All eight were tried on charges stemming from a massacre of Shiites from the town of Dujail. When Saddam visited there in 1982 gunmen attempted to assassinate him. In response thousands of men, women, and children were sent to detention camps, huge swathes of farms and groves were destroyed, and 148 men and boys were sentenced to death by Bandar's Revolutionary Court. 46 of those sentenced were tortured to death before they ever reached a courtroom. Some of those sentenced were as young as 11, they were held until they turned 18 and then killed.
They did seem to get to the heart of the matter, didn't they?
Saddam Hussein personally signed documents ordering the killing of 148 Shia villagers in Dujail, handwriting experts have concluded.....
At earlier hearings, Saddam Hussein acknowledged signing execution orders, saying it was his duty as president of Iraq. But he later appeared to dispute their authenticity.
What's totally amazing to me is that he was not tried for gassing the kurds or gassing the iranians. Amazing that nobody would be charged for those crimes.
Saddam is due to appear for a routine hearing on Tuesday of his second trial, for genocide against ethnic Kurds in 1988. In the meantime, he is held by the U.S. military at Camp Cropper, part of the U.S. base at Baghdad airport. The five judges in the Dujail case are expected also to publish the detailed, unanimous ruling, running to some 200 to 300 pages. It is eagerly awaited by international jurists keen to judge how the court performed.
The situation is tough, the justice may be a little rough, but Saddam is getting justice, far more than his victims, assuming he doesn't have some sort of divine right to mass murder.
So we have one man responsible for thousand of deaths (Saddam) and they're now liberated.
It is more like millions of deaths during Saddam's reign.
Only since the beginning of their liberation, they've actually being dying by the thousands. The irony.
Saddam's agents and bully boys are still arranging or doing a significant share of the killing with an upper from the sectarian violence. Still, the current average is no worse than Saddam's long term average, and with the Iraqi security forces rapidly growing in strength and capability, that is unlikely to last.
And there you have it. In my estimation, it is desperate people - outgunned, with no hope of a "fair fight" - that perform these attacks. The most effective way to stop the attacks is to make them less desperate (ie. by not massacring their loved ones, setting up checkpoints, toppling their democracies, etc).
When you look at the data, a surprising picture of suicide bombers emerges:
Despite the limitations of both data sets, several findings are of interest. The poverty rate is 28 percent among the Hezbollah militants and 33 percent for the population. In terms of education the Hezbollah fighters are more likely to have attended secondary school than are people in the general population (47 versus 38 percent). The results suggest that poverty is inversely related, and education positively related, to the likelihood that someone becomes a Hezbollah fighter.
Similarly, Claude Berrebi, a graduate student in economics at Princeton, has studied the characteristics of recent suicide bombers in Israel. From information on the Web sites of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, he was able to paint a statistical picture of suicide bombers. He compared that to survey-based data on the broader Palestinian population of roughly comparable age. His results indicate that suicide bombers are less than half as likely to come from impoverished families than is the population as a whole. In addition, more than half of the suicide bombers had attended school after high school, while less than 15 percent of the population in the same age group had any post-high-school education.
The study, released this month by an Israeli think tank, looked at the 163 Palestinians -- 155 men and 8 women -- who killed themselves while attacking Israeli targets between September 2000 and December 2005. It found that almost a quarter (37 individuals) graduated from college and another quarter (39) from high school. There is no clear information about the education level of 76 of the suicide bombers, but researchers at the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, which published the study, assumed that many of these terrorists also had achieved high levels of education.
"This illustrates what we have been saying for years, which is that the chief motivating factor for suicide terrorism is ideology, a conviction that the cause is just, and not simple-mindedness or economic distress," said Yoram Kahati, senior research fellow at the center. Palestinian suicide terrorism, he said, is typically a product of a combustible combination of militant ideological fervor and a personal or collective sense of hopelessness. "These are people who are not stupid, yet are absolutely convinced that they are doing the right thing by sacrificing their lives," Kahati said.....
"This corresponds with the worldwide pattern" of the typical suicide bomber "and shatters a lot of our simplistic assumptions that if we cure the world of poverty, terrorism will go away," said Bruce Hoffman, a leading counter-terrorism expert who heads the Rand Corporation's Washington office. Suicide terrorism "is a much more complex phenomenon, not amenable to any simple cause or simple solution," he said.
THE fifth anniversary of 9/11 passed with a great deal of hand-wringing over all the people who want to kill Americans. Especially worrisome is the apparent rise of terrorists whose origins seem far from fanatical.
These terrorists are not desperately poor uneducated people from the Middle East. A surprisingly l
While most Muslim and Arab capitals have remained silent on the president's remarks, a few have spoken out - including Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat.
"Palestinians recognise the right of the state of Israel to exist and I reject his comments," he told the BBC News website.
"What we need to be talking about is adding the state of Palestine to the map and not wiping Israel from the map," he said.
Egypt, which has signed a peace treaty with Israel, also rejected the Iranian line.
"In principle, we are way beyond this type of political rhetoric that shows the weakness of the Iranian government," said an official at the Egyptian embassy in London.
Turkey's prime minister called on the Iranian president "to display political moderation".
Even if you want to want to quibble over the subtle shades of meaning in a speech, this seems pretty clear:
Harking back to language used by of the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel, the hard-line president also called Israel a "fabricated" entity......
On Wednesday Ahmadinejad said "there is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world. As the Imam (Khomeini) said, Israel must be wiped off the map."
The Guardian's hair-splitting is here. I would encourage reading at least some of the comments.
North Korea exploded a nuclear device with an unusually small yield just over three weeks ago, and there is no indication that it was a weapon quality device. So, maybe their "nuclear weapons" have kept them "safe" for three weeks now. As an added benefit, that nuclear explosion is going to be keeping them "safe" from invasions of fine wine, cheese, meats, and various other luxury and military goods banned by the UN. This does leave a mystery though, and maybe you can help. Although they are currently in a cease fire, the UN Forces in South Korea (including the US forces) have been technically at war for more than 50 years now with North Korea. What stopped them from invading for the last 50 years? Any ideas? Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons yet, why hasn't the US invaded them yet? It looks to me like it was their nuclear weapons programs that have brought them into conflict with the US/US/Europe. Saddam was probably further along with building a nuclear bomb than Iran, but it didn't help him. In fact, it caused the Israelis to bomb him, setting the program back for years. Wouldn't it be ironic if it was their nuclear weapons programs that caused them to be invaded or bombed?
Perhaps in response to unbridled United States aggression in the region.
Obviously, because we all know that things in the Middle East are all sweetness and light when the United States isn't around, and that no Arab, Persian, or Muslim would ever kill a fellow, let alone a Jew.
The European lead negotiations with Iran are failing to produce meaningful results. That is bad enough given the threatening language from the Iranian leadership, and their President's state of mind.
Now it looks like the Sunni vs Shia / Arab vs Persian rivalries, are about to take a much more dangerous form, not to mention the Arab/Muslim conflict with Israel. What is even more disturbing is that the restraints that contained the cold war don't seem to apply. We might end up with a nuclear Jihad.
"Melted" Steel CLAIM: "We have been lied to," announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. "The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel." The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC."
FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800 to 1500F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."
"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800 it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.
But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832F.
"The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."
The original article lead to a book Debunking 9/11 Myths, needed now more than ever.
People tend to remember momentous events that occur during their lifetime. It is often expressed "where were you when ________ (happened)" as opposed to "when". Some events that resonate in the United States with at least some people still living:
Pearl Harbor was attacked Sputnik was announced President Kennedy was shot Astronauts landed on the moon Bobby Kennedy was shot Martin Luther King was shot President Reagan was shot Challenger blew up Operation Desert Storm started The Twin Towers were hit
There are others, of course, and not everybody will be struck by the same event.
There are few people alive today who would have been old enough to remember the Hindenberg, and the number who would remember Titanic must be closing in on zero.
I doubt that there are very many people who get the same visceral effect by reading history books about events instead of having lived through them.
It is entirely appropriate to remember the attacks that occurred on the United States on 9/11 and to go after the terrorist organizations that were responsible to prevent further attacks, and a growing menace.
We went into Iraq because he allegedly still had an active weapons program and/or WMDs lying about somewhere, and/or the raw materials to make them. All 3 of which proved to be a complete fabrication.
'What [the research] showed is that Saddam's procurement network is alive and well and has been working steadily despite the sanctions,' said Milhollin. 'There are a lot of companies out there willing to break the embargo.'
Motz said: 'We are seeing everything from just some basic negotiations that probably didn't go anywhere once the firms figured out what was trying to be purchased to contracts that were actually implemented and goods that were found in Iraq by the inspectors. We have contracts for missile engine components, for guidance components for missiles. We actually found some high-end machine tools that are useful for making nuclear weapons, military goods such as [conventional] helicopters and aircraft which were clearly embargoed.'
Mahdi Obeidi, former head of Iraq's nuclear centrifuge program:
Was Iraq a potential threat to the United States and the world? Threat is always a matter of perception, but our nuclear program could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein's fingers. The sanctions and the lucrative oil-for-food program had served as powerful deterrents, but world events - like Iran's current efforts to step up its nuclear ambitions - might well have changed the situation.
Iraqi scientists had the knowledge and the designs needed to jumpstart the program if necessary. And there is no question that we could have done so very quickly. In the late 1980's, we put together the most efficient covert nuclear program the world has ever seen. In about three years, we gained the ability to enrich uranium and nearly become a nuclear threat; we built an effective centrifuge from scratch, even though we started with no knowledge of centrifuge technology. Had Saddam Hussein ordered it and the world looked the other way, we might have shaved months if not years off our previous efforts. Saddam, the Bomb and Me
The UN's "Oil for Food" program was wholly corrupt, providing Saddam the means to pursue rearmament.
It is also worth remembering:
Moreover, Iraq put itself in a state of war with the United States by violating the cease-fire that ended the 1991 Gulf War. Iraqi forces shot at American and British warplanes assigned to enforce the U.N.-imposed "no-fly zones" over Iraq on a daily basis long before the 2003 war. Kofi Annan's Iraq Blunder
These would be fascinating to look it and I'm sure anyone who could get the raw materials already has this knowledge.
Remember North Korea's nuclear fizzle just a couple of weeks ago? Do you think they intended to build a bomb with about 1/40th the power of the first US nuclear test?
Why do you think the People's Republic of China worked so hard to steal the plans for the W88 thermonuclear warhead from the United States?
Nuclear weapons engineering is just like any other branch of engineering. There are theoretical aspects to it as well as practical aspects that can only be learned by experience and experimentation, or from someone else's data.
Building a small, powerful warhead is a lot harder than just getting some Uranium to explode after a fashion.
Lets just hope Iran didn't find anything useful to help them put a little "something extra" on top of their Shahab-3 able to reach Turkey, for now, and tested during the recent "The Great Prophet 2" military exercises.
How long until Google is as hated as Microsoft and 'do no evil' becomes a slogan of doublespeak?
How long? If this is true, it probably won't be until they start helping bomb-belt wearing, no plane-landing skills, beheading, portable electric drilling of body parts, civilian slaughtering extremists instead of helping the guys trying to stop those cockroaches. (Cockroach being a general description of both their character and hiding skills.)
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. - George Orwell
Those rough men need to know where in the haystack to find the cockroachs.
For me the red line has been crossed in 2003 when I read two report of the same news, one from France, saying "Kofi Anna has qualified the attack on Iraq as illegal" and the second, from MSNBC, saying "Kofi Anna has (wrongly) qualified the attack on Iraq as illegal"
U.N. officials in New York sought to play down the significance of Annan's remarks, noting that he had previously said the U.S.-led war was not "in conformity with the U.N. charter." They noted that he was prodded three times by the BBC reporter before acknowledging his position. "The secretary general was quite reluctant to use that word," said Annan's chief spokesman, Fred Eckhard. U.S., Allies Dispute Annan on Iraq War
Some commentary....
Annan's statement that the war was "illegal" is both false and spurious. By Annan's logic, the 1999 U.S./British-led intervention in Kosovo, which was conducted without benefit of a Security Council resolution, also would be "illegal" despite the fact that it was widely supported by the international community. It is true that Washington failed to convince Paris and Moscow to vote for a final Security Council resolution that explicitly endorsed the use of force if Iraq's dictatorship continued to renege on its legal commitments to disarm. But the Security Council did unanimously pass Resolution 1441 in November 2002, which threatened "serious consequences" if Iraq failed to do so. Iraq also defied sixteen other Security Council resolutions on disarmament, human rights, and support for terrorism.
Moreover, Iraq put itself in a state of war with the United States by violating the cease-fire that ended the 1991 Gulf War. Iraqi forces shot at American and British warplanes assigned to enforce the U.N.-imposed "no-fly zones" over Iraq on a daily basis long before the 2003 war. While the Clinton Administration chose to ignore these and most other cease-fire violations, the Bush Administration correctly decided to take action in view of Iraq's manifest failure to prove that it had dismantled its prohibited weapons programs. The U.N. Charter explicitly recognizes the right of every state to act in self-defense, a fact that Annan curiously neglects.
An Ill-Timed Intervention
Kofi Annan's ill-timed comments should be seen as a poorly conceived attempt to undercut the U.S. President's impending address to the U.N. General Assembly and to indirectly influence the electoral debate in the United States. The notion of U.S. isolation, a prominent theme advanced by Senator John Kerry, is a myth that Annan is keen to promote on the world stage. He ignores the fact that the U.S. is backed by over 30 allies with troops on the ground in Iraq, including 12 of the 25 members of the European Union and 16 out of 26 NATO members states.[3] Kofi Annan's Iraq Blunder
For constitutional purposes, the joint resolution passed with but a single dissenting vote by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, was the equivalent of a formal declaration of war. The Supreme Court held in 1800 (Bas v. Tingy), and again in 1801 (Talbot v. Seamen), that Congress could formally authorize war by joint resolution without passing a formal declaration of war; and in the post-U.N. Charter era no state has issued a formal declaration of war. Such declarations, in fact, have become as much an anachronism as the power of Congress to issue letters of marque and reprisal (outlawed by treaty in 1856). Formal declarations were historically only required when a state was initiating an aggressive war, which today is unlawful. FISA vs. the Constitution
The Department of Justice has already utilized section 220 in extremely important terrorism investigations. As the Criminal Division's Assistant Attorney General, Christopher Wray, testified before the Senate's Committee on the Judiciary on October 21, 2003, section 220 proved useful in the Portland terror cell case, because Athe judge who was most familiar with the case was able to issue the search warrants for the defendant's e-mail accounts from providers in other districts, which dramatically sped up the investigation and reduced all sorts of unnecessary burdens on other prosecutors, agents and courts.@ This provision of the PATRIOT Act has been similarly useful in the AVirginia Jihad@ case involving a Northern Virginia terror cell and in the case of the infamous Ashoebomber@ terrorist, Richard Reid.
Who specifically are we at war with? That is to say, other than "the terrorists." Who do we have to kill or who has to surrender to end this war, bin Laden, the Taliban?
Al Qaeda, its affiliates, and the Taliban at present. Hezbollah is operating in the US, and has threatened the US, so its time may come. Hamas, also operating in the US might get there too.
The fact is, we are not at war in any meaningful sense of the word. We are at war only in the same sense that we are at war with drugs and poverty.
Here is a useful guide to figure out when you are in a literal versus figurative war: When you are expending M1 tank main gun rounds, 500 lb or larger bombs, and artillery, to kill people, it is very likely to be a real war.
Now, if you are killing thousands of enemy fighters with tank main gun rounds, big bombs, and artillery, and your enemy says that they are in, "the greatest battle of Islam in this era," and trying to kill you in large numbers, take the hint: you are in a war.
The metaphorical "war on drugs" generally only uses pistols or shotguns, education, and prison cells. The metaphorical "war on poverty" generally only uses government aid checks and programs.
The Cold War lasted about 45 years, don't be surprised if the war against the Islamist extremists lasts as long. Right after 9/11, President Bush referred to the War a... a long struggle.
It isn't so hard to figure out if you try just a little.
The use of the capitalized version of "militia" means that this clause applies specifically to US armed forces -- of which there were none at the time the document was written, only state-run militias thus the use of "militia" as a stand in-- and provides solely for military "courts martial" during wartime.
The phrase "the land or naval forces" refers to the army or navy. Putting an enemy on trail after capture by the army would be part of that "cases arising in the land or naval forces" referred to in the amendment, during "time of War or public danger".
I see... and where, exactly, on a map of the world, is this nation of "Al Qaeda" of which you speak, and claim to be at war with?
Oh... You can't do that? Then I call bullshit.
You make war against people, not territory. You shoot or bomb because there is, or may be, an enemy soldier at that spot, not because you are trying to punish a hill or field. A terrorist group is a collection of people, an organization. It doesn't matter where they are, or if they own the territory they are on, you can fight against them. If it helps you get your head around it, think of Al Qaeda as claiming to be the Caliphate'sgovernment in exile's terrorist "army". Many governments in exile made war during WW2. Surely you can't be claiming anything so silly as the idea that large groups of people can't engage in violent warfare, or be killed in turn, if they don't have a chuck of land that they call their own? If so, I refer you to the First Law of Holes: if you are in one, stop digging.
Your formatting of the 5th Amendment is bad. I fixed it for you:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation
It says "no person," not "no citizen" or "no non-combatant" or anything else. It means no person, period. That includes Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, and Satan himself. In other words, your "clarification" is explicitly unconstitutional!
See above.
And yes, we are at war with Al Qaeda:
For constitutional purposes, the joint resolution passed with but a single dissenting vote by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, was the equivalent of a formal declaration of war. The Supreme Court held in 1800 (Bas v. Tingy), and again in 1801 (Talbot v. Seamen), that Congress could formally authorize war by joint resolution without passing a formal declaration of war; and in the post-U.N. Charter era no state has issued a formal declaration of war. Such declarations, in fact, have become as much an anachronism as the power of Congress to issue letters of marque and reprisal (outlawed by treaty in 1856). Formal declarations were historically only required when a state was initiating an aggressive war, which today is unlawful. Robert F. Turner,co-founder of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia School of Law
Don't you have any confidence in our laws and the ability of the US prosecution to put forth enough evidence to convict him?
As long as the appropriate law is being used we should be fine. Criminal law and the Law of War are aimed at different problems with different standards and procedures. What will get us into trouble is trying to apply civilian criminal law when the Law of War is what should be applied. A battlefield isn't just a sort of really big police raid. Few soldiers will ever use warrants.
It's not just the UK and the US. here is a picture (chart) from the economist magazine with a world-wide view of freedoms lost after 9/11 around the world. It's an old picture, too (2003)--it's likely worse now.
The chart you link to shows a large collection of nations, including a large sampling of the flower of western democracy: US, Canada, UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand. Do you suppose that they suddenly all went fascist, or might there be something to this idea of democratic nations taking reasonable steps to prevent their citizens from gratuitous exposure to explosions?
Amnesty International, the apparent source of the chart, has done some wonderful work over the years, but as advocates, they can get things wrong, or take positions of dubious merit.
I also think that al-Qaida would vote G.W.Bush: Never ever have the recruiting possibilities have be better, never ever have the arguments of al-Qaida being existant better. Never ever have the means and possibilities of getting money from the Arab world being better due to high income on oil and an general feeling of being waged an undeclared war against from the U.S..
It was brilliant the way Al Qaeda tricked the US into occupying all of its nicely equipped and well supplied training bases in Afghanistan, not to mention the way it bogged the US down with all of its supplies, mountains of documents, large numbers of prisoners, and weapons. And the physical training they are getting by running away will no doubt always be useful. And I can't help but think of all the US Treasury officials who gave up weekends because they were forced to freeze the accounts of Al Qaeda members, suppliers, and sympathizers. They also cleverly got around the problem of Afghanistan's government only being recognized by 2 countries, the funny looks you might get with an Afghani passport, by tricking the US into removing the Taliban government. Of course that did create a problem with finding enough ballots for all of the Afghans to vote.
They are being fiendishly clever in Iraq as well, forcing us to use up precious bullets, killing at least 4,000 foreign fighters in the process. And just because Bin Laden claims that the war in Iraq is "greatest battle of Islam in this era" doesn't mean it has to be important to the US. After all, with the Iraqi Army almost up to full strength, and growing more proficient, day by day, you have to wonder about the hatred of the US when Muslim soldiers are killing Islamist extremist terrorist who are killing Iraqi Muslims who used to be killed by the thousands by Saddam, but not any more, so I guess its fault of the US that fewer Muslims are being killed... and voting.... I think that is supposed to be bad.
Never ever have allies of the U.S. being more alienated from the U.S., making "divide et impera" the most easiest ever. Never ever was the danger of the own population being in favor of U.S. so minimal.
Your point about US allies is well taken. If it wasn't for the 34 or so countries that have had forces in Iraq as part of the coalition, the fact that NATO is running the Afghanistan operation these days, including commanding US troops in addition to 36 other countries, or that the US is part of the Six Party talks over North Korea, or that the US is coordinating with European powers over Iran, it is hard to say when the US would ever talk to any other country.
Of course, we should keep in mind that Bush is simply the symbol of this decay. The Administration as a whole is what scares the hell out of me. Add to this the people in Congress who support these shenanigans.
You concerns are hardly new, and are quite misplaced I think.
I wanted to get the source for the "dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe," so I tracked it down to Tom Wolfe's "The Intelligent Coed's Guide to America," republished in Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976). In the process, I found a more extended discussion that struck me as worth repeating. Here's the relevant excerpt, from pp. 115-17 of the hardcover edition; it reports on a panel discussion at Princeton in 1965, in which the participants included Paul Krassner, editor of The Realist magazine, Günter Grass, and Wolfe:
The next thing I knew, the discussion was onto the subject of fascism in America. Everybody was talking about police repression and the anxiety and paranoia as good folks waited for the knock on the door and the descent of the knout on the nape of the neck. I couldn't make any sense out of it. . . . This was the mid-1960's. . . . [T]he folks were running wilder and freer than any people in history. For that matter, Krassner himself, in one of the strokes of exuberance for which he was well known, was soon to publish a slight hoax: an account of how Lyndon Johnson was so overjoyed about becoming President that he had buggered a wound in the neck of John F. Kennedy on Air Force One as Kennedy's body was being flown back from Dallas. Krassner presented this as a suppressed chapter from William Manchester's book Death of a President. Johnson, of course, was still President when it came out. Yet the merciless gestapo dragnet missed Krassner, who cleverly hid out onstage at Princeton on Saturday nights. . ..
Support [for Wolfe's view that fascism wasn't coming to America] came from a quarter I hadn't counted on. It was Grass, speaking in English.
"For the past hour, I have my eyes fixed on the doors here," he said. "You talk about fascism and police repression. In Germany when I was a student, they come through those doors long ago. Here they must be very slow."
Grass was enjoying himself for the first time all evening. He was not simply saying, "You really don't have so much to worry about." He was indulging his sense of the absurd. He was saying: "You American intellectuals -- you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!"
He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.
I credit you that you didn't decend into the fever swamps.
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed," bin Laden said as the U.S. war on terrorism raged in Afghanistan. "The U.S. government will lead the American people in -- and the West in general -- into an unbearable hell and a choking life." linky [cnn.com]
I take that as meaning Bin Laden was confident in his ultimate victory, which is to either turn the US into a Muslim nation governed by Islamic Sharia law, or to destroy it. It is spelled out in Bin Laden's Letter to America:
Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?
(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.
Convert to Islam.
2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression,
It's just they know Word and Office and that's what they want, by hook or by crook.
It used to be the case that knowing Word / Excel / Powerpoint / etc. was something that could help get you in the door for some of the better paying entry level jobs or temp work. I expect that is still the case. Skill with the MS Office products is a bread and butter skill in a lot of jobs. I doubt that there is much call for Works or Open Office in the job market regardless of their utility and price / performance.
Slashdot Mirror
They did seem to get to the heart of the matter, didn't they?
Saddam 'did sign death warrants'
What's totally amazing to me is that he was not tried for gassing the kurds or gassing the iranians. Amazing that nobody would be charged for those crimes.
FACTBOX-What happens next in Saddam trial
The situation is tough, the justice may be a little rough, but Saddam is getting justice, far more than his victims, assuming he doesn't have some sort of divine right to mass murder.
Well said.
Why on earth would he want to talk about how the U.S. was nice to him before.
Not to mention that it would have no bearing on a trial about mass murder of a village.
So we have one man responsible for thousand of deaths (Saddam) and they're now liberated.
It is more like millions of deaths during Saddam's reign.
Only since the beginning of their liberation, they've actually being dying by the thousands. The irony.
Saddam's agents and bully boys are still arranging or doing a significant share of the killing with an upper from the sectarian violence. Still, the current average is no worse than Saddam's long term average, and with the Iraqi security forces rapidly growing in strength and capability, that is unlikely to last.
When you look at the data, a surprising picture of suicide bombers emerges:
Seeking the Roots of Terrorism
Study Finds Most Bombers Are Educated
Even for Shoe Bombers, Education and Success Are Linked
World leaders condemned the Iranian President's remarks, no doubt after checking with their diplomatic services for translations and meaning.
Iran leader defends Israel remark
Even if you want to want to quibble over the subtle shades of meaning in a speech, this seems pretty clear:
Iran president: Wipe Israel off map
The Guardian's hair-splitting is here. I would encourage reading at least some of the comments.
North Korea exploded a nuclear device with an unusually small yield just over three weeks ago, and there is no indication that it was a weapon quality device. So, maybe their "nuclear weapons" have kept them "safe" for three weeks now. As an added benefit, that nuclear explosion is going to be keeping them "safe" from invasions of fine wine, cheese, meats, and various other luxury and military goods banned by the UN. This does leave a mystery though, and maybe you can help. Although they are currently in a cease fire, the UN Forces in South Korea (including the US forces) have been technically at war for more than 50 years now with North Korea. What stopped them from invading for the last 50 years? Any ideas? Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons yet, why hasn't the US invaded them yet? It looks to me like it was their nuclear weapons programs that have brought them into conflict with the US/US/Europe. Saddam was probably further along with building a nuclear bomb than Iran, but it didn't help him. In fact, it caused the Israelis to bomb him, setting the program back for years. Wouldn't it be ironic if it was their nuclear weapons programs that caused them to be invaded or bombed?
South Africa wants two, that's right
South Africa already had nuclear weapons and gave them up.
Perhaps in response to unbridled United States aggression in the region.
Obviously, because we all know that things in the Middle East are all sweetness and light when the United States isn't around, and that no Arab, Persian, or Muslim would ever kill a fellow, let alone a Jew.
The European lead negotiations with Iran are failing to produce meaningful results. That is bad enough given the threatening language from the Iranian leadership, and their President's state of mind.
Now it looks like the Sunni vs Shia / Arab vs Persian rivalries, are about to take a much more dangerous form, not to mention the Arab/Muslim conflict with Israel. What is even more disturbing is that the restraints that contained the cold war don't seem to apply. We might end up with a nuclear Jihad.
It isn't just script kiddies. Organized crime has been making moves into computer crime for some time. There are others too.
Transnational Crime Syndicates
Organized Crime Invades Cyberspace
Cyber Threat Source Descriptions
No need for Data, Scotty, or Spock to get involved. The real explanation is much more mundane.
Debunking The 9/11 Myths - Mar. 2005 Cover Story
The original article lead to a book Debunking 9/11 Myths, needed now more than ever.
The Conspiracy Industry, By James B. Meigs, Editor-In-Chief, Popular Mechanics
People tend to remember momentous events that occur during their lifetime. It is often expressed "where were you when ________ (happened)" as opposed to "when". Some events that resonate in the United States with at least some people still living:
Pearl Harbor was attacked
Sputnik was announced
President Kennedy was shot
Astronauts landed on the moon
Bobby Kennedy was shot
Martin Luther King was shot
President Reagan was shot
Challenger blew up
Operation Desert Storm started
The Twin Towers were hit
There are others, of course, and not everybody will be struck by the same event.
There are few people alive today who would have been old enough to remember the Hindenberg, and the number who would remember Titanic must be closing in on zero.
I doubt that there are very many people who get the same visceral effect by reading history books about events instead of having lived through them.
It is entirely appropriate to remember the attacks that occurred on the United States on 9/11 and to go after the terrorist organizations that were responsible to prevent further attacks, and a growing menace.
Contrary to your assertion, Iraq did have active programs to develop banned weapons at the time of the 2003 invasion, and continued to procure controlled or banned equipment at least through the 90s:
Mahdi Obeidi, former head of Iraq's nuclear centrifuge program:
The UN's "Oil for Food" program was wholly corrupt, providing Saddam the means to pursue rearmament.
It is also worth remembering:
These would be fascinating to look it and I'm sure anyone who could get the raw materials already has this knowledge.
Remember North Korea's nuclear fizzle just a couple of weeks ago? Do you think they intended to build a bomb with about 1/40th the power of the first US nuclear test?
Why do you think the People's Republic of China worked so hard to steal the plans for the W88 thermonuclear warhead from the United States?
Nuclear weapons engineering is just like any other branch of engineering. There are theoretical aspects to it as well as practical aspects that can only be learned by experience and experimentation, or from someone else's data.
Building a small, powerful warhead is a lot harder than just getting some Uranium to explode after a fashion.
Lets just hope Iran didn't find anything useful to help them put a little "something extra" on top of their Shahab-3 able to reach Turkey, for now, and tested during the recent "The Great Prophet 2" military exercises.
How long until Google is as hated as Microsoft and 'do no evil' becomes a slogan of doublespeak?
How long? If this is true, it probably won't be until they start helping bomb-belt wearing, no plane-landing skills, beheading, portable electric drilling of body parts, civilian slaughtering extremists instead of helping the guys trying to stop those cockroaches. (Cockroach being a general description of both their character and hiding skills.)
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. - George Orwell
Those rough men need to know where in the haystack to find the cockroachs.
BBC story, MSNBC story.
A little background...
Some commentary....
This should help you out.
Does your shirt changing have a record of assisting in investigations leading to arrest, prosecution, and conviction?
That might be a little bit of a difference.
Who specifically are we at war with? That is to say, other than "the terrorists." Who do we have to kill or who has to surrender to end this war, bin Laden, the Taliban?
... a long struggle.
Al Qaeda, its affiliates, and the Taliban at present. Hezbollah is operating in the US, and has threatened the US, so its time may come. Hamas, also operating in the US might get there too.
The fact is, we are not at war in any meaningful sense of the word. We are at war only in the same sense that we are at war with drugs and poverty.
Here is a useful guide to figure out when you are in a literal versus figurative war: When you are expending M1 tank main gun rounds, 500 lb or larger bombs, and artillery, to kill people, it is very likely to be a real war.
Al Qaeda in Iraq admits that the US has killed at least 4,000 foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight in what Bin Laden refers to as, "...the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era".
Now, if you are killing thousands of enemy fighters with tank main gun rounds, big bombs, and artillery, and your enemy says that they are in, "the greatest battle of Islam in this era," and trying to kill you in large numbers, take the hint: you are in a war.
The metaphorical "war on drugs" generally only uses pistols or shotguns, education, and prison cells. The metaphorical "war on poverty" generally only uses government aid checks and programs.
The Cold War lasted about 45 years, don't be surprised if the war against the Islamist extremists lasts as long. Right after 9/11, President Bush referred to the War a
It isn't so hard to figure out if you try just a little.
The use of the capitalized version of "militia" means that this clause applies specifically to US armed forces -- of which there were none at the time the document was written, only state-run militias thus the use of "militia" as a stand in-- and provides solely for military "courts martial" during wartime.
The phrase "the land or naval forces" refers to the army or navy. Putting an enemy on trail after capture by the army would be part of that "cases arising in the land or naval forces" referred to in the amendment, during "time of War or public danger".
I see... and where, exactly, on a map of the world, is this nation of "Al Qaeda" of which you speak, and claim to be at war with?
Oh... You can't do that? Then I call bullshit.
You make war against people, not territory. You shoot or bomb because there is, or may be, an enemy soldier at that spot, not because you are trying to punish a hill or field. A terrorist group is a collection of people, an organization. It doesn't matter where they are, or if they own the territory they are on, you can fight against them. If it helps you get your head around it, think of Al Qaeda as claiming to be the Caliphate's government in exile's terrorist "army". Many governments in exile made war during WW2. Surely you can't be claiming anything so silly as the idea that large groups of people can't engage in violent warfare, or be killed in turn, if they don't have a chuck of land that they call their own? If so, I refer you to the First Law of Holes: if you are in one, stop digging.
Your formatting of the 5th Amendment is bad. I fixed it for you:
It says "no person," not "no citizen" or "no non-combatant" or anything else. It means no person, period. That includes Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, and Satan himself. In other words, your "clarification" is explicitly unconstitutional!
See above.
And yes, we are at war with Al Qaeda:
Don't you have any confidence in our laws and the ability of the US prosecution to put forth enough evidence to convict him?
As long as the appropriate law is being used we should be fine. Criminal law and the Law of War are aimed at different problems with different standards and procedures. What will get us into trouble is trying to apply civilian criminal law when the Law of War is what should be applied. A battlefield isn't just a sort of really big police raid. Few soldiers will ever use warrants.
It's not just the UK and the US. here is a picture (chart) from the economist magazine with a world-wide view of freedoms lost after 9/11 around the world. It's an old picture, too (2003)--it's likely worse now.
The chart you link to shows a large collection of nations, including a large sampling of the flower of western democracy: US, Canada, UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand. Do you suppose that they suddenly all went fascist, or might there be something to this idea of democratic nations taking reasonable steps to prevent their citizens from gratuitous exposure to explosions?
Amnesty International, the apparent source of the chart, has done some wonderful work over the years, but as advocates, they can get things wrong, or take positions of dubious merit.
I also think that al-Qaida would vote G.W.Bush: Never ever have the recruiting possibilities have be better, never ever have the arguments of al-Qaida being existant better. Never ever have the means and possibilities of getting money from the Arab world being better due to high income on oil and an general feeling of being waged an undeclared war against from the U.S..
It was brilliant the way Al Qaeda tricked the US into occupying all of its nicely equipped and well supplied training bases in Afghanistan, not to mention the way it bogged the US down with all of its supplies, mountains of documents, large numbers of prisoners, and weapons. And the physical training they are getting by running away will no doubt always be useful. And I can't help but think of all the US Treasury officials who gave up weekends because they were forced to freeze the accounts of Al Qaeda members, suppliers, and sympathizers. They also cleverly got around the problem of Afghanistan's government only being recognized by 2 countries, the funny looks you might get with an Afghani passport, by tricking the US into removing the Taliban government. Of course that did create a problem with finding enough ballots for all of the Afghans to vote.
They are being fiendishly clever in Iraq as well, forcing us to use up precious bullets, killing at least 4,000 foreign fighters in the process. And just because Bin Laden claims that the war in Iraq is "greatest battle of Islam in this era" doesn't mean it has to be important to the US. After all, with the Iraqi Army almost up to full strength, and growing more proficient, day by day, you have to wonder about the hatred of the US when Muslim soldiers are killing Islamist extremist terrorist who are killing Iraqi Muslims who used to be killed by the thousands by Saddam, but not any more, so I guess its fault of the US that fewer Muslims are being killed... and voting.... I think that is supposed to be bad.
Never ever have allies of the U.S. being more alienated from the U.S., making "divide et impera" the most easiest ever. Never ever was the danger of the own population being in favor of U.S. so minimal.
Your point about US allies is well taken. If it wasn't for the 34 or so countries that have had forces in Iraq as part of the coalition, the fact that NATO is running the Afghanistan operation these days, including commanding US troops in addition to 36 other countries, or that the US is part of the Six Party talks over North Korea, or that the US is coordinating with European powers over Iran, it is hard to say when the US would ever talk to any other country.
If only the world hadn't turned against the US before 9/11.
You concerns are hardly new, and are quite misplaced I think.
Tom Wolfe on Fascism:
I credit you that you didn't decend into the fever swamps.
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed," bin Laden said as the U.S. war on terrorism raged in Afghanistan. "The U.S. government will lead the American people in -- and the West in general -- into an unbearable hell and a choking life." linky [cnn.com]
I take that as meaning Bin Laden was confident in his ultimate victory, which is to either turn the US into a Muslim nation governed by Islamic Sharia law, or to destroy it. It is spelled out in Bin Laden's Letter to America:
Convert to Islam.
It's just they know Word and Office and that's what they want, by hook or by crook.
It used to be the case that knowing Word / Excel / Powerpoint / etc. was something that could help get you in the door for some of the better paying entry level jobs or temp work. I expect that is still the case. Skill with the MS Office products is a bread and butter skill in a lot of jobs. I doubt that there is much call for Works or Open Office in the job market regardless of their utility and price / performance.