A plan by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that had been in the pipelines for several months - even though official policy was to ditch it - saw what was to be a low-profile attack in Kashmir turn into the massive attacks on Mumbai last week.

The original plan was highjacked by the Laskar-e-Taiba (LET), a Pakistani militant group that generally focussed on the Kashmir struggle, and al-Qaeda, resulting in the deaths of nearly 200 people in Mumbai as groups of militants sprayed bullets and hand grenades at hotels, restaurants and train stations, as well as a Jewish community center.

The attack has sent shock waves across India and threatens to revive the intense periods of hostility the two countries have endured since their independence from British India in 1947.

There is now the possibility that Pakistan will undergo another about-turn and rethink its support of the "war in terror"; until the end of 2001, it supported the Taliban administration in Afghanistan. It could now back off from its restive tribal areas, leaving the Taliban a free hand to consolidate their Afghan insurgency.

A US State Department official categorically mentioned that Pakistan's "smoking gun" could turn the US's relations with Pakistan sour. The one militant captured - several were killed - is reported to have been a Pakistani trained by the LET. 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JL02Df05.html

Iran poses the greatest foreign policy challenge to Barack Obama, the President-elect, with Tehran on course to produce a nuclear bomb in the first year of an Obama administration, a coalition of top think-tanks gave warning yesterday.

Mr Obama must keep his promises of direct talks with Tehran and engage the Middle East region as a whole if he is to halt a looming crisis that could be revisited on the US, the experts said.

“Diplomacy is not guaranteed to work,” Richard Hass, one of the authors said. “But the other options – military action or living with an Iranian weapon are sufficiently unattractive for it to warrant serious commitment.”

The warnings came in a report entitled Restoring the Balance. The Middle East strategy for the President-elect was drafted by the Council for Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5275647.ece

In one of the biggest heists in American history, the Daily News "stole" the $2 billion Empire State Building.

And it wasn't that hard.

The News swiped the 102-story Art Deco skyscraper by drawing up a batch of bogus documents, making a fake notary stamp and filing paperwork with the city to transfer the deed to the property.

Some of the information was laughable: Original "King Kong" star Fay Wray is listed as a witness and the notary shared a name with bank robber Willie Sutton.

The massive ripoff illustrates a gaping loophole in the city's system for recording deeds, mortgages and other transactions.  http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/12/02/2008-12-02_it_took_90_minutes_for_daily_news_to_ste.html

GOP Stops Democrats in Georgia  http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081203/D94QV0C00.html

Federal prosecutors in Seattle on Wednesday will ask a judge to more than double the 22-year sentence he gave to an al-Qaida-trained terrorist convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport at the turn of the millennium.  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008461263_webressam02m.html

Thailand's courts did on Tuesday what anti-government protesters have been trying to do for months - bring down the government. The Constitution Court ordered that the ruling party and two of its allies be disbanded over electoral fraud, and that numerous politicians, including the premier, be banned from politics. The anti-government groups responded by saying they will unblock the international airport and others they have forced to close. But the political crisis is far from over.  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JL03Ae03.html

One wants to ask the Wall Street wizards who comprise the talent pool for the incoming administration, "If you so smart, how come you ain't rich no more?"

Manhattan's toniest private schools, harder to get into than Harvard, quietly are looking for full-tuition pupils now that the children of sacked Wall Street bankers are departing for public schools in cheaper suburbs. Harvard University president Drew Faust has warned of budget cuts to come due to "unprecedented losses" to its US$39 billion endowment.

Shares of Citibank, the current firm of Bill Clinton's treasury secretary Robert Rubin, last week traded at less than a tenth of their year-earlier market price and may require yet another federal bailout. [Citigroup will have more than $300 billion of troubled mortgages and other assets guaranteed by the US government under a federal plan to stabilize the lender after its stock fell 60% last week, Bloomberg reported today, November 24. Citigroup also will get a $20 billion cash infusion from the Treasury Department, adding to the $25 billion the bank received last month under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. In return for the cash and guarantees, the government will get $27 billion of preferred shares paying an 8% dividend.]

Rubin, a transition advisor to president-elect Barack Obama, was mentor to Treasury secretary designate Timothy Geithner. Even Goldman Sachs, the thoroughbred trading machine that gave us Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson as well as Rubin, is trading at a fifth of its peak value.

These facts came to mind while reading David Brooks' November 21 New York Times panegyric to Obama's prospective cabinet, which gushes, "Its members are twice as smart as the poor reporters who have to cover them, three times if you include the columnists." Brooks added, "... as much as I want to resent these overeducated Achievatrons ... I find myself tremendously impressed by the Obama transition."

Has Brooks checked the markets? The cleverest people in the United States, the Ivy-pedigreed investment bankers, have fouled their own nests as well as their own net worth, and persuaded the taxpayers to bail them out. If these are the best and the brightest of 2008, America is in very deep trouble.

The one-trick wizards of Wall Street had one idea, which was to ride the trend and pile on as much leverage as credulous investors and crony regulators would allow. It has gone pear-shaped, and those who didn't cash out early along with the cynics are poor. Fortunately for them, Obama will let them play with the budget of the US federal government for the next four years.

Failed financiers run the Obama transition team. It used to be that the heads of great industrial companies got the top Cabinet posts. Now it is the one-trick wizards. After George W Bush fired former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who had run Alcoa, the last survivor of the species was Vice President Dick Cheney, the former CEO of Halliburton. Obama's bevy of talent comes from finance. American industrialists have become figures of ridicule, like the pathetic chief executive of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, begging for a government loan.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JK25Dj06.html

Terror does leave a calling card. As the enormity of the attack on Mumbai sank in, it seemed like the arrival of al-Qaida in India, a version of 9/11 designed to attract a global audience given the scale of violence and the planned targeting of westerners.

With the capture of a terrorist, the actual authors were revealed. It wasn't the al-Qaida. But the jihadi credentials were not much less impressive with Lashkar-e-Taiba named as the suspect. Given the operation's obvious planning, few doubted it was the deadly firm of LeT-ISI in action yet again.

Yet the difference between LeT and al-Qaida is not so significant as might have once been the case. In recent years, Lashkar has emerged as not only the single largest pan-Indian terror threat, but also a partner with al-Qaida in jihadi battlegrounds like Iraq, Chechnya and Afghanistan. It has shared training camps and cadre and used al-Qaida-Taliban facilities for a "jihad" against India.

It has been proscribed by US and UK who have recognised LeT to be a global terrorist organisation. In UK, it has been allied to the Kashmiri underground, for long recognised as one of the easiest way to get into the jihadi circuit which leads to Pakistan. It poses as a charity and openly seeks donations in Pakistani cities for the "Kashmir cause" and its leader, Prof Hafiz Saeed, is allowed free movement apart from occasional cosmetic spells of house arrest.

Before the Markaz-da'wa wal-irshad, the Lashkar's religio-political wing, was banned, its website regularly carried the view of its founder. Saeed's view of LeT's mission was quite unambiguous. He argued that Kashmir was the "gateway" to India, much of which comprised "lost Muslim lands". He saw jihad in Kashmir as a religious duty and fully identified himself with the 9/11 mayhem that Osama bin Laden wreaked.

Aligned with the Ahl-e-Hadees sect, Lashkar was founded in 1987 by Saeed, who incidentally was also trained as an engineer like Osama and many other prominent jihadis, and who drew his inspiration from the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood — an organisation that saw Palestine as an Islamic cause way back in the 1930's. In collaboration with ISI, Lashkar built up an impressive Kashmir portfolio with recruits chiefly drawn from Pakistani Punjabis, Pashtoons, Bangladeshis, Arabs and south-east Asians.

But its vision has never been Kashmir-centric as it bids to re-establish Muslim rule from Morocco to Indonesia and also eyes north Australia as part of its likely domain. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Qaida_in_partnership_with_Lashkar_in_India/articleshow/3771746.cms

 

		Description: A black AK-47 rifle, placed against a yellow sun in the center, protrudes vertically from an open, green Koran. Above the rifle, in black, is a semi-circular Koranic phrase which translates: "And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah." These images are set against a light blue background. Below the Koran is white lettering against a red background; it bears the group's original name: Markaz al-Dawa wa al-Irshad (the Center for Preaching and Guidance). Explanation: The Koran signifies the centrality of Islam to Lashkar-e-Taiba's ideology; green is also Islam's traditional color. The blue background represents Allah's mercy and the sun symbolizes wisdom and virtue. The rifle's placement above the Koran, and the inscription above, denote the organization's belief that violent jihad will establish a society based on Islamic precepts. The red on the bottom is a symbol of strength and violence.
| Name Variations | Overview | Focus of Operations | Major Attacks | Leaders | Ideology | Goals | Methods | Sponsors | U.S.- Related Activities |

Name Variations

• Lashkar-e-Taiba
• Jama’at ud-Dawa
• Al-Mansoorian
• Markaz al-Dawa wa al-Irshad
• Army of the Pure
• Army of the Righteous

Overview
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), a Pakistani-based Islamic terrorist organization, seeks to drive out Indian security forces from the disputed Jammu and Kashmir regions of South Asia and establish an Islamic caliphate.  Various intelligence services consider LET to be one of the most dangerous Islamic militant groups operating in Kashmir.  Known for its expertise in suicide bombing and conventional assault tactics, LET has carried out many deadly attacks, including a raid on the Indian Parliament in 2002, which killed 14.  Although the organization stopped claiming responsibility for attacks after it was ostensibly banned by Pakistan in 2002, Indian authorities have arrested many LET operatives in connection with attacks in the region. 

The group was founded in the late 1980’s with the help of the Pakistani government (which also opposes the Indian presence in Kashmir) as the armed wing of the Markaz al-Dawa wa al-Irshad, an Islamic social welfare group.  LET, which was also inspired by Osama bin Laden, continues to maintain close ties with Al Qaeda.  Intelligence services have discovered that, before its camps were destroyed by the United States in 2001, Al Qaeda frequently hosted and trained LET operatives. Conversely, since the destruction of those camps, LET has hosted Al Qaeda trainees and other Islamic militants, including Shahzad Tanweer, one of the suicide bombers in the July 7, 2005 London Underground attack, according to British authorities.  Additionally, senior Al Qaeda leaders, such as Abu Zubeida have been arrested at LET compounds.

Focus of Operations
Pakistan, India, Jammu and Kashmir

Major Attacks

• October 29, 2005: Three coordinated suicide bombs in New Delhi during Hindu festival of Diwali killed at least 63 and wounded over 200.
• August 25, 2003:   Double bombing in Bombay (Mumbai) killed 52 and wounded 175. 
• September 24, 2002: Raid on Akshardam Temple in Gujarat killed 28 Hindu worshippers.
• December 13, 2001: Raid on Indian Parliament killed at least 14. 

Leaders

• Leader: Hafiz Muhammad Saeed
• Leader: Maulana Abdul Wahid Kashmiri
• Co-Founder: Zaki ur Rehman Lakhwi a.k.a. Abdullah Azam

Ideology
Militant Islamic Fundamentalism

Goals
Establishment of Islamic rule over Jammu, Kashmir and eventually India

Methods
Suicide bombings, paramilitary operations against civilian and military targets, mass-executions.

Sponsors
Formerly Pakistan

U.S.-Related Activities

• Designated by the U.S. as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
• Several American citizens, including members of the so-called “Virginia Jihad Network,” were convicted of training at LET camps in Kashmir and Pakistan, as well as other related terrorism charges.
• LET operatives have reportedly been recruited for planned Al Qaeda attacks on American interests and the organization is believed to have operatives already in the U.S. 

Indian and American intelligence sources tell ABS-CBN that there is increasing evidence that the attacks in Mumbai were carried out by a Pakistani militant group linked to Al-Qaeda. The primary suspects, they say, are Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Lashkar-e-Toiba has denied it’s behind the attacks.

Indian intelligence sources say that one of the gunmen now in custody told Indian authorities that he – along with seven others – pretended to be students, rented an apartment in Mumbai and meticulously staked out the targets. Allegedly, they carried Malaysian identity cards. A Pakistani national, he told authorities he was trained by Lashkar-e-Toiba – taught to hijack a sea vessel and carry out urban warfare. These are tactics used by Al-Qaeda in past terror attacks, honed and passed along in its training camps; Lashkar-e-Toiba has long been linked to Al-Qaeda.

The ties are clear if we take the facts in Mumbai and compare them with the history of Al-Qaeda and its affiliate groups.
WHICH YOU CAN DO WITH THE FULL STORY HERE:

MUMBIA KILLERS STARTED KLLING SPREE BY BEHEADING FISHERMAN, BRITISH MEN AMONG TERRORISTS, SOUTH AFRICA CALLS ATTACK WAKE UP CALL

 

 

As many as seven of the terrorists may have British connections and some could be from Leeds and Bradford where London's July 7 bombers lived, one source said.

Two Britons were among eight gunmen being held, according to Mumbai's chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. At least nine others are reportedly dead.

The eight arrested were captured by commandos after they stormed two hotels and a Jewish centre to free hostages today. Despite the Indian authorities' assurances that the situation was under control, the siege continued at the Taj Mahal hotel and explosions could still be heard in central Mumbai.

One security official said: 'There is growing concern about British involvement in the attacks.'  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1089711/Massacre-Mumbai-Up-SEVEN-gunmen-British-came-area-7-7-bombers.html?ITO=1490

 

 

 

Why The Taj Mahal Hotel was chosen

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/3529804/Bombay-terror-attacks-Why-the-Taj-Mahal-Hotel-was-chosen.html

According to top intelligence sources, at least six terror modules comprising nearly 20 youths aged between 25-30 years are believed to be the executors of Wednesday's attack in Mumbai.

"The attack is unprecedented, its scale beyond anticipation, and very clearly directed at the international audience. Star hotels were hit with the intent of taking foreign tourists hostage,'' a senior official told MiD DAY.

A meeting chaired by union home minister Shivraj Patil with top cops from the NSG, state police and home department officials yesterday morning, concluded that the attack was conceived and executed by Pakistan-trained terrorists.

"Preliminary intelligence inputs suggest they arrived in two speed boats one anchored near Sassoon Customs Docks off Colaba coast, and another near Fishermen's Colony at Cuffe Parade. They spread out into small modules to execute the highly sophisticated terror operation," said a senior official.

"One module was armed with hand grenades, Kalashnikov assault rifles and automatic pistols. The second went on planting bombs and lobbed grenades as they drove along,'' he added.

HOW
Module I: Two youths carrying backpacks storm the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus from platform nos 13, 14 and 15, and open fire. They also lob a grenade at the BMC canopy, and flee through a lane to enter the Cama and Albless Hospital.
> Holed up here, they exchange fire with cops. ATS chief Hemant Karkare, ACP Ashok Kamte, and encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar die in the shootout.
> The group steals a car and drives towards Metro Adlabs shooting randomly. They are apprehended by cops at Girgaum Chowpatty. Two terrorists killed and one arrested.
Module 2:  This module enters Leopold cafĂ© and opens fire at foreign tourists. These men enter Nariman House at Colaba Market and lob grenades from the terrace of the building.
Module 3: Five to six militants storm Hotel Trident, open fire in the lobby and hold hostages inside the hotel.
Module 4: Six terrorists enter Taj Mahal Hotel, fire at guests and hold tourists hostage.
Module 5: Hurl grenades at a taxi near BIT Colony, Mazgaon
Module 6: This group travels in a taxi and lobs grenades at Santacruz. Also plants a bomb in a taxi at VileParle.

http://www.mid-day.com/news/2008/nov/281108-News-Mumbai-Taj-Mahal-Hotels-Trident-Hotel-Uberoi-Hotel-foreign-tourists-hostage-terror-attac.htm

President-elect Barack Obama is assembling a deeply experienced team of top economic advisers whose key members firmly believe limited government spending combined with free markets can create lasting prosperity.

But those advisers will take over at a moment Obama says requires just the opposite: New financial regulations and generally unthinkable levels of deficit spending are in the offing as the new administration prepares to battle the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression.

"Right now, our economy is trapped in a vicious cycle. The turmoil on Wall Street means a new round of belt-tightening for families and businesses on Main Street, and as folks produce less and consume less, that just deepens the problems in our financial markets," Obama said in introducing his economic team at a news conference Monday. "These extraordinary stresses on our financial system require extraordinary policy responses."

To fashion government's response, Obama has turned to people who have been associated with more market-oriented approaches. Timothy F. Geithner, 47, Obama's choice for Treasury secretary, is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and has been a key player in negotiations aimed at saving some of the nations' largest financial institutions.

Lawrence H. Summers, whom Obama tapped to direct his National Economic Council, served eight years in the Clinton administration, including a year and a half as Treasury secretary.  http://www.montereyherald.com/ci_11069215?source=rss

Did capitalism kill the banks?  http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/comment?articleid=4722357

 

The secret war in Somalia http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-shadow_war2nov24,0,4720127.story

 

The FBI's false start in the anthrax case revealed  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/washington/26anthrax.html

 

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan — Pakistan's powerful spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, has quietly shut down a unit that for decades spied on domestic politicians and exerted shadowy influence in affairs of state.

Analysts described the decision to deactivate the ISI's "political wing" as the latest in a series of steps meant to separate the army and the security apparatus from domestic politics -- and also to rehabilitate the spy agency's battered public image.
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/itsonlyfair/latimes0557.html

 

Amid driving monsoon rain, a bitter and bloody battle is being fought for one of the Tamil Tigers' last strongholds – a battle that could mark a decisive turning point in Sri Lanka's 25-year-old civil war. Government troops, buoyed by their recent capture of the entire western coast of the island, have been pressing to take control of the northern town of Kilinochchi. The town has been the Tigers' de facto headquarters and they are fighting desperately to hold on to it. In recent days, scores of troops on both sides have reportedly been killed.

Sri Lanka's President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, elected three years ago, has been adamant in his determination to destroy the Tigers.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/tamil-tigers-cornered-by-sri-lankan-army-1035179.html

Despite the increasingly violent "final showdowns" that Thailand's antigovernment protesters have carried out this week, the months-old movement appears to be losing steam.

On Tuesday, members of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) clashed with government supporters and continued besieging Don Muang airport, where government officials had set up a temporary office. They also swarmed Thailand's main international airport and blocked the road to it in anticipation of Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat's return Wednesday, forcing all departing flights to be suspended.

But the PAD's self-declared "last war" – which follows months of disruptive protests – failed to achieve its goals of compelling the government to step down or of triggering a military coup. Meanwhile, the PAD's ranks are thinning as followers weary of the prolonged turmoil. http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1126/p04s01-woap.html

AFGHANISTAN: THE NEXT MESS, HILLARY FOREIGN POLICY PURGE HAS BEGUN,  WHAT COULD NEXT TERROR PLOT BE?, WHAT CAN YOU DO TO PROTECT YOURSELF?

 

 

 

Top Taliban and al Qaeda leaders are still at large and security is getting worse by the day, raising doubts about the prospects of stability in Afghanistan.

Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said Karzai had recently told nations with troops in Afghanistan to dispatch their soldiers to the border to block militants moving from safe havens inside Pakistani territory.

 

Reporting from Forward Operating Base Delaram, Afghanistan -- The Marines of the Two-Seven were not even supposed to deploy to Afghanistan. Their original destination was Iraq, and when they were sent here in April as a stopgap measure to help an overwhelmed NATO force, the plan had been to spend the time mentoring Afghan national police.

It didn't turn out that way.

Instead of training policemen, the lightly equipped 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment of the 1st Marine Division found itself engaged in firefights with insurgent units of 100 or more fighters. They faced Taliban snipers and roadside bombs.

Twenty members of the 1,000-member battalion died in combat.

"It definitely was a lot worse than we expected," said Cpl. James Flores, 22, of Thousand Oaks. "A lot more active."

The Two-Seven has begun returning to its desert base in Twentynine Palms; the bulk will be home by early December. The members take credit for leaving behind 800 trained Afghan police, hundreds of dead Taliban fighters and nascent diplomacy with village leaders.

They also served notice that the Marines were back in Afghanistan to stay.

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/mayfaire/latimes0181.htm

 

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates yesterday urged NATO allies to modify their military strategy to combat the growing Taliban influence in Afghanistan's poppy-growing southern region.

Gates wants NATO forces in the south to abandon the current piecemeal strategy of fighting the Taliban province-by-province in favour of a region-wide command structure, as US military planners consider a possible major build-up of forces in the area next year, according to US defence officials. The five provinces of NATO's Regional Command-South, or RC-South, comprise one of the main battlefronts of the war. Experts say the insurgents, financed by Afghanistan's $3 billion opium trade, now cut a swath of influence across several provincial borders.

Gates discussed strategy yesterday in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia with counterparts from Canada, Denmark, Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, Estonia and Romania, whose forces account for about 90 percent of the 18,000 NATO troops in the south.

The United States has about 3,500 troops in southern Afghanistan. But commanders have asked for more than 10,000 additional forces for the south  http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Americas&month=November2008&file=World_News2008112283212.xml

Before Hillary Clinton has been formally offered the job as Secretary of State, a purge of Barack Obama's top foreign policy team has begun.

The advisers who helped trash the former First Lady's foreign policy credentials on the campaign trail are being brutally shunted aside, as the price of her accepting the job of being the public face of America to the world. In negotiations with Mr Obama this week before agreeing to take the job, she demanded and received assurances that she alone should appoint staff to the State Department. She also got assurances that she will have direct access to the President and will not have to go through his foreign policy advisers on the National Security Council, which is where many of her critics in the Obama team are expected to end up.

The first victims of Mrs Clinton's anticipated appointment will be those who defended Mr Obama's flanks on the campaign trail. By mocking Mrs Clinton's claims to have landed under sniper fire in Bosnia or pouring scorn on her much-ballyhooed claim to have visited 80 countries as First Lady they successfully deflected the damaging charge that he is a lightweight on international issues.

Foremost among the victims of the purges is her old Yale Law School buddy Greg Craig, a man who more than anyone led the rescue of his presidency starting the very night Kenneth Starr's lurid report into the squalid details of the former president's sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky were published on the internet in 1998. Despite his long and loyal friendship with the Clintons, Mr Craig threw his lot in with Mr Obama at an early stage in the presidential election campaign. As if that betrayal to the cause of the Clinton restoration was not enough, Mr Craig did more to undermine Mrs Clinton's claims to be a foreign policy expert than anyone else in the some of the ugliest exchanges of the battle for the Democratic nomination.

Until this week he was poised to be the eminence grise of the State Department, organising as total revamp of America's troubled foreign policies on Mr Obama's behalf. Its turns out that Mrs Clinton's delay in accepting the president elect's offer to be his top foreign policy adviser had much to do with her negotiating the terms of the job and insisting on the right to choose her own state department staff and possibly even some of the plumb Ambassador postings. She wanted guarantees of direct access to the president – without having to go through his national security adviser. Above all she did not want to end up like Colin Powell who was completely out-manoeuvred by the hawkish Vice President Dick Cheney who imposed neo-conservative friends like John Bolton on the State Department and steered the US towards a policy of using torture to achieve its aims.

Mr Craig's crime was not so much that he enthusiastically backed Mr Obama for President and helped run his foreign policy advisory panel, it was his lacerating attacks on the putative Secretary of State's claims that she passed the "Commander-in-Chief test" as a foreign policy expert in the Clinton Administration. In a devastating memo of 11 March last, which he addressed "to interested parties," Mr Craig said: There is no reason to believe, however, that she was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton Administration. She did not sit in on National Security Council meetings. She did not have a security clearance. She did not attend meetings in the Situation Room. She did not manage any part of the national security bureaucracy, nor did she have her own national security staff."

"She did not do any heavy-lifting with foreign governments, whether they were friendly or not. She never managed a foreign policy crisis, and there is no evidence to suggest that she participated in the decision-making that occurred in connection with any such crisis."

The memo went on to say that Mrs Clinton "never answered the phone either to make a decision on any pressing national security issue – not at 3 AM or at any other time of day." Earlier this week Mr Craig was tapped to become White House counsel, a totally anonymous position, and shunted him out of the line of fire from the Secretary of State.

A question remains about the fate of Susan Rice, the public face of Mr Obama's foreign policy throughout the campaign.

 

Don't forget....... terror threat averted in Illinois......

 

British security officials say intelligence experts are seriously concerned that al-Qaida will try to pull off a "spectacular" terrorist attack during the transition period from a Bush administration to an Obama administration.

NEWSMAX

 

Speculation on terror attack:

 

1. Multiple cities/ nations

2. Transit attacks

3. Suicide bombers

4. Terrorists recruited from west

 

Do you believe another terrorist attack is likely on American soil?

I predict, based primarily on information that is floating in Europe and the Middle East, that an event is imminent and around the corner here in the United States. It could happen as soon as tomorrow, or it could happen in the next few months. Ninety days at the most.

What advice do you have for individuals that have the misfortune of finding themselves in the middle of a terror attack?

Since mass transportation is the next attack, when you travel to work have with you, a bottle of water, a small towel and a flashlight. What happened in London is exactly a point to look at. Those people who were close to the bombs died, then others were injured or died from inhaling the toxic fumes or getting trampled. The reason you take a bottle of water and a towel is that if you wet the towel and put it over your face, you can protect yourself against the fumes and get yourself out of there.

Don't be bashful. If your gut feeling tells you when you walk onto a bus there is something unusual or suspicious, get out and walk away. You may do it 10 times for no reason, but there will be one time that saves your life. Let your sixth sense direct you.

Try to break your routine. If you travel during rush hour every day, try to get up a little earlier and drive to work or take the train when it's still not full. Don't find yourself every day in the midst of rush hour. Terrorists are not going to waste a bomb on a half-empty train.

What portion of the American infrastructure do you believe is at the greatest risk for a terror attack?

We have put all of our emphasis, right or wrong, on the aviation area. What has happened, in the last two to three years, based on information we have, is the terrorists have realized that they cannot hijack a plane in America soon because the passengers are going to fight back. So they realize what they have been very successful with over the last 50 years in Madrid, London, Iraq, Israel: demoralizing the public when they go to work and when they come back from work.

What they're going to do is hit six, seven or eight cities simultaneously to show sophistication and really hit the public. This time, which is the message of the day, it will not only be big cities. They're going to try to hit rural America. They want to send a message to rural America: "You're not protected. If you figured out that if you just move out of New York and move to Montana or to Pittsburgh, you're not immune. We're going [to] get you wherever we can and it's easier there than in New York."

What more do you think the government can do to protect the public?

Number one, and this is the beef I've had with Homeland Security for the last four years, is educating the public on how to deal with those types of events. There's no education. We're raising the color code alert and that means nothing to anyone. Whether it's green, yellow, pink, no one ever educated the public how to identify suspicious items or people. In Israel, so many of them [terrorists] have been apprehended just because people have phoned in. We don't have that training on campuses, schools or kindergarten.

In Israel, it's very popular right now [amongst terrorists] to put one device to explode and time another one for five minutes later when it's all calm, people are getting up and the rescue teams have responded. You need to know all those things and think about those things. The government must pursue that. Law enforcement will never have enough people on the street to detect things. We don't have that kind of manpower. That's why the government must enlist the public.

Juval Aviv is a former Israeli Counterterrorism Intelligence Officer and President and CEO of Interfor, Inc. Mr. Aviv has also served as a special consultant to the U.S. Congress on issues of terrorism and security and is the author of "Staying Safe : The Complete Guide to Protecting Yourself, Your Family, and Your Business."

 

 

Democratic and national security sources say that former National Counterrorism Center head John Brennan remains the favorite to be nominated director of the Central Intelligence Agency even as his pending appointment raises the hackles of some Obama advisers because of his ties to George Tenet and controversial programs.

The sources say that Brennan has begun to recruit a team he hopes to bring with him to the agency, and that he has been vetted. Brennan did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.  Along with former CIA official Jami Miscik, he is helping to organize Obama's intelligence agency transition and policy review.

 http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/11/brennan_harding_slated_for_top.php

 

The stunning story of the massacres of Viet Nam, that have been hidden for decades!

 

 

Managua Wednesday threatened to dismiss opposition lawmakers from Congress if they pass a law annulling the November 9 local elections, which they claim the ruling Sandinista Party soundly won by widespread fraud.

As government followers partied in the streets after the Supreme Electoral Council (SLC) ruled late Thursday that the Sandinistas won more than two-thirds (105) of the 146 mayoral races, opposition members warned of trouble ahead.

"This situation gives rise to total political anarchy because all legal measures are being violated," right-wing Liberal Party leader and former president Arnoldo Aleman told AFP.

The opposition accuse President Daniel Ortega, a former rebel who led Nicaragua from 1985-1990, of steering the country to the left in unison with his close allies in communist Cuba and President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081121/wl_afp/nicaraguavote

Much of the Western world just honored the millions of soldiers fallen in the two world wars. But we also need to look beyond postwar myths and understand the tragic political mistakes that sent these soldiers to die in wars that might have been avoided.

In his powerful new book, Hitler, Churchill and the Unnecessary War, veteran politician and author Pat Buchanan challenges many historic taboos by claiming that Winston Churchill plunged Britain and its empire, including Canada, into wars whose outcome was disastrous for all concerned.

Other writers, me included, have made the same point for decades, but Buchanan has marshaled a formidable array of facts and historians to support his case.  http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis128.html

http://www.mathaba.net/rss/?x=612146

 

A U.S. congressman is harshly criticizing the CIA after the spy agency's own watchdog concluded that the agency attempted to obstruct investigations into the 2001 shoot-down in Peru of a plane flown by a missionary from Berks County.

The missionary's family members said Friday that they are not surprised by the CIA inspector general's report.

Kevin D. Donaldson, now 50, a missionary from High Point Baptist Chapel, Geigertown, was shot down April 20, 2001, by a Peruvian military jet participating in a drug interdiction operation with the CIA.

Peruvian officials in a CIA aircraft ordered the jet to shoot down the missionary's plane because they mistakenly believed it was carrying drugs.  http://www.readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=114900