U.S. military officials are now saying that yesterday’s reports of the capture of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, were somewhat premature.
U.S. military officials were surprised about the report of Abu Ayyub al-Masri’s capture — first reported by Iraqi media and picked up by The Associated Press. And intelligence officials said they were skeptical, even though Iraqi officials said al-Masri was already in U.S. military custody.
Al-Masri (”the Egyptian”), also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, took the reins of the Iraqi al Qaeda offshoot in June 2006 after a U.S. missile strike killed his predecessor, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
You may recall that announcements have been made over the last year or so that al-Masri had been captured three times, killed twice, and horribly injured once. It is somewhat reminiscent of the revolving door position of the “number three man in al Qaeda” who seems to be routinely killed and/or captured in Afghanistan or Pakistan every six months or so.
The position al-Masri holds clearly makes him one of the more dangerous, high value targets in our fight to get al Qaeda under control. The man is apparently part feline in nature and is using up his nine lives quickly. For the time being, though, it seems the hunt goes on.
There is angst on North Africa - otherwise known as the Maghreb - over the second-class treatment meted out to the region by the Bush Administration.
And since this is where the Pentagon intends to headquarter its new African Command - and since it hosts a blossoming al-Qaeda presence - this is not an inconsequential matter.
In the latest in a series of articles WORLDMEETS.US has translated that one might call “we can’t get no repect,” Read the rest of this entry »
Could the Northern Alliance - America’s allies who helped bring down the Taliban Government in 2001 and bring Hamid Karzai to power - be behind the brazen attempt on his life during a military parade last week?
“Who was behind the April 27 attempt on the life of the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, and what did they have to gain? Read the rest of this entry »
What’s poses the greatest danger to NATO’s effort in Afghanistan? According to Dutch Scholar Gunnar Heinsohn, the answer is clear: Afghanistan’s birth rate.
“In 2008, there are 4.5 million male Afghans within the traditional warrior age of 15 to 29 years. Out of that group come the insurgents that the approximately 35,000 NATO soldiers are now dug in to confront … and behind Read the rest of this entry »
Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly. — JOHN ASHCROFT
With the drip drip of revelations that the decision to torture enemy combatants and other detainees in the so-called War on Terror began not with commanders and interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq but at the highest levels of the Bush administration, arguments that these insiders should and could be tried as war criminals have become more credible.
Just not tried in the U.S., of course.
As if we needed to be reminded that the White House has worked as hard to prevent these insiders from facing the consequences of their dirty deeds as they worked to rationalize the use of Nazi-like torture techniques, there is a provision in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that would immunize them against prosecution.
But only in the U.S., of course.
Overseas is another matter, and any Geneva Conventions signatory nation has the right — indeed, the responsibility — to detain someone suspected or accused of violating Article 3 of the conventions.
Indeed, courts in Italy and Germany have issued warrants demanding the arrest of CIA operatives for kidnapping and torturing citizens and residents of their nations, although the warrants have not been executed for diplomatic reasons.
And an effort to prosecute former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in France for the torture of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, the flagship accommodation in the Rumsfeld Gulag, has foundered because no court was willing to take on this hot potato.
But with every new revelation comes a flurry of articles suggesting that Bush administration big shots, present and former, might want to think twice before jetting off to Europe this summer for some sightseeing.
Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House, and here for an index of torture-related stories and links.
“Bush sees the world in terms of good and evil, and he considers that only a united front encompassing all 2.2 billion Judeo-Christians will be able to resist Islam. Recent decades have seen increasing religious tension and the spread of theocracies, which now encompass almost all Arab countries.” Read the rest of this entry »
Now it’s Condoleezza Rice’s turn to take a hand in putting up the false front the Bush Administration is trying to construct and pass off as “victory.” She follows President Bush last September, Vice President Cheney and the war’s heir apparent, John McCain, last month in projecting a perception of peace with smoke and mirrors.
In a surprise trip last weekend, the Secretary of State was cheerleading “a coalescing of a center in Iraqi politics in which the Sunni leadership, the Kurdish leadership, and elements of the Shiite leadership that are not associated with these special groups have been working together better than at any time before.”
The “special groups” are militias of the Mahdi Army. If the central government continues to attack them, as it did ineptly in Basra this month only to be bailed out by US forces, al-Sadr is threatening “all-out war.”
While Rice hailed the coalescing, there were three rocket attacks–the first as she was meeting with Maliki at his office, another while returning to the Green Zone from a meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talibani, a third that delayed a ceremony at which she unveiled a plaque commemorating civilian deaths in the Green Zone.
For years Democrats have SOUNDLY condemned any attempts by the White House or GOP to use bin Laden images to suggest that Democrats are soft on terrorism. But now a Democrat does just that — and there is silence from many Democrats.
So in 2008 if some Republicans use the same “Vote for us or die” suggestion and Democrats condemn them, people need to keep in mind that the use of these tactics — coming on the eve of a vote so the other campaign really can’t mount a quick response — has now been validated by many Democrats who applaud or look the other way when anything is used to help their side win.
Are the pro-Obama forces seriously trying to get their troops outraged over this latest ad from Hillary Clinton? Just because it contains a ten-second sequence of presidential crises (Depression, Pearl Harbor, gas crisis, Katrina, etc.) and flashes a half-second clip of Osama bin Laden as part of it? Spare me. Are Democratic political ads no longer even allowed to mention the fact that the next president is going to have to deal with the war on terror?
I politely disagree:
1. If you go back and look at the blog, progressive talk show, etc. outrage during the Bush administration there has been one constant. Democrats of all types soundly condemned any use of bin Laden footage or a suggestion that if you didn’t vote for the Republicans your life might be in danger. Now it appears in an ad for a Democrat — and it’s no longer something to condemn.
2. It isn’t only Obama forces that could react this way. The last time I belong to a political party, I registered as a Republican in California to vote for John McCain in the 2000 Republican presidential primary. A new book on Arnold Schwarzenegger quotes me and describes me as a typical California independent voter. If it’s wrong when one side does it, it’s wrong when the other side does it. Not all independent voters react this way (independent voters are not monolithic) — but this one does.
Any alleged terror plot has to be taken seriously, but the Justice Department is amassing a pretty lousy record when it comes to separating the amateurs from the pros.
So it is no surprise that the second trial of the Liberty City Six, formerly the Liberty City Seven, whom the government alleged were planning to take a bus from Miami to Chicago and blow up the Sears Tower ended yesterday with another mistrial.
The Justice Department made a collective fool of itself because Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (remember him?) pulled out all of the public-relations stops and equated these nimrods from the dirt poor Liberty City neighborhood of Miami with the foulest of the Al Qaeda foul.
Gonzo had asserted that the group represented a “new brand of terrorism” created by “the convergence of globalization and technology,” but these lads were clearly buffoons who didn’t even have the money to buy bus tickets to get to Chicago.
No matter, the government retried the six mistrial defendants (a seventh was acquitted) in the hopes that if it threw everything up against the wall something would stick. Alas, nothing did and the jury was excused after 13 days of deliberations.
Next up is the Fort Dix Six, a bunch of hard-drinking blue-collar bozos who asked cops for maps of military installations, had trouble finding lethal weapons, practiced jihadist attacks by playing paintball in the Pocono Mountains, went to a Kinko’s to have a videotape of their training sessions made into a DVD, and were infiltrated by not one but two informants, include a brainiac who knew the wide open New Jersey Army base “like the back of his hand” because he once delivered pizzas there for his family’s restaurant.
A modest prediction: The informants will bomb on the stand and the Fort Dix Six will walk.
From everything we can gather so far, there are few fans of a John McCain presidency in the Russian press - and the same can be said of President Bush. Asking what’s wrong with Bush’s Iraq strategy is the same as asking what the danger of a John McCain Administration would be. Galina Zeveleva of Russia’s Novosti News Service writes, “Bush continues to rely on force, thereby multiplying the army of terrorists more quickly than he can suppress them, while strengthening the conviction in Iran that possession of nuclear weapons is the only guarantee of its security.” Read the rest of this entry »
We just posted at WORLDMEETS.US something that anyone interested in global affairs simply must watch.
Nearly every year at the annual Arab Summit, Libyan despot Muammar Qadhafi gives a speech to the collected rulers of the Arab world who in stony-faced silence, sit and listen to him. Invariably - it is absolutely priceless.
With the most significant NATO summit in decades about to begin, among other issues, the problem of what to do about Afghanistan is high on the list. Chief among European concerns in this regard is the apparent lack of a strategy beyond killing members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. For France’s Liberation, Bernard Guetta writes of British plans that France should take part in:
“The Taliban have learned from the defeat they suffered in 2001 … They now realize that they will achieve nothing if they persist with their cocktail of jihad and Sharia; they have become less fanatical, more political, and we could in a word, seek a compromise with them.” As far as the Americans are concerned, Guetta writes, “This is where the French reinforcements could play not only a military role, but a political one as well. They could permit the assertion of a Franco-British pole in Afghanistan, which would be so significant that it could encourage George Bush’s successor to endorse this strategy.”
By Bernard Guetta
Translated By Sandrine Ageorges
April 1, 2008
France - Liberation - Original Article (France)
Attention! Everything seems to plead - naturally - against sending more French troops to Afghanistan. But the Atlanticism of Nicolas Sarkozy is so compulsive, his foreign policy so confused, this war in particular - so close to being completely lost - that we have no choice but to conclude that to do so is merely an intolerable, dangerous, positive gesture toward George Bush. As it is, this decision is nothing but troubling, but beware! Contrary to the Iraqi adventure, the Afghan intervention was approved by the United Nations. It’s legal. It is, above all, legitimate, since the Taliban not only protected the organizers of the September 11 attacks, but seven years later, their victory would become a tragedy for this country and would complete the destabilization of neighboring Pakistan. Even worse, it would strengthen the networks of Jihadists giving them a territorial sanctuary and more importantly, nourish their myth about the inevitable defeat of the “crusaders” before the rising masses of Islam. Read the rest of this entry »
March 28th, 2008 by DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
FM 3-24 is the Army and Marines’ counter-insurgency manual. It was written in part by one Sarah Sewall, who is now an adviser on the Obama campaign. In the Weekly Standard, Dean Barnett, not seeming to know this, blasts her along with Samantha Power as embodying “dovish idealism” in the course of his critique of the “Obama Doctrine.” It’s a lot of juvenile giggling over “climates of fear” (because serious people know that fear distracts us from the important task of killing people) and very little in the way of hard-nosed analysis.
In addition to pointing out some other bone-headed errors (”Her name is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, you dumb douche.”), Spencer Ackerman helps elucidate why the “critique” is substantively flat out wrong….
Some Americans will find this editorial more than a little ironic - especially coming from the French. Pierre Rousselin writes for France’s Le Figaro of the lessons that Europeans and Americans - particularly the three remaining U.S. Presidential candidates - should draw from the Iraq War: “With a few months to go until a change at the White House, debating the past is no longer appropriate. The important thing is to draw the proper lessons in order to avoid making the same mistakes again … the United States must make an effort to build a solid coalition of allies on which it can draw upon. And those allies must be prepared to play their part.”
Editorial by Pierre Rousselin
Translated By Kate Davis
March 20, 2008
France - Le Figaro - Original Article (French)
Five years later, everyone pretty much agrees that the war in Iraq was a mistake. Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction - and the fall of the dictator, as welcome as it was - didn’t put the Arab world on the path to democracy.
In the battle, the United States has lost a large number of soldiers, wasted an enormous amount of money and, more importantly, squandered the sympathetic capital that was at its disposal throughout the world. Read the rest of this entry »
March 24th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Is it curtains for the bluff and bluster game played by President ex-General Pervez Musharraf and his mentor in the White House, President George W. Bush, for the past eight years? The first important decision the new Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani took after being elected as prime minister was to order the release of the Chief Justice of the highest court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry.
Justice Chaudhry and his family had been confined to his house since Musharraf declared a state of emergency in November last year and sacked 60 senior judges ahead of a Supreme Court ruling that could have invalidated his re-election as president. More here…
Now both Musharraf and Bush appear as pathetic caricatures extolling the virtues of democracy after working overtime to crush any dissidence to the totalitarian rule of Musharraf. The Pakistani president fearing that his days were numbered has started a media campaign that he would love to work with the new government and “promote democracy”.
If one reads carefully the US administration’s recent press release, it would appear that counter-terrorism is not really the main issue in engaging the Pakistan government!!! Imagine Musharraf was being promoted by the US government for eight years and given billions of dollars for the so-called “war-on-terror”.
Here is what the White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said: “We look forward to working with the new government in Pakistan. There’s lots of different areas where we can cooperate - not just counter terrorism, but across the board.”
The US State department Spokesman Sean McCormack said: “This (Gilani becoming PM) was the selection of the Pakistani political leadership and people. (Obviously…Bush & Co are still trying to somehow ensure that dictator Musharraf contiues as president.) We look forward to work with Gilani and his government. Beyond that, I don’t know that there’s much more to add other than our congratulations to his election as prime minister.” What a way to greet the return of democracy in Pakistan!!!
Why is the US administration not talking about seeking the new Pakistan government’s support for “war-on-terror”, or capturing al-Qaeda leaders or Osama-bin-Laden? Are these not the real issues? Or were these used as camouflage to ensure the survival of Musharraf all these years for some extraneous reasons?
These are serious matters which have not found proper space in the US media/blogs for some strange/unknown reasons, and may have long term impact on the US and its media’s standing/credibility in the world.
To give one example of the US backing dictators, who are despised by their people, and how this boomrangs: “The new Pakistan prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, a former house speaker who until two years ago was jailed under what he claims were politically motivated charges, beat the pro-Musharraf candidate for the premier’s slot, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, by 264 votes to 42.”
But 4,000, well, that one seems to give us pause. For some reason the sight of three zeros makes us turn our necks long enough to pay attention, ask more questions and continue to find few real answers.
So here’s my question on the anniversary of this 4th set of three zeros: Was it worth it?
And more broadly, how has the Bush administration demonstrated that this war has:
been worth the cost in lives,
been worth diverting attention and resources away from domestic issues,
been worth diverting our attention away from other foreign policy issues,
and made us any safer?
The only tangible benefits seem to be that a bad dictator is gone and people have been freed. Fair enough. These are good things.
But Saddam was a bad guy who had no ties to al Qaeda. And, forgive me for being cruel, but it’s not up to us to make sure the entire world is free. If that were the case, we would have started with Darfur, not Iraq.
Another fact that seems to get missed in all these discussions…our intelligence estimates say that al Qaeda is stronger than ever before.
This is why more and more Americans don’t accept the premise that, if we stay there, things are going to get fixed and, if we leave, everything is going to go south. What we’re all starting to collectively realize is that the longer we’re in Iraq, the more chances there are for things to go wrong both there AND here. And what a continued presence in Iraq will most likely result in is we’ll have less say in how we’ll ultimately exit the country. Because we will exit at some point. We all know this. The only way we can control our own destiny here is to set realistic timetables and stick to them.
And yes, al Qaeda will claim victory, but I say let them think they’ve defeated us. Let them believe we’re tucking our tail between our legs. Let them put out their inane little videos. People, just because they say it doesn’t make it true.
Does anybody think if we pull out of Iraq that we’re going to stop tracking down al Qaeda heavies? Does anybody believe the broader fight against the Islamic extremists is going to stop? In fact, now we can start this shadow war in earnest and allocate our vast resources to that fight instead of continuing to throw billions down a hole in Iraq. Can you imagine how many top al Qaeda we could have captured by now using those resources that lay at the bottom of that hole?
Also, is it just me or have we forgotten that we won the war against Saddam and Iraq? Seriously, it was won. Saddam was defeated. We just haven’t been able to secure peace. The difference between those two things is very significant, and I think most of us are accepting the reality that there’s no way we’ll be able to stem the insurgent violence completely. So the fact that Bush and McCain continue to say that withdrawal means “defeat” just shows you how ass backwards our current foreign policy reasoning has become. Again, we all know we have to get out of Iraq at some point, so who’s truly setting us up to fail, the “Defeatocrats” or the “Republican’ts”?
It’s time to go. The sooner the better. Otherwise, we’ll be meeting back here in about a year and talking about the lives that were forever changed between now and 5,000.
What can be gleaned from the fact that on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, President George W. Bush and his ‘alter ego’ Osama bin Laden both gave speeches? Patrik Etschmayer writes for Switzerland’s Nachrichten, ‘Bush once again showed how brilliant he is at ignoring the reality of his own mistakes and giving the truth a whole new twist … This speech - which was an absolute denial of reality and self-deception - was not out there on its own for long, but was soon accompanied by one from his alter-ego on the Dark Side, when Osama bin Laden reportedly spoke again … Bin Laden’s message carries more than just a warning for Europe. It also shows that even for bin Laden, Bush is a man whose time has run out. … Both are voices from the crypt - but it seems that it will be bin Laden’s voice that will be heard the longest.’
By Patrik Etschmayer
Translated By Patrik Etschmayer
March 20, 2008
Switzerland - Nachrichten - Home Page (German)
It’s the fifth anniversary of the starting shot of the second Iraq War, and right on cue, two of the undead have chosen to speak. First, George W. Bush gave his speech on the anniversary of this enterprise; and from the other, reports are that Osama Bin Laden too has spoken once again.
Bush went first, however, and once again showed how impressive and brilliant he is at ignoring the reality of his own mistakes and giving the truth a whole new twist.
A wonderful example for his mental somersaults can be found early in the speech, when Bush says the following about the defeated Iraqi army and regime: “When the Iraqi regime was removed, it did not lay down its arms and surrender. Instead, former regime elements took off their uniforms and faded into the countryside to fight the emergence of a free Iraq.”
What he didn’t say was that the army and security forces had in fact surrendered, and then were released by the Americans - with the effect that in the aftermath, hundreds of thousands of unemployed soldiers and police - still armed - were ready to organize resistance to the occupiers.
Of the fact that the U.S. Army also failed to secure huge caches of Iraqi army weapons, which were then cleared out by insurgents in the tremendous power vacuum that existed at the time … not a word was mentioned.
Nor was any mention made of the non-existent weapons of mass destruction (the alleged existence of which was the main reason for the war), the fact that al-Qaeda only appeared in Iraq after the invasion, and that for four years the U.S. administration ignored every voice that criticized its actions in Iraq - and in the case of the generals that dared to speak up - it silenced them.
The perhaps too-late U-turn in Iraq, which in recent times has at least brought a degree of calm, was mentioned this way: “So we reviewed the strategy - and changed course in Iraq.” Four botched-up years of ineptitude rolled up into one sentence, which makes it sound as if some real achievement has been accomplished.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the Iraq War anniversary.
See the full video (with an accompanying text article) from here. Many key graphs, see this post for the text of the speech. Here is where he makes the Day One promise:
When you have no overarching strategy, there is no clear definition of success. Success comes to be defined as the ability to maintain a flawed policy indefinitely. Here is the truth: fighting a war without end will not force the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. And fighting in a war without end will not make the American people safer.
So when I am Commander-in-Chief, I will set a new goal on Day One: I will end this war. Not because politics compels it. Not because our troops cannot bear the burden- as heavy as it is. But because it is the right thing to do for our national security, and it will ultimately make us safer.
In order to end this war responsibly, I will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. We can responsibly remove 1 to 2 combat brigades each month. If we start with the number of brigades we have in Iraq today, we can remove all of them 16 months. After this redeployment, we will leave enough troops in Iraq to guard our embassy and diplomats, and a counter-terrorism force to strike al Qaeda if it forms a base that the Iraqis cannot destroy. What I propose is not - and never has been - a precipitous drawdown. It is instead a detailed and prudent plan that will end a war nearly seven years after it started.
The World Beyond Iraq
Fayetteville, NC
March 19, 2008
As Prepared for Delivery
Just before America’s entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress: “It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war,” he said. “…But the right is more precious than peace.” Wilson’s words captured two awesome responsibilities that test any Commander-in-Chief - to never hesitate to defend America, but to never go to war unless you must. War is sometimes necessary, but it has grave consequences, and the judgment to go to war can never be undone.
Five years ago today, President George W. Bush addressed the nation. Bombs had started to rain down on Baghdad. War was necessary, the President said, because the United States could not, “live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.” Recalling the pain of 9/11, he said the price of inaction in Iraq was to meet the threat with “armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.”
At the time the President uttered those words, there was no hard evidence that Iraq had those stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. There was not any evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks of September 11, or that Iraq had operational ties to the al Qaeda terrorists who carried them out. By launching a war based on faulty premises and bad intelligence, President Bush failed Wilson’s test. So did Congress when it voted to give him the authority to wage war.
Five years have gone by since that fateful decision. This war has now lasted longer than World War I, World War II, or the Civil War. Nearly four thousand Americans have given their lives. Thousands more have been wounded. Even under the best case scenarios, this war will cost American taxpayers well over a trillion dollars. And where are we for all of this sacrifice? We are less safe and less able to shape events abroad. We are divided at home, and our alliances around the world have been strained. The threats of a new century have roiled the waters of peace and stability, and yet America remains anchored in Iraq. Read the rest of this entry »
![[NZZ am Sonntag, Switzerland]](http://worldmeets.us/images/bushpope_nzzamsonntag.gif)
