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Thread Eighteen: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1198769/posts |
Posted on 08/10/2004 12:58:27 AM PDT by JustPiper
"U.S. government policy requires that young Middle Eastern men who are caught crossing illegally into the United States from Mexico be treated the same as illegal aliens from elsewhere in the world--meaning that if they don't have criminal records, don't appear on government watch lists and are not deemed to be suspicious by the federal law enforcement officers who interview them, they most likely will be released into the U.S. population."
I never got that eight steps behind rule either. My self, I like to keep the women in front, that way I can admire their backside. ;-)
By Anna Cearley UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER August 20, 2004
Mexican authorities detained eight people from Armenia, Iran and Iraq at a Mexicali hotel yesterday after exchanging information with the FBI, Mexican police said.
The six men and two women, one of whom is eight months pregnant, were found about 11 a.m. by members of the State Preventive Police at the hotel, in the city's center.
The continuing threat of a terrorist attack has raised concerns that terrorists could try to enter the United States from Mexico......
Thanks Much this is a great site passed it on to all on my email list "HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS"
http://www.llerrah.com/honkifyoulovejesus.htm
thanks again
Iran calls for meeting on Iraq 'catastrophe'
Bakersfield Californian ^ | 8/20/04 | Ali Akbar Dareini - AP
Posted on 08/20/2004 11:19:29 AM CDT by NormsRevenge
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iranian President Mohammad Khatami called on Muslim countries Friday to hold an urgent meeting to discuss the "catastrophe" in Iraq, particularly the 2-week standoff in the holy city of Najaf.
Khatami urged the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference to hold an emergency summit and said immediate action should be taken to end the escalating violence in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf, where militiamen loyal to militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have been fighting U.S. and Iraqi forces.
"What is happening in Iraq is a spiritual and human catastrophe and IMMEDIATE ACTION MUST BE TAKEN TO STOP THE SPREAD OF THE CATASTROPHE (emphasis mine), particularly in Najaf," Khatami said in a telephone conversation with the head of the OIC Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
On Friday, the Najaf uprising, centered on the revered Imam Ali Shrine, appeared to be drawing to an end as militants from al-Sadr's Mahdi Army removed weapons from the holy site.
The militants had been using the shrine, one of Shiite Islam's holiest, as a hideout while attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces. Earlier Friday they offered to give control of the shrine to Shiite religious authorities, who accepted the offer in principle.
It was unclear how Friday's apparent easing of the crisis in Najaf would affect Khatami's summit call.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi urged countries neighboring Iraq to hold an urgent meeting on the Najaf crisis.
Kharrazi first raised his meeting idea in a telephone call to Jordanian counterpart Marwan Muasher on Wednesday, but Jordan's response was not immediately made public.
The Syrian government supported Kharrazi's call, Syria's official news agency quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry official as saying. Syria has been a loud opponent of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
In Tehran, Iranians staged street protests Friday over the violence in Najaf, the third holiest city to Shiite Muslims after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, and condemned "the slaughter of the Iraqi people and the desecration of holy sites and cities of the country by the U.S. military in Iraq."
The demonstrators also described Iraq's interim government as "illegitimate" and a "puppet" of the United States, IRNA reported, and URGED MUSLIM COUNTRIES TO DISPATCH A MILITARY FORCE (emphasis mine) to defend Najaf's holy sites.
In his conversation with OIC chief Badawi, who is also Malaysia's prime minister, Khatami said the Iraqi interim government was facing a difficult situation in Najaf and that Iran was interested in seeing a stable Iraq.
"Allowing these conditions to continue and keeping silent in the face of these events will create grater problems for us," Khatami warned.
It was unclear if a meeting would be held, but Iran's call reflects the growing concern in the Middle East over violence in Iraq and, in particular, Najaf.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1195570/posts
No evidence that Iran is aiding Sadr militia: US
hindustantimes.com ^ | Friday, August 20, 2004 | Agence France-Presse
The United States has no conclusive evidence that radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr has received arms from Iran, but refuses to rule out the possibility, a senior US official said.
"There are certainly those charges being made, but I guess we are hesitant to say definitively 'yes' or definitively 'no' because we just don't have conclusive evidence it's either validated or knocked down," a senior State Department official told reporters on Thursday.
For more than two weeks, Sadr's Mehdi Army has been locked in heavy fighting with US-led Iraqi government forces on a mission to crush his militia in the holy city of Najaf.
Noting the "porous border" with Iran, the US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said "it's certainly plausible" that Sadr was receiving weapons from Iran, but added that Washington could not be certain.
"I don't know if we've traced weapons in the hands of Mehdi people across the border to Iran," the official said. "There are plenty of weapons in Iraq you don't have to rely on Iran for them.
"Obviously they are getting their guns from somebody, but I don't think we are ready to say it is the Iranian government that's doing it."
On August 10, State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said the United States was concerned by suggestions that Iran is involved in deadly unrest in Iraq's Shiite holy city of Najaf and maintained it was not in Tehran's interest to foment instability in its neighbour.
But he declined to confirm Iraqi Defence Minister Hazem Shaalan's claim that militiamen loyal to Sadr were receiving weapons from Iran.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1195574/posts
Pakistan has arrested two suspected al-Qaida members, following a shootout in the conservative western city of Peshawar.
Police and intelligence officers captured the first suspect after wounding him during an exchange of gunfire Thursday in Peshawar's upscale Hayatabad district.
The other man was arrested later in the day.
Pakistan has arrested dozens of suspected al-Qaida members during a month-long sweep.
Speaking to VOA Friday, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed would not confirm reports that one of the men was Algerian, but said both were foreigners.
He said the suspect wounded in the gunfight is still hospitalized.
They're setting the table:
1) Irrational demands (U.K., give us all your technology!)
2) Threat of pre-emption against Israel by attacking the U.S.
3) Direct intervention in Najaf as a "humanitarian" gesture to the Iraqi Shiites.
Methinks the mullahs doesn't know the meaning of "catastrophe", but they may shortly...
The heat is seriously on Musharraf. He didn't just convert to Christianity. Everyone is scrambling these days...
Saudi Arabia is planning to launch a radio advertising campaign in 19 US states aiming at challenging the criticism addressed to its role in fighting terrorism. The campaign will be based on the report of the Congress committee of September 11, which indicates the role played by Saudi Arabia as " faithful ally " in the war against al-Qaida organization.
The advertising campaign indicates the conclusion reached by the Congress to that the Saudi government did not finance al-Qaida. One of the two advertisements says that Riyadh disclosed in 1998 a plan to attack the American forces, while the second advertisement testifies what the report had said that any of the Saudi citizens did not leave the US following September 11 events and before the American authorities opened up of the American airspace. The campaign does not tackle the criticism addressed to Saudi Arabia in the report. The campaign says that in 1998, Riyadh disclosed a plan for the leader of al-Qaida organization Osama Bin Laden to attack the American forces by shoulder- borne missiles and secretly detained many suspects.
The spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington Adel al-Jubeir said that the report of the committee " is in contradiction with many of the accusations addressed to us, and we want to make sure that people know that." He added that it was decided the campaign to be via the radio so as to be able to reach the largest group of the Americans inside and outside the USA.
It is, however, decided that the campaign will start next Friday and continue until September 6th.
This week's report of terror charges being brought by Britain (and perhaps soon by the U.S. government) against Dhiren Barot, aka Eisa Hindi, and his associates constitutes fairly stunning evidence of success against the al Qaeda terrorism threat to America. And, while the danger remains high and the struggle will continue for perhaps generations, President Bush deserves some credit for effective leadership in the war on terror to date.
To review the bidding, Mr. Barot was identified in the computer files seized recently in Pakistan as suspected of surveilling U.S. financial buildings in New York, Washington and New Jersey. It was that information that led our government to go to orange alert on Aug. 1 and led the British government to arrest Mr. Barot and his associates on Aug. 3.
Pursuant to that arrest, evidence was found in his possession of a "reconnaissance plan" for the Prudential Financial Headquarters in Newark, N.J., "likely to be useful to terrorists between Feb. 19, 2001 and this month," according to British authorities. Mr. Barot was further charged with possessing reconnaissance plans for the New York Stock Exchange, the Citigroup Center and the IMF Building, as well as papers on explosives, poisons and chemicals.
It is fair to draw the inference from these public facts that a major terrorist attack on America has probably been thwarted. Hundreds — perhaps thousands — of lives (and the ensuing psychic agonies of the survivors), as well as billions of dollars, have been saved by the collective efforts of the American, Pakistani, British and other unnamed governments.
And yet no headline, no breaking cable news graphic, announces this success, as they do the death of a soldier or civilian in Iraq almost every day. This is understandable as death is absolute and its immediate cause is obvious (a bomb, a mortar, a bullet shot), while the avoidance of death resulting from many individual and collective efforts is ambiguous and its cause is obscured by the shadows in which the defensive covert actions and classified information necessarily occur.
Nonetheless, this great triumph that appears to have saved New York City from a second devastation is not causeless. While myriad elements went into the success, it is hard to avoid seeing our relations with Pakistan as central to this and other successes. And it is precisely on this point of U.S.-Pakistan relations that Mr. Bush deserves some significant credit.
This healthy, productive relationship could easily have been quite otherwise. Just three years ago, Pakistan was closely allied with the Taliban, while its relations with the United States were strained by both its nuclear testing and its support of anti-Hindu terrorism. After September, Mr. Bush established — with the deft use of both carrots and sticks — a modus vivendi with Pakistan as a primary pillar of our war on terror.
It has not been an easy relationship because, as this page has repeatedly pointed out, Pakistan's ethnic, religious and political interests do not neatly coincide with ours. Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell have had to exercise both forbearance and firmness to keep Pakistan's security services working toward our common security interests.
The deft management of Pakistani nuclear proliferator Abdul Qadeer Khan is a case in point. It would have been both easy and politically popular here in the United States if Mr. Bush had self-righteously grandstanded against Mr. Khan. But given Mr. Khan's popularity and President Pervez Musharraf's tenuous hold on power in Pakistan, restraint by Mr. Bush was the wiser decision.
Likewise, it would have been very easy to have overplayed our military hand in the contested, and terrorist infested, no- man's-land between Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Mr. Bush correctly recognized that good, working relations with the Pakistani government and its military leaders is a strategic asset, while any individual maneuver would have yielded only tactical advantage.
For almost three years Mr. Bush has managed our relations with Pakistan with shrewdness and nice judgment. This week it yielded a noticeable success in thwarting a second major terrorist assault on New York (and possibly Washington and New Jersey). Continuing to successfully manage that difficult relationship will be a key to our continuing success in the war on terror.
They sure are. It's a race against time it seems.
ALERT ** Gold has taken a hug jump up to $413.20.
Two suspected members of Hamas arrested in US
AFP ^
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Two suspected members of Hamas have been arrested in the United States and charged with supporting a foreign terrorist organization, money laundering and racketeering, US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced.
The authorities have issued an arrest warrant for a third suspect facing the same charges, identified as the deputy chief of the political bureau of Hamas, Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, who currently resides in Syria.
Ashcroft said the trio allegedly ran a US-based terrorist recruiting and financing cell linked with Hamas, a Palestinian militant group which has publicly admitted to many killings, primarily of Israelis but also of Americans.
"This cell allegedly financed the activities of a terrorist organization that was murdering innocent victims abroad, including American citizens," Ashcroft told a news conference.
He said Muhammad Hamid Khalil Salah, 51, of Chicago, and Abdelhaleem Hasan Abdelraziq Ashqar, 46, of Washington, were arrested on Thursday night.
The three were said to have participated in a 15-year racketeering conspiracy to illegally finance terrorist activities in Israel and the disputed West Bank and Gaza Strip territories, including providing money for the purchase of weapons.
The authorities have sought the forfeiture of 2.7 million dollars, all funds in four bank accounts and Salah's residence in Bridgeview, Illinois.
Ashcroft said that Marzook at one time lived in Louisiana and near Washington and is now thought to live in Damascus.
(snip)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1195603/posts
Isn't this associated with the same Bridgeview, IL mosque that Steven Emerson associated with Hamas way back in 1993? ("American Jihad" pg.12)
Now that's a jump. Wow, what's causing that?
Thanks for th info. Is this a high for gold recently?
Yes, the table is set. But the meal is being cooked by Ivan.
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