March 12, 2005

Now that St. Patrick's Day is almost upon us, this year we find out that not all Irishmen are good guys.
For shame, Gerry!
I'll never deal with Adams again, says Bush

President Bush personally ordered that Gerry Adams be frozen out of official engagements during his visit to America, furious that the Sinn Fein leader had betrayed his efforts to help to re-start the Northern Ireland peace process.
 
Mr Bush now views Mr Adams in the same unfavourable light as he did Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian leader, a senior presidential adviser said last night. "At the White House, Adams is now regarded with the same sort of disdain as Arafat," the adviser told The Telegraph. "The President no longer considers Mr Adams a reliable partner for peace. He doesn't want to meet him."

Mr Bush was enraged to learn that at the same time as he was pressing Mr Adams late last year to relaunch the power-sharing deal, Sinn Fein's armed wing, the IRA, was planning the £26 million Northern Bank raid in Belfast. He had telephoned both Mr Adams and Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionists, in an attempt to persuade Northern Ireland's two biggest parties to resume the stalled peace negotiations.
[Lest we forget, President Bush also made a trip there to meet with Northern Ireland's leaders and Tony Blair.]

Mr Bush's displeasure has forced Mr Adams to abandon plans to raise money while in America. The United States government made it clear that it would not grant him a visa that permits fund-raising, this newspaper has learnt. Sinn Fein had claimed that Mr Adams had chosen not to raise money "to avoid it being made into a contentious issue''. In reality, he was told not even to bother applying for the appropriate paperwork for the week-long visit, which began in Ohio yesterday. American officials are also demanding major concessions from Sinn Fein, most significantly that the IRA be disbanded.

"It's hard to understand how a European country in the year 2005 can have a private army associated with a political party," said Mitchell Reiss, the US envoy for Northern Ireland.

Mr Adams was invited to a St Patrick's Day reception at the White House by President Clinton in 1995 and given permission to start raising funds three years later. While he and other Irish political leaders are not on Mr Bush's guest list for St Patrick's Day celebrations this Thursday, significantly the President will welcome the sisters and fiancée of Robert McCartney, the Catholic man murdered by a gang of IRA thugs in January.

When he visited Northern Ireland in 2003, Mr Bush welcomed the efforts being made by Mr Adams and fellow political leaders. "They've signed on to a process that will yield peace," the President said.

Mr Bush's snub by will be a financial blow to Sinn Fein, as Mr Adams is the party's star turn in America and had been expected to raise large sums on his tour.

For decades, Irish republicanism has been a source of strain in Anglo-American relations as successive British governments have tried to persuade Washington to clamp down on IRA fundraising in the US. As prime minister, John Major was so angry when President Clinton first granted Mr Adams a visa in 1994 that he refused to take his telephone calls.

Ah, Bill Clinton!
Has America's favorite convalescing patient ever met a terrorist he didn't like?
And the scales have certainly fallen from President Bush's eyes (and the rest of ours) if we had any doubts that Sinn Fein's and the IRA's main business was terrorism.
Now there's reason to believe that the IRA is working with Al Queda and from the Colombia Three case, we definitely know that the IRA was working with FARC terrorists in South America, teaching them how to make better bombs.
I predict that relationship will get stronger now that the IRA's goons like Adams are personna non grata in the UK.
But Al Queda ties or no, we should continue to isolate, help prosecute, shut down funding and refuse to legitimize any political group that uses murder and bombings of the innocent to get their political way.
The GWOT's dragnet just expanded to include the Islamists' Celtic cousins.
I won't miss seeing Adams innocuously pinning shamrocks on the leader of the free world to celebrate Saint Paddy's Day and perhaps he won't miss all those American millions since they have those bank robbery proceeds to tide them over.
I appreciate and love President Bush for so many reasons, but his taking a stand against evil men and terror lords like Adams is a biggie.
So, I'll be sending an Irish blessing his way on March 17;
"May the road rise up to meet you..."

Iran Determined to Keep Nuclear Program

Iran scoffed at U.S. incentives aimed at coaxing the Islamic republic to drop its nuclear ambitions and declared Saturday that Washington's overtures did nothing to change Tehran's plans to push ahead with its nuclear program.

I cannot lie: when the Bush Administration agreed to make some economic concessions to the Iranians yesterday, I was pretty miffed!
It looks like we're weak and caving into the outrageous bellicosity of the mullahs from fear and the only reason I can find is that President Bush and Dr. Rice want to show our EUropean "allies" and Russia that we're not intransigent (yet) about the Iranian nuke situation and that, as with the Iraq problem before we launched OIF, Bush will go
the extra mile on the "multilateral" diplomatic road until it says "Dead End."
With today's response from the moo-lahs, I think we can safely say that negotiating with them is definitely a dead end and now it's time to talk and act tough.
They're training, manning and funding the "insurgency" in Iraq, their propping up their puppet Assad in Syria who keeps Lebanon as their surrogate satellite and via Hezbollah, they're murdering Americans, Israelis and Jews all over the world.
It's past time we started cutting the heads off this hydra!

This is a must read to inform yourself about the Enemy we face in our immediate future and in our backyard, even though reading it may be feel very scared and creepy (because I know it's true):
Q&A with Barbara Newman on Hezbollah on National Review Online

"Until the al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, the self-described ‘Party of God’ had killed more U.S. citizens than any other radical Islamist group and, for the most part, they had gotten away with it,” Tom Diaz and Barbara Newman write in their new book Lightening Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil.
[I'm getting my copy and I heartily encourage you to do the same.
Knowledge is one of our best weapons to fight this war!--Jen]

Barbara Newman, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, spoke to NRO Editor Kathryn Lopez Thursday afternoon about the book, current activity, and the deadly threat of Hezbollah.

National Review Online: I did a double take when I saw that Kofi Annan was encouraging serious people to accept Hezbollah. But then the New York Times reported that people in the U.S. administration are thinking similarly. Can they really be serious? Can Hezbollah ever be a legitimate political movement anywhere?

Barbara Newman: I almost lost my breakfast Thursday, which luckily I hadn't eaten yet, when I saw the New York Times page-one report today that Kofi Annan is encouraging the acceptance of Hezbollah as the preponderant power in Lebanon and the United States is thinking of yielding to this and France's pressure to do just that.

I think the report is perhaps a trial balloon by our people to test the waters. But the unvarnished truth is that Hezbollah is the most dangerous terrorist group in the world. It has about 25,000 armed members and as we saw in the pro-Syrian march in Beirut, it can muster a million in the streets.

It's no coincidence that former Deputy Secretary of State (Richard) Armitage called them "the A team of terrorism." They are disciplined, highly trained, with incredibly lethal equipment with a frighteningly good counterintelligence network. A former head of the FBI's Hezbollah branch told me that "they are the best light infantry in the world and can strike the United States any time any where." [That general sentiment] was echoed by last week's testimony of both the CIA and FBI directors before the Senate in open hearings.

Hezbollah does have a dozen members in the Lebanese parliament, which shows how smart Hezbollah is; it is trying to go both way by having a political side and a standing terrorist apparatus.

Hezbollah doesn't play politics the way we think of it. Its members are devoutly dedicated to the creation of a theocracy in Lebanon similar to that in Iran and to the eradication of the "Jewish entity" — they don't even say Israel is a state — and to the obliteration of all U.S. influence in the Middle East. We are the "Big Satan" to them and Israel is "the little Satan."
[These Islamist killers think of Democracy as a religious "heresy."
The more we try and spread democracy to their lands, the more they're going to hate us and come after us.]

Those who advocate the position that Hezbollah can be brought into a moderate role by dealing with it politically, have never heard the speeches of its charismatic chief, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah when he calls for death to America. It's like Chamberlain when he went to Munich and had never read Mein Kampf. These people mean what they say.

NRO:Just how big is Hezbollah?
Newman: Hezbollah has about 25,000 soldiers but its influence is far greater. It has members all over the world.

NRO: Could Hezbollah exist without Iranian support?

Newman: Hezbollah can probably now exist without Iranian support. But I don't think that will ever be the case. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards started training what became Hezbollah in Baalbeck in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon in 1979, right after Khomeini came to power in Iran. Iran supports Hezbollah with about $100 million a year but Hezbollah has enough businesses and is a powerful fundraiser in its own right. Iran helps Hezbollah by putting at its disposal its diplomatic prerogatives, letting Hezbollah use its security apparatus for communications and shipping of equipment.
[IOW, Iran is a classic "state-sponsor" of terrorism as defined by President Bush in his speech to the joint houses of Congress and the nation on Sept. 20, 2001 and as such, a "deserving" member of the Axis of Evil.]

NRO: Now, in Lebanon: If Syria gets out, does Hezbollah take over? How can Hezbollah’s power be squashed by the Cedar Revolution — does people power have that kind of power?

Newman: I believe that if Syria pulls out of Lebanon now, which — by the way I don't think will happen — because the Bashar Assad regime would collapse — Hezbollah would be the most powerful entity in Lebanon. It could easily smash the Lebanese army. The tragedy of all this is that the Cedar Revolution, the confluence of such previously vicious enemies, the Christians, the Sunnis, and the Druze, is occurring in a power vacuum. The Taif agreement, which ended the Lebanese civil war, forced all militias to disarm with the exception of Hezbollah. In the last ten years it has grown into a behemoth and we have done nothing about it.

How can we forget the fact that in 1983 a Hezbollah suicide driver crashed a one-thousand-pound bomb into the Marine Barracks in Beirut and killed 241 of our best and brightest? What about the hostages they took and tortured? What about the CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley who they kidnapped and slowly drowned to death by forcing a pipe down his throat and flooding him with water? They made tapes of his agony and sent it to the CIA. I'm told that former CIA Director William Casey almost went crazy when he heard them, and this propelled him to Iran-Contra, to try to free the hostages.
[In addition to the 1993 Marine barracks bombing, Hezbollah also was responsible for the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing and the bombing of U.S. military headquarters in Riyahd the year before that in which 5 US soldiers were killed.
There is good reason to believe they may have been behind the taking down of TWA 800.
That same summer of '96, we suffered the bombing at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta and I'm beginning to wonder if Islamist terrorists, and not Eric Rudolph, were the perpetrators.--J.T.]

NRO: How damaging has Hezbollah been and could it be in Iraq?

Newman: Hezbollah is very damaging to us in the war in Iraq. First of all they have trained al Qaeda. Second, they have several offices in Iraq where they share intelligence and equipment with Zarqawi and Baathists fighting us there. Third, Hezbollah commands a great deal of respect in these quarters because they are regarded as having shown that America is beatable; that in the words of Osama bin Laden it is a paper tiger because it showed it can't sustain casualties when American troops were pulled out of Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing.
[If the great President Reagan made any missteps, this was one of the biggest, although the record indicates that Congress wasn't behind him carrying out a military response to the bombing.]

NRO: You say that Hezbollah is here. I’m devil’s advocate: If they’re so embedded, why haven’t they done anything big?

Newman: Hezbollah has been operating inside the United States. Since the 1980s, the FBI has deported hundreds of members and had dozens of cases. Mostly, in these years, the Hezbollah cells were busted for criminal activity such as insurance fraud, credit-card fraud, counterfeiting clothes such as Levi jeans, phony marriages which they arranged to get green cards, and cigarette smuggling. Though these are sort of under-the-radar crimes, they raised millions of dollars which were sent to Hezbollah coffers in Beirut and in some cases used to buy highly sophisticated "dual-use" equipment in Canada such as very sophisticated computers, cell phones hooked up electronically to be capable of remotely controlled explosions, and intelligence drones.

They have not hit us here but the FBI and CIA thinks if we push them to the wall, cut off their ability to raise funds, get tough with them in Lebanon, they easily could hit us here.

Remember, they are very tough and sophisticated. Their soldiers don't do solo operations. Think of them as a pistol aimed at our head, which can be shot at will.

NRO: Has the war on terror diluted the FBI’s focus on Hezbollah cells in the U.S.?
Newman: The FBI tells me that, no doubt, the war on terror has been focused on al Qaeda and there has been a diminution of interest in Hezbollah, but this is changing. We know that the White House is very concerned about the potentiality of Hezbollah damage. Perhaps this is why some in our government might be counseling to respect the power on the ground and get into negotiations with Hezbollah. It will never work.

NRO: How have U.S. immigration policies and practices helped Hezbollah?

Newman: Without a doubt, U.S. immigration policies and practices made it laughingly easy for Hezbollah members to enter the U.S. illegally. There is a place called Margarita Island off the coast of Venezuela where for $300 you can get phony papers to enter the U.S. When immigration officials noticed the blatant forgeries, the Hezbollah members asked for political asylum and were told to report to court on a certain date. Most didn't. Many found ways to stay here simply by taking identities of friends leaving the country or paying women to marry them and never living with them.

Since 9/11, these politics have been toughened and our people are more vigilant in the pursuit of terrorists trying to enter the country.

But we have porous borders to our north and south and Hezbollah has taken to getting people in the country by hiding in the trunk of cars coming in from Mexico.
[...or just walking across the border in Arizona.
This is why a citizen militia called the Minuteman Project has formed and why we must prevail upon the Bush Administration to tighten our borders immediately if not sooner!
It has nothing to do with how much we like Mexicans and how much they contribute to our society and everything to do with the WOT.
The fact that we haven't had another big attack here staged by Islamist murderers who snuck in over these porous borders is merely our good luck or good fortune and we have no idea who's here already planning something terrible for the future!]

NRO: What should every American know about Hezbollah?

Newman: Every American should know that Hezbollah is a terrorist group whose ideology advocates the killing of Americans.

Now, not every Muslim is a terrorist and not every Shiite is a member of Hezbollah. In fact, Hezbollah commands just a small, but unfortunately lethally dedicated membership worldwide.

NRO: Is Hezbollah more of a threat to Americans than al Qaeda at this point?

Newman: A lot of intelligence officers I have spoken to regard Hezbollah as more a threat to Americans than al Qaeda. One FBI station chief I know very well said he's worried about Hezbollah, he's worried about the Hezbollah cells in the United States, and he's worried about Hezbollah members so secretly ensconced here that even operating cells don't know about them.

This matches the m.o. of the 9/11 hijackers, most of whom didn't know about the others.
(I think Mohammed Atta was the only one who knew about the entire operation because he was the ringleader.)
As of this Thursday, the FBI was saying that they "couldn't find" sleeper cells in the homeland.
Could they have found the 9/11 killers with enough notice?
I doubt it.
Terrorist operatives implanted here take great efforts not to be caught, noticed or apprehended, using any kind of lie, masquerade or dissembling to hide their true identities and evil purposes, as instructed by their own Koran when waging jihad with the infidel in the Dar El-Harb.
Perhaps John Negroponte's new Intelligence agency can do a better job coordinating the FBI, the CIA and all the other Homeland Security agencies.
Their efforts, combined with the Patriot Act, and tighter border controls, may save many American lives.
But it may be too little, too late.
We'll see as developments in the Middle East trigger events here at home.
We need to keep the pressure up on our Congresspersons and Senators to renew the Patriot Act, to pass legislation for tighter border and immigration controls and to preach preparedness to the American people to watch suspicious persons and activities and how to be ready if there's an attack.
Also, we must ignore the ACLU when it tries to get terrorists freed from the docket like Jose Padilla and Sami Al-Arian, whom the MSM is portraying as "innocent victims" of a 9/11 anti-Muslim witch hunt.
Although Freedom is on the march in the Middle East, we're not out of the woods of this war yet--there may be dark days ahead.
Prepare. Demand more from our government. Know the enemy.
And whether they call themselves Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Moslem Brotherhood or Al Queda, their goal is the same: to kill us and end our way of life.
We are NOT craven citizens of a "paper tiger" and it's time these evildoers hear and see that loud and clear.

March 11, 2005

Prof accused of plagiarism

University of Colorado officials investigating embattled professor Ward Churchill received documents this week purporting to show that he plagiarized another professor's work. Officials at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia sent CU an internal 1997 report detailing allegations about an article Churchill wrote.

Is this guy a piece of work or what?
He lied about being an Indian, he's funded by the Left and he got tenure by putting himself in the understaffed, not very academically-demanding "Ethnic Studies" department.
I hope UC gives him the boot!
The rumor is that the boot will come with a nice monetary cushion to make its impact a little softer, though.
What a shame and a disgrace for the Forces of Truth and Justice--we cannot let charlatans like Churchill game the system and get away with it,
although I'd say the man has made a lot more enemies than he has friends and even if the university has to buy him out, at least he won't be "teaching" our youth his poisonous ideology anymore!
For an intellectual moron who hates the capitalist system, he sure seems eager to get ahold of $300-400,000, produced by the "military/industrial complex" of the USA.
(I haven't blogged about this asshat before because he's just so loathesome--Sorry!
And does his name have to be "Churchill," that of one of the world's greatest leaders? Fie!)

Hostage Shot By US Was Careless - Italian Minister

Italy's justice minister urged former hostage Giuliana Sgrena on Friday to stop making "careless" accusations after being shot by US forces in Baghdad, saying she had already caused enough grief.

Sgrena has repeatedly [been] suggesting US soldiers shot her on purpose
[Except that here she takes it back! What a Ditzy Chick!--Jen]
and said on Friday she had little faith in a joint investigation by Italy and the United States into the "friendly fire" incident.

"She has created enormous problems for the government and also caused grief that perhaps was better avoided," Justice Minister Roberto Castelli told reporters in Bologna.
[...]
"Sgrena, I think, should perhaps be more careful. She has said a load of nonsense, speaks somewhat carelessly and makes careless comments," Castelli said.

The US army says Sgrena's vehicle sped toward the checkpoint outside the airport and ignored warning shots, an explanation rejected by Rome and the car's driver.

Italy's centre-right government, while rejecting any hint that the shooting was intentional, has until now largely refrained from directly criticising Sgrena.

Bravo, Senore Castelli!
It's about time someone set that airheaded Communist ditz straight!
I hope there's more of this in the Italian press to undo the damage Segrena's done to America, Italy's allies, and her good soldiers in the minds of the Italian public.

H/T La Divina Lucianne

Saddam's $2m offer to WMD inspector

Saddam Hussein's regime offered a $2 million (£1.4 million) bribe to the United Nations' chief weapons inspector to doctor his reports on the search for weapons of mass destruction.

Rolf Ekeus, the Swede who led the UN's efforts to track down the weapons from 1991 to 1997, said that the offer came from Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister and deputy.
[...]
A clean report from Mr Ekeus's inspectors would have been vital in lifting sanctions against Saddam's regime. But the inspectors never established what had happened to the regime's illicit weapons and never gave Iraq a clean bill of health.

The news that Iraq attempted to bribe a top UN official is a key piece of evidence for investigators into the scandal surrounding the oil-for-food programme. It proves that Iraq was offering huge sums of cash to influential foreigners in return for political favours.

Nile Gardiner, of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, who has followed the inquiries, said: "It's the tip of the iceberg of what the Iraqis were offering. For every official like Ekeus who turned down a bribe, there are many more who will have been tempted by it."

This revelation surprises me none at all.
My only question is how much did Scott Ritter and Hans Blix take under the table?

March 07, 2005

The headlines from the Leftist MSM about the nomination of Josh Bolton as the U.S. rep to the U.N. are a hoot!
Here's Al-Reuters:
Hawkish Bolton Nominated as U.N. Ambassador
Their "story" actually says this:

Bolton, who has been a leading hawk against Iran and North Korea as the top arms control policies diplomat, has complained the United Nations does not take strong enough action against such nations. He also is a leading critic of international treaties.

Bolton's nomination, which must be confirmed by the Senate, shocked diplomats at the United Nations.

Can't you hear those worms, weasels and thugs in the UN right now: "Oh, no! Not Bolton! He hates us!"
LOL
But for the really hilarious coverage of the story, you've gotta love the BBC's version:

Bush names hardliner as UN envoy

President George W Bush has named Undersecretary of State John Bolton as his choice to be US ambassador to the United Nations.

Mr Bolton, currently the US top arms control expert, is known to be a harsh critic of the UN.
[Given their recently exposed scam of Saddam's Oil-for-Food program, sex crimes by UN "peacekeepers" in the Congo, and their utter uselessness coordinating tsunami relief, I'd say they give Mr. Bolton plenty to be critical about!--Jen]

His appointment is likely to be seen as highly controversial, says the BBC's state department correspondent.
[Viva Bush!
I love it when he gets up the noses of the Left and the Democrats!]
[...]
He [Bolton] has been a leading hawk on Iran, Iraq and North Korea, admired by many Republicans and neo-conservatives, but not seen as particularly close to former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
[Hey, BBC! Guess what?! Powell ain't Sec State anymore!
There's a new Warrior Princess in town.]

He has in past been quoted as saying there is no such thing as the United Nations.

He also reportedly said in 1994 that it would not make any difference if the UN headquarters in New York lost 10 of its storeys.
[BWAHAHAHAHA to both of those quoted statements!
Too, too funny and too accurate.]

He has recently been involved in multilateral talks with North Korea over its nuclear programme.

Mr Bolton has often accused UN bodies of not taking a tough enough stance against nations such as Iran and North Korea.

He recently described North Korea's uranium programme as "an 800lb gorilla sitting at the table" that could not be ignored.

His public denunciation of North Korea's nuclear weapons programme prompted Pyongyang to refuse to deal with him.

But a US government official insisted Mr Bolton would work well at the UN.

If we still have to have that albatross UN hung around our necks, Bolton sounds like the PERFECT guy to be our representative...or he'll be in the vortex of the Perfect Storm.
Go get 'em, Mr. NeoCon Warmonger!
Iran and North Korea are still a problem, as our Dr. Rice's "outposts of tyranny."

Opposition protesters carry anti-Syrian banners during a demonstartion against Syria in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday March 7, 2005. About 100,000 anti-Syrian demonstrators converged on Martyrs' Square, repeatedly chanting 'Syria out!' and most waving Lebanon's distinctive red and white flag with a green cedar tree. Monday's demonstration marked three weeks since the Feb. 14 assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri that began a peaceful campaign against Syrian control.
Opposition holds mass rally in Beirut as Syria prepares for army pullback

Up to 150,000 opposition supporters rallied in Beirut three weeks after the murder of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri as Syria prepared for a troop pullback in Lebanon in the face of international pressure.

No kidding!
Today, President Bush told Assad to pull out all Syrian forces "now" and his call for complete Syrian withdrawal was joined by France's ChIraq and Germany's Schroeder just a couple of hours ago.
So did King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to Assad's face.
And so did Russia. (Even if Russia chimed in only so Putin can look pro-democratic for Bush's sake!)
The jig's up, Bashar!
Unless the Chinese want to back you...
When not only the U.S., but France, Germany, Russia, the Sauds and your former pals in the Arab League tell you to get your troops and "intelligence" people out of Lebanon and your only allies are Iran and Hezbollah, it's time to get out of Lebanon.

Lebanese red-and-white flags and chants of "Syria Out" filled the central Martyrs' Square as President Emile Lahoud held much anticipated Damascus talks on the promised redeployment to the eastern Bekaa Valley.

The pullback to the Bekaa will take place by the end of March, according to a joint statement issued after the summit between Lahoud and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad.
[Bashar's doing what the Iranian mullahs are telling him to now.--Jen]
[...]
According to police, more than 150,000 people attended Monday's rally in Martyrs' Square, where Hariri is buried, to demand the truth about the Damascus critic's death.

Organisers of the rally gave a figure of between 200,000 and 250,000.
[I'm going with the organisers guesstimate; the crowds are massive.--J.T.]
[...]
"Truth, freedom, national unity," chanted the crowd.
[...]
Demonstrations were also held in the streets of Sidon, Hariri's hometown in southern Lebanon, gathering some 4,000 students.

The new protests came as the president held talks with Assad on the planned troop redeployment, which falls short of the full pullout demanded by the UN Security Council last September.
[Assad's putting his toes in the water to check the temperature.
If he can get away with this small, slow and incomplete pullout, he'd like that a lot, but I don't think either President Bush and the other world leaders or the Lebanese people are going to let him slide.]

Lebanese Defence Minister Abdel Rahim Mrad said Sunday that the Syrian army would pull back to Bekaa Valley in a move expected to involve 4,000 to 5,000 troops, with the rest already in place.

On Saturday, Assad vowed to pull back the 14,000 Syrian troops in Lebanon "to the Bekaa Valley and then to the border."

But he did not make clear whether the troops would cross over into Syria once they had reached the border, prompting calls from Washington and Paris for an unambiguous pledge for an immediate and full withdrawal.

Damascus first sent in its troops in a year after the start of Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war and has remained the dominant political and military force in the country ever since.

As the pressure grew on Damascus, its allies announced that they too planned to take to the streets on Tuesday, fanning fears of violence.

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Syrian-backed Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah, said a full withdrawal of Syria's troops was unacceptable while Lebanon remained in a "state of war" with Israel.

Isn't this Cedar Revolution exciting?
Stay clicked, as Lucianne Goldberg likes to say!
(Maybe I misunderstood, but isn't the Bekaa Valley the place where Syrians have been firing on the Israelis for years?
And there's a good chance that this is where they wheeled Saddam's WMDs to.)

U.S. General: Omar Loses Control of Afghan Insurgency

Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has lost control of the insurgency in Afghanistan and the number of attacks has fallen dramatically, a senior U.S. general said Monday.

Taliban spokesmen have said attacks will resume once the harsh Afghan winter is over.
[Would this be like the "brutal Afghan winter" of 2001 that we're still waiting for...?
And that was supposed to be a problem for our guys, not the Taliban's!
Kinda funny, isn't it?--Jen]

But Major General Eric T. Olson told a news conference in Kabul that the Taliban lacked cohesion and were a fading force in the southern and southeast provinces that had been their strongholds.
[...]
Omar's whereabouts remains a mystery, said Olson, but the U.S. general was convinced that wherever he is, Omar no longer exerts control over the Taliban.

"It seems very clear to us, given the disjointed and uncoordinated effort that the Taliban has been able to launch, that those types of leaders, Mullah Omar specifically, are not exercising an effective command and control over Taliban operations in Afghanistan."

He put this down to the success of U.S.-led forces in both combat operations and in winning over support from local communities, leaving the insurgents isolated.

What great news!
With God's help, we'll see this same thing happen in Iraq, too.
Good work, U.S. military!
I know Rush Limbaugh enjoyed his tour of Afghanistan last week, where he met, thanked and enjoyed camaraderie with our troops and even met with Hamid Karzai.
(The military wouldn't have let him go if they hadn't pretty much nailed down the Taliban "insurgency" as this story asserts.)
Here's a picture of him meeting with a group of Afghan women who are teaching literacy to other Afghan ladies at the Afghan Literacy Institute outside Kabul:



Isn't it terrific to see no burkas and head scarves at a minimum there?!

March 06, 2005

Iran warns: We won't end nuke program

Iran said Saturday it will never agree to permanently stop making nuclear fuel and warned that any attempt to haul it before the Security Council for possible sanctions would lead to more instability in the Middle East.

Any effort by Washington to bring Tehran's suspended uranium enrichment program under Security Council scrutiny is a dangerous path, warned Hasan Rowhani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator.

Rowhani, speaking at a two-day conference on nuclear technology, also confirmed that Iran was building a tunnel next to a nuclear facility in Isfahan without informing the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.
[...]
A diplomat familiar with Iran's dossier said last week that parts of the concrete tunnel could run as deep as a half-mile underground and could withstand air attacks.
[The jihadis, driving for an Arab Bomb, learned their lesson when the Israelis bombed Saddam's Osirak reactor in 1981.
They won't be making that mistake again by leaving their nuke facilities out in the open.--J.T.]
[...]
Rowhani said the tunnel, which is under a mountain, will be used for storage. Asked if the tunnel was meant to protect nuclear equipment against air strikes, he said: ''Air strikes won't be able to do anything against it.''
[These Islamofacists are such cagy liars!
Notice how he answers the question but doesn't answer it at the same time.]

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday had asked the atomic agency to investigate reports about the tunnel. She won tentative support Saturday from Russia's Foreign Ministry, which said the nuclear agency should clear up concerns ''in the process of routine IAEA monitoring activity.''

Iran will halt negotiations and resume making nuclear fuel ''without any hesitation,'' Rowhani said, if European negotiators insist Iran turn its temporary suspension into a permanent halt.
[Not to worry.
I don't think the moo-lahs have halted their nuclear activities for a moment anyway.]

Iran suspended uranium enrichment last year
[Uh-huh.]
to create confidence in its negotiations and avoid Security Council referral. But Tehran says maintaining the voluntary freeze depends on progress in talks with Britain, Germany and France.
[And I suppose that the Iranian idea of "progress" is for the E3 to leave them alone, take their word for it they're abiding by the NPT, and letting them do what they want, when they want.]

Rowhani said referring Iran to the Security Council would only make things worse.

"Americans and Europeans will be the first to lose in that case,'' he said. ''It will cause problems for regional energy and for the European economy. And it will cause additional problems for America.

"No one will benefit from this. It's playing with fire.''

So, what does Mr. Rowhani mean by all these veiled threats exactly?
I guess we're not supposed to ask;
a nod's as good as a wink to a blind man, eh?
Iran, as a voluntary signatory to the NPT, doesn't have the luxury of non-compliance with any of the requests that the E3, the IAEA or the UNSC make on them about their nuclear program.
Yet, they use this very same program for nuclear blackmail--which is precisely why we don't want rogue régimes to have access to nukes in the first place.
The E3 must press on and when those negotiations fail, which Rowhani virtually promises they will, then the IAEA (under the leadership of fellow Muslim ElBaradei) must continue their inspections and when, if ever, this goes to the U.N. Security Council, they need to come down hard on bellicose Iran.
(But they won't. I believe that Mohammed ElBaradei, the E3 and the weenies on the UNSC will all be completely intimidated by these threats, as they are supposed to be.)
After what we went through with Saddam in 2001-2003, I dread this process.
It's like Groundhog Day and worse!
The Iranians have been stalling for some time now with these negotiation "failures" until they could get their nukes operational.
Then, when they're pressed by the West, they'll nuke something with the missiles they swore they didn't have and then say that we were to blame.
Very, very devious and very evil.
And, of course, Iran is feeling very threatened right now what with Freedom being on the march in the Middle East and their operations in Syria and Lebanon (in the guise of Hezbollah) being taken out thereby, as well as the tyrannical régime of the clerics in Iran itself.
If the Lebanese are liberated by the withdrawal of all of Syria's forces, then Assad's régime in Syria will fall not long after.
In fact, if democracy does continue its happy march through the Middle East and these things are accomplished, that will leave only Iran and Saudi Arabia as the only Islamist thugocracies in the region.
Happy Day!
The mullahs are plenty scared or they wouldn't be doing this U-235 saber-rattling right now.
But just because they're desperate doesn't mean they can't hurt someone with their nukes or that they won't try.
Nail-biting and prayer time again.
Thank God President Bush isn't going to use a "global test" to decide if he should act and that all options, including military strikes, are "on the table."

Sgrena shooting a 'blunder'

An Iraqi minister challenged Sunday the allegation that US troops in Iraq fired deliberately on Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena after she was released following a month-long kidnap ordeal.

"Why would the Americans want to stop a journalist from being freed?" asked Iraqi Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin in an interview with the Belgian public television channel RTBF.

Amin, who spoke at the end of a visit to Belgium, said a military blunder was a more likely explanation for the incident, in which an Italian intelligence officer was killed and Sgrena was injured when US troops opened fire on their car as it approached a checkpoint.
[To put it bluntly, our troops at the checkpoint saw a speeding car, tried everything to get it stop without success and then fired on it, thinking it was a suicide car bomber.--Jen]

"I don't know who the driver of the car was and if he knew the rules... a thorough inquiry must be carried out," the minister said.

"Errors are made in difficult security situations, in zones where people are targeted by terrorists.

"You must not forget the criminals who created this situation, it is the abductors who are responsible," he added.

Sgrena was wounded when the convoy taking her to safety was fired on by US troops near Baghdad airport on Friday.

On her return to Rome she said she might have been targeted deliberately by the troops because the Americans opposed negotiations with her kidnappers.

Any negotiation with terrorists is a mistake, but in Italy's case, particularly, there's reason to believe that they've paid large ransoms for their people kidnapped in Iraq and in Sgrena's case that it may have been $1,000,000.
Not only that, but being a Communist (the BBC actually refers to her as a "former Left-wing militant", so terrorist tactics are nothing new to her!) with the IslamoNazis, journos like Sgrena will give favorable coverage to the "insurgents,"
portraying them as noble "freedom fighters."
Actually, the Left is getting a lot of mileage out of this one strange incident in addition to the reasons given already.
it makes Useful Idiots like Eason Jordan look right:
"Ah, yes, U.S. troops are targeting journalists."
Back at home in Italy, it stirs up anti-war and anti-American feeling like nobody's business.
While we must acknowledge that Italy and PM Berlusconi have been strong and invaluable members of the Coalition, this incident has upset even stalwart ally Silvio, who is naturally concerned for his countrymen, and Italy's "anti-war" movement has been larger than it should be, but smaller than that found in most other EU countries, but look for it to get bigger and louder after this weekend.
And, of course, the incident makes Iraq look like a lawless "quagmire," where trigger-happy American cowboy soldiers who
I can't keep order in Iraq unless it's at gunpoint are universally hated by the locals.
Check out this featurette on Drudge right now:
No One Safe on Baghdad's Roads, Iraqis Say.
It's as if all Iraqi gratitude for their liberation which reached a groundswell in the wake of their Jan. 30 elections has just melted away with this one event.
Piffle!
If Ms. Sgrena wasn't on the side of the terrorists, she'd have been murdered by them by now and the MSM would have a tiny column about it in the middle of their papers, instead of the reams of sloppy, detail-poor stories we've had since Friday.
And if U.S. troops were deliberately targeting her as a journalist, she wouldn't be alive today to do her whining about them.
If Iraqis really thought that their streets weren't safe because of U.S. soldiers, you wouldn't have seen 60% of the Iraqi electorate voting on Purple Finger Day.
The dirty details as to what really happened will emerge soon enough, but until then, Sgrena is the global Left's Darling of the Moment™.
Minister Amin is right--the abductors are the ones responsible for what happened to Ms. Sgrena and the U.S. military should be absolved once again of any malicious wrongdoing.

Up to 200 Al-Qaeda terrorists in Britain

BRITAIN’s most senior police officer at the time of the September 11 terrorist attacks has warned that there are at least 100 Al-Qaeda trained fighters “walking Britain’s streets”.

Sir John Stevens, who retired as Metropolitan police commissioner at the end of January, fears the true figure of those potentially able to carry out attacks is probably nearer 200.
[I still think this is a conservative estimate, also.--Jen]

“Though they haven’t yet subjected Britain to horrors such as 9/11 or the Madrid bombings, make no mistake they would if they could,” said Stevens. “If I heard on my car radio that they had pulled off a terrorist atrocity at last, I’d be horrified but not in the slightest bit surprised.”

Stevens’s latest assessment of the threat posed by fundamentalist adherents of Osama Bin Laden comes in a newspaper article in which he says the government’s prevention of terrorism bill is “vital” legislation.
[There's been a real brouhaha in Britain over this proposed terrorism bill which makes our domestic whining about the Patriot Act look like nothing.]

“The main opposition to the bill is from people who simply haven’t understood the true horror of the terrorism we face.

“For the safety of the vast majority, occasionally we will have to accept the infringement of the human rights of high-risk individuals.”
[For the not-too-bright, which would include most of the Left, this means if you don't fit the er...profile, shall we say?, you don't have to worry about your civil liberties being infringed.]
[...]

The figures are thought to be based on the numbers of “graduates” who returned to Britain from Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan until they were destroyed by coalition forces during the war of 2001-02.
[AQ has set up other training camps since, certainly in Saharan Africa and there are probably others we don't know about yet.]

Senior security figures including Sir Ian Blair, Stevens’s successor as commissioner, believe the radicalising influence of such “jihadists” — some of whom have also fought for the Muslim cause in Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir — provide the core of the threat to Britain.

Stevens said the suspects held without trial at Belmarsh prison in southeast London remain a threat and should not be freed despite a ruling by the law lords in December that the men’s human rights had been infringed.

“I have read every word of the evidence and intelligence against them. I know that for the safety of innocent people they should remain under lock and key. They simply should not be at liberty in this country. It is madness,” Stevens wrote in the News of the World.
[...]
The former commissioner, who shared briefings with the prime minister from MI5, MI6 and Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch, said “huge amounts of intelligence” had been provided by Muslims themselves, appalled at atrocities committed in the name of Islam.
[If true, this is definitely progress!]

“That intelligence proves these fanatics must not walk our streets. They must be locked up — or kicked out of the country.”

Whatever Sir Stevens said about the UK goes double for America!
If Britain has 200 "sleeper" AQ terrorists, the USA must have 2,000 or more.
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty." and at no time is that more true than right now;
all of we citizens need to be on red alert for these evildoers among us--they're still here and still planning attacks to kill us here at home.