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Thursday, March 29, 2007

Guardian(!) calls for European unity in confronting Iran 



An item from Timothy Garton Ash in the British "Guardian" tabloid details the flagrant illegality of Iran's latest seizure of (British) hostages:

The British forces were operating as part of a multinational force under an explicit UN mandate, to protect oil installations and prevent the smuggling of guns into Iraq - guns with which more Iraqis would otherwise be killed.

According to the sophisticated GPS instruments which the British service personnel had with them, they were more than three kilometres inside Iraqi territorial waters when they went to search a suspect vessel.
Reflecting the confusion inside the Iranian state, the first coordinates for the allegedly transgressing British boats given to the British by the Iranian government turned out to be within Iraqi territorial waters too (!)

Not until three days later did the Iranians come up with a second "corrected" set of coordinates which conveniently put the British forces on the wrong side of the line.


We might laugh out loud at the crudity of all that, except that the circus has prompted the anti-American propaganda and financial machine into full swing, so that oil prices were rising, Democrats and liberals bellyaching, and hostages being paraded on TV and their 'confessions' published even as Ash typed his article.

Foreseeing that, he cuts against the grain of the Guardian's traditional leftism by calling for European unity:
Those who follow ... (the hostage-taking) ... closely may wonder if the Revolutionary Guards were not making an indirect tit-for-tat response to American seizures of Iranians in Iraq, perhaps even hoping for a hostage swap.

Or perhaps just an angry reaction to the latest UN security council resolution about Iran's nuclear programme - which was actually passed a day after the kidnapping, but its contents were well-known beforehand. That resolution extends targeted sanctions to companies controlled by the Revolutionary Guards and to individuals including the commander of the Revolutionary Guards navy. But I would bet my bottom euro that no ... continental Europeans' synapses will have fired spontaneously with this thought: "Our fellow-Europeans have been kidnapped, so what can we, as Europe, do in response?"
He suggests the suspension, pan-Europe, of Iranian export credit guarantees:

(T)here is something Europe should do: flex its economic muscles.

The EU is by far Iran's biggest trading partner. ... Remarkably, this trade has grown strongly in the last years of looming crisis. Much of it is underpinned by export credit guarantees given by European governments, notably those of Germany, France and Italy. ... Iran comes second to none in terms of the proportion of German exports - in recent years up to 65% - underwritten by the German government.

The total government underwriting commitment in 2005 was €5.8bn (£3.9bn), ... As the squeeze grows on Iran from UN sanctions and their knock-on effects, and as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fails to deliver on his populist economic promises, this European trade becomes ever more vital ...


Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Octogenarian Iraqi nuns stabbed to death! 



The following report would defy belief, were we not inured to the cowardly violence perpetrated by terrorists every day in Iraq:


79-year-old Margaret Naoum and 85-year-old Fawzeiyah Naoum, 85 (both nuns) — were killed in their home near the Cathedral of the Virgin (in Kirkuk). They lived alone and there was no sign of a robbery ...

Naoum was stabbed seven times as she stood in the garden just outside the house, while Naoum was stabbed three times while lying on the sofa inside as she was recovering from eye surgery last week.

In the same news article is this report:

On Saturday, a man wearing an explosives belt blew himself up outside a pastry shop in Tal Afar's central market area, killing at least 10 people and wounding three.



Baghdad deaths drop 60% 



The number of civilians killed in Baghdad dropped from 1,222 in December to 494 in February, according to Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain.

McCain said U.S. forces have moved out of large bases to take up positions in small outposts as part of the shift in strategy being implemented under the auspices of General David Petraeus (see his comments below).

"Contrary to predictions, this has not increased U.S. casualties. And, not surprisingly, our presence has resulted in a dramatic increase in actionable intelligence about terrorists," McCain said.
The speech on the Senate floor was of course pitched to stymie Democrat calls for an early withdrawal of troops. It also coincided with simultaneous mass murders of at least 48 Iraqi civilians outside Baghdad, and with Iran's taking British hostages apparently in response to the capture of Iranians working with terrorists in Iraq.

The Arizona Republican said President Bush's decision to dispatch additional troops last winter "is working far better than even the most optimistic supporter had predicted. Progress is tangible in many key areas despite the fact that only 40 percent of the planned forces are in Iraq," he added.

Reports on Iraqi TV confirm that significant indents have recently been made by American forces into terrorist networks. According to Iraq the Model:

"Ahmed Farhan Hassan has been captured. This operative (who admits to some 300 murders and about 200 kidnapping incidents since he joined al-Qaeda three years ago )is described as a senior aide to Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of al-Qaeda’s so-called Islamic State in Iraq.

"Local Iraqi TV aired recorded confessions ... Hassan, ... and I’m paraphrasing:

'I have four emirs operating under my command. I receive money directly from Abu Omar and then I distribute it among the members of my units according to the number and size of operations they carry out.'

The blog site's writer makes some hard observations about the blinkered Democrat "anti-war" behemoth being confronted by McCain:

"We've been watching the debate in America about redeployment of troops and identifying the real front we must focus on.

"… Al-Qaeda and terrorists in general didn't hide their position in this respect—despite the fact that they still operate in many parts of the world, they are clearly redirecting most effort and resources to the war in Iraq.

"Al-Qaeda and its supporters are using most of the capabilities of their propaganda machine to cover their effort in Iraq, and so is the case with financial resources ….

"(S)ome of the prominent lieutenants of al-Qaeda left Afghanistan to fight in Iraq. One example I remember was Omar al-Farouk who escaped from Bagram to be later captured in Basra!

"Al-Qaeda itself boasts about the great "sacrifices" of more than 4,000 "martyrs" to emphasize the importance of the war here. And the hundreds of suicide bombers preferred to blow themselves up in
Iraq than anywhere else should remind us that if al-Qaeda considers this the main war then why talk about redeployment?

Walking away from the main war is not redeployment, it's quitting.

Iraq … rich-relatively-with resources and scientific base is a greater temptation than Afghanistan, and at the same time the possibility of a democracy arising in Iraq posed a great threat to the ideology of caliph state. …

"Can we compare the opium fields with the massive oilfields of Mesopotamia?

... "The other point is ... military technology (which) almost doesn't exist in
Afghanistan ... Saddam celebrated 17 years ago (the launch of) a rocket to space.

"The same "accomplishment' Iran claimed to have made just days ago."




Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Baby boom, Qaeda style 



How low can terrorists go? Last Sunday, as widely reported:

(A)dults in a vehicle with two children in the backseat ... parked next to a market in the Adamiya area of Baghdad, abandoned the vehicle and detonated it with the children still inside.


Perhaps it confirms that the surge is really working (see US General Petreus's comments in the post two below this one), terrorists now 'having' to resort to ever more desperate measures to evade scrutiny at checkpoints.

"Children in the back seat, lower suspicion, we let it move through," said Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations in the Joint Staff at the Pentagon.

WSJ's James Taranto points out that, in the Reuters dispatch from which these comments are extracted :
Reuters calls the attackers "insurgents" and the attack a "militant" one, but nowhere does the word terrorist appear.

Creatively evil carnage of the above type, inflicted by "insurgents" like these, accounts of course for almost all "war"-related death in Iraq. Take note "anti-war" protesters.








Tuesday, March 20, 2007


Quote of the day, from Bernard Lewis:

"In the Soviet Union, the most difficult task of the historian (was) to predict the past."
(See more on Lewis's excellent book "The Crisis of Islam" here)

Monday, March 19, 2007

Good things about Iraq 



Probably the most uplifting news report I have read in 4 years of the Iraq conflict is this one detailing recent comments of General David Petraeus, the commander of the "surge" troops in Iraq

The surge appears to be having a positive effect. The murderers are being "attrited" (and attrited "at a fearsome rate"), the bombings impeded, the death rate slowing down, people enabled to get on with normal and constructive lives.

That is, in Nut-Speak: all the 'horrible aims of that evil Bush and his imperialist US' finally seem to have a chance of succeeding.

Including the burning desire of the 'imperialists' to get out of Iraq as soon as decently possible.

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

From Chris Hitchens at Slate: 4 Years Later

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



Received by email today:


Did you know that 47 countries' have reestablished their embassies in Iraq?

Did you know that the Iraqi government currently employs 1.2 million Iraqi people?

Did you know that 3100 schools have been renovated, 364 schools are under rehabilitation, 263 new schools are now under construction and 38 new schools have been completed in Iraq?

Did you know that Iraq's higher educational structure consists of 20 Universities, 46 Institutes or colleges and 4 research centers, all currently operating?

Did you know that 25 Iraq students departed for the United States in January 2005 for the re-established Fulbright program?

Did you know that the Iraqi Navy is operational? They have 5 - 100-foot patrol craft, 34 smaller vessels and a naval infantry regiment.

Did you know that Iraq's Air Force consists of three operational squadrons, which includes 9 reconnaissance and 3 US C-130 transport aircraft (under Iraqi operational control) which operate day and night, and will soon add 16 UH-1 helicopters and 4 Bell Jet Rangers?

Did you know that Iraq has a counter-terrorist unit and a Commando Battalion?

Did you know that the Iraqi Police Service has over

55,000 fully trained and equipped police officers? Did you know that there are 5 Police Academies in Iraq that produce over 3500 new officers

each 8 weeks?

Did you know there are more than 1100 building projects going on in Iraq? They include 364 schools, 67 public clinics, 15 hospitals,

83 railroad stations, 22 oil facilities, 93 water facilities and 69 electrical facilities.

Did you know that 96% of Iraqi children under the age of 5 have received the first 2 series of polio vaccinations? Did you know that 4.3 million Iraqi children were enrolled in primary school by mid October?

Did you know

that there are 1,192,000 cell phone subscribers in Iraq and phone use has gone up 158%?

Did you know that Iraq has an independent media that consists of 75 radio stations, 180 newspapers and 10 television stations?

Did you know that the Baghdad Stock Exchange opened in June of 2004?

Did you know that 2 candidates in the Iraqi presidential election had a televised debate recently?

OF COURSE WE DIDN'T KNOW!
WHY DIDN'T WE KNOW? OUR MEDIA WOULDN'T TELL US!

Instead of reflecting our love for our country, we get photos of flag burning incidents at Abu Ghraib and people throwing snowballs at the presidential motorcades. Tragically, the lack of accentuating the positive in Iraq serves two purposes:

It is intended to undermine the world's perception of the United States thus minimizing consequent support, and it is intended to discourage American citizens.

---- Above facts are verifiable on the Department of Defense web site. http://www.defenselink.mil/

.......Pass it on! Give it wide dissemination!