Posted on 09/24/2006 9:18:47 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Lets see. Al Qaeda is being strengthened by our invasion of Iraq. But Al Qaeda is decimated, fractured, and ineffective. Oh, I get it!
Hey! We're more safe and less safe at the same time. Makes perfect sense.
But, but, but, John KERRY says we "took our eye off the ball" and ignored Al Qaeda! BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
No, silly! If we had not liberated Iraq, al Queda would have given up on the whole terrorism thing and would have formed a knitting circle by now. Don't you watch the TV news? I thought everybody knew this stuff!
LEIGH SALES: Figures compiled by the US Government's own agencies back the claim that terrorism is on the increase.
In 2003, the State Department put the number of terrorist attacks worldwide at 208. In 2004, that figure roughly tripled to 650.
After controversy about how the numbers were pulled together, in 2005, the newly created National Centre for Counter Terrorism took over responsibility for gathering the data.
It expanded the criteria for what constituted a terrorist attack and said the adjusted 2004 figure was 3,192 attacks. Then, in 2005, using the same criteria, the figure almost quadrupled to 11,111.
In addition, a report this year by the Council on Global Terrorism - an independent body made up of respected experts - concluded "there is every sign that radicalisation in the Muslim world is spreading, not shrinking".
Iraq would welcome US military bases -Talabani
25 Sep 2006 08:50:11 GMT
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said he would like to have U.S. military bases in his country for an extended period to prevent foreign interference in Iraq, the Washington Post said on Monday.
Talabani was asked in an interview in New York last week if U.S. bases would be welcome in Iraq's Kurdistan region.
"Yes, they are welcome," he said. "Kurdistan wants the Americans to stay. In some places Sunnis want the Americans to stay. Sunnis think the main danger is coming from Iran now. There is a change in the mind of the Sunnis. The Sunnis are for having good relations with America."
Talabani said Iraq would be in need of U.S. forces for "a long time" to prevent interference from other nations.
"I don't ask to have 100,000 American soldiers -- 10,000 soldiers and two air bases would be enough," he said. "This will be (in) the interest of the Iraqi people and of peace in the Middle East."
Talabani said Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had received strong assurances during a recent trip to Iran that Tehran would not meddle in Iraqi affairs.
Despite daily attacks and the prospects of civil war, Talabani said democracy is beginning to take root in Iraq.
"Iraq is not in chaos," he said. "I want to assure the American people that Iraqis are now enjoying democracy and human rights and are struggling to secure the country.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N25241533.htm
Jihad waged against Polish troops
25.09.2006
A resurgent Taliban have threatened the 1000 new troops that the government has announced that it will send to Afghanistan.
Iwona Lejman report
During his recent visit to the US Polish Defense Minister Radoslaw Sikorski declared that 1,000 more troops will be sent to Afghanistan in response to a NATO call for restoring order in the area, which has faced intensified Taliban insurgency in the past few months. The declaration has met with an immediate response of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan web portal, which issued an appeal to the Polish parliament and nation. The Taliban rebels do not threaten terrorist attacks directly, but they want to compel Poland to rethink further dispatching of the troops.
The Polish secret service is investigating the warning, but experts claim that nothing serious is happening. Artur Golawski of the Polska Zbrojna defence magazine admits that such threats should not be ignored, but they have to be treated for what they are, whereas withdrawing Polish troops is out of question:
Poland itself has not been directly affected by terrorists yet. However, since it has been engaged in military actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the country has always taken into account a possible terrorist attack. General Stanislaw Koziej, an expert on security from the Military Training Academy in Warsaw says that the country is better prepared for possible threats with all security services working far more efficiently now:
So far we can feel safe but the nature of terrorism is that we should always be prepared for the worst. I think that Poland is one of the main places in the world which could be attacked by terrorists. One of the reasons is that the country is one of the important partners of the US who are serious opponents for terrorists.
Since all kind of web pages, like the one operated by Russia’s Chechen separatists, are constantly monitored by the Polish secret service, the terrorists were absolutely sure that the warnings would be noticed.
http://www.polskieradio.pl/polonia/article.asp?tId=42432&j=2
Foreign jihadists seen as key to spike in Afghan attacks
'Straight-out-of-Iraq' tactics observed as revived Taliban increases assaults
Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, September 25, 2006
Before the Taliban regime fell five years ago, al Qaeda trained its fighters in Afghanistan's cavernous mountains and dusty valleys, and then exported them to wage war in places like Chechnya and Kashmir.
Today, terrorism experts say, the direction of trade has reversed: Afghanistan now imports international jihadists who have honed their fighting skills in the vast deserts and shrapnel-scarred city streets of Iraq.
The growing involvement of veterans of the Iraq insurgency is a major factor behind the surge of attacks in Afghanistan -- the heaviest since the Taliban government fell in 2001, observers say.
Under their influence, a revived Taliban movement and newer groups are using suicide bombs and remote-controlled bombs to attack U.S. and coalition forces and Afghan civilians, instead of the Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and unsophisticated land mines that were once the hallmarks of the Afghan guerrilla movement.
"The increase in vehicle bombings in Kabul -- that's straight-out-of-Iraq stuff," said Brian Jenkins, an expert on terrorism at the Rand think tank. "Now Iraq is the source of the expertise, and Afghanistan is receiving."
Last Monday, three bombings in different parts of the country killed at least 19 people, including four Canadian soldiers. On Tuesday, Afghan police arrested four militants in Kabul who had been hiding more than 15 highly sophisticated explosives in a mosque. Senior police official Ali Shah Paktiawal told Reuters that the bombs must have come from outside the country.
Scattered reports that veterans of the Iraqi insurgency were traveling to Afghanistan started to appear last year, after radical Islamist Internet forums published calls for fighters to help the Taliban.
"In the summer of 2005 ... there was suddenly an unbelievable increase of publications coming from Afghanistan," said Rita Katz, whose SITE Institute monitors terrorist Web sites, publications and electronic media worldwide.
According to the institute, extremists had set up terrorist training camps in the craggy mountains of northern Iraq and in the country's western desert along the desolate 450-mile border with Syria, modeling them on former al Qaeda training grounds in Afghanistan. The trainees also took part in operations involving attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces, according to SITE.
"Videos and publications said: 'Stop going to Iraq, start going to Afghanistan; we need you here; we will establish (in Afghanistan) the fighting we have now in Iraq,' " Katz said.
Last fall, two Taliban commanders in Afghanistan told Newsweek about their training in Iraq. "I'm explaining to my fighters every day the lessons I learned and my experience in Iraq," said one commander, identified as Mohammed Daud, who at the time claimed he led a force of 300 fighters in the southern Afghan province of Ghazni. "I want to copy in Afghanistan the tactics and spirit of the glorious Iraqi resistance."
In May, U.S. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, who commands the Combined Forces in Afghanistan, disputed reports that Iraq was an emerging breeding ground for insurgents in Afghanistan.
"We have not seen conclusive evidence that there has been any migration from Iraq to Afghanistan of foreign fighters that are bringing with them skills or capabilities," he said.
A U.S. military spokesman at the Combined Forces in Afghanistan reached by telephone last week said he was not authorized to comment. But a NATO spokesman in Kabul, in a telephone interview with The Chronicle, did not dispute the reports.
"I have no reason to refute that or think that it's wrong," said the spokesman, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the issue.
The secretive nature of the insurgency makes it difficult to determine how many fighters have traveled from Iraq to Afghanistan.
In March, Asia Times Online reported that 500 fighters who had trained in Iraq were in Afghanistan or Pakistan, where the tribal region on the porous border with Afghanistan serves as a safe haven for the Taliban -- and, some analysts believe, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Jenkins said he thought the number was lower. "There's no shortage of manpower for the Afghan part of this thing," he said.
The Taliban, who are the major force behind the Afghan insurgency, find their recruits among Pashtuns, who live in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, make up about half of the Afghan population and share ethnic ties with the Taliban.
But terrorism experts said the new, Iraqi-style insurgency relies heavily on foreigners for suicide missions.
Suicide bombings are "something that the Afghan people still abhor," said Nathan Hughes, a military analyst at Strategic Forecasting, a Texas security consulting group.
SITE's Katz said that on videos of suicide missions from Afghanistan posted on Islamist Web sites, "you will see Taliban attack, but the suicide bomber speaks Arabic." Such videos, which terrorist groups have long used for propaganda and recruitment purposes in Iraq, have proliferated in Afghanistan. "All the Taliban communiqués in which they take responsibility for attacks are posted on the same jihadi forums where they post Iraqi communiqués," she said.
Tactics similar to those the insurgents employ in Iraq also have included the use of kidnappings and the "refinement of techniques, including fairly sophisticated explosive devices," said Hughes. "It's the expertise and the know-how that is basically exported from the Iraqi insurgency."
Veterans of the Iraqi insurgency lead training workshops for Taliban fighters in Waziristan, the tribal areas of western Pakistan, the French newspaper Le Monde reported this month. Critics say Pakistan has virtually allowed North Waziristan to become a safe haven for the Taliban and al Qaeda.
The Afghan insurgency itself is metastasizing, Iraqi-style, with at least four insurgent groups -- not just the Taliban -- now attacking Afghan and coalition troops and Afghan civilians, said Katz.
The other three groups, according to Katz, are al Qaeda; a group led by Abu Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan-born al Qaeda member who escaped from the U.S. prison at the Bagram Air Base in 2005; and Jeish al-Mahdi (al-Mahdi Army), a group composed mainly of Afghans and Pakistanis. (The Afghan Jeish al-Mahdi is a Sunni group and bears no relation to its Iraqi namesake, the militant organization of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.)
The proliferation of insurgent groups means that they do not respond to a single authority, which makes it harder for the international forces to contain them, analysts said.
"I think we will see more insurgency groups in the future," Katz said. "This time last year, there was only the Taliban."
Such transformations also point to a larger problem for the international community, and for the Bush administration's war on terror, said Jenkins.
"The future concern is that down the road we'll be dealing with an entire cohort of veterans of fighting in Iraq ... that is just going to go ahead and spread throughout the entire jihadist universe," he said. "What we see in Baghdad today is what we're going to be dealing with tomorrow in a whole bunch of places."
LOL! Good one!
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