Task Force Liberty soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division visually inspect vehicles waiting to enter the Iraqi police traffic control point in Tikrit, Iraq. (Sgt. Matthew Acosta / U.S. Army)
Posted on 06/03/2005 5:45:03 PM PDT by Gucho
Fri, Jun. 03, 2005
BY WARREN P. STROBEL AND JONATHAN S. LANDAY
WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence has no evidence that terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi visited Syria in recent months to plan bombings in Iraq, and experts don't believe the widely publicized meeting ever happened, according to U.S. officials.
Two weeks ago, a top U.S. military official in Baghdad, Iraq, told reporters that Zarqawi had traveled to Syria in April and met with leaders of the Iraqi insurgency to plan the recent wave of bombings against American troops and the Iraqi government. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In the following days, top Bush administration and Iraqi officials increased their threats against Syria.
The reassessment comes amid a debate within the U.S. intelligence community over how to fight the insurgency and over Syria's role in it, the officials said.
Some analysts argue that, while Damascus has been unhelpful in stopping terrorists crossing its border, its importance is being exaggerated and that the key to defeating the insurgency is in Iraq, not in Syria or Iran.
Three officials who said that the reports of Zarqawi's travels were apparently bogus spoke on condition of anonymity because intelligence matters are classified and because discussing the mistaken report could embarrass the White House and trigger retaliation against them.
The allegation by the U.S. military official in Baghdad that Zarqawi and his lieutenants met in Syria suggests that, despite the controversy over the Bush administration's use of flimsy and bogus intelligence to make its case for war in Iraq, some officials are still quick to embrace dubious intelligence when it supports the administration's case - this time against Damascus.
One of the U.S. officials said the initial report was based on a single human source, who has since changed his story significantly. Another official said the source and his information were quickly dismissed as unreliable by intelligence officials but caught the attention of some political appointees.
These officials and two others said the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies were mystified by the reports of Zarqawi's visit because they had no such information.
"We are not aware of any information that suggests that Zarqawi met in Syria with his lieutenants in April," a defense official said. "However, it doesn't preclude his having met with them most likely in al Anbar," a largely Sunni Muslim province in western Iraq.
The Jordanian-born Zarqawi leads the al-Qaida in Iraq group, which has claimed responsibility for some of the country's deadliest bombings.
U.S. military officials, confirming postings on a Web site used by Zarqawi's group, believe that he was wounded recently in a firefight in Ramadi, west of Baghdad.
Syria has long supported Palestinian terror groups that attack Israel, and Syrian officials have said they're unable to police the long border with Iraq. France and the United States sponsored a U.N. Security Council resolution that forced Damascus to withdraw its troops from Lebanon following the February assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld issued a thinly veiled warning Wednesday to Damascus against providing harbor to anyone allied with Osama bin Laden's network.
"Any country that decides it wants to provide medical assistance or haven to a leading terrorist, al-Qaida terrorist, is obviously associating themselves with al-Qaida and contributing to a great many Iraqis being killed, as well as coalition forces in Iraq. And that is something that people would want to take note of," Rumsfeld said.
But there are sharp differences within the U.S. government over the roles Syria and Iran are playing in the insurgency, which has claimed the lives of more than 800 Iraqis and 80 U.S. troops since Iraq's Shiite-led government was named April 28.
A U.S. official said experts at the Pentagon believe "the keys to the insurgency are external to Iraq" and that closing the Syrian and Iranian borders to the transit of Islamic extremists, weapons and cash would cripple the guerrillas.
But officials at other agencies see the insurgency - the bulk of which is being waged by former members of Saddam Hussein's regime and Sunnis opposed to the Shiite-led government and its U.S. allies - as "an internal Iraqi phenomenon," he said.
Despite the charges that Syria is an important supporter of the insurgency, the U.S. Army has deployed only 400 U.S. soldiers to patrol a 10,000 square-mile area in northwest Iraq abutting Syria and Turkey, Knight Ridder reported this week.
While there's no doubt that insurgents, weapons and cash have crossed into Iraq via Syria, current and former officials say Syria's efforts to stop them too often have been dismissed.
Syria has been "the route of choice" for foreign jihadists trying to enter Iraq, but "putting too much focus on Syria could divert attention away from the much bigger problem: our inability, so far, to deal effectively with the insurgency's center of gravity inside Iraq," said Wayne White, a veteran Middle East intelligence analyst who recently left the State Department.
One official said many fanatics coming to Iraq to wage holy war cross from Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. ally, which also borders Iraq.
Comparing Syria's efforts with Saudi Arabia's, he said: "I'm not sure they're doing any worse."
Sporadic Attacks in Iraq Kill Eight As Sunni Group Condemns Counterinsurgency Offensive
June 3, 2005
By PATRICK QUINN - Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq Jun 3, 2005 — An influential Sunni association called for an end to a weeklong counterinsurgency offensive in Baghdad, saying it overwhemingly targets members of their religious minority and has led to the detention of hundreds of people.
Eight people died from insurgent attacks around the country, bringing to at least 830 the number killed since the Shiite-led government took office April 28 an average of 23 deaths a day, not counting rebels.
In the past 18 months, 12,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, including more than 10,000 Shiites, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said, citing data from a research center. But he said he figured the affiliations based on the areas where victims lived, not individual religious identifications.
Army Col. Mark Milley, who commands the 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, said intelligence indicated insurgents were using Baghdad's southern districts to stage attacks in the capital.
U.S. and Iraqi troops swept through several southern neighborhoods Friday. Milley said 84 suspects were detained, while a "half a dozen suspected al-Qaida cell members" and several other fighters from Sudan, Syria, Egypt and Jordan had been captured since the operation began Sunday.
"For two years I have been suffering from these terrorists, now it is my time," said Brig. Gen. Mohammed Essa Baher, an Iraqi army commander from the southern district of Mahmoudiya whose two sons had been killed by insurgents.
Jabr said the sweep, known as Operation Lightning, had captured 700 suspected insurgents and killed 28 militants.
Before the operation, the biggest Iraqi offensive since Saddam Hussein's fall two years ago, authorities controlled only eight of Baghdad's 23 entrances. Now all are under government control.
Despite the government gains, violence continued throughout the country.
In northern Mosul, a suicide car bomber blew himself up near a police station in the southern part of the city, killing three police officers and wounding five, police Capt. Ahmed Khalil said.
A mortar attack in Tal Afar, a city about 50 miles west of Mosul, killed two Iraqi men and injured three, the police chief, Col. Ishmael Mohammed, said. Police also reported finding seven bodies in different parts of the city, identifying them as five terrorists, a police officer and a Kurdistan Democratic Party member.
Sunni clerics in Baghdad took advantage of Friday prayer services to call for an end to Operation Lightning, which many Sunnis say target members of their own religious minority. Sunni Arabs are thought to make up the overwhelming majority of the insurgency.
"I appeal to every official here in Iraq to stop humiliating people and (end) the raiding campaign," Sheik Mahmoud al-Sumaidie said in the Um al-Qura Mosque, which also serves as the headquarters of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars.
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, has been trying to include the Sunni minority in the political process, seen as the only way to defuse the insurgency.
But the incessant violence launched by Islamic extremists to Saddam loyalists highlights what still needs to be done to stop the killings.
Among those killed Friday were a city council member in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, an Iraqi contractor in western Samarra and an Iraqi man killed by a morter outside Baghdad's main hospital.
Baghdad police also pulled the body of a man, with bound hands and a gunshot wound to the head, from the Tigris River.
Separately, Australia's top Muslim cleric, who is trying to secure the release of 63-year-old Australian hostage Douglas Wood, said he hoped to receive news of the captive's imminent release. He did not elaborate.
Wood was abducted in late April, shortly before a militant group, calling itself the Shura Council of the Mujahedeen of Iraq, released a video May 1 showing him pleading for Australia to withdraw its 1,400 soldiers from Iraq. The Australian government has refused.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press
Fri Jun 3, 2005
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The White House on Friday played down a report in which U.N. weapons inspectors documented additional materials missing from weapons sites in Iraq.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Bush administration had taken steps to ensure sites were secured, and he suggested it was doubtful the looted material was being used to boost other countries' weapons programs.
In a report to the U.N. Security Council, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said that satellite imagery experts had determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles had been removed from 109 sites, up from 90 reported in March.
The sites have been emptied of equipment to varying degrees, with the largest percentage of missing items at 58 missile facilities.
For example, 289 of the 340 pieces of equipment to produce missiles — or about 85 percent, had been removed, the report said.
Biological sites were the least damaged, according to the analysts at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.
Perricos said he's reached no conclusions about who removed the items or where they went. He said it could have been moved elsewhere in Iraq, sold as scrap, melted down or purchased.
He said the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes. "However, they can also be utilized for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair."
McClellan said that the United States has helped to remove low enriched uranium and radioactive sources, offered jobs to weapons experts from Saddam Hussein's programs to keep them from taking their expertise elsewhere, and helped Iraq establish an independent radioactive source regulatory authority.
"We have been working closely with the government in Iraq to ensure that Iraq's former weapons of mass destruction personnel and proliferation materials do not contribute to proliferation programs in other countries," McClellan said.
U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003. They have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.
Since the war, U.S. teams took over the weapons search. Former chief arms hunter Charles Duelfer and his Iraq Survey Group found no weapons of mass destruction in the country, discrediting President Bush's stated rationale for invading Iraq.
McClellan referred to findings by Duelfer, saying that "any looting was the work of uncoordinated elements rather than directed at an effort to try to export equipment to a country that might obtain or have a weapons of mass destruction program."
He also noted that Duelfer had concluded that, since the looted materials are easily obtained elsewhere, "other governments are not likely to look to Iraq to buy used versions of it."
6/4/2005 3:57:25
Source ::: AFP
BAGHDAD: Iraqi authorities pressed yesterday with Operation Lightning in Baghdad after presenting an initial tally of the dragnet's success, following a surge of violence in the north of the country.
According to a preliminary estimate of their plan to crush insurgents in the capital, 700 had been arrested and 28 killed in five days of operations that were nonetheless rarely visible in many parts of the city.
Residents reported some additional mobile checkpoints by interior ministry commandos and combined patrols of Iraqi and US special forces searched suspected insurgent areas while Apache attack helicopters flew sorties over several parts of the city.
But while the aircraft occasionally dropped flares to protect against ground attacks, there was little evidence of major US participation in the offensive, and in many areas of the city, life carried on as usual.
Up to 40,000 army troops and police personnel were to take part in the sweep, but Baghdad streets were filled more often with a motley collection of dusty foreign-built cars than with armored Humvees or heavily-armed personnel carriers.
On Thursday, however, at least 33 people were killed in a wave of violence that swept northern Iraq, including a massive blast that killed at least 12 at a popular highway rest stop in Tuz Khurmatu, where bodyguards of Deputy Prime Minister Roj Shaways, a Kurd, were eating breakfast.
Ansar Al Sunna, a group linked to Al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the suicide attack in a statement on an Islamist website that accused Shaways of belonging to an "apostate Kurdish party". The statement could not be verified.
Myriad other attacks, including some by suicide bombers, killed a four-year-old child, a local politician, and many members of Iraq's security forces.
It marked a dark start for June, following the lethal month of May when almost 700 Iraqis died in widespread violence following the swearing in of Iraq's first post-war democratically elected government.
Despite the slaughter, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari voiced hope that disenfranchised groups believed to be fueling the insurgency could be brought into the political process. "All Iraqi communities would participate in that process. There would be no one marginalised at all," he vowed earlier this week following talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington.
Friday 3rd June, 2005
Pentagon police officers were conducting random checks of bar-coded building passes Friday to guard against fakes.
A security officer said no fake building passes have been detected but with improvements in technology, there is concern that the ID cards -- which have a photo and a bar code on the back that allows movements in and out of the building to be tracked -- could be easily forged.
He noted that sometimes the bar code readers do not work and Pentagon employees with ID cards are often waved in by guards.
The officer also told United Press International they may begin random bag checks for card holders, who currently do not have to submit their belongings for X-rays like non-pass holders do.
More than 25,000 people work in the Pentagon and are issued passes, including Defense Department employees, government contractors, service workers and journalists. Passes are issued only after security clearances are completed.
Fri Jun 3, 2005
By KATHERINE SHRADER and JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence and foreign allies have growing evidence that wanted terrorists have been residing in Iran despite repeated American warnings to Tehran not to harbor them.
The evidence, which stretches over several years, includes communications by a fugitive mastermind of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing and the capture of a Saudi militant who appeared in a video in which Osama bin Laden confirmed he ordered the Sept. 11 attacks, according to U.S. and foreign officials.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because much of the evidence remains classified.
Saudi intelligence officers tracked and apprehended Khaled bin Ouda bin Mohammed al-Harbi last year in eastern Iran, officials said. The arrest came nearly three years after the cleric appeared with bin Laden and discussed details of the Sept. 11 planning during a dinner that was videotaped and aired across the world.
The capture was a coup for Saudi Arabia, which spent months tracking him and setting up the intelligence operation that led to his being taken into custody in exchange for eventual amnesty.
The officials said interrogations of al-Harbi, who is now in Saudi Arabia, have yielded confirmation of many al-Qaida tactics, including how members crossed into Iran after the U.S. began military operations to rout al-Qaida and the Taliban from Afghanistan.
Al-Harbi is believed to have been paralyzed from the waist down while fighting in the 1990s alongside Muslim extremists in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and he surprised intelligence officials when he appeared in the December 2001 video with bin Laden.
"Everybody praises what you did," al-Harbi said on the tape.
U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies also have evidence stretching back to the late 1990s that indicates Ahmad Ibrahim al-Mughassil remains hiding in Iran. He is wanted as one of the masterminds of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans.
Al-Mughassil, who also goes by the alias Abu Omran, has been charged as a fugitive by the United States with conspiracy to commit murder in the attacks and has a $5 million bounty on his head.
U.S. authorities have long alleged the 1996 bombing was carried out by a Saudi wing of the militant group Hezbollah, which receives support from Iran and Syria.
Intelligence agencies gathered evidence, including a specific phone number, as early as 1997 indicating al-Mughassil was living in Iran, and have other information indicating his whereabouts.
U.S. officials have not publicly discussed the Saudi capture of al-Harbi or their evidence on al-Mughassil's whereabouts, but have increasingly raised questions about Iran's efforts to turn over other suspected terrorists believed to be under some form of loose house arrest.
Nicholas Burns, State Department undersecretary for political affairs, told Congress last month that Iran has refused to identify al-Qaida members it has in custody.
"Iran continues to hold senior al-Qaida leaders who are wanted for murdering Americans and others in the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings and for plotting to kill countless others," Burns said.
Top administration officials have repeatedly warned Iran against harboring or assisting suspected terrorists.
U.S. intelligence this week has been checking some reports, still uncorroborated as of Friday, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's leader of the Iraqi insurgency, may have dipped into Iran, officials said.
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned countries in the Middle East not to help al-Zarqawi.
"Were a neighboring country to take him in and provide medical assistance or haven for him, they, obviously, would be associating themselves with a major linkage in the al-Qaida network and a person who has a great deal of blood on his hands," Rumsfeld said.
The U.S. and foreign officials said evidence gathered by intelligence agencies indicates the following figures are somewhere in Iran:
• Saad bin Laden, the son of the al-Qaida leader whom U.S. authorities have aggressively hunted since the Sept. 11 attacks.
• Saif al-Adel, an al-Qaida security chief wanted in connection with the deadly 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.
• Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the chief of information for al-Qaida and a frequently quoted spokesman for bin Laden.
U.S. and foreign intelligence officials say they believe those three are under some form of house arrest or surveillance by Iranian authorities.
Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service, said the conditions that some of suspected terrorists are living under are unclear. Katzman said it's possible they are being held in guarded villas and he doubts any detention is uncomfortable.
"I think that Iran sees these guys as something of an insurance policy," he said. "It's leverage."
Rasool Nafisi, a Middle East analyst who studies conservative groups in Iran and travels there frequently for research, said Iran has returned some lower-rank operatives to their home countries but probably is keeping higher-ranking operatives as a bartering chip.
"Remember, Islamic tradition is very much based on haggling," Nafisi said. "Everything is negotiable, and you haggle for everything. If I were the Iranian government, I'd be very happy to have them and to use them in future negotiations with the United States."
1 hour, 1 minute ago
Another story for MSM to relish. Hmmm, can't link ;)
Saturday June 4, 2005
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon's intelligence chief has instructed the U.S. military to share more classified information with allies and foreign partners, including those helping to combat Iraq's insurgency, officials said on Friday.
Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said in a memo that the Pentagon had too often designated information as "Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals" by imposing the security label, "NOFORN".
"Incorrect use of the "NOFORN" caveat on DoD information has impeded the sharing of classified national defense information with allies and coalition partners," Cambone said in the two-page document dated May 17.
Cambone told originators of military intelligence to limit their use of the official designation and instead mark information as releasable to the "maximum extent possible."
The change was prompted by a new defense strategy this year that emphasizes better collaboration with allies in the U.S. war on terrorism, a Defense Department spokesman said.
"No single event prompted this memo. It was not specific to one country," said the spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Chris Conway.
A European security source said information-sharing with U.S. intelligence has been good on terrorism matters since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but not so where military issues are concerned.
"In the area of terrorism we all work very closely ... There are fewer problems there. But as far as military matters are concerned, it's hard," said the source, whose country does not have troops in Iraq.
Cambone's memo, which was first reported by the Federation of American Scientists' e-mail newsletter, "Secrecy News," would allow combatant commanders to more easily include foreign liaison officers in strategy sessions and other meetings, officials said.
It would include the sharing of information with countries in the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, they said.
Recipients of the memo included the chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, the secretary of each military branch and the directors of defense agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency.
04 Jun 2005 01:33:22 GMT
Source: Reuters
MEXICO CITY, June 3 (Reuters) - Angry at the imminent release of a key drug suspect, Mexico's government raised suspicion on Friday that judges may be protecting drug cartels.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered Archivaldo Guzman, the son of the country's most-wanted man, set free on bail, saying there was no evidence to support money laundering charges against him.
Guzman, whose father is drug trafficker Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, was expected to be released on Friday, dealing a heavy blow to President Vicente Fox's fight against drug cartels.
"It is obvious that in the specific case of judges there is serious suspicion they are acting in favor of criminals," government spokesman Ruben Aguilar said at a news conference.
The younger Guzman was arrested in February and his case has been followed closely to see whether Mexico's often corrupt and inefficient judicial system will be up to the task of trying a relative of such a powerful drug lord.
The judge, Jose Luis Gomez, dropped the money laundering charges against Guzman but ordered he be investigated for the lesser crime of complicity.
The Attorney General's office is appealing the ruling.
Another judge set bail at $55,000, according to local media.
Guzman's father, who runs drugs out of the western state of Sinaloa, has been Mexico's most-wanted man since he escaped from a high-security prison in 2001.
Prosecutors say the elder Guzman is a major player in a drug war that has killed 500 people so far this year.
The Attorney General's office said this week it was struggling to capture the elder Guzman because local people in Sinaloa were helping him avoid detection.
Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, head of the federal police organized crime unit, said the judge who released Guzman this week would be investigated for releasing a suspiciously high number of suspects from one drug gang.
"All of them are related to the Sinaloa cartel, run by Joaquin Guzman," he told Mexican television.
AlertNet news
Date: 03 Jun 2005
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, June 3 (AFP) - Suspected Taliban rebels have killed at least five people in four separate gun and explosives attacks in southern Afghanistan, officials said Friday.
A remote-controlled bomb killed a local militia commander in the provincial capital of Lashkargah in Helmand on Friday, Helmand's intelligence chief Amanullah Jan told AFP.
In another attack the same day a government driver was killed and his assistant badly injured when rebels ambushed their vehicle in neighboring Zabul province, said local police commander Qaim Jan.
The previous day, suspected Taliban gunmen killed a truck driver and another man and torched their oil tanker on the road between central Uruzgan province and Kandahar, the birthplace of the fundamentalist Islamic movement.
The tanker had been transporting fuel for US forces, local military commander General Muslim Hamid told AFP.
Earlier the insurgents had stopped a taxi on the same road and killed an Afghan soldier, wounding four passengers in a shootout.
The rebels "took control of the road for several hours", Uruzgan governor Jan Mohammad Khan said.
Hamid said the rebels had left by the time Afghan security forces arrived.
Violence has spiralled in recent weeks after a winter lull in fighting, with repeated attacks on Afghan security forces and the US-led coalition troops who toppled the Taliban in late 2001.
The latest attacks came after a suicide bomb attack Wednesday killed at least 21 people and wounded more than 50 in a Kandahar mosque.
Signals crackdown on Iraqi insurgents near porous border
Friday, June 3, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military has bulked up its presence in northwestern Iraq near Syria, signaling another clampdown on insurgents who have crossed over the long, porous Iraq-Syria border.
Insurgent violence in that region -- the restive Nineveh province -- continued.
A suicide car bomb went off behind a police station in Hammam al-Ali, south of Mosul, Friday evening, killing two police officers and wounding seven others, the deputy governor said.
Also, mortar rounds wounded five Iraqis in Tal Afar, the U.S. military said.
Tal Afar and Mosul have been the province's major hotspots, where U.S. and Iraqi forces have exchanged months of raids and strikes.
U.S. troops have begun a sweep of northwestern towns for insurgents who may be using the remote area as a staging ground for terror attacks in Baghdad and other cities, said Jane Arraf, who's travelling with the U.S. military in Tal Afar.........(Excerpt)
Australia: A push for more responsible moderate leadership of Australia's Muslim community: "The controversial head of Australia's Muslims, Sheikh Taj Din al-Hilali, is under threat from a new Islamic council that is trying to gather support for an alternative leader. The Islamic High Council of Australia was formed in southwestern Sydney this month with plans to become the leading organisation of the country's 400,000 Muslims. *********************************************************** "Members of the council said their goal was to appoint a mufti of their own, in a direct challenge to Sheikh Hilali, the current mufti of Australia. The council is hoping to tap into disenchantment in some Muslim communities with Sheikh Hilali over his controversial speeches, in which he reportedly attacked Jews and supported suicide bombers... *********************************************************** "A spokesman for the new council, Mahmoud Krayem, said yesterday that 20 Muslim organisations had joined the council from different ethnic backgrounds around the country, including Afghan, Indonesian, Pakistani and Lebanese... *********************************************************** "The spiritual leader of the new council, Sheikh Salim Alwan Al-Hasani, said there was a need for a moderate umbrella organisation that 'totally refuses all kinds of extremism' and rejects interference from overseas." http://www.chrenkoff.blogspot.com/ ************************************************************** The Mufti of Australia and New Zealand, Taj Al-Din Hamed Abdallah Al-Hilali, was born in Egypt's Suhag district in 1941. He graduated from Al-Azhar University and served as a preacher in Egypt, Libya, and Lebanon. In 1982 he came to Australia, and in 1988 he was appointed to his present position by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. The following is a collection of speeches and writings by Mufti Al-Hilali:*************************************** A Call for Jihad from Lebanon In a February 13, 2004 sermon at the Al-Quds mosque while on a visit to Sidon, Lebanon, the Mufti of Australia and New Zealand, Taj Al-Din Al-Hilali, called for Jihad against Israel, and added: "The war waged by the U.S. and Israel against the Muslims is a cruel war aimed at annihilating the [Islamic] nation." ******************************************************** Sheikh Al-Hilali expressed amazement that various Arab countries and leaders had avoided hosting the upcoming Arab summit, and added: "In any event, we have become accustomed to the fact that these summits produce nothing, neither cockroach nor mouse.(2) *********************************************************** "We are in dire need of real men these days in light of the situation in Jerusalem and Palestine... Your leaders are looking for a venue and no one dares address an invitation for the leaders of this stricken nation ... because we lack strong leadership. In the past, in Arab and Islamic history, we were governed by real men, but nowadays we are governed by semi-men."(3) ********************************************************** Following a meeting with Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Sheikh Al-Hilali said: "I blessed Hizbullah for liberating the prisoners and the bones of the Shahids and I praised it and its sacrifice. Hizbullah has become a model for all the Mujahideen in the world... Most of the Australian people do not support the policy of the Australian government, which has placed Hizbullah on the terror list out of submission to the U.S., and the Australian prime minister will pay the price for this in the next elections...."(4) ************************************************************ Anti-American and Anti-Western Sentiment This is not the first time that Sheikh Al-Hilali expressed anti-American or anti-European sentiment. In a speech in March 2003, he likened "Bush Jr." to the son of Genghis Khan, calling him "the most ignorant president to lead the White House."(5) Sheikh Al-Hilali also declared that President Bush, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are the "axis of evil."(6) ************************************************************ Sheikh Al-Hilali said on another occasion: "The media all over the world are controlled by Zionist fingers, particularly the Western media, and that includes Australia, in which the media are under Zionist hegemony. But in Australia, which unlike the West and the U.S. is multicultural, the media are less racist in their enmity to Muslims and Islam. This is evidenced by the fact that we won the last media battle in Australia and succeeded in forcing the Australian people to treat us with respect. We have not suffered from persecution or disrespect to the same extent that Islamic communities in Western countries and in America have suffered."(7) read more: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12226
China's buildup puts military balance in region at risk: Rumsfeld
June 4, 2005
SINGAPORE (AFP) - US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that China is spending considerably more on a major military buildup than officially acknowledged and asked why it had so many missiles aimed at Taiwan.
A Pentagon study due to be released later this month concludes that China's defense budget is now the largest in Asia and third largest in the world, he said.
"Since no nation threatens China, one wonders: why this growing investment? Rumsfeld asked Saturday. "Why these continuing large weapons purchases?"
Rumsfeld delivered the warning, one of the bluntest yet by a senior US official, to an audience of Asian defense ministers and military experts gathered here for an annual international security conference.
The head of the Chinese delegation, foreign ministry official Cui Tiankai, asked Rumsfeld: "Do you truly believe that China is under no threat whatsoever from any part of the world? And do you truly believe that the United States felt threatened by the so-called emergence of China?"
Rumsfeld said he knew of no country that threatened China, and added: "The answer is, no, we don't feel threatened by the emergence of China."
"If everyone is agreed that the situation between the Peoples Republic of China and Taiwan is going to be resolved in a peaceful way then one has to ask why this significant increase in ballistic missiles opposite Taiwan," he said.
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, in an opening speech late Friday, cautioned that "a strategy of confronting China will incur its enmity without seriously blocking its growth, while any attempt to contain China will have few takers in the region".
But Rumsfeld said escalating military budgets in the region "are matters that should be of concern," pointing to rivalries that endure despite the end of the Cold War.
"China appears to be expanding its missile forces, allowing them to reach targets in many areas of the world while also expanding its missile capabilities within this region," he said.
"China also is improving its ability to project power, and is developing advanced systems of military technology," he said.
Rumsfeld dropped a line from his prepared remarks that said: "One might be concerned that this buildup is putting the delicate military balance in the region at risk -- especially, but not only, with respect to Taiwan."
China earlier this year announced a 12.6 percent increase in military spending to 244.65 billion yuan, or 29.5 billion dollars.
Rumsfeld did not say what the Pentagon estimates actual Chinese military spending to be. A senior US defense official traveling with the secretary said the annual report on Chinese military power, which is due to go to Congress later this month, attempts to quantify it for the first time.
In his speech, Rumsfeld also reiterated US concerns about North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
"Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions threaten the security and stability of the region, and indeed the world," he said.
He said China was one country that could persuade North Korea to return to the six party talks.
"China's emergence is an important new reality of this era -- one that the countries of the region would no doubt like to embrace," he said.
"Indeed, the world would welcome a China committed to peaceful solutions and whose industrious and well-educated people contribute to international peace and mutual prosperity."
But he said political freedom has not followed economic growth in China, creating uncertainties for the future.
"Ultimately, China likely will need to embrace some form of open, representative government if it is to fully achieve the benefits to which its people aspire," he said.
Rumsfeld also made it clear that the Pentagon expects to strengthen military ties with Asia's other rising power, India.
"It's pretty clear where India's going, and one would anticipate the relationship with India will continue to strengthen as we go through the period ahead," Rumsfeld told reporters on the flight from Washington.
"With respect to China, it's not completely clear which way they're going because of the tension ... between the nature of their political system and the nature of their economic system," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050604/pl_afp/singaporeuschinankorearumsfeld_050604045157
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