February 07, 2004

Cox & Forkum Editorial Cartoons


This would be hilarious if it weren't so accurate...or if I were an Iranian mullah.

February 05, 2004

Iran Vote Deal Unravels,Reformists Announce Boycott

Iranian reformists on Thursday denounced what they dubbed a "parliamentary coup" and vowed to boycott elections they said had been rigged, after a new bid to resolve Iran's worst political crisis for years unravelled.
[...]
Reformists argue the mass disqualification of candidates -- many of whom were accused of lacking loyalty to Islam and the constitution -- is a crude attempt by hard-liners to regain control of parliament which they lost to reformists in 2000 elections.
[...]
Hopes of an imminent solution to the crisis, which coincides with the 25th anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution, were raised on Wednesday when government officials said the Guardian Council would review the candidate bans for a second time.
The protesting lawmakers, 130 of whom resigned this week, announced they would abandon their sit-in protest.

"With this sit-in we have forced those who oppose reforms to either hold the elections themselves or stage a military coup," said deputy parliament speaker Behzad Nabavi.

Public interest in the electoral row remains muted. Nearly seven years after Khatami's landslide election win, most Iranians have grown frustrated with the reformists' inability to overcome hardline opposition to reform.

The fiction, perpetrated on the West and on the Iranian people, that the Islamic government of Iran was being led by the peoples' votes and the voices of the reformers they elected in the last 7 years is about to be seen for the big lie it is.
While we can hope that we are hearing the rumblings of a grassroots democratic revolution in Iran, who knows?
My thoughts, hopes and prayers are with the people of Iran who long for liberty.
God (or Allah) knows you deserve it.
The day could come that our Coalition of the willing will have to send troops into Iran to topple this evil Islamist regime and for the very same reasons we had to take out Saddam.
But I'd really prefer for the Iranian people to do it themselves.
We've got our hands full in Iraq and Afghanistan militarily and the global Left whines a lot less if Democracy doesn't seem to be "imposed" by the U.S. military removal of a tyrannical dictatorship.
Lord knows why.
(Although the Liberal Left were the main group who got us all to swallow the new "reformed" Iran lie in the first place!)

Spanish leader reiterates support for U.S.

  
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, a staunch ally of the United States in Iraq, told Congress yesterday that Spain has no desire to turn Europe into a counterweight to American economic and military power.
   
 "The Atlantic relationship strengthens Europeans and Americans alike," Mr. Aznar said at a joint session of Congress.
   
 "As a European, I have no wish for an alternative to the trans-Atlantic relationship. Wanting a strong European Union, as Spain does, and being at the vanguard of Europe, as Spain is, does not entail being a counterpower to the United States."
    
He mentioned neither Germany nor France by name but his comments marked an indirect rebuke of both nations, which actively opposed the Iraq war and whose leaders have called on Europe to act as a check on global American influence.
    
Mr. Aznar was the first Spanish prime minister to address Congress.
[...]
The 30-minute speech, delivered in Spanish, was interrupted a dozen times by cheering, applause and standing ovations.
    
Vice President Dick Cheney introduced Mr. Aznar while Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other members of the Cabinet sat in the front row.
    
Mr. Aznar also reiterated Spain's commitment to the war on terrorism.
    
Despite public opinion polls in Spain, which show the majority opposed the war, Mr. Aznar said that fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq was necessary to defend the principles of freedom and democracy.
   
 Much of the speech focused on future U.S.-European relations. He spoke of trade liberalization, privatization and freedom as tools to promote economic development.
[...]
He added that Latin America should be part of that future.
[...]
"The Atlantic relationship will not be complete until it embraces the American continent in its entirety."
    
He took a parting swipe at Fidel Castro's communist Cuba.
    
"The Caribbean island is on of the last remaining anomalies of history, not just in the Americas but anywhere in the world," he said, noting his own family roots in Cuba.
   
 "I would like to reiterate here my desire and hope that, before long, Cuba can be welcomed into the fold of free nations."

What a great day to see this!
As President Bush says, "Out of bad, can come good." and one of the good things that came out of the bad of the 9/11 attacks was our renewed friendship, alliance and collaboration with Spain.
Bush's love of Hispanic culture and people is reflected in his marvelous collegial friendship with PM Aznar, as is his "hail-fellow-well-met" symbiosis with other world leaders like Britain's Tony Blair, Australia's John Howard, Japan's Koziumi and Poland's Kwasniewski.
I find it heartening to see Spain and her leader emerge from the dark decades of Franco with such verve and "can do" spirit!
I think that Spain may be entering a new Golden Age.
Viva Aznar! Viva Bush!

Musharraf will talk to IAEA, but he rejects inspections

President Pervaiz Musharraf yesterday ruled out any outside inspections of Pakistan's nuclear technology, while leaving open the possibility that the scientist behind illegal exports could be questioned by international investigators.

In an apparently contradictory statement, Gen Musharraf seemed intent on calming domestic fears that the West would infringe Pakistan's sovereignty in its search for culprits while assuring an international audience that there would be a full investigation.

"This is a sovereign country. No document will be given. No independent investigation will take place," he said, making clear that there was nothing left to discuss.
[Or so Perv thinks! This ain't over by half!--Jen]

"There is a written mercy appeal from his [the scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan] side and there is a written pardon from my side. A rollback of Pakistan's nuclear programme will never happen."

However, Gen Musharraf added that the International Atomic Energy Agency was welcome to come and discuss the issue. "We are open and we will tell them everything."
[...]
Lee Feinstein, a former US non-proliferation specialist, said: "Even though Musharraf is not accepting official Pakistani government responsibility, it's still a big deal to 'out' Khan and his dealings with the Iranians and Libyans."

The Pakistani leader had "staked his reputation on closing down the nuclear transfers from Pakistan and that's huge progress".

This refusal to let in IAEA inspectors is a rare, but big misstep for Musharraf.
Let's hope he comes around on inspectors while being seemingly open to almost all other kinds of cooperation with the West on his nukes.
However, I don't like the belligerent declaration that Pakistan's nuke program will never be rolled back.
Pakistan supposedly got nukes to counter India's.
And India got nukes to defend itself from Pakistan and her campaign to grab Kashmir.
Since Musharraf recently declared that he doesn't want to have a referendum on Kashmir (a symbolic relinquishment of the entire Kashmir issue, IMO), neither country "needs" nukes and both India and Pakistan should be forced to roll back their nuclear programs.

First Lady: Twins May Hit Campaign Trail

President Bush's twin daughters may take part in their father's re-election bid after they graduate from college this spring, first lady Laura Bush said Thursday.

Mrs. Bush told CNN that her 22-year-old daughters, Jenna and Barbara, are contemplating a role in what may be their father's last campaign.

"They are terrific girls they are getting ready to graduate from college and we'll see when they graduate," Mrs. Bush said. "You know, this will be really their first campaign that their dad has run that they are really old enough to be involved."

I would love to see Jenna and Barbara do this, although the Liberal Media will probably be brutal on them, as they've been in the past.
I think these girls are adorable and they'd really help energize our youngest voters and the college crowd to reelect their wonderful father!
(I'd love to see one--or both-- of them get married in the White House during his second term, too. We haven't had a White House wedding in too long!)

washingtonpost.com: Transcript: CIA Director Defends Iraq Intelligence

Here are the highlights from George Tenet's Georgetown speech today:

[...]
To understand a difficult topic like Iraq takes patience and care. Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful or thoughtful discussion of intelligence these days. But these times demand it because the alternative -- politicized, haphazard evaluation, without the benefit of time and facts -- may well result in an intelligence community that is damaged and a country that is more at risk. 
[...]
This estimate asked if Iraq had chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. We concluded that in some of these categories Iraq had weapons, and that in others where it did not have them, it was trying to develop them. 
[...]
They [CIA operatives] never said there was an imminent threat. Rather, they painted an objective assessment for our policy-makers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests. No one told us what to say or how to say it. 
[...]

First, Iraq's history. Everyone knew that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons in the 1980s and 1990s. Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran and his own people on at least 10 different occasions. He launched missiles against Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel. 

And we couldn't forget that in the early 1990s, we saw that Iraq was just a few years away from a nuclear weapon. This was not a theoretical program. It turned out that we and other intelligence services of the world had significantly underestimated his progress. 

And finally, we could not forget that Iraq lied repeatedly about its unconventional weapons.

So to conclude before the war that Saddam had no interest in rebuilding his weapons of mass destruction programs, we would have had to ignore his long and brutal history of using them. 

Our second stream of information was that the United Nations could not and Saddam would not account for all the weapons the Iraqis had: tons of chemical weapons precursors, hundreds of artillery shells and bombs filled with chemical or biological agents. 

To conclude before the war that Saddam had destroyed his existing weapons, we would have had to ignore what the United Nations and allied intelligence said they could not verify. 

The third stream of information came after the U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998. We gathered intelligence through human agents, satellite photos and communications intercepts. Other foreign intelligence services were clearly focused on Iraq and assisted in the effort. 

In intercepts of conversations and other transactions, we heard Iraqis seeking to hide prohibited items, worrying about their cover stories and trying to procure items Iraq was not permitted to have.
[...] 

And to come to conclusions before the war other than those we reached, we would have had to ignore all the intelligence gathered from multiple sources after 1998.
[...]
But before we start, let me be direct about an important fact. As we meet here today, the Iraq Survey Group is continuing its important search for people and data. And despite some public statements, we are nowhere near 85 percent finished. The men and women who work in that dangerous environment are adamant about that fact.
[...]
Our community said with high confidence that Saddam was continuing and expanding his missile programs, contrary to U.N. resolutions. He had missiles and other systems with ranges in excess of U.N. restrictions and he was seeking missiles with even longer ranges.

What do we know today? Since the war we have found an aggressive Iraqi missile program concealed from the international community. 

In fact, David Kay just last fall said that the Iraq Survey Group, quote, "discovered sufficient evidence to date to conclude that the Iraqi regime was committed to delivery system improvements that would have, if Operation Iraqi Freedom had not occurred, dramatically breached U.N. restrictions placed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War." 

We have also found that Iraq had plans and advanced design work for a liquid-propellant missile with ranges of up to 1,000 kilometers; activity that Iraq did not report to the U.N. and which could have placed large portions of the Middle East in jeopardy. 

We have confirmed that Iraq had new work under way on prohibited solid-propellant missiles that were also concealed from the United Nations. 

Significantly, the Iraq Survey Group has also confirmed prewar intelligence that Iraq was in secret negotiations with North Korea to obtain some of its most dangerous missile technology.
[...]
Let me turn to unmanned aerial vehicles. The estimate said that Iraq had been developing an unmanned aerial vehicle probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents. 

Baghdad's existing unmanned aerial vehicle could threaten its neighbors, U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf and, if a small unmanned aerial vehicle was brought close to our shores, the United States itself.
[...]

The Iraq Survey Group found that two separate groups in Iraq were working on a number of unmanned aerial vehicles designed that were hidden from the U.N. until Iraq's declaration in December of 2002. Now we know that important design elements were never fully declared. 

The question of intent, especially regarding the smaller unmanned aerial vehicle, is still out there. But we should remember that the Iraqis flight tested an aerial biological weapons spray system intended for a large unmanned aerial vehicle. 
[...]
My provisional bottom line today: Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon, he still wanted one, and Iraq intended to reconstitute a nuclear program at some point. 

We have not yet found clear evidence that the dual-use items Iraq sought were for nuclear reconstitution. We do not yet know if any reconstitution efforts had begun. But we may have overestimated the progress Saddam was making. 
[...]
What do we know today? Last fall the Iraqi Survey Group uncovered, quote, "significant information, including research and development of biological weapons, applicable organisms, the involvement of the Iraqi intelligence service in possible biological weapons activities and deliberate concealment activities." 

All of this suggests that Iraq, after 1996, further compartmentalized its program and focused on maintaining smaller covert capabilities that could be activated quickly to surge the production of biological weapons agents. 

The Iraq Survey Group found a network of laboratories and safe houses controlled by Iraqi intelligence and security services that contained equipment for chemical and biological research and a prison laboratory complex possibly used in human testing for biological weapons agents that were not declared to the United Nations. 

It also appears that Iraq had the infrastructure and the talent to resume production, but we have yet to find that it actually did so, nor have we found weapons. 

Until we get to the bottom of the role played by the Iraqi security services, which were operating covert labs, we will not know the full extent of the program.
[...]
My provisional bottom line today: Iraq intended to develop biological weapons. Clearly, research and development work was under way that would have permitted a rapid shift to agent production if seed stocks were available. But we do not yet know if production took place. And just as clearly, we have not yet found biological weapons. 

Before I leave the biological weapons story, an important fact that you must consider: For years the U.N. searched unsuccessfully for Saddam's biological weapons program. His son-in-law, Hussein Kamil, who controlled the hidden program, defected and only then was the world able to confirm that Iraq indeed had an active and dangerous biological weapons program.
[...]
We said in the estimate with high confidence that Iraq had them [chemical weapons]. We also believed, though with less certainty, that Saddam had stocked at least 100 metric tons of agent. 

That may sound like a lot, but it would fit in a few dorm rooms on this campus. And the last time I remember, they're not very big rooms.
[...]
My provisional bottom line today: Saddam had the intent and capability to quickly convert civilian industry to chemical weapons production. However, we have not yet found the weapons we expected.
[...]
...Let me tell you some of what was going on in the fall of 2002. 

Several sensitive reports crossed my desk from two sources characterized by our foreign partners as established and reliable. The first from a source who had direct access to Saddam and his inner circle said Iraq was not in the possession of a nuclear weapon. However, Iraq was aggressively and covertly developing such a (nuclear) weapon. 

Saddam had recently called together his nuclear weapons committee, irate that Iraq did not yet have a weapon because money was no object and they possessed the scientific know-how. The committee members assured Saddam that once fissile material was in hand, a bomb could be ready in 18 to 24 months. The return of U.N. inspectors would cause minimal disruption because, according to the source, Iraq was expert at denial and deception.

The same source said that Iraq was stockpiling chemical weapons and that equipment to produce insecticides under the oil-for-food program had been diverted to covert chemical weapons production. 

The source said that Iraq's weapons of last resort were mobile launchers armed with chemical weapons which would be fired at enemy forces in Israel; that Iraqi scientists were dabbling with biological weapons with limited success, but the quantities were not sufficient to constitute a real weapons program. 

A stream of reporting from a different sensitive source with access to senior Iraqi officials said he believed production of chemical and biological weapons was taking place, that biological agents were easy to produce and hide, and that prohibited chemicals were also being produced at dual-use facilities. 
[...]
The source stated that a senior Iraqi official in Saddam's inner circle believed, as a result of the U.N. inspections, Iraq knew the inspectors' weak points and had to take advantage of them.

The source said that there was an elaborate plan to deceive inspectors and ensure prohibited items would never be found. 

Now, did this information make any difference in my thinking? You bet it did.

The pattern of these efforts is one of deliberate, rather than random, acts. Iraqis who have volunteered information to us are still being intimidated and attacked. 

Remember, finding things in Iraq is always very tough. After the first Gulf War, the U.S. Army blew up chemical weapons without knowing it. They were mixed in with conventional weapons in Iraqi ammo dumps. 

My new special adviser, Charlie Duelfer, will soon be in Iraq to join Major Keith Dayton, commander of the Iraqi Survey Group, to continue our effort to learn the truth. And when the truth emerges, we will report it to the American people no matter what.
[...]

So what do I think about all this today? Based on an assessment of the data we collected over the past 10 years, it would have been difficult for analysts to come to any different conclusions than the ones reached in October of 2002.
[...]

I will say that our judgments were not single-threaded. U.N. inspection served as a base line and we had multiple strands of reporting from signals, imagery and human intelligence. 

After the U.N. inspectors left in 1998, we made an aggressive effort to penetrate Iraq. Our record was mixed. While we had voluminous reporting, the major judgments reached were based on a narrower band of data. That's not unusual in our business. 
[...]
We did not have enough of our own human intelligence. We did not ourselves penetrate the inner sanctum. 

Our agents were on the periphery of WMD activities, providing some useful information. We had access to emigres and defectors with more direct access to these programs. And we had a steady stream of reporting with access to the Iraqi leadership come to us from a trusted foreign partner. 

Other partners provided important information. What we did not collect ourselves, we evaluated as carefully as we could. 

Still, the lack of direct access to some of these sources created some risk. Such is the nature of our business. 
[...]
To be sure, we had difficulty penetrating the Iraqi regime with human sources. And I want to be very clear about something: A blanket indictment of our human intelligence around the world is dead wrong. We have spent the last seven years rebuilding our clandestine service. As director of central intelligence, this has been my highest priority.
[...]

It will take an additional five years to finish the job of rebuilding our clandestine service, but the results so far have been obvious. 

A CIA spy led us to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11th attacks. 

Al Qaida's operational chief Nashiri, the man who planned and executed the bombing of the USS Cole, was located and arrested because of our human reporting. 

Human sources were critical to the capture of Hambali, the chief terrorist in southeast Asia, who organized and killed hundreds of people when they bombed a nightclub in Bali.

So when you hear pundits say that we have no human intelligence capability, they don't know what they're talking about.
[...]
Let's talk about Libya, where a sitting regime has volunteered to dismantle its WMD program. Somebody on television said we completely missed it. Well, he completely missed it. This was an intelligence success.

TENET: Why? Because American and British intelligence officers understood the Libyan programs. 

Only through intelligence did we know each of the major programs Libya had going. Only through intelligence did we know when Libya started its first nuclear weapons program and then put it on the back burner for years. Only through intelligence did we know when the nuclear program took off again. We knew because we had penetrated Libya's foreign supplier network. 

And through intelligence last fall, when Libya was to receive a supply of centrifuge parts, we worked with the foreign partners to locate and stop that shipment. 

Intelligence also knew that Libya was working with North Korea to get longer-range ballistic missiles. 

And we learned all of this through the powerful combination of technical intelligence, careful and painstaking analytic work, operational daring and, yes, the kind of human intelligence that people have led the American people to believe we no longer have. 

This was critical when the Libyans approached British and U.S. intelligence about dismantling their chemical and biological and nuclear weapons programs. They came to the British and American intelligence because they knew we could keep the negotiations secret. 

And in repeated talks, when CIA officers were the only official Americans in Libya, we and our British colleagues made clear just how much insight we had into their weapons of mass destruction and missile programs.

When the Libyans said they would show us their Scud-Bs, we said, "Fine. We want to examine your longer range Scud-Cs." 

It was only when we convinced them that we knew Libya's nuclear program was a weapons program that they showed us their weapons design. 

As should be clear to you, intelligence was the key that opened the door to Libya's clandestine programs.

Let me briefly mention Iran, and I will not go into detail. I want to assure you of one thing: that recent Iranian admissions about their nuclear programs validate our intelligence assessments. It is flat wrong to say that we were surprised by reports from the Iranian opposition last year. 

And on North Korea, it was patient analysis of difficult-to- obtain information that allowed our diplomats to confront the North Korean regime about their pursuit of a different route to a nuclear weapon that violated international agreements. 

One final spy story. Last year in my annual worldwide threat testimony before Congress in open session, I talked about the emerging threat from private proliferators, especially nuclear brokers. I was cryptic about this in public, but I can tell you now that I was talking about A.Q. Khan. His network was shaving years off the nuclear weapons development timelines of several states, including Libya. 

Now, as you know from the news coming out of Pakistan, Khan and his network have been dealt a crushing blow and several of his senior officers are in custody. Malaysian authorities have shut down one of the network's largest plants. His network is now answering to the world for years of nuclear profiteering.

What did intelligence have to do with this? First, we discovered the extent of Khan's hidden network. We tagged the proliferators, we detected the networks stretching across four continents offering its wares to countries like North Korea and Iran. 

Working with our British colleagues, we pieced together the picture of the network, revealing its subsidiaries, its scientists, its front companies, its agents, its finances and manufacturing plants on three continents. Our spies penetrated the network through a series of daring operations over several years.
[...]
Our analysts, at the end of the day, have a duty to inform and warn. They did so honestly and with integrity when making judgments about the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein. 
[...]

But as all these reviews are under way we must take some care. We cannot afford an environment to develop where analysts are afraid to make a call, where judgments are held back because analysts fear they will be wrong. Their work and these judgments make vital contributions to the country's security. 

I came here today to also tell the American people that they must know that they are served by dedicated, courageous professionals. It is evident on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. It is evident by their work against proliferators. It is evident by the fact that well over two-thirds of Al Qaida's leaders can no longer hurt the American people. 

I knew all of what Mr. Tenet said was true, but hearing him say it and make his case for a strong CIA was a very good thing and something that the American people (and especially the Left) need to hear. Again.
President Bush has virtually complete faith in Tenet and so do I--I take my cue from our President.
Tenet assures us that he and his agents are doing their job--which is all that we can demand or expect them to do--and doing it rather well, IMHO.
And one important thing Mr. Tenet forgot to mention was that the CIA is now actively working with the FBI in the GWOIT, something that just never happened before 9/11.
And note Tenet's answer to a question from the audience after the speech:

Let me say this. I'm the director of central intelligence. The president of the United States sees me six days a week, every day. I tell him what the American intelligence community believes. 
[...]
I can tell you with certainty that the president of the United States gets his intelligence from one person and one community: me. And he has told me firmly and directly that he's wanted it straight and he's wanted it honest and he's never wanted the facts shaded. And that's what we do every day. 

Put this in contrast to ex-President Clinton's relationship with his CIA director James Woolsey, who from his TV appearances and editorial columns is clearly as brilliant and capable as Tenet: when a bozo crashed a small plane on the White House lawn in 1994 (one year after the first WTC bombing), the joke was that it was Woolsey trying to get in to see Clinton because the President of the United States wouldn't see his own CIA director!

The Politburo Diktat: DemCom Deck of Cards for Operation Bloggi Freedom

A deep curtsy to the Commissar at Ace Pilots for this great honor!
And what an august company to be in!
This makes me want to rededicate myself to fighting the GWOIT--Lefty whiners and jihadi killers be warned, because as my friend and fellow deck member < href="">VodkaPundit says, we are all very much still at large!

Pakistani Nuclear Hero Admits Selling Secrets

The founder of Pakistan's nuclear program apologized in a nationally televised address Wednesday for spreading weapons secrets.

The government said Abdul Qadeer Khan asked President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for forgiveness.

"I have chosen to appear before you to offer my deepest regrets and unqualified apologies," Khan said in a solemn speech broadcast on state television. "I take full responsibility for my actions and seek your pardon."
[...]
A friend of the scientist said Tuesday that Khan told him he gave nuclear weapons technology to other countries with the full knowledge of top army officials, including Musharraf.

But Khan said government officials were not involved in the leaks.

"I also wish to clarify that there was never ever any kind of authorization for these activities by the government," he said.

More of the Bush Doctrine bearing fruit, as borne out by one of his star "pupils," Pervez Musharraf.
Looks like they handled the problem with Dr. Khan as best they could and it's good that the people of Pakistan can see this man Khan, whom they once revered as a national hero, on television (obviously not tortured or under duress) make an apology, ask for forgiveness from all, and seek to atone for the bad he's done.
It helps to establish Pakistan as a more civilized place where the rule of law and (Western, as opposed to sharia) Justice is respected, at least in my mind.
Now, the onus and the responsibility of this nuclear disaster is transferred to Iran and the NorKs and what they did with the technology that Khan sold them.
But the fact that Musharraf brought Khan to a public accounting (and not a Stalinist show trial with a public execution) and the fact that Khan now regrets what he did and seeks forgiveness is another BIG step in the GWOIT and the consequent war we fight to end rogue states proliferating the worst WMDs and their technology.

Syrians call for democratic reforms in petition to Assad

More than half a million Syrians demanded political and economic reform in a petition to be handed to President Bashar Assad, a human rights group said Saturday.

Some 600,000 citizens, including intellectuals, lawyers and human rights activists, have already signed the document, the Committees for the Defense of Democratic Liberties and Human Rights in Syria said.

The group said it hoped for a million signatures by March. Syria has a population of around 18 million.

A copy of the petition, faxed to news organizations in Damascus, said the country has been "languishing under the duress of the emergency law since 1963, whose impacts have been extended to include all fields of public life."

Aktham Naisse, chairman of the group, told reporters the petition would be presented to Syrian authorities on March 8, 41 years after the law was introduced under the ruling Baath Party.

It calls for the abrogation of the martial law, the release of political detainees and return of all exiles. It also asks for details about the fate of missing people.

Yes, you read that right: Syria has been under martial law for 41 years.
Pity its poor, unfree citizens.
Seeing these reform-hungry Syrians rise up and risk quite a bit just to get a petition signed is, of course, the Bush Doctrine bearing more fruit throughout the Middle East!
Let Freedom Ring in Syria!

February 02, 2004

Pakistan Scientist Admits Selling Nuclear Secrets

The father of Pakistan's atomic bomb has confessed to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, but authorities have yet to decide if the national hero will go on trial, officials said Monday.

Top scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was sacked as adviser to the prime minister Saturday and is the main suspect in a two-month investigation into allegations that individuals passed on Pakistan's nuclear weapons secrets to third countries.

Seven suspects are still under investigation, but senior former military and intelligence officials -- who experts say must have known about Khan's activities -- are not being questioned.
[Pervez better correct this situation right quick!--Jen]

Putting Khan on trial is a sensitive issue in Pakistan, where he is revered as a national hero and the father of not only the country's, but the Islamic world's atomic bomb.
[...]
Intelligence sources said the evidence against Khan was strong enough to formally charge him, and included a statement from a key middleman in Dubai that could prove damning.
[...]
But Western diplomats and analysts say a trial would open a "Pandora's box" for Pakistan and in particular its powerful military, which was likely to be implicated in any case.
[...]
Pakistan launched its investigation more than two months ago after the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, found evidence pointing to Pakistani involvement in Iran's nuclear program.
[...]
The decision to single out Khan marks a major turnaround in Pakistani policy. In January, 2003, the government rushed to his defense, dismissing as "concocted and fabricated speculation" newspaper reports linking him to illegal proliferation.

The widely read Urdu-language press has criticized the handling of the case, and accuses President Pervez Musharraf of blindly following America's agenda after he supported its war in Afghanistan and vowed to crack down on Islamic militancy.
[...]
Khan was a key architect of Pakistan's atomic program from the 1970s up to the first nuclear tests in 1998. The program was developed in response to India's.
[Brilliant response, you insecure, hot-headed 3rd world crazies!--J.T.]

The Pakistani military said at the weekend that no illegal proliferation had occurred since the establishment of the National Command Authority, which controls Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, in February, 2000.

It added that Pakistan would not curtail its nuclear weapons program as a result of the investigation.

Gulp. Hard swallow.
This is very, very bad news but at least now we know for sure.
This makes it a virtual certainty that Iran and North Korea have actual nuclear weapons; you know they wouldn't just get the know-how for its own sake.
And we know about Libya.
Let's pray like there's no tomorrow (because there won't be if we don't) that this Pakistani National Command Authority has everything there under sober and adult control, that no-one sells Perv the planes or the missile technology that could deliver these nukes and that President Bush gets our Missile Defense system up and running without delay.

February 01, 2004

washingtonpost.com: U.S. Missile Defense Set to Get Early Start
Hurray!
Thank you, President Bush, with another grateful nod to President Reagan, who first conceived of the project.

Hundreds hurt during sacrifices

A TOTAL of 988 people have reportedly been treated across Turkey for cuts and fractures they suffered while trying to slaughter sheep and cows to mark the major Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha.

At least they were only injured, because look what happened to their Muslim brothers and sisters in Mecca who were trying to stone the "Devil," a pillar with USA written on it:

Stampede Kills 244 at Hajj Pilgrimage

At least 244 people were trampled to death and hundreds more hurt Sunday under the crush of worshippers in one of the deadliest disasters during the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.

The stampede occurred during the stoning of the devil, an emotional and notoriously perilous hajj ritual. Pilgrims frantically throw rocks, shout insults or hurl their shoes at three stone pillars - acts that are supposed to demonstrate their deep disdain for Satan.
[...]
The same area was the scene of similar deadly incidents in 1998, 2001 and last year.
[...]
Most of the dead Sunday were pilgrims from inside the Saudi kingdom who may not have been authorized to participate, Madani said. It was unclear how many foreign pilgrims died, but Egypt's Middle East News Agency reported that 13 Egyptians were among the dead.

Madani also said 272 pilgrims had died of natural causes during the hajj. Many participants are elderly, and Muslims believe that if a person dies while performing the pilgrimage they will go directly to heaven.

About 2 million Muslims are participating in this year's pilgrimage. To control the crowd, Saudi authorities set quotas for pilgrims from each country, and also require its citizens and residents to register upon arrival.
[...]
Calling America "the greatest Satan," Egyptian pilgrim Youssef Omar threw pebbles at one pillar on which someone had scrawled "USA."

The fact that that they have these crowd-related deaths year after year at the hajj indicates that the Saudis do very little to prevent it from happening.
They, with their inadequate facilities, plus the Islamic clerics themselves are to blame for encouring the Mecca pilgrims to keep indulging in this primitive ritual when the crowds are so huge and the people are worked up into a religious and emotional frenzy.
Charles Johnson makes a good case that this amounts to a literal sanction of human sacrifice, making Muslims the contemparary equivalent of the Aztecs.
Then, there were these "celebrations" of Eid in Iraq:
At Least 56 Dead in Iraq Suicide Bombings

Two suicide bombers with explosives wired to their bodies struck the offices of the country's two main Kurdish parties in nearly simultaneous attacks Sunday, killing at least 56 people and wounding more than 235 in the deadliest assault in Iraq in six months.

The attacks struck in the Kurdish heartland and took a heavy toll among senior leaders of Iraq's most pro-American ethnic group.
[...]
The Irbil attackers slipped into the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan along with hundreds of well-wishers gathering for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice.

Kurdish television said both bombers were dressed as Muslim clerics.
[...]
Guards said they did not search people because of the tradition of receiving guests during the holiday. Neither party's top leader - Jalal Talabani of the PUK and Massoud Barzani of the KDP - was in Irbil when the attacks occurred.

Although Iraq has suffered numerous suicide bombings in recent months, the attack Sunday marked the first time perpetrators have worn explosives rather than using vehicles.

U.S. officials said foreign militants or Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaida-linked Islamic militant group based in the north that has frequently clashed with the Kurds, may have carried out the attacks. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

"We have no proof at this point (about who is responsible). It could be Ansar al-Islam. It could be al-Qaida. It could be any of a number of foreign terrorist groups operating in Iraq," said U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, coalition deputy chief of staff for operations.

Interesting that the jihadis would use the "Palestinian" method of the homicide bomber with explosives attached to the body, although this is definitely not the first time the PA's name has come up in Iraq by a long shot.
Who knows who was behind it... Saddam's Baathists? Assad of Syria's Baathists?
Ansar al-Islam would be the Iranian Shi'ites.
Then there's homegrown Sunnis.
And bringing up the rear, the Turks, who hate the Kurds.
Don't forget the ubiquitous Al Queda.
Any or all of these terror groups could be the responsible murderers.

The bottom line on all 3 stories about Eid today? If you were a Muslim, it was your day to die, at least it was for 550 people.
What a tragedy.
The Muslims keep trying to convince us that they're the religion of peace, but the impression they make is that they're still a religion of death and destruction.

Here's Melanie Phillips at the Telegraph (U.K.) which I think is one of the best analyses of the whole David Kay fiasco:
Dr Kay is not the useful idiot the anti-war party claims

Hardly had Lord Hutton finished summarising his report than the goalposts were promptly moved. Among those who were apoplectic that he had exonerated the Government and eviscerated the BBC, the cry arose that he hadn't addressed the "wider" issue.

This was that the Iraq war was based on false intelligence that Saddam posed a threat with his weapons of mass destruction. This myth has been reinforced by widespread media reports that Dr David Kay, who recently resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, has said that no WMD actually existed in Iraq, thus proving that Saddam was no threat and we were led up the garden path to war.

If you look, however, at what Dr Kay actually said last week to the Senate Armed Services committee and in media interviews, a very different picture emerges. Certainly, he claimed there had been a major failure of intelligence which had misrepresented the situation. But he was specifically referring to large weapons stockpiles which he now thought were not there after all, and to the large-scale weapons programme which he said had been wound down after 1991.

This is a lie, as David Kay and the rest of us should know only too well:
when Saddam's sons-in-law defected from Iraq in 1995, they informed the UNSCOM inspectors that Saddam had concealed, lied about and hidden WMD programs for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. This led the UNSCOM team back into Iraq to oversee their dismantling, a process which continued until UNMOVIC inspectors (UNSCOM's weaker successor) were kicked out in 1998.
Here's CNN/Time's take on that story from March, 1998: Uncovering Iraqi Intrigue:

The SSO was handed the job of hiding the weapons programs at the end of the Gulf War, during the 15-day period when Iraq was ordered by the U.N. to list all its instruments of mass destruction. Over the next four years, the SSO did such an effective job of deception that by July 1995, UNSCOM was ready to declare its task done and close up shop. Then an extraordinary event happened: Saddam Hussein'sson-in-law, Lieut. General Hussein Kamel al-Majid, who had been in charge of Iraq's secret-weapons development, defected to Jordan, where he went public with details of the concealment program.

The Iraqi government tried to portray Kamel as a lone rogue who was himself concealing records; they thus led U.N. investigators to a Kamel-owned chicken farm, where they found more than a million pages of documents on Iraq's banned weapons programs. "The chicken-farm documents gave us a clear indication of how much we had missed," says UNSCOM deputy executive chairman Charles Duelfer.

Instead of disbanding, the U.N. redoubled its effort to find hidden documents and weapons, creating a "counterconcealment team," headed by former U.S. Marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter. At one point, when Ritter and his team tried to enter an SSO facility in downtown Baghdad, a guard pointed a loaded gun at his head and prepared to fire. In the end Ritter, who spoke in depth for the first time about his work to CNN, did his job too well: he was accused of being a CIA spy and denied access to sensitive sites.

How ironic that Ritter, then accused of spying and almost getting shot as a CIA agent, would become a paid tool of the bad guys, as we can now conclude with virtual certainty as the name of the Iraqi patron who bankrolled Ritter's film has turned up on Saddam's "sweetheart list."
Ritter's near execution as a "CIA spy" also can only hint at how difficult it was and would continue to be for America and the West to get covert operatives for the purposes of gathering good intell into Iraq.
Happily, the UNSCOM inspector whom they cite about the chicken farm documents, Charles Duelfer, is going to be taking Kay's place as the new head of the Iraqi WMD search.
Notice, above all, that the 1995 Hussein Kamel episode establishes Saddam's SOP vis-a-vis the West (the US, the UN, the civilized world) right up until the day Coalition forces entered Iraq of lying about, hiding, concealing and obfuscating any evidence of WMD, while at the same time developing and proliferating them.
And noone should know this any better than David Kay.
To continue with Phillip's Telegraph piece, however:

Intelligence agencies, he said, had failed to grasp that in the corruption and chaos of the Iraqi regime, Saddam himself was being told lies about his weapons programmes, whose large-scale production had stalled under the pressure of UN inspections.[Which is precisely what they were designed to do.--J.T.]

Such a serious intelligence failure is clearly a huge political embarrassment for both President Bush and Tony Blair, prompting even the US National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to acknowledge that mistakes had been made and President Bush to say he wants to "know the facts".
[President Bush is now OK'ing a formal investigation into this, which is good. I'd like to know the facts myself, not because I doubt either the intell or his word, but because I'm sure Saddam had weapons and I want very much to know what happened to them so we know for sure that they aren't in the wrong hands still.--Jen]

But Dr Kay was not saying Saddam was therefore no threat on the WMD front. On the contrary, not only did he say it was possible that smaller WMD stockpiles remained hidden in Iraq, but that "right up to the end" the Iraqis were trying to produce the deadly poison ricin.

"They were mostly researching <better methods for weaponisation," he said. Not only that, Saddam had restarted a rudimentary nuclear programme. And he had also maintained an active ballistic missile programme that was receiving significant foreign assistance[Can you say "French?" How about "Russian?"] until the start of the war.

Such revelations corresponded with Dr Kay's interim report last autumn, which detailed "dozens of WMD-related programme activities" which had been successfully concealed from Dr Hans Blix's UN inspectors.

These included a clandestine network of laboratories containing equipment suitable for chemical and biological weapons research, and new research on the biological agents Brucella and Congo Crimean Haemorrhagic Fever [That's Ebola to you and me, folks.]. Furthermore, a scientist who had hidden a phial of live Botulinum in his house had identified "a large cache of agents" that he had been asked, but had refused, to conceal and for which the ISG was now searching.

This all suggested, said Dr Kay, that after 1996 Saddam had focused on "smaller covert capabilities that could be activated quickly" to produce biological weapons agents. And last week he told this newspaper that he had discovered, from the interrogation of Iraqi scientists, that before the war Saddam had hidden WMD programme components in Syria.

So according to Dr Kay, Saddam had posed a very live threat indeed from WMD. Yet this evidence has been almost totally disregarded, as a nearly unanimous chorus of journalists has asserted that even Dr Kay said Iraq had no WMD.

Dr Kay's evidence has been brushed aside because of the assiduously promulgated myth that we only went to war because we were told that Iraq had WMD that were ready to use. But this is not so. We went to war because Saddam was grossly in breach of UN resolutions instructing him to prove he had dismantled his WMD programme.

True, Bush and Blair asserted that he had WMD stockpiles which would be found. But this was not the reason for war. Such claims were only made to bolster the case to a public that seemed incapable of grasping that the reason for war was not the presence of WMD but the absence of evidence that it had been removed.

Failure to make this case successfully led Bush and Blair to claim - according to Dr Kay, in good faith but on the basis of flawed intelligence - that since these stockpiles were unaccounted for they were probably still there. That claim has now spectacularly backfired, since the failure to discover any WMD has merely led people to conclude that this proves the war was indeed ill-founded. But this is not so.

For the fact that Saddam was actively engaged in WMD programmes, large-scale or not, shows he was indeed in breach of the UN resolutions, and was indeed the threat he had been assumed to be from his record, temperament, regional ambitions and links to terrorism.

How much ricin, after all, do you need to kill thousands of people? To listen to anti-war critics, it would seem that modest amounts of biological agent somehow don't count as WMD, or a re-started nuclear programme is no threat because it is only rudimentary.

To Dr Kay, the war was absolutely necessary because Saddam had become "even more dangerous" than had been realised, and, he said last week, "it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat".
[Although, I must note that President Bush didn't state in his SOTU last year that Saddam's threat was "imminent," but that we had to strike before that, because by the time that such a threat is "imminent," it's probably too late and invites an attack.--J.T.]
Yet virtually no one has reported these remarks. Instead, Dr Kay is being quoted out of context to sustain the charge of Government duplicity by the anti-war brigade.

They have implied that Dr Kay resigned because he realised no WMD ever existed. But actually, he threw down his bat and stormed off the pitch in fury at the Bush administration for failing to give the ISG the money it needed to search for WMD, and for its incompetence in not preventing crucial evidence being destroyed by Iraqi looters.

I'm not sure what Kay's motives are, if he's a usual idiot of the Left's anti-war brigade or what.
If Kay's team had found the WMD they thought they would, the Left would have accused Bush and Blair of having them planted.
As the Left would have it, the Coalition's military effort to disarm Iraq and to effect régime change is a "no-win" scenario for those who backed the war for no matter how it's viewed.
Some who back the war and President Bush and PM Blair think that our "intelligence" communities are to blame and an angry chorus of Americans have called for CIA Chief George Tenet's resignation.
But I don't think that the intelligence community is to blame.
They (and I'm including Britain's MI6) got the best intelligence they could and our leaders acted on it, relying on its accuracy.
This is all any government leader can do. Ever.
In fact, every Western government, including France, Germany, Belgium and Russia fully believed (if only because, as we now know, they'd sold Iraq the stuff, that Saddam had WMD and WMD programs.
At an EU summit dinner on Feb. 18, 2003, Blair challenged EU leaders to dispute the fact that Saddam had these WMD. Not one leader did (I did blog on this and on his attendant confrontation of Chirac's contrarian stance at the time.)
Saddam had those weapons.
Or if he didn't at the time of the war, he was going to get them.
(Do you remember what the big UN Tranzi cry was after Bush confronted the UN about Saddam? Not that the 16 previous resolutions should be enforced because the existence of the weapons was a threat to the world, but that Saddam's compliance with them should be ascertained as quickly as possible so that the sanctions could be lifted and business as usual could be recommenced!)
Maybe some were dismantled or destroyed.
Maybe some were shipped to Syria or Iran or Saudi Arabia or even Jordan.
But he had them.
And he had major links and ties to Islamist terrorism, including to Al Queda.
President Bush and PM Blair have nothing to explain or apologize for.
Bush should leave George Tenet in place, too.
Of course, nothing is being said from the usual detractors that since the Church Committee hearings in the post-Watergate fever swamp of the late 1970's, the CIA's funding has been gutted and its rules of operation in the field have been curtailed, although President Bush changed some of this after 9/11.
Worse still, Clinton furthered the degradation of our intell services, declaring that "humint" could be now be supplemented with information gathered electronically such as that from satellites, instead of human operatives on the ground.
With the 2 remaining Axis of Evil members Iran and North Korea ratttling nuclear sabres, as well as committing massive human rights abuses, the Left is trying to steer us back into the dangerous rapids of appeasement and looking the other way when it comes to rogue régimes...back to questioning our own intell agents, who risk their lives to get us this much needed information, and back to requiring an often unattainable legal standard of proof that the tyrannical leaders of these rogue states and the killers they sponsor are "guilty" of crimes against humanity.
This cannot and must not stand!
David Kay didn't find any weapons so far, this time.
And as Jed Babbin so aptly points out, the French and their Weasel allies gave Saddam at least 6 months or longer to get rid of those WMD, too.
That's all.
Bush told the truth and so did Blair.
Liberating Iraq and deposing Saddam was the Right Thing to Do.
Case closed.

Warning: This article contains very graphic descriptions of horrific torture and death.
I won't quote from most of it here for that reason:
Revealed: the gas chamber horror of North Korea's gulag

The number of prisoners held in the North Korean gulag is not known: one estimate is 200,000, held in 12 or more centres. Camp 22 is thought to hold 50,000.

Most are imprisoned because their relatives are believed to be critical of the regime. Many are Christians, a religion believed by Kim Jong-il to be one of the greatest threats to his power. According to the dictator, not only is a suspected dissident arrested but also three generations of his family are imprisoned, to root out the bad blood and seed of dissent.

With North Korea trying to win concessions in return for axing its nuclear programme, campaigners want human rights to be a part of any deal. Richard Spring, Tory foreign affairs spokesman, is pushing for a House of Commons debate on human rights in North Korea.

'The situation is absolutely horrific,' Spring said. 'It is totally unacceptable by any norms of civilised society. It makes it even more urgent to convince the North Koreans that procuring weapons of mass destruction must end, not only for the security of the region but for the good of their own population.'

And this from the Leftist Guardian no less which supposedly hasn't met a Stalinist régime it doesn't like.
But I don't mean to make light of a very grave situation.
While all of the West's talking heads carp about the "perfectability" of our governments' human intelligence and continue to quibble over whether or not Saddam had WMD and was an "imminent " threat, very few pundits even mention Saddam's mass murders and mass graves, which were the result of his gassing of the Kurds, his use of BCW on the Iranians in their 8-year long war or the savage put-down of the Shi'ite revolt in 1991, all of which involved the use of WMD!
Clearly, Saddam was the consummate WMD.
Likewise, Kim Jong-Il is exactly like him, whether or not he has nukes, which I think he does.
If the those on the Left, like Democrats Bill Clinton and John F'ing Kerry, care about "human rights" as they claim to, they shouldn't be so willing to stand idly by and do nothing about the horrific situation in North Korea.
Kim Jong-il is killing thousands of his own people, if not by gassing, then by starvation.
And he also just happens to be proliferating nuclear weapons.
And he's kicked the IAEA inspectors out.
You tell me how much intell we need and proof that the threat he poses is "imminent" before the West needs to act.