Threat Matrix: Daily Terror Threat

That statement from Putin raised my eyebrows.

How are Bandit and Amber?

Interesting article Oorang, thanks for posting. Intro Arabic has 25 people this year at our school, that's up from the 16 last year (2 of us made it to the 3rd sem). :)

You're welcome.

(In my best "Mom" voice"). Don't you work too hard, put too much on your plate, and burn your self out!

Glad to hear you are alright. I had forgotten about weird Betsy. Boy, I hope that doesn't happen again. Unfortunately at your daughters age Stupid=normal. Hang in there!

bookmark

63 Iraqi militants arrested after raid in Baghdad

Ukrainian Opposition Party candidate poisoned

British army launches running shoe

Something is causing people in Kansas to break out in a rash and itch

Now they say there was no blast in North Korea

Proof of whiskey's warming effect - more than internally

Putin claims West complicit in harboring Chechen terrorists - further cooling relations with USA

Putin readies pre-emptive strikes against terrorists (at home or abroad in question)

India scraps anti-terror law

Pakistan army pounds Al Qaeda mountain hideouts

The frogs agree with Kofi Annan that the war in Iraq is illegal - French are fried IMHO

Calgary researchers claiming they have found a cure for the common cold

FLASHBACK--I always turn back to this article again and again for the mirror it appears to offer into al qaeda and its goals:

***

GLOBAL JIHAD AND THE UNITED STATES:
INTERPRETATION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER OF USAMA BIN LADIN

By Reuven Paz

AL-QA`IDAH'S INTERPRETERS

One of the interesting phenomena related to Al-Qa`idah and the culture of global Jihad since the September 11th attacks and the global war against Islamist terrorism led by the United States, is the emergence of a group of interpreters of Usama bin Ladin, Tanzim Qa`idat al-Jihad, and of the nature of the war between radical Islam and the West. These interpreters, primarily Saudi, Yemeni, and Egyptian scholars and intellectuals, have published, throughout the past year, dozens of articles on Islamist web sites and in on-line magazines. Their articles are widely distributed and circulated throughout numerous Islamist Internet forums.

The numerous responses to them provide ample evidence of their popularity. In recent months, some of them have opened their own web sites. Amongst the more famous of these scholars are Abu Ayman al-Hilali, Abu Sa`ad al-`Ameli, Lewis Atiyyat Allah, and Abu `Ubayd al-Qurashi.

These popular scholars are part of a bigger group of well-known clerics, primarily Saudis from the Saudi Islamist opposition movement known in Arabic as the `Ulama' al-sahwah (Clerics of the resurgence), who serve as the backbone of the support for the ideology and doctrines of the culture of global Jihad and Al-Qa`idah. But, if the contribution of the clerics lies in supporting and developing these doctrines, the importance of the "interpreters" lies in spreading the political messages of the global Jihad throughout the Arab and Muslim world, and in promoting and encouraging the radical Muslim youth onwards towards further struggle and more anti-Western and anti-Jewish sentiments. Part of their articles could be viewed in the West as disinformation or psychological warfare.

Yet, serious research of the phenomenon of the global Jihad and their radical Jihadi Salafist doctrines, as well as Al-Qa`idah's policies, should not ignore them.

Another example of such "interpretations" are several dozen unsigned articles published in the past year by the Center for Islamic Study and Research (Markaz al-Dirasat wal-Buhuth al-Islamiyyah). The center is regarded by many observers and in the intelligence communities as one of the official means of propaganda for al-Qa`idah, and accurately reflects the Jihadi-Salafist doctrines of the culture of global Jihad. The fact that many of the reports and articles published by the center are unsigned gives them credibility as the authentic views of the organization or front of al-Qa`idah, and not as just the individual views of its supporters.

This phenomenon is interesting and serves the group and its supporters and adherents very well. A good example of such interpretations, and one that might have practical implications, was an article published by the center in August 2002, about future scenarios of the conflict between al-Qa`idah and the United States. (1) The article talks, among different scenarios proposed, about: "A series of events in various sensitive places over the world, either planned by Al-Qa`idah or not, prior to the attack against the United States." One might conclude that the series of terrorist attacks in October-November 2002 - Bali, Kuwait, the French oil tanker in Yemen, Mombassa, and the theatre in Moscow, in addition to the arrest of suspects in London and Germany, are, according to this scenario, a prelude to another major attack on American soil.

One of the more popular interpreters of al-Qa`idah is Lewis Atiyyat Allah, who is well known in the circles of the supporters of the culture of global Jihad in the Arab and Muslim world, and has his own web site as well -- http://www.yalewis.com. During the past year his articles and views were sometimes controversial, because his attacks on the Saudi government and the Saudi Islamic establishment were very severe. A good example of such an attack was an article he published on November 4th, 2002, entitled "Allah will curse those people, and the cursers will curse them too." (2) This was an extraordinary attack on the Saudi Mufti and the Saudi Islamic establishment for their support of the ruling royal family, whom he called "A group of hypocrites, drunks, and effeminates...that wish to turn Saudi Arabia into a feudal land of slaves they own...and who are loyal to the Jewish and Christian enemies of Allah."

THE NEW WORLD ORDER OF BIN LADIN

On November 30th, 2002, Atiyyat Allah published an interesting article, which was then circulated on several Islamist web sites, including his own, entitled: "The New World Order as written by Usama bin Ladin."(3) The article is an attempt to review the development of Al-Qa`idah, the culture of global Jihad and, in large part, their future, as if bin Ladin himself was sketching his thoughts. The article, written in the first person, is unusual in its attempt to enter bin Ladin's mind in such a direct manner. Yet, it is possible that it might really reflect the future plans and policies of Al-Qa`idah and its front groups.

In the first part of the article, "bin Ladin," the author, describes how the idea of global Jihad developed in his mind, and there is nothing new. The development of the ideas in bin Ladin's mind is presented in a very well organized and rational manner. Interestingly, there is the guidance of Allah, in almost the same manner as was given to the Prophet, Muhammad, according to the Qur’an. The author plants in his readers' minds, young Muslim minds, an image that could easily turn bin Ladin into a kind of "new Muhammad." The admiration, constantly growing, for bin Ladin by Muslim youth, becomes a personification of the best of the Prophet and the stages he experienced during the divine revelation to him.

Bin Ladin's immigration (Hijrah) is to Afghanistan, and his worst period of ignorance (Jahiliyyah) is the American "invasion" of Arabia in 1990-91: "the most sinful crime in the history of Arabia.... And the biggest high treason in Islamic history.... Which was blessed by a unanimous categorical Islamic Fatwah that said that these forces came< for the defense of the purity of Islam, and whoever fights them is a fighter against Allah." But then, after the Gulf war, there was a split over the issue of Islamic priorities:

"Some of our Mujahidin brothers decided that now was the time to spread the Jihadi messages in order to defeat the Western-made regimes, which led to clashes with the Egyptian and Algerian governments. During our study of those efforts, we noticed that the international planning center for burying every Jihadi liberating project in the Islamic nation could be found in the United States, the center of evil.... The ultimate conclusion was therefore, that no project for the liberation of the Islamic nation from Western dominancy could succeed as long as the United States was there....Then we concluded that the equator of the Islamic world is composed of two sections:

a. There is no chance to change the situation of the Islamic world unless the role of the United States is singled out.
b. The United States could not be defeated by an army or by any traditional military confrontation."

This was the origin of the globalization of the war against the United States, "starting in Somalia, where we killed over 200 American soldiers.... And started studying up close the nature of the American soldier, the lines of American military doctrine, and the nature of American retaliation."

Then, Al-Qa`idah decided to provoke the United States with operations that "imposed upon them the distribution of our Jihadi doctrines on the international level, and pushed Clinton to declare us the first enemy of the United States. The flames were the two operations in Nairobi and Dar as-Salam:

It was in fact what the Americans wanted, according to their studies. They were looking for a while for an enemy that would grant them a justification to live. One of their scholars stated that there was no meaning to the United States if there was no Soviet Union to hate. We granted them what they wished for and turned into that enemy. But, unfortunately for them, we were not the traditional enemy they expected, and hence we managed to turn their lives into hell."

Then came the September 11th attacks on American soil, and according to "bin Ladin" they managed to embark, in Afghanistan, on another kind of a war, a traditional guerrilla war in an area that was better known to the Islamists than to the Americans.

But the more important outcome of the September 11th attacks was, according to this analysis, the American attempt to impose upon the Arab governments a coalition against the Islamists. The Arab response uncovered the high treason of these governments to their publics and the fact that their first mission was actually the protection of the West. It enabled al-Qa`idah to act against the United States from within societies that hate their own governments as well as the Americans.

Another important consequence was, in "bin Ladin's" eyes, the success of the Islamists in engaging the globalization of Islam and their ability to stand above the nationalist dimension. It released them from all the limits of the regional perceptions that had paralyzed many of the other Islamic groups.

WHAT NEXT?

The present conflict between the Islamist radicals and the West is perceived by the author as the first stage of four. The next phase and the first priority of the global Jihad for the near future, as presented in this analysis, is to defeat the Arab governments. According to "bin Ladin", they should achieve this goal by:

"Imposing upon the American administration direct cooperation with us. The United States itself will remove the legitimacy of the [Arab] cartoon states. The American direct involvement in the affairs of the Muslim world, by limiting the power of their rulers or by encouraging them to behave according to the American dictates, is the ideal situation that we have wished for a long time. When the direct confrontation between the Americans and us comes, the agent Arab and Islamic governments will be of no importance."

The third stage is called the "stage of isolation," in which the Islamists would seek to isolate the American administration from its own citizens on the one hand, and from its allies, on the other. "At first, we did not know how we could arrive at this stage due to the war against us. But, the American political stupidity of the Bush administration gave us the answer, when it started recruiting the world towards the war against Iraq."

The author gives special importance to the tapes bin Ladin sent and keeps sending to the Western and Muslim people:
"These two messages were meant to target two audiences:
To give the Muslim peoples the confidence that the Mujahidin are the only element capable of destroying the Western hegemony.

To remind the Western people that the revenge against them would be tremendous, and the destruction of the Bush administration and its allied governments would bring on them... They could never uproot the new Islamic powers and therefore, they should press their governments to start isolating themselves from the United States. Otherwise, they would be hit like the Americans would."

This issue of the tapes is interesting, since it might reflect the thinking of Al-Qa`idah's leadership. The Modus Operandi of sending audiotapes through the Al-Jazirah TV station has become, over the past year, a kind of ritual by bin Ladin, like the few articles and books that his deputy Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri has published through the Saudi London-based newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat. It seems that bin Ladin and his aides are closely following the effect of their tapes or announcements in the West, and deliberately sending them only every few months and not more often. This is probably part of an attempt to keep their whereabouts vague and secure and to leave a fog of mystery surrounding them. As bin Ladin or his spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghayth can record voice messages, it is likely that they can probably send their messages by video as well. So, the obscuring of their whereabouts, and the encouraging of a fog of mystery, seems to be a deliberate act.

The atmosphere surrounding the forthcoming attack against Iraq, perceived by Islamist radicals as part of the war against Islam, increases the expectations of the supporters of al-Qa`idah and a great part of the Anti-American Muslim world, for a major retaliation by al-Qa`idah. Moreover, growing in the background is a sense of apocalypse and apocalyptic thinking among Muslims, similar to what occurred in 1991. Wishful thinking of the forthcoming appearance of the Mahdi and the Black Flags (4) (Al-rayat al-sud) has started to become popular recently. We can find signs of that sense in Islamist forums, as well as on the web site of the Center for Islamic Study and Research. In an article published in late January 2003 by the center, they attempted to cool the enthusiasm of those who have started waiting for the Mahdi, some even wishing to view Usama bin Ladin as the expected one.(5)

It seems that the method of distributing these tapes infrequently, as used by al-Qa`idah, has an effect on large parts of the Muslim publics.

THE FINAL CONFRONTATION WITH THE UNITED STATES

The third stage is linked to the fourth: the final direct confrontation with the United States in order to "purify the world from the American power.... By destroying the United States and defeating it on its soil. Defeating the United States means the defeat of the West, which would lead to the shift of the international center of gravity back to the Islamic world."

And then what? Do these radical Islamists possess a real political vision? Not necessarily. Similar to other Islamic groups that have no political vision of a modern Islamic state, it seems that al-Qa`idah is no different. The author, speaking on behalf of bin Ladin, claims that "we have our perceptions of how the Islamic world would look after the fourth stage, and we have already planned it in details, yet, what we really look for is the awakening of the nation.... Until that day we must do our best in fighting the enemies of Allah, through the sword, the pen, and the word in order to chain their hands and deport them from the Islamic world, and stop their support for the Jews in Palestine."

Where are those political plans for the future Islamic world? Are they not important for the motivation and recruitment of the Muslims? There is no answer, only a utopian vision of a world that "would be more just, purer, cleaner, and nicer, without the United States. We act for the day in which we wake up and there is no America."

CONCLUSION

This vision of the future of the conflict of the Islamic world with the United States and the West, whether it reflects the environment of al-Qa`idah and Usama bin Ladin, or just the wishful thinking of the author, goes far beyond the limited targets of deporting the American military forces from Arabia, the Middle East, or the Muslim world. This is a vision of megalomaniacs, as the late Prof. Ehud Sprinzak defined them, who are fed by doctrines of hatred. They are not motivated by positive and constructive political ideas, but by the demonization of an eternal enemy. They cannot supply their audience with a clear political vision for the stage that would follow their victory, for it is as if the Jihad as an endless struggle is actually the primary and even the only goal. Furthermore, while the globalization of the Islamist struggle, instead of dividing it into the various Arab countries, might help them in gaining the support of wider Islamic publics, it leaves the final political targets vague and more difficult to achieve.

It seems that the success of the leaders of al-Qa`idah in surviving the war against them, reorganizing their forces in Afghanistan, initiating terrorist attacks in various places throughout the world, and frequently alerting the Western world through threats and recorded messages, gave them, over the past year, more self confidence and enabled them to decide to widen their declared targets to the maximum and to initiate the broadest vision of the global conflict. Even if their final targets are vague, their view of the struggle through global terrorism is vivid and their persistence is clear.

The article, which was published in November 2002, should be carefully read not only in the United States but also in Europe. As background to the disputes in February 2003 over the attack against Iraq, Europeans might want to look at this article as a statement of the bin Ladin vision and
plan.

NOTES
1. Qira'ah li-mustaqbal al-ma`rakah bayna farouq al-`asr Usamah bin Ladin wa-Amrika (Reading the future war between bin Ladin and the United States), 17 August 2002. See on-line at: http://ww.jehad.net/jehad-news/article.ID?php=234 (The address might change frequently).
2. Ha'ulaa yala`anahum Allah, wayal`anahum al-la`inun. See on-line at: http://www.yalewis.com/arts/index24.html
3. Al-nizam al-duwali al-jadid - written by Usama bin Ladin. See on-line at: http://www.yalewis.com/arts/index25.html
4. The Black Flags, the Mahdi, as well as the false Messiah (al-Masih al-Dajjal), are part of Islamic theories about the end of the world. They are partly based upon sayings of the Prophet in the accepted Hadith, and partly on popular beliefs and sayings in the weak and controversial parts of the Hadith. These theories were very popular during the first Gulf War in 1991, as was the distribution of literature about al-Masih al-Dajjal.
5. Nahnu Ummah lam yukallifna Allah bi-ma`rifat shakhs al-mahdi qabla khurujihi (Allah did not assign our nation to know the personality of the Mahdi prior to his appearance), The Center for Islamic Study and Research, January 2003. See on-line at:
http://www.cambuur.net/cocI/?subject=7&rec=989

http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/g_j/rp_a_11_03.htm

"Now they say there was no blast in North Korea"

This is getting even stranger. So the mushroom cloud was only a figment of the imagination? Or perhaps a natural cloud formation? O.K. Chuckle.

Oh my. That guy in that pic (Skip Estes) was rather dashing looking as a Christian, but look what he turned into after converting to Islam?! Ug. Ugly Sheik Estes now. I know he aged about 12 years or so naturally, but I really think is was/is the muslim way of life that turned him ugly.

Hi AD.

Rough tornadic weather in and around the DC area yesterday, huh? Keep safe and continue to check in here when you can.

LG? Is this the bad or good one? What happened to the one that was fronted by the Arabian chick?

I thought my indoctrination at 8 y old was bad!
We were at a rally for a Republican candidate running against Boss Daley and the dems sabotaged all our power in the building. Don't forget I was of the 'bomb shelter' generation and that scared the holy hell outta me!

bookin

My kin is not to far from where you were in Jasper and they are still without power

“Make Our Ports Safer”
Washington Post
September 17, 2004
M.R. Dinsmore

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27546-2004Sep16.html

“Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge met with a group of Seattle officials recently and told us he's sleeping better at night because our country is better prepared than before to defend against a terrorist attack.

When I spoke with him later, I said, "I'm glad you're sleeping better, Mr. Secretary, because I'm not."

I meant no disrespect. I have tremendous regard for Ridge and for the difficult job he is doing. But here's what keeps me awake at night: Worldwide, there are 50,000 ships, carrying 9 million containers, calling at 3,000 ports.

In the United States we have 361 river ports and seaports. Every year we get 50,000 visits from 8,100 foreign ships.

Every day 21,000 containers enter the United States. We can verify the contents of only about 4 to 6 percent of those containers. And it would require only one rogue container to bring commerce to its knees.

Imagine what would happen if a biological, chemical or some other kind of weapon arrived in one of our harbors. Every U.S. port would be affected as authorities worked to determine the extent and the source of the threat. Global trade could practically be shut down. And we don't have the systems in place to get our seaports up and running again.”

Source: http://cns.miis.edu/

Russia's Gathering Storm

By Stephen Schwartz
Weekly Standard | September 13, 2004

THREE ROADS led to the horror at Beslan in the Russian republic of North Ossetia, in which at least 330 people, most of them children, died: one road beginning in Grozny, the capital of neighboring Chechnya; one road beginning in Moscow, to the north; and one road beginning in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, far to the south. Americans need to know how such frightful events are connected to the global war on terror, and the degree to which they must threaten our own peace of mind.

The main culprits in Beslan were Islamic extremists. Since at least 1999, these violent fanatics, with backing from the Wahhabi sect of Saudi Arabia and financial support from radicals throughout the global Muslim community, have assiduously agitated to take over the Chechen national movement (about which more in a moment).

The participation of "Arabs"--meaning Saudis and other Wahhabi-influenced Muslim foreigners--is a constant in reportage and comment on Beslan and earlier terrorist incidents in Chechnya, as well as in neighboring Ingushetia, in Georgia, and in Russia itself. The majority of Chechens, most of whom want only to be left alone, are not avid for the Wahhabi offensive, which is one reason most attacks now take place outside Chechnya.

Meanwhile, the Islamists hope to exploit old rivalries between the Chechens, Ingushes, and other Muslim peoples of the Caucasus mountains and their Christian neighbors, including the majority of Ossetians. In Russian and Soviet history, Chechens were always the arch-opponents of Russian penetration into the mountains, and the Ossetians the most enthusiastic Russian supporters.

Al Qaeda-promoting websites accessible almost anywhere are replete with propaganda extolling terrorism against innocents in Russia, exalting suicide bombers, and seeking to intoxicate Muslim youth with the glamour of dying in the Chechen campaign (see, for example, www.islamicawakening.com/viewarticle.php?articleID=1059&). In mosques across the globe, from New York to Nairobi, Wahhabi extremists collect money and recruits for combat in Chechnya, which at times overshadows Iraq as a symbol of so-called martyrdom.

To cite an example on American soil, the 25th National Convention of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a front for the radical Jamaat-i-Islami in Pakistan, was held in 2000 in Baltimore. There, Tayyib Yunus, head of the group's youth section, complained, "We all want to see our youth to succeed to become doctors, to become engineers; but how many of you can actually say that you want to send your sons to jihad, to Chechnya? How many of you can actually say that you want to send your youth to fight in jihad?" Chechen advocates claim that money collected in mosques in America and other Western countries never reaches the Caucasus.

Wherever al Qaeda and its supporters operate--which means wherever Wahhabis are to be found, including in the United States--atrocities like those in Beslan may occur. Why should a conspiracy capable of the attacks of September 11, 2001, known to have been plotting the use of nuclear dirty bombs, and guilty of bloodshed from the nightclub bombing in Bali to the Madrid metro massacre shrink from taking children hostage anywhere? To defeat the perpetrators of Beslan and its like must be the goal of all who would protect civilization. Yet two questions must be posed: How can we defeat the terrorists? And, is Russia under Putin truly an ally in the struggle?

The Wahhabi conspiracy that has taken over a section of the Chechen movement is controlled from Riyadh. To stop another Beslan from occurring, the United States and other leaders in the global war should do everything necessary to terminate al Qaeda, capture bin Laden and his command staff, and quiet the storm in Falluja. That is, they must force the rich Saudis and Saudi state institutions to halt their international promotion of Wahhabism. Notably, the terror-financing charities operating in the Chechen refugee camps in Ingushetia must be dismantled.

Action by President Bush calling the Saudis to order on this matter would be more effective than waiting while Vladimir Putin further mishandles a problem that the Russians have never been able to deal with. The Russians respond to such challenges by attempting to manipulate them for political purposes, rather than by trying to save lives and catch terrorists. In dealing with al Qaeda and its allies, Russia can be as slippery an ally as the Saudi kingdom.

Historically, the conflict between Russian power and the Caucasian Muslims, of whom the Chechens are the largest group, dates back more than a century and a half. For a useful glimpse of how the original Russo-Chechen war played out, one may consult the novella of Tolstoy, Hadji Murad, his last major work of fiction. Tolstoy was a young officer in the tsar's 1851 campaign to suppress a Caucasian insurgency. His book evokes the wild landscape and the experiences that drove him to an open and emotional identification with the Muslim fighters.

Back then, the Chechens were idolized by many in Europe as a freedom-loving, indigenous people who had done to the tsarist regime what the oppressed Poles and, later, the persecuted Jews could not do: inflict serious military losses. Among Russian Jews, respect for the Caucasian Muslims was so great that the Lubavitcher rebbe Menachem M. Schneerson praised the Islamic leader Imam Shamyl as a hero of resistance to injustice.

The Chechens were not to be spared from vengeance for their success at undermining Russian authority. The most brutal of Russia's rulers in the past 150 years, Joseph Stalin, whose family tree included some Ossetians, ordered a whole range of Caucasian Muslim nations--Chechens, Ingushes, Karachais, Balkars, and Meskhetian Turks--deported to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and other Central Asian republics during and after the Second World War. In most cases, the pretext was alleged collaboration with the Nazis, who seldom even reached the territories these despised peoples inhabited.

In the 1950s, Stalin's successors allowed the Caucasian Muslims to return to their homes and absolved them of the charge of assisting the Nazis. But many of them settled in Central Asia, where they followed a moderate form of Islam. In a long interview with me in Almaty in June, the deputy mufti of Kazakhstan, Muhammad-Husein Hadzhi Alsabekov, one of that country's top Muslim clerics and an ethnic Caucasian, expressed his sorrow and outrage at the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Nevertheless, the Chechen problem resurfaced in the Caucasus after the Soviet Union fell apart. At first, Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev, who as an infant had been deported from his native land in a railroad cattle car, served, with his supporters, as a protector of nascent democracy. A Soviet Air Force commander in Estonia, Dudayev turned over a nuclear air base to the newly freed Estonians in 1990, making him a hero in the Baltic states. Inside Chechnya, however, order soon disintegrated. For years, many Chechens demanded independence from Russia of the kind their leader had helped the Baltic peoples gain. But unlike Estonia, Chechnya has oil, and Russia was not about to let it go. The result was a series of low-intensity, high-atrocity conflicts, with Chechen militants striking at Russian forces guerrilla-style, and the Russian military responding with mass killings and disappearances of Chechen civilians.

Dudayev, a force for moderation and stability, was slain by the Russians in 1996. Russian president Boris Yeltsin then made peace in Chechnya, in cooperation with the moderate Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov, and withdrew the Russian army. But in 1999 the Wahhabis showed up in Chechnya and neighboring Dagestan in force. Among Muslims, it was said that they were Arabs who had been excluded from participating in the Kosovo war by the Albanian leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, who considered the Kosovar struggle nonreligious, and who did not want to alienate their U.S. allies.

For whatever reason, the arrival of the Wahhabis, led by a Saudi--Samir Saleh Abdullah Al-Suwailem, who called himself Khattab, and who would be killed in mysterious circumstances in 2002--plunged Chechnya back into a nightmare of kidnappings, murders, suicide terrorism, and similar incidents, which has yet to end.

But if the Chechen problem persists, so do its Russian and Saudi counterparts. Many in Russia and elsewhere believe that the Putin regime has a stake in maintaining the Chechen conflict as a means to unite his people behind the president, regardless of the criminal ineptitude displayed by Russian authorities at places like Beslan. According to authoritative Western experts, official Russian complicity in Wahhabi terror in the Caucasus cannot be doubted. The worst of the Wahhabi kidnappers, Arbi Baraev, and his nephew Rovshan, who carried out the hostage-taking in a Moscow theater in 2002, were connected with the Russian security services. The Russian authorities partly face a problem they themselves fostered.

Be that as it may, the decisive struggle to prevent atrocities like Beslan from being repeated will happen at the source, which is Saudi. We cannot, at this late date, expect Putin to suddenly come to his senses and find new Chechen allies capable of isolating the terrorists. Rather, we should recall the end of the Cold War. Once the Kremlin stopped financing world communism, the phenomenon nearly disappeared from the planet. If America can compel Saudi Arabia to cut off funding for global Wahhabism, the ghastly spectacle of Beslan will not be repeated again and again.
Stephen Schwartz, an author and journalist, is author of The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror. A vociferous critic of Wahhabism, Schwartz is a frequent contributor to National Review, The Weekly Standard, and other publications.
Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15040

I posted further down the thread how the LA Times exposed buckrat and links -g-

Buckrat IL ya but in error I wanted to post buckhead
~oops my buck bad ;)

grrrrrrrr....

http://www.citizensunited-interactive.org/c41.11/

===

http://iraqitruthproject.com/