You don't know me blah...blah...blah. You don't know anything about me blah...blah...blah.
Your disciplined authority figures are getting troops killed nearly every day while they act as babysitters Rick. It's time to unleash the dogs of war again.
Among the more comical moments of a grim week was the sight of the president of the Security Council expressing his condemnation of the terrorist attack on the UN. He was the representative of Syria. Syria is a terrorist state. Syrians have flooded across the border into Iraq to take up arms with their beleaguered Baathist brethren. It would not be surprising to discover a Syrian connection to one or both of Tuesday's terrorist strikes in Baghdad and Jerusalem. But Syria happens to hold the presidency of the Security Council, so a fellow who's usually the apologist for terrorists gets to go on TV to represent the international community's determination to stand up to terrorism.
Well, that's the luck of the draw at the UN, where so far this year Libya, Iraq and Syria have found themselves heading up the Human Rights Commission, the Disarmament Committee and the Security Council. The UN's subscription to this charade may be necessary in New York, but what's tragic is that they seem to have conducted their affairs in Baghdad much the same way. Offers of increased U.S. military protection were turned down. Their old Iraqi security guards, all agents of Saddam's Secret Service there to spy on the UN, were allowed by the organization to carry on working at the compound. And sitting in the middle of an unprotected complex staffed by ex-Saddamite spies was Sergio Vieira de Mello, the individual most directly credited with midwifing East Timor into an independent democratic state. Osama bin Laden (or rather whoever makes his audiocassettes) and the Bali bombers have both cited East Timor as high up on their long list of grievances: the carving out, as they see it, of part of the territory of the world's largest Islamic nation to create a mainly Christian state. Now they've managed to kill the fellow responsible. Any way you look at it, that's quite a feather in their turbans.
But it doesn't really matter who's actually to blame--Baathist Iraqis or al-Qaida Saudis. As far as the world's press is concerned, the folks who are really to blame are the Americans. It's the Americans' fault because:
a) They made Iraq so insecure their own troops are getting picked off every day;
b) OK, fewer are being picked off than a few weeks back, but that's only because the Americans have made their own bases so secure that only soft targets like the UN are left;
c) OK, the UN's a soft target only because they turned down American protection, but the Americans should have had enough sense just to go ahead and install the concrete barriers and perimeter trenches anyway;
d) OK, if they'd done that, the beloved UN would have been further compromised by unduly close association with the hated Americans, which is probably what got them killed in the first place.
In other words, whatever happens, it's always evidence of American failure. That's the only ''root cause'' most of the West is interested in. Anyone who thinks Tuesday's events might strengthen the international community's resolve to resist terrorism is overlooking the fact that among the Europeans, the Canadians and New Zealanders, the British and Australian press, CNN and the New York Times and a large majority of the Democratic Party, the urge to surrender is palpable.
At the moment, there's only one hyperpower (the United States), one great power (the United Kingdom) and one regional power (Australia) that are serious about the threat of Islamist terrorism. There's also Israel, of course, but Israel's disinclination to have its bus passengers blown to smithereens is seen as evidence of its ''obstinacy'' and unwillingness to get the ''peace process'' back ''on track.'' What a difference it would make if one or two other G-7 nations were to get serious about the battle and be a reliable vote in international councils. But who? France? It's all business to them, unless al-Qaida are careless enough to blow up the Eiffel Tower. Canada? Canadians get blown up in Bali, murdered in Iran, tortured in Saudi Arabia, die in the rubble of the UN building in Baghdad--and their government shrugs. Belgium? They'd rather issue a warrant for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld than Chemical Ali.
And so on Tuesday, up against an enemy unable to do anything more than self-detonate outside an unprotected facility and take a few Brazilian civil servants and Canadian aid workers with him, the global community sent out a Syrian ambassador to read out some boilerplate and then retreated into passivity and introspection and finger-pointing at Washington. This is the weirdly uneven playing field on which the great game is now fought. Islamic terrorism is militarily weak but ideologically confident. The West is militarily strong but ideologically insecure. We don't really believe we can win, not in the long run. The suicide bomber is a symbol of weakness, of a culture so comprehensively failed that what ought to be its greatest resource--its people--is instead as disposable as a firecracker. But in our self-doubt the enemy's weakness becomes his strength. We simply can't comprehend a man like Raed Abdel Mask, pictured in the press last week with a big smile, a check shirt and two cute little moppets, a boy and a girl, in his arms. His wife is five months pregnant with their third child. On Tuesday night, big smiling Raed strapped an 11-pound bomb packed with nails and shrapnel to his chest and boarded the No. 2 bus in Jerusalem.
The terrorists watch CNN and the BBC and, understandably, they figure that in Iraq America, Britain, the UN and all the rest will do what most people do when they run up against someone deranged: back out of the room slowly. They're wrong. There's no choice. You kill it here, or the next generation of suicide bombers will be on buses in Rotterdam, Manchester, Lyons, and blowing up the UN building in Manhattan. This is the battlefield.
In the sizzling heat of an Iraqi summer, Saddam Hussein’s loyalist guerrillas cannily select targets that will make the life of the ordinary Iraqi unbearable, trusting in acute disruptions to provoke him to rise up en masse against the Americans. Their organization is Saboteurs are systematically disrupting oil, electricity and water supplies. There is efficient organization somewhere in the background. In ten days, guerrillas set two calamitous fires at key points on the 600-mile pipeline just when oil exports were due to resume from northern Iraq’s huge Kirkuk fields, source of 40 percent of country’s oil, to Turkey’s Ceyhan terminal on the Mediterranean.
Each fire takes days to extinguish at great hazard in the windblown desert.
Every day lost costs Iraq $7m of vital reconstruction money.
Fuel shortages have caused riots in the southern town of Basra. Most parts of Iraq are plagued by power cuts. This week, to compound the suffering, the water taps of 300,000 Baghdadis ran dry after a bomber breached the water main in the north of the capital.
The American civil administration this week awarded a contract to an international security company to more than double the guard on the vulnerable pipeline to Turkey. An extra 6,500 guards, most Iraqis, will join the 5,000 who are clearly not coping with the task of protecting the oil. They face a surging threat described in DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s last issue on August 15 as a new international Islamic guerrilla legion, set up expressly to fight the American presence in Iraq by ambush, murder, terror, sabotage and disruption.
US intelligence has dissected the makeup of the guerrilla groups lurking in Baghdad and points north in an area enclosed by Tikrit, Haditha, Fallujah and Baquba. They have come up with some alarming findings:
1. Since late June, Chechen terrorists have been coming to Iraq to join the anti-American offensive.
2. The intake of Arab fighters entering Iraq from Syria is beginning to outnumber the indigenous Iraqi guerrillas fighting in the northern Mosul-Haditha district and the central Ramadi-Fallujah region.
3. The commanders of the guerrilla campaign, Saddam Hussein or his henchmen, appear to are imparting Muslim fundamentalist characteristics to units fighting the Americans - both as camouflage and to foster greater cohesion. In at least one case, a group was lent a pan-Arab identity. The deposed ruler or his commanders are clearly giving careful thought to the ideological nature and makeup of their following. Therefore they may not be quite so pressured by the pursuit as believed. Their ability to strike simultaneously in different places also attests to military and intelligence capabilities.
The Chechen fighters arriving in Baghdad are not drawn from the ranks of foreign Muslims fighting the Russians in Chechnya but ethnic Chechens. They were assigned to duty in the Sunni Triangle of central Iraq by the Chechen rebels’ Saudi al Qaeda commander, Abu al-Walid, also known as Emir al-Walid, who succeeded al Khatib who died in a Russian ambush two years ago.
Not much is known about the new commander except that he comes from western Saudi Arabia and receives funds from Saudi Islamic relief organizations funneled through Balkan or Central Asian Islamic organizations.
The report notes that the Chechen insurgents reach Iraq through Syria.
The US intelligence force outlines five groups – all wings or allies of the Iraqi Baath party which are operating in different districts and under diverse banners:
Muhammad’s Army This group of Iraqi Baathists operates in the guise of Muslim fundamentalists. They are concentrated around Baghdad international airport and the cluster of military airfields in Habania and western Iraq, H-1, H-2 and H-3, armed with shoulder-launched Sam 7 anti-air missiles. In July, they tried to down a US fighter plane and a C-130 transport but missed both.
The Black Flags: This group, mostly Syrian Arabs from the Damascus region, is responsible for sabotaging oil installations and fields. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Islamic experts explain that the black flag was once the symbol of the Abbasid revolt against the Omayyad caliphs who ruled Iraq. Although Sunni Muslims, they posed and lived as practicing Shiites until their army overthrew the Caliph in the year 705 A.D., when they came out from their Shiite cover and reverted to the Sunni faith. The message conveyed by this symbol is that it is permitted for Saddam loyalists to assume any religious facade that will help them defeat the enemy.
Iraqi Nasserists: This group of Saddam loyalists pretends to accept the pan-Arab doctrine preached by the Egyptian dictator Gemal Abdul Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s, a doctrine totally rejected by the Iraqi Baath. This group’s turf lies between Samarra and Baquba.
The Wahhabis: The state religion of the Saudi kingdom was never able to pierce Saddam Hussein’s secular dominion in Iraq. Now the bar has been removed, the Wahhabis have taken up position in Falujjah and its environs. They are working together with some of the Chechens.
Al Awda’s Military Wing: Al Awda, meaning “The Return”, runs the most highly-trained, best armed and richly endowed guerrilla group made up of ex-officers sworn to serve Saddam Hussein to the death. Flush with funds, they go around Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle offering $500 in cash on the spot for any Iraqi prepared to join their operation against US forces.
This week, Al Qaeda came out with a claim of responsibility for the huge truck bombing at UN Baghdad headquarters on August 19, in which 23 people lost their lives including senior UN representative in Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello and some 150 were injured. The al Qaeda message appearing on an Arabic Web site accuses the United Nations of being a branch of the American State Department and against Arabs and Muslims.
US officials are reporting their sense that hundreds of Osama bin Laden’s members are now operating inside Iraq alongside Baathists in their bid to undermine the US presence and reconstruction efforts in Iraq.
In its last issue, Number 122, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported a surge of electronic messages calling on every al Qaeda adherent in the world to mobilize for the battle in Iraq. ”Victory over the United States will be far quicker than many think,” say the messages.
Never before, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terrorism sources, has al Qaeda staged a general mobilization. It is no propaganda exercise. The response has been enthusiastic and its impact noticeable.
Al Qaeda combatants have been racing towards Iraq in large numbers along four main routes. The most surprising and most recent is the path from western Saudi Arabia through Iran, about which more hereunder.
The Pakistani-Iranian route: Claims by senior Iranian leaders of having thwarted Al Qaeda attacks inside Iran are but a smokescreen for the mass influx of Osama bin Laden’s men into the Islamic Republic from the east: The group entering from the Pakistani border region of Baluchistan forms up at the Iranian cities of Zabol and Zahedan; the group from the Afghan town of Herat foregathers near the north Iranian city of Mashhad.
Iran’s all-powerful Revolutionary Guards have their intelligence units conduct “security checks” at both assembly points to establish the terrorists’ real identities and origins. They are watched by men loyal to al Qaeda operations expert Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who is thought to have set up his base in Tehran. Once they reach northern Iraqi Kurdistan, they join the Ansar al-Islam extremists heading south to Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle towns of Ramadi, Tikrit, Balad and Fallujah.
Ansar is held responsible for the Jordanian embassy bomb attack in Baghdad last month. This Iraqi al Qaeda affiliate, once no more than 600 to 800 fighters, has swelled and set up two new units: Jund al-Allah, or “Soldiers of Allah”, and al-Usad, or “The Lions”, indicating a Syrian connection. (Bashar Assad’s name means lion.) Its members are deployed along the northwestern Iraqi-Syrian border, attaching themselves to the al Qaeda arrivals from Syria.
The two groups have already executed joint strikes in the northern Iraqi oil city of Mosul. In one, they attempted to assassinate the local chief of police, but only seriously wounding him.
The Syrian route: At least 1,000 al Qaeda men have traveled along this busiest of all the corridors into Iraq, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terrorism sources report. Damascus International airport is logistical hub and main distribution point for Al Qaeda operatives flying in from Central Asia, Chechnya, the Balkans – mainly Kosovo and Bosnia – Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and even Iran.
Many Al Qaeda fighters turned back by Iran for security reasons go round through Damascus, some hosted at the teeming medressas, or religious schools, other at Palestinian terrorist training camps operating in Damascus. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command receive a large part of their operational funding from Tehran and moreover collect a fee per head for every Al Qaeda operative they train.
On their way into Iraq, Osama bin Laden’s men transit Syrian-Iraqi frontier lands dominated by nomadic Saudi-Iraqi-Syrian Sunni tribesmen. For almost a decade, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence and military sources reveal, Saddam sent monthly stipends to tribal, clan, business and clerical leaders ruling an area roamed by two million of these tribesmen. Once a year, Saddam resettled several thousand demobilized Iraqi officers and their families in the region with orders to assimilate and set up familial relations with the local tribes.
Since the money dried up from Baghdad, Syrian-administered Iranian funds have been disbursed to those tribal leaders. As a result Saddam loyalists are still in control of the tribal regions which US intelligence has found impenetrable. A rare intelligence source knowledgeable about the region told DEBKA-Net-Weekly : “It is true that guerrilla attacks against the Americans are launched from the Sunni Triangle. However the logistics and the consignment of fighting strength to the Triangle are directed from the tribal territories.”
In the last week, the flow of Syrian and Al Qaeda fighters across the frontier into Iraq has doubled.
The Saudi route via Iran: This is the newest channel, first set up in mid-July - but also one of the busiest, believed to have accommodated 1,500- 2,500 Saudi al Qaeda combatants transiting Iran at the rate of almost a thousand a week. Some are thought to be on the run from the Saudi hue and cry conducted against these fundamentalist terrorists since the May 12 Riyadh bombings. Another group appears to consist of Afghan-Pakistan combat veterans obeying the call to arms and eager for the chance of revenge for their rout in Afghanistan. They are also looking forward to an advance base from which to strike down the Saudi throne.
The opening of this route means that for the second time in two years Iran is granting Saudi al Qaeda combatants free passage from one anti-American battle arena to another.
Like Syrian president Bashar Assad, who claims to know nothing of the al Qaeda fighters passing through Damascus, Tehran too says it is powerless to halt their through-passage into Iraq as tourists on valid Saudi passports. They all head to the western Ilan region, where local smugglers help them cross over to the Iraqi towns of al Kut in the south or Baquba in the center.
The Saudi route via Syria:
The same Syrian-Saudi Sunni Muslim tribes who crisscross the Iraqi-Syrian frontier also trek along a north-south route between Syria and Saudi Arabia via Jordan. En route, they collect Saudi, Yemeni, Sudanese and other al Qaeda fighters all heading towards the Iraqi battlefront.
Despite this surge of al Qaeda traffic into Iraq, Washington is reluctant to send reinforcements to the 140,000-strong force shouldering the extra burden and casting about for foreign troop increments.
US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer and American military commanders have asked the Bush administration for two more divisions at full strength to meet the fresh contingencies. President Bush has promised a decision in early October. US field commanders fear the six-week delay will exact a heavy toll on security in Iraq. They predict -
A. The guerrilla war will intensify and the infiltrations of Al Qaeda and other anti-American elements further build up.
B. Strategic parts of Iraq will fall under the control of the Islamist terror group as it ranks are beefed up by unimpeded infiltrations.
C. Tehran will intervene on the side of the Sunni Muslim campaign against the Americans by sponsoring more terrorist attacks like the bombings of the Jordanian embassy and UN HQ in Baghdad. This intervention may draw Iraqi Shiites into the conflict whereas at present they view it as a “purely a Sunni war”.
An Iraqi couple has named their 6-week-old baby boy George Bush to show their appreciation for U.S. efforts to force Saddam Hussein out of power.
"He saved us from Saddam and that's why we named our son after him," the baby's mother, Nadia Jergis Mohammed, told the Associated Press Television News. "It was George Bush who liberated us; without him it wouldn't have happened."
Are you saying al Qaeda is responsible for the recent UN attack in Iraq?
That's what the article seemed to be saying. But the point is they didn't attack the U.N. because they were mad at the U.N., they attacked the U.N. because they were mad at the U.S.
I never said they were brilliant. I'm just saying it helps to understand what actually is running through their little brains. If you think they attacked the UN for any reason other than that they hate the US, then you're going to end up on a wild goose chase.
Alison, 3 different groups have claimed responsibility. Most people feel it was done by the jihaidiots who were upset over the handling and settlement of the east timor issue in which they felt it was unfair to the Muslim's. All the groups see the UN as a pro-western organization. They are mad at everyone and everything, from a nightclub in Bali to the Australians to yes even the French. The Un just happens to encompass many of the countries they have Fattwas'against.
Their actions should point out the flaws in their and (ahem) others thinking. The UN has been anything but an extension of the US. They attacked a group that was there for nothing but humanitarian purposes. They targeted the leader. But I'm sure it was our fault. We offered more and suggested more security, being the extension of the US they are they said no thanks, our fault. They hired Saddamn's ex guards as security Gee I winder how they knew where his office was ? Again, our fault.
In the end, they'll end up having the whole world against them.
You'd be amazed at what it takes some people to get it. They won't until it'sone of their realitives or nation that's attacked. I do agree though that the UN bombing will backfire on them as it should. Too bad it took that sad incident for some to finally get it.
All the groups see the UN as a pro-western organization.
Yes, exactly, and they see the West as just an extension of the U.S. Thus as far as they're concerned, an attack on anything Western is as good as an attack on the U.S.
We offered more and suggested more security, being the extension of the US they are they said no thanks, our fault.
You're getting lost in the details. The question isn't why were they able to attack the U.N. The question is what drives them to attack anything at all? Does it really matter that much if they attack the U.N., an army barracks, or start blowing up innocent Iraqis? None of it is acceptable to us and that's all that matters to either side. So it's pointless to question how they were able to attack a specific target. If it wasn't that, it would have been something else eventually. The real question is how to stop them from trying to bom anything at all?
The real question is how to stop them from trying to bom anything at all?
Who cares why, they did. Now we take them out so it does not happen again. You can not compromise with murders and terrorist. When you do, that puts them at the same moral level as you. They went after innocent people, we go after the people responsible. The only way to stop it, is to wipe them out. Period.
Russia Sells Iran AVLIS System for Advanced Uranium Enrichment
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
August 28, 2003, 9:31 AM (GMT+02:00)
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency – IAEA – put out a disturbing report this week confirming earlier DEBKAfile revelations that traces of uranium enrichment activity were found in samples at Natanz nuclear facility in Iran, 290 km south of Tehran, evidence that Iran was in the process of building a nuclear arsenal.
Agency officials admit that Tehran is in clear non-compliance with its nuclear safeguard obligations and may even have laid itself open to a complaint to the UN Security Council and the threat of sanctions.
In issue Number 120, published on August 8, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources reported exclusively that in the second week of July Russia secretly delivered the components of the AVLIS (atomic vapor laser isotope separator) system aboard unmarked military transports.
This accelerated and environmentally clean process of uranium enrichment was first developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, for the US Department of Energy in the 1970s. In 1998, the Iranians were reported working on their own AVLIS. The version supplied by Russian is apparently based on more advanced technology. While the US energy department suspended AVLIS development in 1998, the Russians appear to have stepped up production, counting on an expanding future exports to governments bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea, India and Pakistan.
The Russian components came with Russian technicians for assembling the apparatus and teaching Iranian nuclear technicians how to use it.
According to the information obtained by DEBKA-Net-Weekly , AVLIS has been installed at two of Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities, Natanz and Moallen Kalayeh. The latter is Iran’s most secluded subterranean nuclear plant, buried under the Albroz Mountains 40 km north of Tehran. In its tall tunnels, Iran carries out its most secret tests.
Moallen Kalayeh used to be a small rural village. Today it is a closed township populated by hundreds of scientists and technicians. It is also one of the most heavily protected places in the country. The Iranians are putting the new equipment to work at top speed at the peak of their effort to build up a stock of enriched uranium sufficient for a nuclear device before September 8, when the Nuclear Atomic Energy Agency’s board convenes in Vienna to discuss the Iran report.
Tehran has also been racing against the clock to forestall decisions at the six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear program that began in Beijing August 27, before they impede Iran’s related progress towards a nuclear weapon. Attending the talks are the US, the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and China, the host.
According to our Moscow sources, Russian military circles as certain that without that AVLIS would not have been consigned to Iran without the okay of President Vladimir Putin. He would have seen the delivery as a means of getting round his promise to President George W. Bush not to send Iran spent nuclear rods to fuel the Bushehr nuclear reactor and a way of compensating Iran for this letdown.
That's the problem though is that some people fail to see that. They want to somehow negotiate with terrorist murderers. You can't, they are not rational. The UN did more to keep us from removing Saddam than many others and they still were attacked. It comes down to as Rich put it, bigotry and hate. Would we have bargained or tried to reason with the KKK, The Nazi's or Tim Mcviegh and friends ? No, of course not, you don't negotiate with them because to do so only encourages more of it. Yet to this day some look everywhere else as to reason or lay blame as to why a terrorist decides one day to blow up a building full of innocent people. Listen to the sermons given by the Imams in the Madrasas around the ME. They're chilling and they start them young just like the KKK, Nazi's etc. They are taught to hate from age 3.
the one's who GW appointed to things like the Office of Information Awareness and the UN. They were involved with negotiating with terrorist murderers and lying to Congress about it. They showed it on TV. Maybe you saw it.
He has appointed many people who were to key positions. To entirely distance GW from his father and the people who worked for his father is folly.
not to mention that these people weren't IN OFFICE before. they weren't elected, but now they all have important jobs with GW? He appointed Henry Kissinger to head an investigation of 9/11. And all you say is that he wasn't in office at the time?
look at the people around him. the people he's appointed to positions of power...and then try to tell me they weren't in office at that time and try keep a straight face. It's the same fuckin' guys from Reagan and Bush I, involved in the same phony "wars" and doing business with the same evil terrorists.
Hillary is an unlikable bitch and it is highly unlikely she could win.
I just heard on the radio that the polls are vary close. I hope she doesn't win but if the Economy takes a dump she has a chance, and she definetly has more of a chance than any other Dem. that is currently running.
so I am digging my bomb shelter and stocking up on M.R.E'S and ammo, just kidding LOL
It could have been a more interesting article if what he had to say involved any sort of anaylsis instead of just name calling. Even if I sort of agree with him, I have to wonder how such comments merit becoming news.
I have to wonder how such comments merit becoming news.
Celebs farting is news. We have entire channels and magazines dedicated to them. Why ? I couldn't tell you why people have obsessions with stars. But anything they do is news and one of them bashing their country in a foriegn country is bound to upset plenty of folks.
It could have been a more interesting article if what he had to say involved any sort of anaylsis instead of just name calling
Could have something to do with him being a moron as to why you won't hear analysis out of him. They rarely do. I respect the ones that will debate and know the issues. Sadly 95% of Hollywood is clueless.
I never said anything about everyone else...stupidity is more common than hydrogen...it's the primary building block of the universe....and you go a long way toward confirming this.
I don't have an opinion on Angelina Jolie. Just joking around
Not bad TMK.
I'll give the typical Rick response.
You don't know me blah...blah...blah. You don't know anything about me blah...blah...blah.
Your disciplined authority figures are getting troops killed nearly every day while they act as babysitters Rick. It's time to unleash the dogs of war again.
BINGO!
http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=70708&group=webcast
Chechens Join Iraqi Guerrillas; Syrian “Black Flags” Sabotage Iraqi Oil
From DEBKA-Net-Weekly 121 Updated by DEBKAfile
August 19, 2003, 9:52 AM (GMT+02:00)
Vulnerable along 600 miles from Kirkuk to Turkey
In the sizzling heat of an Iraqi summer, Saddam Hussein’s loyalist guerrillas cannily select targets that will make the life of the ordinary Iraqi unbearable, trusting in acute disruptions to provoke him to rise up en masse against the Americans. Their organization is Saboteurs are systematically disrupting oil, electricity and water supplies. There is efficient organization somewhere in the background. In ten days, guerrillas set two calamitous fires at key points on the 600-mile pipeline just when oil exports were due to resume from northern Iraq’s huge Kirkuk fields, source of 40 percent of country’s oil, to Turkey’s Ceyhan terminal on the Mediterranean.
Each fire takes days to extinguish at great hazard in the windblown desert.
Every day lost costs Iraq $7m of vital reconstruction money.
Fuel shortages have caused riots in the southern town of Basra. Most parts of Iraq are plagued by power cuts. This week, to compound the suffering, the water taps of 300,000 Baghdadis ran dry after a bomber breached the water main in the north of the capital.
The American civil administration this week awarded a contract to an international security company to more than double the guard on the vulnerable pipeline to Turkey. An extra 6,500 guards, most Iraqis, will join the 5,000 who are clearly not coping with the task of protecting the oil. They face a surging threat described in DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s last issue on August 15 as a new international Islamic guerrilla legion, set up expressly to fight the American presence in Iraq by ambush, murder, terror, sabotage and disruption.
US intelligence has dissected the makeup of the guerrilla groups lurking in Baghdad and points north in an area enclosed by Tikrit, Haditha, Fallujah and Baquba. They have come up with some alarming findings:
1. Since late June, Chechen terrorists have been coming to Iraq to join the anti-American offensive.
2. The intake of Arab fighters entering Iraq from Syria is beginning to outnumber the indigenous Iraqi guerrillas fighting in the northern Mosul-Haditha district and the central Ramadi-Fallujah region.
3. The commanders of the guerrilla campaign, Saddam Hussein or his henchmen, appear to are imparting Muslim fundamentalist characteristics to units fighting the Americans - both as camouflage and to foster greater cohesion. In at least one case, a group was lent a pan-Arab identity. The deposed ruler or his commanders are clearly giving careful thought to the ideological nature and makeup of their following. Therefore they may not be quite so pressured by the pursuit as believed. Their ability to strike simultaneously in different places also attests to military and intelligence capabilities.
The Chechen fighters arriving in Baghdad are not drawn from the ranks of foreign Muslims fighting the Russians in Chechnya but ethnic Chechens. They were assigned to duty in the Sunni Triangle of central Iraq by the Chechen rebels’ Saudi al Qaeda commander, Abu al-Walid, also known as Emir al-Walid, who succeeded al Khatib who died in a Russian ambush two years ago.
Not much is known about the new commander except that he comes from western Saudi Arabia and receives funds from Saudi Islamic relief organizations funneled through Balkan or Central Asian Islamic organizations.
The report notes that the Chechen insurgents reach Iraq through Syria.
The US intelligence force outlines five groups – all wings or allies of the Iraqi Baath party which are operating in different districts and under diverse banners:
Muhammad’s Army This group of Iraqi Baathists operates in the guise of Muslim fundamentalists. They are concentrated around Baghdad international airport and the cluster of military airfields in Habania and western Iraq, H-1, H-2 and H-3, armed with shoulder-launched Sam 7 anti-air missiles. In July, they tried to down a US fighter plane and a C-130 transport but missed both.
The Black Flags: This group, mostly Syrian Arabs from the Damascus region, is responsible for sabotaging oil installations and fields. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Islamic experts explain that the black flag was once the symbol of the Abbasid revolt against the Omayyad caliphs who ruled Iraq. Although Sunni Muslims, they posed and lived as practicing Shiites until their army overthrew the Caliph in the year 705 A.D., when they came out from their Shiite cover and reverted to the Sunni faith. The message conveyed by this symbol is that it is permitted for Saddam loyalists to assume any religious facade that will help them defeat the enemy.
Iraqi Nasserists: This group of Saddam loyalists pretends to accept the pan-Arab doctrine preached by the Egyptian dictator Gemal Abdul Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s, a doctrine totally rejected by the Iraqi Baath. This group’s turf lies between Samarra and Baquba.
The Wahhabis: The state religion of the Saudi kingdom was never able to pierce Saddam Hussein’s secular dominion in Iraq. Now the bar has been removed, the Wahhabis have taken up position in Falujjah and its environs. They are working together with some of the Chechens.
Al Awda’s Military Wing: Al Awda, meaning “The Return”, runs the most highly-trained, best armed and richly endowed guerrilla group made up of ex-officers sworn to serve Saddam Hussein to the death. Flush with funds, they go around Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle offering $500 in cash on the spot for any Iraqi prepared to join their operation against US forces.
Al Qaeda Mobilizes All Its Forces for Iraq
From DEBKA-Net-Weekly Aug. 22
August 26, 2003, 6:19 PM (GMT+02:00)
This week, Al Qaeda came out with a claim of responsibility for the huge truck bombing at UN Baghdad headquarters on August 19, in which 23 people lost their lives including senior UN representative in Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello and some 150 were injured. The al Qaeda message appearing on an Arabic Web site accuses the United Nations of being a branch of the American State Department and against Arabs and Muslims.
US officials are reporting their sense that hundreds of Osama bin Laden’s members are now operating inside Iraq alongside Baathists in their bid to undermine the US presence and reconstruction efforts in Iraq.
In its last issue, Number 122, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported a surge of electronic messages calling on every al Qaeda adherent in the world to mobilize for the battle in Iraq. ”Victory over the United States will be far quicker than many think,” say the messages.
Never before, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terrorism sources, has al Qaeda staged a general mobilization. It is no propaganda exercise. The response has been enthusiastic and its impact noticeable.
Al Qaeda combatants have been racing towards Iraq in large numbers along four main routes. The most surprising and most recent is the path from western Saudi Arabia through Iran, about which more hereunder.
The Pakistani-Iranian route: Claims by senior Iranian leaders of having thwarted Al Qaeda attacks inside Iran are but a smokescreen for the mass influx of Osama bin Laden’s men into the Islamic Republic from the east: The group entering from the Pakistani border region of Baluchistan forms up at the Iranian cities of Zabol and Zahedan; the group from the Afghan town of Herat foregathers near the north Iranian city of Mashhad.
Iran’s all-powerful Revolutionary Guards have their intelligence units conduct “security checks” at both assembly points to establish the terrorists’ real identities and origins. They are watched by men loyal to al Qaeda operations expert Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who is thought to have set up his base in Tehran. Once they reach northern Iraqi Kurdistan, they join the Ansar al-Islam extremists heading south to Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle towns of Ramadi, Tikrit, Balad and Fallujah.
Ansar is held responsible for the Jordanian embassy bomb attack in Baghdad last month. This Iraqi al Qaeda affiliate, once no more than 600 to 800 fighters, has swelled and set up two new units: Jund al-Allah, or “Soldiers of Allah”, and al-Usad, or “The Lions”, indicating a Syrian connection. (Bashar Assad’s name means lion.) Its members are deployed along the northwestern Iraqi-Syrian border, attaching themselves to the al Qaeda arrivals from Syria.
The two groups have already executed joint strikes in the northern Iraqi oil city of Mosul. In one, they attempted to assassinate the local chief of police, but only seriously wounding him.
The Syrian route: At least 1,000 al Qaeda men have traveled along this busiest of all the corridors into Iraq, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terrorism sources report. Damascus International airport is logistical hub and main distribution point for Al Qaeda operatives flying in from Central Asia, Chechnya, the Balkans – mainly Kosovo and Bosnia – Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and even Iran.
Many Al Qaeda fighters turned back by Iran for security reasons go round through Damascus, some hosted at the teeming medressas, or religious schools, other at Palestinian terrorist training camps operating in Damascus. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command receive a large part of their operational funding from Tehran and moreover collect a fee per head for every Al Qaeda operative they train.
On their way into Iraq, Osama bin Laden’s men transit Syrian-Iraqi frontier lands dominated by nomadic Saudi-Iraqi-Syrian Sunni tribesmen. For almost a decade, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence and military sources reveal, Saddam sent monthly stipends to tribal, clan, business and clerical leaders ruling an area roamed by two million of these tribesmen. Once a year, Saddam resettled several thousand demobilized Iraqi officers and their families in the region with orders to assimilate and set up familial relations with the local tribes.
Since the money dried up from Baghdad, Syrian-administered Iranian funds have been disbursed to those tribal leaders. As a result Saddam loyalists are still in control of the tribal regions which US intelligence has found impenetrable. A rare intelligence source knowledgeable about the region told DEBKA-Net-Weekly : “It is true that guerrilla attacks against the Americans are launched from the Sunni Triangle. However the logistics and the consignment of fighting strength to the Triangle are directed from the tribal territories.”
In the last week, the flow of Syrian and Al Qaeda fighters across the frontier into Iraq has doubled.
The Saudi route via Iran: This is the newest channel, first set up in mid-July - but also one of the busiest, believed to have accommodated 1,500- 2,500 Saudi al Qaeda combatants transiting Iran at the rate of almost a thousand a week. Some are thought to be on the run from the Saudi hue and cry conducted against these fundamentalist terrorists since the May 12 Riyadh bombings. Another group appears to consist of Afghan-Pakistan combat veterans obeying the call to arms and eager for the chance of revenge for their rout in Afghanistan. They are also looking forward to an advance base from which to strike down the Saudi throne.
The opening of this route means that for the second time in two years Iran is granting Saudi al Qaeda combatants free passage from one anti-American battle arena to another.
Like Syrian president Bashar Assad, who claims to know nothing of the al Qaeda fighters passing through Damascus, Tehran too says it is powerless to halt their through-passage into Iraq as tourists on valid Saudi passports. They all head to the western Ilan region, where local smugglers help them cross over to the Iraqi towns of al Kut in the south or Baquba in the center.
The Saudi route via Syria:
The same Syrian-Saudi Sunni Muslim tribes who crisscross the Iraqi-Syrian frontier also trek along a north-south route between Syria and Saudi Arabia via Jordan. En route, they collect Saudi, Yemeni, Sudanese and other al Qaeda fighters all heading towards the Iraqi battlefront.
Despite this surge of al Qaeda traffic into Iraq, Washington is reluctant to send reinforcements to the 140,000-strong force shouldering the extra burden and casting about for foreign troop increments.
US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer and American military commanders have asked the Bush administration for two more divisions at full strength to meet the fresh contingencies. President Bush has promised a decision in early October. US field commanders fear the six-week delay will exact a heavy toll on security in Iraq. They predict -
A. The guerrilla war will intensify and the infiltrations of Al Qaeda and other anti-American elements further build up.
B. Strategic parts of Iraq will fall under the control of the Islamist terror group as it ranks are beefed up by unimpeded infiltrations.
C. Tehran will intervene on the side of the Sunni Muslim campaign against the Americans by sponsoring more terrorist attacks like the bombings of the Jordanian embassy and UN HQ in Baghdad. This intervention may draw Iraqi Shiites into the conflict whereas at present they view it as a “purely a Sunni war”.
'Baby Bush' Born in Baghdad
It's a fair bet that one Baghdad baby won't run into anybody else in Iraq with the same name.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,95902,00.html
An Iraqi couple has named their 6-week-old baby boy George Bush to show their appreciation for U.S. efforts to force Saddam Hussein out of power.
"He saved us from Saddam and that's why we named our son after him," the baby's mother, Nadia Jergis Mohammed, told the Associated Press Television News. "It was George Bush who liberated us; without him it wouldn't have happened."
The al Qaeda message appearing on an Arabic Web site accuses the United Nations of being a branch of the American State Department
See?!
Are you saying al Qaeda is responsible for the recent UN attack in Iraq?
Are you saying al Qaeda is responsible for the recent UN attack in Iraq?
That's what the article seemed to be saying. But the point is they didn't attack the U.N. because they were mad at the U.N., they attacked the U.N. because they were mad at the U.S.
Well, that's screwed up and ignorant.
They're going to dig themselves deeper pulling stunts like that.
I never said they were brilliant. I'm just saying it helps to understand what actually is running through their little brains. If you think they attacked the UN for any reason other than that they hate the US, then you're going to end up on a wild goose chase.
I don't care to understand them.
I don't care why they bombed the UN.
In the end, they'll end up having the whole world against them.
Alison, 3 different groups have claimed responsibility. Most people feel it was done by the jihaidiots who were upset over the handling and settlement of the east timor issue in which they felt it was unfair to the Muslim's. All the groups see the UN as a pro-western organization. They are mad at everyone and everything, from a nightclub in Bali to the Australians to yes even the French. The Un just happens to encompass many of the countries they have Fattwas'against.
Their actions should point out the flaws in their and (ahem) others thinking. The UN has been anything but an extension of the US. They attacked a group that was there for nothing but humanitarian purposes. They targeted the leader. But I'm sure it was our fault. We offered more and suggested more security, being the extension of the US they are they said no thanks, our fault. They hired Saddamn's ex guards as security Gee I winder how they knew where his office was ? Again, our fault.
You'd be amazed at what it takes some people to get it. They won't until it'sone of their realitives or nation that's attacked. I do agree though that the UN bombing will backfire on them as it should. Too bad it took that sad incident for some to finally get it.
All the groups see the UN as a pro-western organization.
Yes, exactly, and they see the West as just an extension of the U.S. Thus as far as they're concerned, an attack on anything Western is as good as an attack on the U.S.
We offered more and suggested more security, being the extension of the US they are they said no thanks, our fault.
You're getting lost in the details. The question isn't why were they able to attack the U.N. The question is what drives them to attack anything at all? Does it really matter that much if they attack the U.N., an army barracks, or start blowing up innocent Iraqis? None of it is acceptable to us and that's all that matters to either side. So it's pointless to question how they were able to attack a specific target. If it wasn't that, it would have been something else eventually. The real question is how to stop them from trying to bom anything at all?
The question is what drives them to attack anything at all?
That's easy. Blind, bigotted hatred.
The real question is how to stop them from trying to bom anything at all?
Killing them as soon as they say anything negative about the west works for me.
The real question is how to stop them from trying to bom anything at all?
Who cares why, they did. Now we take them out so it does not happen again. You can not compromise with murders and terrorist. When you do, that puts them at the same moral level as you. They went after innocent people, we go after the people responsible. The only way to stop it, is to wipe them out. Period.
Well said Wolvie.
that pic is a real keeper for the propaganda files. thanks
Russia Sells Iran AVLIS System for Advanced Uranium Enrichment
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
August 28, 2003, 9:31 AM (GMT+02:00)
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency – IAEA – put out a disturbing report this week confirming earlier DEBKAfile revelations that traces of uranium enrichment activity were found in samples at Natanz nuclear facility in Iran, 290 km south of Tehran, evidence that Iran was in the process of building a nuclear arsenal.
Agency officials admit that Tehran is in clear non-compliance with its nuclear safeguard obligations and may even have laid itself open to a complaint to the UN Security Council and the threat of sanctions.
In issue Number 120, published on August 8, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources reported exclusively that in the second week of July Russia secretly delivered the components of the AVLIS (atomic vapor laser isotope separator) system aboard unmarked military transports.
This accelerated and environmentally clean process of uranium enrichment was first developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, for the US Department of Energy in the 1970s. In 1998, the Iranians were reported working on their own AVLIS. The version supplied by Russian is apparently based on more advanced technology. While the US energy department suspended AVLIS development in 1998, the Russians appear to have stepped up production, counting on an expanding future exports to governments bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea, India and Pakistan.
The Russian components came with Russian technicians for assembling the apparatus and teaching Iranian nuclear technicians how to use it.
According to the information obtained by DEBKA-Net-Weekly , AVLIS has been installed at two of Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities, Natanz and Moallen Kalayeh. The latter is Iran’s most secluded subterranean nuclear plant, buried under the Albroz Mountains 40 km north of Tehran. In its tall tunnels, Iran carries out its most secret tests.
Moallen Kalayeh used to be a small rural village. Today it is a closed township populated by hundreds of scientists and technicians. It is also one of the most heavily protected places in the country. The Iranians are putting the new equipment to work at top speed at the peak of their effort to build up a stock of enriched uranium sufficient for a nuclear device before September 8, when the Nuclear Atomic Energy Agency’s board convenes in Vienna to discuss the Iran report.
Tehran has also been racing against the clock to forestall decisions at the six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear program that began in Beijing August 27, before they impede Iran’s related progress towards a nuclear weapon. Attending the talks are the US, the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and China, the host.
According to our Moscow sources, Russian military circles as certain that without that AVLIS would not have been consigned to Iran without the okay of President Vladimir Putin. He would have seen the delivery as a means of getting round his promise to President George W. Bush not to send Iran spent nuclear rods to fuel the Bushehr nuclear reactor and a way of compensating Iran for this letdown.
Well said Wolvie.
That's the problem though is that some people fail to see that. They want to somehow negotiate with terrorist murderers. You can't, they are not rational. The UN did more to keep us from removing Saddam than many others and they still were attacked. It comes down to as Rich put it, bigotry and hate. Would we have bargained or tried to reason with the KKK, The Nazi's or Tim Mcviegh and friends ? No, of course not, you don't negotiate with them because to do so only encourages more of it. Yet to this day some look everywhere else as to reason or lay blame as to why a terrorist decides one day to blow up a building full of innocent people. Listen to the sermons given by the Imams in the Madrasas around the ME. They're chilling and they start them young just like the KKK, Nazi's etc. They are taught to hate from age 3.
see Iran-Contra...because these people apparently thought you could.
crabgrass 8/29/03 5:17pm
see Iran-Contra...because these people apparently thought you could.
Which people exactly?
Didn't work out so well did it?
the one's who GW appointed to things like the Office of Information Awareness and the UN. They were involved with negotiating with terrorist murderers and lying to Congress about it. They showed it on TV. Maybe you saw it.
crabgrass 8/29/03 7:23pm
GW wasn't in office at that time.
Care to try again?
He has appointed many people who were to key positions. To entirely distance GW from his father and the people who worked for his father is folly.
not to mention that these people weren't IN OFFICE before. they weren't elected, but now they all have important jobs with GW? He appointed Henry Kissinger to head an investigation of 9/11. And all you say is that he wasn't in office at the time?
look at the people around him. the people he's appointed to positions of power...and then try to tell me they weren't in office at that time and try keep a straight face. It's the same fuckin' guys from Reagan and Bush I, involved in the same phony "wars" and doing business with the same evil terrorists.
Lying?...Conspiracy?...Coverups?...Clinton-I?
Why Torpedo, are you expecting a Clinton II? I never would have pictured you as a Hilary supporter. hehe
Clinton-I because Hitlary will TRY in 08.
Clinton-I because Hitlary will TRY in 08.
If not in 04
honestly don't think she'll try in '04. not against an incumbent like bush.
not against an incumbent like bush.
With his approval rating going in the direction it is, Gray Davis might even have a chance at running against him.
 Bill and Hillery are meeting with a strategist on tuesday.
Hillary is an unlikable bitch and it is highly unlikely she could win.
Hey jethro,
Don't beat around the bush! Let us know how you feel! =)
I am just having one of those days!
Hillary is an unlikable bitch and it is highly unlikely she could win.
I just heard on the radio that the polls are vary close. I hope she doesn't win but if the Economy takes a dump she has a chance, and she definetly has more of a chance than any other Dem. that is currently running.
so I am digging my bomb shelter and stocking up on M.R.E'S and ammo, just kidding LOL
Now here is an idiot: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,96331,00.html
He has a new movie coming out on the 12th. Surprise, Surprise. What unusual timing. ::sarcasm::
Nobody cares what Hollyweird has to say anyway.
I did enjoy the 'Freedom Fries' comment though.
he's right.
we, as a nation, are pretty dumb.
as a matter of fact, we excel at it.
we, as a nation, are pretty dumb.
Yes we are pretty dumb. I mean after all we have so many people like you. Maybe the dumb part is we tolerate your kind.
Oh yah up against the wall LOL.
people capable of recognizing how dumb we are as a nation?
not so many as you think
people capable of recognizing how dumb we are as a nation?
Oh yes Americans stupid, everyone else brilliant. We get it, crabs. What utter crap.
It could have been a more interesting article if what he had to say involved any sort of anaylsis instead of just name calling. Even if I sort of agree with him, I have to wonder how such comments merit becoming news.
Big suprise there.
Celebs farting is news. We have entire channels and magazines dedicated to them. Why ? I couldn't tell you why people have obsessions with stars. But anything they do is news and one of them bashing their country in a foriegn country is bound to upset plenty of folks.
Could have something to do with him being a moron as to why you won't hear analysis out of him. They rarely do. I respect the ones that will debate and know the issues. Sadly 95% of Hollywood is clueless.
I never said anything about everyone else...stupidity is more common than hydrogen...it's the primary building block of the universe....and you go a long way toward confirming this.