This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Terror War

  • Gitmo alum strikes in Mosul

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    Amnesty International and the ACLU protest Guantanamo detention facilities in DC, January 2008

    (Click picture for more on that protest)

    Fox News reports that a recently released Guantanamo prisoner allegedly didn’t waste anytime blowing himself up in Mosul recently;

    Three years ago, Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti soldier who deserted to fight in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban, sat in a detention cell at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, while lawyers argued whether he was an “enemy combatant.”

    Last week, a Dubai-based television channel reported that al-Ajmi was killed carrying out a homicide bombing in Mosul, Iraq.

    While the report did not specify which attack Abdullah carried out, Iraqi officials reported that Mosul was hit on April 26 by three homicide attacks, killing seven people.

    CBS News reported that al-Ajmi carried out an attack on Wednesday, April 30, according to an unconfirmed report posted on a jihadist Web site.

    Al-Ajmi’s cousin, Salem, reportedly told Al-Arabiya television that , “We were shocked by the painful news we received … from one of the friends of martyr Abdullah in Iraq.”

    James Taranto at WSJ’s Best of the Web quotes a blogger/law professor making excuses for the Left’s shallow position;

    Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, blogger and law professor Jonathan Adler makes a manful effort at evenhandedness:

    What does this prove? Nothing really, but I’m sure partisans in the debate over Guantanamo and the treatment and detention of alleged [sic] enemy combatants will see this as evidence that confirms their respective points of view. On the one hand, Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi may have been a dangerous enemy combatant all along, and should never have been released. On the other hand, he may have been wrongfully detained in the first place, only to become radicalized by his (mis)treatment by the U.S. military. In other words, we either had a terrorist and let him go, or we created one.

    So I guess the Left would have us release all of the Gitmo detainees because we can’t decided if the chicken or the egg came first. But that’s the Left’s main problem – we should find out why these creatures do what they do. They ignore the fact that these criminals are actually killing people while the Left gazes at it’s collective navel.

    As I’ve reminded readers a number of times, there was no outcry from these same people when the Clinton Administration detained hundreds of Haitians (who had committed no crimes) in Guantanamo in hastily erected tent cities under much worse conditions than the current residents suffer. The only difference was the political party of the Presidents.

  • Islamic Republic on borrowed time?

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    A woman walks past an anti-American mural on a wall of the former U.S. embassy in central Tehran May 1, 2008. A senior Iranian official said on Saturday Tehran saw no need for more talks with the United States about Iraqi security until what he described as U.S. attacks on Iraqis stopped, Iran’s Fars News Agency reported.
    Just this week an Iraqi delegation went to Tehran to present evidence to the Iranians that the whole world knows the Iranians are supporting whatever anti-democratic fighters they can in Iraq (Reuters link);

    Members of the United Iraqi Alliance had said the delegation was sent to Tehran to tell Iran to stop backing Shi’ite militias fighting U.S. and Iraqi security forces, underscoring Iraq’s unease over the influence of its powerful neighbor.

    But Attiya made no mention of the accusations.

    “The delegation saw a positive stance from the brothers in Iran to support the government’s efforts in extending the sovereignty of the state and to fight the outlaws,” Attiya said.

    “The delegation hopes this visit is the basis for strengthening relations between the two neighboring states.”

    CNN reports that the Iraqi delegation told the press that they’d hurt the Iranian’s feelings;

    The Iranian side was hurt” by these allegations, Haidar al-Abadi said.

    Al-Abadi is a parliament member from the ruling United Iraqi Alliance and a member of al-Maliki’s Dawa party.

    He said Saturday that the five-member delegation presented the Iranians with evidence of “weapon and explosive device smuggling, and the existence of training camps for Iraqi militants in Iran.”

    The Iraqis also supplied “proof that most of the Basra outlaw leadership had fled into Iran” after a military operation that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki launched this year against Shiite militias in the southern city, al-Abadi said.

    Al-Abadi did not explain what the “evidence” was.

    The Iranian officials “completely denied … training, financing and arming” militant groups in Iraq, al-Abadi said.

    In another Reuters story, Iranians have cut off relations with US negotiators;

    “Should the Americans’ attacks against civilians and the defenseless Iraqi people come to an end, Iran will consider their request for the fourth round of negotiations,” Fars quoted the official as saying.

    It said the official was a senior member of the negotiating team with U.S. officials but did not give his name.

    “Under the current conditions, with the Americans’ massive attacks on the Iraqi people in various cities, no need is felt for holding negotiations with that country about Iraq’s security,” the official said.

    But, after reading Cuffy Meigs, (h/t Ace of Spades) that may just be Iran whistling past the graveyard;

    Getting ready to strike the Iranian frontier:

    The US military is drawing up plans for a “surgical strike” against an insurgent training camp inside Iran if Republican Guards continue with attempts to destabilise Iraq, western intelligence sources said last week. One source said the Americans were growing increasingly angry at the involvement of the Guards’ special-operations Quds force inside Iraq, training Shi’ite militias and smuggling weapons into the country.

    […]

    Meanwhile, Iranian state news is in panic mode — the Sword of Damocles hangs over their head:

    On April 29, a second American aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, arrived in the Persian Gulf in what observers see as a tacit declaration of war on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

    Of course, the Iranians are counting on the Democrats to pull their fat from the fire – just like Hussein expected them to do. It’s their tough luck that the Cowboy is still running things. A couple of well-placed air strikes could end this war before the November election.

  • AP rushes out grim milestone

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    Iraqi girls look a a damaged school building after an airstrike in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq on Wednesday, April 30, 2008. Health officials said two were killed and 16 wounded in the strike, which occurred Tuesday evening.

    The AP could barely contain their glee as the rushed out the report that “US troop deaths hit 7-month high in Iraq“;

    The killings of three U.S. soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad pushed the American death toll for April up to 47, making it the deadliest month since September.

    One soldier died when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. The other died of wounds sustained when he was attacked by small-arms fire, the military said Wednesday. Both incidents occurred Tuesday in northwestern Baghdad.

    A third soldier died in a roadside bombing Tuesday night in the east of the capital, the military said.

    The statement did not give a more specific location. But the eastern half of Baghdad includes embattled Sadr City and other neighborhoods that have been the focus of intense combat between Shiite militants and U.S.-Iraqi troops for more than a month.

    Of course they might have a smidgen of credibility if they’d reported that there were record lows last year, if they’d reported the overall success of the troops in the last six months. they did mention that operations had increased to destroy the militias in Iraq, but they’ve been  quiet on the successful operations in Basra and in 90% of the country.And they still rely on their unnamed sources;

    The Sadr City violence continued overnight with the destruction of a school in the district. AP Television News footage showed that parts of the two-floor Baghdad Girls’ School had pancaked as the result of an explosion. Desks were hanging down from the slanting classrooms where the outer walls were blown out by the blast.

    Local officials said the school was the target of an airstrike on Tuesday evening.

    An official at the local hospital, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to release the information, said two people were killed and 16 wounded overnight in Sadr City. He said this brought the death toll in the district since Tuesday to 31, with 107 wounded.

    How many schools have the US troops built in Iraq that don’t get reported in the AP, but blow one up and it gets graphic descriptions of the slanted walls and mangled school furniture. I guess those 31 dead and 107 wounded were all attending night school when the evil Americans struck? This is reminiscent of the Winter Soldier testimony that detailed US troops’  cruelty towards innocent buildings.

  • It’s not a long trip

    Lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners are concerned that confinement is driving the poor dears crazy according to the International Herald Tribune;

    Next month, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was once a driver for Osama bin Laden, could become the first detainee to be tried for war crimes in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. By now, he should be busily working on his defense.

    But his lawyers say he cannot. They say Hamdan, already the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, has essentially been driven insane by solitary confinement in a tiny cell where he spends at least 22 hours a day, goes to the bathroom and eats all his meals. His defense team says he is suicidal, hears voices, has flashbacks, talks to himself and says the restrictions of Guantánamo “boil his mind.”

    “He will shout at us,” said his military defense lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer. “He will bang his fists on the table.”

    So how do they know he wasn’t completely unbalanced before he was put in Guantanamo? After all, he was driving a wanted criminal around the Middle East and engaged in sociopathic behavior long before he was captured. And what do they want us to do with him? Give him weekend passes unsupervised in Miami?

    They claim that isolation in Guantanamo is worse than isolation in US prisons – how is that even possible? There are no degrees of isolation – there’s only isolation. Having spent a little time in isolation in a foreign prison myself, I have some experience in that.

    Since it’s a lawyer’s job to get their client out of prison, I hardly blame them for yapping nonsense – I blame the media for giving them a bullhorn.

  • al Sadr cries “Uncle!”

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    Muqtada al Sadr had a sermon read by another cleric in Sadr City that called for an end to Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence (Associated Press link);

    Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for an end to clashes between his militia fighters and Iraqi troops, saying Friday that his threat of an “open war” applied only to U.S.-led foreign forces.

    In a sermon read by an aide during Friday prayers in Baghdad’s militia stronghold of Sadr City, the cleric also urged Iraqi soldiers and policemen “not to support the occupiers in combating your brothers.”

    Al-Sadr issued a “final warning” to the government Saturday to halt its crackdown against the Mahdi Army or face an “open war until liberation.”

    The old “I didn’t mean you guys” ploy. I wonder if the Mahdi Army noticed that he sent the sermon to be read by someone else while he’s stretched out in the Tehran Comfort Inn watching Imam-on-goat porn. We, here in the West, know that every time al Sadr’s army is getting their butts handed to them he calls for a ceasefire. I hope Maliki has the gumption to see it through this time.

  • Syria, North Korea were near nuclear bomb production

    Sara Carter and Nicholas Kralev of the Washington Times writes this morning thatthe Administration was convinced that Syria, with the help of North Korea were nearing completion of the facility before Israel bombed it last year;

    The Bush administration is set to tell Congress today that a nuclear facility in Syria built with North Korean help was nearly complete when Israel bombed it in September, but that Pyongyang has not provided any further nuclear assistance to the hard-line Arab nation, at least at that site, U.S. officials said.

    CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and other intelligence officials are expected to brief several congressional committees in closed-door sessions, breaking the administration’s silence on the issue. The facility has become a major issue in six-nation negotiations to end the North’s nuclear programs.

    “The belief is that the reactor was nearing completion,” said one official familiar with the content of the briefings. “It would have been able to produce plutonium.”

    The Washington Post provides more details. Apparently an Israeli informant video taped North Koreans inside the facility;

    A video taken inside a secret Syrian facility last summer convinced the Israeli government and the Bush administration that North Korea was helping to construct a reactor similar to one that produces plutonium for North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, according to senior U.S. officials who said it would be shared with lawmakers today.

    The officials said the video of the remote site, code-named Al Kibar by the Syrians, shows North Koreans inside. It played a pivotal role in Israel’s decision to bomb the facility late at night last Sept. 6, a move that was publicly denounced by Damascus but not by Washington.

    Sources familiar with the video say it also shows that the Syrian reactor core’s design is the same as that of the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, including a virtually identical configuration and number of holes for fuel rods. It shows “remarkable resemblances inside and out to Yongbyon,” a U.S. intelligence official said. A nuclear weapons specialist called the video “very, very damning.”

    It also explains why Syria never complained much about the bombing – much less that the Sudanese complained about their aspirin factory getting cruise-missiled. Who knows what kind of crap Hezbollah would be firing into Israel today if production has continued.

  • Zawahiri; Ahmadinejad is FOS

    al Qaida’s number 2 guy, Zawahiri is upset that the Joos are getting credit from Iran for the attacks on New York City in 2001 (AP/Yahoo link);

    Osama bin Laden’s chief deputy on Tuesday denied a theory that Israel carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and blamed Iran and Shiite Hezbollah for spreading the idea to discredit the Sunni al-Qaida’s strike against the U.S.

    The comments in a recording posted on an Islamic Web site reflected the increasing criticism by al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahri against Iran. Al-Zawahri has accused Iran in recent messages of seeking to extend its power in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and through its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.

    He also claims that Iran is aiding the US in Afghanistan and Iraq;

    “The purpose of this lie is clear — (to suggest) that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no else did in history. Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it,” he said.

    “Iran’s aim here is also clear — to cover up its involvement with America in invading the homes of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said.

    This ought to be a blow to the “truthers”, but somehow I doubt it.

    Update: Charles Johnson points out that “Onion scoops Zawahiri“.

  • Muslims want to distract McCain and voters

    In this morning’s Washington Times, Rowan Scarbourgh writes that the Islamic Society of North America is attempting to change John McCain’s descriptions of the terrorists against whom we’re fighting;

     A coalition of American Muslim groups is demanding that Sen. John McCain stop using the adjective “Islamic” to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States.

    Muneer Fareed, who heads the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), told The Washington Times that his group is beginning a campaign to persuade Mr. McCain to rephrase his descriptions of the enemy.

    “We’ve tried to contact his office, contact his spokesperson to have them rethink word usage that is more acceptable to the Muslim community,” Mr. Fareed said. “If it’s not our intent to paint everyone with the same brush, then certainly we should think seriously about just characterizing them as criminals, because that is what they are.”

    Here’s a hint Mr. Fareed;  It’s probably true that not all Muslims are terrorists, but all of the terrorists are Muslims.

    They use the Koran as an excuse to kill massive numbers of people, and they claim they do it for the prophet of the entire Muslim religion and point to passages in his texts as justification for their evil deeds. They’re recruited by supposed holy men of the Islamic religion and recruited in the places of worship of Islam. That makes them Islamic terrorists.

    Changing the language doesn’t make that any less true – it only distracts from the obvious.
    Refusing to admit the obvious is what brought us to this place in our shared history. Americans tried to be tolerant of what was going on under our noses, and we got killed for it. It seems to me that if Muslims were upset about the language we use, they’d do something about what happens in their own communities instead of trying to force their will on the rest of us over words and, instead change the realities in their communities to prevent more attacks on their FELLOW AMERICAN CITIZENS.