Posted on 03/14/2006 3:31:08 PM PST by bnelson44
The fall of Baghdad in April 2003 opened one of the most secretive and brutal governments in history to outside scrutiny for the first time. Seizing a unique opportunity, the U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) commissioned a secret comprehensive study of the inner workings and behavior of Saddam Husseins regime based on previously inaccessible primary sources.
Two years in the making, the report of the Iraqi Perspectives Project draws on interviews with dozens of captured senior Iraqi military and political leaders and hundreds of thousands of official Iraqi documents from all levels of the regime, and is destined to rewrite the history of the war from the ground up. Excerpts from the report itself are presented exclusively in a special double-length article from the upcoming May/June issue of Foreign Affairs.
Kevin Woods is a defense analyst in Washington, D.C. James Lacey is a military analyst for the U.S. Joint Forces Command. Williamson Murray is Class of 1957 Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at the U.S. Naval Academy. Along with Mark Stout and Michael Pease, they were the principal participants in the USJFCOM Iraqi Perspectives Project.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignaffairs.org ...
For your late night (or in Allegra's case early morning) reading pleasure.
INTRODUCTION
Founded in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations is a non-profit and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs through the free exchange of ideas. Its 3,400 members include nearly all past and present Presidents, Secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury, other senior U.S. government officials, renowned scholars, and major leaders of business, media, human rights, and other non-governmental groups. Each year the Council sponsors several hundred meetings including televised debates and other media events, and publishes Foreign Affairs, the preeminent journal in the field, as well as dozens of other reports and books by noted experts.
Since 1922, the Council has published Foreign Affairs, America's most influential publication on international affairs and foreign policy. It is more than a magazineit is the international forum of choice for the most important new ideas, analysis, and debate on the most significant issues in the world. Inevitably, articles published in Foreign Affairs shape the political dialogue for months and years to come.
With America more engaged in the world than ever, Foreign Affairs is performing an especially valuable service for its readers. And now educators and researchers can also benefit from Foreign Affairs through its Academic Resource Program, helping teach tomorrow's leaders and thinkers.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/about/
bump
Thanks for the reference, Surely as I write it is being bookedmarked, probably will download the whole works to my PC.
Looks like Fred is already digging into it.
Oh boy...isn't this the group set on globalism through which America will be NO more?
I don't know who they are, I'm an Aussie. But when I saw the following listed as who belongs to the org,
"...other senior U.S. government officials, renowned scholars, and major leaders of business, media, human rights, and other non-governmental groups..."
My alarm bells rang!
"Looks like Fred is already digging into it."
A very strange odour emanated from the source...I just followed my nose. Whenever I see 'renowned scholars' bells clang, toes curl up, teeth gnash, goosebumps appear!
Council on Foreign Relations my @$$! Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of a marxist front.
A SPONSORED ITEM FROM THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS ORG:
Country Focus
Nigeria: The Great Leap Forward
A Sponsored Section from the March/April 2006 Issue
Click here to download
432 kb
On the eve of the 2006 World Economic Forum in Davos, a BBC-commissioned poll conducted amongst citizens of 32 countries worldwide showed that 64 percent of participating Nigerians believe their personal economic situation is improving. Such a show of confidence is an important indicator of how President Olesegun Obasanjo's strategy for his nation's Great Leap Forward has positively affected his citizens' mentality. In the first of a series on Nigeria, Strategic Media focuses on this nation's efforts to make that strategy a reality. Through implementation of the self-help NEEDS documents (National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy) as well as local initiatives such as an Independent Power Plant in Akwa Ibom state, Nigeria may well overcome its hardships in the long term to become Africa's economic and cultural leader.
For more information about Strategic Media, please contact: info@smlstrategicmedia.com
NOW AREN'T WE ALL HAPPY TO HEAR THAT? QUICK, SOMEONE TELL THE NATIVES THAT ARE STARVING AND DYING OF THIRST.
Ah, now I see...
Meanwhile, here's what is really going on. But Rocky feller loves his islamofascist buddies, doesn't he?
Radical Islam in Nigeria
From the April 15, 2002 issue: The Talibanization of West Africa.
by Paul Marshall
04/15/2002, Volume 007, Issue 30
AFTER SAFIYA HUSEINI was sentenced to death by stoning last October 9 by an Islamic sharia court in northern Nigeria, her case drew international attention. The New York Times Magazine profiled her, and European members of parliament protested to Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo. When, in March, an appeals court overturned the death sentence on a technicality, much of the world sighed with relief and lost interest in the growth of militant Islam in Africa's most populous country.
But the extremism to which Huseini's case drew attention--she had gone to the police to complain of being raped, then was arrested and tried for adultery--remains a growing threat to human rights in the dozen Nigerian states that have adopted a hard-line interpretation of Islamic law. Especially at risk are women and religious minorities, not to mention democracy and stability in West Africa.
Thus, three days before Huseini's conviction was overturned in Sokoto state, a sharia court in neighboring Katsina state condemned Amina Lawal Kurami to be stoned to death for adultery, and another court is considering the same for 18-year-old Hafsatu Abubakar. (This mode of execution, incidentally, involves immobilizing the person to be stoned by first burying her up to her chest.)
Men are invariably let off for their part in these sexual crimes because sharia courts require a higher standard of evidence to convict them. But men face notable brutality for other offenses. In May 2001, an Islamic court ordered the removal of Ahmed Tijjan's left eye after he was found guilty of partially
blinding a friend. Another ordered 15-year-old Abubakar Aliyu's hand amputated for stealing. Ahmed Sani, the governor of Zamfara, the first state to introduce this form of sharia, told Freedom House that "without amputations there is no sharia."
The growth of radical Islam has effects far wider than these draconian punishments. Nigeria is about equally divided between Christians and Muslims, with a small number of animists. If radical Islam is left unchecked, it will continue to provoke widespread inter-religious conflict that, combined with endemic ethnic strife, may fragment the country. This could make the giant of sub-Saharan Africa--a major oil exporter to the United States and a new, struggling democracy--into a haven for Islamism, linked to foreign extremists.
As in much of Africa, family law in Nigeria has long drawn on sharia, the body of Islamic law and precedent. But the versions of sharia introduced in the last two years are closer to those imposed by the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. Since 1999, Zamfara state has sexually segregated buses, taxis, and many public places, banned alcohol, enforced a dress code on women, and closed non-Muslim schools. Its hizbah (religious enforcers) mete out immediate, harsh punishments for "un-Islamic" activities such as questioning Islamic teaching or women's wearing pants.
In some states Muslims are subject to sharia even if they prefer civil courts that have protections under Nigeria's bill of rights. Non-Muslims are barred from being judges, prosecutors, and lawyers in the courts to which they may be subject. Sharia state governments have destroyed dozens of churches.
Val:Y
CONTINUED:http://www.weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/001/099tvutr.asp
AND ALL THAT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO!
The BBC profiles a sweet, peaceloving convert to islam who only wants what's best for his people...barf bag on.
Last Updated: Monday, 4 October 2004, 12:52 GMT 13:52 UK
Profile: Nigeria's oil militant
Asari tried and failed to win elected office
Journalist Ebimo Amungo profiles Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, the leader of an armed group demanding more control of oil resources for the ethnic Ijaws, who are the biggest group in Nigeria's oil-producing region, the Niger Delta.
He is currently in custody on treason charges.
Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, known simply as Asari, is a 40-year-old Ijaw youth leader.
He was born Dokubo Melford Goodhead Junior, to a high court judge and a housewife.
He is the first of six children and had a middle-class upbringing in a Christian home.
He had his primary and secondary education in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, and was described as a respectful child.
Asari gained admission to study law in the University of Calabar, but dropped out in his third year in 1990 after repeated clashes with school authorities.
He abandoned a second attempt to earn a degree in law at the Rivers State University of Science and Technology due again to his activism.
It was about this period that he converted to Islam and adopted the name Mujahid Dokubo-Asari.
Any means necessary
In 1992, Mr Asari attempted to get elected into the Rivers State House of Assembly but failed.
In 1998, he sought to be elected as the chairman of Asari-Toru local government area but lost again.
In pictures: Fighting for oil
Mr Asari was a founding member of the Ijaw Youths Council, IYC, becoming its first vice-president in 1998.
In November 1998, the IYC issued the "Kiama Declaration", demanding control of the oil resources from the Niger Delta by the people of the Niger Delta.
There was an immediate crackdown on the body by the military junta that then ruled Nigeria.
Mr Asari became President of the IYC in 2001 and immediately changed the slogan of the body to "Resource Control and Self Determination By Every Means Necessary", signalling his readiness to do battle with the Nigerian state.
He condemned the 2003 elections, won by President Olusegun Obasanjo, as a fraud in full-page newspaper adverts, and promptly fell out with the governor of Rivers State.
Soft-spoken
Mr Asari took to the mangrove swamps of the Niger Delta and built up his now infamous Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force in 2004.
He launched a damaging military and propaganda war against the state and federal governments and those he described as their agents, prompting the government to initiate full-scale military operations against him.
Asari says his people have not gained from the region's oil wealth
Even as he continued to fight against the government, Mr Asari called for the convocation of a Sovereign National Conference to discuss the place of the Ijaw people in the country.
His recent threat to blow up oil facilities in the Niger Delta forced the government to open up negotiations with him.
Mr Asari is a burly man of 5 feet 10 inches (1.78m). He is soft-spoken and an easy-going person who is passionate about his convictions, especially, on matters he views as injustice.
He is given to fits of anger.
He has no criminal record and is known to have been called upon by the police to help them out in difficult situations.
Mujahid Dokubo-Asari is a voracious reader who loves to visit friends to discuss issues.
He leads a strict Muslim life and is married to two wives, with six children.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3713664.stm
SORRY, I KNOW I'M OFF TOPIC.
Carpetbagger Deadly Flu spreadin' throughout the world.
Iraqi Perspectives Project mentioned in the body of the article is available on:
http://www.ida.org/IDAnew/Research/research/forcestrategy.html
Institute for Defense AnalysesThe Iraqi Perspectives Project interviewed former Iraqi civilian and military leaders and analyzed their maps and documents to better understand the Iraqis' ...
www.ida.org/IDAnew/Research/research/forcestrategy.html - 31k -
very interesting post thanks.
Oh, I knew you meant Rockefeller. One of the young'uns died not long ago, Laurie was it? He gave Nancy Talbot of BLT Research a big cheque for her to study the phenomenon of Cropcirles. His brother (I think) is/was a Senator? Doesn't have a Security Clearance??? Warned the Syrians Bush was coming after Saddam. Nice people. Glad they're yours, not mine.
You'll have mail in a few minutes. Something off topic...
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