Just Foreign Policy Iraqi Death Estimator    

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Another 5.7 BILLION is Missing

Read the following post of an

article from the London Times.

Not only does Allawi claim

Civil War Has Began, he also claims

that 5.7 BILLION that bush set aside

for Iraq was NEVER RECIEVED.

Thats 5.7 Billion BESIDES

the OTHER 9 Billion

we know is missing.

W. T. F.
?

Allawi Proclaims Iraq Civil War Has Began


July 10, 2005

Allawi: this is the

start of civil war
Hala Jaber, Amman


Link in headliner
IRAQ’S former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi has warned that his country is facing civil war and has predicted dire consequences for Europe and America as well as the Middle East if the crisis is not resolved.

“The problem is that the Americans have no vision and no clear policy on how to go about in Iraq,” said Allawi, a long-time ally of Washington.

In an interview with The Sunday Times last week as he visited Amman, the Jordanian capital, he said: “The policy should be of building national unity in Iraq. Without this we will most certainly slip into a civil war. We are practically in stage one of a civil war as we speak.”

Allawi, a secular Shi’ite, said that Iraq had collapsed as a state and needed to be rebuilt. The only way forward, he said, was through “national unity, the building of institutions, the economy and a firm but peaceful foreign relation policy”. Unless these criteria were satisfied, “the country will deteriorate”.

Allawi’s concern comes amid signs of growing violence between Shi’ites, who make up 60% of Iraq’s estimated 26m people, and the Sunni minority who dominated the upper reaches of the civilian bureaucracy and officer corps under Saddam Hussein.

The Shi’ites, who endured decades of oppression, are threatening to purge members of Saddam’s former Ba’ath party from the army and the intelligence services, a move that would provoke fierce retaliation from the Sunnis.

Since the execution-style killings of 34 men whose bound and blindfolded bodies were found in three predominantly Shi’ite areas of Baghdad in May, other tit-for-tat murders have followed, with clerics among the targets.

Tension has increased in the past two weeks following the return of Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Zarqawi left the country in May to seek medical treatment for a chest wound suffered in an American airstrike, but has now recovered sufficiently to resume his activities.

Earlier this month he claimed that his supporters had killed Sheikh Kamaleddin al-Ghuraifi, a senior aide to Iraq’s most influential Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Zarqawi has now released an audiotape in which he announces the formation of a new militant unit, the Omar Corps. Its avowed aim is to “eradicate” the Badr brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country’s largest Shi’ite political party, which has targeted Sunnis.

Allawi, who became head of the interim government council created after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, said it was imperative that the security services and military be rebuilt. He has been a staunch critic of the policy followed by Paul Bremer, the American former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, of removing former Ba’athists from positions of power and disbanding Saddam’s army without putting anything else in place.

Allawi said that he had discussed the urgency of rebuilding Iraq’s military with President George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, last year. “Bush

earmarked $5.7 billion

(£3.2 billion) . . .

but I did not receive

the money,” Allawi said.

His experience as prime minister had taught him that “force alone will not solve the problems in Iraq”. It needed to be combined with dialogue and money to ensure stability.

However, Allawi insisted the Americans’ presence in Iraq was still required and rejected suggestions that a schedule should be drawn up for their withdrawal. “I cannot see withdrawal based on timing, but based on conditions,” he said. These would be satisfied only once Iraq “develops the capability to deal with threats”.

During his term Allawi lost the support of Iraq’s secular middle class through failing to fulfil his promise of restoring security and because of alleged corruption.

However, he is preparing for a comeback in elections scheduled for December. His supporters believe he will be helped in part by the increasing impact of Iraqi gunmen and suicide bombers since Ibrahim Jaafari became prime minister in April.

More than 1,400 people have since been killed, and many Iraqis who regarded Allawi as a ruthless leader now speak wistfully of the relative calm enjoyed under his rule.

Allawi is in intense negotiations to create a new multi-ethnic secular coalition before the general election.

“If we don’t build a state we will lose,” Allawi warned. “Not just as Iraq, but the region as a whole and Europe should say goodbye to stability and so should the United States. Iraq will become a breeding ground for terrorists.

“My philosophy in fighting is to isolate the hardcore Islamists. If you isolate them, it will become very easy to smash them or bring them to justice.”


US Marines and Iraqi soldiers have seized 22 suspected militants in Operation Scimitar, a fourth counter-insurgency sweep of the Euphrates valley in less than a month, the American military said yesterday.


US, Britain planning major Iraq withdrawal: report

Last Update: Sunday, July 10, 2005. 11:29am (AEST)

The United States and Britain are considering the withdrawal of more than 100,000 coalition troops from Iraq.

The British defence ministry says the intention has always been to hand over the lead in fighting terrorists to the Iraqi Security Forces as their capability increases.

"It is simply prudent planning," a spokeswoman said.

Defence officials were commenting on a document by British Defence Secretary John Reid, which was leaked to the media.

The document - marked Secret, UK Eyes Only - indicates Washington hoped to hand over control of security to Iraqi forces in 14 out of 18 provinces in the country by early next year.
That would allow it to slash US-led troop levels from 176,000 to 66,000.

Britain had a plan to cut its 8,500-strong contingent to 3,000.

Britain, which heads a foreign military force in southern Iraq, wants to give back control of Al-Muthanna and Maysan provinces this October, followed by the other two provinces it handles next April, said the document.

"This should lead to a reduction in the total level of UK commitment in Iraq to around 3,000 personnel," a copy of the document said, according to the Mail on Sunday.

-AFP/Reuters

Allawi: this is the start of civil war

July 10, 2005

Hala Jaber, Amman

IRAQ’S former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi has warned that his country is facing civil war and has predicted dire consequences for Europe and America as well as the Middle East if the crisis is not resolved.

“The problem is that the Americans have no vision and no clear policy on how to go about in Iraq,” said Allawi, a long-time ally of Washington.

In an interview with The Sunday Times last week as he visited Amman, the Jordanian capital, he said: “The policy should be of building national unity in Iraq. Without this we will most certainly slip into a civil war. We are practically in stage one of a civil war as we speak.”

Allawi, a secular Shi’ite, said that Iraq had collapsed as a state and needed to be rebuilt. The only way forward, he said, was through “national unity, the building of institutions, the economy and a firm but peaceful foreign relation policy”. Unless these criteria were satisfied, “the country will deteriorate”.

Allawi’s concern comes amid signs of growing violence between Shi’ites, who make up 60% of Iraq’s estimated 26m people, and the Sunni minority who dominated the upper reaches of the civilian bureaucracy and officer corps under Saddam Hussein.

The Shi’ites, who endured decades of oppression, are threatening to purge members of Saddam’s former Ba’ath party from the army and the intelligence services, a move that would provoke fierce retaliation from the Sunnis.

Since the execution-style killings of 34 men whose bound and blindfolded bodies were found in three predominantly Shi’ite areas of Baghdad in May, other tit-for-tat murders have followed, with clerics among the targets.

Tension has increased in the past two weeks following the return of Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Zarqawi left the country in May to seek medical treatment for a chest wound suffered in an American airstrike, but has now recovered sufficiently to resume his activities.

Earlier this month he claimed that his supporters had killed Sheikh Kamaleddin al-Ghuraifi, a senior aide to Iraq’s most influential Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Zarqawi has now released an audiotape in which he announces the formation of a new militant unit, the Omar Corps. Its avowed aim is to “eradicate” the Badr brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country’s largest Shi’ite political party, which has targeted Sunnis.

Allawi, who became head of the interim government council created after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, said it was imperative that the security services and military be rebuilt. He has been a staunch critic of the policy followed by Paul Bremer, the American former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, of removing former Ba’athists from positions of power and disbanding Saddam’s army without putting anything else in place.

Allawi said that he had discussed the urgency of rebuilding Iraq’s military with President George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, last year. “Bush earmarked $5.7 billion (£3.2 billion) . . . but I did not receive the money,” Allawi said.

His experience as prime minister had taught him that “force alone will not solve the problems in Iraq”. It needed to be combined with dialogue and money to ensure stability.

However, Allawi insisted the Americans’ presence in Iraq was still required and rejected suggestions that a schedule should be drawn up for their withdrawal. “I cannot see withdrawal based on timing, but based on conditions,” he said. These would be satisfied only once Iraq “develops the capability to deal with threats”.

During his term Allawi lost the support of Iraq’s secular middle class through failing to fulfil his promise of restoring security and because of alleged corruption.

However, he is preparing for a comeback in elections scheduled for December. His supporters believe he will be helped in part by the increasing impact of Iraqi gunmen and suicide bombers since Ibrahim Jaafari became prime minister in April.

More than 1,400 people have since been killed, and many Iraqis who regarded Allawi as a ruthless leader now speak wistfully of the relative calm enjoyed under his rule.

Allawi is in intense negotiations to create a new multi-ethnic secular coalition before the general election.

“If we don’t build a state we will lose,” Allawi warned. “Not just as Iraq, but the region as a whole and Europe should say goodbye to stability and so should the United States. Iraq will become a breeding ground for terrorists.

“My philosophy in fighting is to isolate the hardcore Islamists. If you isolate them, it will become very easy to smash them or bring them to justice.”

US Marines and Iraqi soldiers have seized 22 suspected militants in Operation Scimitar, a fourth counter-insurgency sweep of the Euphrates valley in less than a month, the American military said yesterday

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1687910,00.html

Security incidents in Iraq, July 9

09 Jul 2005 08:39:12 GMTSource:
ReutersBAGHDAD, July 9 (Reuters)

- Following are security incidents reported in Iraq on July 9 as of 0730 GMT. U.S. and Iraqi forces are battling a Sunni Arab insurgency against the Shi'ite-Kurdish-led government in Baghdad.

MOSUL - Eleven Iraqis -- including two soldiers and a police officer -- were shot dead throughout the flashpoint city of Mosul in separate attacks on Friday, hospital officials said. In the worst attack, four civilians travelling from Baghdad were dragged out of their car and shot in the south of the city.

BAIJI - A family of four were shot dead on Saturday in the northern town of Baiji when gunmen stormed their house at dawn and killed a husband, wife and their children, five and two years old, police Major Ali al-Qeysi said. Residents said the man may have worked for a foreign company.

BAQUBA - An Iraqi civilian was killed by a roadside bomb 8 km (5 miles) east of Baquba while driving an old white pick-up truck on the road, police said. No military targets were nearby at the time of the blast.

BAGHDAD - Police killed three insurgents driving a car packed with explosives in western Baghdad's Ghazaliya district on Thursday evening, a U.S military statement said. The car was stopped at a routine police checkpoint but attempted to escape before police shot dead the occupants.

(Reporting by Maher al-Thanoon in Mosul, Amer Salman in Tikrit and Faris al-Mehdawi in Baquba and Mussab al-Khairalla in Baghdad)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KHA927051.htm

London Police Expecting Jump In Death Toll

This is just an update. We still do not have anything beyond 49 CONFIRMED. The police are quoted as saying as many as 80.

We simply do not know yet.

We will keep up with it and let you know A.S.A.P.

Pic of Manly Beach from Down Under Posted by Picasa

"The time of revenge has come"

'Blowback from Bush and Blair's incompetently pursued war on terror has hit London.

When will the U.S. figure out how to fight smart?By Juan ColeBritish Foreign Minister Jack Straw, "It has the hallmarks of an al-Qaida-related attack."

Although U.S. President George W. Bush maintains that al-Qaida strikes out at the industrialized democracies because of hatred for Western values, the statement said nothing of the sort.

The attack, the terrorists proclaimed, was an act of sacred revenge for British "massacres" in "Afghanistan and Iraq," and a punishment of the United Kingdom for its "Zionism" (i.e., support of Israel). If they really are responsible, who is this group and what do they want?


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9430.htmhttp://snipurl.com/g56z

20,000 flee as city threatened


DEVELOPING STORY:

POLICE today evacuated 20,000 people from the centre of Britain's second-biggest city, Birmingham, and carried out a controlled explosion on a bus

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15882097-2,00.html

Australian's bus ride to hell

By Mark ButtlerJuly 09, 2005
FALLING bodies, blood, screaming and acrid smoke ... Australian Catherine Klestov was sitting right below where the bomb exploded on the top deck of the London bus.Miraculously, the 26-year-old walked from the mangled wreckage in Tavistock Square.

From the hospital bed where she is recovering from cuts and bruises, the recruitment consultant from Queensland gazed at an image of the shattered remains.

"Thank God I wasn't sitting up there. Everyone fell from the top on to us. It was horrible," she said.
"I can't believe it. I am definitely one of the luckiest people."

Ms Klestov, who moved to London in February, normally takes a train to work but found the Underground network was paralysed.

She walked up the steps of Euston station and tried to catch a cab but all were full. She then tapped on the window of a passing bus, trying to get on, but the driver indicated there was no room.

If she had been allowed on board, she would have been safe, as the next bus to pass was the doomed No.30.

Despite it being busy, she was allowed aboard the lower deck and struck up a conversation with a fellow passenger about the "major incident" unfolding on the underground.

"I said 'God, what's going on?' She said there were all sorts of things being said," she recalled.

"A second later, there was the loudest noise you could imagine. I wasn't really sure what happened."

The blast threw her off her feet and on to the floor. Through the smoke, she saw other passengers lying around her, piled on top of each other.

Where the roof had been was the sky, there was screaming.

Almost immediately, the passengers able to walk began scrambling to get out, fearful the bus would catch fire.

"It was smoky and gritty - you could taste it," she said.

Finding herself on the street, she checked herself for injuries and found her arms and legs stained with blood.

"It didn't really register. I just remember screaming at the side of the road, being extremely shaken up," she said.

Passers-by helped her and other passengers into the foyer of a nearby building were they were treated by paramedics. The most serious were then rushed to hospitals.

Ms Klestov told The Daily Telegraph yesterday her feelings of abject shock were now being replaced with "complete anger" at those who would attack innocent people.

"You think, how could they do this. We were just trying to get to work. They picked a peak time," she said.

She said having the support of her sister Elizabeth, who also lives in London, had been an enormous help.

Ms Klestov said she her initial reaction was also to rush back to family in Australia but she has now decided to stay and bravely return to work as soon as she can.

She expects to be released from the Royal Free Hospital in North London later today. But she conceded travelling from Chalk Farm to work at Angel would not be the same.

She said she had contemplated the possibility of a terror attack while riding the tube network and wondered how she would react, never thinking it would happen to her.

"Now, I've just got to face getting back on the tube and the bus," she said.

"I'm going to stay and keep going on with the things I'm doing. I'm extremely lucky to be where I am."

Paying tribute to the emergency services, she said: "Everyone dealt with it exceptionally well."

Back at the family home in Brisbane, her relieved mother Maureen was grateful but astonished her daughter could have survived the carnage.

She had been glued to the news to try to find news about her daughters in London and had four worried hours without information as phone lines went down across the UK capital.

Now she knows her daughter was on the bus, every time she sees footage of it, she shudders.

"I just can't believe it," she said.

"I don't know how she survived that. When you look at that, you think how? She's just so lucky."

She spoke to her daughter yesterday afternoon: "It was a big relief. I told her I loved her and all those sorts of things. Catherine will bounce back.

"She's an absolutely lovely girl with many friends. A lovely, capable young lady. I think she'll be OK."

Officials from the Australian High Commission are trawling through hospitals looking for Australians.

An official said the High Commission had received 1500 inquiries from families trying to track loved ones and urged the more than 100,000 Aussies living in London to call home and allay fears.

Meanwhile, tales of near misses and escapes flood in.

Hamish MacDonald fled Kings Cross station moments after the morning blast to face chaos.
"We were confronted by hundreds of people streaming off the Piccadilly Line service - blood all over their faces, many of them burned," he said.

Oliver Shaw was on a train at Edgware Road when a bomb exploded on the train next to his.

"It was quite horrific and just hearing the shouts and screams of the poor people on the other carriage - it was going to stay with me for quite a while," he said.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15868707-2,00.html

Spanish Bombers Take Credit For London




Group that hit Spain

claims UK attacks;

Third such claim

RAW STORY


The al-Qaeda-linked sect that claimed responsibility for the recent train bombings in Spain that killed 191 people has claimed responsibility today for this week's bloody London blasts in an Internet statement posted by the Europe Division of the network's Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades.

U.S. and other officials were quick to question the claim, saying it did not conform to usual Qaeda language and style. The claim did not appear on major al Qaeda sites.


---But they DID jump right on the fist claim and advertise it IMMEDITATELY as Al Qaeda, the SECRET Group of Al Qaeda in Europe , no less. Wonder do they give decoder rings with membership?---

"A group of mujahedeen from a division of the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades piled blow after blow on the infidel capital, the British capital, leaving dead and injured," the statement said, translated by Reuters. "The beginning was in Madrid and in Istanbul. Today, it's London and tomorrow the mujahedeen will express themselves again."

The group described the attack as a "laudable conquest" and warned of future attacks.

"The next days will be marked by the biggest demonstrations of jihad (holy war) against those who have declared war on Islam and Muslims," it said.

The statement is the third claim by myriad little-known Islamists groups since the blasts.

The language of all the statements has been vague and does not conform to al-Qaeda language and style. The brigade's relationship with al-Qaeda is unclear.

British investigation continues

British investigators continue to pull bodies from a rat-infested subway tunnel under King's Cross terminal in London.

They say the bombs in London's mass transit system, dubbed 'the Tube,' were detonated by timers and weighed less than ten pounds each. The bombers are still at large.

In the wake of the blasts, London's mayor sought to quell fears that his city wouldn't be suitable for the 2012 summer Olympic games. The capital was chosen the day before the attacks.

"We have reassured the [International Olympic Committee] that we have the security to handle the games," mayor Ken Livingstone told the Guardian. "The Metropolitan Police have huge experience in this area, were involved in the advisory group to the Athens games and will be involved again in Beijing.

"The IOC know, through the experience of the 1972 Munich Olympics, that there is nowhere that can ever be completely safe," he added, "but there is nowhere that will be safer than London."

Because no suspects have been apprehended, some Britons worry of future attacks.

This story drew upon material from The Australian, Reuters, and The Guardian.

One Bomber Believed Dead, Unknown Number Still On The Loose

London bombs

July 09, 2005

Police give warning that bombers may strike again

By Sean O’Neill, Daniel McGrory,
Tom Baldwin and Stewart Tendler


THE al-Qaeda terrorists who killed more than 52 people in the London rush-hour bombings are still at large and could strike again, security sources gave warning yesterday.

Investigators are increasingly convinced that only one bomber — who killed 13 people in the explosion on a double-decker bus — died in the blasts.

The others are thought to have left their bombs — consisting of less than 10lb of high explosive hidden in rucksacks and fitted with timed fuses — on the floors of three Tube trains before escaping.

New information emerged last night on the timing of the explosions on the Undergroud. Police said that they now believed that the bombs went off within six minutes of each other, the first at Edgware Road station at 8.50am. This was originally logged as a person under a train, but by 9.17 police had realised that it was a bomb.

The second blast, between Aldgate and Liverpool Street on the Circle Line, came at 8.51, with the third, on the Piccadilly Line train between King’s Cross and Russell Square, at 8.56. The bus explosion in Tavistock Square came at 9.47.

One high-level source said that investigators were assuming that “the people who did this are still out there. They could do it again”.

A second attack would fit the pattern of recent al-Qaeda activity in Europe. In November 2003, the HSBC bank and the British Consulate in Istanbul were attacked five days after two synagogues in the city had been bombed.

The London bombs are strikingly similar to the wave of blasts which killed 191 people on commuter trains in Madrid in March last year. Less than a month later, a bomb attack on the high-speed rail line to Seville was foiled.

Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Branch is in contact with its Spanish counterparts and police and security services around the world to try to discover any intelligence that can identify the bombers.

A main concern is that they are dealing with “clean skins”, possibly British-born terrorists who have not crossed the intelligence radar before. Whoever the killers are, they have access to high explosives and bomb-making expertise.

A police source told The Times: “Our main fear is that this group is out there still sitting on a cache of high explosives knowing that their bomb designs worked.

“We know from the two most recent atrocities in Europe that those groups always intended to make two attacks. Instead of going for perfect synchronicity in one spectacular, they have tried to hit the same target twice.”

The confirmed death toll in Thursday morning’s four blasts has risen to 49 but police say that it could reach 70. Nobody knows how many bodies are inside a wrecked carriage in a deep, badly damaged tunnel between King’s Cross and Russell Square stations.


Continues,....

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1686680,00.html

Subject: Is there Marriage in Heaven?

On their way to get married, a young Catholic couple is involved
in a fatal car accident. The couple find themselves sitting outside the Pearly Gates waiting for St Peter to process them into Heaven. While waiting, they begin to wonder: Could they possibly get married in Heaven?

When St. Peter showed up, they asked him.

St. Peter says, "I don't know. This is the first time anyone has
asked. Let me go and find out," and he leaves..

The couple sat and waited for an answer.


Two months pass and the couple is still waiting. As they waited,
they discussed that IF they were allowed to get married in Heaven, SHOULD they get married, what with the eternal aspect of it all. "What if it doesn't work?" they wondered, "Are we stuck together FOREVER?"

After yet another month, St. Peter finally returns, looking
somewhat bedraggled. "Yes," he informs the couple, "you CAN get married in Heaven."

"Great!" said the couple, "But we were just wondering, what if
things don't work out? Could we also get a divorce in Heaven?"

St. Peter, red-faced with anger, slams his clipboard onto the
ground. "What's wrong?" asked the frightened couple.

"OH, COME ON!" St. Peter shouts, "It took me three months to find
a priest up here! Do you have ANY idea how long it'll take me to find a lawyer?"

Iraq ejects Fox News crew

Old Article Christy but check out his prediction: Wrong, Wrong, Wrong big time Mr Murdoch.

Julia Day

Monday February 17, 2003

Rupert Murdoch's Fox News has been expelled from Iraq in what the TV channel believes is a tit-for-tat move following the US expulsion of an Iraqi journalist.

The four-strong Fox News crew, including correspondent Greg Palkot, has not been told why it must leave the country.

John Stark, the vice-president of news gathering for Fox News, said the reason for the development was American demands that an Iraqi News Agency journalist quit the US.

"We have reason to believe it was a tit-for-tat situation," said Mr Stark, who added Fox News intended to continue broadcasting from countries neighbouring Iraq.

"We will do our best from the perimeter and depend on the various news agencies we subscribe to - it's a difficult place for a journalist to try to conduct business," he said.

Mohammed Allawi, an INA reporter who has reported from the United Nations' New York headquarters for the past two years, said he was told to leave because he was "harmful to US interests".

Allawi said he received an expulsion letter signed by the deputy US ambassador, Patrick Kennedy.

Last week Mr Murdoch gave his unequivocal backing to war in Iraq, praising George Bush as acting "morally" and "correctly" and describing Tony Blair as "full of guts" for supporting the US.

The media tycoon said the price of oil would be one of the war's main benefits.

"The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country," Mr Murdoch said.

How wrong can you be Mr Murdoch, try $60 a barrel

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,897403,00.html

A Place Where Women Rule

Ohhhhh, Yeah, that is beautiful,

You go Girl

By Emily Wax

Washington Post Foreign ServiceSaturday, July 9, 2005; A01

UMOJA, Kenya -- Seated cross-legged on tan sisal mats in the shade, Rebecca Lolosoli, matriarch of a village for women only, took the hand of a frightened 13-year-old girl. The child was expected to wed a man nearly three times her age, and Lolosoli told her she didn't have to.
The man was Lolosoli's brother, but that didn't matter. This is a patch of Africa where women rule.

"You are a small girl. He is an old man," said Lolosoli, who gives haven to young girls running from forced marriages. "Women don't have to put up with this nonsense anymore."

Ten years ago, a group of women established the village of Umoja, which means unity in Swahili, on an unwanted field of dry grasslands. The women said they had been raped and, as a result, abandoned by their husbands, who claimed they had shamed their community.

Stung by the treatment, Lolosoli, a charismatic and self-assured woman with a crown of puffy dark hair, decided no men would be allowed to live in their circular village of mud-and-dung huts.
In an act of spite, the men of her tribe started their own village across the way, often monitoring activities in Umoja and spying on their female counterparts.

What started as a group of homeless women looking for a place of their own became a successful and happy village. About three dozen women live here and run a cultural center and camping site for tourists visiting the adjacent Samburu National Reserve. Umoja has flourished, eventually attracting so many women seeking help that they even hired men to haul firewood, traditionally women's work.

The men in the rival village also attempted to build a tourist and cultural center, but were not very successful.

But the women felt empowered with the revenue from the camping site and their cultural center, where they sell crafts. They were able to send their children to school for the first time, eat well and reject male demands for their daughters' circumcision and marriage.

They became so respected that troubled women, some beaten, some trying to get divorced, started showing up in this little village in northern Kenya. Lolosoli was even invited by the United Nations to attend a recent world conference on gender empowerment in New York.

"That's when the very ugly jealous behaviors started," Lolosoli said, adding that her life was threatened by local men right before her trip to New York. "They just said, frankly, that they wanted to kill me," Lolosoli said, laughing because she thought the idea sounded overly dramatic.

Sebastian Lesinik, the chief of the male village, also laughed, describing the clear division he saw between men and women. "The man is the head," he said. "The lady is the neck. A man cannot take, let's call it advice, from his neck."

"She's questioning our very culture," Lesinik said in an interview at a bar on a sweltering afternoon. "This seems to be the thing in these modern times. Troublemaking ladies like Rebecca."

In a mix of African women's gumption and the trickling in of influences from the outside world, a version of feminism has grown progressively alongside extreme levels of sexual violence, the battle against HIV-AIDS, and the aftermath of African wars, all of which have changed the role of women in surprising ways.

A package of new laws has been presented to Kenya's parliament to give women unprecedented rights to refuse marriage proposals, fight sexual harassment in the workplace, reject genital mutilation and to prosecute rape, an act so frequent that Kenyan leaders call it the nation's biggest human rights issue.

The most severe penalty, known as the "chemical castration bill," would castrate repeatedly convicted rapists and send them to prison for life.

In neighboring Uganda, thousands of women are rallying this month for the Domestic Relations Bill, which would give them specific legal rights if their husbands take a second wife, in part because of fear of HIV infection.

Eleven years after the genocide in Rwanda, in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed, women in the country hold 49 percent of the seats in the lower house of parliament. Many of them are war widows who have said they felt compelled to rise up in protest after male leaders presided over the 1994 slaughter of Tutsi tribal members by the Hutu majority.

Across the continent in West Africa, Nigerian women are lobbying strongly for the nomination of more women politicians, including a president in 2007, saying that men have failed to run the country properly.

Focusing on the meeting of Group of Eight leaders in Scotland this week, female activists said they hoped international aid intended for Africa would include funding for women who are seeking rights in their court systems and more representation in their statehouses.

"We are at the start of something important for African women," said Margaret Auma Odhiambo, a leader of western Kenya's largest group for widows. The members are women whose husbands have died of AIDS complications.

Lolosoli's effort to speak out for change in her patch of the continent shows the difficulties of changing the rhythm and power structure of village life. Before Lolosoli even went to the U.N. conference, she was going house to house in the nearby town of Archer's Post, telling women they had rights, such as to refuse to have sex with their husbands if they were being beaten or ill-treated.

"A woman is nothing in our community," she said, referring to the members of her tribe, including the men in the village across the road.

"You aren't able to answer men or speak in front of them whether you are right or wrong," she said. "That has to change. Women have to demand rights, and then respect will come. But if you remain silent, no one thinks you have anything to say. Then again, I was not popular for what I was saying."

At the U.N. conference in New York, Lolosoli said, she and other women from around the world bonded as they watched an episode of "Oprah" that focused on women, verbal abuse and cheating husbands.

"You just cry and cry," sighed Lolosoli, who said many men in her tribe still take several wives. "Then again, I was really inspired to know that a lot of women face challenges of this nature and make it."

When she came back to Kenya, armed with ideas and empowerment training workbooks, she stood her ground even when some of the men filed a court case against her, seeking to shut down the village.

"I would just ignore the men when they threw stones at me and ask, 'Are you okay? Are your children okay? Are your cows okay?' " she said. Her tactic and calm reaction was disarming, she recalled. "After everything, they weren't going to stop us."

Lolosoli is still battling her brother over his attempt to marry the 13-year-old.

But lately, the residents of the men's village have been admitting defeat. They are no longer trying to attract tourists. Some have moved elsewhere. Others have had trouble getting married because some women in the area are taking Lolosoli's example to heart.

"She has been successful, it's true." sighed Lesinik, who said maybe he is a little bit jealous. He then shrugged and said, "Maybe we can learn from our necks. Maybe just a little bit."

Link in headline

Iraqis as Terror Bait

The bush freak show has released their new report on terrorist activity around the world. Guess what is NOT on it? That's right, apparently 'terrorist events' in Iraq and Afghanistan do not count even as they are repeatedly refferred to as the 'Front Lines of the War on Terror".

See, apparently, we are fighting them there so they,..Oh, thats right. (see London)(see New York) (See Bali) (see Spain) (see Oklahoma City)

Do you want to know what it is EXACTLY that enrages me about this explanation..? Other, than it being proved violently wrong....


My problem is this, Saddam WAS a bad guy, Saddam killed his own people. And NOW, WE are killing the same people he terrified,terrorized and tortured. Well YEAH for US. Now it is US, kicking their men to death while they are chained to the ceiling. Now it is WE, who find a way to JUSTIFY IT.

The only terrorists in Iraq before we got there was Saddam himself. The others were subjigated cowards who helped maim their own country to save their own skins. There WERE NO suicide bombs going off before we got there. Their women were given more rights there than almost ANYWHERE else in the ENTIRE middle east. Ahhh, but nevermore.

The C.I.A.s' own reports say that Iraq is NOW the foremost training ground for terrorists in the world. WHY the ENTIRE world...? Well, because, in Iraq, they actually get EXPERIENCE from KILLING our soldiers. But, let us not confuse the 'terrorists' with the Iraqis.

The Iraqis themselves were NOT terrorists before and those fighting against us now are NOT terrorists either. They are PATRIOTS of Iraq who will not stand idle as we kill their families with bombs and poision their lands with horrifying depleted urainium. They will not care that we have a MESSAGE OF FREEDOM when we herd them into Abu Ghraib to meet their fate at AMERICAN hands. Do you UNDERSTAND the meaning of the MEDICAL definition of 'Pulpified'...? And thats just what we do to their bones. Imagine the state we leave their women in. Their children.


And after all the lies that brought us here, what have We learned?

Oh, that indeed; we WERE lied too, Repeatedly. Day After Day. Night After Night. They USED our deepest fears against us. They PROFITED from our fears. They PROFITED from AMERICAN DEATHS.


They = OTHER AMERICANS. The ones we trusted the most. Traitors among us.

And instead of HANGING those who would commit TREASON against US. What do I hear?

Using Iraq as a place to bait terrorists is the ONLY way to stay safe. Too damn bad about all those IRAQIS.

Another disturbing trend is those hiding behind God in our country to justify hypocrisy in politicking. You will grovel and cry ,oh so publicly; for a brain dead woman but you wont spend a moment to find out WHY all those babies in Iraq are being born HIDIOUSLY deformed.

WHAT WILL YOU SAY TO GOD WHEN YOU FACE HIM??? I know what I will say.

I will beg God to FORGIVE my beloved nation, for she knows not what she has done. I will beg that the oncoming waves of suicide bombings in the name of vengence can be held off long enough for mankind to find MERCY in thier hearts. I will stand with a clear concience and say 'It was NOT in MY name Lord, nor did I ever believe it was YOUR will."

But, you know, frankly, I do not think God gives a shit. AND YES, if you believe in the ONE who created the Trees, then we share the SAME God. I do not believe GOD cares about your petty excuses based on LIES and prejudice, and WILLFUL ignorance.

And to the ones who created this. To the ones who felt Iraqis are so worthless they can openly and even jubiliantly be used as bait to attract TERRORISTS while you discreetly steal their wealth, I
truely hope you burn in hell. I hope the souls STRIPPED from the children of Iraq wieghs down your descent to the Devil himself like a yoke of needles around your neck.

I pray that descent comes moments after the Hang Man pops your damn head off.

After all, THAT is how we deal with those who CREATE terrorist training grounds, isn't it?

Toledo Blade Strikes Again


Americans deserve

the unspun truth

about Iraq


Link in headliner.

WHEN it's hot here, it's 110 degrees in Iraq. There are miserable sandstorms. The electrical grid is up and running less than in prewar times. It's impossible to tell friend from foe. Suicide bombings and mortar attacks are common. The number of American dead is inching daily toward the 2,000 mark. About six times as many young soldiers have been maimed for life.


Several thousand Iraqis have died since sovereignty was returned to an interim government a year ago. The alienated parties to the U.S.-brokered governing body have been fighting for relevance ever since. A new, unifying constitution is supposed to be crafted by August, planting the seeds for a trend-setting democracy in the Middle East. Nobody's betting the farm on meeting that deadline.

In the meantime, foreign envoys have become the latest targets of the insurgency, a term that actually covers myriad warring parties, from disenfranchised natives to committed terrorists, tearing up the country. If Iraq wasn't a hotbed for insurrection and Islamic zealots before the Bush War, it is now. They will seize this chaotic moment in history to advance their civil war or jihad no matter the cost to themselves or innocent others.

George W. Bush, the man who set up the whole scenario with unsubstantiated claims of weapons of mass destruction, with sensational but phony arguments of the smoking gun being a "mushroom cloud," with tragically premature "mission accomplished" propaganda and inane "bring it on" bravado, wants Americans to trust him again.

He says freedom is on the march, but we can't hear any footsteps.

Most of us wish we could take the President and the Pentagon and Donald Rumsfeld at their word, but their stubborn aversion to straight talk and the plain truth makes that impossible. More than pep talks or scripted appearances and orchestrated rallies to support the troops - even as VA benefits are being cut - Americans want the truth.

No more excuses. No more using the unrelated terrorist attacks of 9/11 or terrorism in general as a crutch to explain Iraq. No more pap about taking the fight to the terrorists so we won't have to fight them at home. No more canned speeches about spreading liberty and justice for all when Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo beg to differ.

While there is a growing recognition in the country that going to war was a bad decision based on nonexistent WMDs, there is also a growing resignation that the U.S. can't up and leave the chaos it unleashed. We know we have to see this nightmare through and it makes us sick.

The worst part is living with the unknowns as American caskets arrive regularly from Iraq and thousands of wounded soldiers are carried away on gurneys. The Bush Administration could shed light on some of the big unknowns of the war with a little honesty about where we are in the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis, what actually constitutes a mission accomplished, and, realistically, how many U.S. troops will be required to that end and for how long?

The generals say the insurgency is faring no better or worse than ever. The vice president says it's in its last throes. What's the truth? How strong is the insurgency now and is it getting stronger?

The defense secretary said he's seen insurgencies last a dozen years or more. Will U.S. forces remain engaged concurrently?

Mr. Rumsfeld also says American troops will stand down when Iraqi security forces can stand up to adequately protect their homeland. What is the truth about the phantom legions of ready-to-roll Iraqi security forces without numbers inflated to include cops and border guards never trained as army.

The President says the U.S. won't leave Iraq until the mission is completed. Define that mission in real terms today so it won't keep changing tomorrow with every unplanned setback in Iraq, from ethnic power struggles to election boycotts to new outbreaks of destabilizing violence.

We have spent two years trying to fix what we broke in Iraq. When is enough enough? Is the latest outrage in London a clue? Will we be there in perpetuity, until Iraq rights itself, embraces a constitution, installs a democratically elected government, restores order, and pigs fly?

It's hot and getting hotter in Iraq. Only fair that Washington feels the heat for staging pep talks on patience instead of candidly leveling with the American people that support for the continuing war means a far greater and more prolonged sacrifice than any predicted.

Trust us.

Foe News Screws The Pooch


Fox News slammed over 'callous' line

Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday July 9, 2005
The Guardian

Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel was under fire yesterday for comments by some of its leading journalists in response to the London bombs.
Speaking about the reaction of the financial markets, Brit Hume, the channel's Washington managing editor, said: "Just on a personal basis ... I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought 'hmm, time to buy'."

The host of a Fox News programme, Brian Kilmeade, said the attacks had the effect of putting terrorism back on the top of the G8's agenda, in place of global warming and African aid. "I think that works to our advantage, in the western world's advantage, for people to experience something like this together, just 500 miles from where the attacks have happened."


Another Fox News host, John Gibson, said before the blasts that the International Olympic Committee "missed a golden opportunity" by not awarding the 2012 games to France. "If they had picked France instead of London to hold the Olympics, it would have been the one time we could look forward to where we didn't worry about terrorism. They'd blow up Paris, and who cares?" He added: "This is why I thought the Brits should let the French have the Olympics - let somebody else be worried about guys with backpack bombs for a while."
Media Matters for America, a watchdog and frequent critic of Fox, criticised the comments on its website. "I think it's absolutely sickening three Fox anchors had such callous reactions to the bombings that took dozens of lives," said the Jamison Foser, of the group.

The Fox News media relations office had not responded by the time the Guardian went to press yesterday.

Taliban Spokesman Says US Commando Beheaded in Afghanistan

Agence France-Presse
Go to Original

Saturday 09 July 2005

Taliban militants in Afghanistan claimed to have beheaded a US special forces soldier they had held hostage since last week, but the US military said there was no proof the soldier had been killed.

Self-styled Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdul Latif Hakimi told AFP the soldier was killed on Saturday and his body was left on a mountainside in the northeastern province of Kunar.

An American navy SEAL has been missing in Kunar after the rescue attempt of a four-man team ended in the downing of a US military helicopter on June 28, killing 16 people. One soldier was rescued but the other two are dead.

"This morning at 11:00 am (0630 GMT) in Shagal district in Kunar province, the Taliban killed the American soldier and cut his head off," Hakimi told AFP.

"We left the body on a mountainside in the area ... so the Afghan or US soldiers there can find it," the spokesman said, declining to give any details about the victim.

"We cannot give more information, after the US finds the body and announces it that will be the proof of our claim," he said.

The report could not be verified from independent sources and Hakimi has previously made inflated or untrue claims about clashes in Afghanistan between the Taliban and coalition forces.

A US military spokesman here said there was no proof that the soldier was dead and that the massive search for him was continuing.

"Our service member is still missing, and search operations are ongoing. We have no proof that what the Taliban claim has happened," spokesman Lieutenant colonel Jerry O'Hara said.

The US has said more than 300 US soldiers backed by military aircraft were searching the wooded mountains to locate the missing commando. It has disputed previous claims that he was being held by the Taliban.

The four Navy SEALs were on a reconnaissance mission when they came under attack by a large force of militants. After calling for support, the Chinook helicopter was shot down in the coalition's biggest single loss of life since toppling the fundamentalist Taliban regime in late 2001.

Taliban insurgents have stepped up attacks on Afghan and US-led forces in the run-up to the war-torn country's first post-conflict parliamentary polls in September.

Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said Saturday that a resurgent Al-Qaeda terror network had teamed up with Taliban militants to unleash attacks which have killed about 600 people this year.

He said Al-Qaeda was regrouping and using unspecified "new tactics" in the attacks.

In the latest incidents, two Afghan policemen were wounded and 15 others went missing after suspected Taliban insurgents ambushed their convoy Saturday in southern Afghan province of Helmand, officials said.

Hakimi said the Taliban had carried out the attack in Helmand's Dishu district and said the group had killed six policemen and taken seven others hostage.

Have you noticed...

I think this site is the ONLY site that did not carry the Rehnquist retires Friday story.

Good thing, too.

We would have been wrong.

Art For Christy.

Something Big is Breaking in Ohio

Cleveland's Plain Dealer:

We're Holding Big Stories

Because of Miller Jailing

By Mark Fitzgerald

Published: July 08, 2005 5:02 PM ET

CHICAGO Plain Dealer Editor Doug Clifton says the Cleveland daily is not reporting two major investigative stories of "profound importance" because they are based on illegally leaked documents -- and the paper fears the consequences faced now by jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

Lawyers for the Newhouse Newspapers-owned PD have concluded that the newspaper would almost certainly be found culpable if the leaks were investigated by authorities.

"They've said, this is a super, super high-risk endeavor, and you would, you know, you'd lose," Clifton said in an interview Friday afternoon.

"The reporters say, 'Well, we're willing to go to jail, and I'm willing to go to jail if it gets laid on me,'" Clifton added, "but the newspaper isn't willing to go to jail. That's what the lawyers have told us. So this is a Time Inc. sort of situation."

Both Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper faced jail on contempt charges for refusing to identify confidential sources, but Time agreed to hand over Cooper's subpoenaed notes when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the reporters' appeal. Cooper later agreed to testify to a grand jury, saying his source had given "express personal consent" to be identified.

Clifton declined to characterize the two stories, saying only they were based on material that was illegally leaked.

Clifton's revelation that the PD was holding two investigative projects was actually first published in a column he wrote June 30 about the Miller and Cooper case. While the column garnered positive reaction, he said, almost nobody picked up on the disclosure tucked into the end of the piece.

"As I write this, two stories of profound importance languish in our hands," Clifton wrote. "The public would be well served to know them, but both are based on documents leaked to us by people who would face deep trouble for having leaked them. Publishing the stories would almost certainly lead to a leak investigation and the ultimate choice: talk or go to jail. Because talking isn't an option and jail is too high a price to pay, these two stories will go untold for now. How many more are out there?"

Clifton said he wrote the column to show that "there are consequences" to the actions taken against Miller and Cooper by a federal judge and special prosecutor.

"Some people might argue that you're being chicken-shit," Clifton said. "Well, I, I can respect that," he said, his voice trailing off.

Clifton said the Miller-Cooper case has not presented any problem in its ongoing reporting of the biggest current scandal in Ohio, sometimes called "Coingate."

"So much of that we are pursuing unambiguously with public records," he said. "We've had to rely very little on anonymous sources."

The scandal, first reported by The Blade in Toledo, revolves around a rare-coin dealer who was given authority to invest $50 million in state money in rare coins and other collectibles. Gold coins valued at $300,000 that were part of that investment were lost in the mail, the Blade reported. It later came out that millions of dollars in the fund cannot be accounted for.

Friday, July 08, 2005

Art For Boys

(reposted by request, REPEATED requests)

In Iraq, they call events like this "Tuesday."

Over There

Posted by WilliamPitt
Added to homepage Thu Jul 07th 2005, 02:16 PM ET

A British associate penned a quick response to the bombing attacks that took place in London this morning. “The message from those claiming responsibility says, in part, ‘Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters,’” he wrote. “Well it isn't, so fuck them.”

Indeed.

My first response was a wrenching horror, a kick to the gut when I checked my email and saw two hundred messages with the words ‘London attack’ in the subject line. Suddenly, the television was on and I was reading every news report I could get my eyes on. At least thirty-three people were killed and hundreds more wounded in four coordinated bombing attacks aimed at the mass transit system.

All of a sudden I was back in my classroom, back in the middle of a bright September morning, surrounded by wall-eyed students asking me if this was World War III as we watched two buildings burn, and then fall, and then unannounced I had Ani DiFranco in my head and she was singing, “And every borough looked up when it heard the first blast, and then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed, and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar looked more like war than anything I've seen so far…”

That was my first response, but I’m a little wiser nowadays. My second thought, bluntly, was that of all the Western cities in the world, London can handle this. From 1973 until roundabout the year 2000, bombings in that city took place with dreary regularity. In November of 1974, two IRA bombs in Birmingham killed 19 and wounded 180. A 1989 bombing at the Royal Marines School of Music killed 10 and wounded more than 30. There were more than a dozen different major incidents like these, and many smaller ones besides.

London handled the Nazi blitz. ‘Handled’ is perhaps the wrong word. Londoners watched as their city was battered to rubble day after day, and squared their shoulders, and sent out the RAF, and prevailed. A fire chief named Deasy summed up the British response: “The idea of England folding up, that's a joke. That outfit will never fold up. They've got just as much guts as anybody in this man's world has and they'll carry right on. Anybody thinks they're gonna fold up, they're crazy.”

In other words, the British associate who wrote that note this morning hit the nail on the head.

Now comes the so-called official response. Predictably, George W. Bush proclaimed that the War on Terror goes on. Conservative frother Rush Limbaugh got on the radio and made a few remarkable rhetorical contortions. To wit: The G8 summit, which was apparently the target of these attacks, is a liberal summit. Yes, you read that right. He called it a “leftist summit” aimed at achieving leftist goals like saving Africa (“Again,” he said) and stopping global warming, and so this was an attack on leftists who will now attack Bush.

The idea that the G8 is a leftist organization is a new one to me. I must have missed a memo somewhere. Apparently, the three billion people who went out last weekend to ask the G8 to do the right thing likewise missed the memo. Other conservative commentators rushed to microphones to proclaim that if we had all been standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Bush, this London attack would never have happened. Never underestimate the ability of the right-wing to use tragedy as a means of beating on people they don’t agree with.

I am a little wiser nowadays, and perhaps a little more callous because of that wisdom. My first response was horror, and my second was a sense that the British people have the strength to endure this. My third response was to marvel at the news coverage. Four bombings, more than thirty dead, hundreds more wounded? In London, it is a terrifying, enraging, appalling act of despicable violence that must be immediately avenged.

In Iraq, they call events


like this “Tuesday.”

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and wounded in Iraq by way of deadly bombings that have been taking place every single day. These Iraqi people are no different from the Londoners who perished today. Their skin is darker perhaps, and they pray to a different God, but they have families and children and dreams and they die just as horribly as their British counterparts. Yet they earn perhaps a few sentences on the back page of the paper, and virtually no comment from the members of the international community which ginned up the invasion of Iraq in the first place.

The world was warned about this, warned and warned and warned again. An invasion based on lies and disinformation, an occupation that grinds a civilian populace, becomes the perfect machine to manufacture terrorists who will happily die in order to see others die. The CIA calls what happened in London today “blowback.” It is wrong, it is heinous, it is murder plain and simple, and it was as predictable as the sun rising in the East.

The rhetoric about Iraq has been that we are “fighting the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.” Today, “over here” became the streets of London. Where will it be tomorrow?

One thing is certain. The perpetrators of this bombing bear the responsibility for this wretched act, and bear the responsibility for the gross miscalculation that many have made in the past: A democratic society is weak and decadent, and can be easily pushed. Ask Hitler if that is true. A democratic society, once enraged, is the strongest force on Earth, and those responsible for this are going to find that out to their woe.

The other certainty: Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair bear the responsibility for this wretched act, as well. They decided in April of 2002 to start a war based on false pretenses, to fix the intelligence and facts around the policy, and now the whirlwind has come to be reaped. The blood that runs in the streets of London, and in the streets of Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit and Mosul, is on their hands.


http://www.democraticunderground.com


--BLOW BACK INDEED!!!!--

What If...


...This were YOUR home?
YOUR women...?

Mosul, Iraq

Arianna SKEWS Bush, Oh, but good.


Link in headline
Arianna Huffington

Approve the Bush Agenda...

or the Terrorists Win!


Don’t you love the way many in the media are trying to spin the London bombings? Instead of focusing on the bloody deconstruction of Bush’s “fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here” strategy, they are using it to promote Bush’s failing agenda.

For an outrageous example, check out today’s Wall Street Journal, where Dan Henninger tries to make the case that what happened in London proves the need for keeping our troops in Iraq, keeping the Patriot Act intact, keeping Guantanamo open, and -- I kid you not -- confirming John Bolton (supposedly because of his expertise in dealing with nuclear proliferation; if you want to know how Bolton has really handled this task read this).

Here’s Henninger’s money quote: “If the U.S. Senate wanted to send a signal of resolve and seriousness to whoever bombed London, Democrats would join with Republicans their first day back to dispatch proven anti-terror warrior John Bolton straight to the U.N.”

It’s a 2005 spin on that popular 2001 fill-in-the-blanks game “If You Don’t [insert pet issue here] the Terrorists Win." Now instead of “get back to normal,” “go shopping,” and “travel to Disney World,” it’s “If you don’t confirm John Bolton, the terrorists win!” Shameless.

Then there was Stuart Varney on Fox, making the case that what happened in London “puts the number one issue right back on the front burner right at the point where all these world leaders are meeting. It takes global warming off the front burner. It takes African aid off the front burner.”

So, Stuart, when exactly did global warming become a front-burner issue and the war on terror a back-burner one? Was it after the vice president spent the entire campaign trying to convince voters that another terrorist attack in America was imminent?

How convenient for the president’s apologists to use the attacks to absolve him of his responsibility to deal with thorny issues he doesn’t really want to. “Global warming? Africa? Sorry, boys, no time for them, the war on terror’s back on the front burner!”

Wait a minute, if we let terrorists set the international agenda doesn’t that mean, you know, that they win?

The London bombings will not make global warming go away. The London bombings will not make the crises in Africa go away. They also won’t make it okay for Bush to appoint right-wing extremists to the Supreme Court or make his plan to privatize Social Security acceptable or make John Bolton a good choice for the UN.

And they sure as hell don’t make Bush's lack of a plan for Iraq any less of a disaster for America.

Indeed, it’s precisely because the war on terror is -- and was, even before the London bombings -- the number one issue that we have to have an exit strategy for Iraq. If Bush and his backers in the media are really serious about the war on terror, they need to admit that we can no longer afford all the resources -- human and monetary -- being devoted to Iraq.

Because if we don’t keep the real war on terror on the front burner, and go after al-Qaeda, and capture bin Laden, and secure our ports, railways, airports, and roadways, to say nothing of the world’s loose nukes... then the terrorists really will have a shot at winning.


---Hell, yes!...I love that woman.---

Big, Bloody, Creepy, HMMMMMM


Who's Watching the Watch List?


By John Graham / AlterNet

My name is on a list of real and suspected enemies of the state and I can't find out what I'm accused of or why, let alone defend myself.

Heading for Oakland from Seattle to see my grandkids last week, the Alaska Airlines check-in machine refused to give me a boarding pass. Directed to the ticket counter, I gave the agent my driver's license and watched her punch keys at her computer.

Frowning, she told me that my name was on the national terrorist No Fly Watch List and that I had to be specially cleared to board a plane. Any plane. Then she disappeared with my license for 10 minutes, returning with a boarding pass and a written notice from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confirming that my name was on a list of persons "who posed, or were suspected of posing, a threat to civil aviation or national security."

No one could tell me more than that. The computer was certain.

Back home in Seattle, I called the TSA's 800 number, where I rode a merry-go-round of pleasant recorded voices until I gave up. Turning to the TSA web site, I downloaded a Passenger Identity Verification form that would assist the TSA in "assessing" my situation if I sent it in with a package of certified documents attesting to who I was.

I collected all this stuff and sent it in. Another 20 minutes on the phone to the TSA uncovered no live human being at all, let alone one who would tell me what I'd presumably done to get on The List. Searching my mind for possible reasons, I've been more and more puzzled. I used to work on national security issues for the State Department and I know how dangerous our country's opponents can be. To the dismay of many of my more progressive friends, I've given the feds the benefit of the doubt on homeland security. I tend to dismiss conspiracy theories as nonsense and I take my shoes off for the airport screeners with a smile.

I'm embarrassed that it took my own ox being gored for me to see the threat posed by the Administration's current restricting of civil liberties. I'm being accused of a serious--even treasonous--criminal intent by a faceless bureaucracy, with no opportunity (that I can find) to refute any errors or false charges. My ability to earn a living is threatened; I speak on civic action and leadership all over the world, including recently at the US Air Force Academy. Plane travel is key to my livelihood.

According to a recent MSNBC piece, thousands of Americans are having similar experiences. And this is not Chile under Pinochet. It's America. My country and yours.

With no real information to go on, I'm left to guess why this is happening to me. The easiest and most comforting guess is that it's all a mistake (a possibility the TSA form, to its credit, allows). But how? I'm a 63-year-old guy with an Anglo-Saxon name. I once held a Top Secret Umbra clearance (don't ask what it is but it meant the FBI vetted me up the whazoo for months). And since I left the government in 1980, my life has been an open book. It shouldn't be hard for the government to figure out that I'm not a menace to my country.

If they do think that, I can't see how. Since 1983 I've helped lead the Giraffe Heroes Project, a nonprofit that moves people to stick their necks out for the common good. In the tradition of Gandhi, King and Mandela, that can include challenging public policies people think are unjust. In 1990, the Project's founder and I were honored as "Points of Light" by the first President Bush for our work in fostering the health of this democracy. I've just written a book about activating citizens to get to work on whatever problems they care about, instead of sitting around complaining.

I'm also engaged in international peacemaking, working with an organization with a distinguished 60-year record of success in places ranging from post-war Europe to Africa. Peacemakers must talk to all sides, so over the years I've met with Cambodians, Sudanese, Palestinians, Israelis and many others. You can't convince people to move toward peaceful solutions unless you understand who they are.

As I said, I'm not into conspiracy theories. But I can't ignore this administration's efforts to purge and punish dissenters and opponents. Look, for example, at current efforts to cleanse PBS and NPR of "anti-administration" news. But I'm not Bill Moyers and the Giraffe Heroes Project is not PBS. We're a small operation working quietly to promote real citizenship.

Whether it's a mistake or somebody with the power to hassle me really thinks I am a threat, the stark absence of due process is unsettling. The worst of it is that being put on a list of America's enemies seems to be permanent. The TSA form states:


The TSA clearance process will not remove a name from the Watch Lists. Instead this process distinguishes passengers from persons who are in fact on the Watch Lists by placing their names and identifying information in a cleared portion of the Lists.
Which may or may not, the form continues, reduce the airport hassles.

Huh? My name is on a list of real and suspected enemies of the state and I can't find out what I'm accused of or why, let alone defend myself. And I'm guilty, says my government, not just until proven innocent or a victim of mistaken identity--but forever.

Sure, 9/11 changed a lot. Tougher internal security measures (like thorough screenings at airports and boundary crossings) are a dismal necessity. But, in protecting ourselves, we can't allow our leaders to continue to create a climate of fear and mistrust, to destroy our civil liberties and, in so doing, to change who we are as a nation. What a victory that would be for our enemies, and what a betrayal of real patriots and so many in the wider world who still remember this country as a source of inspiration and hope.

I don't think it's like Germany in 1936 -- but, look at Germany in 1930. Primed by National Socialist propaganda to stay fearful and angry, Germans in droves refused to see the right's extreme views and actions as a threat to their liberties.

And don't forget that frog. You know that frog. Dropped into a pot of boiling water, he jumps out to safety. But put him into a pot of cold water over a steady flame, he won't realize the danger until it's too late to jump.

So how hot does the water have to get? When the feds can rifle through your library reading list? When they can intimidate journalists? When a government agency can keep you off airplanes without giving you a reason? When there's not even a pretense of due process? We're not talking about prisoners at Guantanamo; this is you and me. Well, after last week, it sure as hell is me and it could be you, next.

Oh, yes -- Washington State just refused to renew my driver's license online, a privilege given others. I had to wait in line at the DMV before a computer decided I could drive home. This conspiracy theory debunker smells a connection to the Watch List.

I know what I will do. If my name is not removed completely from the Watch List in 45 days I will use every resource I've got to challenge the government of a country that I love and have served. In all the press about identity theft, I find myself railing at having my identity as a patriot stolen--by my own government. This must not stand.


http://www.alternet.org/story/23362

God Is Tracking OBL

July 8th, 2005 1:37 pm

Bin Laden is not in Afghanistan, Karzai says,
as Taliban reiterates claim
it is holding U.S. commando


Associated Press

Osama bin Laden is not in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai said Friday, while a purported Taliban spokesman reiterated a claim that a missing American commando is being held by the rebels and will soon be killed.

Karzai made the comment at a news conference in the capital, Kabul, but gave no suggestion of where he thinks the al-Qaida leader may be hiding.

"God knows where he is. ... We don't know. ... He is not in Afghanistan," he said, without elaborating.

His comment came three days after Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said bin Laden is not in Pakistan and could be hiding in southeastern Afghanistan.

U.S. officials have said they believe bin Laden is somewhere in rugged mountains between the two nations.

U.S. military spokeswoman Lt. Cindy Moore declined to comment on the latest claim that a U.S. Navy SEAL commando has been captured, except to say that "we are continuing to search for him."

The commando is the last of a four-member U.S. Navy SEAL team missing for 11 days in Kunar province, near the Pakistani border. One of the men was rescued and the other two were found dead.

Purported Taliban spokesman Mullah Latif Hakimi said the commando is being interrogated and would later be killed.

"Right now the interrogation is taking place of the American who is with us about the American strategy in Afghanistan," he said. "After that ... he will be executed, definitely."

Hakimi has said previously that the Taliban are holding the commando. But information from him in the past has frequently proven exaggerated or untrue, and his exact tie to the Taliban leadership cannot be independently verified.

The claims by the Taliban follow an unprecedented spate of insurgent violence that has left about 700 people dead and threatened to sabotage three years of progress toward peace. Afghan officials insist the violence will not disrupt landmark legislative elections slated for September.

Something you may not realize...

I decided to look up the per capita rumor of Iraqi Ph.Ds'.

Guess what...? It's True.

They most likely have the highest number of doctorates, per capita, than anyone else on the entire planet.

TRANSLATION...

The mightiest military in history, has invaded the smartest people in the world.


Great. Just Great.

Booga, Booga




Zarqawi: Everywhere and nowhere


By Dahr Jamail / Asia Times

AMMAN, Jordan - A remarkable proportion of the violence taking place in Iraq is regularly credited to the Jordanian Ahmad al-Khalayleh, better known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and his al-Qaeda-linked organization in Iraq. Sometimes it seems no car bomb goes off, no ambush occurs that isn't claimed in his name or attributed to him by the Bush administration. Bush and his top officials have, in fact, made good use of him, lifting his reputed feats of terrorism to epic, even mythic, proportions (much aided by various mainstream media outlets). Given that the invasion and occupation of Iraq have now been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be based on administration lies and manipulations, I begun to wonder if the vaunted Zarqawi even existed.

In Amman, random interviews with Jordanians only generated more questions and no answers about Zarqawi. As it happens, though, the Jordanian capital is just a short cab ride from Zarqa, the city Zarqawi is said to be from. So I decided to slake my curiosity about him by traveling there and nosing around his old neighborhood.

"Zarqawi, I don't even know if he exists," said a scruffy taxi driver in Amman, and his was a typical comment. "He's like [Osama] bin Laden, we don't even know if he exists; but if he does, I support that he fights the US occupation of Iraq."

Chatting with a man sipping tea in a small stall in downtown Amman, I asked what he thought of Zarqawi. He was convinced that Zarqawi was perfectly real, but the idea that he was responsible for such a wide range of attacks in Iraq had to be "nonsense".

"The Americans are using him for their propaganda," he insisted. "Think about it - with all of their power and intelligence capabilities - they cannot find one man?"

Like so many others in neighboring Jordan, he, too, offered verbal support for the armed resistance in Iraq, adding, "Besides, it is any person's right to defend himself if his country is invaded. The American occupation of Iraq has destabilized the entire region."

The Bush administration has regularly claimed that Zarqawi was in - and then had just barely escaped from - whatever city or area they were next intent on attacking or cordoning off or launching a campaign against. Last year, he and his organization were reputed to be headquartered in Fallujah, prior to the American assault that flattened the city. At one point, American officials even alleged that he was commanding the defense of Fallujah from elsewhere by telephone. Yet he also allegedly slipped out of Fallujah, either just before or just after the beginning of the assault, depending on which media outlet or military press release you read.

He has since turned up, according to American intelligence reports and the US press, in Ramadi, Baghdad, Samarra and Mosul among other places, along with side trips to Jordan, Iran, Pakistan and/or Syria. His closest "lieutenants" have been captured by the busload, according to American military reports, and yet he always seems to have a bottomless supply of them. In May, a news report on the BBC even called Zarqawi "the leader of the insurgency in Iraq", though more sober analysts of the chaotic Iraqi situation say his group, Jama'at al-Tawhid wal Jihad, while probably modest in size and reach, is linked to a global network of jihadis. However, finding any figures as to the exact size of the group remains an elusive task.

Former US secretary of state Colin Powell offered photos before the United Nations in February, 2003 of Zarqawi's "headquarters" in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, also claiming that Zarqawi had links to al-Qaeda. The collection of small huts was bombed to the ground by US forces in March of that year, prompting one news source to claim that Zarqawi had been killed. Yet seemingly contradicting Powell's claims for Zarqawi's importance was a statement made in October, 2004 by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who conceded that Zarqawi's ties to al-Qaeda may have been far more ambiguous, that he may have been more of a rival than a lieutenant to bin Laden. "Someone could legitimately say he's not al-Qaeda," added Rumsfeld.

The eternal netherworld of Zarqawi
For anyone trying to assess the Zarqawi phenomenon from neighboring Jordan, complicating matters are the contradictory statements Jordanians regularly offer up about almost any aspect of Zarqawi's life, history, present activities, or even his very existence.

"I've met him here in Jordan," claimed Abdulla Hamiz, a 29 year-old merchant in Amman, "Two years ago." However, Hajam Yousef, shining shoes under a date palm in central Amman, insists, "He doesn't exist except in the minds of American policy-makers."

In fact, what little is actually known about Zarqawi sounds like the biography of a troubled but normal man from the industrial section of Zarqa. Thirty-eight years old now, according to the BBC, Zarqawi reportedly grew up a rebellious child who ran with the wrong crowd. He liked to play soccer in the streets as a young boy and dropped out of school when he was 17. According to some reports, his friends claimed that in his teens he started drinking heavily, getting tattoos, and picking fights he could not win. According to Jordanian intelligence reports provided to the Associated Press in Amman, Zarqawi was jailed in the 1980s for sexual assault, though no additional details are available. By the time he was 20 he evidently began looking for direction, and ended up making his way to Afghanistan in the last years of the jihadi war against the Soviets in that country. While some media outlets, such as the New York Times, claim that he did not actually fight in Afghanistan, there are people in Jordan who believe he did.

He is reported to have returned to Jordan in 1992, where he was arrested after Jordanian authorities found weapons in his home. On his release in 1999, he left once again for Pakistan. When his Pakistani visa expired, expecting to be arrested as a suspect in a terror plot if he returned to Jordan, he entered Afghanistan instead.

After supposedly running a weapons camp there, he was next sighted by Jordanian authorities crossing back into Jordan from Syria in September of 2002. Some time between then and May 11, 2004, when he was reported to have beheaded the kidnapped American, Nick Berg, in Baghdad, Zarqawi entered Iraq. Many news outlets have reported that his goal in Iraq is to generate a sectarian civil war between the Sunni and Shi'ites.

In September, 2004, the BBC, among others, reported, "US officials suspect that Zarqawi ... is holed up with followers in the rebellious Iraqi city of Fallujah," though their sources, as is true of more or less all sources in every report on Zarqawi, were nebulous. During the second siege of Fallujah, last November, Newsweek reported that "some US officials say that Zarqawi may actually be directing or instigating events in the town by telephone from elsewhere in Iraq".

Though they, too, cited no specific sources and provided no evidence for this, Newsweek then summed Zarqawi's importance up in this way: "His crucial role in the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, however, cannot be underestimated." Meanwhile, the BBC was reporting that his "network is considered the main source of kidnappings, bomb attacks and assassination attempts in Iraq" - another statement made without much, if any, solid evidence.

In the end, the vast mass of reportage on Zarqawi amounts to countless statements based on anonymous sources hardly less shadowy - to ordinary readers - than him. He exists, then, in a kind of eternal netherworld of reportage, rumor and attribution. It could almost be said that never has a figure been more regularly written about based on less hard information. While we have a rough outline of who he is, where he is from, and where he went until he entered Iraq, evidence that might stand up in a court of law is consistently absent. The question that remains to be answered in this glaring void of hard information is: who benefits from the ongoing tales of the mysterious Zarqawi?

The search for Zarqawi's past
My own little journey only seemed to repeat this larger phenomenon on a more modest scale. It was the sort of story where, from beginning to end, no one I met ever seemed willing to offer his or her real name (or certainly let a real name be used in an article). From second one, Zarqawi and an urge for anonymity were tightly - and perhaps appropriately - bound together. Abdulla (not his real name, of course), the man who agreed to drive my translator Aisha and me to al-Zarqa for this excursion, was a Jordanian, by the look of things about 30 years old, who chain-smoked nervously throughout the trip. We decided to go with him after running into him while I was conducting my own informal Zarqawi reality poll in Amman.

"I know him personally because we fought together in Afghanistan in the early '90's," insisted Abdulla. "If you like, I can show you where he is from."

When he picked us up on the late afternoon of the next day in his beat-up, rusting taxi, he agreed to a modest fee that was to be paid at the end of our excursion. As we puttered up a hillside on our venture to Zarqawi's hometown of al-Zarqa, he promptly pulled out a small stack of photos. I flipped through them as we drove towards Zarqawi's neighborhood and noted Abdulla standing in front of the huge Faisal mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan, a giant beard (no longer present) dominating his flowing dishdasha (robe). Another picture had him in Peshawar, Pakistan, a city near the Afghan border known as a recruiting and staging area for the Taliban. Others seemed to have him in the Philippines standing amid dense forest with a gun slung over his shoulder. In none of them - why should I have been surprised - did he have a companion with the now so globally recognizable Zarqawi sneer.

A little while into our journey, out of nowhere Abdulla suddenly said, "Anyone collaborating with the Americans in Iraq should be killed!"

I took this as a sign that he felt like talking, and asked him what he knew of Zarqawi. According to him, he met the mythic terrorist in Peshawar before being sent with him to a training camp on the border of Afghanistan in 1990. "There are several well-known training camps in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan," he explained, "And we were in one of those, along with freedom fighters from Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon."

Only fighters for "jihad" were allowed into the camps, he continued proudly. Only fighters who were identified by other well-known mujahideen were granted permission to enter, in an effort to safeguard those camps against spies. After three months of training with machine guns and rocket launchers, Abdulla claims that he and Zarqawi headed for Afghanistan to fight the Russians who remained there.

When I looked at him quizzically - since the Russians withdrew from Afghanistan in February of 1989 - he replied, "Many of them stayed after their government announced they had withdrawn - so we were pushing the rest of them out."

This was already a questionable tale, but he went right on. They were given the choice, he claimed, of where to go in Afghanistan, and Abdulla proudly stated that most of the mujahideen went to the "hot" areas where they expected to find fighting. Our discussion was then interrupted because we had completed the hop to Zarqa and arrived in the neighborhood, so rumor has it, where Zarqawi's brother-in-law lives. We were dropped off near a small mosque where Zarqawi supposedly used to pray.

Abdulla says it isn't safe for him to linger here - though he doesn't bother to explain why - and we agree instead that he will call us on my cell phone in an hour to see if we need more time or not.

So Aisha and I begin to walk around the quiet, middle-class neighborhood asking people if they know where the brother-in-law lived. Small children play in the streets. Behind them young men and parents sit eyeing us suspiciously. The wind whips plastic bags along the roads between the usual stone houses of Jordan. Finally, we find an old man with a white, flowing beard and tired eyes sitting in a worn chair at the front of a small grocery stall. He admits to being the imam of the mosque, but when asked if he remembers Zarqawi he dodges the question artfully.

"It is probably true that he used to pray in my mosque," he responds tiredly, "but I can't say for sure, as my back is to the people whom I lead in prayers."

After this he looks away, down the road. I assume he's wishing we were gone - undoubtedly like so many Zarqawi seekers before us. So we thank him and walk on.

Next we find a woman - no names given - who assures us that Zarqawi is from the Beni Hassan tribe, the largest tribe in Jordan, before pointing to a two-storey white house with a black satellite dish on top.

"That is Ahmed Zarqawi's home," she says softly, referring to one of his brothers before warning, "But don't go there because they will throw rocks on your head. They are sick of the media."

After being sidetracked by being shown his brother's home, we keep doggedly asking for his brother-in-law, but everyone insists that they simply don't know where he lives, which seems odd. Just up the hill from his brother's home, we stumble on a middle-aged man who is willing to be interviewed. He's a rare find in this village that has certainly been inundated with media, not to speak of far more threatening visits from the intelligence and police personnel of various countries.

Like our taxi driver, this man agrees to be interviewed on condition of anonymity. These are, it seems, a reasonably media-savvy group of villagers. He tells us that Zarqawi's brother doesn't know much about the mythic legend of the Jordanian jihadi outlaw, due to the fact that he keeps his distance from all the hoopla. He then laughs and adds, "But all the media went to his brother's house anyway to film it, because they thought it was Zarqawi's home!"

He then points across a shallow valley where lines of homes sit bathed in the setting sun. "He [Zarqawi] is from that village, lives near a cemetery, and his father is mayor of that district, which is called al-Ma'assoum quarter."

He claims to have known Abu Musab since he was seven years old, as they went to Prince Talal primary school together. "He was a trouble-maker ever since he was a kid," he explains, "What the media is saying about him is not true, though. Abu Musab is a normal guy. What the Americans are saying is not true. Most of us who know him here and in his neighborhood don't believe any of this media."

He tells us that Zarqawi left the neighborhood in the early 1990s to go to Afghanistan, but that he doesn't believe he is in Iraq. Along with others in the neighborhood, he is convinced that Zarqawi was killed in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan during the US bombings that resulted from the attacks of September 11.

"His wife and their three children still live over there," he adds. "But don't go talk to them. They won't allow it." He believes Zarqawi was killed, "100%," and then says emphatically, "If he is still alive, why not show a recent photo of him? All of these they show in the media are quite old."

Like so many Jordanians, he supports the Iraqi resistance, "All Muslims should fight this occupation because every day the Americans are slaughtering innocent Iraqis." Zarqawi, he tells us, wasn't a fighter until he went to Afghanistan. "Then his wife covered herself in black and has worn it ever since." According to this man, Zarqawi has two brothers named Ahmed and Sail. He says with a smile, "Most of the media coming here are Westerners because I think most of the Arab media know this is all a myth."

He holds up his hands when one of his sons brings us coffee and asks, "When they show hostages in Iraq, why doesn't he put himself in the film? There is simply no proof he is alive offered by the Americans or the media."

We engage in some small talk while drinking our strong Arabic coffee as we sit under grape vines lacing the terrace over our heads. As the sun begins to set, we thank him for the talk and the coffee, and head off as our taxi driver phones.

I am walking quickly through the streets to meet him when Aisha, whom I've worked with often in Baghdad, reassures me: "You can slow down, Dahr, we are not in danger here. This isn't like Baghdad where we'll be killed after dark."

Shortly thereafter we meet our driver. "They didn't tell you where his brother-in-law is because his home has been raided so many times," he states as a matter of fact. "By both Jordanian and US intelligence."

Our driver insists that Zarqawi is alive and well in Iraq. "I'm certain of it, because if he was dead they would show his picture and make the announcement. He has always been so strong. When we were in Afghanistan, any time we got a new machine to learn or French missiles, he was the first to learn them."

He drives us by another mosque Zarqawi is also supposed to have attended. We are in the al-Ma'assoum quarter now and our driver tells us that a sister of Abu Musab is the head of the Islamic Center of the district. He then adds, somewhat randomly, that he himself has been in different prisons for a total of seven years - one of those statements you can't decide whether you wished you had never heard or are simply relieved you didn't hear hours earlier just as you were beginning.

"In Afghanistan when we beheaded people it was to show the enemy what their fate was to be. It was to frighten them."

I think to myself grimly: well, it works.

He adds, "The jihad in Iraq is not just Zarqawi. It is up to Allah if we prevail, not dependent on the hand of Zarqawi. If he is killed, the jihad will continue there."

I ask him about civilian casualties. Does he think Zarqawi cares about the killing of innocent people?

"I have had so many discussions with Iraqis to tell them that Zarqawi doesn't instruct his followers in the killing of innocent people. If he did this, I would be the first to turn against him. He only targets the Americans and collaborators."

He's still chain smoking as we drive through the darkness back to Amman. I pay him as we thank him for taking us to Zarqa, and then his beat up taxi rolls off down the busy street.

The eerie blankness of Zarqawi
After discussions with our driver and other Jordanians, the only thing I feel I can say for sure is that Zarqawi is a real person. Whether or not he is alive and fighting in Iraq or not, or what acts he is actually responsible for there, is open to debate. On one point, I'm quite certain, however: reported American claims that Zarqawi has affiliations with the secular government of Syria make no sense. Just as Saddam Hussein opposed the religious fundamentalism of Bin Laden, the Syrian government would not be likely to team up with a fundamentalist like Zarqawi.

As Bush administration officials have falsely claimed Saddam had links to bin Laden and to Zarqawi, they have also conveniently linked Zarqawi to a Syrian government they would certainly like to take out. Similarly, Bush officials continue to link Zarqawi to the Iraqi resistance - undoubtedly another bogus claim in that the resistance in Iraq is primarily composed of Iraqi nationalists and Ba'athist elements who are fighting to expel the occupiers from their country, not to create a global Islamic jihad.

Thus, even if Zarqawi is involved in carrying out attacks inside Iraq and is killed at some future moment, the effect this would have on the Iraqi resistance would surely be negligible. It would be but another American "turning point" where nothing much turned.

Right now, when you try to track down Zarqawi, a man with a $25 million American bounty on his head, or simply try to track him back to the beginnings of his life's journey, whether you look for him in the tunnels of Tora Bora, the ruined city of Fallujah, the Syrian borderlands, or Ramadi, you're likely to run up against a kind of eerie blankness. Whatever the real Zarqawi may or may not be capable of doing today in Iraq or elsewhere, he is dwarfed by the Zarqawi of legend.

He may be the Bush administration's terrorist of terrorists (now that bin Laden has been dropped into the void), the Iraqi insurgency's unwelcome guest, the fantasy figure in some jihadi dreamscape, or all of the above. Whatever the case, Zarqawi the man has disappeared into an epic tale that may or may not be of his own partial creation. Even dead, he is unlikely to die; even alive, he is unlikely to be able to live up to anybody's Zarqawi myth.

Whoever he actually may be, the "he" of jihadi websites and American pronouncements is now linked inextricably with the devolving occupation of Iraq and a Bush administration that, even as it has built him up as a satanic bogeyman, is itself beginning to lose its own mythic qualities, to grow smaller.

I'm sure we'll continue to hear of "him" in Iraq, in Jordan, or elsewhere as his myth, perhaps now beyond anyone's control, continues to transform itself as an inextricable part of the brutal, bloody occupation of Iraq where the Bush administration finds itself fighting not primarily Zarqawi (or his imitators) but the Iraqis they allegedly came to liberate.

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist from Anchorage, Alaska. He has spent eight months reporting from occupied Iraq, and recently has reported from Jordan and Turkey. He regularly reports for Inter Press Service, as well as contributing to The Nation, The Sunday Herald and Asia Times Online among others. He maintains a website at:
www.dahrjamailiraq.com
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