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Friday, August 19, 2005
The 911 Omission Commission: Coverup Continues
IRAQ INVOLVEMENT BLOCKED FROM REPORT, IRAQ CONSTITUTION NEAR MAY GRANT RIGHT TO SUCCESSION!
The Omission Commission
The 9/11 Commission Report failed to make any mention of Iraqi operations in Germany that might have been connected to al Qaeda.
REPRESENTATIVE CURT WELDON dropped a delayed political bombshell with a special-orders speech last June in which he revealed the existence of a data-mining program at the Pentagon named Able Danger, which he claimed had identified Mohammed Atta and three of the other 9/11 hijackers as al Qaeda operatives over a year before the attacks. Almost two months later, an intelligence-community periodical, Government Security News, noted the speech. This caught the attention of New York Times reporter Douglas Jehl, who informed the nation that far from missing the terrorist cell before the 9/11 attacks, military intelligence had identified them with plenty of time to act.
Questions immediately arose about why no law-enforcement agency took action with the information, and why the 9/11 Commission made no mention of Able Danger or the identification of Atta's cell in its final report. The sources for Weldon's revelations insist that the political atmosphere and the attorneys at the Pentagon would not allow the military to share the information with the FBI, believing (1) the existence of the data-mining project would create a political backlash against the Defense Department, and (2) it would violate the policies of the Department of Justice to have coordination between military intelligence and the FBI involving a legal resident in the United States, as they believed Atta to be.
THEY MIGHT START with a few cryptic media reports from March 2001 regarding two arrests made in Germany. The BBC and Reuters both noted the capture of Iraqi intelligence agents in Heidelberg. Both reports gave essentially the same minimal data on March 1:
German state prosecutors said on Thursday federal police had arrested two Iraqis on suspicion of spying.
The two men were detained in Heidelberg, according to a German television report. German officials declined to comment on the report. . . . "They are suspected of carrying out missions for an Iraqi intelligence service in a number of German towns since the beginning of 2001,'' said a spokeswoman for state prosecutor Kay Nehm in Karlsruhe.
The Germans did not arrest these Iraqi operatives on a whim. Their counterintelligence operations had tracked them for some time before closing in and capturing the two. At the time, American and British forces had launched air raids on radar stations in Iraq's no-fly zones and the assumption was that the Iraqis may have wanted to hit American forces stationed in Heidelberg in retaliation. However, by March 16, a Paris-based Arabic newspaper had developed more information on the arrests. The Middle East Intelligence Bulletin summarized the report from al-Watan al-Arabi:
Al-Watan al-Arabi (Paris) reports that two Iraqis were arrested in Germany, charged with spying for Baghdad. The arrests came in the wake of reports that Iraq was reorganizing the external branches of its intelligence service and that it had drawn up a plan to strike at US interests around the world through a network of alliances with extremist fundamentalist parties.
The most serious report contained information that Iraq and Osama bin Ladin were working together.
IRAQ CONSTITUTION TO BE READY SOON
It looks like the Iraq Constitution will be ready early next week. They are doing better than us. Work on ours started in 1786 and the document was worked on until 1789!
The Kurds want the right to succession, and that seems to be a key reason for the hold up.
Of course if their Constitution ends up granting that right, once again we will have sent troops in harms way for a right we do not have here.
Ironic, isn't it? http://www.suntimes.com/output/iraq/cst-nws-iraq19.html
Posted at 07:14 am by Psychomike
Thursday, August 18, 2005
How Suicide Bombers Are Made!
HOW SUICIDE BOMBERS ARE CREATED, THE POPE IN GERMANY
Pope ends first day in GermanyLast Updated Thu, 18 Aug 2005 19:26:57 EDT
CBC News
Pope Benedict XVI ended his first day in Germany on Thursday, after preaching to a crowd on the banks of the Rhine from the bow of a cruise boat.
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Pope Benedict XVI waves from a boat on the river Rhine in Cologne, Germany on Thursday (CP Photo) |
The pontiff is on his first foreign trip, and first homecoming, since becoming Pope in April.
Marc Cardinal Ouellet of Quebec, who was on the boat, said he was very impressed by the enthusiastic welcome given to the Pope by large numbers of people along the river.
Earlier, at the airport, the Pope was greeted by young people attending World Youth Day in Cologne.
Amy Boskill of Saskatoon was one of two delegates chosen to formally welcome the pontiff.
Benedict said he was looking forward to visiting the city's synagogue, rebuilt after being destroyed by the Nazis, and to meeting with Muslim leaders. "Visiting a synagogue is close to my heart, and also the greeting of members of the Islamic community," he said, gusts of wind ruffling his white garments and silver hair.
The strong wind knocked off the Pope's white skullcap as he got off the plane, blowing it back inside the cabin. He reached for it in vain and decided to go on with the ceremonial welcome hatless.
Winds also toppled the World Youth Day cross from the bow of the cruise ship, breaking one of its arms. The cross was first used during World Youth Day in 2000 in Rome and has been carried around the world by Catholic youth groups, including to the site of the World Trade Center attacks in New York.
Benedict landed to a subdued arrival compared to some of the greetings received by his charismatic predecessor, John Paul II. He skipped John Paul's custom of kissing the ground, and only a few hundred enthusiastic admirers were brought to the airport.
In the most symbolic moment of his triumphant visit to his homeland, Benedict will visit a Cologne synagogue on Friday that was destroyed by the Nazis during the anti-Jewish Crystal Night riots in 1938.
He will be greeted as a friend, a fact that speaks volumes about how Catholics and Jews in Germany have become reconciled since the Second Vatican Council repudiated the old anti-Semitic notion of the Jews as "Christ killers" 40 years ago.
http://www.cbc.ca/storyview/MSN/world/national/2005/08/18/Pope_ends_first_day_in_Germany20050818.html
HOW SUICIDE BOMBERS ARE CREATED
Are you ready? Tomorrow you will be in Paradise . . .
Nasra Hassan
What motivates a suicide bomber? Our correspondent talks to a young Muslim who survived his intended 'martyrdom' and describes the terrorists' rigorous training
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| AT DAWN, when the three men heard the morning call to prayer from a mosque in the village below their hideout in the hills, they knelt and uttered the traditional invocation to Allah that Muslim warriors make before setting off for combat. They put on clean clothes, tucked the Koran into their pockets, and began the long hike over the hills and along dry riverbeds to the outskirts of Jerusalem.
In the Palestinian neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem, they walked in silence so that their accents, the guttural vernacular of Gaza, would not arouse suspicion. It was June 1993, and they were members of the Palestinian fundamentalist group Hamas. Along the way, they stopped to pray at every mosque. At dusk, they boarded a bus that was heading toward West Jerusalem, filled with Israeli passengers. When the driver thwarted their attempt to hijack the vehicle, they tried to detonate the homemade bombs they were carrying.
The bombs failed to go off, so they pulled out guns and began firing wildly. The shots injured five passengers, including a woman who later died. The young men fled the bus, hijacked a car at a red light, and forced the driver to take them toward Bethlehem. Israeli security forces stopped them at a military checkpoint, and in a gun battle two of the young men and their hostage were killed. The third hijacker, whom I will call S, was struck by a bullet in the head; he lay comatose for two months in Israeli hospitals. Finally, he was pronounced brain-dead, and the Israelis sent him back to his family in the Gaza Strip to die.
But S recovered, and when we met, five years later, he told me his version of the events. By then, he was married and the father of three sons. Each of them had been named for shaheed batal — “martyr heroes”.
In Gaza, S is celebrated as a young man who “gave his life to Allah” and whom Allah “brought back to life”.
He was polite as he welcomed me into his home. The house was surrounded by a high cement wall that had been fortified with steel. We sat down in a large, simply furnished room whose walls were inscribed with verses from the Koran. On one wall was a poster showing green birds flying in a purple sky, a symbol of the Palestinian suicide bombers.
S had just turned 27. He is slight, and he walked with a limp, the only trace of his near-death. He invited his wife to join us, and he answered my questions without hesitation.
I asked him when, and why, he had decided to volunteer for martyrdom. “In the spring of 1993, I began to pester our military leaders to let me do an operation,” he said. “It was around the time of the Oslo accords, and it was quiet, too quiet. I wanted to do an operation that would incite others to do the same. Finally, I was given the green light to leave Gaza for an operation inside Israel.”
“How did you feel when you heard that you’d been selected for martyrdom?” I asked.
“It’s as if a very high, impenetrable wall separated you from Paradise or Hell,” he said. “Allah has promised one or the other to his creatures. So, by pressing the detonator, you can immediately open the door to Paradise — it is the shortest path to Heaven.”
S was one of 11 children in a middle-class family that, in 1948, had been forced to flee from Majdal to a refugee camp in Gaza, during the Arab-Israeli war that started with the creation of the State of Israel. He joined Hamas in his early teens and became a street activist.
In 1989, he served two terms in Israeli prisons for intifada activity, including attacks on Israeli soldiers. One of his brothers is serving a life sentence in Israel.
I asked S to describe his preparations for the suicide mission. “We were in a constant state of worship,” he said. “We told each other that if the Israelis only knew how joyful we were they would whip us to death! Those were the happiest days of my life.”
“What is the attraction of martyrdom?” I asked.
“The power of the spirit pulls us upward, while the power of material things pulls us downward,” he said. “Someone bent on martyrdom becomes immune to the material pull. Our planner asked, ‘What if the operation fails?’ We told him, ‘In any case, we get to meet the Prophet and his companions, inshallah.’
“We were floating, swimming, in the feeling that we were about to enter eternity. We had no doubts. We made an oath on the Koran, in the presence of Allah — a pledge not to waver. This jihad pledge is called bayt al-ridwan, after the garden in Paradise that is reserved for the prophets and the martyrs. I know that there are other ways to do jihad. But this one is sweet — the sweetest. All martyrdom operations, if done for Allah ’s sake, hurt less than a gnat’s bite!”
S showed me a video that documented the final planning for the operation. In the grainy footage, I saw him and two other young men engaging in a ritualistic dialogue of questions and answers about the glory of martyrdom. S, who was holding a gun, identified himself as a member of al-Qassam, the military wing of Hamas, which is one of two Palestinian Islamist organisations that sponsor suicide bombings. (Islamic Jihad is the other group.) “Tomorrow, we will be martyrs,” he declared, looking straight at the camera. “Only the believers know what this means. I love martyrdom.”
The young men and the planner then knelt and placed their right hands on the Koran. The planner said: “Are you ready? Tomorrow, you will be in Paradise.”
SINCE 1982, I have been an international relief worker. In 1996 I was posted to the Gaza Strip during one of the most vicious cycles of suicide bombings. To understand why certain young men voluntarily blow themselves up in the name of Islam, I began, without official sponsorship, to research their backgrounds and the beliefs that had led them to such extreme tactics.
I was warned that my interest in trying to understand the suicide missions was dangerous. But eventually, when the people who were observing me had assured themslves of my credentials — an important one was that I am Muslim and from Pakistan — I was allowed to meet members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who would help me. “We are agreeing to talk to you so that you can explain the Islamic context of these operations,” one man told me. “Even many in the Islamic world do not understand.”
From 1996 to 1999, I interviewed nearly 250 people involved in the most militant camps of the Palestinian cause: volunteers who, like S, had been unable to complete their suicide missions, the families of dead bombers, and the men who trained them.
None of the suicide bombers — they ranged in age from 18 to 38 — conformed to the typical profile of the suicidal personality. None of them was uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded, or depressed. Many were middle-class and held paying jobs. Two were the sons of millionaires. They all seemed entirely normal members of their families. They were polite and serious, and in their communities were considered to be model youths. Most were bearded. All were deeply religious.
I was told that to be accepted for a suicide mission the volunteers had to be convinced of the religious legitimacy of the acts they were contemplating, as sanctioned by the divinely revealed religion of Islam. Many of these young men had memorised large sections of the Koran and were well versed in the finer points of Islamic law and practice. But their knowledge of Christianity was rooted in the medieval crusades, and they regarded Judaism and Zionism as synonymous.
Most of the men I interviewed requested strict anonymity. The majority spoke in Arabic and they all talked matter-of-factly about the bombings, showing an unshakeable conviction in the rightness of their cause and their methods. When I asked them if they had any qualms about killing innocent civilians, they would immediately respond, “The Israelis kill our children and our women. This is war, and innocent people get hurt.”
They were not inclined to argue but they were happy to discuss, far into the night, the issues and the purpose of their activities. One condition of the interviews was that, in our discussions, I not refer to their deeds as “suicide”, which is forbidden in Islam. Their preferred term is “sacred explosions”. One member of al-Qassam said: “We do not have tanks or rockets, but we have something superior — our exploding Islamic bombs.”
My contacts told me that, as a military objective, spreading fear among the Israelis was as important as killing them. Anwar Aziz, an Islamic Jihad member who blew himself up in an ambulance in Gaza, in December 1993, had often told friends: “Battles for Islam are won not through the gun but by striking fear into the enemy’s heart.”
Military commanders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad remarked that the human bomb was one of the surest ways of hitting a target. A senior Hamas leader said: “The main thing is to guarantee that a large number of the enemy will be affected. With an explosive belt or bag, the bomber has control over vision, location, and timing.”
As today’s weapons of mass destruction go, the human bomb is cheap. A Palestinian security official pointed out that, apart from a willing young man, all that is needed are such items as nails, gunpowder, a battery, a light switch and a short cable, mercury (readily obtainable from thermometers), acetone, and the cost of tailoring a belt wide enough to hold six or eight pockets of explosives. The most expensive item is transportation to a distant Israeli town. The total cost of a typical operation is about US $150 (£85). The sponsoring organisation usually gives between $3,000-$5,000 (£1,700- £2,830) to the bomber’s family.
I met an imam affiliated with Hamas, a youthful, bearded graduate of the prestigious al Azhar University in Cairo. He explained that the first drop of blood shed by a martyr during jihad washes away his sins instantaneously. On the Day of Judgment, he will face no reckoning. On the Day of Resurrection, he can intercede for 70 of his nearest and dearest to enter Heaven; and he will have at his disposal 72 houris, the beautiful virgins of Paradise. The imam took pains to explain that the promised bliss is not sensual.
There is no shortage of willing recruits for martyrdom. Hamas and Islamic Jihad generally reject those who are under 18, who are the sole wage-earners in their families, or who are married and have family responsibilities. If two brothers ask to join, one is turned away.
The planners keep a close eye on the volunteer’s self-discipline, noting whether he can be discreet among friends and observing his piety in the mosque. During the week before the operation, two “assistants” are delegated to stay with the potential martyr at all times. They report any signs of doubt, and if the young man seems to waver, a senior trainer will arrive to bolster his resolve.
A planner for Islamic Jihad said that his organisation carefully scrutinises the motives of a potential bomber: “We ask this young man, and we ask ourselves, why he wishes so badly to become a human bomb. What are his real motives? Our questions are aimed at clarifying first and foremost for the boy himself his real reasons and the strength of his commitment. Even if he is a long-time member of our group and has always wanted to become a martyr, he needs to be very clear that in such an operation there is no drawing back. Preparation bolsters his conviction, which supports his certitude. It removes fear.”
A member of Hamas explained the preparation: “We focus his attention on Paradise, on being in the presence of Allah, on meeting the Prophet Muhammad, on interceding for his loved ones so that they, too, can be saved from the agonies of Hell, on the houris, and on fighting the Israeli occupation and removing it from the Islamic trust that is Palestine.”
I asked one planner about the problem of fear. “The boy has left that stage far behind,” he said. “The fear is not for his own safety or his impending death. It does not come from lack of confidence in his ability to press the trigger. It is awe, produced by the situation. He has never done this before and, inshallah, he will never do it again. It comes from his fervent desire for success, which will propel him into the presence of Allah. It is anxiety over the possibility of something going wrong and denying him his heart’s wish. The outcome, remember, lies in Allah’s hands.”
Al-khaliyya al-istishhadiyya, which is often mistranslated as “suicide cell” — its proper translation is “martyrdom cell” — is the basic building block of operations. Generally, each cell consists of a leader and two or three young men. When a candidate is placed in a cell, usually after months, if not years, of religious studies, he is assigned the lofty title of al-shaheed al -hayy, “the living martyr”. He is also referred to as “he who is waiting for martyrdom”.
Each cell is tightly compartmentalised and secret. Cell members do not discuss their affiliation with their friends or family, and even if two of them know each other in normal life, they are not aware of the other’s membership in the same cell. (Only the leader is known to both.) Each cell, which is dissolved after the operation has been completed, is given a name from the Koran or from Islamic history.
The young men undergo intensified spiritual exercises, including prayers and recitations of the Koran. Usually, the trainer encourages the candidate to read six particular chapters of the Koran: Baqara, Al Imran, Anfal, Tawba, Rahman, and Asr, which feature such themes as jihad, the birth of the nation of Islam, war, Allah’s favours and the importance of faith.
Religious lectures last from two to four hours each day. The living martyr goes on lengthy fasts. He spends much of the night praying. He pays off all his debts, and asks for forgiveness for actual or perceived offences.
In the days before the operation, the candidate prepares a will on paper, audiocassette or video, sometimes all three. The video testaments, which are shot against a background of the sponsoring organisation’s banner and slogans, show the living martyr reciting the Koran, posing with guns and bombs, exhorting his comrades to follow his example, and extolling the virtues of jihad.
The wills emphasise the voluntary basis of the mission. “This is my free decision, and I urge all of you to follow me,” one young bomber, Muhammad Abu Hashem, said in a recorded testament before blowing himself up, in 1995, in retaliation for the assassination of Fathi Shiqaqi.
The young man repeatedly watches the video of himself, as well as the videos of his predecessors. “These videos encourage him to confront death, not fear it,” one trainer told me. “He becomes intimately familiar with what he is about to do. Then he can greet death like an old friend.”
Just before the bomber sets out on his final journey, he performs a ritual ablution, puts on clean clothes, and tries to attend at least one communal prayer at a mosque. He says the traditional Islamic prayer that is customary before battle, and he asks Allah to forgive his sins and to bless his mission. He puts a Koran in his left breast pocket, above the heart, and he straps the explosives around his waist or picks up a briefcase or a bag containing the bomb. The planner bids him farewell with the words “May Allah be with you, may Allah give you success so that you achieve Paradise.”
The would-be martyr responds, “Inshallah, we will meet in Paradise.”
Hours later, as he presses the detonator, he says, “Allahu akbar” — “Allah is great. All praise to Him.”
The operation doesn’t end with the explosion and the many deaths. Hamas and Islamic Jihad distribute copies of the martyr’s audiocassette or video to the media and to local organisations as a record of their success and encouragement to other young men. His act becomes the subject of sermons in mosques, and provides material for leaflets, posters, videos, demonstrations, and extensive coverage in the media. Graffiti on walls in the martyr’s neighbourhood praise his heroism. Aspiring martyrs perform mock re-enactments of the operation, using models of exploding cars and buses. The sponsoring organisation distributes cassettes of chants and songs honouring the good soldier.
The bomber’s family and the sponsoring organisation celebrate his martyrdom with festivities, as if it were a wedding. Hundreds of guests congregate at the house to offer congratulations. The hosts serve the juices and sweets that the young man specified in his will. Often, the mother will ululate in joy over the honour that Allah has bestowed upon her family.
But there is grief, too. I asked the mother of Ribhi Kahlout, a young man in the Gaza Strip, who had blown himself up in November 1995, what she would have done if she had known what her son was planning to do. “I would have taken a cleaver, cut open my heart, and stuffed him deep inside,” she said. “Then I would have sewn it up tight to keep him safe.”
Nasra Hassan works in Vienna. |
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Posted at 10:47 pm by Psychomike
HAWAII POISED TO LEAVE U.S.????, AL QAEDA SAUDI HEAD KILLED IN SHOOT OUT, GOOGLE STOCK SALE!
Riyadh - One of two militants killed in clashes with Saudi security forces in the holy city of Medina on Thursday was the suspected one-time chief of al-Qaeda in the country, Saleh al-Ufi, the interior ministry confirmed.
Ufi and the other unidentified militant were killed and a third was wounded and arrested when security forces came under fire as they tracked down suspected extremists in the city, the ministry said in a statement read on state television.
An expatriate, whose nationality was not specified, was seriously wounded and a security man was moderately injured in the shootout, it said.
Security forces had shortly earlier arrested nine suspects at other locations in Medina in the west of the kingdom, the ministry said.
The killing of Ufi had been first reported by Dubai-based Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news channel.
Ufi, one of the kingdom's most wanted suspected militants, was one of two men from a wanted list of 26 still at large. The other, Taleb Al-Taleb, remains in hiding.
The new chief of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, Moroccan Younes Mohammed Ibrahim Al-Hayari, was killed in a battle with police in the Saudi capital Riyadh on July 3.
The ministry reported another incident in Riyadh on Thursday in which human remains were found resulting from an explosion after security forces tracked down a suspect and besieged a residential location.
Surprising investors and analysts, Google said today that it would sell up to $4 billion in stock but offered few details on what it would do with the cash other than to hint at possible acquisitions.
The Internet search company, which went public in one of the most successful initial public offerings ever this month last year, filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission saying it would sell 14.16 million of its Class A shares. At their Wednesday closing price of $285.10, that would fetch Google $4.04 billion.
Google, which had almost $3 billion in cash as of the end of June, said it would use the funds from the stock offering to finance ongoing operations and possibly for acquisitions. Its filing read: "In addition, we may use proceeds of this offering for acquisitions of complementary businesses, technologies or other assets."
But the company also noted that it did not have any "agreements or commitments" to buy any companies or assets rights now, and in the meantime would park the money in investments that could be easily sold off if Google wanted to use the cash right away.
Analysts said they were surprised and hard pressed to explain the stock offering, but noted that Google frequently makes cryptic moves and announcements.
E Pluribus Unum?
Not in Hawaii.
BY SLADE GORTON AND HANK BROWN
Wednesday, August 17, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
The Senate is poised to sanction the creation of a racially exclusive government by and for Native Hawaiians who satisfy a blood test. The new race-based sovereign that would be summoned into being by the so-called Akaka Bill would operate outside the U.S. Constitution and the nation's most cherished civil rights statutes. Indeed, the champions of the proposed legislation boast that the new Native Hawaiian entity could secede from the Union like the Confederacy, but without the necessity of shelling Fort Sumter.
The Akaka Bill classifies citizens by race, defying the express provisions of the 14th Amendment. It also rests on a betrayal of express commitments made by its sponsors a decade ago, and asserts as true many false statements about the history of Hawaii. It should be defeated.
The Akaka Bill's justification rests substantially on a 1993 Apology Resolution passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton when we were members of the Senate representing the states of Washington and Colorado. (We voted against it.) The resolution is cited by the Akaka Bill in three places to establish the proposition that the U.S. perpetrated legal or moral wrongs against Native Hawaiians that justify the race-based government the legislation would erect. These citations are a betrayal of the word given to us--and to the Senate--in the debate over the Apology Resolution.
We specifically inquired of its proponents whether the apology would be employed to seek "special status under which persons of Native Hawaiian descent will be given rights or privileges or reparations or land or money communally that are unavailable to other citizens of Hawaii." We were promised on the floor of the Senate by Daniel Inouye, the senior senator from Hawaii and a personage of impeccable integrity, that "as to the matter of the status of Native Hawaiians . . . this resolution has nothing to do with that. . . . I can assure my colleague of that." The Akaka Bill repudiates that promise of Sen. Inouye. It invokes the Apology Resolution to justify granting persons of Native Hawaiian descent--even in minuscule proportion--political and economic rights and land denied to other citizens of Hawaii. We were unambiguously told that would not be done.
FULL STORY HERE: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007117
Posted at 11:52 am by Psychomike
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Clinton Knew About Laden- Did Not Act!
August 17, 2005
State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996
WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin Laden's move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven as he sought to expand radical Islam "well beyond the Middle East," but the government chose not to deter the move, newly declassified documents show.
In what would prove a prescient warning, the State Department intelligence analysts said in a top-secret assessment on Mr. bin Laden that summer that "his prolonged stay in Afghanistan - where hundreds of 'Arab mujahedeen' receive terrorist training and key extremist leaders often congregate - could prove more dangerous to U.S. interests in the long run than his three-year liaison with Khartoum," in Sudan.
The declassified documents, obtained by the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch as part of a Freedom of Information Act request and provided to The New York Times, shed light on a murky and controversial chapter in Mr. bin Laden's history: his relocation from Sudan to Afghanistan as the Clinton administration was striving to understand the threat he posed and explore ways of confronting him.
Before 1996, Mr. bin Laden was regarded more as a financier of terrorism than a mastermind. But the State Department assessment, which came a year before he publicly urged Muslims to attack the United States, indicated that officials suspected he was taking a more active role, including in the bombings in June 1996 that killed 19 members American soldiers at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
Two years after the State Department's warning, with Mr. bin Laden firmly entrenched in Afghanistan and overseeing terrorist training and financing operations, Al Qaeda struck two American embassies in East Africa, leading to failed military attempts by the Clinton administration to capture or kill him in Afghanistan. Three years later, on Sept. 11, 2001, Al Qaeda struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in an operation overseen from the base in Afghanistan.
Critics of the Clinton administration have accused it of ignoring the threat posed by Mr. bin Laden in the mid-1990's while he was still in Sudan, and they point to claims by some Sudanese officials that they offered to turn him over to the Americans before ultimately expelling him in 1996 under international pressure. But Clinton administration diplomats have adamantly denied that they received such an offer, and the Sept. 11 commission concluded in one of its staff reports that it had "not found any reliable evidence to support the Sudanese claim."
The newly declassified documents do not directly address the question of whether Sudan ever offered to turn over Mr. bin Laden. But the documents go well beyond previous news and historical accounts in detailing the Clinton administration's active monitoring of Mr. bin Laden's movements and the realization that his move to Afghanistan could make him an even greater national security threat.
Several former senior officials in the Clinton administration did not return phone calls this week seeking comment on the newly declassified documents.
Adam Ereli, a spokesman for the State Department, said the documents should be viewed in the context of what was happening globally in 1996, rather than in the hindsight of events after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In 1996, Mr. Ereli said, "the question was getting him out of Sudan."
"The priority was to deny him safe haven, period, and to disrupt his activities any way you could," he continued. "There was a lot we didn't know, and the priority was to keep him on the run, keep him on guard, and try to maximize the opportunities to nail him."
Before the East Africa bombings in 1998, however, Mr. bin Laden "wasn't recognized then as the threat he is now," Mr. Ereli said. "Yes, he was a bad guy, he was a threat, but he was one of many, and by no means of the prominence that he later came to be."
The State Department assessment, written July 18, 1996, after Mr. bin Laden had been expelled from Sudan and was thought to be relocating to Afghanistan, said Afghanistan would make an "ideal haven" for Mr. bin Laden to run his financial networks and attract support from radicalized Muslims. Moreover, his wealth, his personal plane and many passports "allow him considerable freedom to travel with little fear of being intercepted or tracked," and his public statements suggested an "emboldened" man capable of "increased terrorism," the assessment said.
While a strategy of keeping Mr. bin Laden on the run could "inconvenience" him, the assessment said, "even a bin Laden on the move can retain the capability to support individuals and groups who have the motive and wherewithal to attack U.S. interests almost world-wide."
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said the declassified material released to his group "says to me that the Clinton administration knew the broad outlines in 1996 of bin Laden's capabilities and his intent, and unfortunately, almost nothing was done about it."
Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, was highly critical of President Clinton during his two terms in office. The group has also been critical of some Bush administration actions after the Sept. 11 attacks, releasing documents in March that detailed government efforts to facilitate flights out of the United States for dozens of well-connected Saudis just days after the attacks.
Michael F. Scheuer, who from 1996 to 1999 led the Central Intelligence Agency unit that tracked Mr. bin Laden, said the State Department documents reflected a keen awareness of the danger posed by Mr. bin Laden's relocation.
"The analytical side of the State Department had it exactly right - that's genius analysis," he said in an interview when told of the declassified documents. But Mr. Scheuer, who wrote a book in 2004 titled "Imperial Hubris," under the pseudonym "Anonymous," that was highly critical of American counterterrorism strategies, said many officials in the C.I.A.'s operational side thought they would have a better chance to kill Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan than they did in Sudan because the Sudan government protected him.
"The thinking was that he was in Afghanistan, and he was dangerous, but because he was there, we had a better chance to kill him," Mr. Scheuer said. "But at the end of the day, we settled for the worst possibility - he was there and we didn't do anything."
August 17, 2005
Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists
WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly.
The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the bureau.
Colonel Shaffer said in an interview on Monday night that the small, highly classified intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, and three other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to share its information.
But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 attacks were still being planned.
"I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued," Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001.
He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States.
"It was because of the chain of command saying we're not going to pass on information - if something goes wrong, we'll get blamed," he said.
The Defense Department did not dispute the account from Colonel Shaffer, a 42-year-old native of Kansas City, Mo., who is the first military officer associated with the program to acknowledge his role publicly.
At the same time, the department said in a statement that it was "working to gain more clarity on this issue" and that "it's too early to comment on findings related to the program identified as Able Danger." The F.B.I. referred calls about Colonel Shaffer to the Pentagon.
The account from Colonel Shaffer, a reservist who is also working part time for the Pentagon, corroborates much of the information that the Sept. 11 commission has acknowledged it received about Able Danger last July from a Navy captain who was also involved with the program but whose name has not been made public. In a statement issued last week, the leaders of the commission said the panel had concluded that the intelligence program "did not turn out to be historically significant."
The statement said that while the commission did learn about Able Danger in 2003 and immediately requested Pentagon files about it, none of the documents turned over by the Defense Department referred to Mr. Atta or any of the other hijackers.
Colonel Shaffer said that his role in Able Danger was as liaison with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, and that he was not an intelligence analyst. The interview with Colonel Shaffer on Monday was arranged for The New York Times and Fox News by Representative Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a champion of data-mining programs like Able Danger.
Colonel Shaffer's lawyer, Mark Zaid, said in an interview that he was concerned that Colonel Shaffer was facing retaliation from the Defense Department, first for having talked to the Sept. 11 commission staff in October 2003 and now for talking with news organizations.
Mr. Zaid said that Colonel Shaffer's security clearance was suspended last year because of what the lawyer said were a series of "petty allegations" involving $67 in personal charges on a military cellphone. He said that despite the disciplinary action, Colonel Shaffer had been promoted this year from major.
Colonel Shaffer said he had decided to allow his name to be used in part because of his frustration with the statement issued last week by the commission leaders, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton.
The commission said in its final report last year that American intelligence agencies had not identified Mr. Atta as a terrorist before Sept. 11, 2001, when he flew an American Airlines jet into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York.
A commission spokesman did not return repeated phone calls on Tuesday for comment. A Democratic member of the commission, Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor, said in an interview on Tuesday that while he could not judge the credibility of the information from Colonel Shaffer and others, the Pentagon needed to "provide a clear and comprehensive explanation regarding what information it had in its possession regarding Mr. Atta."
"And if these assertions are credible," Mr. Ben-Veniste continued, "the Pentagon would need to explain why it was that the 9/11 commissioners were not provided this information despite requests for all information regarding Able Danger."
Colonel Shaffer said he had provided information about Able Danger and its identification of Mr. Atta in a private meeting in October 2003 with members of the Sept. 11 commission staff when they visited Afghanistan, where he was then serving. Commission members have disputed that, saying that they do not recall hearing Mr. Atta's name during the briefing and that the name did not appear in documents about Able Danger that were later turned over by the Pentagon.
"I would implore the 9/11 commission to support a follow-on investigation to ascertain what the real truth is," Colonel Shaffer said in the interview this week. "I do believe the 9/11 commission should have done that job: figuring out what went wrong with Able Danger."
"This was a good news story because, before 9/11, you had an element of the military - our unit - which was actually out looking for Al Qaeda," he continued. "I can't believe the 9/11 commission would somehow believe that the historical value was not relevant."
Colonel Shaffer said that because he was not an intelligence analyst, he was not involved in the details of the procedures used in Able Danger to glean information from terrorist databases, nor was he aware of which databases had supplied the information that might have led to the name of Mr. Atta or other terrorists so long before the Sept. 11 attacks.
But he said he did know that Able Danger had made use of publicly available information from government immigration agencies, from Internet sites and from paid search engines like LexisNexis.
two of three cells identified
An Army intelligence officer said Wednesday he told staff members from the Sept. 11 commission that a secret military unit had identified two of the three cells involved in the 2001 terrorist strikes more than a year before the attacks.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who said he was associated with the "Able Danger" unit, said that during a 2003 meeting in Afghanistan, he mentioned that the unit had identified Sept. 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta along with three other hijackers as terrorist suspects.
Three months later, in January 2004, Shaffer said he was back in the United States and offered to follow up with the commission, but his offer was declined.
"I just walked away shocked that they would kind of change their mind, but I figured someone with equal or better knowledge ... probably came and talked to them, so they must've taken care of it," Shaffer said.
Shaffer said he was told the commission obtained only two briefcase- size loads of documents from at least 15-plus boxes of information on Able Danger.
Lt. Col. Chris Conway, a Pentagon spokesman, said Wednesday an investigation into Able Danger was under way.
The department "has been working to gain more clarity on this issue. Accordingly, we continue to interview a number of individuals associated with Able Danger," Conway said.
Conway said it was too soon to comment on findings related to the program.
Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the commission's follow-up project, said the commission is awaiting the results of the Pentagon's investigation.
A statement last Friday by former commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said the commission did not obtain enough information on the operation to consider it historically significant.
Shaffer said Able Danger identified Atta and three other Sept. 11 hijackers in 2000, but that military lawyers stopped the unit from sharing the information with the FBI out of concerns about the legality of gathering and sharing information on people in the U.S.
"The lawyers' view was to leave them alone, they had the same basic rights as a U.S. citizen, a U.S. person and therefore the data was kind of left alone," Shaffer said.
Shaffer said he and a Navy officer disagreed with that and tried to set up meetings with the FBI, but each time the idea was rejected by lawyers from the Special Operations command.
"There was a feeling ... if we give this information to the FBI and something goes wrong, we're going to get blamed for whatever goes wrong," Shaffer said.
The statement by Kean and Hamilton said only Atta was mentioned to them as being identified by Able Danger. They were told by a Navy officer about Atta 10 days before the commission released its report in July 2004, but the officer did not have documentation to back it up, the statement said.
The statement also said the Navy officer's dates related to the pre- Sept. 11 whereabouts of Atta did not fit with what they knew.
Shaffer said it did not surprise him the dates would be different.
Able Danger "wasn't about dates and locations. It was about associations and linkages. That's what the focus was," Shaffer said.
Shaffer said Able Danger identified the terrorists using data mining techniques. His relationship to Able Danger was first reported Tuesday night by The New York Times and Fox News Channel. FULL STORY HERE: http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/08/17/D8C1OOTG0.html
Posted at 03:48 pm by Psychomike
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
U.S. Scales Back Plans For Iraq
THE LAND WHERE SKINHEADS RULE, WHY THE WAR WITH JAPAN IS DIFFERENT THAN GERMANY, WHY NATIONS DIE, AL QAEDA ANNIVERSARY ATTACK, U.S. LOWERS EXPECTATIONS IN IRAQ, ISRAELI EVACUEES TURN VIOLENT
Israel’s evacuation forces remove the gloves Tuesday. In Gush Katif, hundreds of police and troops battled activists.
August 15, 2005, 10:01 PM (GMT+02:00)
They were blocking Neve Dekalim entrance to trailers bearing containers to pack up furnishings in homes marked for evacuation. Earlier, in contrast with Monday`s tearful scenes between evacuees and troops, police sawed through locked gates and stormed in. At least half of the 9,500 evacuees may get through the day by allowing their belongings be packed and removed. Some will make their last stand on Wednesday August 17, until they are dragged out of their homes. Elei Sinai refuses to leave for lack of a communal solution for their resettlement. They have been offered hotel rooms in separate locations. Holdout evacuees stand to lose one third of the state compensation due. National Religious Party leader Zevulun Orlev cancelled a meeting with prime minister Ariel Sharon lest he be seen supporting the evacuations. Ultra-religious Shas leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef told followers to head for Gaza to help evacuees pack their belongings. During the night, more than 500 activists detained trying to break through to Gush Katif.
THE LAND WHERE SKINHEADS RULE
In 2004, neo-Nazis killed 44 people across Russia -- more than double the previous year, Amnesty International reported. One of the victims, 9-year- old Hurshida Sultanova from Tajikistan, was stabbed 11 times in front of her father and older brother by about 10 neo-Nazis in St. Petersburg. Another Tajik girl, Nikufar Sangbaeva, 5, died when skinheads beat her and her relatives with brass knuckles and metal rods at a train station. Last month, a dozen skinheads beat a Vietnamese man to death in a Moscow park, chanting, "Russia for Russians!"
Boris Prolorov, 28, a member of the ultra-nationalist Russian Thought movement, said the victims were to blame for their own deaths.
"Those Tajik girls should have stayed in Tajikistan," said Prolorov, who shaves his head and, like Oleg, wears all black. "Tell me, where do all these uncontrollable blacks come from?"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/14/MNGUSE7N2D1.DTL
Oddly, most skinheads worldwide see the Russian skinheads as wannabe's! http://www.skinheadz.com/docs/history/2005/copycats.html
New surge in Al Qaeda’s internal electronic and human traffic
DEBKAfile Special Report
August 13, 2005, 12:51 PM (GMT+02:00)
DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources register a volume and heightened sense of anticipation in al Qaeda’s internal communications, signals, publications and Websites - mostly in code - that recall its electronic traffic in the months leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The sense of a big anti-American event in the making for September-October is marked. Self-congratulatory accounts of the London and Sharm al Sheikh July bombings abound, along with extravagant claims of victories against American forces in Iraq.
For the first time since 2001, teams of new recruits are being shunted between countries, according to coded instructions passing around the internal sites.
Our sources interpret these instructions as indicating that al Qaeda was able to raise sufficient fresh operational strength in its recent recruitment drive to carry out strikes in several target arenas. According to the information reaching DEBKAfile, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, for instance, proposed rotating the veteran operatives in Iraq, there for more than six to eight months, in favor of fresh men.
This surge of activity, electronic and human, seems to signpost an al Qaeda offensive in the works, and will no doubt raise terror threat levels in US, European and Middle East cities in the coming weeks.
Reading the signs, an FBI terrorism task force in Los Angeles issued a warning Wednesday, Aug 10: “Al Qaeda leaders plan to employ various types of fuel trucks as vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices in an effort to cause mass casualties in the US prior to the 19th of September.” The attacks are planned specifically for New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, either simultaneously or spread out. The attackers are described in the FBI advisory as “members of small al Qaeda cells which are spread out through the US.”
This information is uncorroborated, said a Homeland Security Department spokesman, but continues to be evaluated by the intelligence community.
DEBKAfile also learns of a general threat to America to mark the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
In Turkey, an al Qaeda plot to pack Zodiac speedboats with explosives and ram five Israeli cruise ships with more than 4,000 tourists aboard when they were docked last weekend at the Mediterranean port of Alanya. Had they succeeded, the catastrophe would have been on the mega scale. The terror alert is still in force in parts of Turkey because out of two large suicide teams, only two terrorists have been caught with large quantities of explosives. Each of those teams is believed to number 5-8 suicide killers, and most are still at large.
There is also information about similar al Qaeda teams on the loose in London, Rome, Cairo, Damascus, Amman, Riyadh and Sinai, as well as Turkey - but nothing specific on American cities. The London transport bombings and the 2003 Madrid rail attacks have however taught security agencies to be prepared at all times for the unexpected.
In any event, the quality of intelligence regarded al Qaeda in the hands of anti-terror agencies in the West has clearly not improved much since 9/11. Therefore, internal electronic traffic must be treated as a serious guide to the Islamic organization’s intentions. Above all, its tone and volume must be carefully evaluated by experts, because much of its content is coded and inaccessible to outsiders. SOURCE: http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1070
U.S. DOWNPLAYS IRAQ CONSTITUTION DELAY
US Downplays Iraq Constitution Delay, Hails Progress Made
INTRO: The United States Monday downplayed news that Iraqi leaders have missed their August 15th deadline for drafting a constitution and gotten a week's extension. Senior administration officials hailed the progress made and expressed confidence democracy in Iraq remains on track. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.
TEXT: The Bush administration had pressed hard for Iraqi politicians to complete the draft constitution on time, considering it a key to defusing the insurgency and setting the country on a course to full democracy and self-dependence.
But top U.S. officials are taking the week's delay in stride, emphasizing progress made by the constitution drafters and voicing confidence the effort will succeed.
President Bush set the tone in a written statement from his home in Crawford, Texas, applauding what he termed the heroic efforts of the Iraqi negotiators thus far, and wishing them well as they complete the constitution-drafting process.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, called an unusual late-afternoon news conference to say that despite the delay the democratic process is working in Iraq and that she is confident the constitution will be finished to allow elections for a permanent government at the end of the year.
Ms. Rice welcomed the fact the Iraqi leadership had sought the one-week extension rather than dissolving parliament and calling new elections, an option that many analysts feared would worsen instability:
///Rice actuality///
"I think that it is a very good sign that when it came to it today, when they as responsible officials, responsible elected officials, believed that they needed a little more time, that they availed themselves of the vehicle that was there, to go to the National Assembly, ask for that time. President Talibani said we've made substantial progress, we'd like to have a little more time. That's the way that this process is working, it's working in an orderly fashion. And I think the Iraqis have a lot to be proud of. They've got a lot of work to do. But this is really democracy at work, in Iraq."
///end act///
Ms. Rice expressed satisfaction that Iraq's Sunni Muslims seem to be very much a part of the drafting process.
She also said it was not surprising that Iraqi Kurds are pressing for a large measure of autonomy, but also said the various constituent groups will have to be able to compromise if the process is to succeed.
Under questioning the secretary also made clear the continuing U.S. interest in a constitutional outcome that gives Iraq women a full measure of political rights:
///Second Rice actuality
"We've been very clear that a modern Iraq will be an Iraq in which women are recognized as full and equal citizens and I have every confidence that that is how Iraqis feel. And the important phrasing in the constitution, how that will be represented, of course they're going to continue to work on. But the United States has been very clear about the importance of womens' rights."
///end act///
The Secretary of State, who has been in frequent touch with the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, on the constitution-writing process, said she and the U.S. envoy remained ready to assist if needed.
But she repeatedly stressed it is an Iraqi process, and a historic moment for the Iraqi people to produce what she said will be the most important document in the history of the new Iraq. (Signed)
NEB/DAG/RH
ASIA LESS RECONCILED WITH WORLD WAR 2 PAST
When the "greatest generation", to borrow Tom Brokaw's phrase, finally fades away in East Asia's nations, the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II - celebrated on August 15 to mark the day when Japan surrendered - may well be remembered as a turning point when the region did not move forward into the future but back toward the past, in both style and substance.
While commemorations in Europe were joined by both victors and vanquished, Asians have gone their separate ways: the Japanese to Hiroshima, Yasukuni Shrine or Saipan; the Chinese to Beijing's Marco Polo Bridge, the Nanjing Massacre Museum or Harbin (where the Japanese biological warfare Unit 731 was stationed); and others to Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila, and so on.
The substance and chemistry of those events also differ vastly in Europe and Asia. Gatherings at Normandy, Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin and Dresden conveyed not only painful reflection but also heartfelt remorse, reciprocal forgiveness, genuine reconciliation and a determination not to forget and repeat the greatest slaughter in human history. Europe has indeed turned a historical corner. In sharp contrast, the anniversary year in Asia has so far witnessed hyper-nationalism, rising mutual hatred, and intensifying interstate rivalry.
The agony and irony of war
There are plenty of reasons why Asians have not found it easy to become reconciled to the past, even after 60 years. For one thing, World War II both began and ended in Asia. It also lasted longer and was more devastating than the war in Europe. The ball started rolling in 1931 when Japan seized the three northeastern provinces of China and turned them into the Japanese colony of Manchukuo. This was five years before Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland, eight years before the official start of World War II in Europe with the German attack on Poland, and fully 10 years before Pearl Harbor in 1941. Japan's 1931 annexation of Manchuria was also the beginning of the end of the Versailles system put in place by the Western democracies in 1919. When the League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations, ruled that Japan was the aggressor in the "Manchuria Incident", Tokyo angrily withdrew from it in 1933. This "unilateralism" of the Japanese was echoed and followed by Germany, which withdrew from the League in 1933. Italy followed in 1937, Austria in 1938 and Spain in 1939. The rest is history.
Despite the different durations of the war - 14 years in Asia (1931-45) versus six years in Europe (1939-45) - the two theaters were intimately connected, ironically, by the action and inaction of the United States. The European democracies were totally consumed by their own war and paid little attention to Asia, save a major campaign by the British in Burma. The United States, a crucial weight in deciding the final outcome in both sectors, was still sitting on the fence. Harry S Truman, then Democratic senator from Missouri, explicitly expressed the feelings of many Americans when he said in June 1941, "If we see that Germany is winning we should help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many [of each other] as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances." [1] In actuality, ever since the 1937 Neutrality Act the US practiced a policy of "cash and carry". Belligerents could purchase certain war materials from the US if they paid cash and carried them away in their own ships. In short, it was an "MM" policy of maximizing profit while minimizing risks.
Even after Germany, Italy and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact to form the Axis bloc in September 1940, the only thing FDR (president Roosevelt) was able to do was "lend and lease" goods to the European allies, which they were expected to "return" after the war. In Asia, Japan remained one of the largest trading partners of the US, while the Emperor's Imperial Army devastated China's vast territory. Following the Japanese army's move into Indochina in the summer of 1941, the US "accidentally" initiated an oil embargo against Japan. This "mistake" was inadvertently made by lower-level bureaucrats who went ahead with a total stoppage of oil shipments to Japan when FDR meant only a partial embargo. Only after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor did the US have no choice but to declare war on both Japan and Germany. Thus the resolution of the war in Europe was hastened by events in Asia.
Fast forward to 1945, when Asia was also the last to stop fighting. After 50 years of war with its neighbors and various Western powers in Asia, the unprecedented military ascendancy of the Empire of the Sun was finally arrested in 1945, thanks to the combined efforts of three continental powers - America, China, and Russia - plus US atomic weapons. This first war to engulf the whole of Asia therefore effectively made World War II a conflict on a truly global scale. The United States of America, the only real winner of the war, was able to achieve an unprecedented global reach in the second half of the 20th century, thanks to its ideal geostrategic location and its late entry into the war.
A tale of two axis powers
When the guns finally fell silent across Asia, 35 million Chinese had died, along with 27 million Russians, 10 million Germans, three million Japanese, 870,000 French, 760,000 British and 600,000 Americans. The manner in which they died, however, was significantly different from previous conflicts. Whereas military operations in Europe were far more effective and destructive, they were also fought between two more or less equally equipped and determined sides. The Germans' relatively high casualty figure (10 million in six years) testifies to the severity of the war. By contrast, Japan's aggression against China was very much a one-sided slaughter with the Chinese viewed as easy prey. The huge difference between the Chinese and Japanese casualties clearly indicates the asymmetry (Japanese military records show that some 400,000 Japanese military personnel died in China out of the total of 1.9 million between 1937 and 1945).
Japanese soldier beheads a Chinese child
Many of the World War II casualties were civilians. In Europe, both sides resorted to the use of deadly force against the civilian population. (And of course Hitler's attempted extermination of the Jews killed an additional six million.) In Asia, before the US started large-scale air raids against Japanese cities in March 1945, civilian casualties largely meant the slaughter of defenseless Chinese by the Japanese invading army. During the notorious Rape of Nanking in 1937, the killing and raping spree went unchecked for three months and an estimated 300,000 Chinese died. [2]
"We'd do everything for the sake of the emperor, raping, killing, everything," explained Masayo Enomoto, a former Japanese soldier (1939-45) in a recent US TV interview. "We'd march into a village, find the men and question them as to where they kept their arms. And when we finished questioning them, we'd kill them. We were told it was too good to kill Chinese with our swords. So we used stones," recalled Hajime Kondo, another former Japanese soldier. [3]
Japanese soldiers bayonet practice- using tied up and blindfolded Chinese
The killing and raping in Nanjing even sickened John Rabe, the leader of the German Nazi party in the area and head of the International Safety Zone in Nanking. When he failed to persuade Japanese military authorities to stop the massacre, Rabe began to roam the city, trying to prevent the atrocities himself. He'd go anywhere raping was taking place. With only his status as an official of an allied nation, he would chase Japanese soldiers away from their prey and on one occasion even bodily lifted a Japanese soldier off a young girl.
Rabe's diary was publicized only in 2000. [4] The Japanese wartime media, however, avidly covered the army's killing records near Nanking. In one of the most notorious, two Japanese sublieutenants, Mukai Toshiaki and Noda Takeshi, went on separate beheading sprees near Nanjing to see who could kill 100 men first. The Japan Advertiser in Tokyo ran their picture under the bold headline, "Contest to Kill 100 Chinese with Sword Extended When Both Fighters Exceed Mark - Mukai Scores 106 and Noda 105." [5]
For years after the war, Japan insisted that its atrocities in China were "normal" wartime attrition and therefore different from the Holocaust in Europe. This may be true. While the SS troopers' "final solution" of European Jews was systematically done for efficiency, the killings of Chinese by the Japanese soldiers were apparently for fun. "We actually treated them more like things than people," Ken Yuasa, a Japanese military doctor (1942-45), recently stated. [6] FULL STORY HERE:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/GH16Ad07.html
WHY NATIONS DIE
Why people read a certain book often contains more information than the book itself, and there is rich information content in the brisk sales of Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Diamond picks out of the rubbish bin of history a few cases of nugatory interest in which environmental disaster overwhelmed a society otherwise desirous of continued existence. According to the publisher's notice (I do not read such piffle), Diamond avers that the problem was in breeding too fast and cutting down too many trees.
The silly Vikings of Greenland refused to eat fish, disdained the hunting techniques of the Inuit, and consumed too much wood and topsoil. As a result their colony collapsed during the 15th century and they all died. One feels sorry for the Greenlanders, though not for their cousins on the Scandinavian mainland, who just then stood at the cusp of their European power.
Something similar happened to the Easter Islanders, who chopped down all their palm trees and the Mayans of Central America, who burned their forests to build temples. Diamond thinks this should serve as a warning to the inveterate consumerists of the United States, who presumably also face extinction should they fail to erect legal barriers to suburban sprawl.
Ideological reflex is too mild a word for this sort of thinking; perhaps the term "cramp" would do better. Given that America returns land to the wilderness each year, the danger to American survival from deforestation must be on par with the risks of being hit by a large asteroid. The world is not breeding too fast - birthrates are everywhere falling - and the industrial countries (except for the Anglo-Saxons) fail to reproduce at all.
Why should the peculiar circumstances that killed obscure populations in remote places make a geography professor's book into a bestseller? Evidently the topic of mass extinction commands the attention of the reading public, although the reading public wants to look for the causes of mass extinction in all but the most obvious place, which is the mirror. Diamond's books appeal to an educated, secular readership, that is, precisely the sort of people who have one child or none at all. If you have fewer than two children, and most of the people you know have fewer than two children, Holmesian deductive powers are not required to foresee your eventual demise.
After rejecting revealed religion, modern people seek an sense of exaltation in nature, which is to say that they revered the old natural religion. If you do not believe in God, quipped G K Chesterton, you will believe in anything. It is too fearful to contemplate one's own mortality, so the Green projects his own presentiment of death onto the natural world. Fear for the destruction of the natural world - trees, whales, polar ice-caps, tigers, whatever - substitutes for the death-anxiety of the individual. I discussed this under the title, "It's not the end of the world – it's just the end of you," and am told that Rush Limbaugh read the whole essay aloud on his radio program. [1]
In fact, the main reason societies fail is that they choose not to live. That is a horrifying thought to absorb, and the average reader would much rather delve into the details of obscure ecosystems of the past than reflect upon why half of Eastern Europe will die out by mid-century.
Suicide is a rare occurrence at the individual level, but a typical one at the level of nations. Even among the most stressed populations in the world, eg the Neolithic Amazon people of the Guarani, the suicide rate is small compared to the total population. According to Survival International (survival-international.org), 330 of the 30,000 Guaranis killed themselves during the past 17 years, a sad response to the shock of engagement with modern culture.
We know little of small peoples who died out in antiquity or even Medieval times, but the case histories that have come down to us are compelling, precisely because they include the most successful civilizations of the West, namely classical Greece, Rome and Byzantium. Countless small tribes disappeared into the hands of the Roman slavers, doubtless quite against their inclinations. As Robert Marcellus wrote in The Human Life Review:
The Greek geographer and historian Strabo (63 BCE-21 CE) described Greece as "a land entirely deserted; the depopulation begun since long continues. Roman soldiers camp in abandoned houses; Athens is populated by statues". Plutarch observed that "one would no longer find in Greece 3,000 hoplites [infantrymen]." The historian Polybius (204-122 BCE) wrote: "One remarks nowadays all over Greece such a diminution in natality and in general manner such a depopulation that the towns are deserted and the fields lie fallow. Although this country has not been ravaged by wars or epidemics, the cause of the harm is evident: by avarice or cowardice the people, if they marry, will not bring up the children they ought to have. At most they bring up one or two. It is in this way that the scourge before it is noticed is rapidly developed. The remedy is in ourselves; we have but to change our morals." [2]
Sparta, the model of slave-based military oligarchy, had 5,000 land-owning families at the time of the Peloponnesian War, but only 700 by the third century AD after Epiminondas broke the Spartan hold over its helot population. Rome's population fell to perhaps 100,000 during the seventh century from 1 million in the second century. Between 150 AD and 450 AD, the population of Rome's Western empire fell by about four-fifths. Constantinople held 250,000 people in the ninth century and between 600,000 and one million during the 12th century, yet it had fallen to only 100,000 when the Turks took it, at least in 1453. After Constantinople, the world's largest city west of the Indus, well may have been the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. Estimates of the annual number of humans sacrificed by the Aztecs range from 20,000 to a quarter million per year. Although Aztec civilization was overthrown by the conquering Spaniards, it could not have lasted indefinitely given such practices.
There is endless debate about such data. Roman population data are somewhat conjectural, and Strabo's estimates have been disputed by some scholars. Explanations have been forwarded that range from the collapse of the slave-based agricultural system to mass infanticide and venereal disease.
Nonetheless, it seems clear that the Romans did not so much conquer Greece as to occupy its shell; that the Germanic tribes did not so much conquer Rome so much as to move into what remained of it; and that the Arabs did not so much conquer the Byzantine hinterland as migrate into it. On this last point, a new book by Yehuda Nevo and Judith Koren argues convincingly that the Byzantines ceded frontier territories to Arab foederati in the mid-seventh century and that the famous battles of the Islamic conquest in fact never took place. [3] In one form or another the antecedents of Western civilization died of existential causes, rather than external ones.
No doubt Diamond's Greenlanders wished to keep on living. They ate their dogs when other food ran out (although apparently they continued to refuse fish for reasons that are hard to explain). Perhaps the will to live among 17th century Easter Islanders burned brightly as they chopped down their last palm tree. It is hard for us to fathom, for we have very little in common with the Easter Islanders. But we have a great deal in common with the residents of classical Greek polis and with the Romans as well as their Byzantine offshoot.
Notes
[i] http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FB03Aa01.html
[2] http://www.humanlifereview.com/2001_winter/demarcellus.php
[3] Crossroads to Islam, by Yehuda D Nevo and Judith Koren. Prometheus: New York 2003.
SOURCE : http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GH16Aa02.html
U.S. LOWERS EXPECTATIONS IN IRAQ
U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq
Administration Is Shedding 'Unreality' That Dominated Invasion, Official Says
By Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 14, 2005; A01
The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.
"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."
Administration officials still emphasize how much they have achieved despite the chaos that followed the invasion and the escalating insurgency. "Iraqis are taking control of their country, building a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And we're helping Iraqis succeed," President Bush said yesterday in his radio address.
Iraqi officials yesterday struggled to agree on a draft constitution by a deadline of tomorrow so the document can be submitted to a vote in October. The political transition would be completed in December by elections for a permanent government.
But the realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how the initial U.S. ambitions have not been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad's 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.
Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent.
U.S. officials say no turning point forced a reassessment. "It happened rather gradually," said the senior official, triggered by everything from the insurgency to shifting budgets to U.S. personnel changes in Baghdad.
The ferocious debate over a new constitution has particularly driven home the gap between the original U.S. goals and the realities after almost 28 months. The U.S. decision to invade Iraq was justified in part by the goal of establishing a secular and modern Iraq that honors human rights and unites disparate ethnic and religious communities.
But whatever the outcome on specific disputes, the document on which Iraq's future is to be built will require laws to be compliant with Islam. Kurds and Shiites are expecting de facto long-term political privileges. And women's rights will not be as firmly entrenched as Washington has tried to insist, U.S. officials and Iraq analysts say.
"We set out to establish a democracy, but we're slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic," said another U.S. official familiar with policymaking from the beginning, who like some others interviewed would speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity. "That process is being repeated all over."
U.S. officials now acknowledge that they misread the strength of the sentiment among Kurds and Shiites to create a special status. The Shiites' request this month for autonomy to be guaranteed in the constitution stunned the Bush administration, even after more than two years of intense intervention in Iraq's political process, they said.
"We didn't calculate the depths of feeling in both the Kurdish and Shiite communities for a winner-take-all attitude," said Judith S. Yaphe, a former CIA Iraq analyst at the National Defense University.
In the race to meet a sequence of fall deadlines, the process of forging national unity behind the constitution is largely being scrapped, current and former officials involved in the transition said.
"We are definitely cutting corners and lowering our ambitions in democracy building," said Larry Diamond, a Stanford University democracy expert who worked with the U.S. occupation government and wrote the book "Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq."
"Under pressure to get a constitution done, they've lowered their own ambitions in terms of getting a document that is going to be very far-reaching and democratic. We also don't have the time to go through the process we envisioned when we wrote the interim constitution -- to build a democratic culture and consensus through debate over a permanent constitution," he said.
The goal now is to ensure a constitution that can be easily amended later so Iraq can grow into a democracy, U.S. officials say.
FULL STORY HERE: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/13/AR2005081300853_pf.html
Posted at 07:29 am by Psychomike
Monday, August 15, 2005
It's Official! Iran Behind Iraq Attacks!
For a long time I have said that whether Iraq had WMD or not, we need to be in the area to sit on Iran and Syria. With the information you are about to read- it is clear.
Iran must not be allowed to continue as a nation.
Inside Iran's Secret War for Iraq
A TIME investigation reveals the Tehran regime's strategy to gain influence in Iraq--and why U.S. troops may now face greater dangers as a result
By MICHAEL WARE/BAGHDAD
The U.S. Military's new nemesis in Iraq is named Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani, and he is not a Baathist or a member of al-Qaeda. He is working for Iran. According to a U.S. military-intelligence document obtained by TIME, al-Sheibani heads a network of insurgents created by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps with the express purpose of committing violence against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. Over the past eight months, his group has introduced a new breed of roadside bomb more lethal than any seen before; based on a design from the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hizballah, the weapon employs "shaped" explosive charges that can punch through a battle tank's armor like a fist through the wall. According to the document, the U.S. believes al-Sheibani's team consists of 280 members, divided into 17 bombmaking teams and death squads. The U.S. believes they train in Lebanon, in Baghdad's predominantly Shi'ite Sadr City district and "in another country" and have detonated at least 37 bombs against U.S. forces this year in Baghdad alone.
Since the start of the insurgency in Iraq, the most persistent danger to U.S. troops has come from the Sunni Arab insurgents and terrorists who roam the center and west of the country. But some U.S. officials are worried about a potentially greater challenge to order in Iraq and U.S. interests there: the growing influence of Iran. With an elected Shi'ite-dominated government in place in Baghdad and the U.S. preoccupied with quelling the Sunni-led insurgency, the Iranian regime has deepened its imprint on the political and social fabric of Iraq, buying influence in the new Iraqi government, running intelligence-gathering networks and funneling money and guns to Shi'ite militant groups--all with the aim of fostering a Shi'ite-run state friendly to Iran. In parts of southern Iraq, fundamentalist Shi'ite militias--some of them funded and armed by Iran--have imposed restrictions on the daily lives of Iraqis, banning alcohol and curbing the rights of women. Iraq's Shi'ite leaders, including Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, have tried to forge a strategic alliance with Tehran, even seeking to have Iranians recognized as a minority group under Iraq's proposed constitution. "We have to think anything we tell or share with the Iraqi government ends up in Tehran," says a Western diplomat.
Perhaps most troubling are signs that the rising influence of Iran--a country with which Iraq waged an eight-year war and whose brand of theocracy most Iraqis reject--is exacerbating sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shi'ites, pulling Iraq closer to all-out civil war. And while top intelligence officials have sought to play down any state-sponsored role by Tehran's regime in directing violence against the coalition, the emergence of al-Sheibani has cast greater suspicion on Iran. Coalition sources told TIME that it was one of al-Sheibani's devices that killed three British soldiers in Amarah last month. "One suspects this would have to have a higher degree of approval [in Tehran]," says a senior U.S. military official in Baghdad. The official says the U.S. believes that Iran has brokered a partnership between Iraqi Shi'ite militants and Hizballah and facilitated the import of sophisticated weapons that are killing and wounding U.S. and British troops. "It is true that weapons clearly, unambiguously, from Iran have been found in Iraq," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week.
How real is the threat? A TIME investigation, based on documents smuggled out of Iran and dozens of interviews with U.S., British and Iraqi intelligence officials, as well as an Iranian agent, armed dissidents and Iraqi militia and political allies, reveals an Iranian plan for gaining influence in Iraq that began before the U.S. invaded. In their scope and ambition, Iran's activities rival those of the U.S. and its allies, especially in the south. There is a gnawing worry within some intelligence circles that the failure to counter Iranian influence may come back to haunt the U.S. and its allies, if Shi'ite factions with heavy Iranian backing eventually come to power and provoke the Sunnis to revolt. Says a British military intelligence officer, about the relative inattention paid to Iranian meddling: "It's as though we are sleepwalking."
The Iranian penetration of Iraq was a long time in planning. On Sept. 9, 2002, with U.S. bases being readied in Kuwait, Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei summoned his war council in Tehran. According to Iranian sources, the Supreme National Security Council concluded, "It is necessary to adopt an active policy in order to prevent long-term and short-term dangers to Iran." Iran's security services had supported the armed wings of several Iraqi groups they had sheltered in Iran from Saddam. Iranian intelligence sources say that the various groups were organized under the command of Brigadier General Qassim Sullaimani, an adviser to Khamenei on both Afghanistan and Iraq and a top officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Before the March 2003 invasion, military sources say, elements of up to 46 Iranian infantry and missile brigades moved to buttress the border. Positioned among them were units of the Badr Corps, formed in the 1980s as the armed wing of the Iraqi Shi'ite group known by its acronym SCIRI, now the most powerful party in Iraq. Divided into northern, central and southern axes, Badr's mission was to pour into Iraq in the chaos of the invasion to seize towns and government offices, filling the vacuum left by the collapse of Saddam's regime. As many as 12,000 armed men, along with Iranian intelligence officers, swarmed into Iraq. TIME has obtained copies of what U.S. and British military intelligence say appears to be Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence reports sent in April 2003. One, dated April 10 and marked CONFIDENTIAL, logs U.S. troops backed by armor moving through the city of Kut. But, it asserts, "we are in control of the city." Another, with the same date, from a unit code-named 1546, claims "forces attached to us" had control of the city of Amarah and had occupied Baath Party properties. A 2004 British army inquiry noted that the Badr organization and another militia were so powerful in Amarah, "it quickly became clear that the coalition needed to work with them to ensure a secure environment in the province."
For many Iraqis in the south, the exile militia groups brought with them forbidding religious strictures. "These guys with beards and Kalashnikovs showed up saying they'd come to protect the campus," says a student leader at a Basra university. "The problem is, they never left." Militants frequently "investigate" youths accused of un-Islamic behavior, such as couples holding hands or girls wearing makeup. "They're watching us, and they're the ones who control the streets, while the police, who are with them, stand by," says a student leader who did not wish to be identified. "From the beginning, the Islamic parties filled the void," says a police lieutenant colonel working closely with British forces. "They still hold the real power. The rank and file all belong to the parties. Everyone does. You can't do anything without them."
Military officials say they believe Iranian-funded militias helped organize a mob attack in the southern township of Majarr al-Kabir on June 24, 2003, that resulted in the execution of six British military-police officers. According to a classified British military-intelligence document, a local militia leader is "implicated in the murder of the 6 RMP [Royal Military Police]." The man heads a cell of the Mujahedin for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (MIRI), a paramilitary outfit coordinated out of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's base in Ahvaz, Iran. Although U.S. and British officers think it unlikely the soldiers were killed on orders from Revolutionary Guard officers, they agree that the slayings fit within the Iranian generals' broad guidelines to bog coalition forces down in sporadic hit-and-run attacks.
The Iranian program is as impressive as it is comprehensive, competing with and sometimes bettering the coalition's endeavors. Businesses, front companies, religious groups, NGOs and aid for schools and universities are all part of the mix. Just as Washington backs Iraqi news outlets like al-Hurra television station, Tehran has funded broadcast and print outlets in Iraq. A 2003 Supreme National Security Council memo, smuggled out of Iran, suggests even the Iranian Red Crescent society, akin to the Red Cross, has coordinated its activities through the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The memo instructs officials that "the immediate needs of the Iraqi people should be determined" by the Guard's al-Quds Force.
More sinister are signs of death squads charged with eliminating potential opponents and former Baathists. U.S. intelligence sources confirm that early targets included former members of the Iran section of Saddam's intelligence services. In southern cities, Thar-Allah (Vengeance of God) is one of a number of militant groups suspected of assassinations. U.S. commanders in Baghdad and in eastern provinces say similar cells operate in their sectors. The chief of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, General Mohammed Abdullah al-Shahwani, has publicly accused Iranian-backed cells of hunting down and killing his officers. In October he blamed agents in Iran's Baghdad embassy of coordinating assassinations of up to 18 of his people, claiming that raids on three safe houses uncovered a trove of documents linking the agents to funds funneled to the Badr Corps for the purposes of "physical liquidation."
A former Iraqi official and member of Saddam's armored corps, who identifies himself as Abu Hassan, told TIME last summer that he was recruited by an Iranian intelligence agent in 2004 to compile the names and addresses of Ministry of Interior officials in close contact with American military officers and liaisons. Abu Hassan's Iranian handler wanted to know "who the Americans trusted and where they were" and pestered him to find out if Abu Hassan, using his membership in the Iraqi National Accord political party, could get someone inside the office of then Prime Minister Iyad Allawi without being searched. (Allawi has told TIME he believes Iranian agents plotted to assassinate him.) And the handler also demanded information on U.S. troop concentrations in a particular area of Baghdad and details of U.S. weaponry, armor, routes and reaction times. After revealing his conversations to U.S. and Iraqi authorities, Abu Hassan disappeared; earlier this year, one of his Iraqi superiors was convicted of espionage.
Intelligence agencies say Tehran still funds various political parties in Iraq. Documents from Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps files obtained by TIME include voluminous pay records from August 2004 that appear to indicate that Iran was paying the salaries of at least 11,740 members of the Badr Corps. British and U.S. military intelligence suspect those salaries are still being paid, although Badr leader Hadi al-Amri denies that. "I've told the American officers to bring us the evidence that we have a deal with Iran, and we will be ready, but they say they don't have any," he says.
What remains murky is the extent to which Iran is encouraging its proxies to stage attacks against the U.S.-led coalition. Military intelligence officers describe their Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps counterparts' strategy as one of using "nonattributable attacks" by proxy forces to maximize deniability. What's uncertain, says a senior U.S. officer, is what factions within Tehran's splintered security apparatus are behind the strategy and how much the top leaders have endorsed it. Intelligence sources claim that Brigadier General Sullaimani ordained in a meeting of his militia proxies in the spring of last year that "any move that would wear out the U.S. forces in Iraq should be done. Every possible means should be used to keep the U.S. forces engaged in Iraq." Secret British military-intelligence documents show that British forces are tracking several paramilitary outfits in Southern Iraq that are backed by the Revolutionary Guard. Coalition and Iraqi intelligence agencies track Iranian officers' visits to Iraq on inspection tours akin to those of their American counterparts. "We know they come, but often not until after they've left," says a British intelligence officer.
Shi'ite political parties do not dispute that the visits occur. And a steady flow of weapons continues to arrive from Iran through the porous southern border. "They use the legal checkpoints to move personnel, and the weapons travel through the marshes and areas to our north," says a British officer in Basra. Top diplomats and intelligence officials know that some Iranian officers are providing assistance to Shi'ite insurgents, but it's dwarfed by the amount of money and materiel flowing in from Iraq's Arab neighbors to Sunni insurgents.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1093747,00.html
Posted at 02:46 pm by Psychomike
Sunday, August 14, 2005
LOST SECRETS OF VIETNAM: FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO KNOW, FOR THOSE THAT LIVED THROUGH IT, FROM ALL SIDES.
All war is based on deception.
~Sun Tzu
For my generation Viet Nam was a defining moment- yet decades later most young people know nothing of this war. Today's theme, then, is Viet Nam.
In 1964 Goldwater ran for President as a Republican. The earliest known libertarian to run for office (he supported gay rights when it wasn't even an issue), Goldwater warned that LBJ was lying when he said we weren't going to war in Nam. LBJ responded with commercials accusing Goldwater of wanting a nuclear war and
promised there would be no war. Goldwater said there would, but if we hadn't won by the end of 1965 he would withdraw our troops. What would America
be like if we had left Nam at the end of 1965? Or if we had fought to win? An interesting what if scenario...... here is a brief history of warfare in Viet Nam- who began by fighting 1000 years against China for freedom! http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWvietnam.htm
This is a great site on the myths of VietNam. Was the U.S. military defeated? Were most Nam soldiers poor and drafted?
More on Barry Goldwater-
During his 1964 presidential campaign, Mr. Goldwater was attacked by Democrats and opponents within his own party as a demagogue and a leader of right-wing extremists and racists who was likely to lead the United States into nuclear war, eliminate civil rights progress and destroy such social welfare programs as Social Security.
But that perception mellowed with time. Mr. Goldwater returned to the Senate in 1969 and went on to serve three more terms. Long before his retirement, he had come to be regarded as the Grand Old Man of the Republican Party and one of the nation's most respected exponents of conservatism, which he sometimes defined as holding on to that which was tested and true and opposing change simply for the sake of change.
His friends said he was often misunderstood, but his reputation for personal integrity was unblemished. At the height of the Watergate crisis, when the Republicans in Congress needed someone to tell President Richard M. Nixon he should resign, they chose Mr. Goldwater. But instead of telling the president what to do, Mr. Goldwater simply informed him in the Oval Office on Aug. 7, 1974, that the Republicans in Congress were unwilling and unable to stop his impeachment and conviction should he remain in office. Nixon announced his resignation the next day. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/may98/goldwater30.htm
WE CAME BECAUSE
WE BELIEVE
WE LEAVE BECAUSE
WE ARE DISILLUSIONED
WE CAME BACK BECAUSE
WE ARE LOST
WE DIE BECAUSE
WE ARE COMMITTED
Found on a Zippo lighter, Airborne Go Dau, 1971
Before the Americans went into Nam, the French were there.
Thirty years ago, it all seemed very clear.
"American Planes Hit North Vietnam After Second Attack on Our Destroyers; Move Taken to Halt New Aggression", announced a Washington Post headline on Aug. 5, 1964.
That same day, the front page of the New York Times reported: "President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and 'certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam' after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin."
But there was no "second attack" by North Vietnam — no "renewed attacks against American destroyers." By reporting official claims as absolute truths,
American journalism opened the floodgates for the bloody Vietnam War.
The seige of Khe Sanh in the Viet Nam War, as told by the men who slept in holes in the ground for months, often waking up with rats covering them.
Then facing a force much larger trying to wipe them out. You'll find stories, photos and memories of the men who fought for their lives.
Khe Sanh was one of the most remote outposts in Vietnam, but by January 1968, even President Lyndon Johnson had taken a personal interest in the base. With Khe Sanh facing a full-scale siege by the North Vietnamese Army, the question was being asked: Should the base be held, or should it be quietly abandoned?
Along with the President, American military officials decided to try and hold the base. On the morning of January 21, 1968, NVA forces launched the awaited attack, and the siege of Khe Sanh had begun.
What was it like to be at Khe Sanh? In this multimedia retrospective, you can learn about the history of the battle, study tactical maps, view archival images, and read the stirring reflections of American soldiers who survived in the siege.
http://www.pbs.org/battlefieldvietnam/khe/
Vietnam War from the perspective of the vets who fought there on both sides, the memories, the Vietnam war pictures and the humanitarian work that VWAM
(Vets With A Mission- a group of Nam vets who do humanitarian work in Nam today) . http://www.vwam.com/vets/tet/tet.html
The Medal of Honor and the men in Nam who received it. http://www.mishalov.com/Citations.html
What about the war protesters? Here are some facts about Jane Fonda- and why so many vets both for and against the war to
this day cannot forgive her. But it also clears up some urban legends about her too.
When American POWs finally began to return home (some of them having been held captive for up to nine years) and describe the tortures they had endured at the hands of the North Vietnamese, Jane Fonda quickly told the country that they should "not hail the POWs as heroes, because they are hypocrites and liars." Fonda said the idea that the POWs she had met in Vietnam had been tortured was "laughable," claiming: "These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed." The POWs who said they had been tortured were "exaggerating, probably for their own self-interest," she asserted. She told audiences that "Never in the history of the United States have POWs come home looking like football players. These football players are no more heroes than Custer was. They're military careerists and professional killers" who are "trying to make themselves look self-righteous, but they are war criminals according to law." http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.asp
Up until Kent State when demonstrations were held over the war they drew tens of thousands of people. After Kent State they drew hundreds of thousands. Part of the reason was that some students shot were not in the strike- they were changing classes. When Nixon called all those shot bums the message was clear. If you were young, whether you supported the war or not, you were the enemy. Here is a chronology of what happened:
http://members.aol.com/nrbooks/chronol.htm now, here is the controversy that still rages to this day: http://dept.kent.edu/sociology/lewis/LEWIHEN.htm
One military unit was out of control- this story of Tiger Force won a Pulitzer Prize when it was published in Canada. It was not reported here in the states,
decades after the war, we still can't come to grips with it in many ways. http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=SRTIGERFORCE
America tried to forget about Nam when it ended. What happened after we left, was a nightmare.
http://jim.com/ChomskyLiesCites/When_we_knew_what_happened_in_Vietnam.htm
Posted at 10:59 am by Psychomike
Thursday, August 11, 2005
U.S. Intel Knew 9/11 Plotters
Republican congressman, Curt Weldon, who serves as vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, has claimed a classified military intelligence unit codenamed Able Danger knew of Mohammed Atta and the 9/11 terrorist cell on U.S soil in 1999. The unit recommended that the FBI be informed of the terrorist cell "so they could bring that cell in and take out the terrorists". The Pentagon denied the request to inform the FBI citing that they are forbidden to share intelligence on the men because they were legally in the country.
The source of this information is a congressman who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security commitees no less. He is a credible source with no reason to lie. The 9/11 commission was intentionally misled into believing the government knew absolutely nothing about the 9/11 terrorist attack before it occured. This proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that the government was well aware of terrorists plotting an attack on American soil as early as 1999.
Congressman: U.S. Intel Knew 9/11 Plotters
By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press WriterWed Aug 10, 9:37 AM ET
Members of the commission that uncovered the government's failures to share intelligence among agencies before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks want to know whether U.S. defense intelligence officials knew for more than a year that four of the hijackers were part of an al-Qaida cell but failed to tell law enforcement.
Lee Hamilton, co-chairman of the now-disbanded commission, said Tuesday that members of the Sept. 11 commission could issue a statement by the end of the week after reviewing claims that defense intelligence officials had identified ringleader Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers.
"The 9/11 commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell," said Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana. "Had we learned of it obviously it would've been a major focus of our investigation."
The commission's report on the terrorist attacks, released last year, traced government mistakes that allowed the hijackers to succeed. Among the problems the commission cited was a lack of coordination across intelligence agencies.
Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), a Pennsylvania Republican who serves as vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, said a classified military intelligence unit known as "Able Danger" identified the men in 1999.
That's an earlier link to al-Qaida than any previously disclosed intelligence about Atta if the information, which Weldon said came from multiple intelligence sources, is true.
A group of 9/11 widows called the September 11th Advocates issued a statement Wednesday saying they were "horrified" to learn that further possible evidence exists, and they are disappointed the 9/11 Commission report is "incomplete and illusory."
"The revelation of this information demands answers that are forthcoming, clear and concise," the statement said. "The 9/11 attacks could have and should have been prevented."
With the 9/11 commission disbanded for a year under provisions of the legislation that created it, some of the panel's members have said congressional committees should investigate Weldon's assertions.
According to Weldon, Able Danger identified Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi as members of a cell the unit code-named "Brooklyn" because of some loose connections to New York City.
Weldon said that in September 2000 Able Danger recommended that its information on the hijackers be given to the FBI "so they could bring that cell in and take out the terrorists." However, Weldon said Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally, so information on them could not be shared with law enforcement.
Weldon did not provide details on how the intelligence officials identified the future hijackers and determined they might be part of a terrorist cell.
Defense Department documents shown to an Associated Press reporter Tuesday said the Able Danger team was set up in 1999 to identify potential al-Qaida operatives for U.S. Special Operations Command. At some point, information provided to the team by the Army's Information Dominance Center pointed to a possible al-Qaida cell in Brooklyn, the documents said.
However, because of concerns about pursuing information on "U.S. persons" — a legal term that includes U.S. citizens as well as foreigners admitted to the country for permanent residence — Special Operations Command did not provide the Army information to the FBI. It is unclear whether the Army provided the information to anyone else.
The command instead turned its focus to overseas threats.
The documents provided no information on whether the team identified anyone connected to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York City and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people.
If the team did identify Atta and the others, it's unclear why the information wasn't forwarded. The prohibition against sharing intelligence on "U.S. persons" should not have applied since they were in the country on visas and did not have permanent resident status.
Posted at 03:17 am by Psychomike
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Saddam's Private Torture Videos
Saddam torture videos released.
Please do not watch if offended by scenes of torture.
SADDAMS TORTURE VIDEO 1
SADDAMS TORTURE VIDEO 2
This item is available on the Benador Associates website, at http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/14975
HYPOCRISY MOST HOLY
by Ali Al-Ahmed
Wall Street Journal
May 20, 2005
With the revelation that a copy of the Quran may have been desecrated by U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay, Muslims and their governments -- including that of Saudi Arabia -- reacted angrily. This anger would have been understandable if the U.S. government's adopted policy was to desecrate our Quran. But even before the Newsweek report was discredited, that was never part of the allegations.
As a Muslim, I am able to purchase copies of the Quran in any bookstore in any American city, and study its contents in countless American universities. American museums spend millions to exhibit and celebrate Muslim arts and heritage. On the other hand, my Christian and other non-Muslim brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia -- where I come from -- are not even allowed to own a copy of their holy books. Indeed, the Saudi government desecrates and burns Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points into the kingdom or during raids on Christian expatriates worshiping privately.
Soon after Newsweek published an account, later retracted, of an American soldier flushing a copy of the Quran down the toilet, the Saudi government voiced its strenuous disapproval. More specifically, the Saudi Embassy in Washington expressed "great concern" and urged the U.S. to "conduct a quick investigation."
Although considered as holy in Islam and mentioned in the Quran dozens of times, the Bible is banned in Saudi Arabia. This would seem curious to most people because of the fact that to most Muslims, the Bible is a holy book. But when it comes to Saudi Arabia we are not talking about most Muslims, but a tiny minority of hard-liners who constitute the Wahhabi Sect.
The Bible in Saudi Arabia may get a person killed, arrested, or deported. In September 1993, Sadeq Mallallah, 23, was beheaded in Qateef on a charge of apostasy for owning a Bible. The State Department's annual human rights reports detail the arrest and deportation of many Christian worshipers every year. Just days before Crown Prince Abdullah met President Bush last month, two Christian gatherings were stormed in Riyadh. Bibles and crosses were confiscated, and will be incinerated. (The Saudi government does not even spare the Quran from desecration. On Oct. 14, 2004, dozens of Saudi men and women carried copies of the Quran as they protested in support of reformers in the capital, Riyadh. Although they carried the Qurans in part to protect themselves from assault by police, they were charged by hundreds of riot police, who stepped on the books with their shoes, according to one of the protesters.)
As Muslims, we have not been as generous as our Christian and Jewish counterparts in respecting others' holy books and religious symbols. Saudi Arabia bans the importation or the display of crosses, Stars of David or any other religious symbols not approved by the Wahhabi establishment. TV programs that show Christian clergymen, crosses or Stars of David are censored.
The desecration of religious texts and symbols and intolerance of varying religious viewpoints and beliefs have been issues of some controversy inside Saudi Arabia. Ruled by a Wahhabi theocracy, the ruling elite of Saudi Arabia have made it difficult for Christians, Jews, Hindus and others, as well as dissenting sects of Islam, to visibly coexist inside the kingdom.
Another way in which religious and cultural issues are becoming more divisive is the Saudi treatment of Americans who are living in that country: Around 30,000 live and work in various parts of Saudi Arabia. These people are not allowed to celebrate their religious or even secular holidays. These include Christmas and Easter, but also Thanksgiving. All other Gulf states allow non-Islamic holidays to be celebrated.
The Saudi Embassy and other Saudi organizations in Washington have distributed hundreds of thousands of Qurans and many more Muslim books, some that have libeled Christians, Jews and others as pigs and monkeys. In Saudi school curricula, Jews and Christians are considered deviants and eternal enemies. By contrast, Muslim communities in the West are the first to admit that Western countries -- especially the U.S. -- provide Muslims the strongest freedoms and protections that allow Islam to thrive in the West. Meanwhile Christianity and Judaism, both indigenous to the Middle East, are maligned through systematic hostility by Middle Eastern governments and their religious apparatuses.
The lesson here is simple: If Muslims wish other religions to respect their beliefs and their Holy book, they should lead by example.
Mr. al-Ahmed is director of the Saudi Institute in Washington. Posted at 03:49 pm by Psychomike
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
The Impact Of Clinton On Foreign Affairs
Fresh from a daring attack on America’s homeland, an army of Islamic terrorists is roaming the earth and planning further attacks. At the same time, North Korea is brandishing brand-new nukes and threatening to destabilize an entire continent. And somewhere in Iraq, Saddam Hussein is building his own arsenal of hideous weapons, playing games with the United Nations (UN), and plotting revenge against his most bitter enemy.
Although these stories are dominating today’s news, what makes them especially interesting is that they also happened to dominate yesterday’s news, specifically during President Bill Clinton’s first term. This unpleasant feeling of déjà vu speaks volumes about the former president’s foreign policy. Clinton’s uncanny ability to change positions effortlessly made him a political juggernaut, but it was this same trait that made his foreign policy so ineffective. Clinton summed up his approach to foreign affairs when he fumed over his administration’s inability to settle on a course in the Balkans: “We’ve got to find some kind of policy and move ahead,” the president told an aide during the siege of Sarajevo.
Some say that this haphazardness was a sign of the times, that Clinton’s ever-shifting foreign policy was directly related to the murky nature of the post-Cold War era. However, the fact that today’s most pressing challenges are just distorted versions of yesterday’s reminds us that foreign policy demands consistency and close attention in every era. Just as actions have consequences, so too does inaction.
North Korea, Iraq, and al Qaeda were problems long before Bill Clinton became president. However, they grew worse during his presidency, which is why it is both fair and constructive to examine how Clinton handled these challenges. As Paul Wolfowitz, who is currently assistant secretary of defense, explained in the heady days of Clinton’s first term, “Every administration is responsible for what it makes of the situations it inherits.”
As he ascended to the presidency, now a full decade ago, Clinton pledged “to reassert American leadership in the post-Cold War world and to advance our values around the world.” Anyone who maintained even a casual interest in foreign affairs could recognize the false assumption behind that promise. With the collapse of Communism in Europe, reunification of Germany, fall of the Soviet empire, and defeat of Iraqi aggression serving as the key signposts of the years immediately preceding the Clinton era, neither America’s leadership nor its values needed to be “reasserted” in 1992-93. The elder Bush had ended the Cold War peacefully and launched the post-Cold War era deftly. As Johns Hopkins professor Michael Mandelbaum would later note, “The real legacy of the Bush administration was . . . unprecedentedly good relations with all the major centers of power—Western Europe, Japan, China, and Russia.”
October Origins
Clinton’s foreign-policy legacy, on the other hand, will always be asterisked by missed opportunities with North Korea, Iraq, and al Qaeda. Yet it’s important to remember that this trio festered into the problems they are today largely because of Clinton’s mishandling of his very first foreign-policy challenge: Somalia. At the closing hours of his presidency, President George H. W. Bush had dispatched 28,000 troops to Somalia. Their mission was limited to protecting food shipments from tribal warfare and looting. Within days, chaos was turned to order, and within four months, the number of U.S. troops in Somalia had shrunk to 3,000. But upon taking office, Clinton placed them under UN command. With his blessing, the UN expanded what had been a limited, humanitarian mission into an ambitious reconstruction of Somalia’s government infrastructure.
Soon, tribal leader Farah Aidid rallied thousands of Somalis against what had become an occupying army. After being ambushed by a pro-Aidid mob, UN troops fired on a group of protesters, killing dozens of Aidid supporters. Clinton then sent hundreds of U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force troops into Somalia to apprehend Aidid. Significantly, Major General Thomas Montgomery’s requests for tanks and armored fighting vehicles were denied by then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, doubtless with the president’s knowledge.
The Rangers launched a brutal, sixty-day war against tribal strongholds, culminating on October 3, 1993, in a day-long gun battle with Aidid’s forces in the dusty alleys of Mogadishu. When the guns fell silent, eighteen Americans and hundreds of Somalis were dead, triggering the beginning of the end of U.S. involvement in Somalia.
The impact of this episode on the young president and his foreign policy cannot be overstated. As historian David Halberstam observes in his history of U.S. foreign policy in the 1990s, War in a Time of Peace (2001), “It was for the Clinton team not unlike the Bay of Pigs thirty-two years earlier, a devastating blow for a new administration.” However, as Halberstam adds, Clinton lacked the confidence and credentials of the World War II veteran John F. Kennedy, making it much harder for him to regain his foreign-policy footing.
That much was clear just a few days after the battle in Mogadishu, half-a-world away in Haiti, where Clinton had promised to install that country’s democratically elected but deposed president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Clinton backed up his words by dispatching a small force of 193 troops to Port-au-Prince on October 12, 1993. Waiting for the Americans was a group of club-wielding loyalists of Haitian strongman Raoul Cedras. A standoff ensued as the White House agonized over whether to take the beach by force and thus risk another Mogadishu, or withdraw and risk further erosion of American credibility. Choosing the path of least resistance, the president backed down and decided to deal with the consequences later. “Rarely,” Halberstam recalls, “had the United States looked so impotent.”
Clinton’s greatest failure that fateful October was not overreaching in Somalia so much as the subsequent retreat from Haiti. Whether democracy in Haiti or order in Mogadishu is worth risking American blood is open to debate; the importance of American credibility, however, is not. Clinton failed to grasp this in 1993. By waving the white flag in Haiti, he sent a message around the world that could be understood in every language: America had lost its way and its nerve. North Korea, Iraq, and al Qaeda got the message.
A Failed Test
Thanks in part to the first Bush administration’s working partnership with the world’s power centers, in 1991-92 Washington prodded North Korea into opening its nuclear facilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency. By late 1993, however, Pyongyang was balking at that agreement and threatening to withdraw from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). As he had with so many others, Kim Il-Sung, North Korea’s wily dictator, was testing America’s inexperienced president.
By 1994, the North Koreans made good on their threats to bolt the NPT. They punctuated their intentions by ringing the Yongbyon nuclear facility with anti-aircraft batteries, lining the inter-Korean border with 11,000 artillery pieces, threatening to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire,” and leaning their million-man army into the demilitarized zone (DMZ). Defense Secretary William Perry prudently ordered the U.S. military chiefs to develop plans for a preemptive strike against Yongbyon. However, on the heels of the bloody ambush in Mogadishu and humiliating retreat off the coast of Port-au-Prince, Clinton had no stomach for preemptive war in North Korea—and who could blame him? As the Congressional Research Service concluded in a mid-1994 report about North Korea’s nuclear program, “The tactical success of a counter-proliferation mission could be lost in the consequences of another war on the Korean peninsula.” Given the choice between making war and making a deal, Clinton chose the latter, even after the CIA concluded that Pyongyang already had at least one nuclear weapon. The deal went something like this: If you don’t build any more nuclear weapons, we’ll build power-generating nuclear reactors for you; and as a small token of our appreciation for your patience, we’ll send you 500,000 tons of oil every year while you wait.
It was an offer Pyongyang couldn’t refuse, as it entailed the North getting everything it wanted and giving up nothing. The drive for nuclear weapons went forward, albeit underground; the push for missiles continued; and eight years later, Pyongyang now brashly admits what only the most naïve refused to suspect—that it has joined the no-longer exclusive club of nuclear powers.
According to former Secretary of State James Baker, this development “is the natural, foreseeable result of the 1994 Framework Agreement between the United States and North Korea.” In Baker’s view, the Framework turned a bipartisan policy “based on strength into one based on accommodation, compromise, and appeasement.” The real tragedy of the present situation on the Korean peninsula is that the United States had many more choices than simply war and appeasement—both of which, in an odd way, reflect an easy way out. “War,” as the Roman historian Sallust observed, “is easy to begin but difficult to stop.” Appeasement, on the other hand, seems easy because it delays the hard decisions and defers them to someone else.
In the case of North Korea, there were middle-ground solutions available. For starters, the administration could have done what President George W. Bush directed his national-security team to do when Pyongyang tested him: cajole the Chinese into demanding a nuclear-free peninsula, freeze all non-humanitarian assistance bound for Pyongyang, and lead Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo in an unlikely diplomatic counter-offensive.
Further up the response ladder, Clinton could have taken a more strategic view, as President Reagan did with Moscow: With North Korea rattling nuclear sabers and testing medium- and long-range missiles, perhaps Washington should have concluded that the time was right for America’s regional allies to pool their technological resources and construct an overlapping web of theater missile-defense systems. And if Pyongyang wanted to make the peninsula a nuclear tripwire, perhaps Washington could have redeployed nuclear weapons on the southern side of the DMZ. (The first Bush administration withdrew them in 1991.) If the North Koreans wanted an arms race, we certainly could have given them one. (For that matter, we still can.)
Still further up the ladder, Clinton could have taken a page out of President Kennedy’s playbook and quarantined North Korea by air, land, and sea, daring Kim to fire first and demanding that he end his drive for nuclear weapons and open up his weapons sites.
Of course, Clinton didn’t climb that ladder. We now know that the Korean missile crisis of 1993-94 didn’t end nearly as well for the United States as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. As a result, the current administration is left with few options in dealing with Pyongyang—none of them good. As military historian Victor Davis Hanson puts it, “The sad truth is that once an outlaw regime possesses nuclear weapons, it wins special consideration as the range of our own countermeasures diminishes.” Indeed, by playing kick the can with America’s security, Clinton may have unwittingly made war more—not less—likely. And if war returns to the peninsula, a nuclear-armed North Korea will make it more—not less—bloody than before. The words of a high-level North Korean official should give us pause: “We’re not going to be another Yugoslavia.”
Phony War
Clinton slightly adjusted his finger-crossing foreign policy in dealing with al Qaeda. He didn’t directly appease Saudi expatriate Osama bin Laden, but he may have done something worse: he made a halfhearted attempt to bring the terror master to justice.
Like the Framework Agreement, this decision gave the appearance that something was being done, but appearances don’t always translate into reality. Just consider what passed for a counterterrorism policy during the Clinton era. In 1993, Islamic terrorists backed by bin Laden threw their first blows at the World Trade Center, killing six Americans and injuring a thousand. The Clinton White House responded with criminal indictments and prosecutions. Later that year, Washington linked bin Laden to the ambush in Mogadishu. Clinton responded by hastily withdrawing the troops. In the summer of 1996, a truck bomb exploded outside the U.S. military’s Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, claiming nineteen airmen and injuring two hundred others. The White House responded with indictments and deportations. In 1998, al Qaeda bombed a pair of American embassies in East Africa, murdering 224 civilians and injuring more than 5,000. This time, the Clinton White House responded with a volley of seventy-five cruise missiles, another indictment of bin Laden, and a $5 million bounty on the terror master’s head.
The indictment and bounty had no tangible effect. And although the missiles leveled an abandoned terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and razed a chemical-weapons facility on the outskirts of Khartoum, Sudan, the strikes had no real effect, either. The “chemical-weapons facility” turned out to be a pharmaceutical plant, and bin Laden emerged from the rubble unscathed. In fact, bin Laden’s ability to withstand a mighty blow from the U.S. Navy catapulted him into mythic hero status among Islamists. By mid-1999, CIA Director George Tenet conceded that bin Laden’s network could strike American targets virtually at will. In October 2000, al Qaeda did just that, using a rubber boat to blast a hole in the side of the USS Cole, killing seventeen sailors. The Clinton White House responded not by sending troops into Yemen, but FBI agents. Less than eleven months later, bin Laden would send his own troops to strike America’s homeland.
Owing to the attention he gained as the prime target of Washington’s phony war, bin Laden grew more popular as America grew ever weaker in his eyes. America’s perceived weakness fueled al Qaeda’s attacks, which fueled bin Laden’s popularity, which—left unchallenged—further fueled bin Laden’s perception of American weakness.
Again, it didn’t have to be this way. In 1980-81, President Reagan offered his successors an instructive example of how to deal with terrorists, by demanding that Iran free all fifty-two American hostages and leaving the consequences of Iran’s failure to comply deliberately and chillingly vague. Of course, a president with no track record, like Reagan in 1981, has a better chance of ending or deterring terrorist activity than a president with an inconsistent record, like Clinton in the mid-1990s. Yet all is not lost when intimidation fails. In 1986, after Libyan-trained terrorists bombed a Berlin disco filled with American servicemen, Reagan ordered U.S. warplanes to attack the government that had spawned them. Libya’s army of terrorists stayed clear of Americans after the raids, and Qadhafi’s involvement in anti-U.S. terrorism ceased.
Low Grades
As with so many of President Clinton’s foreign-policy fumbles, Iraq was considered a success before he arrived in Washington, albeit a limited one. His predecessor’s foreshortened military operation allowed far too much of Saddam’s army to escape and survive to kill another day. Still, the elder Bush did lay the groundwork for Iraq’s long-term containment and disarmament: a UN weapons-inspection regime, international sanctions, and support for Iraqi opposition movements—all backed by U.S. air power.
Clinton, however, did not continue this policy. In addition, Saddam Hussein took notice of Clinton’s vacillation in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and North Korea, and he began to drive a wedge between Washington and key members of the UN Security Council. As international cooperation on Iraq deteriorated, Saddam reopened his factories of weapons of mass destruction, blocked UN weapons inspectors, challenged U.S.-enforced no-fly zones, and moved against protected areas near Turkey and Kuwait.
After almost six years of this mischief, the president finally fired back at Saddam in December 1998. The four-day air campaign was by far the largest operation against Saddam since the Gulf War, but it was roundly dismissed as meaningless because Saddam and his nuclear-weapons program survived the barrage. Although the operation ended by Christmas, the air war on Iraq did not. Searching for a policy, the president authorized what came to be called “low-grade war” against Iraq—weekly or even daily air attacks on targets of opportunity such as radar posts, surface-to-air missile sites, and other strategically irrelevant facilities on the extreme periphery of Saddam’s power. Rather than a means to an end, the raids became an end in and of themselves. In fact, they became so ubiquitous that by the end of the Clinton presidency the press had stopped reporting them. To get an idea of the scope of this low-grade war, consider an eight-month stretch in 1999 that saw American and British pilots fire more than 1,100 missiles and attack 359 targets inside Iraq. The raids continued after Clinton’s departure, even intensifying as the second Bush administration prepared to topple Saddam’s regime.
Rather than weakening Saddam, this low-grade war permanently fractured the Gulf War coalition, kept UN weapons inspectors out of Iraq, and pushed the Iraqi people into Saddam’s corner. Moreover, when in 1998a bipartisan majority of Congress overwhelmingly approved a plan to train and equip Iraqi opposition groups with military and humanitarian aid, Clinton signed the bill but refused to implement it, apparently believing that the appearance of action would be as effective as action itself.
As a result, Saddam grew steadily stronger on the international political front, and the United States grew weaker. For evidence of this, just look at the UN Security Council today, which debated a full eight weeks before passing a resolution demanding that Baghdad observe existing UN resolutions.
Hard Lessons
All of this should serve as a lesson for the current president. His actions and inaction will have long-term, perhaps unforeseeable, consequences. For example, Bush’s ambidextrous policy of using military force to disarm a nuclear pretender in Baghdad, while using diplomacy to coax the nukes away from Pyongyang, may deter other nuclear hopefuls. Of course, it could just as well embolden them. We simply won’t know for a few years.
By that time, this unpleasant sense of déjà vu will probably have subsided—but don’t be surprised if it returns.
Alan W. Dowd is a senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research. He is a frequent contributor to The World & I, The American Enterprise, National Review Online, and The American Legion Magazine, where he publishes policy commentaries and a monthly column covering national security and military issues.
Posted at 10:23 am by Psychomike
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