The Second Edition of the War on Terror Newstand commenced 1 January 2005. While it will follow a chronological format for news and analysis, just like the First Edition, it will be easier to follow:

 

Our news and analysis pieces will now be entered most recent to earliest, instead of the reverse.

 

As a new policy matter, the Newstand will also be adding staff bylines to selected articles.

 

Opinions expressed in un-bylined articles are those of the Newstand only (and usually will be stated to be such), and not necessarily officially those of the Association itself, unless explicitly stated to be such.

 

Opinions expressed in by-lined articles are officially those of the by-lined reporter(s) or editor(s) only, unless expressly stated to be the opinion of either the Newstand and/or the Association itself.

 

 

Only opinions expressly stated to be those of the Association are official opinions or positions of the Association, as endorsed explicitly by the Association's National Executive Board.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Click here for:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1/14/2008:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here to hear

 

 

speak as to the state of the War on Terror today. His views DO reflect those of the Newstand's Board and staff.

 

10/2/2006:

 

 

 

Newstand analysts have concluded that approximately $600 billion has been spent on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and enhanced security at military bases since 9/11. The Iraq war itself is costing taxpayers almost $2 billion a week currently - nearly twice as much as in the first year of the conflict three years ago and 20% more than last year - as the Pentagon spends more on establishing regional bases to support our Forces' deployment there and works to fix or replace equipment damaged in combat.

 

The DoD hoped to reduce our troop presence in Iraq to fewer than 100,000 by the end of this year, but this Newstand is now predicting that we will have to keep a minimum of 140,000 troops there at least through the middle of 2007, if not longer,  because of the inability of domestic Iraqi forces to contain the terrorists.

 

9/20/2006:

 

 

 

Al Quaida, on one of its websites yesterday, threatened Roman Catholic Pope Benedict XVI and all non-Muslims "with death, unless you convert to Islam."

 

Which is, of course, exactly what the Pope said about these people last week in Germany, in quoting from a 13th century manuscript about what Islam stood for.

 

Riots and atrocities by Muslims against Christians  throughout the Muslim world continued unabated as of yesterday, including murders of innocent nuns, the burning and desecration of Christian churches and an inflammatory denunciation of the Pope by an official spokesman for the lowlife mullahs who run Iran, all allegedly in "protest" of the accuracy of the Pope's remarks.

 

The Pope, who apologized for his remarks of a sort, and said they did not reflect his personal views (without stating explicitly what his personal views were or what the specific ex cathedra position of the Catholic Church was today on the quotation), and Al Quaida are both correct as to what Islamism stands for.

 

9/18/2006:

 

 

 

 

 

There are only 20,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, a low-ball strategy conceived by the Bush Administration to avoid the appearance of a Soviet-style occupation (150,000 troops). NATO commanders have demanded an additional 2,500 troops but they will not come until next year, and then from Poland.

 

 

 

 

The U.S. Supreme Court, in one of ts last holdings for its current term, by a 5-3 vote, declared all Bush Administration procedures for trial and hearings  for Guantanamo detainees a violation of the Geneva Convention, treaties to which the United States is a signatory; and a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a Congressional statute.

 

The ruling did not shut down the Guantanamo prisoner facility per se, and still permits the Bush Administration to try the Guantanamo inmates by either court martial, or openly in the federal court system, according to the  sticter rules of procedure applicable in either case, rules the Bush Administration had sought to make easier for the government by its unilateral creation of the alternative Guantanamo tribunals.

 

Reliable high level sources have indicated to this Newstand that a decision has been made in the Administration to phase out the Guantanamo detention facility. The numbers of prisoners held there has been steadily declining over the past year.

 

Upon the inception of the Guantanamo idea for prisoners, the Association specifically opposed it, on this Newstand, in 2002. The Association said at that time that these terrorists should be killed on the battlefield instead; that little war-winning intelligence was going to come from their interrogations, and that the existence of prisoners at Guantanamo would only fuel anti-American liberal leftists, on or off the Surpreme Court, to spew their propaganda about U.S. torture and the violation of the rights of these poor, harmless terrorists.

 

The Association never altered these original statements and predictions.

 

History has now proven us correct again, big time, in this case.

 

Al Zarqawi was the most prominent terrorist and jihadist in Iraq, although born in Jordan. His strategic and tactical administration of the terrorist campaign in country was responsible for the deaths of over 1,000 U.S. and Coalition troops, and the deaths of many more Iraqis.

 

The U.S. manhunt for him had lasted over 3 years. Iraqis within Al Quaida in Iraq themselves turned Zarqawi in to Coalition Forces, identifying him as staying in a safehouse which was then targetted by two 500 lb. GPS guided smart bombs, killing Zarqawi and three of his lieutenants.

 

There was a $25 million bounty on Zarqawi's head, dead or alive.

 

Other jihadists will now strive to fill his shoes to continue the terror war in Iraq against the U.S. and its interests there.

 

 

 

 

 

See also our story immediately below.

 

6/2/2006:

 

 

 

 

In Haditha, Iraq, a unit of the U.S. Marine Corps was fired upon by murderous Islamic anti-American terrorists seeking to destabilze Iraq, to kill our Marines, and to impose through violence an anti-American, anti-human rights state on the people of Iraq. An IED killed one Marine corporal. A Marine unit is accused of then singling out, in revenge, unarmed Iraqi women and children, in the immediate aftermath, in their house in the immediate vicinity, and of murdering them.

 

Even if the allegations of Marine misconduct have merit, even if other allegations which have surfaced about other incidents have merit, these are isolated instances which the overwhelming number of our troops on the ground have nothing to do with. The U.S. Armed Forces in their policies and official actions go out of their way, and have gone out of their way, to prevent the killing of unarmed Iraqi civilians. There will be some collateral damage with regard to all military activities, however, and this is especially true when terrorists refuse to wear identifying uniforms and deliberately try to fade into and hide behind the civilian population, some of whom support and succor them.

 

Neither this Newstand, nor the Association, has ever advocated, nor do we now advocate, nor will we ever advocate, that unarmed civilians in a theatre of war, with no evidence of their direct participation in terror, with no evidence that they constitute an imminent threat of harm to U.S. Forces, and as an act of revenge for an attack on  U.S. troops, be lined up and shot.  Such an act would constitute a violation of the laws of war.

 

This Newstand does advocate, however, and continues to advocate, in a justifiable paraphrase of the words of U.S. Senator John Kerry:

 

wherever they are."

 

- First Bush-Kerry Televised Debate, 2004,

 

that the United States should identify, find, fix and then hunt down every single Islamic anti-American violent terrorist in the world, men, women and children included, kick in the doors of these identified belligerents, and anyone who is giving them succor, wherever they may be, hatching their plots, and given a reasonable presumption that they are armed, as an pre-emptive matter solely of self-defense, kill them on the spot.

 

 

Then, after they are dead as a result of our military action, we should come home,  and leave their countryfolk to their own devices. We are not about empire, and we cannot afford to create a large, long-standing American army of occupation anywhere in the third world.  But if Islamic radicals in the Middle East start their nonsense again, then they should know, like the Panamanians in 1989, that we will be back.

 

When that is done, when the existing Islamic anti-American terrorists and their supporters are hunted down and killed, and not until that day and hour, will the 3,000 people murdered on 9/11,  and our troops who have been murdered and maimed in the Global War on Terror, smile on us, for on that day, and not before, they will know justice.

 

One of the biggest problems in Iraq, why we probably may not be able to win the non-conventional war there, something this Newstand and this Association have held consistently since the victorious end to the conventional conflict in 2003, is that the President and Secretary of Defense have determined in their heads that a substantial number of U.S. ground forces, e.g., anything above 300,000, in Iraq would fan the anti-American terrorism there. The Secretary of Defense has said as much. 

(Note we did not say insurgency; "insurgency" makes it sound like we are fighting righteous revolutionaries, and we're not. We are fighting, instead, a bunch of sub-human anti-American terrorists, just like we are everywhere in the War on Terror.) 

 

What the Administration has not said publicly, but which they also believe, is that larger ground troops also means weekly U.S. casualties the size we had in Vietnam, making the war in Iraq even more unpopular than it already is with the American people, and causing the people and Congress, like Vietnam, to buckle and simply to cut off all assistance, military or otherwise. That's something the Administration does not want to see, and something the anti-American liberal left in this country does want to see.

 

Thus the Administration is in a trap of its own making, but a trap its opponents are taking advantage of.

 

 

We cannot "hunt down the terrorists," unless we have enough ground forces to do that effectively, and if we had had effectiveness in Iraq in the last three years, which is all the American people rightfully ever asked for, the President wouldn't be seeing the low poll numbers he is seeing. To say that 127,000 U.S. ground troops is enough in a country the size of Iraq to effectively hunt down the terrorists is pathetic tacticly on its face.

 

127,000 isn't even enough to have enough buddies around you to protect you effectively if you get into trouble.

 

But it is enough to simply have our men and women drive up and down roads all day trying to put out fires, making them 'sitting ducks' for the terrorists who use IED's and AK-47's to kill them. That is not what the strategy is supposed to be about, to be sure, but that is another serious negative consequence of the strategy in place.

 

WITHOUT ENOUGH TROOPS IN IRAQ, WITHOUT ENOUGH TROOPS FIGHTING THE WAR ON TERROR ABROAD, NOT ONLY CAN WE NOT WIN THE WAR ON TERROR, WE ARE SIMPLY PUTTING TOO MUCH PRESSURE ON OUR INDIVIDUAL TROOPERS, AND THEY CANNOT TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES, AND WILL NOT BE ABLE TO TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES.

 

That applies if they get into trouble physically because of lack of manpower, and it also applies if they get into trouble morally because of the pressures placed on them because of lack of manpower.

 

See the Association's fuller discussion of this issue on the Legislative Agenda Page.

 

 

6/1/2006:

 

 

 

 

By MARIA JESUS PRADES, Associated Press Writer

With Newstand Commentary

 

Spain's Supreme Court on Thursday threw out an al-Qaida suspect's conviction for conspiracy to commit murder in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, weeks after prosecutors acknowledged the evidence against him was weak.

The court upheld a separate conviction against Syrian-born Spaniard Imad Yarkas for belonging to a terrorist organization.

Before the ruling, Yarkas had been the only person in the world with a standing conviction over the Sept. 11 attacks after a trial. Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States, pleaded guilty in April 2004 and was sentenced to life in prison in May. He did not stand trial. A Moroccan convicted in Germany in 2003 was later acquitted on appeal.

The Spanish Supreme Court also confirmed the acquittal of three other suspects accused of belonging to or collaborating with al-Qaida. Moroccans Driss Chebli, Sadik Merizak and Abdelaziz Benyaich had already been released in April at the request of prosecutors.

The court announced only its verdicts in the Yarkas appeal and the other cases, not its grounds for the decisions. The explanation is expected to be released in a few days, court officials said.

Yarkas is alleged to have founded and led an al-Qaida cell in Spain, which investigators say was a key staging ground for the attacks along with Germany. He was one of 18 people found guilty of terrorism charges in a trial that ended in September 2005.

Yarkas was sentenced to 15 years for conspiracy to commit murder in the Sept. 11 attacks and 12 years for belonging to a terrorist organization. He was the only person at the Spanish trial convicted specifically of Sept. 11 involvement. Chebli and one other man facing charges of planning Sept. 11 were acquitted.

Yarkas appealed his convictions. In April, a new set of prosecutors,  fearful of more Al Quaida attacks on Spain, and appointed by an anti-American socialist government which had taken over, and different from the Conservative government prosecutors at the first trial, asked the Spanish Supreme Court to overturn his conviction in the U.S. attacks, citing a lack of evidence.

It is insanity when the legal processes of any country are manipulated by political motivations for bringing cases, or how cases are bought, or how they are argued. All legal processes the world over should be governed by the exact same legal standards, and those standards should be exacting, objective, and having nothing to do with politics. Anything else is political mumbo-jumbo, and no country which engages in that is worthy to try anyone of anything. Since going to such a country subjects one to their subjective standards of justice, Americans are better advised to stay home, since our courts at least have some semblance of objectivity comparatively on legal matters.

This whole Spanish process, and what we have also seen in regarding terrorism cases and issues in the courts of Germany and of Britain, remind us of the wholesale validity of President George W. Bush's comments in 2004 when he said, in response to a question about the so-called aggressiveness of USG military action against the Islamic terrorists world wide: "What did you think we were going to do,  just bring a few lawsuits against these people?"

Well, this Newstand and its staff has had enough of these lawsuits,  domestic or foreign, all of them. What we should have done, a long time ago, was to forget about all of the lawsuits, hunt down the terrorists where they were hiding anywhere in the world, including Germany and Spain, kick in their doors, and simply kill every one of them inside, and anybody else who got in our way. We may have been violating their laws in doing so, but the protection of American lives and property as a function of our foreign policy trumps any foreign law to the contrary. So say we. 

We've had enough of these lawsuits. Anything about what we've said you don't understand?

Yarkas is a violent murderer. He should have been convicted, and put to death. Anybody who has anything else to say, is certainly not interested in objective justice, and only a moron or worse would give that person the title of lawyer or judge. In any country.

And, speaking as Americans, that's no lawyer we would let represent us.  And, speaking as Americans, that's no judge we would ever let judge us.*

 

*Commentary added by the Newstand

 

5/31/2006:

 

 

 

By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer 

 

A U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday that American soldiers used their guns in self-defense after rioting Afghans opened fire during a melee that broke out after a deadly road crash.

President Bush spoke with the Afghan leader and pledged a full investigation into Kabul's worst unrest since the Taliban's downfall. The anti-foreigner riots were sparked by an accident Monday in which a U.S. truck plowed into a line of cars, killing up to five Afghans.

Col. Tom Collins, the military spokesman, said the driver of the truck was not suspected of any wrongdoing and had not been arrested. He said the truck's brakes were believed to have overheated and failed.

However, he said the military was investigating whether the troops involved in the crash fired their guns into a group of violent demonstrators or over their heads. He said some of the rioters who were throwing stones at the U.S. troops also had weapons and were shooting at them.

"Our initial investigation ... shows that fire came from the crowd, and our soldiers used their weapons to defend themselves," he said. Asked if this meant that they fired into or over the crowd, Collins said, "Our investigation is still looking into this."

The New York Times, on its Web site Wednesday, quoted the chief of highway police in Kabul, Gen. Amanullah Gozar, as saying U.S. soldiers fired into the crowd, killing four people. Gozar, who the Times reported was an eyewitness, said the soldiers were in the last vehicle in a U.S. army convoy involved in the crash.

The Afghan parliament on Tuesday demanded prosecution of U.S. soldiers involved in the truck accident. "Those responsible for the accident on Monday should be handed over to Afghan legal authorities," Saleh Mohammed Saljuqi, an assistant to the parliamentary speaker, cited the motion as saying.

It seems unlikely the parliamentary motion would lead to any action. U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan come under American military jurisdiction, although foreigners working on civilian projects are generally subject to Afghan law.

In the violence that immediately followed the crash, rampaging mobs looted stores and burned some government buildings and offices of international organizations. Up to 20 Afghans were killed and more than 160 wounded, mostly from gunshots. The situation has since calmed, but Kabul remains under a night curfew.

The unrest, seemingly fueled by widespread poverty and unemployment, has added to President Hamid Karzai's woes as militant supporters of the Taliban regime ousted by U.S.-led forces in late 2001 step up attacks and fighting grips volatile southern and eastern regions of the country.

On Wednesday, Bush spoke with Karzai and pledged a comprehensive inquiry into the riots, White House press secretary Tony Snow said.

"They talked about recent developments and the need to continue with police reform and capacity building," Snow said. "The president expressed sympathy for those killed and injured in Kabul on Monday and pledged a full investigation."

The unrest has shaken confidence in authorities' control of the capital. Kabul is patrolled by NATO peacekeepers and is regarded as relatively secure — certainly in comparison to the lawless south, which is wracked by the fiercest clashes in four years.

Early Wednesday, hundreds of suspected Taliban fighters besieged the police headquarters in Chora, a remote town in Uruzgan province, running off 100 police inside and occupying the compound for hours before slipping away again, said Rozi Khan, the regional police chief.

They left behind scorched police vehicles and buildings, he said, adding that police were not returning immediately, fearing an ambush.

The attack underscored the tenuous grip Karzai's government has on the countryside, particularly in the Taliban's former southern heartland.

Uruzgan lies on that region's northern fringes and hundreds of Dutch forces are set to deploy to the province later this year as part of an expansion of NATO forces into the south.

Afghanistan's post-Taliban security forces of 58,000 police and 38,000 soldiers are teaming up with more than 30,000 U.S.-led coalition and NATO troops aiming to calm the country. But security has worsened since the rebels stepped up attacks this spring. In the past two weeks alone, more than 400 people, mostly militants, have been killed in fighting.

In other violence Wednesday, insurgents killed a provincial deputy police chief and wounded three of his officers by firing a rocket-propelled grenade at their vehicle in southern Zabul province, local government spokesman Ali Khail said.

___

Associated Press writers Daniel Cooney and Edward Harris in Kabul and Noor Khan in Kandahar, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

 

"The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 2, 2010

There is no doubt the nation needed to toughen the process of issuing drivers' licenses and identification cards. Consider: 18 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 obtained drivers' licenses or ID cards in the United States to "establish" identifies in this country. Several of them came to Florida for flight training and obtained drivers' licenses.

But in trying to protect residents against murdering zealots, state and federal officials have gone overboard in requiring all applicants for drivers' licenses and ID cards to dig deep into their past to prove who they are.

The new paperwork requirements, which took effect New Year's Day, are mandated by Florida law and "Real ID," a federal law adopted in 2005. States were given time to comply.

The rules are so burdensome for longtime residents that anyone who needs to renew their licenses and identification cards better start the footwork several weeks in advance.

To prove your identity you will need your original birth certificate or a certified copy - even if you were born in one of the nation's territories. If one can't be found, a valid U.S. passport will do.

You'll also need proof you have a Social Security number. That can be accomplished either through presenting your Social Security card, a W-2 form or pay check stub - again, either the original or a certified copy. If you don't have one, that must be disclosed.

In addition, you're required to have two types of documents to prove you live where you say you live. A Florida voter registration card, property deed or mortgage, or vehicle registration or title are just some of the paperwork that will meet the burden of proof.

And in some cases, divorce decrees and marriage licenses will be required if your last name has changed - even if those events occurred 50 years ago. That likely will pose a hardship to many.

Imagine the difficulties senior citizens will encounter trying to get certified copies of their birth certificates.

It would make sense if these requirements applied to new residents of states or new American citizens, but the blanket application is foolish. There is no need to impose such a burden on citizens who have lived in a state their entire lives or on those who have established longtime residency.

It's no consolation that people with Internet access get one shot at renewing their licenses and cards online, or by mail, before having to go to the DMV with papers detailing their personal histories. Too many people are being treated as foreign to their homeland - which is insulting.

We do need a more secure nation. Getting a driver's license or ID card should not be a snap. But let's be realistic. Longtime residents are not the primary terrorist threat. To treat everyone - whether a retiree or recent immigrant - as equally suspicious may be politically correct, but it is unnecessary.

The requirement is significant because it is nearly impossible to function legally in today's society without identification.

It's bad enough that people in Florida who have to renew their cards and licenses this year will discover the Legislature has substantially increased fees - to $48 for a standard driver's license, up from $27 last year, for example.

With the new paperwork requirements, Floridians are being hit with a double whammy, one that will likely result in more costs for people needing copies of documents.

Congress and officials in Florida and other states need to revisit this law to establish a reasonable coverage period or, better yet, have it apply only to new residents or those who have lived in a state for five years or less.

The across-the-board approach defies common sense."

 

 

Zacarias Moussaoui, fundamentalist Muslim of Arab blood, French citizen, and Al Quaida member, was sentenced to life  in a maximum security federal peniitentiary without possibility of parole, on May 5, for his role in the Al Quaida 9/11 conspiracy to fly planes into prominent U.S. buildings. Moussaoui had been nicknamed the "20th conspirator." He is the only Al Quaidist conspirator within the U.S. on 9/11 to be ever have been tried.

 

A federal jury split 11 to 1 for death on one count to which Moussaoui had pled guilty, a vote which, had it been unanimous, would have given Moussaoui  the death penalty. The one holdout was anonymous, refused to make any argument, and kept voting for life over and over again.  However, Newstand sources believe that this juror believed that, since Moussaoui had not actually killed anybody himself, the death penalty was inappropriate. According to federal rules, in a death penalty case, this sort of a hung jury automatically gives the defendant the lesser of the two penalties, in this case, life imprisonment.

 

After he had pled guilty to three counts of conspiracy, Mousaoui was given a lengthy sentencing "trial," during which he at times requested death as a martyr, and at other times requested life. When the jury voted to consider the death penalty the first time, Moussaoui screamed out "God Curse You All," but later he said he wanted to die as a martyr and went out of his way to mock U.S. military officers who cried at the thought of their friends who were killed at the Pentagon, and implied he had poisoned one juror. Then, during the sentencing trial, he told the jurors that he knew there would come a day when America admitted it was defeated in the War on Terror, and that he would be exchanged by a U.S. president (He named George W. Bush) for U.S. soldiers captured by Muslim fundamentalists.

 

Moussaoui's admittedly confusing testimony was also interesting for putting the lie to the arguments of many prominent non-Muslim American government officials, including the President, that most Muslims do not believe the Koran espouses violence. Moussaoui said exactly the opposite from the stand, quoting verse after verse from the Koran advocating jihad against all non-believers. In stating that a majority of Muslims in the Third World believe that the Koran justifies killing all Americans, overthrowing American society violently, and killing all Jews, this writer, for one, believes Moussaoui has the poll numbers correct.

 

That's why he should have been given death. This war we're in is not just with a few sub-humans who are card-carrying members of some formal political party called Al Quaida, and when American politicians make it sound like that is the case, they do a disservice to American national security. This war we're in is with ALL Muslim fundamentalist fanatics worldwide who believe America is the enemy, want to kill us, and who will not rest until they do that, or until we kill them.

 

We can build a new maximum security prison every day, and we will still never have enough jails for all of them.

 

That's why Moussaoui should have been given the death penalty, and it should have been carried out immediately.

 

As far as this writer is concerned, that goes as well for all his supporters.

 

Some people just need killing, and that applies not just to Moussaoui, but also to all his kind.

 

As he was led away to prison, Moussaoui yelled out three things:

 

"God Curse America."

"God Bless bin Laden."

"I won, America, and you lost."

 

 

 

5/1/2006:

 

 

 

 

Professor Sami Al-Arian of the University of South Florida was sentenced today by a federal judge in Tampa to 18 months in prison, and then to be deported from the United States. Al-Arian was convicted as guilty out of his own plea, as a terrorist who conspired to murder Israelis.

 

Al-Arian had publicly praised the U.S. and President Bush, but in private, Arabic speeches to his own crowd, denounced them both as the "great Satan."

 

The only connection his pseudo-religious-educational charity in Tampa had with widows and orphans in the Mid-East is how many of them his charity's funds created in Israel, by murdering their husbands and fathers.

 

If Al-Arian's lips are moving, he's lying.

 

There are plenty, plenty more of Al-Arian's like-minded Muslim religious 501(c)(3)'s around today in the U.S., doing the same thing he was doing.

 

To this date, not a single state has brought a state action, either civil or criminal, against any of them, for fraudulent fundraising or on any other ground.

3/23/2006:

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Afghan man, Abdul Rahman, 41,  is currenty imprisoned in Afghanistan and may be put to death by the Afghan court system because he converted to Christianity 14 years ago.

There is a possibilty that the man would be classified by American psychologists as mentally unstable.

 

Rahman stands by his conversion.

 

Afghanistan, like the U.S., has three independent branches of government: the Executive, currently held by strong US ally President Hamid Karzai; the Legislature, in which many Muslim-oriented parties vie for effective control; and the Judiciary, largely viewed by the population as the country's first protector of Islamic law, the Sharia. The constitution of Afghanistan says that Afghanistan will respect international law, but that the Sharia is the law of the land. The Sharia provides, as conservatively interpreted, contrary to everything every member of this Association believes, that conversion from Islam to any other religion consitutes apostacy, and is punishable by death.

No person in Afghanistan, nor any person we have been able to research in any other Muslim country, in the immediate past, has ever been put to death as a matter of governmental action, for apostacy. Such a governmental action would be straight out of the Middle Ages, and needs to be condemned by the world community in advance.

 

This Newstand has previously commented on the craziness of the world views of the average Afghan, and the craziness of any Muslim radical fundamentalist in the third world who seeks to achieve his or her world views through violence, including state-sponsored violence. This Newstand specifically denounced the Taliban government of Afghanistan for dynamiting Buddhist monuments into dust in northern Afghanistan, and in arresting  two US citizen Christian missionaries for preaching the Christian gospel in Afghanistan, and then threatening them with death, acts both taken by the Taliban prior to our overthrowal of their government in 2001. This Newstand implied that both of these Taliban actions  were akin to acts of war directed at everything the American people stand for, and should stand for, in world affairs. This Newstand stands by those implications in this case.

 

There is no way the United States of

America should continue its involvement in protecting the Government of Afghanistan in the War on Terror

if any Afghan, to the slightest degree, is punished for exercising his God-given rights of conscience to freedom of religion. If that becomes government sponsored action in Afghanistan, or anywhere else, such a government is better considered as an enemy of the United States than its friend. Come what may.

 

Both Al Quaidists and anti-Talibanists in Afghanistan have publicly threatened that if Rahman is not put to death, they will overthrow Karzai, kill Rahman,  and kill everyone in Afghanistan, and anywhere else in the world for that matter, who feels Rahman should not be put to death. If there is one thing in the world that this Association stands for, it is that these murderers and violent blackmailing thugs need to be stood up to, wherever in the world they are, and need to be taken down, and destroyed from the face of the earth, every last one of them, and that no innocent person seeking to go about his or her affairs in peace, in any civilized country, will ever be safe until that day is achieved.

 

This Newstand was asked by persons in the USG not to express the above opinions. It was not a requirement, nor was any threat implied or stated.

 

Conscience, and the consistency of our previously expressed opinions stated, mean that we could not comply with that request.

 

US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has stated to President Karzai in a telphone conversation today that the execution of  Rahman would be viewed unfavorably by the United States Government. This Association thinks she, and the USG, need to step up the pressure to a higher level.

 

Now that we have added our voice to this advocacy on behalf of the freedom of man, we expect that that is exactly what will take place, in unannouced conversations, tomorrow, and in the coming week, and that the situation will accordingly resolve itself.

 

Stay tuned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All politics is local, anywhere in the world, and anyone who is involved with the foreign affairs of the United States, or who is thinking about going into that area of endeavor as a career, firstly should take cognizance of that fact. This Newstand believes our current Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, has, and did, in this case.

 

3/7/2006:

 

 

 

 

There is talk of civil war in Iraq.

And there may very well be a Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq, a possibilty of civil war this Newstand and our sister Newstamd, the National Security Affairs Newstand, have analyzed repeatedly in the past, analyses which are still posted and which anybody can look up and read, research and analyze for their own account.

 

But all that talk of a civil war in Iraq, all that analysis, misses the point for the United States and its interests in the world, and the cause of Freedom in the world.

 

Al Quaida (Last available site: Go to www.google.com, type in drasat.com, and view the cached site (Warning: the FBI has managed to take down this site, and monitors anyone seeking access to this site)), an international non-governmantal organization with many world-wide affiliates, seeks to take down both the government and the society of the United States of America. That's their goal, it's that simple. It is the goal of all the millions, perhaps billions, of their sympathizers worldwide, Americans and non-Americans included. They hate America. It's that simple.

 

If the creation of chaos, or murder, or mass murder, in Iraq, or elsewhere, gets them closer to that goal, they will carry out those activities. To them, the end always justifies the means, which means, to this Association, they do not believe in any faith-based or God-based religion.

 

We need some people who refuse to say what we've just said in the previous paragraph, Muslims or non-Muslims, to publicly say the same thing.

 

We need to stay the course in Iraq. Our course is to establish a true democracy which recognizes the human and constitutional rights every person, born in every country, is given, and has always been given, at the moment of their creation, not by government, but, instead, by Nature and by Nature's God.

 

That course is a noble course. It was our mission during the Revolution of 1776. It was also our mission in South Vietnam, and in Vietnam we failed in that mission. It is our mission today  in Iraq, and we may well win, or fail there, or maybe it will be somewhere in between.

 

But it is, and was, and will forever continue to be, a noble mission. Anyone who says otherwise, Marine in Congress or otherwise, is not speaking accurately, and not speaking fairly.

 

We are the best, and the greatest country on earth. We are not in it for empire, we are not in it to create a march state or a miltary echelon who rules over the rest of us. We are in it for the good we represent, we, the United States of America.

 

It's that simple.

 

2/18/2006

 

 

 

 

 

Recent testimony this week before Congress has demonstrated that there are on-going fractures beteween the Department of Homeland Secrity (DHS) and its subordinate agencies. This recent testimony involved conflicting remarks made by DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and fired FEMA Director Michael D. Brown, over the response of the federal government to the Hurricane Katrina emergency.

 

The importnat conclusion about this testimony relates insignificantly to the example cited. Instead, it relates more importantly in general to the on-going bureaucratic problems created by Congress when  Congress created the gigantic bureaucracy without tight contol, known as DHS. This analysis applies as well when Congress did the same thing later, when it created the bureaucracy known as the Directorate of Nationall Intelligence (DNI). The similar problems in the latter agency have not yet matrialized, but they will emerge.

 

Your Newstand, and our sister USNVA Newstand, the National Security Affairs Newstand,  predicted these exact problems as of the time these two agencies were created, and you can still read our commentaries in our online editions,, posted at the time, on those two Newstands.

 

Nobody listened to us then. The problem is with gigantic bureaucracies in Washington. Re-arranging the organizational chart to mask a desired increase in "bigness" does not cure specific poblems on the ground. To the contrary, that approach makes dealing with those same problems worse, because the change creates more options in shifting the blame game as to who is at fault in the national government when something goes wrong, a game all breaucrats, all politicians, love to play.

 

In the area of national security and the War on Terror, it's the game that's wrong. It's a game that has been played for a long time, under the current rules. It's the game that's needs to be changed.

 

In the name of the people of the United States of America.

 

 

************************************

 

2/3/2006

 

 

 

 

 

Armed Muslim terrorists in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq have taken to the streets threatening to kill Europeans, because of editorial cartoons in newspapers in Denmark, Norway, Italy and Germany depicting the prophet Mohammed in a sarcastic light, e.g., with lit fuses coming out of his turban.

 

These Islamists are a bunch of cowardly bullies. They are sadists who cut people up on camera. They make war on women, even when they aren't kidnapping and killing them. They hate free speech and societies based on free speech. There is no such thing as a society which is both Islamist and democratic.

 

The day they are all dead and buried, that will be the day the War on Terror really ends.

 

 

 

TERRORIST GROUP HAMAS SWEEPS PALESTINIAN ELECTION,

AS YOUR NEWSTAND PREDICTED

 

By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH, Associated Press Writer

and WOT Newstand Editorial Staff

 

 

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas asked Hamas on Friday to form a new government after his vanquished Fatah Party rejected a role in the Cabinet and  Israel ruled out peace talks in what could be the first steps to isolate the militant group after its election victory.

 

Both Fatah and Hamas are listed as terrorist groups on the Newstand’s Glossary of Terrorist Groups. While Fatah might be called the more moderate of the two, Hamas is especially vicious, with a platform explicitly calling for the murder of every Jewish man, woman and child on the earth. This Newstand has consistently said in articles going back to 2002, all of which continue to be posted, that the Hamas platform represents in fact what is in the heart of the average Palestinian, and in the heart of the average Muslim fundamentalist.

 

Acting Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni appealed to the international community not to legitimize a Palestinian government led by Hamas, saying elections are not a "laundry" for terrorist groups.

This Newstand has consistently chided the Bush administration to put the support of pro-Americans abroad above the support of “democracy” for democracy’s sake, citing the key example of Adolf Hitler, who initially came to power in Germany in 1933 exclusively through the democratic and constitutional processes of the Weimar Republic.

Speaking to reporters, Livni said Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last summer opened a window of opportunity in peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians. With the election of Hamas, she said, "the Palestinians slammed it shut."

The United States and some European nations said Hamas must renounce violence and drop its demand to destroy Israel. This Newstand continues to feel it is just silly for government leaders to ask a leopard if he will kindly change his spots, and swear to it on a worthless piece of paper. We shouldn’t be negotiating with terrorists; we should be hunting them down and killing them, even if they are heads of state or governments.

"If your platform is the destruction of Israel, it means you're not a partner in peace, and we're interested in peace," President Bush said, on the other hand. Similar statements came from other parts of the world.

European parliament members spoke of the possibility that donors would cut off vital aid to pressure Hamas to moderate its hard-line positions. The U.S. consul in Jerusalem, Jacob Walles, said Friday it was too early to discuss that possibility.

Secretary of State  Condoleezza Rice is to meet in London on Monday with U.N., Russian and European leaders as the so-called "Quartet" of would-be international peacemakers evaluates the results and tries to decide how to proceed.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said he had asked Abbas, who is Fatah's chief, to meet Sunday to discuss forming a new government. Abbas' office said no appointment has been made yet, and Abbas said separately that he would ask Hamas to lead the next government.

Israel was unprepared for the Hamas landslide. Foreign and defense ministry scenarios had put such a stunning blow to the long-ruling Fatah as a low probability, officials said. They should, instead, should have listened to this Newstand’s intelligence sources. This Newstand predicted the Hamas victory, for the first time, in an article posted on July 17, 2004.

This Newsstand now predicts a surge of support for the hard line Likud Party in Israel’s Knesset elections scheduled for this spring.

But after the Fatah electoral rout, acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert quickly ruled out talks.

"The state of Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian administration if even part of it is an armed terrorist organization calling for the destruction of the state of Israel," Olmert said.

Fatah, turned out of office partially by Palestinians angry over its corrupt and inefficient government, offered no help to Hamas, catapulted into leadership after its first foray into parliamentary politics.

Fatah leaders decided late Thursday not to enter a joint government with Hamas.

Hamas does not need Fatah — it won 76 of the 132 seats in parliament, a sweeping majority. Fatah, the undisputed ruler of Palestinian politics for four decades, got only 43. But Fatah could help Hamas by serving as a conduit for talks with Israel, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that he intended to pursue peace talks with Israel. This Newstand’s opinion is that his comment was lame.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia of Fatah and his Cabinet resigned Thursday to make room for a Hamas government.

Thousands of angry Fatah supporters marched in Gaza City early Friday, firing rifles in the air and demanding that Fatah leaders resign, while backing their decision to stay out of a Hamas government.

A large crowd of Hamas supporters briefly clashed with Fatah loyalists outside the Palestinian parliament in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday, with both sides throwing stones after Fatah activists pulled a Hamas flag from the building. Hamas terrorists had previously yanked down the Palestinian flag from the building and raised the green flag of Hamas terrorism in its place.

On Friday, three people were injured after an argument between about 20 Hamas and Fatah loyalists degenerated into gunfire and rock-throwing. One man was treated for moderate gunshot wounds and two for minor injuries caused by rocks, witnesses and hospital officials said.

Hamas ideology does not recognize the presence of a Jewish state in an Islamic Middle East. In recent years, however, some Hamas leaders have grudgingly accepted the idea of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, as long as it is understood to be only a stage toward the utter elimination of Israel from the face of the earth..

Avi Dichter, a former Israeli security services chief, said he didn't expect terror to rise once Hamas takes over.

"The moment they become partner to the Palestinian government, reality will become a lot more complicated for them than it was when they were a terror organization alone," Dichter told Army Radio.

"I think it would be illogical — even insane — for them to toe the extremist line they have been following until now," he added. "I think we need to wait and see if common sense dictates."

This Newstand does not feel that it will.

Economic constraints may curb Hamas' extremism. With the Palestinian Authority dependent on foreign aid for its survival and on Israel for day-to-day needs such as electricity, water and the movement of people and goods, Hamas will have a hard time ignoring international calls to renounce violence, should Israel and the West impose sanctions.

Hamas leaders themselves have hinted that despite their hard-line ideology, they will be pragmatic and not disrupt daily life in the territories they are about to rule.

 

"We will not let our position adversely affect the daily life of our people," a Hamas leader, Osama Hamdan, declared.

 

 

3/28/2006

 

UPDATE

 

Contrary to our prediction about an upsurge in votes for the Israeli Likud party, Kadima today won a plurality of votes in elections to the Knesset, winning 32 out of 120 seats, and permitting it to form a majority government with the help of the Labor party, which finished second with 22 seats, or some minor parties, thus ensuring the Sharon approach of Israeli disengagement from the Palestinian territories and the continued offer of an olive branch to the Hamas government of Palestine for a final resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

 

The new, far-right, anti-Palestinian terrorist party, Yisrael Beiteinu, fished third with 14 seats and Benyamin Netanyahu's Likud party, also on the right, finished fourth with 12 seats. Together, Yisrael Beitenu and Likud captured 26 seats, second only to Labor.

 

Stay tuned here for the latest hot news and analysis on this subject.

 

 

 

 

 

*****************************

 

1/25/2006:

 

 

 

After anti-U.S. demonstrations in Pakistan by Muslim fundamentalists, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, apparently primarily for his domestic political audience, complained about unilateral U.S. air action on Pakistani soil designed to kill Usama's Second-in-Command al-Zawahiri.

 

This Association's initial post-9/11 lecture to the Bush Administration, still appearing on the 2001 News and Analysis Page, told Musharraf where to get off. We'll rephrase that here, for the record:

 

U.S. Forces will go anywhere they want in the Muslim world to kill terrorists. If your people don't like that, tell them to get out of our way, or we will clear them, and you, out of our way.

It's that simple. Not more. Not less.

 

1/21/2006:

 

 

 

Speaking on a tape released by Al Jazeera on 1/18/2006, Usama bin Laden again threatens the United States. The "we" in his speech refers to Muslim fundamentalist terrorists wordwide. After studying the tape in Arabic, the Association believes he made four succinct points addressed directly to the American audience:

 

1. Bush is a liar. You are losin in Iraq. we will win, and the American people, in your "polls" say we will win.

 

2. We planned and carried out the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London. These are "evil" allies of the United States.

 

3. We are planning new attacks on the U.S. Your "security system" is a paper tiger. You will see these new attacks soon.

 

4. We offer you a "truce." No new attacks on either side, and we will help you rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

The official response of the United States Navy Veterans Association: The United States should not negotiate with any terrorist, ever, period. The war of Terror on America will end at a day and a time of our choosing, not theirs, if at all. We demand, doable or not, the unconditional surrender, or the destruction, of all Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who war on the United States.

Period.

 

For the record, this Newstand comments that Usama's unusual (for him) point 4 was made out of weakness in his strategic position, and not out of strength.

 

1/20/2006:

 

 

 

In the early days of this Newstand we reported accurately that the Taliban had, immediately prior to 9/11, captured three female Christian missionaries in Afghanistan and were threatening to kill them. This Newstand said that the United States would not stand for that and, in fact, those missionaries were freed unharmed.

 

A reporter for the Christian Science Monitor out of Boston has been kidnapped recently in Iraq by Muslim fundamentalist terrorists there. They are threatening her with death. Many pro-American journalists have  been both kidnapped and murdered in Iraq by Muslim fundamentalist terrorists.

 

It is about time that the United States Government said that where there is a place in the world where people who are simply reporting or testifying to the truth as they see it, and somebody attempts to stop them, then that somebody is an enemy of the United States, and of Freedom.

 

If those places, those peoples, those governments, are doing that with murder or with the threat of murder, then they are murderers.

 

It's that simple.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2) No person, Lara Logan included, no matter how pretty they are, has any business working in the news industry anywhere, not even for Al Jazeera, not even as a janitor, if they disagree with anything in point (1).

********************************

 

12/28/2005:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Sami Al-Arian, the de facto North American head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (see this Newstand's Glossary of the Islamic Terrorist Groups in the 1st Edition), was acquitted by a federal jury in Tampa of almost all charges he ran a terrorist ring in the U.S. under the guise of a charity. His Islamic co-defendants were acquitted of all charges. The acquittals constitute a major blow to the Bush Administration's domestic War on Terror.

 

Two jurors, out of twelve, refused, to acquit Al-Arian of racketeering charges, thus deadlocking the jury on those two lesser counts against him alone. The two anonymous jurors gave interviews implying the other ten jurors attempted to steamroller them. The interviews imply the Al-Arian case was lost in voir dire, the process by which jurors are selected before the trial even begins. The federal prosecutors assigned apparently did a less than superlative job in weeding out jurors biased either against the Administration or in favor of Al-Arian, or in favor of terror.

 

That Al-Arian is a bona fide terrorist who believes every Jewish man, woman and child should be murdered cannot be, and is not, in doubt. What the government failed to do was to show that the money Al-Arian and his group sent to the Middle East went directly into the hands of terrorists for the purpose of committing terrorist acts. One of the holdout jurors, "Char," said that the acquitting jurors seemed hell-bent on drawing an artificial and logically strained distinction between the terrorist arm of Al-Arian's group, and its "charitable" arm.

 

The USG can now either re-try Al-Arian on the racketeering charge, and try to voir dire in more patriotic jurors in a second trial, or they can move to deport him. This Newstand's highly placed sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, say it will be the latter.

 

Either way, justice will not be served until this bum and his minions are finally brought down for good.

 

************************************

 

12/17/2005:

 

 

 

As Iraqis go to the polls in record numbers to elect their first ever democratic government (a government which, this Newstand now predicts, will turn out to be friendly to the long term national security interests of the United States in both the Mid-East and in the War on Terror, which friendliness is the real reason that government is opposed both within and without Iraq), we present the following cold statistics, without spin, on the war in Iraq. The figures present the situation in Iraq for the month of November 2005 compared to the situation there for the month of November 2004:

 

U.S. troop fatalities: 96, down from 137.

Iraqi security forces: 212,000, up from 114, 000.

Number of quality Iraqi security forces: 35,000, up from 5,000.

Iraqi security force fatalities: 176, up from 160.

Iraqi civilian fatalities: 600, down from 1500.

Mutiple fatality bombings: 41, up from 11.

Kidnappings of foreigners: 11, up from 5.

U.S. ground troops: 160,000, up from 138, 000.

Other coalition forces: 23,000, down from 24,000.

USG estimated number of insurgents: 18,000, down from 20,000.

Daily insurgent attacks: 90, up from 77.

Daily tips from Iraqis about insurgents: 150, up from 10.

 

Crude oil production: 2.0 millions of barrels per day, same.

Average electrical power: 3.7 megawatts, up from 3.2 megawatts.

Annual GDP: $29 billion, up from $28 billion.

Cumulative USG aid disbursed: $12.0 billion, up from $3.6 billion.

Registered cars: 3.1 million, up from 2.5 million.

Unemployment rate: 32%, down from 35%.

Telephone subscribers: 5 million, up from 2.2 million.

 

Iraqis optimistic about future: 49%, down from 54%.

Iraqis favoring near term U.S. troop withdrawal: 80%, up from 75%.

Expected Sunni share of Iraq's oil revenue under new regime: 10%, down from 20%.

 

*******************************

 

11/11/2005:

 

 

 

 

There is a movement in the U.S. Senate, led by Senator John McCain (R - Ariz.) to declare by legislation that no USG personnel shall use torture on any prisoner, terrorist or otherwise, uniformed or otherwise. Senator McCain argues that if we do not do this, captured USG personnel will be tortured in return. He also argues that the U.S. must improve its image in the Muslim world.

 

While Senator McCain's arguments have some merit, they do not sway us. On September 11, 2001 the USG was not torturing anybody in the Muslim world. On that day, armed animals who, by reason of both their culture and their ideology, have no respect for the laws of nature, never mind the laws of war, seized unarmed American civilians aboard our airplanes, imposed psychological torture of the utmost magnitude on them and, then, slit the throats of our stewardesses with box cutters. From what we know of these sub-humans, and the people who support them today, it is our firm conclusion that no self-righteous U.S. legislation designed to place a halo over the heads of our troops will have the slightest impact on them whatsoever. These people, and we use that term generously, instead, need one thing, and that thing is killing.

 

The Senate would be better advised to approach the issue of torture with the following resolution:

 

"It is the sense of the Senate, resolved: If any foreign person tortures, or has tortured, any U.S. person wearing the cloth of our Nation, that the Commander-in-Chief is hereby authorized, indefinitely, and using executive discretion, to destroy such foreign person and all his or her affiliates, by whatever means deemed necessary.

'Torture' is defined as the intentional infliction of any physical or psychological harm without justifiable provocation."

 

 

 

 

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON -

President Bush reversed course on Thursday and accepted Sen. John McCain's call for a law banning cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of foreign suspects in the war on terror.

"It's a done deal," said McCain, talking to reporters in a driving rain outside the White House after he met with the president.

Under the deal, CIA interrogators would be given the same legal rights as currently guaranteed to members of the military who are accused of breaking interrogation guidelines. Those rights say accused people can defend themselves by claiming they were obeying an order and did not know the actions were unlawful. The government also would provide counsel for accused interrogators.

"We've sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists," McCain said earlier as he sat next to Bush in the Oval Office. "We have no grief for them, but what we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behavior and treatment of all people, no matter how evil or bad they are. And I think this will help us enormously in winning the war for the hearts and minds of people throughout the world in the war on terror."

The White House at one point threatened a veto if the ban was included in legislation sent to the president's desk, and Vice President Dick Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to all Republican senators to give an exemption to the CIA.

But congressional sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of the ban, and McCain, a former Navy pilot who was held and tortured for five and a half years in Vietnam, adopted the issue.

The Republican maverick and the administration have been negotiating for weeks in search of a compromise, but it became increasingly clear that he, not the administration, had the votes in Congress.

Bush called McCain "a good man who's honored the values of America."

"We have worked very closely with the senator and others to achieve that objective as well as to provide protections for those who are the front line of fighting the terrorists," Bush said.

McCain thanked Bush for his personal participation in the negotiations and his effort to resolve their disagreements.

McCain said there are no loopholes in the agreement. The negotiations with the White House produced an agreement to provide to civilian interrogators the same legal defense protections as those afforded military interrogators and to set up a process for legal counsel.

McCain's amendment would prohibit "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of anyone in U.S. government custody, regardless of where they are held. It also would require that service members follow procedures in the Army Field Manual during interrogations of prisoners in Defense Department facilities.

In discussions with the White House, a provision was added modeled after the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That says that military personnel accused of violating interrogation rules can defend themselves if a reasonable person could have concluded they were following a lawful order. The addition extends those rights to CIA interrogators, and McCain said from the Oval Office that they were "legitimate concerns."

Officials said the language also now includes a specific statement that those who violate the standards will not be afforded immunity from civil or criminal lawsuits.

In recent weeks, the administration had sought to add language that would offer protection from prosecution for interrogators accused of violating the provision. But McCain rejected that, arguing it would undermine the ban by not giving interrogators reason to follow the law.

Earlier this year, the Senate included McCain's original provisions in two defense bills, including a must-pass $453 billion spending bill that provides $50 billion for the

Iraq war. But the House omitted them from their versions, and the bills have been stalled.

Negotiations intensified this week, with Congress under pressure to approve at least the spending bill before adjourning for the year.

Supporters of the provisions say they are needed to clarify current anti-torture laws considering abuses at  Abu Ghuraibin Iraq and allegations of misconduct by U.S. troops at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

They also say that passing such legislation will help the United States repair an image they say has been tarnished by the prisoner abuse scandal.

The White House long has contended that the United States does not engage in torture.

 

FOR THE ASSOCIATION NOTE:

The Association strongly opposes, and will continue to strongly oppose, the specific language of Senator McCain's bill, and will continue to oppose it after it is enacted into law, for the reasons cited. Painting a self-appointed halo around the heads of our U.S. Armed Forces and CIA interogators will do absolutely nothing for our image in the self-righteous Islamic radical world, and will do absolutely nothing for U.S. POWs captured by vile scum like the Viet Cong or the Al Quaida. Moreover, domestic child abusers, rapists, murderers and other domestic violent criminals will take about a week, we figure, as soon as the ACLU gets into the act, to file a federal lawsuit saying that somebody said something to them while in domestic federal custody that "degraded" them.

Senator McCain may be a hero to many, and this Association certainly does not disagree with President Bush's categorization of him, but this piece of legislation, if it is heroic, is primarily heroic to the lawyers of America, the lawyers of the ACLU, the lawyers of the International Red Cross and the lawyers of the World Court.

 

 

 

*************************************

 

10/31/2005:

 

 

 

2025 U.S. Armed Forces personnel have been killed in action in Iraq since the beginning of the war there, approximately 2 years and 7 months ago.

 

U.S. casualties, during the height of the Vietnam War, averaged 100 - 150  KIAs per week, or 5200 -7500 per year.

 

 

 

 

************************************

 

10/26/2005

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., on PBS-TV's Lehrer Report last night, said that the U.S. was on the right course in Iraq, and that U.S. troop withdrawals could begin next year.

 

This Newstand, as well as our sister NSA Newstand, has gone back and forth over the past two years on Bush Administration plans to begin a drawdown of troops from Iraq. That is because Administration plans have changed, and not because any of our stories were inaccurate as of the time they were posted.

 

The Bush Administration still seeks a drawdown of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2006, as reported to us from high-level Administration officials.

 

A respected, neutral, think tank, the Institute for Strategic Studies (ISS) has posited recently that substantial numbers of U.S. troops (currently there are 159,000 U.S. troops in Iraq) will have to remain in Iraq indefinitely (regardless of who the U.S.  President is), even after 2008, if USG stated goals of democratization, stability and the prevention of Iraq from falling into the hands of the Al Quaidists, are to be achieved.

 

This Newstand concurs with the conclusions of the ISS position paper.

 

Those goals mentioned were at the outset, and  are today, both admirable and noble, in the eyes of the U.S. Navy Veterans Association.

 

10/13/2005:

 

 

 

 

There are presently approximately 152,000 U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq. About half of those are  Regular Forces and about half are Reservists and National Guard. 49,000 are from the Army National Guard, 22,000 are from the Army Reserve, and 4,000 from the Marine Corps Reserve.

 

The Guard and Reserve accounted for more than half of all U.S. deaths in iraq in August and in September - the first time that has happened in consecutive months. In the first five weeks of the conventional war, they accounted for 10% of all U.S. deaths and, for all of 2004, 20%.

 

In Vietnam, by comparison, the vast majority of our troops on the ground were Regular Forces.

 

It is a not so well kept secret in the military that both our Reservists and our Guardsmen continue to complain that the equipment they are provided with in Iraq are hand-me-downs and rejects.

 

The Association continues to lobby for substantial expansions of manpower for the U.S. Armed Forces, especially for the Regular Army and  Regular Marine Corps.

 

 

*************************************

 

9/1/2005:

 

 

 

 

 

Our WOT Newstand reporters embedded with our troops in Iraq report, almost unanimously,

(a) that the overwhelming majority of our troops there support the war in Iraq; and

(b) the question uppermost in their minds is why many in the American media are promoting so-called polls allegedly showing that currently a majority of Americans believe that the war in Iraq is a mistake. The troops interviewed question who these people are taking these so-called polls (meaning who are they individually and what is the bias in how the words of the polled questions are written), who exactly are the people who were polled, and what Americans in their hometowns in the heartland of America really think.

 

One frequently heard, impromptu, question, by our reporters, including variants, from our troops, was: "Who are these people taking these anti-war polls in the U.S.? Are they trying to promote an anti-Vietnam War type movement? Why?"

 

Here are the results of a scientific, representative sample poll this Newstand conducted among our troops in Iraq over the period August 12 - August 26, 2005:

 

"When you return to the U.S., will you watch, read, or listen to, the following as a source of the news?"

 

                                                                       NO

CBS-TV                                                         75%

NBC-TV                                                         63%

ABC-TV                                                         54%

CNN-TV                                                         78%

New York Times                                          72%

Washington Post                                         69%

 

 

When our troops on the ground in Iraq are stating that these people are getting the story in Iraq wrong, and it is clear that that is exactly what they are saying, then who are the presidents of these news divisions, the publishers of these newspapers, and the so-called "experts" who work for them as reporters and members of their editorial staffs, to be saying that our troops are liars, and that the former are getting the stories, and their focus, and their emphases, straight?

 

Who is in charge of what the "news" constitutes in the American establishemnt? How did they get, and how do they maintain, their positions, exactly?

 

These are neither facetious, nor frivolous, questions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A German court has convicted Moroccan Mounir Motassadeq and sentenced him to serve a remaining 4 1/2 years in prison as a key member of the Hamburg cell that planned the September 11 attack on the United States. During the trial, the German judge, Ernst-Rainer Schudt, criticized the Bush Administration by name.

 

Motassadeq, as this Newstand previously reported, was originally convicted in 2003 and sentenced to 15 years in prison. We complained at that time about the leniency of that sentence.

 

A German appellate court overturned that sentence in 2004. Both this Newstand and certain German prosecutors complained again. The latter bravely retried the case.

 

This is the result. Motassadeq will be scott free again when he is 36!

 

4 1/2 more years in prison for direct and knowing assistance to Al Atta to perpetrate mass muder killing over 3000 human beings, many of them Germans!

 

The Socialist German Interior Minister Otto Schily praised the verdict.

*********************************

 

8/22/2005:

 

 

 

 

 

1864 U.S. troops have been killed in the war in Iraq to date, and 223 in Afghanistan.

 

14,061  U.S. troops have received serious physical injuries in these two theatres as of date, not counting those who have filed claims for psychological injury.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Way back on 1/1/2002, and in our Updates to that story, this Newstand criticized the Blair Administration in Britain for permitting foreign-born Muslim jihadists to freely emigrate into the United Kingdom. We implied that the Blair Administration was coddling them by permitting them to freely  preach their violent hatred both on the street, in British jails and in mosques in Britain.  We said there should be a crackdown on those people, and that they should be sent packing.

 

Well, in the aftermath of the July, 2005 London bombings by Al Quaidists, Prime Minister Tony Blair has decided to heed our specific recommendations.

 

His government last week proposed sweeping and specific new laws which would:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bush Administration would be well advised to study this proposed British legislation. Much of it could, and should, be applied here as well.

 

UPDATE 11/9/2005:

 

WOT Newstand Staff

For the Association, in part:

 

 

Blair's 90 day detention proposal was voted down by the British House of Commons this date. The Opposition Conservatives voted almost unanimously to defeat the bill for opportunistic political reasons, to cause disruption for Blair within his own Labour Party. Had the Conservative leader been British prime minister during the recnt London attacks, this is exactly the kind of legislation he would have proposed.

 

The Association does not lobby for foreign legislation or policy. Were it to do so, however, Blair's proposals would be exactly the kind of legislation it would support.

 

 

 

 

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As Israel prepared for the forced removal of its settlers in Gaza, to commence August 17 in an eviction which will involve about 60,000 Israeli troops, and about 4,000 remaining settlers living in 21 settlements all along the Mediterrean coast there, masked, and fully armed, Hamas terrorists marched through the streets of Gaza City today, shouting in Arabic, according to eyewitness Newstand sources, that 'they drove Israel out of Gaza with terror attacks,' and that they would ultimately drive all the Jews into the sea by the same means.

 

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke in Hebrew on Israeli television today, saying that he was "forced" to order the evictions. "Forced by whom?" was an unspoken question to which every Israeli knew the answer. Without the promise of unlimited military supplies  and assistance from the U.S. if Israel ever got into serious trouble because of an Arab invasion, every military analyst in the world knows Israel would be finished.

 

For those worlwide, who believe we can negotiate with, accomodate, or compromise with terror, or do not believe that such accomodation emboldens terrorism, this Newstand invites them to heed the words of Hamas' street, because it is those marchers, not George Bush, not Ariel Sharon, and not Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas,  who REALLY speak for the jihadist terror movement worldwide.

 

 

 

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8/15/2005:

 

 

 

 

 

High level sources within the Pentagon, speaking on condition of anonymity, have told this Newstand that the Bush Administration has a well and strongly defined plan to reduce U.S. Forces in Iraq to

 

80,000 by Summer, 2006

 

and

 

40,000 by December 31, 2006.

 

The plan is preconditioned on the will and capability of a popularly elected Iraqi government and its forces to contain the jihadist insurgency, an insurgency which will most certainly continue after American military personnel targets are gone.

 

Sometime ago both this Newstand and our sister National Security Affairs Newstand opined that the war in  Vietnam and the war in Iraq were not the same war, citing, among other points, the cultural differences between the respective peoples.

 

Well, this Newstand woulsd also like to offer an equally valid counterpoint to that previously made, and previously and currently correct argument:

 

The vicious Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Communists did not conquer South Vietnam in 1975, after U.S. Forces had left, because the South Vietnamese people overwhelmingly loved them. They won, in large measure, because the South Vietnamese people were sorely tired of 20 years of non-stop war, and they turned to the strongesst force available domestically which promised to impose peace.

 

Likewise, the Taliban did not capture Afghanistan in the 1990's because an overwhelming majority of Afghans loved them. They captured Afghanistan (or 90% of it, at least) because the Afghan people were simply tired of over 10 years of non-stop war, and they turned to the strongest force available domestically which promised to impose peace.

 

These two examples of what can happen amongst culturally dissimiliar people may be lost on the average American voter, and may be lost even on some in our government.

 

But one thing this Newstand is certain of:

these points are not lost on Al Quaida,

or on Usama bin Laden

or on his deputies.

 

 

 

 

He's right about that.

He's not right about many things,

but he's right about that.

 

 

 

8/1/2005:

 

 

 

 

 

Uzbek President Islam Karimov has served notice on the USG that U.S. Forces must clear out of the Karshi-Khanabad air base within six months. The major base was used by the DoD to provide air support for the War on Terror in Afhanistan, and housed about 1,000 U.S. personnel. The USG had paid over $15 million to Uzbek authorities for the use of the airfield since 2001.

 

Intelligence sources have reported to this Newstand that the eviction was an outlet for Karimov's pique because the USG was going to officially lecture him  for his mowing down of over 500 Muslim anti-government rioters in Andijan province in May, a lecture this Newstand correctly predicted was going to happen in its 5/17/2005 story on Uzbekistan.

 

DoD sources have told this Newstand that the U.S. will rely on other bases in nearby Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan for air support, and that the USG's efforts in Afghanistan will not be materially affected by Karimov's move. Neither Kyrgyzstan nor Tajikistan border Afghanistan. Uzbekistan does.

 

Karimov is also a close ally of, and supported by, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

 

7/31/2005:

 

 

 

 

 

As of today the U.S. Armed Forces have suffered 1792 killed in action in the Iraq war.

 

Over 43,000 U.S. service personnel have been seriously wounded or injured in the line of duty there, including those asserting serious mental illness.

 

As of today , the Association's NSA Newstand will cease updating casualty figures for Iraq in their classic 2/10/2003 Special Report "Operation Iraqi Freedom.

 

Instead, casualty figures for Iraq will from time to time be reported on this Newstand.

 

The NSA Newstand will of course update final casualty figures in their Special Report upon the total withdrawal of U.S. and Coalition Forces from Iraq.

 

 

 

7/30/2005:

 

 

 

 

 

As more and more suicide bombers materialize in London and in Iraq, and as the appeasers and excuse makers for jihadist terror make more and more phony arguments that we have to eliminate American imperialism and colonialism as policy because the poor terrorists are aggrieved by those policies,  a new poll from the credible Pew Research Center suggests that support for terror is in fact waning in the Muslim world. Three quarters of those polled in Morocco and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia said Islamic extremism posed a threat to their countries.

 

But Andrew Kohut, Director of the Center, also said that there are still very large percentages of people in the Muslim world who supprt suicide bombings and say they have a high regard for Usama bin Laden.

 

The exact results of the poll:

 

7/29/2005:

 

 

 

 

U.S. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and a number of other U.S. Senators, are supporting amendments to the newest supplemental for the War on Terror in Iraq which basically declare that all captured terrorists will be treated as Geneva Convention P.O.W.s.

 

Adding extraneous amendments for one's pet project to War on Terror suplementals is unfortunately becoming the fad du jour in the U.S. Congress.

 

If this Association had a representative in Congress,* this is what he or she would have said on the floor of the Senate to Senator McCain in response to his speech in favor of his amendment:

 

You, yourself, Senator, in 2000, called your North Vietnamese Army captors "gooks' for the  violent abuses they inflicted on you in North Vietnam. When asked to retract this statement later, you refused.

 

Gooks they were, and gooks they are today, is the opinion of this Association.

 

So are all terrorists. They are not human, they are animals. A person who detonates a dirty radiological or chemical or biological weapon on one of our subways, or a subway in London, killing perhaps 30,000 people, a person who slits the throat of one of our stewardesses and then flies her plane into the WTC, is an animal, plain and simple. He is not a uniformed soldier of a recognized government (regardless of whether it is recognized by the USG or not) playing by the very same Geneva Conventions you seek to invoke on his behalf.

 

He is an animal.

 

And the rules of animals should apply to how we treat him, if we capture him alive. Not some legalistic jargon coming out of Geneva international lawyers.

 

Terrorists do not understand, nor do they play by, the 'laws of war.'

 

They don't even understand, or agree with, the laws of nature.

 

They are 'gooks.'

 

And we should treat them as such, on or off the battlefield. Close down the GITMO camp if you want, as this Newstand has argued we should do eventually, but don't argue that these people are honorable soldiers wearing the uniform of an honorable government.

 

They're not.

 

 

 

 

If the Association had been given this occasion to speak to Senator McCain we would have also told him, with all due respect, that Americans are a free people; that we have the right to be free from terrorism; that we have, also, the right to earn our money and, as patriots, to spemd that money, if we did in fact earn it, in support of any political candidate, party or committee we choose without the shade or specter of bribery or corruption falsely being raised, and without regulation. Nature's Providence did not put us here to be regulated by either domestic or foreign know-it-alls. Nature's Providence put us here, instead, to teach those who would regulate others a lesson, and that lesson is that we have the right to be free.

 

 

 

 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, in the aftermath of the London Tube bombings, has ordered subway security checkpoints to be established on the New York City subways. Checks will be carried out on bags of randomly selected passengers. People will have the right to decline the search, and to leave the subway.

 

Approximately 4.5 million people ride the New York City subways each day. There are approximately 468 separate subway stops, each one with its own entrance and exit. The searches, established after, and as a result of, the London bombings of 7/7/2005, appear to be going smoothly.

 

NO RACIAL OR RELIGIOUS PROFILING WILL BE PERMITTED AS PARTY OF THE SEARCHES, Mayor Bloomberg announced.

 

When every single suicde bomber terrorist actually carrying out attacks against Western, and democratic civilization, since 9/11, looks like this:

 

Especially when, as they're searching a 75 year old Jewish grandmother from Brooklyn on a 'random' basis, three Al Quaidists jump on the same subway line and blow it up under the East River?

 

Were the people who struck on 9/11 and in London, the people who are doing the suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq today, white Americans; were they black Americans with 200 years of descent in this country; were they Mexicans; were they Chinese?

 

This Newstand is neither opposed to security checkpoints nor profiling for checkpoints, for there are surely not enough cops in all the world to check everybody. What we are opposed to, however, is 'dumb cop' assumptions for profiling, or profiling motivated primarily by what might offend some Amnesty International lawyer somewhere, in times of a true national emergency.

 

'Racial and religious' profiling is EXACTLY what we need. You don't need, as a matter of common sense, to go any further than the pictures we've presented in this article to establish that. The American people should demand common sense in the prosecution of the War on Terror, and we should also demand no less.

 

And why should the rest of us, the non-terrorists among us, be intimidated as to matters of what we can or cannot do in our own self defense by a bunch of Amnesty International lawyers?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both this Newstand and the Association itself have said so explicitly going back to the formulations for the CAPS II program in the U.S. in 2002.

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7/22/2005:

 

 

 

 

The editors of this Newstand saw 9/11 theoretically coming when they saw the Taliban government in Afghanistan, pre-9/11, blowing up world treasure giant Buddhist statuary carved into mountainsides, similar to our Mt. Rushmore memorial, and arresting and threatening to kill U.S. citizen Christian female missionaries in 'their' country for exercising free speech.

 

The Al Quaidists have a mission, evident in these cited acts, of carrying out their predators' positions aggressively and violently, both inside and outside their own borders. Their teachings are new; they are not pan-Arabist like the teachings of true nationalists like Gamal Abdel Nasser; these people are, instead, violently pan-Islamist.

 

The facts we cite from Afghanistan are easily forgotten by most. They were forgotten by sources as disparate as the liberal Eleanor Clift of Newsweek, and the conservative news commentator Patrick Buchanan, both of whom argued simultaneously on the PBS-TV news talk show, the Mclaughlin Report, on 7/15/2005, that all these people want is the right to be left alone in their own countries, sort of a 'we're only nationalists, don't tread on us' argument.

 

Nothing could be further from reality, from the way these people actually think.

 

What radical Islamists really think, instead, is : 'What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine, too.' At the same time the Taliban was dynamiting icons of world Buddhism, a truly peaceful religion, they were harboring bin Laden, and helping him to plan 9/11, an attack far outside the borders of Afghanistan, a country the U.S. had not laid a hand on as of that date.

 

How quickly we forget.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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At the request of Armando Spataro, an Italian terrorism prosecutor, a Milan magistrate, Chiara Nobile, has now issued Interpol arrest warrants for 13 CIA covert case officers, naming them by name (although some names available to the Italians may only have been cover aliases), for allegedly being involved in a kidnapping in Italy  two years ago of an Egyptian Al Quaidist terrorist, Abu Omar, who was sent to Egypt, where he later died.

 

The CIA officers charged will remain international fugitives until the day they die. As one FBI officer blandly told this Newstand, "Once you go on the [Interpol warrant] list, you never come off."

 

Spataro, who acts like a grand jury as well as a prosecutor, is expected to request arrest warrants for at least six more CIA operatives.

 

None of the 19 are currently in Italy.

 

This is ridiculous, but the Italian government has not said so.

 

It should.

 

The Italian miltary's secret service, SISMI,  in fact authorized this operation targetting Abu Omar, a 'snatch and grab job,' of the type first made popular among intelligence services by DeGaulle's SDECE's 1962 kidnappings of OAS personnel, and Italian secret agents carry out their work in the U.S., in Italy's national interests as an ally of the U.S., without interference by USG courts.

 

The USG should be afforded the same privileges in Italy.

 

It is also ridiculous for a second reason. The Department of Justice is currently investigating whether felony charges should be brought here against Americans for releasing the name of a CIA covert case officer. Does that law only apply to Americans? That's not the way it's written. Why is there one law for Americans and another law for foreigners, on exactly the same question?

 

 Both Spataro and any Italian magistrates involved in this 'law by grandstanding' soap opera should be indicted on felony charges by the very same grand jury currently empaneled in the 'Bob Novak' case in Washington.

 

 

 

LONDON - Four blasts rocked the London subway and tore open a packed double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday, sending bloodied victims fleeing in the worst attack on London since World War II. At least 40 people were killed, U.S. officials said, and more than 700 seriously wounded in the terror attacks. A clearly shaken Prime Minister Tony Blair called the attacks "barbaric" and said they were designed to coincide with the G-8 summit opening in Gleneagles, Scotland.

The attack had all the earmarks of Al Quaida.

 

The Editorial Board of this Newstand listened in amazement this evening to the PBS-TV's Lehrer Report's analysis of the London attacks:

The premise of all the questions asked was that the London attack  was a mere 'law enfocement' problem to be focused on more and heavier domestic screening to catch people bringing bombs on busses and subways. That premise goes beyond being  just an inaccuracy, in the opinion of this Newstand. Al Quaidists  are not just a law enforcement problem; they are a national security problem because, specifically, they are a politicized threat both to the American way of life, and to Western civilization.

The interviewees on this show, probably carefully selected, bit into the interviewers' premises, and strengthened them. They never once, not one of them, talked about the political threat of Al Quaida. One of those interviewed even questioned (using the sophomoric 'this isn't exactly a CENTRALIZED conpiracy' argument) whether Al Quaida was even responsible for the London attack.

All this is wrong, dead wrong in our opinion, in the American media. The Al Quaidists just laugh at talk of 'prioritizations' for more screens harassing domestic travellers, knowing that there is no measure they cannot find a way to avoid or evade, just like the average drug dealer just laughs at interdiction measures in the so-called 'War on Drugs,' viewing the avoidance of those measures as just another cost of doing business.

It is the political threat of the Al Quaidists, instead, the power of their pen and thought worldwide, which overshadows the power of their swords, their bombs, and their IED's.

"Proiritizations' need to emphasize tha latter , and now, and not merely be an empty word encompassing  vast new panoplies of process for harassing the travel, and poking into the privacies, of Americans who are not Al Quaidists.

'Prioritizations' need to focus on one result, and one result only, and not be focused on process at all: We need to kill the Al Quaidists who raise, or are about to raise, their fists against us. All of them. Men and women amongst them, both. Anywhere in the world they can be found. The Dresden treatment. Sherman's March to the Sea. Now.

That is what we need to do "as a priority".

Not to establish empire, but just for self-defense.

If we don't do it, for the next two hundred years at least, we will not be safe from these animals, not even in our own homes.

 

Anybody who thinks the War on Terror is over is mistaken. It has only just begun, as this Newstand has long argued. It is  a worldwide war with the enemy having the ability to strike anywhere. It is a war against  an enemy with a clearly defined political and worldwide agenda against Western civilization and for a world dominated by Al Quaida's version of how  society should be run according to their fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran.

Just calling them domestic criminals, as if they were carrying out garden variety murders sporadically, without paying attention to their political agenda, and the wordwide threat posed by them, is not enough.

FOR WHAT THESE PEOPLE, THE RADICAL ISLAMISTS, THE NEW SOVIET UNION, THE NEW NAZIS OF WORLD POLIRICS, REALLY WANT, SEE: THIS NEWSTAND'S FIRST EDITION'S

GLOSSARY OF THE MAJOR ARAB AND ISLAMIC TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS.

The two sides in this struggle represent diametrically opposed political visions for the globe.  And the world is not big enough to house both of those visions.

 

 

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7/7/2005:

 

 

 

At least 882 U.S. troops died in Iraq in the last twelve months, up from 657 in the preceding year.

 

There are currently about 140,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq, and about 36,000 additional Coalition forces there. That force size is obviously having substantial trouble overcoming the terrorist insurgency.

 

If 140,000 U.S troops have not been able to put down the terrorists, that speaks volumes about how many and how capable the Iraqis have to be, if they were left on their own to do the same job. They have to be better than 140,000 U.S. troops. The prospects for that are not good, not even in the next five years.

 

 

 

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7/7/2005:

 

 

More U.S. Forces will be headed to Afghanistan shortly, this Newstand has learned. There are currently about 18,000 U.S. troops  there now.

 

As this Newstand has reported for a while, the terrorist forces of the Taliban have stepped up their military activities against both U.S. Forces and the Karzai government in Afghanistan.

 

Taliban forces also seem to be learning new tactics, and adopting new tactics, like IED's, which they perceive as working in Iraq. The Taliban is part of a larger, worldwide, anti-U.S. Al Quaidist movement.

 

 

********************************

 

7/4/2005:

 

 

 

This Newstand wants to give loud applause to the President on the arguments he made on the war in Iraq at Ft. Bragg on 28 June. We will restate some of these arguments in our own words here, but, at the same time, add some of our own:

 

1. The war on Saddam is over. It was over on April 26, 2003, the date we took Baghdad Airport, the date called by NBC-TV News Division "VI Day," for Victory in Iraq Day. We won that war. Saddam is gone, and he will not be back.

 

2. Condi Rice, however, is dead wrong in saying on NBC-TV News Division's Meet the Press with Tim Russert and in an interview with Jim Lehrer that the terrorists today in Iraq do not have a political agenda. The Al Quaidists have a very clear political agenda. That agenda was (in 2001), and is today, posted on our War on Terror Newstand First Edition  in the Terrorist Groups Section. That agenda calls for a world Caliphate state with the Koran, as interpreted by the Al Quaidists, as the civil and criminal rule of law for all, believers and non-believers alike, the killing of non-believers, and the Al Quaidists, of course, as the self-appointed rulers of mankind.

 

3. Predictions as to what would happen in Iraq after Saddam fell would have been difficult for even the world's greatest intelligence officers to make. There would have been, e.g., a 50-50 proposition that anti-American terrorists in Iraq would have  been intimidated into doing nothing by Saddam's defeat; and a 50-50 proposition that the same groups would have decided, instead, to step up anti-American operations. It turned out to be the latter. We made a mistake.

 

But is was still a 50-50 proposition going in.

 

4.The war in Iraq today has absolutely nothing to do with the war on Saddam. It is now, for better or worse, as the President said, part of the same War on Terror that was started against us on 9/11. Anybody who says otherwise, including U.S. Senators, are misrepresenting the facts. The War on Terror today in Iraq is a war, not against Saddam, but a war against the Al Quaidists who saw a vacuum there they could move into after Saddam's fall. It is a new war, regardless of who created it.

 

And it is still a war we must win.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6/16/2005:

 

 

- A WOT Newstand Analysis Story

 

The following things would happen, in short order:

Open, armed militias, operating as military arms fronting for political parties, would spring up, or grow in strength, in the Sunni, Shiite and Kurd areas of the country. Many of these militias would be Al Quaidist in nature.

 

The Kurdish militia, the Pesh Murga, while able to protect Iraqi Kurdistan from invasion, would not be able to protect either the oilwells or pipelines located there, nor would any country offer the Kurds an outlet to an open port for those pipelines. The Kurds would not be able to capitalize on the ownership of their own crude oil. Their nationalist movement would, accordingly, ferment, eventually spilling over the Iraqi Kurdish border into Turkey. Likewise, the Armenians to the north would see an opportunity to spill an Armenian uprising into the same overlap area in eastern Turkey. The Turkish Army would probably react to either of these events with armed excursions, at a minimum, into both Iraqi Kurdistan and into the Armenian Republic.

 

Meanwhile, Shiite and Sunni militias would openly struggle for control of the rest of Iraq. The Iranian mullahs, appreciating the vacuum created by the withdrawal of U.S. Forces, would also almost certainly be pulled by the natural force of that vacuum itself to invade Iraq with the Iranian Army in support of their Shiite allies and, if successful, to annex eastern Iraq, leaving the Sunnis with the oil-less desert of western Iraq. Such a war would undoubtedly draw into Iraqi Kurdistan and, in that case, unless the U.S. bucked up the Pesh Murga with money and manpower, they too might fall to the Iranians, the Shiite militias, or the Al Quaidists, or a combination thereof.

 

Maybe this is what the American people want. That would be their decision to make, and not the decision of this Newstand.

 

This piece is just our prediction to make, and we have made it. And, if the scenario outlined above did play out, this Newstand will say again, as the Association's WOT and NSA Newstands said long ago on the War on Terror in Iraq, it will not be George W. Bush who lost Iraq.

 

It will be the Iraqi people themselves. 

 

6/6/2005:

 

 

As of today, 1665 American Armed Forces have been killed in Iraq, and 12,400 have received serious physical wounds.

 

800 Iraqis were killed by terrorists in the last month, and 80 U.S. troops. There has been no let up whatsoever in the level of killing since the start of the terrorist insurgency.

 

The effective Iraqi security force today is only 3 battalions strong, with another 23  battalions expected to come on line by the end of the year. At the current rate of training, it would take a minimum of 2 more full years, until the end of 2007 at the earliest, before Iraqi forces by themselves could even marginally handle the terrorism in Iraq at its current levels, if then.

 

U.S. Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) said on Sunday that more U.S. troops are needed in Iraq.

 

This Newstand agrees.

This Newstand is of the opinion that the time is rapidly approaching for the POW facility at GITMO to be shut down.

 

This Newstand was publicly opposed to its opening at the time of its opening, and our opinion has not changed since. Very little operationally useful intelligence has come out of the prison interrogations at GITMO relating to major operational successes in the War on Terror in either Afghansitan or Iraq.

On the other hand, as we accurately predicted in 2002, GITMO has served readily for both domestic and foreign anti-Americans  to unfairly  paint a bullseye on the head of the United States, and on the heads of our troops.

 

These prisoners, instead, should have been shot on the battlefield of their home countries, guns in hand. That's what we did with surrendering Japanese troops in the Pacific during World War II, and that's what we should have done, and should be doing today, with these anti-American Muslim terrorist radicals. 

 

 

As Vice-President Dick Cheney has stated, nothing any Newstand of the Association has ever disagreed with, the prisoners at GITMO have been treated better than they ever would have been afforded by any other captor power in the history of warfare and, no POW at GITMO has ever, let us be clear, been tortured.

 

 

 

 

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A car bomb in the northwest Madrid district of San Blas seriously wounded at least 50 people early Wednesday morning. The Basque separatist group ETA claimed responsibility.

 

When Al Quaidists blew up commuter trains last year in Madrid, fearful Spanish voters immediately voted out their conservative government because the opposition anti-American Socialists promised to pull out all Spanish troops from Iraq, which they did. This Newstand openly warned Spain at that time that surrender to terror would only motivate terrorists to strike further. 'You will reap what you sow,' we said.

 

The Spanish parliament just last week had authorized the government to negotiate with the ETA. Apparently, Spaniards of the mold of their current government like to negotiate with anyone, as long as you are a terrorist, or represent terrorism. If you represent the side of civilization in Iraq, on the other hand, they don't want to talk to you.

 

This Newstand has been proven correct in Spain that appeasement of violent terrorists only breeds more terror, and everything our foreign opponents believe in, has been proven, not just in Spain, but in the history of modern international relations as a whole, to be a pack of lies.

 

 

 

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5/17/2005:

 

ANTI-AMERICAN DEMONSTRATIONS SWEEP AFGHANISTAN AND UZBEKISTAN PROMPTED BY NEWSWEEK REPORT

 

Over the past weekend, the Uzbek government killed over 500 riotous Muslim radical Uzbeks in the western portion of the country, in an violent effort to restore order.

 

Afghan security forces have also been forced to fire into rioting Muslim crowds there.

 

The riots and demonstrations were pegged on a Newsweek report, based on an unidentified government source who said he read the item in an unspecified government report or reports, and  retracted yesterday by the magazine, that copies of the Koran were flushed down the toilets at Guantanamo by USG personnel in an effort to intimidate Al Quadist prisoners there. Taliban and Al Quaida operatives scour the international news media every day, especially including online publications like the New York Times and Newsweek, but also including the Association's Newstands, for stories in whole or in part they can use or manipulate for their own operational purposes. So does our own CIA for that matter, although certainly not, in terms of operational usage, as effectively or frequently as Al Quaida.

 

President Putin of Russia says he will stand behind the current Uzbek president, Islam Karimov, who is, as we have said, accused of dictatorship by Islamic militants in the country. Russia certainly doesn't want another major southern neighbor controlled by anti-Russian Islamic radicals. The USG is in a quandary about what to do about the Uzbek situation because of President Bush's recent statements in other former Soviet republics about the need for true democracies and true freedoms. Watch for the U.S., accordingly, to lie low as to the Uzbek situation and hope for the best there, perhaps making some meaningless lecture to Karimov about the need to watch his step.

 

The Government of Pakistan said today it believed the original Newsweek report and not the retraction.

 

This Newstand, as long ago as 2002, predicted that nothing good would come of the P.O.W. camp at Gitmo, and that these Al Quaidists, instead, should have been shot dead on the battlefield in their home countries, guns in hand.

 

None of the Association's Newstands have ever been asked to retract a report, and none have ever done so.

 

 

 

*Al Quaida operatives also attempt to sabotage sites they find disagreements with, including this one.

 

5/5/2005:

 

 

The House and Senate agreed on the President's supplemental legislation for the War on Terror Tuesday. Defense expenditures agreed upon in the bill, primarily for the Iraqi and Afghan theatres, were $75.9 billion.

 

The total cost now for the War on Terror abroad, since 9/11, has reached over $300 billion. Of that, about $200 billion has been spent on Iraq alone.

 

Miscellaneous riders were added to the bill on the Senate side. Miscellaneous VA benefits were added, which this Newstand will leave our VI Newstand to report on. Another rider all but assured passage of the REAL I.D. Measure, which makes it much more difficult for innnocent Americans, swept up in a witch hunt against  foreign Hispanics, to get both their birth certificates and their drivers' licenses, and which was opposed by the Association. Another rider passed a whopping $900 million for tsunami relief in Indian Ocean countries, while at the same time the bill denied the Secretary of State $170 million  Condolleeza  Rice had asked for for military aid to our foreign allies in the WOT, and also denied her another $70 million she had asked for for construction to protect the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The bill also  gave another $200 million (the White House had asked for $350 million), with spending checks which can and will be avoided, for the Palestinian Authority for "economic and infrastrucure assistance," the very same day Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas released from prison  a known Hamas murderer and terrorist, after Abbas had repeatedly promised to get tough on Islamic terrorists in Palestine.

 

Elections for the Palestinian Assembly are now set for July 17. Both this Newstand and the NSA Newstand are now predicting that the terrorist group Hamas will win about 40% of the seats.

 

 

 

Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi who, in the interests of fair disclosure, the Association's WOT and NSA Newstands have long nominated for elimination, has reportedly made a diplomatic request to the White House to have permanent U.S. military bases in Libya.

 

The last U.S. military base in Libya was evacuated in June, 1970, the year after Gaddafi's movement overthrew the last Libyan king.

 

Both Tunisia and Algeria are reported to our Newstand staff, by high level USG sources, to also have made recent demarches to the Bush Administration for bases in their countries.

 

This Newstand cannot confirm any of these requests from Arab sources.

 

In our opinion, these putative requests should be both welcomed and carefully considered, and are caused by the realistic perception in the candidate countries that U.S. Forces are an integral part of the fight against the radical Islamic fundamentalists' unjust war against all civilized societies.

 

 

 

 

4/13/2005:

 

 

 

 

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has publicly asked the USG for long term U.S. Armed Forces bases in Afghanistan as a necessity in the War on Terror.

 

The Association's WOT and NSA Newstands have long said:

(1) the first act of the newly elected Iraqi government should be to ask for the same, if they're smart, and;

(2) We need our Armed Forces stationed abroad in countries like these, as cops, because if we don't, Al Quaida and its anti-American allies will violently and quickly catalyze the resulting chaos, and will hijack those governments.

 

SecDef Donald Rumsfeld said the USG will consider Karzai's official request.

 

 

 

 

4/12/2005:

 

 

This Newstand is now predicting  that in the upcoming Palestinian parliamentary elections this year, which will be democratically held, the anti-American terrorist group Hamas will win 40%-50% of the vote, and then go on to paralyze any further peaceful coexistence approach of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas toward Israel.

 

 

 

 

4/11/2005:

 

 

 

 

This Association has long opposed the travel restrictions CAPS II places on American citizens. Likewise, it opposes new requirements, effective January 1, 2008, that Americans possess passports in order to return to their own homeland from other places in North America.

 

Why?, you ask: Because the freedom to travel, to freely associate with others, the freedom of speech, the freedom of ideas to move across borders without alienation by government, are rights given to every American at birth, not by government, but by Nature and Nature's God. Both the Administration and the U.S. Supreme Court can read our lips: No government on the face of the earth created these rights, and no government can take them away. They are real, and they are part and parcel of American society and our way of life.

 

On a practical level, we'd like to ask a few questions about the passport restrictions: If an American citizen, speaking fluent English, with a birth certificate, driver's license and voter's I.D. card, currently loses his passport (or has it stolen) on a flight back from France, what does the INS do? Deport him back to France, and tell him to stay there? Arrest him until his prints clear NCIC? It is not due process of law for a government to deny a citizen re-entry to his own country because he does not have the right papers.

 

On an intellectual level, it is hypocritical for the Bush Administration to say it stands for Freedom in the world and then blatantly take these rights away from Americans, in the name of the Al Quaida threat. We've said it before, and we'll say it again: To take Americans' freedoms away from them, or, for that matter, for any people,  to elect anti-American socialists to office, in the name of national security, is to give Al Quaida exactly what they want - a fundamental change in the nature of free society. That is wrong. It is not corrective action. It is destroying a society in order to save it. It is surrender.

 

We pay law enforcement to identify foreign terrorist suspects coming here, and to arrest them. Let them do their job. Give them the money they need.

 

But do not say that the innocent need to be punished along with the guilty, because we're too incompetent to figure out how to do it any other way. That is not the American way, unless, of course, we're talking about radical fundamentalists who burned innocent women at the stake in New England about 300 years ago, all in the name of preventing witchery.

 

 

 

 

 

Just three days after the posting of our opinion piece above, a period of time in which our visitor tracker noticed a high uptick in traffic from certain D.C. based computers, the President of the United States said at the American Society of Newspaper Editors Conference, incredulously, that the imposition of the future North American travel restrictions were a surprise to him.

 

These types of travel restrictions may be originally asked for by INS or the State Department, or some other Cabinet department but, in all cases, they have to be signed off on by the White House.

 

 President Bush said, "When I first read that in the newspaper about the need to have passports, particularly the day crossings that take place, about a million for instance in the state of Texas, I said,'What's going on here?'"

 

'What the HELL is going on here?,' is what our piece figuratively asked, on the other hand. And of those one million Texans, Mr. President, many of them are members of the Association and we can vouch most assuredly to the INS that they are certainly not terrorists.

 

Expect that these future passport restrictions will be scaled back (hint: the use of the phrase 'day trips' in the President's prepared remarks), or, better yet, eliminated entirely, before the effective date of January 1, 2008.

 

This Association will take policy changes in favor of our arguments, incredulously arrived at or not, any way we can.

 

And who said our Newstand lobbying for changes in government policy wasn't effective?

 

Not you, we hope.

 

 

 

3/17/2005:

DOLLAR COST OF THE WAR TO DATE

 

The dollar cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to date has just crossed the $300 billion mark.

 

 

 

 

3/15/2005:

 

 

Italian Prime Minister announces the total pullout of the 3,000 Italian troops in Iraq by year's end. In the announcement to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, he said explicitly that he was caving into anti-American Italian public opinion, and had no choice from the standpoint of his own political career.

 

What a shame for this otherwise honorable statesman.

 

The pullouts from Iraq by our erstwhile allies, which this Newstand has consistently reported to the American people, are bad news because they put our troops in Iraq in more physical danger, as they also put Iraq in more physical danger of a takeover by the terrorists. Yet, based on our Washington sources, we expect currently that none of these cowardly withdrawals will deter the Bush Administration from staying the course in attempting to stabilize a free and democratic Iraq in a new Middle East.

 

Cowards should be dealt with appropriately for their cowardice. Anything else is less than moral.

 

And the underpinning of all good foreign policy is morality.

 

 

 

 

 

3/15/2005:

 

 

The Kurds are rightfully asking for more of the Shiites in return for their support of the Shiite candidate.

 

Specifically, the United Kurdish Front wants:

 

 

 

 

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari pledged to unite Iraq's rival ethnic and religious factions and fight terrorism as the nation's first democratically elected government was sworn in Tuesday amid escalating violence.

 

3/14/2005:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A U.N. team visited several former Syrian military bases in east Lebanon on Tuesday in their first field mission to verify whether Damascus withdrew all its forces from its tiny neighbor.

The eight-member team, which arrived in Beirut last week, checked at least seven sites previously used by the Syrian troops and intelligence agents in the Bekaa Valley, security sources said.

"They started today and will check other posts tomorrow as well," one security source told Reuters.

Syria told the United Nations it had ended its 29-year military and intelligence presence in Lebanon and fully complied with resolution 1559.

But U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the U.N. verification mission would have to confirm that.

Witnesses said the team, which was accompanied by officers from the Lebanese army, stopped for few minutes at each site, including the house of the former head of Syrian intelligence in the ancient town of Baalbek, Major Ali Safi.

Syria entered Lebanon early in the 1975-1990 civil war and has dominated Lebanon militarily and politically since, meeting little international opposition until a U.S. sponsored U.N. Security Council resolution in September demanded it withdraw.

Pressure on Syria to end its grip mounted after the Feb. 14 killing of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, which many Lebanese blamed on Damascus. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in March ordered his 14,000 troops home.

Syria and Lebanon said on Tuesday a joint military committee would check to see whether an old Syrian border post was on right side of the frontier.

The post has been near the village of Deir al-Ashayier since before 1976 when Syria began its occupation. Some Lebanese say the post is about 300 meters (yards) inside Lebanon, others say it is in Syria.

 

 

 

3/10/2005:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bush Administration has made noises in a White House Press Conference today suggesting the pro-Syrian organization Hezbollah, previously referred to accurately by White House insider Richard Armitage as "the A-Team of terrorism," should be welcomed into a unity government in Lebanon.

 

If true, this Newstand's opinion is that this is a big mistake in the War on Terror.

 

Meanwhile, in Beirut, a Syrian puppet,Omar Karami, has been re-appointed as prime minister of Lebanon. Karami is in favor of a new Lebanese election law which would rig the system, with elections scheduled in about two months, so that elected Syrian puppets like himself always controlled the country. (Democracy! Yeah, right.)

 

The question, Whither Lebanon?, is an important one in the Mid-East. Lebanon has always been a bellweather for shifts in the political winds in the region since the time of the Phoenicians, but the country does not directly affect U.S. national security. There are two diametrically opposed forces operating today in this land of 3.6 million people: a pro-U.S., pro-democracy, anti-Syrian, anti-Islamic fundamentalist force; and, on the other side, an anti-U.S., anti-democracy, anti-Semitic, pro-Syrian, Hezbollah dominated Islamic fundamentalist force. The Bush Administration had a shot at this one, a free Lebanon, especially with the good work the President did to build up a world wide coalition for that result, but now the Administration may be backing off.

 

There are people in the Pentagon, trust us, as well as many Lebanese, shaking their heads as to the latter point.