he had also smuggled people into the United States.

This sort of link between jihadis and conventional drug smuggling has long existed and available public evidence suggests it is getting even stronger. Little attention has been given to Spanish investigators’ discovery that the terrorists who bombed Madrid on 3/11 had financed their operations by smuggling drugs into Spain. And a leading Italian judge recently announced that the "camorra," the infamous Neapolitan criminal organization, had worked hand-in-glove with Middle Eastern terrorists.

We can’t wage war against terrorism without fighting the narcotraffickers as well. It’s often impossible to say where the one ends and the other begins. And here again, the mullahs play an important role. Iran is a major conduit for Afghan poppy seeds and opium, and can easily place its terror agents within the drug caravans heading south and west. That long pipeline eventually arrives at America’s borders, where, as Abbasi announced last Sunday, Iran is passionately courting our southern neighbors.

Perhaps Secretary of State Powell, who remains aloof from the life-and-death struggle for freedom in Iran, and his loyal deputy, Richard Armitage (who proclaims the Islamic Republic "a democracy") might study the remarks from Abbasi, and ask themselves if it is in our interest to have this hateful regime continue to attack us, even as they speed toward acquisition of atomic bombs.

You’d have thought this president, who has spoken so often and so well about his support for freedom in Iran, would have long since insisted that his administration develop a coherent policy to support the Iranian people’s desire to rid themselves of these murderous mullahs. It hasn’t happened. Moreover, President Bush eloquently and spontaneously condemns the mullahs in private conversations as well as in public speeches, yet he seems oddly detached from his State Department’s slow mating dance with the black widows in Tehran.

Sooner or later we will be forced to fight back against the mullahs, because their war against us is driven by fanatical hatred of everything we stand for and the knowledge that their regime is doomed if we succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no escape from this war, whatever the appeasers in Foggy Bottom may think. We can win or lose, but we can’t get out of it.

Faster, please.
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Home Front: Politix
The Degeneration Of The Democratic Party...
2004-04-14
...from Vanderleun at www.americandigest.org . SEVERELY EFL'd, read the whole thing - these are the highlights as I saw 'em...
Question: When is it permissible in the United States to call a distinguished African-American an "Uncle Tom'"
Answer: When he's a Republican and you're a Democrat.
That's the way it is over on the Daily ("Screw 'Em) Kos. You see, it seems that Secretary of State Powell is in the minds of these twisted people guilty of.... guilty of.... what? Of being a Republican? Of being an African-American that doesn't seem to want to follow the party line? Strange. The message is that anyone or anything that stands with or supports, not the policies nor the positions of George Bush, but the very person of George Bush is to be attacked and denigrated with every slur at their command.

I will spare my gentle readers the details of my own political odyssey since September 11, but I will note that as of last year I was determined to vote Republican instead of Democrat in the coming elections more out of sorrow than anger. But that was then and this is now. Now I have come to the place where the whole sorry spectacle and circus of the Democrats over the last year has finally angered me. The party whose ideals once excited me has become a parody of itself, a dangerous parody. Instead of inspriation it delivers either numbing boredom or sheer despair at its intellectual and spiritual poverty. Instead of telling us what sort of New Jerusalem it would have us build as our City on the Hill, it takes us into the slums of the soul. Instead of waving the bright banners of how, it dons the rags and bones of defeatism and appeasement. Instead of leading the parade, it wants to make us content with following after the elephants with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. When it needs to supply us with someone to believe in, to follow, to admire and to trust, it offers up John F. Kerry and his rollicking side-kick Ted Kennedy. It's like after sitting through the long and tedious circus of the primaries, the party went out and chose Emmett Kelly; the saddest clown of them all.

From the party that gave us FDR, Truman, JFK and even, yes, LBJ, the Democrats have gone through a process of gradual but increasingly shrill devolution to the party of such weak, tepid and compromised souls as Carter, Clinton, and now Kerry. And the men the Party puts up are only the shadows of the compromises it has made with itself. And it has made many compromises over the years.... and become the poorer for each one of them. Perhaps the reason the Democrats are still so obsessed with Vietnam is that it was the war that pitched them into the quagmire of their own making; a quagmire that sucks them deeper into the pit of inconsequence with each passing election.

True, they did start to climb out of the quagmire of sixties politics and Vietnam with Clinton, but it was only for a few years until Clinton's own sixties tendencies sucked them back down. What we see instead is a party that has been so out of power for so long, and is so deeply out of touch with so much of the body politic that it has turned in upon itself in its hunger for power and, through starvation, has begun to consume itself from the core out. This is why we are starting to see such chilling incidents as the ad in a newspaper in Florida by a Democratic Political Club calling for the killing of Donald Rumsfeld. That's why we are almost certain to see a move in the next few months on the part of the Democrats to bring a Bill of Impeachment against both the President and the Vice-President. It won't pass. It won't be expected to pass or even make it to the floor. It will be there just for the "news-cycles" it will churn up.

And this all arises from deep within the monsters from the id that now control and move the Democratic Party across out political landscape like a mob of extras from The Dawn of the Dead. It's an indecent and disgusting spectacle and I suspect there's more than a few million long-time Democrats who are revolted by it. Bush-Hate, racism, calls for the death of Republican cabinet members, snide innuendo, joy at the death of Americans in Iraq, the endless political thumbsucking of the 911 Commission, and there's more on the way, much more. It's a tired, sick and crazed political party that is so greedy and hungry for power that it will do anything, including selling this country down the drain, to get it back. I'll have no more to do with it. I'm not the only one.
..I'm going to go one step further. I believe some time before the election, you will see a direct, unambiguous call for 'armed resistance' against the Bush Administration from a national political figure.

God help us all.


Mike
Link


Fifth Column
Kerry’s pandering for votes Beginning to Alarm Hemisphere Leftists
2004-04-03
EFL - From Venezuelaanalysis.com home of the Chavistas•
In a series of foreign policy formulations in recent days, the presumptive Democratic party presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry, has issued a number of statements on Latin American-related subjects which, if anything, appear to outflank on the right the Bush administration’s extremist regional policymakers, as he shamelessly panders to the anti-Castro paranoia of a group of aging but wealthy Cuban-American ideologues in South Florida, and rich Venezuelan expatriates in Coral Gables. His two primary targets have been President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. While commendably finding fault with Bush policy regarding Secretary of State Powell’s failure to protect the Aristide government in Haiti, Kerry’s rhetoric regarding Cuba and Venezuela is reminiscent of barren Cold War strictures which, for all purposes, places him in the same extremist ideological bracket as the administration’s two chief Latin American policy makers; the State Department’s Roger Noriega and the Bush White House’s Otto Reich.

Regarding Haiti, Kerry has said, “This administration has been engaged in very manipulative and wrongful ways. They have a theological and an ideological hatred for Aristide. They always have. They approached this so the [anti-Aristide] insurgents were empowered by this administration.” He also has observed in reference to Haiti, “People will know I’m tough and I’m prepared to do what is necessary to defend the United States of America, and that includes the unilateral deployment of troops if necessary.” Such declarations have raised hopes that a Kerry administration will take a more forceful stand in favor of Haitian democracy and commit the resources needed to stabilize the country’s battered institutions and uphold its constitution, which has been all but ignored by Powell.
Kerry would have deployed U.S. forces to support Jean=Berty? It's okay to prop up a dictator if there's an election in his past?
Regarding Castro, Kerry called for the continuation and intensification of Washington’s near-universally acknowledged failed embargo policy towards Havana. ’’I’m pretty tough on Castro, because I think he’s running one of the last vestiges of a Stalinist secret police government in the world,’’ Kerry remarked in recent days. When asked whether he endorsed lifting the embargo, he answered, “Not unilaterally, not now, no.” In truth, any action would have to be unilateral, since the embargo is not honored by any other country in the world. As for sending back Elían to his father in Cuba several years ago, Kerry observed, “I don’t agree with that. I didn’t like the way they did it.” Regarding the virulently anti-Castro Helms-Burton measure, Kerry said, “I voted for the Helms-Burton legislation to be tough on companies that deal with him [Castro].”

Having endeavored throughout the Democratic primaries to establish his credentials as an advocate of a more principled and professional method of international engagement, in contrast to the interventionist and unilateralist blunderings of the current administration when it came to the Iraq war, the senator is now in danger of tarnishing that reputation through his reckless endorsement of the White House’s long discredited Latin America policies that are now even opposed by conservative farm state Republican legislators and businessmen.... By so flagrantly tacking to the prevailing political winds in South Florida, Kerry risks alienating voters from elsewhere in the country who want not a reprise of Bush and Powell’s tainted foreign policy, but a bold and visionary alternative. Kerry’s statements could also potentially deal a heavy blow against Democratic efforts to mobilize some of the more disaffected members of its party base in a year where the drop out of even a handful of previously committed Democratic dissidents could prove deadly to his electoral prospects.

Kerry’s regrettable baiting of Bush on being soft on Castro and Chávez borders on the irresponsible and could have dangerous implications for peace in the region. In 1989, when the first President Bush was confronting deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Manuel Noriega’s Panama, the president admirably attempted to contain the situation without having to resort to military force against the Panamanian dictatorship. At the same time, Bush was being mercilessly attacked by Senate liberals, including Leahy, Dodd and Kennedy, for being too soft on Manual Noriega. Since there appeared to be no defined constituency supporting a peaceful settlement of the conflict with Panama... it can be argued that it was the U.S. Senate liberals who helped to bring on the conflict, because there were few political costs to initiating a conflict, while there were many not to. The same could be said of Kerry’s provocative attacks against Cuba and Venezuela at a time when Roger Noriega has been warning Castro that “he’s playing with fire,” and both he and Reich... are publicly denouncing Chávez and Castro for working to destabilize the rest of Latin America. Kerry’s tilt to the right when it comes to Latin American policy may be attributable to confusion, given the clarity of his charges against the Bush administration’s controversial Haiti policy. While this may account for his resorting to aimless babble concerning Venezuela, and pandering for donations and Florida’s votes when it comes to Castro, it doesn’t entirely explain the inevitably heavy domestic political costs he seems prepared to risk, given the fund raising harangues he is apparently prepared to make to Cuban-American audiences and his eagerness to submit to South Florida’s political calculus.

If his recent statements are any guide, it is obvious that the Kerry campaign has not given any serious consideration to the issues at stake in Washington’s relations with Cuba or Venezuela... Having stated in a newspaper interview in 2000 that the embargo was a product only of the “politics of Florida” and should be reconsidered, Kerry recently reversed himself and declared in favor of a tough line against Castro after meeting with prominent Cuban-American exile leaders in Miami six months ago. This reversal only helps to confirm the Bush campaign’s damaging accusations that Kerry is a political dandy who is deft at flip-flopping when such an action is to his benefit... Over the past week, he has sweetened his stance toward Cuban community leaders, perhaps driven by the desire not to repeat Gore’s Palm Beach County election debacle, as well as buoyed by polls stating that only 60% of Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade and Broward counties plan to vote for Bush this November, reflecting the growing conviction among older Cubans that while Bush regularly bashes Castro, he does little to bring him down.
Surely they don't think Kerry will?
In Kerry’s estimation, the road to capturing the disaffected 40% lies in emulating candidate Clinton’s first presidential race against Bush I, when the latter galloped around his adversary’s rightwing flank by accusing Bush of being soft of Havana, and making denunciations of the Castro regime, and by extension, any government that has cordial relations with it. Embattled President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who, ironically enough, recently declared himself a strong supporter of Kerry, stands accused by the senator of undermining democracy in Venezuela and supporting “narco-terrorists” in neighboring Colombia. Unless Kerry has information that is not being shared with Colombian specialists, no evidence exists to buttress this charge... It is quite clear, however, that the real issue here is not the state of democracy in Venezuela... On the contrary, the most devastating accusation that the Kerry camp seeks to level against Chávez is that his “close relationship with Fidel Castro has raised serious questions about his commitment to leading a truly democratic government” ...Presumably, Kerry would not extend his theory by questioning the bona fides of President Lula de Silva of Brazil or Argentina’s Nestór Kirchner, both of whom have referred to both Castro and Chávez as their friend. Chávez’s complex populist nationalism doesn’t permit this kind of trivialized analysis, which is both simplistic and represents a vulgarized comprehension of the present balance of forces existing in today’s Venezuela.

Nor does the spirit of Kerry’s rhetoric take into account the practical basis of Chávez’s relationship with Castro, with the latter providing subsidized oil deliveries to Cuba and the former providing thousands of badly needed doctors and hard boyz technicians to Caracas. Kerry’s attacks on Chávez are a transparent attempt to win the backing of the most conservative factions of Miami’s Cuban-American community as well as its large population of wealthy Venezuelan expatriates who own condos or other second homes in the area... Kerry’s self-serving hemispheric strategy could have very grave implications for his political fate. When it comes to Latin American issues, there exists a very substantive, vocal and highly sophisticated political constituency in this county – in the hundred of thousands - regarding the region. This bloc repeatedly has denounced Bush, Secretary of State Powell, Noriega and Reich for the extremist policies being directed against Cuba, Venezuela and other left-of-center governments and movements in the region. The prospect of Ralph Nader attracting what normally would have been Kerry’s votes...
-snip- transparent posturing as a Nader advocate slightly more believable than a pro-Kucinich we plant to waste our vote to show you rant.
Drafted by Larry Birns, Director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, and COHA Research Fellow Jessica Leight.
Leftists take heart - if you don’t like Kerry’s stance on any, just wait 24 hour hours. His rhetoric will rebound by 180 degrees.
Link


Iraq
Powell puts Iraqi transition in hands of Foggy Bottom hack
2004-01-15
EFL
Over the objections of the Bush administration’s hawks, Secretary of State Powell is bringing back President Clinton’s point man to the old Iraqi opposition to oversee the transfer of power to an Iraqi government in Baghdad from coalition forces. Next week, the American ambassador to the Philippines, Francis Ricciardone, will take up new offices in Foggy Bottom to run what one State Department official told The New York Sun is an “Iraq policy super office.” In his new capacity he will negotiate the status of American forces in Iraq and prepare for the opening of an American Embassy in Baghdad after a new government is formed in June. Administration officials told the Sun that the deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, tried for weeks to block the appointment of Mr. Ricciardone.
Translation: he’s no Paul Bremer.
Between 1999 and 2001, Mr. Ricciardone was in charge of implementing [the Iraqi Liberation Act] for the State Department. He spent much of his time seeking to broaden the INC’s coalition of Saddam Hussein’s opponents and fighting with the ones willing to work with America get rid of the tyrant. “I think it is a horrible shame that the person appointed to thwart congressional intent on the Iraq Liberation Act is now pulled from the Philippines to work on Iraq policy,” one of the staff members who wrote that legislation, Randy Scheunemann, said yesterday. “It’s an insult to Iraqi democrats and a slap at our interests in the Philippines.”

As much as many of the administration’s hawks dislike Mr. Ricciardone, Secretary Powell has grown to rely on him. Shortly after September 11, 2001, Mr. Powell tapped him to run the State Department’s task force on the coalition against terrorism, a 24-hour a day operations center that monitored diplomatic traffic on Al Qaeda. The career foreign service officer was also on the front lines of the Clinton administration’s efforts to try Saddam in an international tribunal, similar to the one hearing the case against Serbian ex-dictator Slobodan Milosevic.
That was then, this is now.
Mr. Ricciardone was also a key player in the State Department’s early attempts to expand the Iraqi opposition to bring back opposition groups sponsored by the Iranian government.
Woo hoo! Bring on SCIRI, al-Dawa, and that theocracy.
Link


Africa: East
US says Darfur fighting threatens peace deal
2004-01-10
There is growing concern in Washington that fighting in Sudan’s western Darfur region may complicate the final drive for an agreement ending that country’s north-south civil war. A senior State Department official says the United States is pressing the Khartoum government to find a political solution to the Darfur conflict. The Bush administration has been heavily involved in efforts to end the 20-year-old Sudanese war, and has offered to bring the leaders of the two sides in the negotiations to a White House event to celebrate an eventual agreement. But a senior State Department officials said Friday that if the fighting in western Sudan cannot be ended peacefully, and soon, it will tarnish a north-south peace accord and call into question the durability of any commitments included in it.
I think they recognize that both sides have a bad habit of violating such agreements, though Omar seems to have his sights set on oppressing Darfur and targeting Eritrea with his new-found buddies for the time being.
The senior official, who spoke to reporters on condition he not be named, said Secretary of State Powell has raised Darfur in recent telephone talks with the chief negotiators in the north-south peace talks saying it calls into question their promises to end the broader civil war.
Can't say I've been overimpressed by Omar's word on anything...
He said both the Khartoum government and the southern rebel movement, the SPLA, have contributed to the local crisis. He said the SPLA initially trained the Darfur rebels, while faulting the government for pursuing a military, rather than a political, solution to the conflict.
Who was it that trained the Arab camel jockeys, I wonder? And who's arming them?
He also said the principles in the nearly-completed north-south peace accord which include wealth sharing and a period of autonomy for the south, are "easily transferable" to Darfur.
I doubt if Omar's going to go for the possibility of both the south and the west breaking off and going their own ways...
Secretary of State Powell visited the Sudan peace talks in Kenya in October and secured a pledge from the parties at the time to try to complete a peace accord by the end of 2003.
That pledge was worth the paper it was written on. And it was verbal.
They failed to reach that target, but did announce an agreement on sharing the country’s oil wealth earlier this week. The senior official said the remaining issues, including power-sharing and the status of three disputed regions in central Sudan, are difficult. But he said U.S. officials were none-the-less still hopeful the process can be completed before President Bush’s State of the Union address to Congress January 20.
Link


Iraq
Turkey Won’t Send Troops to Iraq
2003-11-07
Wotta surprise.
Turkey will not send troops to Iraq to relieve U.S. forces there, a government official said Friday, after local Iraqi officials made clear they didn’t want Turkish soldiers to join the coalition.
"Nononononononononononononono...
Turkey’s parliament voted last month to allow a contingent of Turkish troops to join the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. American officials had pressed Turkey, the only majority Muslim nation in NATO, to approve sending troops. But a government official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that his administration will not use the authority granted by parliament to send troops to Iraq under current conditions.
"Seeing as the Kurds would like to pot us, and the 4ID wouldn’t let us shoot back."
Private NTV television said Turkey’s military has stopped preparations for deployment. Turkey’s ambassador to the United States, Osman Faruk Logoglu, said this week that his country would not send peacekeeping troops into Iraq without an invitation from the Iraqi Governing Council. Some members of the council have expressed opposition to Turkish deployment, citing atrocities ethnic tensions and uncomfortable memories of the Ottoman empire, which ruled Iraq for about 400 years. The Pentagon had been counting on a third multinational division, possibly led by Turkey, but that has not materialized. It announced plans Thursday to alert an additional 43,000 National Guard and Reserve support troops that they may be sent to Iraq as well. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the matter in a phone conversation late Thursday. ``Powell called Foreign Minister Gul. They talked about the current condition in Iraq, and the possible troop contribution,’’ the U.S. official said. ``Foreign Minister Gul said the government was reconsidering its offer’’ to send troops. Asked if Turkey was still sending troops, the U.S. official said: ``At this point, it appears ’no.’’’
Turks get to play this both ways at home, and probably will.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Dirioz said in a written statement that Powell thanked Turkey for its offer to help ``efforts led by the United States to ensure security, stability and economic development in Iraq.’’ ``Foreign Minister Gul and U.S. Secretary of State Powell agreed that Turkey and the U.S. would continue to work together for the Iraqi people and that Turkey would assume a key role in Iraq’s stability and restructuring,’’ Dirioz added.
"Mr. Secretary, how did that phone call with the Turkish Foreign Minister turn out?"
"Marvin, it ain’t good. We have a problem here. We can activate about 43,000 Guard soldiers, or we can bring the Turkish army into Iraq."
"Pardon me for asking, Mr. Secretary, but are these the Turks that used to rule the place?"
"Yep."
"The Turks that thumped the Kurds to the north?"
"Yep."
"The Turks that committed atrocities against Kurdish civilians?"
"Yep."
"The Turks who would cause an insurrection in Iraq?"
"Yep."
"I’ll get Mr. Rumsfeld on the phone for you."
"Right now, Marvin."
Link


Terror Networks
Zarqawi’s a $25,000,000 man
2003-10-30
Won’t his imam be proud of him.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed by U.S. officials to be the leading al-Qaida figure operating inside Iraq, has quietly joined the exclusive list of terrorists who has a $25 million reward on his head. He joins only Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and bin Laden’s two deputies, Ayman al Zawahiri and Saif al-Adil, on that elite list.
Worst of the worst. Guess he’s moving up the food chain these days ...
THE FIVE MEN are on the U.S. government’s Rewards for Justice Web site, along with several others whose capture would bring lesser rewards. Most, but not all, of the others are lesser lights in al-Qaida and other terror groups. Zarqawi, a 37-year-old Jordanian, was added on Tuesday, said one U.S. official, who spoke to NBC on condition of anonymity. There had not been any reward on his head until that point. The move suggested Zarqawi is now seen as one of the leading suspects in the wave of bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. “We really want this guy,” said the official, adding that the U.S. intelligence community is not certain where he is operating, but that he appears to move frequently between Iraq and Iran.
I guess that fits with the Farsi for "in custody" these days ...
You mean we came to that conclusion before the intel community did? C'mon! "I dun thin so," as R.Ricardo used to say...
The size of the reward is five times that of most of those on the Rewards for Justice site, which is managed by the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and the FBI. Two of those with $5 million rewards on their heads, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Imad Mugniyah, are both seen by U.S. intelligence as terrorist masterminds: Mohammed is believed to be the leader of the cell that carried out the East Africa embassy bombings in August, 1998, and Mugniyah the military commander of Hezbollah and responsible for planning the embassy and Marine Barracks bombings in Beirut in April and October of 1983.
Wow, he beats Mugniyeh for the top spot. What a swell guy ...
Even Saddam’s two sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein, carried only $15 million rewards on their heads. An Iraqi has been paid $30 million for information that led to the attacks that killed the two and Qusay’s son earlier this year in Mosul. Zarqawi is believed to be a member of both al-Qaida and Ansar al-Islam, U.S. officials said. “It’s like being a member of the Rotary and the Chamber of Commerce,” said another U.S. official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. “Being a member of one doesn’t preclude membership in the other.”
Especially when the former runs the latter as a subsidiary.
A longtime follower of bin Laden, Zarqawi was severely wounded in the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan last year and lost a leg. He reportedly received medical attention in Baghdad after escaping from Afghanistan through Iran. In the wanted poster on the government’s Web site, Zarqawi is described as having had “a long-standing connection to senior al-Qaida leadership and appears to be highly regarded among al-Qaida and a close associate of Osama bin Laden and Saif al-Adil,” the al-Qaida’s military commander.
They had tea together back February to talk about starting the current troubles we’re having in Iraq since their Euro plots had fizzled.
U.S. intelligence believes the Jordanian planned and helped execute the assassination of Laurence Foley, the U.S. AID official, in Amman last October. Prior to the Iraq war, Zarqawi gained notoriety when administration officials, including Secretary of State Powell in his U.N. speech on Feb. 5, cited his ability to get medical attention in Baghdad as evidence of a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida. That belief was not shared by all in the intelligence community, and congressional investigators have subsequently cast doubt on the quality of the information about Iraq gathered by the administration ahead of the war.
But that particular item looks like it's holding up well...
For example, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in the past six months has hurt the credibility of the government’s case at home and abroad.
... which has nothing to do with Zarqawi, does it?
Zarqawi’s network also was reported to have established a poisons and explosives training camp in Kurdish-controlled northwestern Iraq prior to the war.
CNN showed the Dead Doggy films...
He was indicted in absentia in Jordan for his role in the al-Qaida’s Millennium bombing plot targeting the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman as well as other American, Israeli and Christian religious sites in Jordan.
Link


East/Subsaharan Africa
Bush may send 500-1,000 troops to Liberia
2003-07-03
President Bush could announce later this week that he is sending 500 to 1,000 peacekeeping troops to Liberia, two senior officials told CNN.
Bad Move George W - Put in a toe - the whole foot gets stuck there!!
Facing mounting international pressure to have the United States lead a Liberia mission that also would include West African peacekeepers, Bush discussed such a deployment Wednesday. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and others have talked of a U.S. deployment of 2,000 troops, but U.S. officials told CNN any deployment would be no more than half that.
Of course - volunteer the US - Sometimes we don't like what we wished for - we may actually accomplish something in spite of the UN lapdogs!
The officials said the timing of the announcement could be slowed by efforts to get Liberian President Charles Taylor, who faces war crimes charges by a U.N. court in neighboring Sierra Leone, to step down and leave the war-torn country. The White House official line is that Taylor should leave now and face a war crimes trial later. But Bush used different language Wednesday regarding Taylor, saying simply that he should leave the country. Secretary of State Powell has been arguing in favor of a U.S. commitment, sources said -- citing recent peacekeeping commitments by France in the Ivory Coast and Great Britain in Sierra Leone.
I say let the French handle it then - the Brits are busy with us in Iraq!
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