Posted on 08/25/2007 2:26:58 PM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT
Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy
By Paul R. Pillar
Summary
http://books.google.com/books?id=3-7ID_v-7tcC#reviews_anchor
Read parts of the book at Google:
November 25, 2007 Anti-Terrorism News - UnitedStatesAction.com
Al-Qaeda kingpin: I trained 9/11 hijackers - Louai al-Sakka, convicted in Turkey, claims major role
in attacks
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2936761.ece
(Iraq) Car bomb kills 9 in Baghdad - near a medical complex — also roadside bomb in Baghdad
kills 1 one civilian, wounds 8 others
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071125/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_071029195491;_ylt=AsoZqckJChOaI4kMXgTmV9dX6GMA
(Iraq) Five killed in Baghdad blast - in booby trapped car in Baghdad’s Al-Muaadham district
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1860092&Language=en
(Iraq) U.S. troops detain 24 suspects in operations targeting al-Qaida in Iraq, military says —
in Samarra, Youssifiyah, Daband-i-Khan, and Mosul
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/25/africa/ME-GEN-Iraq-Raids.php
(Iraq) Al-Qaeda group kills nine abducted officer - says captured in Salahuddin province
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22818162-38201,00.html
(Iraq) Powerful Iraqi Shiite politician: US needs more proof of allegations Iran is fomenting
violence
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/25/africa/ME-GEN-Iraq-Shiites.php
(Iraq) U.S.: Iran-linked Shiites admit pet market blast
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21947843/
(Iraq) U.S. manages its political expectations for Iraq
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/25/africa/policy.php
Iraq docs targeted — “Islamic death squads are targeting Iraqi doctors and engineers in Basra”
http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/sunday/2007/11/25/iraq-docs-targeted-98487-20157320/
(Afghanistan) Nearly 80 Taliban killed in Afghan air strikes: official — 65 killed in single air strike in
in eastern Paktia
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071125/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanunrest_071125111918;_ylt=Aqf.RiUbUwwZO2IqZA1hoe_OVooA
(Afghanistan) U.S. Notes Limited Progress in Afghan War - White House assessment says
strategic goals set for 2007 not met
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/24/AR2007112401333.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21955108/
Pakistani troops pound militants, 30 killed: officials Pakistani troops pound militants, 30 killed:
officials — in Swat valley
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071125/wl_sthasia_afp/pakistanunrestnorthwest_071125100112;_ylt=AnC4KAoLf_L4s.CuJdotrTbzPukA
(Pakistan) Mirali villages pounded: three dead
http://www.dawn.com/2007/11/25/top9.htm
(Pakistan) Rocket hits minister’s home — caretaker minister, Sardar Sadat Ali Hazara
http://www.dawn.com/2007/11/25/top12.htm
(Pakistan) Bomb explodes, another defused in Swabi - local Taliban suspected
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\11\25\story_25-11-2007_pg7_48
(Pakistan) Blast suspends Quetta rail link
http://www.dawn.com/2007/11/25/top11.htm
(Pakistan) US to restructure, not cut, massive aid to Pakistan
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\11\25\story_25-11-2007_pg7_1
(India) Police release sketches of UP bomb suspects
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=186626&version=1&template_id=40&parent_id=22
(India) Uttar Pradesh bombings mark new phase of Islamist terror
http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/25/stories/2007112555861000.htm
(India) Police turn to technology in hunt for bombers
http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/25/stories/2007112555680800.htm
(India Assam) Serial blasts in Assam, 2 killed — 18 injured - in India’s insurgency-hit northeast
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Serial_blasts_in_Assam_2_killed/articleshow/2569962.cms
(India J&K) Jawan killed in cross-border firing in J&K
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Jawan_killed_in_cross-border_firing_in_JK/articleshow/2569487.cms
(U.S.) America becoming conspiracy nation - survey shows increasing numbers believe
alternative explanations for 9/11 attacks
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58852
(U.S.) Book Dispels Okla. City Bomb Conspiracy
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5htmW-Tq6vbile_R0CSt7r8W2DpDAD8T41LK00
Iran dimisses US accusations over recent Baghdad blasts
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/25/africa/ME-GEN-Iran-US-Iraq.php
Iran says IAEA closes more files over atomic work
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2007/November/middleeast_November402.xml§ion=middleeast&col=
Iran arrests 11 Kurdish rebels: ministry
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2007/November/middleeast_November401.xml§ion=middleeast&col=
(Lebanon) Hezbollah recruits thousands in Lebanon crisis
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/25/wlebanon125.xml
(Lebanon) Hezbollah raises specter of long Lebanon power void
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/lebanon_president_dc;_ylt=AjKOHsOT9nre_0Hh.P_aodXagGIB
(Lebanon) Hezbollah blames US for blocking Lebanese election
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/25/africa/ME-GEN-Lebanon-Election.php
(Gaza) Defiant Hamas rules by fear in isolated Gaza
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2937105.ece
Israeli troops kill two militants in Gaza gunbattle
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/25/africa/ME-GEN-Israel-Palestinians-Clash.php
(Israel) Jerusalem police lift terror ‘red alert’
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546719681&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
(Israel) Kassam fired from Gaza; no wounded or damage reported
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546717187&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Arabs prepare for Mideast conference warning against normalization with Israel
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/25/africa/ME-GEN-Arabs-Mideast-Conference.php
Saudis calling shots at Annapolis peace conference?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58853
(Russia) Powerful bomb found in Chechnya
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/11/24/powerful_bomb_found_in_chechnya/7757/
(Turkey) Politics gains upper hand in fight against terror, optimism prevails
http://www.sundayszaman.com/sunday/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=2539
(UK) Brit universities are terror hotbeds
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1318360/1462381
(UK) Hizb ut-Tahrir calls for change to Islamic rule in Pakistan
http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/walthamforest/walthamforestnews/display.var.1857502.0.waltham_forest_ht_calls_for_change_to_islamic_rule_in_pakistan.php
(UK) US is ‘worst’ imperialist: archbishop — interview with British Muslim magazine criticizes
US and “chosen nation myth of America”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2937068.ece
http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/arch2.pdf
http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/arch1.pdf
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=WHULASR43PYAZQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2007/11/25/nbishop225.xml
(Thailand) Muslim woman shot dead in Pattani
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingnews/read.php?newsid=30057332
(Sri Lanka) Air force destroys Tamil Tigers’ satellite communications center, military says
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/25/asia/AS-GEN-Sri-Lanka-Civil-War.php
(Sri Lanka) Violence kills 21 in Sri Lanka, military says - update
http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071124/FRONT01/71124011
(Nepal) Efforts underway to remove Maoists from US terror list: Carter
http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2007/nov/nov24/news10.php
Other News:
Indonesia: Aceh invites tourists to see Sharia law in action
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Religion/?id=1.0.1590498126
Commentary: It is proper to challenge Islam — by Jemima Khan
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=WHULASR43PYAZQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/opinion/2007/11/25/do2504.xml
(Norway) Trondheim: Muslim police student incident during Jewish community visit
http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/11/trondheim-muslim-police-student.html
__._,_.___
If reposting elsewhere, please credit source of this research as UnitedStatesAction.com
Hezbollah recruits thousands in Lebanon crisis
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/25/wlebanon125.xml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/25/wlebanon125.xml
By Hugh Macleod in Beirut
Last Updated: 1:48am GMT 25/11/2007
[photos from 1915 to today of muslim nazi connection]
http://www.tellchildrenthetruth.com/gallery/
Pre-World War II
Amin Al Husseni
Amin Al Husseini as officer of Ottoman Empire - 1915
Amin Al Husseini, founder of World Islamic Congress
1931
Amin Al Husseini is founder and President of the World Islamic Congress. After WWII, it will actively shape the agenda of the Muslim world.
Amin Al Husseini inciting the riots.
1920 - Jerusalem, Palestine. Amin Al Husseini inciting the riots that pitted Palestinian Arab against Palestinian Jew.
World War II
Muslim Soldiers reading German Propaganda
Muslim Soldiers reading German Propaganda.
The name of the book is Islam Und Judentum
(Islam and Judaism in German)
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini with one of his Nazi Muslim Troops - 1943 Hanzar SS Division.
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini meets Heinrich Himmler, Head of Nazi SS.
Amin Al Husseini spends WWII by Hitler’s side
Berlin-1942
Amin Al Husseini spends WWII by Hitler’s side.
Amin Al Husseini inspecting Nazi Muslim troops
Amin Al Husseini inspecting Nazi Muslim troops - 1943
Nazi officer inspecting Muslim Bosnian SS troops
Nazi officer inspecting Muslim Bosnian SS troops.
Rashid
Rashid
Amin Al Husseini inspects his Muslim Nazi Hanzar troops
Amin Al Husseini inspects his Muslim Nazi Hanzar troops 1943
Amin Al Husseini
Nazi propaganda poster featuring Amin Al Husseini recruiting young Muslims.
Muslim soldiers
Muslim soldiers with hat showing Nazi insigna- WW II.
Bosnian Nazi Muslim Flag under Amin Al Husseini
Bosnian Nazi Muslim Flag under Amin Al Husseini - 1943
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini in Berlin during World War II.
Amin Al Hussseini meets Croat Nazi A.Artukovic and M,Budak, planning Serbian genocide.
Amin Al Hussseini meets Croat Nazi A.Artukovic and M,Budak, planning Serbian genocide.
Amin Al Husseini inspecting his Nazi Muslim troops
Amin Al Husseini inspecting his Nazi Muslim troops- 1943
Amin Al Husseini
Bosnian Soldier posting picture of Amin Al Husseini - 1943
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini at Nazi meeting in Berlin
during WW II.
Amin Al Husseini
Muslim Nazi troops in traditional Muslim prayer -1943
Amin Al Husseini
Muslim Nazi troops in traditional Muslim prayer -1943
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Head of SS Muslim Hanzar Division Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Head of SS Muslim Hanzar Division Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Head of SS Muslim Hanzar Division
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Head of SS Muslim Hanzar Division Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Head of SS Muslim Hanzar Division Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini
Head of SS Muslim Hanzar Division
Amin Al Husseini
POST World War II
Amin Al Husseini
Amin al Husseini at Arab League meeting at its creation- 1944
Amin Al Husseini
1946. Key Picture of Amin Al Husseini with the Muslim Leaders of Post-WWII era. Amin Al Husseini
1951. Karachi, Pakistan.
Amin Al Husseini
Pakistan 1951. Amin Al Husseini is guest of honor as President of World Islamic Congress.
Amin Al Husseini
Karachi, Pakistan. 1951.
Amin Al Husseini
Amin Al Husseini with Egyptian President Nasser.
Amin Al Husseini
Leading and representing the Muslim Community: Amin Al Husseini.
Amin Al Husseini
1969. Amin Al Husseini with Prime Minister of Malaysia Rahman, First Secretary-General of (OIC) Organisation of Islamic Conferences..
Amin Al Husseini
1966. Karachi, Pakistan. Amin Al Husseini continues to be central figure in Pakistani leadership.
Amin Al Husseini
1970. Karachi, Pakistan. Husseini with Pakistani leader.
Amin Al Husseini
Yasser Arafat (far-right) at Amin Al Husseini’s funeral (with Mufti of Lebanon).
1974
Amin Al Husseini
Palestinian soldiers under Yasser Arafat doing Nazi salute- today
Amin Al Husseini
Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. Distributed by Palestinian Authority- 2003
DOCUMENTS
Here is a premiliminary list of documents. This list will be updated often so please check back.
Minutes of the meeting with Hitler and Husseini.
H.I.M. Haile Selassie’s appeal to The League of Nations against the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia 1936
- RETURN TO MENU -
Minutes of the meeting with Hitler and Husseini.
Source: Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945, Series D, Vol XIII, London, 1964, pp.881 ff.
German Chancellor Adolf Hitler and Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini:
Zionism and the Arab Cause (November 28, 1941)
Haj Amin al-Husseini, the most influential leader of Palestinian Arabs, lived in Germany during the Second World War. He met Hitler, Ribbentrop and other Nazi leaders on various occasions and attempted to coordinate Nazi and Arab policies in the Middle East.
Record of the Conversation between the Fuhrer and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem on November 28, 1941, in the Presence of Reich Foreign Minister and Minister Grobba in Berlin.
The Grand Mufti began by thanking the Fuhrer for the great honor he had bestowed by receiving him. He wished to seize the opportunity to convey to the Fuhrer of the Greater German Reich, admired by the entire Arab world, his thanks of the sympathy which he had always shown for the Arab and especially the Palestinian cause, and to which he had given clear expression in his public speeches. The Arab countries were firmly convinced that Germany would win the war and that the Arab cause would then prosper. The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely the English, the Jews, and the Communists. Therefore they were prepared to cooperate with Germany with all their hearts and stood ready to participate in the war, not only negatively by the commission of acts of sabotage and the instigation of revolutions, but also positively by the formation of an Arab Legion. The Arabs could be more useful to Germany as allies than might be apparent at first glance, both for geographical reasons and because of the suffering inflicted upon them by the English and the Jews. Furthermore, they had had close relations with all Moslem nations, of which they could make use in behalf of the common cause. The Arab Legion would be quite easy to raise. An appeal by the Mufti to the Arab countries and the prisoners of Arab, Algerian, Tunisian, and Moroccan nationality in Germany would produce a great number of volunteers eager to fight. Of Germany’s victory the Arab world was firmly convinced, not only because the Reich possessed a large army, brave soldiers, and military leaders of genius, but also because the Almighty could never award the victory to an unjust cause.
In this struggle, the Arabs were striving for the independence and unity of Palestine, Syria, and Iraq. They had the fullest confidence in the Fuhrer and looked to his hand for the balm on their wounds, which had been inflicted upon them by the enemies of Germany.
The Mufti then mentioned the letter he had received from Germany, which stated that Germany was holding no Arab territories and understood and recognized the aspirations to independence and freedom of the Arabs, just as she supported the elimination of the Jewish national home.
A public declaration in this sense would be very useful for its propagandistic effect on the Arab peoples at this moment. It would rouse the Arabs from their momentary lethargy and give them new courage. It would also ease the Mufti’s work of secretly organizing the Arabs against the moment when they could strike. At the same time, he could give the assurance that the Arabs would in strict discipline patiently wait for the right moment and only strike upon an order form Berlin.
With regard to the events in Iraq, the Mufti observed that the Arabs in that country certainly had by no means been incited by Germany to attack England, but solely had acted in reaction to a direct English assault upon their honor.
The Turks, he believed, would welcome the establishment of an Arab government in the neighboring territories because they would prefer weaker Arab to strong European governments in the neighboring countries and, being themselves a nations of 7 million, they had moreover nothing to fear from the 1,700,000 Arabs inhabiting Syria, Transjordan, Iraq, and Palestine.
France likewise would have no objections to the unification plan because she had conceded independence to Syria as early as 1936 and had given her approval to the unification of Iraq and Syria under King Faisal as early as 1933.
In these circumstances he was renewing his request that the Fuhrer make a public declaration so that the Arabs would not lose hope, which is so powerful a force in the life of nations. With such hope in their hearts the Arabs, as he had said, were willing to wait. They were not pressing for immediate realization for their aspirations; they could easily wait half a year or a whole year. But if they were not inspired with such a hope by a declaration of this sort, it could be expected that the English would be the gainers from it.
The Fuhrer replied that Germany’s fundamental attitude on these questions, as the Mufti himself had already stated, was clear. Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine, which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests. Germany was also aware that the assertion that the Jews were carrying out the functions of economic pioneers in Palestine was a lie. The work there was done only by the Arabs, not by the Jews. Germany was resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time to direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well.
Germany was at the present time engaged in a life and death struggle with two citadels of Jewish power: Great Britain and Soviet Russia. Theoretically there was a difference between England’s capitalism and Soviet Russia’s communism; actually, however, the Jews in both countries were pursuing a common goal. This was the decisive struggle; on the political plane, it presented itself in the main as a conflict between Germany and England, but ideologically it was a battle between National Socialism and the Jews. It went without saying that Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle, because platonic promises were useless in a war for survival or destruction in which the Jews were able to mobilize all of England’s power for their ends.
The aid to the Arabs would have to be material aid. Of how little help sympathies alone were in such a battle had been demonstrated plainly by the operation in Iraq, where circumstances had not permitted the rendering of really effective, practical aid. In spite of all the sympathies, German aid had not been sufficient and Iraq was overcome by the power of Britain, that is, the guardian of the Jews.
The Mufti could not but be aware, however, that the outcome of the struggle going on at present would also decide the fate of the Arab world. The Fuhrer therefore had to think and speak coolly and deliberately, as a rational man and primarily as a soldier, as the leader of the German and allied armies. Everything of a nature to help in this titanic battle for the common cause, and thus also for the Arabs, would have to be done. Anything however, that might contribute to weakening the military situation must be put aside, no matter how unpopular this move might be.
Germany was now engaged in very severe battles to force the gateway to the northern Caucasus region. The difficulties were mainly with regard to maintaining the supply, which was most difficult as a result of the destruction of railroads and highways as well as the oncoming winter. If at such a moment, the Fuhrer were to raise the problem of Syria in a declaration, those elements in France which were under de Gaulle’s influence would receive new strength. They would interpret the Fuhrer’s declaration as an intention to break up France’s colonial empire and appeal to their fellow countrymen that they should rather make common cause with the English to try to save what still could be saved. A German declaration regarding Syria would in France be understood to refer to the French colonies in general, and that would at the present time create new troubles in western Europe, which means that a portion of the German armed forces would be immobilized in the west and no longer be available for the campaign in the east.
The Fuhrer then made the following statement to the Mufti, enjoining him to lock it in the uttermost depths of his heart:
1. He (the Fuhrer) would carry on the battle to the total destruction of the Judeo-Communist empire in Europe.
2. At some moment which was impossible to set exactly today but which in any event was not distant, the German armies would in the course of this struggle reach the southern exit from Caucasia.
3. As soon as this had happened, the Fuhrer would on his own give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations, which he had secretly prepared. When that time had come, Germany could also be indifferent to French reaction to such a declaration.
Once Germany had forced open the road to Iran and Iraq through Rostov; it would be also the beginning of the end of the British World Empire. He (the Fuhrer) hoped that the coming year would make it possible for Germany to thrust open the Caucasian gate to the Middle East. For the good of their common cause, it would be better if the Arab proclamation were put off for a few more months than if Germany were to create difficulties for herself without being able thereby to help the Arabs.
He (the Fuhrer) fully appreciated the eagerness of the Arabs for a public declaration of the sort requested by the Grand Mufti. But he would beg him to consider that he (the Fuhrer) himself was the Chief of State of the German Reich for five long years during which he was unable to make to his own homeland the announcement of its liberation. He had to wait with that until the announcement could be made on the basis of a situation brought about by the force of arms that the Anschluss had been carried out.
The moment that Germany’s tank divisions and air squadrons had made their appearance south of the Caucasus, the public appeal requested by the Grand Mufti could go out to the Arab world.
The Grand Mufti replied that it was his view that everything would come to pass just as the Fuhrer had indicated. He was fully reassured and satisfied by the words which he had heard form the Chief of the German State. He asked, however, whether it would not be possible, secretly at least, to enter into an agreement with Germany of the kind he had just outlined for the Fuhrer.
The Fuhrer replied that he had just now given the Grand Mufti precisely that confidential declaration.
The Grand Mufti thanked him for it and stated in conclusion that he was taking his leave from the Fuhrer in full confidence and with reiterated thanks for the interest shown in the Arab cause.
SCHMIDT
http://www.tellchildrenthetruth.com/gallery/
H.I.M. HAILE SELASSIE ‘S APPEAL TO THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AGAINST THE FASCIST INVASION OF ETHIOPIA 1936
I, Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, am here today to claim that justice
which is due to my people, and the assistance promised to it eight months
ago, when fifty nations asserted that aggression had been committed in
violation of international treaties.
There is no precedent for a Head of State himself speaking in this assembly.
But there is also no precedent for a people being victim of such injustice
and being at present threatened by abandonment to its aggressor. Also,
there has never before been an example of any Government proceeding to
the systematic extermination of a nation by barbarous means, in violation of
the most solemn promises made by the nations of the earth that there should
not be used against innocent human beings the terrible poison of harmful
gases. It is to defend a people struggling for its age-old independence that
the head of the Ethiopian Empire has come to Geneva to fulfil this supreme
duty, after having himself fought at the head of his armies.
I pray to Almighty God that He may spare nations the terrible sufferings that
have just been inflicted on my people, and of which the chiefs who
accompany me here have been the horrified witnesses.
It is my duty to inform the Governments assembled in Geneva, responsible
as they are for the lives of millions of men, women and children, of the deadly
peril which threatens them, by describing to them the fate which has been
suffered by Ethiopia.
It is not only upon warriors that the Italian Government has made war. It has
above all attacked populations far removed from hostilities, in order to
terrorize and exterminate them.
At the beginning, towards the end of 1935, Italian aircraft hurled upon my
armies bombs of tear-gas. Their effects were but slight. The soldiers learned
to scatter, waiting until the wind had rapidly dispersed the poisonous gases.
The Italian aircraft then resorted to mustard gas. Barrels of liquid were hurled
upon armed groups. But this means also was not effective; the liquid affected
only a few soldiers, and barrels upon the ground were themselves a warning
to troops and to the population of the danger.
It was at the time when the operations for the encircling of Makalle were
taking place that the Italian command, fearing a rout, followed the procedure
which it is now my duty to denounce to the world. Special sprayers were
installed on board aircraft so that they could vaporize, over vast areas of
territory, a fine, death-dealing rain. Groups of nine, fifteen, eighteen aircraft
followed one another so that the fog issuing from them formed a continuous
sheet. It was thus that, as from the end of January, 1936, soldiers, women,
children, cattle, rivers, lakes and pastures were drenched continually with
this deadly rain. In order to kill off systematically all living creatures, in order
to more surely to poison waters and pastures, the Italian command made its
aircraft pass over and over again. That was its chief method of warfare.
Ravage and Terror
The very refinement of barbarism consisted in carrying ravage and terror
into the most densely populated parts of the territory, the points farthest
removed from the scene of hostilities. The object was to scatter fear and
death over a great part of the Ethiopian territory.
These fearful tactics succeeded. Men and animals succumbed. The deadly
rain that fell from the aircraft made all those whom it touched fly shrieking with
pain. All those who drank the poisoned water or ate the infected food also
succumbed in dreadful suffering. In tens of thousands, the victims of the
Italian mustard gas fell. It is in order to denounce to the civilized world the
tortures inflicted upon the Ethiopian people that I resolved to come to Geneva.
None other than myself and my brave companions in arms could bring the
League of Nations the undeniable proof. The appeals of my delegates
addressed to the League of Nations had remained without any answer; my
delegates had not been witnesses. That is why I decided to come myself to
bear witness against the crime perpetrated against my people and give Europe
a warning of the doom that awaits it, if it should bow before the accomplished
fact.
Is it necessary to remind the Assembly of the various stages of the Ethiopian
drama? For 20 years past, either as Heir Apparent, Regent of the Empire, or
as Emperor, I have never ceased to use all my efforts to bring my country the
benefits of civilization, and in particular to establish relations of good
neighbourliness with adjacent powers. In particular I succeeded in concluding
with Italy the Treaty of Friendship of 1928, which absolutely prohibited the
resort, under any pretext whatsoever, to force of arms, substituting for force
and pressure the conciliation and arbitration on which civilized nations have
based international order.
Country More United
In its report of October 5th 193S, the Committee of Thirteen recognized my
effort and the results that I had achieved. The Governments thought that the
entry of Ethiopia into the League, whilst giving that country a new guarantee
for the maintenance of her territorial integrity and independence, would help
her to reach a higher level of civilization. It does not seem that in Ethiopia
today there is more disorder and insecurity than in 1923. On the contrary, the
country is more united and the central power is better obeyed.
I should have procured still greater results for my people if obstacles of every
kind had not been put in the way by the Italian Government, the Government
which stirred up revolt and armed the rebels. Indeed the Rome Government,
as it has today openly proclaimed, has never ceased to prepare for the conquest
of Ethiopia. The Treaties of Friendship it signed with me were not sincere; their
only object was to hide its real intention from me. The Italian Goverment asserts
that for 14 years it has been preparing for its present conquest. It therefore
recognizes today that when it supported the admission of Ethiopia to the League
of Nations in 1923, when it concluded the Treaty of Friendship in 1928, when it
signed the Pact of Paris outlawing war, it was deceiving the whole world.
The Ethiopian Government was, in these solemn treaties, given additional
guarantees of security which would enable it to achieve further progress along
the specific path of reform on which it had set its feet, and to which it was
devoting all its strength and all its heart.
Wal-Wal Pretext
The Wal-Wal incident, in December, 1934, came as a thunderbolt to me. The
Italian provocation was obvious and I did not hesitate to appeal to the League of
Nations. I invoked the provisions of the treaty of 1928, the principles of the
Covenant; I urged the procedure of conciliation and arbitration.
Unhappily for Ethiopia this was the time when a certain Government considered
that the European situation made it imperative at all costs to obtain the friendship
of Italy. The price paid was the abandonment of Ethiopian independence
to the greed of the Italian Government. This secret agreement, contrary to the
obligations of the Covenant, has exerted a great influence over the course of
events. Ethiopia and the whole world have suffered and are still suffering today its
disastrous consequences.
This first violation of the Covenant was followed by many others. Feeling
itself encouraged in its policy against Ethiopia, the Rome Government
feverishly made war preparations, thinking that the concerted pressure
which was beginning to be exerted on the Ethiopian Government, might
perhaps not overcome the resistance of my people to Italian domination.
The time had to come, thus all sorts of difficulties were placed in the way with a
view to breaking up the procedure; of conciliation and arbitration. All kinds of
obstacles were placed in the way of that procedure. Governments tried to
prevent the Ethiopian Government from finding arbitrators amongst their
nationals: when once the arbitral tribunal a was set up pressure was exercised
so that an award favourable to Italy should be given.
All this was in vain: the arbitrators, two of whom were Italian officials, were
forced to recognize unanimously that in the Wal-Wal incident, as in the
subsequent incidents, no international responsibility was to be attributed to Ethiopia.
Peace Efforts
Following on this award. the Ethiopian Government sincerely thought that an era
of friendly relations might be opened with Italy. I loyally offered my hand to the
Roman Government.
The Assembly was informed by the report of the Committee of Thirteen, dated
October 5th, 1935, of the details of the events which occurred after the month of
December, 1934, and up to October 3rd, 1935.
It will be sufficient if I quote a few of the conclusions of that report Nos. 24, 25 and
26 “The Italian memorandum (containing the complaints made by Italy) was laid on
the Council table on September 4th, 1935, whereas Ethiopia’s first appeal to the
Council had been made on December 14th, 1934. In the interval between these two
dates, the Italian Government opposed the consideration of the question by the
Council on the ground that the only appropriate procedure was that provided for in
the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1928. Throughout the whole of that period, moreover,
the despatch of Italian troops to East Africa was proceeding. These shipments of
troops were represented to the Council by the Italian Government as necessary for
the defense of its colonies menaced by Ethiopia’s preparations. Ethiopia, on the
contrary, drew attention to the official pronouncements made in Italy which, in its
opinion, left no doubt “as to the hostile intentions of the Italian Government.”
From the outset of the dispute, the Ethiopian Government has sought a settlement
by peaceful means. It has appealed to the procedures of the Covenant. The Italian
Government desiring to keep strictly to the procedures of the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty
of 1928, the Ethiopian Government assented. It invariably stated that it would
faithfully carry out the arbitral award even if the decision went against it. It agreed
that the question of the ownership of Wal-Wal should not be dealt with by the
arbitrators, because the Italian Government would not agree to such a course. It
asked the Council to despatch neutral observers and offered to lend itself to any
enquiries upon which the Council might decide.
Once the Wal-Wal dispute had been settled by arbiration, however, the Italian
Govemmcnt submitted its detailed memorandum to the Council in support of its claim
to liberty of action. It asserted that a case like that of Ethiopia cannot be settled by
the means provided by the Covenant.
It stated that, “since this question affects vital interest and is of primary importance
to Italian security and civilization” it “would be failing in its most elementary duty,
did it not cease once and for all to place any confidence in Ethiopia, reserving full
liberty to adopt any measures that may become necessary to ensure the safety of its
colonies and to safeguard its own interests.”
Covenant Violated
Those are the terms of the report of the Committee of Thirteen, The Council
and the Assembly unanimously adopted the conclusion that the Italian
Government had violated the Covenant and was in a state of aggression.
I did not hesitate to declare that I did not wish for war, that it was imposed
upon me, and I should struggle solely for the independence and integrity of
my people, and that in that struggle I was the defender of the cause of all
small States exposed to the greed of a powerful neighbour.
In October, 1935. the 52 nations who are listening to me today gave me an
assurance that the aggressor would not triumph, that the resources of the
Covenant would be employed in order to ensure the reign of right and the
failure of violence.
I ask the fifty-two nations not to forget today the policy upon which they
embarked eight months ago, and on faith of which I directed the resistance
of my people against the aggressor whom they had denounced to the world.
Despite the inferiority of my weapons, the complete lack of aircraft, artillery,
munitions, hospital services, my confidence in the League was absolute. I
thought it to be impossible that fifty-two nations, including the most powerful
in the world, should be successfully opposed by a single aggressor. Counting
on the faith due to treaties, I had made no preparation for war, and that is
the case with certain small countries in Europe.
When the danger became more urgent, being aware of my responsibilities
towards my people, during the first six months of 1935 I tried to acquire
armaments. Many Governments proclaimed an embargo to prevent my doing
so, whereas the Italian Government through the Suez Canal, was given all
facilities for transporting without cessation and without protest, troops, arms,
and munitions.
Forced to Mobilize
On October 3rd, 1935, the Italian troops invaded my territory. A few hours
later only I decreed general mobilization. In my desire to maintain peace I
had, following the example of a great country in Europe on the eve of the
Great War, caused my troops to withdraw thirty kilometres so as to remove
any pretext of provocation.
War then took place in the atrocious conditions which I have laid before
the Assembly. In that unequal struggle between a Government commanding
more than forty-two million inhabitants, having at its disposal financial,
industrial and technical means which enabled it to create unlimited
quantities of the most death-dealing weapons, and, on the other hand, a
small people of twelve million inhabitants, without arms, without resources
having on its side only the justice of its own cause and the promise of the
League of Nations. What real assistance was given to Ethiopia by the fifty
two nations who had declared the Rome Government guilty of a breach of
the Covenant and had undertaken to prevent the triumph of the aggressor?
Has each of the States Members, as it was its duty to do in virtue of its
signature appended to Article 15 of the Covenant, considered the aggressor
as having committed an act of war personally directed against itself? I had
placed all my hopes in the execution of these undertakings. My confidence
had been confirmed by the repeated declarations made in the Council to the
effect that aggression must not be rewarded, and that force would end by
being compelled to bow before right.
In December, 1935, the Council made it quite clear that its feelings were in
harmony with those of hundreds of millions of people who, in all parts of the
world, had protested against the proposal to dismember Ethiopia. It was
constantly repeated that there was not merely a conflict between the Italian
Government and the League of Nadons, and that is why I personally refused
all proposals to my personal advantage made to me by the Italian Government,
if only I would betray my people and the Covenant of the League of Nations.
I was defending the cause of all small peoples who are threatened with
aggression.
What of Promises?
What have become of the promises made to me as long ago as October,
1935? I noted with grief, but without surprise that three Powers considered
their undertakings under the Covenant as absolutely of no value. Their
connections with Italy impelled them to refuse to take any measures
whatsoever in order to stop Italian aggression. On the contrary, it was a
profound disappointment to me to learn the attitude of a certain Government
which, whilst ever protesting its scrupulous attachment to the Covenant,
has tirelessly used all its efforts to prevent its observance. As soon as any
measure which was likely to be rapidly effective was proposed, various
pretexts were devised in order to postpone even consideration of the
measure. Did the secret agreements of January, 1935, provide for this
tireless obstruction?
The Ethiopian Government never expected other Governments to shed
their soldiers’ blood to defend the Covenant when their own immediately
personal interests were not at stake. Ethiopian warriors asked only for
means to defend themselves. On many occasions I have asked for financial
assistance for the purchase of arms That assistance has been constantly
refused me. What, then, in practice, is the meaning of Article 16 of the
Covenant and of collective security?
The Ethiopian Government’s use of the railway from Djibouti to Addis Ababa
was in practice a hazardous regards transport of arms intended for the
Ethiopian forces. At the present moment this is the chief, if not the only
means of supply of the Italian armies of occupation. The rules of neutrality
should have prohibited transports intended for Italian forces, but there is
not even neutrality since Article 16 lays upon every State Member of the
League the duty not to remain a neutral but to come to the aid not of the
aggressor but of the victim of aggression. Has the Covenant been
respected? Is it today being respected?
Finally a statement has just been made in their Parliaments by the
Governments of certain Powers, amongst them the most influential members
of the League of Nations, that since the aggressor has succeeded in
occupying a large part of Ethiopian territory they propose not to continue
the application of any economic and financial measures that may have
been decided upon against the Italian Government.
These are the circumstances in which at the request of the Argentine
Government, the Assembly of the League of Nations meets to consider
the situation created by Italian aggression.
I assert that the problem submitted to the Assembly today is a much wider
one. It is not merely a question of the settlement of Italian aggression.
League Threatened
It is collective security: it is the very existence of the League of Nations.
It is the confidence that each State is to place in international treaties. It
is the value of promises made to small States that their integrity and their
independence shall be respected and ensured. It is the principle of the
equality of States on the one hand, or otherwise the obligation laid upon
smail Powers to accept the bonds of vassalship. In a word, it is international
morality that is at stake. Have the signatures appended to a Treaty value
only in so far as the signatory Powers have a personal, direct and immediate
interest involved?
No subtlety can change the problem or shift the grounds of the discussion.
It is in all sincerity that I submit these considerations to the Assembly. At a
time when my people are threatened with extermination, when the support of
the League may ward off the final blow, may I be allowed to speak with
complete frankness, without reticence, in all directness such as is
demanded by the rule of equality as between all States Members of the
League?
Apart from the Kingdom of the Lord there is not on this earth any nation
that is superior to any other. Should it happen that a strong Government
finds it may with impunity destroy a weak people, then the hour strikes for
that weak people to appeal to the League of Nations to give its judgment
in all freedom. God and history will remember your judgment.
Assistance Refused
I have heard it asserted that the inadequate sanctions already applied
have not achieved their object. At no time, and under no circumstances
could sanctions that were intentionally inadequate, intentionally badly
applied, stop an aggressor. This is not a case of the impossibility of
stopping an aggressor but of the refusal to stop an aggressor. When
Ethiopia requested and requests that she should be given financial
assistance, was that a measure which it was impossible to apply whereas
financial assistance of the League has been granted, even in times of
peace, to two countries and exactly to two countries who have refused
to apply sanctions against the aggressor?
Faced by numerous violations by the Italian Government of all international
treaties that prohibit resort to arms, and the use of barbarous methods of
warfare, it is my painful duty to note that the initiative has today been
taken with a view to raising sanctions. Does this initiative not mean in
practice the abandonment of Ethiopia to the aggressor? On the very eve
of the day when I was about to attempt a supreme effort in the defense of
my people before this Assembly does not this initiative deprive Ethiopia of
one of her last chances to succeed in obtaining the support and guarantee
of States Members? Is that the guidance the League of Nations and each
of the States Members are entitled to expect from the great Powers when
they assert their right and their duty to guide the action of the League?
Placed by the aggressor face to face with the accomplished fact, are
States going to set up the terrible precendent of bowing before force?
Your Assembly will doubtless have laid before it proposals for the reform
of the Covenant and for rendering more effective the guarantee of
collective security. Is it the Covenant that needs reform? What undertakings
can have any value if the will to keep them is lacking? It is international
morality which is at stake and not the Articles of the Covenant.
On behalf of the Ethiopian people, a member of the League of Nations, I
request the Assembly to take all measures proper to ensure respect for the
Covenant. I renew my protest against the violations of treaties of which the
Ethiopian people has been the victim. I declare in the face of the whole
world that the Emperor, the Government and the people of Ethiopia will not
bow before force; that they maintain their claims that they will use all means
in their power to ensure the triumph of right and the respect of the Covenant.
I ask the fifty-two nations, who have given the Ethiopian people a promise
to help them in their resistance to the aggressor, what are they willing to do
for Ethiopia? And the great Powers who have promised the guarantee of
collective security to small States on whom weighs the threat that they may
one day suffer the fate of Ethiopia, I ask what measures do you intend to take?
Representatives of the World I have come to Geneva to discharge in your
midst the most painful of the duties of the head of a State. What reply shall I
have to take back to my people?
June, 1936.
Military probe focuses on Iraq contracts
Associated Press
Friday, November 23, 2007
By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer
The flashy Laila Tower office building in this wealthy oil capital is a
world away from the mean streets of Baghdad. But the U.S. government
says they are linked by a web of fraud and bribery that stole millions
of dollars provided by American taxpayers to support U.S. combat troops
in Iraq.
The U.S. military and prosecutors have launched 83 criminal
investigations into alleged contract fraud, including a total of $15 million in
bribes.
It was the apparent suicide of an Army major in Baghdad a year ago that
brought them to the 15th floor of the Laila Tower. There, overlooking
the Persian Gulf, is the firm run by American George H. Lee and his
family, a small part of that huge web.
None of the Lees has been charged with any crime. But the Army
suspended them from doing business with the U.S. government, and a federal
judge in Huntsville, Ala., upheld the order in August, as a military
investigation into their case continues.
The case of Lee, a 64-year-old former Army supply clerk from
Pennsylvania, provides rare insight into how fraud was able to occur, in part by
exploiting the chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It also shows the flaws in the U.S. system of bids between private
contractors and the U.S. military officers who doled out billions of
dollars in contracts since 2003, often with little oversight.
Kuwait’s close-knit expatriate community also played a role, in a place
where business is traditionally done away from the glare of public
scrutiny.
“Bribery and kickbacks are common with big projects,” said Ali
al-Nemash of the Kuwait Transparency Society, a private organization that seeks
to combat graft and corruption. “They call it ‘gifts,’ but it is
bribery.”
Teams of U.S. investigators are reviewing a sample of about 6,000 U.S.
military contracts worth $2.8 billion that were awarded by a single
Army office at Camp Arifjan, a huge logistics and supply base about 40
miles south of the Laila Tower.
The U.S. has publicly identified only some of the companies and
individuals linked to the alleged bribery and fraud. The Army cited the need
to protect “the integrity of the ongoing investigation” in refusing a
request by The Associated Press for an interview at Camp Arifjan.
The biggest bribery case brought so far involves Maj. John Cockerham, a
former Army contracting officer, his wife and sister. They have been
charged in U.S. federal court with receiving $9.6 million in bribes from
companies seeking contracts to provide bottled water and other
supplies.
The apparent suicide last year in Baghdad of Army Maj. Gloria D. Davis
set in motion a chain of events that has shed light on the Lee case and
others in the web.
Before her death on Dec. 12, Davis told Army investigators she had
received $225,000 in bribes from Lee in return for granting his company $14
million in contracts to provide warehouses and management services in
Iraq.
She took the bribes while a contracting officer at Camp Arifjan in 2003
and 2004, according to a July memorandum by the Army’s Legal Services
Agency.
Davis also told investigators that Lee and his son, Justin W. Lee, paid
other American officers in return for getting U.S. contracts,
according to the memo. A copy of the memo was obtained by AP.
The memo included allegations that another, unidentified former Army
contracting official said he received $50,000 for helping Lee win
contracts worth $11 million. The officer was identified in the memo as a
“cooperating witness in the investigation.”
The government disclosed its findings against the Lees in court papers
seeking to uphold the banning order, including a statement by the Army
investigator who interviewed Davis.
Lee, who served as an Army supply clerk from Jan. 20, 1965, until Dec.
23, 1966, did not respond to telephone calls and an e-mail from AP
seeking comment. An AP reporter who visited his offices on the 15th floor
of the Laila Tower in Kuwait City’s glittering Salmiya commercial
district was told by an executive that Lee was unavailable. The reporter left
a business card with a local telephone number but no one from the
company responded.
AP uncovered no previous history of wrongdoing by the Lee family.
According to the court papers, Davis said she received the $225,000
through bank accounts established in Thailand by Lee’s Thai wife, Oai, and
then deposited the money in American and Swiss banks.
At the time, Lee was president of American Logistics Services, another
Kuwait-based company. In 2005, he set up his current company, Lee
Dynamics, and won a $12 million warehousing contract.
Davis, then working at the Pentagon, told him he would receive a
“glowing report” during the bidding process, court documents allege.
“Maj. Davis also alleged that payments were provided to other
contracting officers by both George H. Lee and Justin W. Lee in an effort to
have contracts awarded” to their companies, the Army said in the July
memorandum.
In a seven-page declaration, Army investigator Larry Moreland said a
former officer identified only as “Person B” visited Lee’s office in
Kuwait in March 2004 and provided him with inside information on an
upcoming warehouse contract.
Lee’s company was awarded the contract in May 2004, Moreland said. One
month later, the contract was increased by $3.5 million. Moreland
quoted an unidentified former associate of Lee’s as saying Lee knew more
money was available “based on information from Person B,” who has agreed
to cooperate with the government.
One of the most striking aspects of the fraud investigations has been
the number of those caught up in it who have apparently killed
themselves - at least three Army officers so far.
Until her death, Davis, a native of Portageville, Mo., appeared to have
been a model Army officer.
Her daughter, Candace, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Davis had
mentored fellow black military officers, worked in women’s shelters in
the Washington, D.C., area, and encouraged disadvantaged black children
to attend school.
Davis’ children are seeking to reverse a government order seizing their
mother’s bank accounts, which were frozen one day before she was found
dead of a gunshot wound in Baghdad.
She and others may have fallen into what Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of
the House Armed Services Committee, referred to as a “culture of
corruption” at Camp Arifjan, where about a dozen people gave out contracts
worth tens of millions of dollars.
Poor record-keeping, overwork and inadequate supervision contributed to
the problem, as a relative handful of personnel scurried to support
complex operations - set up quickly in the run-up to the 2003 U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq - which have lasted far longer than foreseen.
A handful of soldiers and civilians and military officers working out
of a small office in the bleak Kuwaiti desert found themselves doling
out contracts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, often with little
contracting experience.
Several former civilian contractors who worked in Iraq spoke of a
climate where costs didn’t seem to matter, where equipment disappeared
without accountability and where inept managers were simply shifted from job
to job rather than fired.
“I think some people just saw all that money coming through and decided
to take a piece of it for themselves,” one of them said.
All spoke on condition of anonymity because they still work for firms
doing business with the U.S. government.
Kuwaiti law requires companies operating here to have a Kuwaiti
partner. But the government has shown little interest for looking into the
activities of firms doing business with the Americans, considering it an
internal U.S. matter and possibly to avoid embarrassing well-connected
Kuwaiti businessmen.
Kuwait is a tiny country that thrives on commerce and trade, with a
long tradition of wheeling and dealing by powerful trading clans that grew
rich even before oil was discovered here. Although the country has
public disclosure regulations, many business deals are still considered a
private matter.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this month that the Pentagon will
act on recommendations that the Army needs 2,000 more military and
civilian workers to better manage contracts - to ensure the years of waste,
fraud and abuse don’t happen again.
A Nov. 1 report by an independent Army panel said the Army “lacks the
leadership and personnel (military and civilian) to provide sufficient
contracting support.” The report said the Army has seen a 600 percent
increase in its contract workload, yet staffing has declined or remained
stagnant since 1990.
Such shortcomings, the report said, “have significantly contributed to
the waste, fraud and abuse.”
___
Associated Press researcher Barbara Sambriski in New York contributed
to this report.
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
From: osint@yahoogroups.com
Archived.
MAD MULLAHS PUZZLED PUTIN
Bendador Associates ^ | 11/09/2007 | Amir Taheri
Posted on 11/25/2007 10:28:04 PM MST by Marine_Uncle
November 9, 2007 — ‘EDUCATIONAL”: That’s how President Vladimir Putin’s entourage described the Russian’s recent whirlwind trip to Tehran.
Islamic Republic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hyped the 36-hour visit as a “historic event.” Some Western commentators even suggested that Putin and Ahmadinejad planned to create an axis to counter Western influence in the Middle East.
In fact, the visit seems to have persuaded Putin and his closest advisers that the Tehran leadership is culturally and temperamentally incapable of playing the classical Cold War-style power games that the Russians are interested in.
````````````````````````
This article by Amir Taheri may be found to contain some very interesting observations. If what Amir says is true, and for the most part he seems to be right on the money, the Russians may be having some second thoughts as how they plan on using the Iranians against the west.
Clearly. The article brings out the concerns Putin showed regarding the blatant disregard the Mullahs and their primary puppet, President Ahmadinejah have regarding how they view their position in the world. It appears they may be living in Alice and Wonderland.
It is late from my end. Have to get ready for bed, so please bare with me if I do not respond quickly to any feedback.
This article if accurate in it’s contents may set the stage for what we can see happen in the near future regarding military intervention in Iran.
Perhaps the Iranians really do require a wake up call of sorts. Some really big booms may be in the making. Then again, with the price of crude oil being constantly bumped up due to world consumption we may see a no call to action being the call of the day.
If this posting deserves bumping up and pings to various groups in FR so be it.
1 posted on 11/25/2007 10:28:04 PM MST by Marine_Uncle
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1930504/posts
An interesting article, thanks for posting it.
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/bcyls.html
BICYCLES
- a Children’s Christmas Story for Adults -
by Joel A. Wendt
This story is dedicated to Gabriella, Catherine Rose, Ross Gregory, and Adam, who were on my mind Christmas Eve, 1996, as their fathers (of which I must confess I was one) were absent from home for the Season. It was written the following Christmas Morning.
There once was a girl, who found herself weeping in the dark, alone in her room.
This is nothing unusual. Many people, not just children, can be found weeping, alone with their pain in the dark of the night.
But there was a difference. Although it was not a difference as infrequent as we might imagine.
And the difference was this. While she was weeping an Angel appeared, sitting quietly at the end of her bed.
It was quite a while before the girl noticed the Angel. Yet, this did not bother the Angel, who had been, if we do not mind, created out of patience and joy.
After a time the girl stopped weeping, and the two simply looked at each other for a while.
Finally the Angel reached out and touched the girl on the shoulder, and asked: “What is troubling you child?”.
Now it is true that the Angel already knew the answer to this question, but the Angel also knew that the girl needed to talk about her grief.
This was the girl’s answer.
“It is Christmas Eve.” she said, “My father and mother have quarreled and my father is not here. I don’t even know when, or if, he is coming home.”
At this the girl, who was at that very awkward age between being a child and being a young woman, began to weep again, even more deeply then before.
After a while she stopped, looked at the Angel and asked: “Why?” and, then began weeping some more.
Now you may wonder why the girl wasn’t troubled or confused by someone being in her room at night. The fact is that when you meet an Angel there is no question about what is happening. No doubt, no confusion. Angels aren’t like anything else except Angels.
This is how the Angel answered the girl.
“Are you ever bad?” asked the Angel.
“Yes”, she said, a bit hesitantly.
“Are you ever bad on purpose, knowing you are being bad?”
“Yes”, she said, almost whispering now.
“Are you ever bad by accident, not having thought about what might happen?”
“Yes”, she said, a little more confident.
“Do bad things ever sometimes happen even though you were trying as hard as possible to do something good?”
“Yes”, she said, back to herself finally.
Then they sat together for a while. She was thinking and the Angel just was.
“O.K.”, she eventually said. “Mother and father aren’t trying to hurt me, and I didn’t do something wrong.”
“Right”, said the Angel.
“But”, she said, having just reinvented philosophy, “Why is the world such a terrible place?”
After a very long pause the Angel said, “It’s because of the bicycles.”
Now this was said with a straight face, as much as an Angel can be said to have a straight face, their normal countenance being filled with patient joy.
Even so, the girl’s dark mood broke and she laughed, and then caught in this odd feeling she tried to stop and ended up almost falling out of bed because she was giggling so much.
Again there was a passage of time, so that the girl could ask her next question without breaking up. It actually took several attempts before she could get the question out.
“What do you mean by “it’s the bicycles”?” she said, pulling up the hem of her nightgown, as much to distract herself as to dry the tears of both suffering and mirth.
“Well”, said the Angel, “As you have guessed the bicycles are invisible, being made out of ideas and dreams, hope and despair, all stuck together with bits of conscience and just plain stubbornness.
“Everyday people wake up and ride around on their invisible bicycles, forgetting the bicycles are there and then because they have forgotten them, people just keep banging into each other.
“Soon all the bicycles are in great disrepair. Some with flat tires, some with crooked wheels, and some without even handlebars to steer by.
“It takes a great deal of courage for people, for mothers and fathers, to get up in the morning and ride their bicycles out into life each day. A great deal of courage.”
Then the Angel was quiet again and so was the girl.
After a while the girl, having graduated from philosophy to theology, asked: “Why does God let this go on? Why doesn’t he fix the bicycles or make people learn how to ride them without banging into each other?”
“Hmmm.” said the Angel
Now before you imagine the Angel is pausing to think, I should tell you that is not what was happening. Angels do think, but when they do something happens. For Angels thinking creates. The reason the Angel said “Hmmm” was so the girl would first reflect a little about what she had said, before the Angel answered her.
“Do you ever talk to God?” asked the Angel.
“I think so,” said the girl, tentative again, and rightly so.
“You should you know.”, said the Angel. “You can’t interrupt him, or bother him when he’s doing something else. He always listens. Always. And when you talk to him he never interrupts you, never tells you he’s heard it before or done it himself or knows more than you. You couldn’t ask for a better listener. And when you’re done he doesn’t give advice, or tell you what to do, or criticize what you’ve done or tell you, you aren’t adequate. He just listens, and accepts you and loves you, whatever you have to say.”
Then the Angel asked another question.
“Do you ever get angry at God?”
“What!” exclaimed the girl. “Get angry at God !?!”
“Of course.” said the Angel. “God loves you and wants your love. People who love each other get to be angry with each other. It’s a way to care. God doesn’t mind your anger. Now your indifference? That’s another matter.”
“O.K.” said the girl, now a little more in touch with her own frustration. “But you still haven’t said anything about repairing the bicycles or giving lessons on riding them.”
‘Didn’t need to” said the Angel. “All kinds of excellent repair and riding manuals already out there. There’s the Bible, and the Vedas, and the Torah, and the Koran, and the Sutras, and the...”
“O.K.. I get it.” she said, interrupting the Angel, who didn’t mind at all. Then she paused and thought a little.
“All right.” she said. “This is what you’ve said. The reason the world is so difficult is because we all have our own ideas and dreams and conscience and stubbornness, and when we go out and ride these “bicycles” in life we bang into each other, or ride over each others feet, because we have forgotten about these invisible things. But if we want riding lessons and repair instruction, that information is already there. We just have to use it. Right?”
“Right.” said the Angel.
“O.K.” said the girl, after a very deep sigh, “Just one more question.”
“Granted God is the best listener in the world, always available and never critical. But how come he never answers me?”
This last was spoken with a great deal of anguish, as only the very young can feel at the impossible burdens they sense when they contemplate growing up and being really free and responsible for themselves.
Again the Angel waited for a while, as silent and beautiful as a starry winter night.
“How well do you listen?” the Angel answered. “He always answers you, always. You just don’t always hear him. He answers in many ways. With the continued breath of life, or with a fading sunset. With the touch of a breeze on the cheek or a crash of thunder. In the most quite place inside yourself he whispers to you. More softly then the endless beat of your heart he sings to you in the voice of the dancing colors that delight the eye. You eat his answers for breakfast and when you walk barefoot through the dew wet grass his answers touch your feet.
“Do you have eyes, ears? Or if not even these, you have the thoughts you choose. You believe or not. Is that not a great gift itself? To have faith or not, hope or not, charity or not, according to your own will. God does answer. With life, with freedom. And yes, with sorrow and with pain. Are these not gifts as well?”
Again there was a harmony of silence between the two of them. Then the girl smiled and looked mischievously at the Angel.
“Do you have a bicycle?” she asked.
Then the Angel laughed. And outside the girl’s window the birds sang to greet with joy the first hints of dawn on Christmas morning.
http://freelebanon.org/articles/a363.htm
United States Committee for a Free Lebanon Logo
Article:
Facts on Who Benefits From Keeping Saddam Hussein In Power
Author:
The Heritage Foundation
Date:
March 2003
France
* According to the CIA World Factbook, France controls over 22.5 percent of Iraq’s imports.[1] French total trade with Iraq under the oil-for-food program is the third largest, totaling $3.1 billion since 1996, according to the United Nations.[2] In 2001 France became Iraq’s largest European trading partner.
* Roughly 60 French companies do an estimated $1.5 billion in trade with Baghdad annually under the U.N. oil-for-food program.[3]
* France’s largest oil company, Total Fina Elf, has negotiated a deal to develop the Majnoon field in western Iraq. The Majnoon field purportedly contains up to 30 billion barrels of oil.[4]
* Total Fina Elf also negotiated a deal for future oil exploration in Iraq’s Nahr Umar field. Both the Majnoon and Nahr Umar fields are estimated to contain as much as 25 percent of the country’s reserves.[5]
* France’s Alcatel company, a major telecom firm, is negotiating a $76 million contract to rehabilitate Iraq’s telephone system.[6]
* From 1981 to 2001, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), France was responsible for over 13 percent of Iraq’s arms imports.[7]
Germany
* Direct trade between Germany and Iraq amounts to about $350 million annually, and another $1 billion is reportedly sold through third parties.[8]
* It has recently been reported that Saddam Hussein has ordered Iraqi domestic businesses to show preference to German companies as a reward for Germany’s “firm positive stand in rejecting the launching of a military attack against Iraq.” It was also reported that over 101 German companies were present at the Baghdad Annual exposition.[9]
* During the 35th Annual Baghdad International Fair in November 2002, a German company signed a contract for $80 million for 5,000 cars and spare parts.[10]
* In 2002, DaimlerChrysler was awarded over $13 million in contracts for German trucks and spare parts.[11]
* German officials are investigating a German corporation accused of illegally channeling weapons to Iraq via Jordan. The equipment in question is used for boring the barrels of large cannons and is allegedly intended for Saddam Hussein’s Al Fao Supercannon project.[12]
Russia
* According to the CIA World Factbook, Russia controls roughly 5.8 percent of Iraq’s annual imports.[13] Under the U.N. oil-for-food program, Russia’s total trade with Iraq was somewhere between $530 million and $1 billion for the six months ending in December of 2001.[14]
* According to the Russian Ambassador to Iraq, Vladimir Titorenko, new contracts worth another $200 million under the U.N. oil-for-food program are to be signed over the next three months.[15]
* Soviet-era debt of $7 billion through $8 billion was generated by arms sales to Iraq during the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq war.
* Russia’s LUKoil negotiated a $4 billion, 23-year contract in 1997 to rehabilitate the 15 billion-barrel West Qurna field in southern Iraq. Work on the oil field was expected to commence upon cancellation of U.N. sanctions on Iraq. The deal is currently on hold.[16]
* In October 2001, Salvneft, a Russian–Belarus company, negotiated a $52 million service contract to drill at the Tuba field in Southern Iraq.[17]
* In April 2001, Russia’s Zaruezhneft company received a service contract to drill in the Saddam, Kirkuk, and Bai Hassan fields to rehabilitate the fields and reduce water incursion.
* A future $40 billion Iraqi–Russian economic agreement, reportedly signed in 2002, would allow for extensive oil exploration opportunities throughout western Iraq.[18] The proposal calls for 67 new projects, over a 10-year time frame, to explore and further develop fields in southern Iraq and the Western Desert, including the Suba, Luhais, West Qurna, and Rumaila projects. Additional projects added to the deal include second-phase construction of a pipeline running from southern to northern Iraq, and extensive drilling and gas projects. Work on these projects would commence upon cancellation of sanctions.[19]
* Russia’s Gazprom company over the past few years has signed contracts worth $18 million to repair gas stations in Iraq.[20]
* The former Soviet Union was the premier supplier of Iraqi arms. From 1981 to 2001, Russia supplied Iraq with 50 percent of its arms.[21]
China
* According to the CIA World Factbook, China controls roughly 5.8 percent of Iraq’s annual imports.[22]
* China National Oil Company, partnered with China North Industries Corp., negotiated a 22-year-long deal for future oil exploration in the Al Ahdab field in southern Iraq.[23]
* In recent years, the Chinese Aero-Technology Import–Export Company (CATIC) has been contracted to sell “meteorological satellite” and “surface observation” equipment to Iraq. This contract was approved by the U.N. oil-for-food program.[24]
* CATIC also won approval from the U.N. in July 2000 to sell $2 million worth of fiber optic cables. This and similar contracts approved were disguised as telecommunications gear. These cables can be used for secure data and communications links between national command and control centers and long-range search radar, targeting radar, and missile-launch units, according to U.S. officials. In addition, China National Electric Wire & Cable and China National Technical Import Telecommunications Equipment Company are believed to have sold Iraq $6 million and $15.5 million worth of communications equipment and other unspecified supplies, respectively.[25]
* According to a report from SIPRI, from 1981 to 2001, China was the second largest supplier of weapons and arms to Iraq, supplying over 18 percent of Iraq’s weapons imports.[26]
[1]Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook 2002, at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook.
[2]Jon Talton, “French Ideals and Profits in the Iraqi Triangle”, The Arizona Republic, February 23, 2003.
[3]Jon Talton, “French Ideals and Profits in the Iraqi Triangle,” The Arizona Republic, February 23, 2003.
[4]Kenneth Katzman, Iraq: Oil-for-Food Program, International Sanctions, and Illicit Trade, Congressional Research Service, September 26, 2002.
[5]Kenneth Katzman, Iraq: Oil-for-Food Program, International Sanctions, and Illicit Trade, Congressional Research Service, September 26, 2002.
[6]Evelyn Iritani, “Hussein’s Government Signs Lucrative Contracts, Especially with Nations that Oppose the U.S. Led Effort to Oust the Regime,” The Los Angeles Verdana,Arial,Helvetica, November 11, 2002.
[7]Information from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), “Arms Transfers to Iraq, 1981–2001,” at http://projects.sipri.se/armstrade/IRQ_IMPORTS_1982-2001.pdf.
[8]David R. Sands, “France, Germany Protect Iraq Ties,” The Washington Verdana,Arial,Helvetica, February 20, 2003.
[9]David R. Sands, “France, Germany Protect Iraq Ties,” The Washington Verdana,Arial,Helvetica, February 20, 2003.
[10]“Africa Analysis—Trade Points Way to Peace”, The Financial Verdana,Arial,Helvetica: Asia Africa Intelligence Wire, November 19, 2002.
[11]Faye Bowers, “Driving Forces in War-Wary Nations: The Stances of France, Germany, Russia and China Are Colored by Economic and National Interests,” Christian Science Monitor, February 25, 2003.
[12]“Helping Saddam Rearm,” The Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2002.
[13]Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook 2002, at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook.
[14]Testimony provided by Ariel Cohen to the House International Relations Committee, “Russia and the Axis of Evil: Money, Ambition and U.S. Interests,” February 26, 2003.
[15]Nelli Sharushkina, “Russia Plays the Field in Iraq—Mixed Signals Worry Baghdad,” Energy Intelligence Briefing, February 5, 2003.
[16]Dan Morgan and David B. Ottaway, “In Iraqi War Scenario, Oil Is Key Issue,” The Washington Post, September 15, 2002.
[17]Dan Morgan and David B. Ottaway, “In Iraqi War Scenario, Oil Is Key Issue,” The Washington Post, September 15, 2002.
[18]Scott Peterson, “Russia’s Newest Tie to Iraq: Moscow Is Set to Sign a $40 billion Economic Pact with Baghdad Next Month,” Christian Science Monitor, August 20, 2002.
[19]“Mideast Tensions to Delay Iraq Iraqi–Russian Signing,” Energy Compass, April 19, 2002.
[20]Dmitry Zhdannikov, “Russian’s Grim About Working Under Saddam,” The Houston Chronicle, April 14, 2002.
[21]Information from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), “Arms Transfers to Iraq, 1981–2001,” at http://projects.sipri.se/armstrade/IRQ_IMPORTS_1982-2001.pdf.
[22]Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook 2002, at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook.
[23]Trish Saywell, “Oil: The Danger of Deals with Iraq,” Far Eastern Economic Review, March 6, 2003.
[24]Kenneth R. Timmerman, “Rogues Lending Hand to Saddam,” Insight on the News, March 4, 2003.
[25]Kenneth R. Timmerman, “Rogues Lending Hand to Saddam,” Insight on the News, March 4, 2003.
[26]Information from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), “Arms Transfers to Iraq, 1981–2001,” at http://projects.sipri.se/armstrade/IRQ_IMPORTS_1982-2001
© Copyright 1997-2004 United States Committee For A Free Lebanon. All rights reserved.
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2006/82735.htm
Chapter 2 — Country Reports: Western Hemisphere Overview
[ON TERROR THREATS, BY COUNTRY IN 2006]
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2006/
Country Reports on Terrorism 2006 (html format)
U.S. law requires the Secretary of State to provide Congress, by April 30 of each year, a full and complete report on terrorism with regard to those countries and groups meeting criteria set forth in the legislation. This annual report is entitled Country Reports on Terrorism. Beginning with the report for 2004, it replaced the previously published Patterns of Global Terrorism.
Background Information: Country Reports on Terrorism and Patterns of Global Terrorism
— Table of Contents
— Chapter 1 — Strategic Assessment
— Chapter 2 — Country Reports: Africa Overview
— Chapter 2 — Country Reports: East Asia and Pacific Overview
— Chapter 2 — Country Reports: Europe and Eurasia Overview
— Chapter 2 — Country Reports: Middle East and North Africa Overview
— Chapter 2 — Country Reports: South and Central Asia Overview
— Chapter 2 — Country Reports: Western Hemisphere Overview
— Chapter 3 — State Sponsors of Terrorism Overview
— Chapter 4 — The Global Challenge of WMD Terrorism
— Chapter 5 — Terrorist Safe Havens (7120 Report)
— Chapter 6 — Terrorist Organizations
— Chapter 7 — Legislative Requirements and Key Terms
— National Counterterrorism Center: Annex of Statistical Information
— International Conventions and Protocols on Terrorism
—04/30/07 Briefing on Release of 2006 Country Reports on Terrorism; Frank C. Urbancic, Acting Coordinator for Counterterrorism; Washington, DC
https://www.cia.gov/library/kent-center-occasional-papers/vol2no1.htm
Central Intelligence Agency
Kent Center Occasional Papers
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Strategic Warning: If Surprise is Inevitable, What Role for Analysis?
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CIA Home > Library > Kent Center Occasional Papers > Strategic Warning: If Surprise is Inevitable, What Role for Analysis?
Strategic Warning: If Surprise is Inevitable, What Role for Analysis?
The Sherman Kent Center for Intelligence Analysis
Occasional Papers: Volume 2, Number 1, Jan. ‘03
Strategic Warning:
If Surprise is Inevitable, What Role for Analysis?
Jack Davis
Sherman Kent Center
The dramatic events of 11 September 2001 color this paper, but it is not about the devastating terrorist attacks per se, nor about the daunting challenges of tactical warning. The focus, instead, is on strategic warning.
Warning analysis is charged with applying all-source information, expert insights, and specialized tradecraft to help policy officials prevent or limit damage from threats to US security interests. Tactical warning, as defined in this paper, seeks to detect and deter specific threats to US interests; the objective is to avoid incident surprise and thus block or blunt damage. Strategic warning addresses perceived dangers in broader terms, in order to inform policymaker decisions on general security preparedness—again to prevent or limit damage.
US national security resources are limited. Tactical warning cannot be counted on to pinpoint defensive measures by providing timely notice of all specific attacks and menacing developments. In this context, the challenge of strategic warning is to help policy officials decide—in advance of specific indicators of danger—which of the many plausible general threats to US security interests deserve concerted defensive and preemptive preparations.
Strategic warning, to be effective, has to be credible in assessing contingent dangers and has to facilitate policymaker decision and action to protect against these dangers. This paper tables for consideration and debate several recommendations to advance two goals:
1.
To reconstitute strategic warning as a collaborative governmental function by engaging policy officials responsible for effecting defensive measures in every step of the analysis process, including topic selection and trend monitoring.
2.
To warrant a distinctive intelligence contribution to a collaborative warning effort by expanding dedicated analytic resources and sharpening requisite substantive expertise and specialized tradecraft.
Tactical and Strategic Warning Analysis
The central mission of intelligence analysis is to warn US officials about dangers to national security interests and to alert them to perceived openings to advance US policy objectives. Thus, the bulk of analysts’ written and oral deliverables points directly or indirectly to the existence, characteristics, and implications of threats to and opportunities for US national security.
Regarding warning of threats, the central analytic task is to peel back substantive uncertainty about the meaning of past developments and the prospects for future developments that could endanger US interests. Prescient, timely, convincing analysis regarding imminent and potential dangers can be an important force multiplier for US officials by reducing the likelihood, first, of incident surprise and, second, of inadequate defensive preparedness for dealing effectively with high-impact potential threats.
In order to identify and evaluate alternatives to current doctrine and practice of strategic warning, a clear, even if arbitrary, distinction from tactical warning can usefully be made.
Tactical warning focuses on specific incidents that endanger US security interests, such as military attack, terrorism, WMD developments, illicit transactions, and political crises abroad. Tactical warning analysis is usually characterized by a search for and evaluation of diagnostic information about incident, perpetrator, target, timing, and modalities. The goal is to deter and limit damage by identifying in advance when, where, and how a declared or potential adversary will forcefully strike the United States directly, mount a challenge to US forces, personnel, or interests abroad, or make a menacing weapons breakthrough.
Strategic warning aims for analytic perception and effective communication to policy officials of important changes in the character or level of security threats that require re-evaluation of US readiness to deter, avert, or limit damage—well in advance of incident-specific indicators. Thus, strategic warning is characterized by inferential evidence and general depiction of the danger. The issues addressed here are changes in the level of likelihood that an enemy will strike or that a development harmful to US interests will take place and changes in enemy mechanisms for inflicting damage. The goal is to assist policy decisions on defensive preparedness and contingency planning, including preemptive actions, to manage the risks of potential threats.
How are the two aspects of warning analysis related? The ultimate goal of effective warning is to protect US interests. Incident surprise can amplify damage. Foreknowledge can reduce it. But not always, absent appropriate preparedness for dealing with a specific threat, once it is identified. Moreover, effective strategic warning is often needed to ensure the subsequent availability of an appropriate level of resources for detecting and preventing specific attacks and harmful developments. That is, good strategic warning has the potential to enhance both tactical warning and preparedness.
In any case, a strong historical argument can be made that the occurrence of incident or tactical surprise can be reduced but not eliminated. Even the best of intelligence services cannot expect to penetrate every plot or otherwise anticipate every damaging incident. Offensive forces—the perpetrators of military or terrorist attacks, for example—learn lessons from past attempts about how to achieve surprise, just as defensive forces—US intelligence, policymaking, warfighting, and law enforcement professionals—learn lessons about prevention. Moreover, simple applications of denial and deception activities and small innovations in modes of attack by adversarial forces can increase the likelihood of incident surprise.
Regarding the onset of dramatic developments abroad that could damage US interests—internal strife that threatens friendly governments, economic crises with global implications, outbreaks of regional wars—the fluidity as well as the complexity of relationships and rationales of foreign groups and leaders hinder timely specific warnings.
Finally, it is no easy matter for analysts who are convinced they have a sound tactical warning case to galvanize policy officials to defensive action. Distraction of other calls on policy officials’ attention, their remembrance of unavoidable occurrence of warnings that proved to be false or aborted positives, and their concern about high opportunity costs for what could prove to be “unnecessary” defensive measures can cause rejection or delay of preventive actions to ward off a specific threatening incident.
What role for analysis if incidents of tactical surprise are inevitable? A robust strategic warning effort serves as the indispensable analytic supplement to tactical warning—by spurring, in advance of specific, harmful developments, preemptive and defensive measures that can mute the negative consequences of tactical surprise.
To paraphrase a Cold War observation about the danger of a surprise Soviet military attack:
If surprise can succeed despite robust tactical warning, then defense must utilize effective strategic warning to prepare to succeed despite surprise.
Think in terms of the analogy between homeland defense and household defense. A concerned and resourceful homeowner cannot always know when and how a burglar or other predator will strike. Despite lack of incident foreknowledge, however, the homeowner (1) can deter many planned “attacks” by investing in ample outdoor and indoor lighting, (2) can abort attempted attacks with superior door and window locks, and (3) can reduce the damage should a break-in nonetheless occur through an alarm system, which will encourage the burglar to grab-and-run, rather than ransack. If concern for security rises sharply—say, the neighborhood becomes a more accessible and attractive target—still more protection can be effected: neighborhood patrols, gated communities, and coordination of police and resident intelligence.
That said, the challenges of effective strategic defense are formidable. The homeowner, like the national security policymaker, has got to be willing to pay the direct costs of heightened defense without being sure an attack will ever take place. Assuming a practical limit to expenditures to prepare for plausible but seemingly unlikely events, how much for flood insurance, for fire insurance, and so forth? Next, what of opportunity costs—inconvenience, reduced alternative consumption and savings? And what of resistance to effort and expenditures (even ridicule) from inside and outside the household? Finally, as the responsible “policymaker,” how best to garner diagnostic information and expert judgment for informed decisionmaking and actiontaking?
The Imperative to Seek More Effective Strategic Warning
The terrorist attack of 11 September 2001 is fairly represented in open source commentary as a tactical surprise—if nothing else, a reminder of the inherent limitations of tactical warning. Judging whether there was a failure of strategic as well as tactical warning is a more difficult task, and depends largely on where one places the goal posts.
Evidence on the public record indicates that intelligence communicated clearly and often in the months before 11 September the judgment that the likelihood of a major al-Qa’ida terrorist attack within the United States was high and rising. The public record also indicates that many responsible policy officials had been convinced, from intelligence warnings and their other sources of information and analysis, that US vulnerability to such attack had grown markedly. Both governmental and non-governmental studies, in recognition of a mounting terrorist threat, had begun to recommend national investment in numerous protective measures—tougher air passenger scrutiny, greater cooperation between and among intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and stricter enforcement of immigration laws, to name three.
The bottom line? Even after taking account of inevitable hindsight bias that accompanies bureaucratic recollection of prescience of dramatic events, the public record indicates (1) strategic warning was given, (2) warning was received, (3) warning was believed. Yet commensurate protective measures were not taken. Whether in theory this represents a strategic warning success or failure by intelligence, the fact is that the national security components of the Government, intelligence included, failed to generate appropriate and affordable measures for increased preparedness.
Some observers characterize the surprise attending the 11 September terrorist attack as an instance of inconvenient warning. Top policy officials, while convinced at one level of engagement with the warning process of the reality of the threat, did not commit fully to the warning as perhaps they would have if the judgment reflected their own conclusion. Thus, they were unwilling to pay the political and economic costs of direct expenditures, inconvenience, disapproving special interests, and breaking of bureaucratic rice bowls.
Whatever the ultimate judgment of the performance of intelligence and policy communities, the impact of the 11 September attacks on the nation’s sense of security warrants a critical examination of the efficacy of strategic warning doctrine and practice. How can organizational obstacles to the intelligence professional’s responsibilities for perception and communication of threat and the policy professional’s responsibility for timely decision and action best be removed?
The following recommendations have two main objectives:
1. To reconstitute strategic warning analysis as a collaborative governmental responsibility—vice an intelligence function—by engaging the policy community much more directly in every step of the strategic warning process.
2. To expand and upgrade the analytic resources devoted to strategic warning, in order to ensure a distinctive intelligence contribution to policy decision making and action taking in response to warning.
Recommendations for Strengthening Strategic Warning
1. Clarify the Warning Mission
Any critical examination of the mission of warning analysis should give primacy of place to avoidance or limitation of damage—and not to the unrealistic standard of avoidance of surprise. In other words, the ultimate goal of effective warning is to maximize damage limitation not predictive accuracy.
Acquisition of foreknowledge to reduce incident surprise should be treated as an extremely important means to the larger goal. Security preparedness is also a means to the goal of avoidance or limitation of damage. As indicated by the United States’ relatively damage-free navigation of the Cold War, preparedness abets damage avoidance from surprise attacks mainly through the workings of deterrence. Preparedness advances damage limitation through erection of the means for appropriate preemptive offensive and post-attack defensive responses to all kinds of challenges to US interests.
Over the decades, the Intelligence Community has generated many worthy definitions of warning analysis. The one recommended here puts damage avoidance and limitation front and center. It also specifies decision-enhancing assessments as a requisite for a successful intelligence warning effort—that is, assessments with good potential to help avoid or limit damage.
Warning analysis seeks to prevent or limit damage to US national security interests via communication of timely, convincing, and decision-enhancing assessments that assist policy officials to effect defensive and preemptive measures against future threats and to take action to defend against imminent threats.
Decisions on whether and how to take action and the effectiveness of actions taken remain the responsibility of policymakers and action takers. The analysts’ responsibility is to facilitate decisionmaking and action taking processes by providing, for example, disciplined depiction of perceived changes in the likelihood or means of the threat and identification and evaluation of US options for preempting, blunting, or otherwise limiting damage from the threat.
2. Increase Resources for Strategic Warning
Which is the more important intelligence responsibility—tactical or strategic warning? A strong argument can be made that the vital role of technical and clandestine intelligence collection in executing tactical warning justifies its dominant command on analytic resources. But intelligence scholars have argued that a government adequately prepared to respond to hostile action and other damaging events which receives no warning of a specific incident is better able to limit damage than a government that receives warning but is inadequately prepared to respond. This calls into question the extent to which the current division of analytic resources favors tactical over strategic warning.
The official doctrine of CIA and other Intelligence Community analytic units is that every analyst is a warning officer. Probably so, if intent rather than effect is the standard. At the Agency, at least through the 1980s, a rough balance prevailed between tactical and strategic, if all forms of event reporting and crisis management support were generously defined as tactical warning, and all forms of research and estimative work were similarly defined as strategic warning.
A major post-Cold War downsizing of analytic resources in the 1990s seemed to cut much more sharply into strategic warning analysis and in-depth, mid-term analysis generally than it did into tactical warning analysis and overall current policy support efforts. Understandably, the initial response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks was for intelligence leaders to effect a sizeable additional shift of total available analytic resources into the tactical warning effort.
For the Intelligence Community to meet its professional responsibility to prevent and limit damage to national security in the uncertain years ahead, leaders now should expand substantially and quickly its capacity to execute a more robust strategic warning effort. This includes attention to (1) doctrinal development, (2) staffing levels for in-depth analysis generally and thus for strategic warning, (3) career incentives, (4) continuous leadership engagement, and (5) especially tradecraft training to ensure that policy officials receive warning analysis they see as decision-enhancing.
Even before 11 September, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whose position affords considerable influence over the partitioning of intelligence resources, called for increased effort to avoid strategic surprise. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is long on record with charging intelligence analysts with “helping policymakers decide which seemingly unlikely threats to pay serious attention to.” Since 11 September, other key policy officials have taken actions that indicate they have joined this chorus.
3. Strengthen Strategic Warning as Sound Estimative Analysis
Intelligence analysts, as strategic warning officers, regularly make a convincing case for a judgment that a danger overlooked or understated by policymakers is likely to occur. Analysts leverage the strengths of the warning process at its best—mastery of collection guidance, collaborative multidisciplinary substantive expertise, well-structured all-source information, sound tradecraft for dealing with uncertainty, awareness of but some distance from the daily policymaker pressures to “get things done.” The analysts produce an assessment about a looming danger that is prescient, timely, and convincing, and thus provides a window for effective policy decision and action.
Many of the examples on the public record of strategic warning as sound estimative analysis—such as the successful US defusing of India-Pakistan war preparations in the early 1990s—depend on exploitation of all-source information that, while not conclusive, is determinative to the accomplished analyst. As a rule, it is the favorable balance between evidence and inference that galvanizes responsible policy officials into action.
While the overall record on “making the call” is a respectable one, doctrinal emphasis on specific estimative prediction is a root cause of high-profile warning failures. The analysts’ expertise, in effect, is trumped by the hazards of estimating. Available data on a complex issue is inherently ambiguous, open to manipulation by denial and deception, and otherwise subject to misinterpretation. The analysts’ understanding of how things usually work on the subject at hand, what one academic observer calls “normal theory,” does not adequately account for seemingly unprecedented or exceptional developments, overlooked key variables, foreign actors’ distinctive risk-benefit calculations.
This was more or less the case with the September 1962 Intelligence Community estimate that judged the Soviet Union would not install nuclear weapons in Cuba. The US analysts, for example, did not know the extent to which Nikita Khrushchev as dominant Soviet decisionmaker was misinformed about the seriousness of US warnings against the introduction into Cuba of offensive nuclear weapons.
Increased numbers of better-trained analysts, greater leadership engagement, and more robust warning tradecraft (addressed in sections below) will improve the success record in terms of making the right call as well as galvanizing policy officials to timely action. But as with tactical warning, strategic warning as sound estimative analysis will inevitably produce what are perceived to be “intelligence failures” that can reduce the willingness of policy officials to rely on intelligence warnings.
4. Strengthen Strategic Warning as Alternative Analysis
Almost by definition, an effective strategic warning effort should also be focused on threats to US security interests that are surrounded by considerable, even impenetrable, substantive uncertainty—potential threats that may or may not mature. Here, the analysts address a danger they judge to be plausible and potentially highly damaging, but about the details of which—timing, location, modalities, triggers, indicators, indeed, likelihood—they retain important doubts.
Analysts address some issues, such as the threat of Soviet nuclear attack during the Cold War, because they judge that the danger, however unlikely, could prove to be so devastating that it has to be better understood. On other issues, analysts warn when they judge a danger was previously understated or has increased in magnitude or likelihood, and when policy officials seek help in refining contingency plans. But, again, for these strategic warning exercises, the danger addressed is either judged unlikely under prevailing conditions or is seen as too highly dependent on poorly understood factors and contingencies to assess its likelihood with confidence.
Strategic warning analysis, in these circumstances, is a branch of “alternative analysis,” in that its tradecraft places emphasis on disciplined and value-added assessments of threats that, for the most part, are seen as unlikely or indeterminate. Related forms of alternative analysis—including High Impact-Low Probability Analysis, What-If Analysis, Gaps in Information Analysis, and Devil’s Advocacy—share the requirement with warning analysis to marshal all-source information, expert insight, and specialized tradecraft to illuminate developments that analysts judge to be potentially damaging but unlikely.
CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence in recent years, in response to criticism of its warning performance, has increased tradecraft training in and production of alternative analysis. Unfortunately, in some circles, alternative analysis has picked up a reputation as an exercise in analysis for its own sake that is largely ignored by policy clients.
But alternative analysis rarely should be executed as an end in itself. The goal of strategic warning as alternative analysis should be to provide distinctive intelligence support to policy officials as they undertake the difficult task of deciding whether and how to deal with threats to US strategic interests before the advent of specific indicators rings the alarm bell. Here too expansion of analyst ranks and leadership attention and enrichment of tradecraft are needed to capture the policymakers’ confidence.
Here, too, there is reason to believe Intelligence Community programs that connect strategic warning to an enhanced alternative analysis effort will receive policymaker support. A key proposal of the 1998 Report of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which was chaired by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and on which Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz also served, called for expanded efforts by analysts to address high-impact dangers they thought unlikely. More specifically the report called on the policymakers to probe analysts to ensure they were not too quick to dismiss dangers simply because of a lack of hard evidence or clear precedent.
5. Assign the Strategic Warning Effort to Regular Analytic Units
Most of an expanded strategic warning effort should be undertaken by production units also responsible for tactical warning and other analytic deliverables. The goal should be to increase the number and warning skills of analysts—not the complexity of the table of organization. Closeness to substantive colleagues provides benefits to the warning analyst in terms of policymaker contacts, databases, and substantive expertise. Multi-function production units, admittedly, open the age-old danger of current policy support analysis driving out in-depth analysis by management fiat or implicit career incentives. Intelligence leaders have to get the word out that Peter is not to be robbed to pay Paul.
Line analysts engaged in strategic warning will often occupy the uncomfortable position of seeming to discredit their colleagues’ established assumptions and conclusions about the issue at hand. This would warrant an important role as well for specialized entities, including the National Intelligence Officer for Warning, to produce independent strategic warnings and to provide a temporary base for line analysts to engage in a strategic warning effort removed from the pressures of their home unit.
6. Expand Tradecraft Training and Research
Since strategic warning analysis often focuses on depicting plausible future developments that would contradict the prevailing judgment of analysts as to the likelihood, timing, modalities, or security implications of a potential threat, effective execution requires special skills in alternative analysis tradecraft. This includes disciplined assessment of the following factors (the italicized hypothetical text illustrates how strategic warning tradecraft would critically examine the judgment that the short-term stability of a pro-US regime is underwritten by the loyalty of its security forces):
(1) Evidence and inference that support alternative views about what drives the situation (key variables).
*
In country X, analysts assume security force loyalty is the key to regime survival, but what if public anger over deteriorating economic conditions, which the government may mask in official statistics, is the more potent driving force?
(2) Similar tough-minded probing about the most likely path of future development of these key variables or drivers.
*
Even if security force loyalty is the key, what if intelligence collection has under-reported growing populism among junior officers, who then would not be as ready to follow orders from more elitist senior officers to crack down on disturbances?
(3) Triggering events or developments that could set off the alternative dynamics and paths.
*
A major threat to the regime could be triggered by such destabilizing factors as (a) greater public exposure of elite corruption, (b) breakdown of the antiquated food distribution network, (c) a truce between feuding populist leaders, (d) growing populism and nationalism within the officer corps.
(4) Signposts or indicators that would signal increased (or decreased) danger for the United States.
*
Changes in the tenor of opposition, popular, and officer corps opinion about the status quo are often reflected first in informal newsletters, Internet commentary, and church sermons. Also the quality and price of rice usually correlates with the temper of the popular mood, including for the families of junior officers.
These and related analytic skills for disciplined assessments of seemingly unlikely dangers are key to distinguishing strategic warning analysis from exercises in worst-case speculation. As addressed in detail below, the analysts’ strategic warning effort is most likely to generate timely action if policy professionals have an analytic stake in all steps of the process—from selection of priority warning issues to co-ownership of indicator lists. Policymakers would be more likely to engage in such close collaboration if intelligence analysts develop specialized expertise that generates distinctive analytic value-added for the difficult decisionmaking processes of strategic planning.
That said, a research initiative is much needed to expand the armory of warning analysis tradecraft. Whereas much has been written about the causes of warning failure, a search for a science or even a theory for strategic warning success is well beyond reach. What can be developed are doctrinal and skills refinements that give all participants in the strategic warning process—collectors, analysts, policy officials— increased confidence in identifying, weighing, and tracking threats. For the most part, tradecraft developments that serve to improve the quality and policy utility of warning as alternative analysis would also improve performance of warning as sound estimative analysis.
One promising area for more robust analytic tradecraft would be techniques for evaluating the authenticity and diagnosticity of information.
* Regarding authenticity, use of denial and deception (D&D) is usually central to the planning of US adversaries, because of its effectiveness in compensating for other power weaknesses. From obsessive operational security to distractive reports about planned attacks overseas, D&D probably increased the odds for success for the 11 September terrorists. The Intelligence Community has made important strides in understanding how a less powerful opponent can use D&D against the United States. The main frontier for improving warning analysis is conversion of this awareness into practical analytic tradecraft for identifying and countering an adversary’s manipulation of intelligence and open source information.
* Regarding diagnosticity, the rapid expansion of both classified and open source information can be a burden as well as a benefit to the warning analyst. More than ever, powerful yet practical tradecraft is needed to distill information that serves as reliable “signal” from the mass of collected information that is distracting “noise.” Sharper analyst insight on what new information is central to reducing uncertainty must then be used to rationalize intelligence and open source collection efforts.
7. Encourage Warning Analysts to Engage in Action Analysis
Also to ensure that policy clients take strategic warning seriously, analysts have to be better prepared to address with distinctive intelligence value-added the “so-what” of their assessments. This includes addressing not only the likely implications of a threat to US interests but also, in cost-benefit terms, measures the United States can take to reduce the likelihood and magnitude of potential damage.
Managers and senior analysts regularly join in policymaker efforts to identify and evaluate alternative measures the United States can take to avoid or limit damage from developments that would harm security interests. This form of action or opportunities analysis is usually delivered in oral forums—including telephone exchanges, in-office briefings, teleconferences, and Interagency Working Groups and other decision-oriented meetings. The analyst’s professional role in action analysis is to identify and evaluate; policymakers retain the professional responsibilities to recommend and choose.
All analysts, especially strategic warning analysts, have got to be well trained in the doctrines and skills associated with this professional division of labor—in effect, a replacement for the previously imbedded doctrine that sets a wall of separation between intelligence analysis and policy-support activities in any guise. Once analysts sense that policy clients have bought into the need to review defensive preparedness and contingency planning in response to a strategic warning effort, the analysts can best ensure continued contact and guidance by directing their substantive and tradecraft expertise to these “so-what” issues.
The main intelligence asset that analysts bring to the table for action analysis is their expert knowledge of the history and culture, political and leadership dynamics, and back-stage agents of influence of the countries and organizations that threaten US interests. While this substantive expertise is also central to the risk analysis phase of strategic warning, the goal in action analysis is to help US policy officials determine how best to divert, deter, disrupt, and generally leverage a threatening foreign entity.
One thing needed here is more extensive analyst training in the instrumentalities of US power and influence and in decisionmaking processes regarding their use. Agency analysts have come a long way from the point some 20 years ago, when a CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence observed that his analysts knew how every government in the world worked—except their own. But a continued shyness toward including action analysis in written assessments probably reflects analysts’ insecurity about their understanding the policymaking process as well as about the ethics of their selective engagement in the process.
8. Select Strategic Warning Issues Carefully
If the goal is to provide distinctive analytic values that policymakers incorporate into their national security decision making and action taking, the strategic warning effort will be resource intensive. In the CIA context, the analysis will usually require a multidisciplinary team of analysts, well connected to the collection community, analytic colleagues in other agencies and peer-level policy staffers. The National Intelligence Officer for Warning would serve to provide guidance on tradecraft and process, and to ensure access to and credibility with key policy officials and Agency leaders. The Sherman Kent Center’s Global Futures Partnership and the DI’s Strategic Analytic Group would help to arrange for contributions to in-depth strategic warning efforts from non-governmental substantive and methodological experts.
The resource requirements for effective strategic warning efforts, thus, will dictate careful selection of topics—in a sense a triage approach. As a rule, topic selection should favor the national security threats deemed potentially most damaging rather than those viewed as most likely—that is, the plausible developments whose consequences well-informed policymakers fear most. Again, the main value of an expanded strategic warning effort should be damage limitation not predictive accuracy.
This is not a call to avoid working on what was described earlier as strategic warning as sound estimative analysis. What is to be avoided are disguised “training exercises,” where the warning mission is used for analysts to build their credentials on a subject with nothing much new to convey to well-informed policymakers who already have the dangers addressed well in mind.
Illustrative examples for selection of topics on developments that could do the most damage to US security interests include the prospects for a collapse of political stability in Mexico (or in Pakistan or Egypt or China); and for the outbreak of regional warfare in the Middle East or in South Asia. Catastrophic terrorism, environmental or humanitarian disasters that have a global reach, and economic and societal breakdowns in Russia or Japan might also be topics on which strategic warning analysis could play a major role in identifying, assessing, and monitoring major potential threats to US security interests.
Initially, while strategic warning resources are still scarce, policymakers should play a major role in topic selection, to ensure their active participation in the warning analysis process. That is, a production unit’s main policy clients should be polled on what developments they fear most—that keep them awake at night.
Once policymakers gain confidence in the utility of a strengthened strategic warning regime, and closer ties between the warning and policy planning process are thereby established, more of the initiative for topic selection can reside with intelligence producers. Even then, validation of topic selection should be obtained from the policy clients whose active participation is required for an effective strategic warning effort.
The objective is not to forfeit the responsibility of the intelligence professional to call policymakers’ attention to dangers they seem to be overlooking or understating. But rather to increase the likelihood the busy policymakers’ attention will be gained when the intelligence professional issues such warnings.
9. Expand Policymaker Role in Warning Analysis
Relations between the strategic warning and contingency planning processes have demonstrated considerable variation over the decades, depending in good measure on the centrality and urgency of the threat addressed. At one extreme, during the Cold War, the intelligence analysis and policy planning cycles regarding estimating and countering future threats from Soviet nuclear weapons development were closely tied and timed both to the Department of Defense yearly procurement planning schedules and to Congressional budgetary calendars.
Longstanding crises, such as the Vietnam War, produced more ad hoc relationships—but lines of communication that regularly put intelligence community assessment and policy community planning on the same page, even if not always harmoniously.
At times, strategic warning analysis and contingency policymaking develop useful lines of connection on certain issues through the efforts of individuals in both camps who actively seek it and institutions such as Interagency Working Groups that are charged with effecting it.
That said, strategic warning on most issues, most of the time has largely been an intelligence function, the practitioners of which hope will be taken seriously in policymaking. And contingency planning has essentially been a policy function, the practitioners of which hope to garner useful Intelligence Community support. While the record shows a mixture of successful and unsuccessful connections, policy community criticism of strategic warning comes across more vividly in the record than does praise.
Two common complaints by key policy officials about strategic warning efforts—before 11 September 2001—were (1) inadequate influence over the timing and focus of National Intelligence Estimates and other assessments, and (2) concern that periodic warning reports showed inadequate sensitivity to the wrenching shift in defensive resources that would be required if the warnings were taken seriously.
*
Regarding timing, one former intelligence analyst who had crossed over to serve as a policy official observed that her analyst colleagues seemed not to understand that policy decisions will be held up for many reasons—but not for lack of a well-timed intelligence input.
*
Regarding periodic warning lists, one senior policymaker expressed his indignation at what he saw as the bureaucratic imperative to warn to meet weekly deadlines and quotas.
To overcome producer-consumer disconnects, strategic warning should be reconfigured, as advocated throughout this memorandum, as a governmental responsibility rather than an intelligence responsibility. The policy officials who will have to make the challenging decisions about resource commitments for defense against future threats should have a direct role at every phase of the strategic warning process, including (1) intelligence resource allocations, (2) topic selection, (3) general analytic standards, (4) specific warning methodologies, and (5) selection and monitoring of indicators of change in likelihood, impact, timing, and character of dangers.
Under a collaborative system, when participants judge warning thresholds to have been breached and difficult policy decisions have to be made, policy officials would see the strands of their own analytic thinking in the warning process, ideally amplified by the all-source information, expert insights, and distinctive tradecraft of intelligence analysts.
A rough (and perhaps romanticized) model for the relationship would be the workings of the United Kingdom’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). The main JIC deliverable is a “Government Assessment,” in all phases of which serving policy officials participate alongside intelligence professionals. The policy officials are supposed to wear their “intelligence hat” when appropriate, and when appropriate their “policy hat.”
Would such a system eliminate the phenomenon of “inconvenient warning” in the United States—where the numbers of bureaucratic entities and people involved are greater and the lines of intelligence-policy communication more stretched out than in the United Kingdom? Probably not. But it should reduce its frequency, and also set up feedback loops and other mechanisms for continual refinements of the processes of intelligence-policy cooperation needed to underwrite effective strategic warning.
What of the dangers of policymaker domination of the strategic warning process, to the derogation of analysts’ integrity and specialized expertise? The US record on certain highly contentious issues—Vietnam in the 1960s; Central America in the 1980s—is a reminder that professionals do not always wear the “appropriate hat.”
What is needed here is commitment of top leaders of the intelligence and policy camps to zero tolerance of abuses of established warning ethics down the line, and not walls that promote analysts’ irrelevance in the name of protecting their integrity. On their own, analysts can warrant policymaker respect for their integrity by demonstrating command of distinctive warning expertise and tradecraft that help get the difficult contingency planning job done.
The spate of post-mortem critiques of intelligence analysis performance issued during the 1990s in fact called for closer relations between the analytic and policy communities across the board. For example, the 1996 Report of the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community judged that the greater obstacle to an effective intelligence contribution to sound policymaking was analysis that was ignored because of inadequate connection to consumers and not that of analysis that was politicized by relations that were too close.
Perhaps the greatest danger is a rush to atone for assumed warning shortcomings surrounding 11 September with changes for change’s sake. A more deliberate pace of change, which takes account of the insights of leaders of the policy community, Congress, and leading thinkers of the non-governmental community as well as of experienced hands of the Intelligence Community, is more likely to generate the robust strategic warning regime the nation deserves. The points that have been argued here are intended to contribute to a constructive dialogue on such change.
Disclaimer:
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in Occasional Papers are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect official positions or views of the Kent School, the Central Intelligence Agency, or any other US Government entity, past or present.
Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government endorsement of an article’s factual statements and interpretations.
These papers have been prepared with the support of Central Intelligence Agency funds and are published with the consent of the authors.
Posted: 2007-04-21 20:28
Last Updated: 2007-11-08 14:09
Last Reviewed: 2007-04-21 20:28
[I did not read these, will later, there are more than this]
http://www.csis.org/stratassessment/reports/syriaWMD.pdf
The Top Security Challenges of 2008
CSIS has published Global Forecast a volume of essays showcasing CSIS’s collective wisdom on the most important security issues facing America in 2008—the major political, military, and economic challenges likely to have strategic implications for the nation. Some of these challenges depend on political developments in other countries, while others hinge on U.S. actions. All have the potential to expand into full-scale crises and must be watched and managed carefully. Read more
what’s new
The EU and the US in the 21st Century
The CSIS New European Democracies Project hosted the Deputy Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Alexandr Vondra, who gave a speech on US-EU relations.
listen to the event | NEDP
The Washington Quarterly: Climate Policy Crossroads
The autumn issue of The Washington Quarterly, featuring articles on climate policy at the crossroads, new nuclear realities, and should democracy be promoted or demoted, is now online. READ MORE
Ambassador from Venezula Speaks at CSIS
H.E. Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, Ambassador of Venezuela, discussed the process of constitutional reform in Venezuela. Following his presentation, he answered questions from the audience. Listen to the Event | Americas
World Energy Outlook 2007
The CSIS Energy and National Security Program hosted Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka and Chief Economist Fatih Birol to discuss the new World Energy Outlook (WEO 2007).
Listen to the Event | Video | Energy
Japanese Politics at the Crossroads
Hiroshi Hoshi the senior political writer of The Asahi Shimbun gave a speech titled “Fukuda Vs. Ozawa: Japanese Politics at the Crossroads?” at CSIS. Listen to the Event | Japan
Overcoming Extremism
CSIS hosted a two-day conference featuring high-profile leaders, experts, and opinion-makers to develop a shared international agenda for protecting civilians from terrorist violence. Each session from conference is now available to be viewed online. Video | PCR
Progress in Colombia, 1999-2007
The Americas program at CSIS published a new report on Colombia, Back from the Brink: Evaluating Progress in Colombia, 1999-2007. The report was launched with a panel discussion by regional experts.
Read more | Listen to the Event | Americas
Senator Chuck Hagel on Iran
Senator Chuck Hagel delivered a speech about Iran at a CSIS event on Thursday. The Nebraska Republican told the audience that American leadership is needed “to help set a new course for a rudderless world.” VIDEO | Listen to the Event
Romania in the EU
CSIS co-hosted a conference entitled Romania in the EU: Impact on Development and Transatlantic Relations. Conference panelists examined Romania’s economic development almost a year after EU accession. Listen to the Event | NEDP
CSIS Commission on Smart Power Report
CSIS has released the Commission on Smart Power’s final report, A Smarter, More Secure America. Richard Armitage and Joseph Nye chaired the commission that offered a set of recommendations to implement a Smart Power approach to America’s global engagement.
Read More | Video | Listen to the Event | Smart Power
Syria - Special Weapons
Syria is a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and Syria has called for an area free of all weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. Although Syria has long been cited as posing a nuclear proliferation risk, the country seems to have been too strapped for cash to get far. Syria allegedly began a military nuclear program in 1979 and has not provided the IAEA with full information on all its nuclear activities. Syria has claimed that it was interested in nuclear research for medical rather than military purposes, but Israel and the United States have opposed sales of a reactor to Syria on the grounds that it would serve as an important step toward the building of a nuclear weapon.
In 1991, China reported to the IAEA the potential sale of a 30 KW research reactor to Syria. The IAEA blocked the sale and Syria subsequently reduced its nuclear activities. In 1995 the United States pressured Argentina into abandoning a proposed sale of a reactor to Syria. In 1997 it was reported that the Russian government was interested in selling a nuclear reactor to Syria. On 23 February 1998 Syria and Russia signed an agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear energy. In July 1998 the two sides agreed on the time table for the realization of a 25-MW light-water nuclear research center project in Syria with the participation of Russia’s Atomstroyeksport and Nikiet. The Syrian fertilizers plant under construction at Homs [34° 40’ N 36° 40’ E] is ownded and operated by the Atomic Energy Commission of Syria. The facility will engage in Uranium recovery from phosphates using the D2EHPA-TOPO process.
Syria has a limited biotechnology infrastructure but could support a limited biological warfare effort. Though Syria is believed to be pursuing the development of biological weapons, it is not believed to have progressed much beyond the research and development phase and may have produced only pilot quantities of usable agent. Syria has signed, but not ratified, the BWC.
Syria has a mature chemical weapons program, begun in the 1970s, incorporating nerve agents, such as sarin, which have completed the weaponization cycle. Future activity will likely focus on CW infrastructure enhancements for agent production and storage, as well as possible research and development of advanced nerve agents. Munitions available for CW agent delivery likely include aerial bombs as well as SCUD missile warheads. Syria has not signed the CWC and is unlikely to do so in the near future.
Syria has been producing chemical warfare agents and munitions since the mid-1980’s. While the Syrian program was “quite closely held,” former CIA Director William Webster told a Congressional panel in 1989 that the CIA had determined foreign assistance was of “critical importance in allowing Syria to develop its chemical warfare capability. West European firms were instrumental in supplying the required precursor chemicals and equipment. Without the provision of these key elements, Damascus would not have been able to produce chemical weapons”.
In addition to mustard gas, Syria is known to be manufacturing nerve gas agents, and can pack CW agents into a wide variety of munitions, including ballistic missiles. Israeli intelligence analysts believe that Syria is actively seeking to manufacture VX agents, which are several magnitudes more powerful than other nerve agents. Syria’s current CW stockpiles have been estimated at “several thousand aerial bombs, filled mostly with sarin,” and between 50 to 100 ballistic missile warheads.
Syria first acquired CW artillery shells as a “gift” from Egypt just prior to the 1973 war. Shortly thereafter, Syria purchased defensive chemical warfare gear from the USSR and from Czechoslovakia. However, the Soviets are said to have consistently refused to provide manufacturing processes or assistance in building CW facilities in Syria.
Israeli intelligence analysts have expressed their concern with the rapidity and ease with which the Syrians have been able to obtain the know-how to produce VX nerve gas. Secretly assisted by Russian chemical experts, the Syrian military research and development and industrial complex known as the Scientific Studies and Research Center had little trouble getting the required expertise, technology and materials from Russian sources.
General Anatoly Kuntsevich, Russian President Yeltsin’s personal adviser on chemical disarmament and Russia’s highest official authority on the subject, was dismissed from his position for suspicion of smuggling nerve gas precursors to Syria in early 1995.
General Kuntsevich admitted in an interview in 1998 with the New York Jewish weekly The Forward that shipments to Syria of small amounts of nerve gas components had indeed taken place. According to him, however, these shipments were only intended for “research purposes” and had been authorized by the Russian government under previously undisclosed terms of a treaty with Syria. The materials shipped to Syria were intended for the production of the Soviet/Russian version of the VX nerve agent - code-named Substance 33 or V-gas. Such a deal might have been made in the early ‘90s or late ‘80s during a visit to Syria by the then-commander of the Russian Chemical Corps, General Pikalov.
Program Direction
Atomic Energy Commission of Syria
P.O.Box 6091 Damascus, Syria
Telephone: 6668114/5
Telefax : 6620317
Scientific Studies and Research Center [SSRC]
Scientific Research Council [CERS]
P.O. Box 4470
DAMASCUS, Syria
Tel. +963 11 772 603
Fax +963 11 2223771
As might be surmised from its apparently innocent name, the Scientific Studies and Research Center is the Syrian government agency responsible for non-conventional weapons development and production, including research on weapons of mass destruction and missiles that can deliver them.
The overt goals of the Center are to promote and coordinate scientific activities in the country, particularly those related to Education, Research & Development, Consulting, manufacturing and maintenance, and to work on research and development projects needed for the economic and social development of the country, particularly on the computerization of governmental enterprises and institutions.
The the extensive foreign activities of Syrian intelligence services include substantial acquisition efforts focused on biological and chemical weapons. The Syrian procurement structure uses the Scientific Studies and Research Center as cover.
Secretly assisted by Russian chemical experts, the Syrian military research and development and industrial complex known as the Scientific Studies and Research Center had little trouble getting the required expertise, technology and materials from Russian sources to produce VX nerve gas.
The Washington Times reported on July 23, 1996 that the CIA had discovered that Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center received a shipment of missile components from China Precision Machinery Import-Export Corporation, China’s premier firm selling missiles (particularly M-11s) abroad.
Related Resources
* Syrian Nuclear Science Bibliography: Open Literature Citations by Mark Gorwitz, September 2007
FAS | Nuke | Guide |||| Search | Join FAS
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/syria/
Maintained by Steven Aftergood
Originally created by John Pike
Updated Friday, May 12, 2000 7:56:06 PM
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/syria/index.html
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/syria/biblio.pdf
I need to close these windows, before I freeze my computer, lots to read, not all checked as yet, but there have been a few gems.
I was looking for the name of the communist group that crossed the Mexican border in about 1975 and attempted to take an Arizona Military base, near Tucson.
It was a ‘September gang’ had numbers and maybe black in the name.
I know it happened, as I worked at the court and saw the teletype that gave the warning that it would happen.
Later there was an one inch article in the newspaper that said the attack had been stopped.
granny
Syria and Lebanon and other articles:
http://freelebanon.org/Special%20Reports/index.htm
http://freelebanon.org/readings.htm
World anarchist groups, this site is a good one, several important pages connected with it, owner is a college professor:
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu:16080/Anarchist_Archives/worldmovements.html
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu:16080/Anarchist_Archives/worldwidemovements/mexicobiblio.html
last and this are mexico:
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu:16080/Anarchist_Archives/worldwidemovements/mexicohis.html
http://freelebanon.org/articles/a167.htm
always interesting:
More lists and info on groups:
http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-guerrilla-movements
http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-designated-terrorist-organizations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September_(group)
http://www.answers.com/topic/black-september-group
Terror group told to prepare for U.S. training
WorldNetDaily.com ^ | November 26, 2007
Posted on 11/26/2007 3:43:46 AM PST by Man50D
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1930528/posts
Islamists target Arizona base
The Washington Times ^ | November 26, 2007 | Sara A. Carter
Posted on 11/26/2007 3:51:33 AM PST by Man50D
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1930530/posts
Report: Islamic Terrorists Wanted to Attack U.S. Base in Arizona
FoxNews ^ | 11/26/07 | staff
Posted on 11/26/2007 8:27:41 AM PST by teddyballgame
WASHINGTON — Islamic terrorists with the assistance of Mexican drug cartels might have been planning an attack on the U.S. Army base Fort Huachuca in Arizona, forcing the nation’s largest intelligence training center to change security measures back in May.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1930649/posts
At 6 am, [5 am Calif. time], the San Diego Police scanner sent officers to the yard for the trolly in San Ysidro, this is on the Mexican border, or very close and would be the end terminal for the trolley.
There was a man laying on the tracks with a backpack, he said he would kill anyone who attempted to stop him.
I never heard the Officers check in, after they got there and climbed down to him.
I assume it was another “nothing in the backpack” black out.
granny
I was surprised to find all these reports:
Authorities: Riverside man drunk when he tried to beat train ...
San Diego Union Tribune, United States - 1 hour ago
Bryan, who had an 18-year-old male passenger, was driving south across the tracks when Bryan’s 2003 Chevy S-10 was broadsided by a westbound train, ...
LIRR Train Kills Man on Tracks
myfoxny.com, NY - 5 hours ago
Service was temporarily disrupted; eastbound service has been restored and bus service replaced a westbound train. The man was walking on the tracks around ...
Man injured by train
Regina Leader-Post, Canada - 17 hours ago
Apparently two people were walking down the rail tracks when one of them was hit by the train. The man was taken to hospital with non-life threatening ...
Close to Home - The mannequin at the end of the tracks
Anderson Independent Mail (subscription), SC - 3 hours ago
Waiting on the next train. But not many trains travel this far south these days. This is the end of the line, here on SC 81 South. The railroad tracks ...
police: drunk man falls asleep on train tracks, loses arm, asks ...
FOX News - Nov 21, 2007
a van buren man fell asleep on a railroad track and lost his right arm to a passing train early wednesday morning, fort smith police said. officers found ...
Delays after man killed on rails
Basingstoke Gazette, UK - 12 hours ago
By Chris Yandell RAIL services in Hampshire were disrupted today after a man lying on the track was killed by a train. The incident happened half-a-mile ...
Body found near train tracks in north Albany
WALB-TV, GA - Nov 24, 2007
The body of an unidentified black man was found in a wooded area near the 400 block of Hodges Avenue. An engineer on board a passing train spotted the body ...
Investigation of body found continues WALB-TV
all 3 news articles »
Tribune de Genève
Train shutdown provokes anger
Tribune de Genève, Switzerland - 17 hours ago
Le Matin Bleu reports that one man, impatient over the disruption, grabbed a conductor and cried out, “It’s always like this.” Taxis arrived in Nyon but as ...
man on tracks struck by train
Bellingham Herald, WA - Nov 24, 2007
ap video bellingham — a 26- year-old man was struck by a train while walking on a railroad bridge near the 2600 block of roeder avenue early thanksgiving ...
Dog-walker finds headless body by Brownsville railroad tracks
Houston Chronicle, United States - Nov 22, 2007
AP BROWNSVILLE — A man walking his dog came upon a decapitated body near a railroad line running through Oliveira Park, police said. ...
New! Get the latest news on man on train tracks with Google Alerts.
The latest Paris riot is here:
Nov 26, 4:43 PM EST
al-Qaida Wing: Bin Laden Message Coming
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Al-Qaida’s media wing said Monday it will soon release a new message from Osama bin Laden addressed to European countries.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AL_QAIDA_BIN_LADEN?SITE=KDWN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Nov 26, 8:43 PM EST
DA: Candidate Staged Crash for Campaign
By BEVERLEY WANG
Associated Press Writer
Gary Dodds was vying for a Democratic Party congressional nomination
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MISSING_CANDIDATE?SITE=KDWN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Nov 26, 4:16 PM EST
Nothing found in vehicle checked at Nellis Air Force Base
Advertisement
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A military official says a false alert by a bomb-sniffing dog prompted an investigation of a construction vehicle at a Nellis Air Force Base gate.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NV_BOMB_ALERT_NVOL-?SITE=KDWN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
November 26, 2007 Anti-Terrorism News - UnitedStatesAction.com
(U.S.) Islamists target Arizona base — report that Jihadists from Iraq and Afghanistan planned
attack on Fort Huachuca
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071126/NATION/111260034/1001
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071126/ts_alt_afp/usattacksmexicohuachuca_071126082617;_ylt=AtJ_FbKeB4H_1NWfkE7vLvkTv5UB
-— previous related report
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/updates/2007/11/18/tucson-tv-station-broadcasts-arizona-fort-huachuca-terror-threat-report/
(Iraq) American forces kill 10 Qaeda insurgents in Iraq - north of Baghdad - and 8 detained in Samarra on Sunday
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1860351&Language=en
(Iraq) Gunmen slaughter 11 relatives of Iraqi journalist
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071126/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunrestmedia_071126124437;_ylt=AjZMGLmOidoawhBoFUOcecFX6GMA
Iraqi Shiites denounce draft legislation — to ease curbs on ex-Saddam Hussein loyalists
in government services
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071126/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_071029195500;_ylt=Aqeh8vWi9..ujeeffH.LYUBX6GMA
Iraq forces improve but not ready yet: US general
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2007/November/focusoniraq_November107.xml§ion=focusoniraq
(Afghanistan) Kabul bomb kills four Afghan civilians: police
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071126/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanunrestkabul_071126091154;_ylt=AqwtYSwphk7QVyeeL.jnldjOVooA
Afghan lawmakers walk out in bomb probe protest
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2007/November/subcontinent_November1073.xml§ion=subcontinent&col=
Pakistani forces kill two militant commanders: officials — in Swat valley
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071126/wl_sthasia_afp/pakistanunrestnorthwest_071126090452;_ylt=AmfTw3S.x2C5zglBW0rCaTfzPukA
Pakistani forces kill 15 militants in northern valley
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1860478&Language=en
(Pakistan) Two Rawalpindi blast suspects arrested
http://www.dawn.com/2007/11/26/top6.htm
(Pakistan) Taliban burn aid agency food: officials — in South Waziristan
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\11\26\story_26-11-2007_pg7_4
http://www.dawn.com/2007/11/26/top8.htm
(Pakistan) Musharraf set to quit army, become civilian president on Thursday
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/26/asia/AS-GEN-Pakistan-Musharraf.php
(India J&K) Insurgent killed in police encounter in Kashmir — in Pulwama district
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1860334&Language=en
http://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/India/20071126/833490.html
(India J&K) 2 top ultras killed, CRPF bunker attacked, tragedy averted in J&K
http://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/India/20071126/833608.html
(India) Uttar Pradesh govt to set up Anti-Terror squads
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Uttar_Pradesh_govt_to_set_up_Anti-Terror_squads/articleshow/2572810.cms
India in dilemma over exiled Muslim woman writer
http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnDEL113114.html
Iran rebukes Saudi Arabia over Mideast conference
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071126/wl_mideast_afp/mideastdiplomacyiransaudiarab_071126115332;_ylt=AtOZLFrKse5TMPs7sfktYw5Sw60A
Iran poised to destabilize Lebanon — Tehran, Syria slam Annapolis on verge of peace conference
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58861
Syria to attend Annapolis summit
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58860
U.S. ‘holding back reports critical of Palestinians’ - Officials say State Department fears
affecting negotiations leading to Annapolis
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58862
Hamas steps up verbal attacks on Abbas as peace summit gets under way
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/26/africa/ME-GEN-Israel-Palestinians.php
Israeli fire kills three Palestinians in Gaza
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071126/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictgazatoll
(Israel) Hamas bomber sentenced to 18 life terms — Ayad Abu-Shehadam for bombings in
Beersheba that killed 16 people
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/11/26/hamas_bomber_sentenced_to_18_life_terms/2707/
(Israel) ‘Majority of Hamas detainees released’
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546723448&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
(Israel) IDF arrests 14 Palestinian terror suspects in West Bank
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546726038&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Nigerian military reports clash with militants near Shell gas plant
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/25/africa/AF-GEN-Nigeria-Oil-Unrest.php
Sudan: Lobby Warns of New Darfur Insurgency
http://allafrica.com/stories/200711260816.html
(Russia) Suicide Bomber Suspect in Bus Blast
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/11/26/014.html
(UK) Counter terror Yard chief’s fears
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/26/npolice126.xml
(UK) Terror detention plans condemned
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7112439.stm
(Spain) New ETA manual hints at group’s growing paranoia
http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=81&story_id=46322
(Thailand) Malaysian held as rebel suspect
http://www.bangkokpost.com/topstories/topstories.php?id=123941
(Thailand) 20 suspects detained in Narathiwat
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2007/11/26/national/national_30057472.php
(Thailand) Separatist suspects nabbed in Tak Bai
http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/previousdetail.php?id=123954
Philippine communist rebels declare truce in typhoon-ravaged areas to aid recovery
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/26/asia/AS-GEN-Philippines-Communist-Rebels.php
(Sri Lanka) Military: rebels suspected of killing 4 farmers in Sri Lanka; 5 rebels killed in clashes
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/26/asia/AS-GEN-Sri-Lanka-Civil-War.php
(Sri Lanka) LTTE shifting operations to Kerala coast: Top Navy official
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Top_Headlines/LTTE_shifting_operations_to_Kerala_coast_Top_Navy_offcial/articleshow/2572692.cms
(Sri Lanka) Tamil group says it will defy ban, continue work in Lanka
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Top_Headlines/Tamil_group_says_it_will_defy_ban_continue_work_in_Lanka/articleshow/2571036.cms
North Korea to come clean on nuclear programs: report
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071126/wl_asia_afp/nkoreanuclearweaponsusdiplomatskorea_071126081954;_ylt=AmydejrtAG_C_zOAmTD5Fn2CscEA
Japanese paper: N. Korea discussed chemical arms technology with Syria
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546726110&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/26/asia/AS-GEN-NKorea-Syria.php
(Columbia) Venezuela freezes ties with Colombia over mediation row
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Rest_of_World/Venezuela_freezes_ties_with_Colombia_over_mediation_row/articleshow/2570711.cms
Other News:
GOP Presidential Hopeful Mike Huckabee Says Next Terror Attack ‘Postmarked Pakistan’
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312766,00.html
Huckabee: America enslaved to Saudi oil
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071125/ap_on_el_pr/huckabee_saudi
(France) New riots shock France
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gNnzfpWkDBxijtsu4wReCzT7e6OA
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1599286875
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2947984.ece
http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/11/paris-riots.html
http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=25&story_id=46332
(Sudan) British teacher faces lashes in Sudan after class teddy bear is named ‘Muhammad’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article2947734.ece
(Sudan) British teacher held in Sudan over teddy bear’s name — accused of insulting Islam’s Prophet
by letting her class of 7-year-olds name a teddy bear Mohammed
http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN640050.html
Qatar Islamic Bank eyes London listing for UK unit
http://investing.reuters.co.uk/news/articleinvesting.aspx?rpc=401&type=newIssuesNews&storyID=2007-11-26T124502Z_01_L26562801_RTRIDST_0_QATARISLAMIC-UKLICENCE.XML
Islamic Banking Enters Mainstream
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/islamic-banking-enters-mainstream/
Islamic banking rises on oil wealth, drawing non-Muslims
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/22/business/islamic.php
(Denmark) Habdol Hamid: Denmark should indicate its disgust to Saudi Arabia
http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/11/habdol-hamid-denmark-should-indicate.html
(Sweden) Stockholm: Protest against Iranian government
http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/11/stockholm-protest-against-iranian.html
__._,_.___
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(Iraq) Iraqi Shiite Leader Defends Iran
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gkx-3oYeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD8T506CO3
(India) Update: Four bomb blasts in Assam, two killed
http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/26/stories/2007112656350100.htm
(Gaza) Interview with Hamas’s Said Siyam
http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=3&id=10988
(Israel) Tension rises as Hamas threatens fresh bloodshed
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3196245.ece
(Lebanon) Hezbollah Adds New Demand in Lebanon
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hqJ_5OmNTlIdB4U-SVQM73KkzH7wD8T4S8EG0
(Israel) Update: Terror alert raised; IDF kills four Palestinians in territories.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/927845.html
(Colombia/Venezuela) Uribe: Chavez wants a Marxist FARC government in Colombia
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h38LF1xlbHKvSwV8pfmsfWV93Ddw
(Colombia) Dutch Woman Joins Guerrillas in Colombia
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gKbpX8_9KkkOpz6-rF4jzb1QVdkgD8T4T3J80
__._,_.___
If reposting elsewhere, please credit source of this research as UnitedStatesAction.com
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