The King of The "North" Is Coming!

[Abaddon (Revelation 9:11)]

Al-Zawahri in first video since failed U.S. strike

AL-QAIDA NO. 2 CALLS BUSH ‘FAILURE,’ ‘BUTCHER,’ THREATENS NEW AMERICAN ATTACK

The Associated Press
Updated: 3:50 p.m. ET Jan. 30, 2006
Source of Article

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri said in a videotape aired Monday that President Bush was a “butcher” and a “failure” because of a deadly U.S. airstrike in Pakistan targeting the bin Laden deputy, and he threatened a new attack on the United States.

Al-Zawahri, shown in the video wearing white robes and a white turban, said a Jan. 13 airstrike in the eastern village of Damadola killed “innocents,” and he said the United States had ignored an offer from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden for a truce.

“Butcher of Washington, you are not only defeated and a liar, but also a failure. You are a curse on your own nation, and you have brought and will bring them only catastrophes and tragedies,” he said, referring to Bush.

“Bush do you know where I am? I am among the Muslim people enjoying what God has given me from their support and their care and their generosity and their protection, and their participating in jihad until we defeat you, by Allah's grace and help.”

Civilian deaths angered Pakistanis

The airstrike hit a building in Damadola, where U.S. intelligence believed al-Zawahri had been attending an Islamic holiday dinner. The strike killed four al-Qaida leaders — including a man believed to be al-Zawahri’s son-in-law — but intelligence officials said later they believe al-Zawahri sent his aides to the dinner in his place.

Thirteen villagers also were killed in the strike, angering many Pakistanis.

“The American planes raided in compliance with Musharraf the traitor and his security apparatus, the slave of the Crusaders and the Jews,” he said, referring to Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

“In seeking to kill my humble self and four of my brothers, the whole world has discovered the extent of America’s lies and failures and the extent of its savagery in fighting Islam and Muslims.”

Video is new

The video was al-Zawahri’s first appearance since the airstrike and came 11 days after the latest audiotape by bin Laden. IntelCenter, a contractor working with U.S. intelligence agencies, said the video of al-Zawahri is new.

The last video from al-Zawahri came Jan. 6, when he called the U.S. decision to withdraw some troops from Iraq a victory for the Islamic world.

The Al-Jazeera newscaster said Monday the network was airing excerpts, and it showed two short segments. It was not immediately known how long the entire tape was.

In the video, al-Zawahri spoke before a black background. No automatic weapon was visible, unlike past videos by the al-Qaida deputy in which a gun often appeared leaning next to him. In the bottom left corner, the video had the logo in Arabic and English of Al-Sahab, an al-Qaida video production company that made some past videos by bin Laden and al-Zawahri.

“My second message is to the American people, who are drowning in illusions. I tell you that Bush and his gang are shedding your blood and wasting your money in frustrated adventures,” he said, speaking in a forceful and angry voice.

Rage at coalition

“The lion of Islam, Sheik Osama bin Laden, may God protect him, offered you a decent exit from your dilemma. But your leaders, who are keen to accumulate wealth, insist on throwing you in battles and killing your souls in Iraq and Afghanistan and — God willing — on your own land.”

Al-Zawahri then vented more fury at the United States and Britain, its main coalition partner in Iraq.

“Your leaders responded to the initiative of sheik Osama, may God protect him, by saying they don’t negotiate with terrorists and that they are winning the war on terror. I tell them: You liars, greedy war mongers, who is pulling out from Iraq and Afghanistan? Us or you? Whose soldiers are committing suicide because of despair? Us or you?” he said.

“You, American mother, if the Pentagon calls to tell you that your son is coming home in a coffin, then remember George Bush. And you, British wife, if the Defense Department calls you to say that your husband is returning crippled and burnt, remember Tony Blair.”

The video came in the wake of a Jan. 19 audiotape by bin Laden in which he warned that al-Qaida is preparing attacks in the United States but offered a truce “with fair conditions” to build Iraq and Afghanistan.

No conditions on truce

The al-Qaida leader did not spell out conditions for a truce in the excerpts aired by Al-Jazeera.

U.S. officials said after the bin Laden tape that they had no sign that al-Qaida was preparing an imminent attack in the United States.

In an Arabic transcription of the entire tape on the Al-Jazeera Web site — but not aired — bin Laden made an oblique reference to how to prevent new attacks on the United States but did not specify if those were conditions for a truce.

The tape was the first message from bin Laden in more than a year. The CIA authenticated the voice on the tape as that of bin Laden. Al-Jazeera said the tape was recorded in the Islamic month that corresponds with December.

The White House firmly rejected bin Laden’s suggestion of a negotiated truce. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Vice President Dick Cheney said at the time. “I think you have to destroy them.”

During the year of silence from bin Laden, al-Zawahri issued several video and audiotapes, including one claiming al-Qaida responsibility for the July 7 London bombings.

NBC News' Alfred Arian contributed to this report.

© 2006 MSNBC.com

[Abaddon (Revelation 9:11)]

PALESTINIAN REFUGEES CALLED ON OSAMA BIN LADEN AND ABU MUSAB AL ZARQAWI TO PROTECT THE ISLAM


3 February 2006
Source of Article
FOCUS News Agency


Ain el-Helweh. Palestinian refugees enraged over the publication in Europe of cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed called Friday on Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his lieutenant in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to defend Islam, AFP reported.

"Punish those who have wronged Islam!" shouted Abu Sharif, head of the Sunni Muslim fundamentalist group Osbat al-Ansar to a group of more than 6,000 people assembled after Friday prayers in the Ein el-Helweh refugee camp, many of them brandishing portraits of the two Al-Qaeda leaders.

[Abaddon (Revelation 9:11)]

DANISH EMBASSY IN BEIRUT TORCHED

Thousands of protesters rallied outside Beirut's Danish embassy

2006/02/05 13:47:05 GMT
BBC News
Source of Article

Lebanese demonstrators have set the Danish embassy in Beirut on fire in protest at the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

Denmark urged its citizens to leave the country as soon as possible.

The violence came a day after mobs in neighbouring Syria torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus in anger at the pictures.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller urged anti-Danish protesters in Muslim countries to calm tensions.

"It is a critical situation and it is very serious," Mr Moeller told Danish public radio.

The cartoons first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September and caused outrage among Muslims, who consider any images of Muhammad offensive.

One of the cartoons shows Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban.

Global anger

CARTOON ROW

• 30 Sept: Danish paper publishes cartoons
  20 Oct: Muslim ambassadors complain to Danish PM
  10 Jan: Norwegian publication reprints cartoons
  26 Jan: Saudi Arabia recalls its ambassador
  30 Jan: Gunmen raid EU's Gaza office demanding apology
  31 Jan: Danish paper apologises
  1 Feb: Papers in France, Germany, Italy and Spain reprint cartoons
  4 Feb: Syrians attack Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus

Newspapers across Europe have republished the pictures in recent days, saying they are defending freedom of expression.

Huge crowds attended Sunday's protest in Beirut. It turned violent after Islamic extremists tried to break though security barriers protecting the Danish embassy building.

Some 2,000 riot police and army troops fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd and fired their weapons into the air.

But smoke was later seen rising from the building after demonstrators broke into it.

Some protesters threw stones at the security forces and burned Danish flags. Security officials said at least 18 people were injured, AP news agency reported. The embassy building, which also houses commercial offices, was believed to be unoccupied.

Some people in the crowd are not happy with the violence, thinking this was going to be a peaceful demonstration, reports the BBC's Jim Muir from the scene of the violence.

He says some of the wilder elements in the crowd have succeeded in turning it into a very angry and quite violent demonstration.

In other developments:

• Hundreds of people rally in Afghanistan in protest at the cartoons
• Jordanian authorities arrest two tabloid editors for printing the cartoons
• Iran recalls its ambassador to Denmark
• An Iraqi militant group in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi calls for attacks on Danish and non-Muslim targets in Iraq
• Britain's main opposition Conservative Party says slogans by anti-Danish protesters in London amount to incitement to murder
• Denmark and Norway condemned Syria for failing to stop Saturday's attacks in Damascus and urged their citizens to leave the country.

"The principle of diplomatic relations is that diplomats can work safely and the fact that this has been broken is extremely serious," Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told a news conference in Oslo.

The US also criticised Syria's approach, saying it was "inexcusable" for such damage to be inflicted on diplomatic missions.


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[Abaddon (Revelation 9:11)]

U.N.: U.S. TORTURES GUANTANAMO DETAINEES

U.S. takes issue with preliminary report; document urges closing prison


NBC News and news services
Updated: 7:47 p.m. ET Feb. 13, 2006
Source of Article


UNITED NATIONS - A U.N. investigation has concluded that the United States committed acts amounting to torture at Guantanamo Bay, including force-feeding detainees and subjecting them to prolonged solitary confinement, according to a draft report obtained Monday.

U.S. officials rejected the report, saying it was riddled with errors and treated statements from detainees’ lawyers as fact.

The report from five U.N. human rights experts also recommended the United States close Guantanamo Bay and revoke all special interrogation techniques authorized by the Department of Defense.

It accused the United States of violating the detainees’ rights to a fair trial, to freedom of religion and to health.

The report also said that although 30 days of isolation was the maximum permissible period, some detainees were put back into solitary confinement after very short breaks and lived in “quasi-isolation for up to 18 months.”

Using photos and video, the report said some prisoners transported to Guantanamo were shackled, chained, hooded, kicked and stripped.

‘Amounting to torture’
“The excessive violence used in many cases during transportation ... and forced-feeding of detainees on hunger strike must be assessed as amounting to torture,” it said.

The draft report, which follows repeated claims by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay that they have been mistreated or denied their rights, was delivered to the United States on Jan. 16. It was first disclosed Sunday by the Los Angeles Times.

Harsh conditions, including placing detainees in solitary confinement, stripping them naked, subjecting them to severe temperatures or threatening them with dogs could amount to torture, if used simultaneously, the report said. Forced-feeding of hunger strikers through nasal tubes caused intense pain, bleeding and vomiting.

Regarding hunger strike allegations, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said prison doctors follow “accepted international practice” and treat those on hunger strike in a “humane way.”

Based on peacetime laws
American officials said the most significant flaw of the report was that it judged U.S. treatment of detainees according to peacetime human rights laws. The United States contends it is in a state of conflict and should be judged according to the laws of war.

“Once you fail to even acknowledge that as the legal basis for what we’re doing, much of the legal analysis that follows just doesn’t hold,” a State Department official said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the United States has not formulated an official public response to the draft.

The five U.N. experts have mandates that cover torture, freedom of religion, health, independent judiciary and arbitrary detention. They started working together in June 2004 to monitor conditions at Guantanamo Bay.

They were appointed to their three-year terms by the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission, the global body’s top rights watchdog.

About 500 people are being held in Guantanamo on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban government, and charges have been filed against 10 detainees.

The draft report, which will be presented to the next session of the rights commission, dismissed the U.S. claim that the war on terror constitutes an armed conflict. It also said that the detainees at Guantanamo had a right to challenge their detention, and that right was being violated.


‘Serious violations’
“In the case of the Guantanamo Bay detainees the U.S. executive operates as judge, as prosecutor, and as defense counsel,” the report said. “This constitutes serious violations of various guarantees of the right to a fair trial before an independent trial.”

Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture and one of the five experts, said the report was a draft and had not incorporated U.S. comments. It was expected to be made public later in the week.

“It is a preliminary version,” Nowak said, refusing to comment on its substance. “This is an unauthorized preliminary report which might be changed.”

U.S. officials faulted the experts for rejecting an invitation to visit Guantanamo Bay, saying it fundamentally undermined the accuracy of their findings.

“The U.N. rapporteurs were invited to visit Guantanamo Bay, and they chose not to,” said Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York. “Had they visited, they would have found that there is no torture going on.”

In an unusually heated briefing Monday, McCormack added that the United States made a “good faith offer” to the U.N. envoys to visit the prison.

The five experts had sought invitations from the United States to visit Guantanamo Bay since 2002 and accepted the offer in December. But they reversed that decision when they were told they would not be allowed to interview detainees.

McCormack dodged questions about whether it would have been possible for the envoys to do a complete report without access to detainees.

“Fact-finding on the spot has to include interviews with detainees,” Nowak said. “What’s the sense of going to a detention facility and doing fact-finding when you can’t speak to the detainees? It’s just nonsense.”

The Associated Press, Reuters and NBC News contributed to this report.

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[Apollyon (Revelation 9:11)]

LIBYA SUSPENDS OFFICIAL AFTER DEADLY RIOTS

By KHALED EL-DEEB, Associated Press Writer
Source of Article

TRIPOLI, Libya - Libya suspended its interior minister Saturday, citing an "excessive use of force" in riots the day before that left at least 10 people dead in the bloodiest protest yet against the Prophet Muhammad cartoons roiling the Muslim world.

The controversy claimed another political casualty in Italy as Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli offered his resignation after wearing a T-shirt featuring the drawings, a provocative move blamed for Friday's protests at the Italian consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi, in which at least 10 people were killed.

In eastern Pakistan, police opened fire on a mob trying to burn down shops, the latest in a spate of cartoon protests that have killed five people in the conservative country. At least four people were injured in the city of Chaniot, said police officer Mohammad Ishaq.

Pakistani authorities, meanwhile, imposed a ban on rallies in Islamabad ahead of a planned protest Sunday. In the southern city of Karachi, though, about 12,000 women joined a rally organized by the country's oldest and best-organized religious party, Jamaat-e-Islami.

"We want that those who drew these blasphemous cartoons to be hanged," Aysha Munawar, a senior party leader, told the crowd.

In London, more than 10,000 people joined an angry but peaceful protest against the drawings. "Free speech cheap insults," read some placards. "How dare you insult the blessed Prophet Muhammad?" asked another.

At least 29 people have been killed in protests across the Muslim world, according to a count by The Associated Press.

Also Saturday, some 1,000 Muslims protested peacefully in Indian-controlled Kashmir, carrying banners reading "We love our Prophet" and "Down with enemies of Islam."

Libya's parliamentary secretariat announced the suspension of Interior Minister Nasr al-Mabrouk and said all those involved in Friday's riots "and the officials responsible for them" should be referred to investigations and to the courts.

"We condemn the excessive use of force and the inappropriate way that went beyond the limits of carrying out the duties of the police," the secretariat said in a statement.

It also declared Sunday a day of mourning for "our martyr sons."

Libyan security officials said 11 people were killed or wounded during the riot in the eastern city when police firing bullets and tear gas tried to contain more than 1,000 demonstrators hurling rocks and bottles. The casualties included police officers.

Rioters charged the consular compound and set fire to the first floor of the building, the Italian Foreign Ministry said.

Domenico Bellantone, an Italian diplomat, said 10 or 11 people — all Libyan — had died.

The riot appeared to be a reaction to Calderoli's decision to wear a T-shirt printed with the cartoons. His declaration that he would do so was widely published in Libya.

Calderoli, a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League Party, wore the T-shirt beneath a suit on Friday and showed it off during an appearance on television. Hours later, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi asked for his resignation.

Calderoli said Saturday he had agreed to offer his resignation to stop "the shameful exploitation which in these hours has been directed against me," the Italian news agency ANSA reported.

There was no demonstration outside the Italian Embassy in Tripoli, a possible indication of greater state control in the capital. Politics is tightly controlled in Libya — a former Italian colony — and open dissent is rare.

The Italian ambassador to Tripoli met late Friday with the Libyan interior minister "who expressed the condemnation of his government for the acts of violence occurring in Benghazi," the Italian Foreign Ministry said.

In London, demonstrators carried placards reading "Europe lacks respect for others," and "Don't they teach manners in Denmark?"

Police said about 10,000 people were present. The Muslim Action Committee, which organized the protest, estimated that 20,000 people were there. There were no reports of violence.

On Friday, a Pakistani cleric announced a $1 million bounty for killing the cartoonist but did not give a name — apparently unaware that 12 different people had drawn the pictures. Denmark temporarily closed its embassy in Pakistan and advised its citizens to leave the country.

The Danish newspaper that first printed the caricatures in September, the Jyllands-Posten, has since apologized to Muslims for the cartoons, one of which shows Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Other Western newspapers, mostly in Europe, have reprinted the pictures, asserting their news value and the right to freedom of expression.

Mogens Blicher Bjerregaard, president of the Danish Journalist Union and spokesman for the cartoonists, who have been living under police protection since last year, condemned the bounty offer.

"It is totally absurd what is happening. The cartoonists just did their job and they did nothing illegal," he said.

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Associated Press writers Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Jennifer Price in London contributed to this report.

[Apollyon (Revelation 9:11)]

AT LEAST 15 DIE IN NIGERIA CARTOON PROTEST

By NJADVARA MUSA,
Source of Article
Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 5 minutes ago


Nigerian Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad attacked Christians and burned churches on Saturday, killing at least 15 people in the deadliest confrontation yet in the whirlwind of Muslim anger over the drawings.

It was the first major protest to erupt over the issue in Africa's most populous nation. An Associated Press reporter saw mobs of Muslim protesters swarm through the city center with machetes, sticks and iron rods. One group threw a tire around a man, poured gas on him and set him ablaze.

In Libya, the parliament suspended the interior minister after at least 11 people died when his security forces attacked rioters who torched the Italian consulate in Benghazi.

Right-wing Italian Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli resigned under pressure, accused of fueling the fury in Benghazi by wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with one of the offending cartoons, first published in September in a Danish newspaper.

Danish church officials met with a top Muslim cleric in Cairo, meanwhile, but made no significant headway in defusing the conflict.

And in what has become a daily event, tens of thousands of Muslims protested — this time in Britain, Pakistan and Austria — to denounce the perceived insult.

But it was in Nigeria, where mutual suspicions between Christians and Muslims have led to thousands of deaths in recent years, that tensions boiled over into sectarian violence.

Thousands of rioters burned 15 churches in Maiduguri in a three-hour rampage before troops and police reinforcements restored order, Nigerian police spokesman Haz Iwendi said. Iwendi said security forces arrested dozens of people in the city about 1,000 miles northeast of the capital, Lagos.

Chima Ezeoke, a Christian Maiduguri resident, said protesters attacked and looted shops owned by minority Christians, most of them with origins in the country's south.

"Most of the dead were Christians beaten to death on the streets by the rioters," Ezeoke said. Witnesses said three children and a priest were among those killed.

The Danish cartoons, including one showing Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with an ignited fuse, have set off sometimes violent protests around the world.

After the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed the caricatures in September, other Western newspapers, mostly in Europe, followed suit, asserting their news value and the right to freedom of expression.

But Nigeria has been spared much of the violence seen elsewhere in the world, though lawmakers in the heavily Muslim state of Kano burned Danish and Norwegian flags and barred Danish companies from bidding on a major construction project. Kano lawmakers also called on the state's 5 million people to boycott Danish goods.

Nigeria, with a population of more than 130 million, is roughly divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a mainly Christian south.

With Saturday's deaths, at least 45 people have been killed in protests across the Muslim world, according to a count by The Associated Press.

In the violence in Libya, Seif el-Islam Gadhafi, the son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, said four of the 11 dead were believed to have been Egyptians or Palestinians.

"Setting the consulate on fire was a mistake, but using excessive force was the most tragic response," the younger Gadhafi said, explaining the suspension of Interior Minister Nasr al-Mabrouk.

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi blamed the riots in Libya, Italy's former colony, on "thoughtless action by our minister," the Italian news agency ANSA quoted him as saying.

Calderoli said he wore the shirt to show "solidarity to all those who were hit by the blind violence of religious fanaticism." He said he did not intend "to offend the Muslim religion nor to be the pretext for yesterday's violence."

At the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, U.S. Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes said U.S. newspapers generally did not reprint the caricatures "because they recognize they are deeply offensive, even blasphemous to the precious convictions of our Muslim friends and neighbors."

In Cairo, Bishop Karsten Nissen, of Denmark's Evangelical Lutheran Church, met with Grand Imam Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi of al-Azhar University, the world's highest Sunni Muslim seat of learning.

Tantawi said the Danish prime minister must apologize for the drawings and further demanded that the world's religious leaders meet to write a law that "condemns insulting any religion, including the Holy Scriptures and the prophets." He said the United Nations should impose the law on all countries.

In response, Nissen did not address the issue of a global law but said it was impossible for Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to apologize.

"I have brought to his excellency (Tantawi) the apology of the newspaper, but our prime minister did not draw these cartoons. Our prime minister is not the editor of this newspaper. He cannot apologize for something he did not do," Nissen said.

In Pakistan on Sunday, police raided offices and homes of dozens of radical Islamic leaders, putting several under house arrest and detaining hundreds of their associates to foil a rally in the capital, officials said.

So far the West and Islamic nations remain at loggerheads over fundamental, but conflicting cultural imperatives — the Western democratic assertion of a right to free speech and press freedom, versus the Islamic dictum against any representation of the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims say such depictions could encourage idolatry.

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Associated Press writer Dulue Mbachu in Lagos and Khaled al-Deeb in Tripoli, Libya, contributed to this report.

[Apollyon (Revelation 9:11)]

ISLAMIC LEADERS ARRESTED AHEAD OF PLANNED RALLY

Several in Pakistan under house arrest in bid to foil cartoon protest

Source of Article

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistani police on Sunday raided offices and homes of dozens of radical Islamic leaders, putting several under house arrest and detaining hundreds of their associates in a bid to foil a rally in the capital, officials said.

Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the chief of a six-party coalition was placed under house arrest in the eastern city of Lahore, while other senior leaders were either arrested or asked not to leave their homes in Islamabad, where the rally was to be held today.

Mian Maqsood, a spokesman for the coalition said "hundreds" of Islamic leaders had been arrested, although Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said only about two dozen had been detained to stop the latest protest against the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons in Europe and elsewhere.

Fear of more violence

The arrests came hours after the government warned radical Islamic groups against holding the rally, fearing that it would spark more violence after at least five people died in riots across the country over the past week.

On Sunday, troops and police were alert in Islamabad to handle any situation.

Pakistani intelligence officials have said militants from outlawed extremist groups have been stirring up the violence. Authorities have banned demonstrations in several cities in the country's east, where riots turned deadly last week.

"We have condemned these blasphemous cartoons, but we will not allow anyone to disrupt peace," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said late Saturday.

But the rally's organizers said they will defy the order and go ahead with the protest.

"Our supporters are being arrested by police in raids at their homes, but we will hold the rally as planned," Mian Mohammad Aslam, a lawmaker with a coalition of six religious parties, said late Saturday.

Aslam was also arrested just before dawn Sunday.

Cartoon outrage

The cartoons offend Muslims because Islamic tradition bars drawings of Muhammad, favorable or otherwise, in a policy to discourage idolatry.

The drawings were first published in the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, and the reprinted by European media outlets that insist they're exercising their right to free speech.

Also on Saturday, about 12,000 women joined a nonviolent rally in the southern city of Karachi. The event was organized by Jamaat-e-Islami -- the country's oldest and best-organized religious party.

"We want that those who drew these blasphemous cartoons to be hanged," Aysha Munawar, a senior leader of the party, told the crowd. She also urged the government to sever ties with countries where the cartoons have been reprinted.

Lawmaker Ghaffor Ahmad, another leader of the group, said in a speech that police and the army should join the protests.

[Apollyon (Revelation 9:11)]

CIA ANALYST SPEAKS ON BIN LADEN'S OFFER OF A TRUCE WITH AMERICA

By Steve Perry
Source of Article
Arab American News


When the latest Osama bin Laden tape aired on al Jazeera last month, Michael Scheuer's phone was one of the first to start ringing off the hook with calls from journalists seeking a quick soundbite for that day's news cycle. Scheuer has credentials on the subject that few can match: By the time September 11 happened, he had been studying and trailing bin Laden for five years, as the creator and chief analyst of the CIA's bin Laden unit. Later on, writing as "Anonymous," Scheuer put out two books about bin Laden and his group, Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam and the Future of America (published in 2002, but largely written in 1999 as an unclassified manual for CIA personnel joining the bin Laden unit) and the bestseller Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror, which appeared in 2004 shortly before Scheuer resigned the CIA to go public about his views.

Appearing on CBS Evening News the day the tape surfaced, January 19, Scheuer told anchor Bob Schieffer that "it would be foolish not to take this very seriously as a threat to the United States." He discussed the Islamic custom of offering one's enemies an out before attacking them, and made reference to bin Laden's long-standing wish to obtain a nuclear weapon, and to the still-unsecured stockpile of nukes in the former Soviet Union. "It sounds pretty scary, what you're saying here," Schieffer offered near the end of the two-minute segment. "This is not a threat that should be defined as criminals, gangsters, and deviants," Scheuer replied. "These are very serious people, they are our deadly enemies, and they are extraordinarily talented. We can worry about Saddam and we can worry about the Iranians," Scheuer answered, "but the only people capable of attacking us inside the United States in the world today is al Qaeda."

Scheuer's sense of alarm was soon forgotten, swallowed up by the official line about the bin Laden tape, which also became the conventional media wisdom: As ex-FBI terrorism hand Christopher Whitcomb put it to a different CBS anchor the next morning, "I don't think there's very much significance in this tape at all. And the reason is, we've seen so many of these in the past four-and-a-half years. Osama bin Laden is trying to show the world he's still relevant. I think he's not still relevant, and I think he is trying just to say, 'I'm out here, look at me.'"

I phoned Scheuer recently to ask him more about his views of the tape and the status of the U.S.'s anti-terror efforts.



City Pages: You've dissented strongly from the Bush administration line that says bin Laden and other Islamic radicals "hate us for our freedoms." What's the real root of their opposition?



Michael Scheuer: The real root of their opposition is what we do in the Islamic world. If they were hating us because we had elections, or gender equality, or liberty, they would be a lethal nuisance, but they wouldn't be a threat to our security. If you remember, the Ayatollah tried waging a jihad against Americans because we were degenerate˜we had X-rated movies, we drank liquor, women were in workplaces. Very, very few people were willing to die for that kind of thing. Bin Laden, I think, took a lesson from that and instead focused on the impact of our policies in the Islamic world˜our support for the Arab tyrannies in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, our presence in the holy lands on the Arabian Peninsula, our invasion of Iraq, our support for countries like Russia that are deemed to repress Islamic people. He's focused on things that are visible to the Islamic world every day, and quite frankly there's a direct correlation between what he says and what all the Western polling firms are finding, that there is a huge majority in Islamic countries that hate our foreign policy. And yet generally, every one of the same countries has a majority, sometimes a large one, that admires the way Americans live, the basic equity of our society.

We should be so lucky as to have him hate us only for our freedoms. He's never even discussed that kind of thing.



CP: After the latest bin Laden tape aired, the official spin was to call it a political bluff, or even a call for truce out of weakness on his part. But you've written and spoken about seeing a different aim behind these bin Laden warnings, one that has more to do with meeting the expectations of a Muslim audience than a Western one.



Scheuer: I think that's very much the case. He's very conscious of the tradition from which he comes and how that history works. It's the tradition of the prophet that you warn your enemy and you offer a truce before the fighting starts. Saladin followed the same tradition against the Crusaders in medieval times, and bin Laden has been very careful to follow that in his time. He's offered us warnings numerous times, but this is the first time he's offered a truce in addition. In the early summer of 2004, he offered the Europeans an almost identical truce or cease-fire. They refused him much like we did, and he attacked them in July of '05 in London.



CP: Getting back to what you said a moment ago about the importance to bin Laden of offering the U.S. a warning, didn't he in fact get in trouble in a lot of Islamic circles after 9/11 for failing to provide a warning



Scheuer: Yes˜that is, for failing to provide enough of a warning. The prophet's guidance is that you go the extra mile to warn your enemy. Bin Laden was called on the carpet by his peers in the Islamic militant movement for three things. One was that he didn't give us enough warning. He's now addressed the American people on five separate occasions since 2002. So he's taken care of that one. He was also called on the carpet for not offering us a chance to convert to Islam. He's now done that three separate times, and Zawahiri has done it once. So they've covered that angle. The other thing they were taken to task for was that they didn't have the religious authority to kill as many Americans as they did. In the summer of 2003, he got a religious judgment from a very reputable Saudi cleric that he could use weapons of mass destruction, specifically nuclear weapons, to kill up to 10 million Americans.

After 9/11, he had several very important loose ends to tie up, in religious terms, before he could attack us again. He's done all of those things. It's interesting, because he spoke on the eve of our presidential election, and he said, This is the last time I'm going to warn you. In his speech last week, he said, I was not going to talk to you again, but your president is lying to you. I wanted to give you one more opportunity to hear the truth. He again warned us about the impact of our policies, and then offered us the truce. But you were right at the beginning. He's very much speaking to an Islamic audience as much as to an American [one].



CP: How do you read the offer of truce, that being the unique element in this communiqué?



Scheuer: I think he's very serious about it. I don't think for a second he believes we'll take him up on it. But he's kind of done as much as he can do to make sure there's no further bloodshed between us and the forces he represents. It was very common, you know, in the era of the prophet˜truces came about fairly regularly. There were truces between Saladin and Richard the Lionhearted in the Third Crusade. One of them was as specific as three years and some odd months before the fighting was to resume. From his culture, from his history, this is a very serious offer. I think he expected the kind of curt response he got from Scott McClellan and then from the president and vice president.

This is a very difficult problem for a world that's run on the basis of nation-states. How do you respond to something like this?



CP: The competing popular images of bin Laden in the U.S. seem to run to opposite extremes˜he's either the supreme commander of anti-U.S. forces or an isolated, mostly ceremonial figure. Can you describe his place in the firmament of radical Muslim forces aligning against the U.S.?



Scheuer: I think he is the hero and the leader in the Islamic world. But that's not to say that he controls very much beyond his own group. The two things I would point out are that, one, for a man of his stature in the world, he probably has as little ego as I've ever seen in a leader. He's a man who clearly wants to control his own organization, but outside of that he's never really shown much interest in controlling other groups.

The other thing people tend to forget, or to lose in the rhetoric, is that when he outlined his aims in 1996, the first one - and it still is the first one - was to incite jihad around the world. He regarded al Qaeda and his role not as an instrument of American defeat, but as an instrument that would incite the jihad that would spur America's defeat. He saw his job as encouraging other groups to join in. Picking a number is kind of a mug's game, but now we have 40 or 50 groups around the world that fight, sometimes locally, but also have an intention of attacking the United States. So in his main goal, of incitement, he's been singularly successful.



CP: Can you talk about the role that the Iraq war has played in his recruiting successes?



Scheuer: I have to tell you, sir, I'm not an expert on Iraq. I don't know what the threat was from Saddam. My own judgment is, as a nation-state [Saddam's Iraq] was probably containable. But our invasion of Iraq broke the back of our counter-terrorism policy, because it validated in the Islamic mind so much of what bin Laden had said through the past decade. He said, Americans will do anything to defeat a strong Muslim government. We took Saddam out. He said we would take on and defeat any Muslim state that threatened Israel. I think Iraq is an indication of that being true, from their perspective. He said we would occupy their sanctities and try to destroy their religion. From the Islamist's perspective, we occupy all three of their sanctities now - the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and Jerusalem. The Israelis hold Jerusalem, but increasingly in the Islamic world, Americans and Israelis are viewed interchangeably. He said we were going to try to take all the oil from the Muslim world. And certainly the view predominates that one of the reasons we went to Iraq was oil.

And so, in terms of perception, the Iraq war was a validation of what bin Laden had said. In addition, bin Laden and Zawahiri are not trained Islamic clerics or jurists. The argument was always made that they had no authority, therefore, to declare a jihad. Well, when we invaded Iraq, it was kind of a textbook example of an event that necessitates jihad in the Islamic world. Now, any number of well-credentialed clerics and jurists and scholars have authorized jihad against the United States around the world, because we invaded a Muslim land. In my view, the invasion of Iraq accelerated the transformation of al Qaeda from a man and an organization into a philosophy and a movement.

We're at the point where it's still very important to kill˜preferably to kill, or else to capture˜Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri. But because of Iraq, our problem is far from over if that happens.



CP: From the standpoint of practical politics, do you think bin Laden and his associates feel obliged to make the next attack on U.S. soil more spectacular than the last?



Scheuer: That's certainly what they have promised. And one of the things I've tried to point out when I've been interviewed is that, objectively, if you examine bin Laden's rhetoric, the correlation between words and deeds is pretty much close to perfect. One of the things he always stressed from the very first days of al Qaeda was, I intend to incrementally ratchet up the severity of the pain I cause Americans until they begin to listen and change their policies. So my answer would be yes. To keep true to his world, which seems to be a major concern for him, the next attack on America will have to be more damaging than 9/11.



CP: You spoke on 60 Minutes over a year ago about bin Laden's seeking and obtaining the fatwa to use nuclear weapons against the U.S. Do you think it's his wish to use nuclear weapons in his next attack?



Scheuer: Sure. If he has them, he'll use them. It's not like he's looking for a deterrent. In old Cold War terms, he's looking for a first-strike weapon. One of the problems we have in the West, and particularly in America, is we view him as kind of a person who wouldn't have anything else to do if he wasn't killing and fighting. Clearly he would. America is not their first target. Their first targets are the Arab states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, that are tyrannies, and Israel. We're being attacked because bin Laden has argued that the other targets, the more important targets, are easy pickings if they can drive us out of the Middle East. One of the ways they look to do that is to create a situation in the United States that is so destructive, in terms of the economic impact and casualties, that it would take the U.S. military to administer the after-effects of the attack. Clearly their preference is for a nuclear-type weapon.



CP: How feasible do you think it is for an organization of their profile and resources to obtain a nuclear weapon?



Scheuer: Well, you know, money is never a problem. We make a lot of noise about taking their money, but we've taken very little of their money. To put it bluntly, they're not stupid enough to use the Western economic system. So that's one thing we shouldn't bank on. In 1996, we acquired the information that since 1992 they'd been trying to get one of these weapons, and have developed a unit that features technicians and engineers and hard scientists, to prevent themselves from being scammed.

We know - well, I didn't know it until the election campaign, when Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry were arguing about whether the Soviet nuclear arsenal should be under control by 2007 or 2010, but the Soviet nuclear arsenal is not all accounted for. When you add all these things up - the availability, the expertise available to them, and the virtually unlimited amounts of money they can bring to bear - I think we would be foolish not to think that they could do it.

There's a book called "Nuclear Terrorism" by a man named Graham Allison from Harvard, who is kind of the premier expert on the possibility of nuclear terrorism in the Western world. In that book, he points out that the only really difficult part about constructing a nuclear weapon is acquiring the fissile material, the highly enriched uranium or the plutonium. After that, the machining of the trigger and the containers and all the rest is not very hard at all. It's college-level physics. Certainly that kind of expertise is available to Osama bin Laden. I sat in on an unclassified briefing from a couple of our national laboratories, Sandia and Los Alamos, and they basically mirrored what Graham Allison had said. That basically, if you can acquire the fissile materials, you've done the hardest part of the job. I think we would be silly to assume they can't do it. Which is one reason I've been so outspoken about trying to control our borders.



CP: Could you comment briefly on the command-and-control structure of al Qaeda? I think most Americans have the notion of a paramilitary group with clear lines of top-down control. Is that correct, or is it more akin to a consortium of venture capitalists pursuing different objectives in different locales?



Scheuer: I think it's both. Bin Laden has always been someone who welcomed ideas, which, if he liked them, he would help to fund or train for. But in terms of attacks inside the United States, that is one part of his organization that he has always maintained personal command and control over. We argue quite frequently that he can't communicate, and that he's isolated. The one thing I hope we learn from last week's statement is that that argument may not be correct. He dominated the international media for three days at a time of his choosing.

If you can expose your telecommunication system to a satellite, you can communicate from anywhere in the world. He has all the money he needs. It's a very dangerous thing to assume he can't communicate.



CP: Any additional thoughts regarding the latest communiqué?



Scheuer: The only thing I've tried to say to people is that this is a very serious man, and a very talented one. He's a very terse man in many ways. He doesn't say things just for the sake of saying them. He is a man well acquainted with the power of silence, I think. When he says something, given the correlation between what he's said and what he's done in the past, I think he deserves a lot of respect and I don't want to say fear, but respect as an enemy is something that we don't give him. My own inclination is to say that the decks are pretty much cleared now. He would not have said what he said if he wasn't prepared to attack us.

Reprinted from CityPages


***

[Apollyon (Revelation 9:11)]

US WARNS IRAN OF CONSEQUENCES OF NUCLEAR AMBITIONS

By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent

Source of Article

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Sunday warned that Iran faced "painful consequences" if it continued sensitive nuclear activities and said the problem would become increasingly difficult to resolve if the international community did not confront it.

Ahead of what could be a crucial international meeting on Iran on Monday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton reaffirmed that the United States will use "all tools at our disposal" to thwart Iran's nuclear program and is already "beefing up defensive measures" to do so.

"The Iran regime must be made aware that if it continues down the path of international isolation, there will be tangible and painful consequences," he told 4,500 delegates to the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the leading pro-Israel U.S. lobbying group.

Monday's meeting of the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency governing board is expected to take stock of Iran's continued defiance of U.S. and European demands to end sensitive weapons-related uranium enrichment activity and then hand the case over to the UN Security Council.

The United States is discussing a 30- to 60-day deadline for Tehran to halt its nuclear program and cooperate with international inspectors or face intensified pressure in the security council, a U.S. official told Reuters.

Iran on Sunday again threatened to begin large-scale nuclear enrichment if the case is taken up by the security council.

Bolton said Iran poses a "comprehensive threat" as a state-sponsor of terrorism and a nuclear aspirant, and so "we must be prepared to ... use all the tools at our disposal to stop the threat."

'LONGER WE WAIT ... HARDER IT WILL BECOME TO SOLVE'

"The longer we wait to confront the threat Iran poses, the harder and more intractable it will become to solve," he warned.

Bolton reaffirmed that Washington does not see the security council moving quickly to impose sanctions on Iran. Veto-wielding members Russia and China have made clear their reluctance.

But he said many other governments have begun to speak publicly of sanctions, implying they may take action outside the security council.

The United States has had sweeping sanctions on Iran since after the 1979 Iranian revolution, but it is looking at ways to further use its Proliferation Security Initiative to deny Iran materials it needs for its nuclear program, Bolton said.

The United States and key allies, led by the European Union trio of Britain, France and Germany, are convinced Iran is trying to produce a nuclear weapon, but Tehran insists it is only interested in civilian nuclear energy.

Former chief UN weapons inspector David Kay, who also spoke at the AIPAC conference, discussed the limits of weapons inspections and said a conclusive judgment about Iran's program may only come too late, after it conducts a weapons test.

The IAEA is expected to weigh a report on Monday by the IAEA chief saying Iran has ignored a February 4 resolution urging it to shelve uranium-enrichment work to ease the crisis.

Instead, Iran is vacuum-testing 20 centrifuges, which convert uranium into fuel for power plants or, if highly purified, bombs, the report said. Iran also plans to install 3,000 centrifuges later this year in a push to "industrial scale" enrichment, according to the IAEA report.

The IAEA board voted on February 4 to report Iran to the security council, but on the condition the world body would not flex its muscle at least until after Monday's session.

If the security council did not act in a timely manner, Bolton said, the council's credibility would be damaged.

[Abaddon (Revelation 9:11)]

WARNING: MAJOR THREAT TO US NOT REPORTED (PERHAPS NOT EVEN NOTICED)

Date and time: 2006-03-12 00:33:28
Source of Article


With a salute toward Mario Profaca, one of the best Internet scouts around, we post below a major warning about two attacks to be carried out in the USA, away from Washington. Arizona is specifically mentioned. We consider Florida and Texas to be prime candidates for an attack. This particular threat may or may nolt have been planned by Bin Laden. See the link to the book Rage of the Random Actor. What is happening here are three things: 1) Peripheral admirers of Bin Laden are taking their own initiatives--he has shown them the end and the means, they are making their own way. 2) Middle class individuals being driven into poverty are losing their minds--the cheating culture is creating huge disconnects between expectations and achievements, and more and more folks are going into "desperation" mode; and 3) finally, it would be a serious mistake to under-estimate both the seriousness of the complaints against the current Administration and its policies and actions overseas, and the degree to which rational people simply do not trust the government to do the right thing. This is Waco times ten million, on a global scale.

One final observation: in addition to seeing more copycat violence, we are going to start seeing a lot more copycat "wanna-bees" who issue warnings or leave signs of an attack simply to jerk the system's chain. Law enforcement works only when the majority are sane and law abiding, and those we need to deal with a very small minority. We are reaching a tipping point. It is not inconceivable for the USA to eventually (25 years out) be dismembered as the "nine nations of North America" lose faith in the federal government and some of them choose to go their own way--for example, the Pacific Northwest succeeding from the Union to join British Columbia. The current path is very destructive, both internally and externally.


Islamic websites carry al-Qaida's 'last warning'
Threat of 2 operations designed to bring Americans 'to your knees'

Posted: March 11, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com.

WASHINGTON – Islamic websites yesterday posted a "last warning" warning by Rakan Ben Williams, who describes himself as an "al-Qaida undercover soldier" in the U.S., threatening two major operations designed to bring Americans "to your knees."

According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Global Islamic Media Front was responsible for posting the threat.

Williams is a mystery man, who, according to the London Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, is an English convert to Islam.

The threat suggests the attack will be far greater in magnitude than Sept. 11, 2001, because following this one, "there will be no one to analyze and investigate, because the mind and the heart will be unable to comprehend it. ... This will not be a single operation, but two; one bigger than the other, but we will begin with the big one and postpone the bigger one, in order to see [how] diligent the American people is [in preserving] its life. If it chooses life, [it must] carry out the demands of the Muslims, and if it chooses death, then we are its best perpetrators."

The warning appeared in Arabic and in English.

"Do not put your hopes on Bush and his clan, they are incapable of protecting you, and if they think they are, let them foil or stop the two upcoming operations, and punish those who are responsible for them," says the statement. "But if they could not identify and foil the devastating events coming your way, you must ask yourselves: How long will we continue allowing ourselves to be slaughtered with full advance knowledge of our fate?

"Let me now inform you why we opted to inform you about the two operations and your inability to stop them before they are carried out. The reason is simple: You cannot uncover or stop them except by letting them be carried out. Furthermore, the best you could do would be to accelerate the day of carrying out the operations. In other words, if we schedule the operation to take place tomorrow, the best you could do is to make it happen today."

The spokesman claims the operations are inevitable – even if the specific plans are uncovered by authorities.

"This indeed is a sweet situation to be in," he says. "It is a win-win all the way for us. It is the ultimate control and the most stunning way to stop an operation (accelerating it with the same impact). What we are saying is this: You will have a choice of either let us carry it out on our own schedule and with our own hands or allow your own intelligence apparatus to cause it to happen. This second choice will cause a level of dissatisfaction (with your decision makers) to reach its highest level. Therefore, your Homeland Security agencies would have no choice but to surrender and wait for the inevitable to happen."

Williams asserts, he "will not give any more clues; this is enough as a wake up call. Perhaps the American people will start thinking about the magnitude of the danger that is coming their way."

The statement also appears to be an attempt to divide Americans by region.

"O you helpless Americans, especially those living in States far away from Washington, D.C.!" he says. "Your country is comprised of many states that should not have anything to do with Muslims. Take the state of Arizona for example; what does this state have to do with killing Muslims in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq? What interest is it of theirs serving, helping, and siding with the Jews and Israel? If some members of your Congress and Senate are being used as Jewish tools manipulated by Israel, why do you bear the consequences? Why do you bring death and destruction to your homes and lives in an apparent sacrifice for a handful of dishonest men and women?"

The statement says the operations are awaiting only a final order from Osama bin Laden.

"The operations are ready to go, we are just waiting for orders from the commander in chief, Osama bin Laden (may Allah preserve him)," it says. "He will decide whether to strike or to hold. We swear by Allah that there are so many tricks and tactical maneuvers that will make your heads spin, by the grace of Allah. You will be brought to your knees, but not until you lose more loved ones and experience significant destruction."

It continues: "Now is the time to wake up and dust off this state of complacency and ineffectiveness to save yourselves and your loved ones from catastrophes sure to come your way. Remove war mongers from positions of power and throw them in prisons, where they belong. Rid yourselves of 'the Jewish pests' that brought nothing to you but adversity and loss of lives and wealth. They have deceived you for many years, it is time now you turn the table on them and make an example out of them. Rid yourselves of media crafters who deliberately kept you in the dark for so long and made a mockery of you before the rest of the world."

The statement calls for a boycott of NBC and CBS because of their Jewish owners. It calls on Americans to watch al-Jazeera and to visit Islamic websites "to get educated."

"Visit Mujahideen web sites to get to know who they are," it suggests. "You will see for yourselves that they are not what your media outlets made you believe they are. If you cannot do that, the least you could do is to watch Al-Jazeera Channel; there you might get 20 percent or less of the truth about the war zones. Resent the corrupted politicians in Washington, D.C. and demand justice, if they do not give in to your demands, you must declare autonomy so you may live in peace and security."

Williams calls the statement "the last warning you will receive from us. Consequently, if you ignore it, we regret to inform you that we will carry out devastating operations against the states of America and we will not show mercy whatsoever."


***

[Apollyon (Revelation 9:11)]

FORMER IRAQ PM: 'WE ARE IN CIVIL WAR'

LONDON, March 19, 2006
Source of Article

(CBS/AP) Iraq is in the middle of a civil war, Iraq's former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. aired on Sunday.

Allawi said there was no other way to describe the increasing violence across the country.

"It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more," Allawi told the BBC. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."

Allawi heads the Iraqi National List, a secular alliance of Shiite and Sunni politicians.

While visiting British troops in Iraq on Sunday, defense secretary John Reid said Allawi's remarks to the BBC contradicted what the former prime minister had told him in a meeting on Saturday.

"Every single politician I have met here from the prime minister to the president, the defense minister and indeed Ayad Allawi himself yesterday said to me there's an increase in the sectarian killing, but there's not a civil war and we will not allow a civil war to develop," Reid said.

"The essential thing is to show maximum unity in a government of national unity so that the terrorists that do want a civil war do not get their wish."

Allawi said the violence in the country was moving toward "the point of no return" and that Iraq is "in a terrible civil conflict."

Allawi warned that European nations and the United States would not be immune from the conflict, saying that not only will Iraq "fall apart," but that "sectarianism will spread throughout the region, and even Europe and the United States would not be spared all the violence that may occur as a result of sectarian problems in this region."

Not surprisingly, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld disagreed.

In a Washington Post column Sunday, Rumsfeld argued that talk of civil war has been overblown, promoted mostly by terrorists, who, as the defense secretary said, "seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq."

Rumsfeld added that failing to fight terrorists in Iraq, "would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis."

After the bombing of the Shia shrine at Samarra on Feb. 22, there was an increase in civil violence, leading observers to say that the country was on the brink of civil war, an assertion that has been rejected by lawmakers.

Allawi said that playing down the current problems in Iraq would be a mistake, and told the BBC that he had warned against creating a power vacuum and the prevalence of militias.

Allawi said the formation of a national unity government was the means the country needs to achieve the goal of a peaceful country.

Iraq's newly elected Parliament was seated on Thursday, and representatives of its Shiite Arab, Sunni Arab and Kurdish blocs have been meeting in an effort to overcome deep divisions and agree on the makeup of a new government. The minority factions want to block broad Shiite control of powerful ministries.

Allawi, a secular Shiite whose nonsectarian party won 25 seats in December parliamentary balloting, was among the groups trying to block the candidacy of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Al-Jaafari, the opposition groups contend, would not represent their interests and did too little to stop Shiite revenge attacks in the aftermath of the Samarra shrine bombing.

[Madmary1]

INTERPOL SAYS AL QAEDAA PREPARING FOR BIOLOGICAL WARFARE


(DPA)
Source of Article
27 March 2006


SINGAPORE - Interpol said the Al Qaeda terrorist group is preparing to engage in biological warfare in urging countries to enact legislation allowing police to investigate scientific activity that can result in the manufacture of a bio-terrorist weapon.

Ronald Noble, secretary-general of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), told a conference in Singapore that captured terrorist suspects have admitted that their groups are plotting potential biological attacks.

There is enough evidence to show that Al Qaeda is preparing to engage in biological warfare, Noble said.

“It can’t be that we as a world community have to wait for a September 11 type of attack in bio-terrorism before we prepare,” Noble told government officials, police and health experts attending the Asian Terrorism Workshop.

“Institutions that are engaged in any bioscience need to make sure that the controls they have in place are sure that only legitimate scientific investigative activity is going on,” he said.

Police forces worldwide need to be trained, Noble said. They need to know how to investigate bio-terrorism-related cases and how to handle such an attack.

Representatives from 26 Asian countries are attending the three- day conference.

The law enforcement officers were encouraged to coordinate moves aimed at warding off bio-terrorist attacks or days may past prior to the realization that such a calamity has already occurred.

“Unlike other forms of terrorist acts where the impact can be felt almost instantaneously in the aftermath, we may not realize that a biological attack has occurred until perhaps days or even weeks later,” said Ho Peng Kee, Singapore’s senior minister of state for law and home affairs.

“By that time, the terrorist may already have fled the country or succumbed to the biological agent, and all the valuable investigative leads may have disappeared,” Ho noted in a keynote address.

The after-effects of a bio-terrorist attack may be far more widespread “in this age of easy air travel,” he warned, transcending borders and impacting different continents.

Ho called on countries to reach out to one another and increase their level of cooperation and exchange of information.

“Time is of the essence,” he said. Networks must be established and strengthened in times of normalcy so that we are resilient enough to confront and overcome crises.

The Al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a terrorist group blamed for a spate of attacks and plots throughout Southeast Asia, has relied on bombings, including suicide bombers. A manual discovered in the Philippines in 2003 however indicated interest in acquiring chemical and biological agents.

The JI has been held responsible for the 2002 Bali nightclub attacks that killed 202 people, last October’s attack on the island that left 20 dead and several attacks in Jakarta.

Singapore passed a law in 2005 carrying a life-imprisonment term for anyone using biological agents for non-peaceful purposes.

As a close ally of the United States, the city-state regards itself as a prime target of terrorists and has uncovered JI plans to attack its infrastructure, transport facilities, the US and Israeli embassies.

The US has been urging Asian countries to enact tougher laws against bio-terrorism.

***

[Madmary1]

INTERVIEW-AL QAEDA BIOTERROR THREAT REMAINS REAL -INTERPOL


29 Mar 2006 04:55:22 GMT
Source of Article
Source: Reuters
By Jan Dahinten


SINGAPORE, March 29 (Reuters) - Al Qaeda has the ability to carry out attacks using biochemicals and the threat of a strike remains real, a top Interpol official warned on Wednesday.

John Abbott, chairman of Interpol's bioterrorism sub-committee, said national police forces and health services lacked preparation for an attack using dangerous toxins and had insufficient knowledge and powers to handle such an event.

"There is a threat. Al Qaeda have made it clear ... that they consider the use of chemical and biological agents as acceptable. There have been a few cases around the world in recent times which suggest that there is a capability," Abbott said.

"I think that any person who carefully considers the issues will recognise that it's complacent to assume that we're prepared for anything. Criminals and terrorists are innovative," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a bioterrorism conference attended by Asian law enforcement officials and health experts.

Security officials have long warned of the risk of an al Qaeda attack using biological weapons such as anthrax, ricin, botulinum toxin, smallpox, plague or Ebola.

Al Qaeda manuals on preparation of biowarfare agents were discovered at the group's training camps in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion of the country in late 2001.

Interpol, the global police body, has stepped up training of police forces on how to handle possible attacks with biological agents, which often take some time to emerge as victims with symptoms of contamination or infection report to hospitals and doctors.

Abbott said many countries still lacked legislation that would enable their authorities to look into potential threats such as the movement of agents and pathogens within countries and across borders.

"It is necessary to criminalise certain activities. We don't want to get in the way of bio-science development. What we want to do is stop people who have a desire to misuse the developments in bio-science from being able to do so."

France-based Interpol last year moved to establish a resource centre at its Lyon headquarters for sharing information between police, health officials and scientists and informing member countries about threats and best practice.

***

[Madmary1]

DIRE PREDICTION FROM OSAMA'S BODYGUARD

March 30, 2006
(CBS)
Source of Article


(CBS) A former personal bodyguard of Osama bin Laden says he is certain the al Qaeda leader is planning an attack on the U.S.

In the first television interview with an al Qaeda member close to bin Laden since 9/11, Abu Jandal tells 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon first-hand details about the world's most wanted man this Sunday, April 2, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Abu Jandal, who was with bin Laden in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2000, says bin Laden's last tape, on which he threatened consequences to the U.S., is not a threat, but a promise.

"When Sheik Osama promises something, he does it…. So I believe Osama bin Laden is planning a new attack inside the United States, this is certain," he tells Simon in the interview conducted in Yemen earlier this month.

It's been long speculated that bin Laden is hiding in the tribal areas of Pakistan, but Abu Jandal says Afghanistan is the place. "Not Pakistan. I know the Pakistani tribe along the border very well. Yes, they can be very trustworthy and faithful to their religion and ideology, but they are also capable of selling information for nothing," he says.

Even if found, bin Laden will not be captured, says Abu Jandal, who says the al Qaeda leader gave him the authority to kill him if he was surrounded. "If he was going to be captured, Sheik Osama prefers to be killed than captured," he tells Simon. "There was a special gun to be used if Sheik Osama bin Laden was attacked and we were unable to save him, in which case I would have to kill him," says Abu Jandal.

The closest the Americans came to getting bin Laden before 9/11, recounts Abu Jandal, was the U.S. missile attack on al-Qaeda training camps near Khost, Afghanistan, a retaliatory strike for the al-Qaeda bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. It was luck that saved him the night before the strike. "There was a fork in the road," remembers Abu Jandal, "one road leading to Khost and the training camps and another one leading to Kabul. I was with Sheik Osama in the same vehicle with three guards…he turned to us and said, 'Khost or Kabul?' We told him, 'Let’s just visit Kabul.' Sheik Osama said, 'OK, Kabul.'

So the missile strike the next day failed to get bin Laden, but the man they think provided information that led to it was discovered. "It was the Afghan cook," said Abu Jandal. He says he would have killed the man who betrayed bin Laden himself, but bin Laden forgave him and sent him home. "Sheik Osama even gave him money and told him, 'Go provide for your children.'"

Among the other things he remembers about bin Laden was the way the al Qaeda leader forbade cursing. "I remember once I used the wrong word, so he suspended me from guard duty for three days," says Abu Jandal.

Abu Jandal says the rumor that bin Laden suffered from a kidney problem and needed dialysis was nonsense. "Never. The only problem Sheik Osama suffered from is with his vocal chords. He was affected by missiles that contained some chemicals during the jihad against the Soviets. Only his vocal chords were affected," he tells Simon.

He reveres bin Laden to this day and wishes he were still with him. Abu Jandal must stay in Yemen, however, under an agreement with the government, which detained him for almost two years after the al Qaeda bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. But he has a son. "I have great hopes for him and pray to God that he will finish what his father was unable to finish," Abu Jandal says. "Frankly, I hope that my son gets killed and becomes a martyr for the sake of God almighty."

Produced By Draggan Mihailovich ©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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[Madmary1]

REPORTS: U.S. CONSIDERS IRAN INVASION

Attack Would Target Nuclear Facilities

Source of Article
Apr 9, 2006 11:25 am US/Eastern

(CBS) WASHINGTON Plans for a U.S. attack on Iran over its nuclear ambitions are being explored, according to reports by the Washington Post and The New Yorker magazine.

As reporter Seymour Hersh explains in the April 17 issue of The New Yorker, members of the U.S. military, more and more, believe President Bush is leaning toward a "regime change" in Iran as the best way to quell the country's quest for nuclear capabilities.

Hersh quotes one former senior intelligence official as saying that Mr. Bush views Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a "potential Adolph Hitler."

For more than 30 years Hersh's reporting on the military has been controversial, but accurate, including exposing the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam war and the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, reports CBS News correspondent Dave Browde.

The Washington Post reports possible targets for a U.S. attack on Iran include facilities where uranium enrichment plant and a uranium conversion take place, according to current and former officials with the Pentagon and CIA. The Post adds that officials are looking at airstrikes and bombing campaigns, but not a land invasion.

"Surely, the report will spur debate about U.S. military action against Iran, particularly since U.S.-Iran talks regarding Iraq are tentatively scheduled for mid-April and because U.S. military action would be opposed by most world leaders," CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk says.

"The U.N. in late March gave Iran one month and asked the international watchdog agency to report back on Iran's compliance on freezing its nuclear program, but according to the Hersh report, the White House has increased its military planning for possible attacks against Iran and has not ruled out using tactical bunker-busting nuclear weapons, in the event negotiations fail," Falk says.

"The unity of the world powers at the United Nations ends with a stern warning, mainly because Russia and China have made no bones about opposing sanctions or harsher action," Falk says, "leaving the Bush administration planning for a coalition of countries to impose sanctions and, according to the Hersh report, military action."

(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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