Bomb Yemen

My hands are shaking with anger as I write this, and all I have to say about a recent story out of Yemen is that it is headed by a Feh Feh Pi Goh, and that they need to follow through with the death sentence on Jamal Al-Badawi, the man responsible for the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

The captain of the ship was unjustly blamed for the bombing, and should not have had his career cut short because of the actions of another man.

What do I think we should do? Well, we have a bunch of destroyers sitting in the Gulf, and a single "stray" Cruise Missile could easily destroy the terrorist, and thus kill him and the Terrorist Fuckers who have surrounded him.

This man was sentenced to death, lets make sure that sentence is carried out.

Oh, and President Ali Abdullah Saleh, G’en Ho Tze Bi Dio Se.

Well my friends, it would seem that Musharaff has actually found his cahones, and is launching a full attack on the Waziristan and tribal Regions in the Pashti Mountains. Well Mr. Musharaff, it is about time.

We have had evidence of Taliban and Al-Qaeda presences in these areas for years, and they have strongly entrenched themselves in that area.

Good luck Mr. Musharaff, and my you be successful in this endeavor.

Hezbollah and Venezuela, the scare of my life.

Imagine, living in a country with an open border across which anyone can walk. Imagine that this border is being kept open for political reasons. Now, imagine that some where south of that border, one of your biggest enemies are training on how to look and act like your neighbors, so that they can sneak across that border.

Now, imagine that that very organization is already the most widespread terror organization within you nation.

Now you know why I have nightmares. Currently, Hezbollah is being trained in Venezuela to look, act, and dress like Mexicans. That scares the go-se out of me.

For those of you who do not know what Hezbollah is, they are the Lebanese Terrorist arm of the Syrian Army. they are the organization with which Israel went to war earlier in the year.

And they hate the United States. Now, Syria has the bomb, and several people are wanting to make it easier to transport goods from Mexico to the United States.

Well, I say no. We already have enough problems with drug use, I don't need a nightmare to fill this warped head of mine.

Time for a shift

Well, my friends, it would seem that North Korea's soldiers are getting relgion. This is a major first, and on top of that, the religion is highly critical of Socialism and Communisim. To make matters worse for the "Dear Leader," his army has been getting secret information about South Korea.

This is what you get Kim Jong Il, when you have a nation that is indoctrinated, I should say brainwashed, from birth to worship you.

You get guards along the border with S Korea whose sole job is to prevent your fellow guards from crossing over, and a major city with eight lanes on many of its streets, but no people with the ability to own their own car.

Guess that Nuclear Test didn't work out so well for them.

Syria, Iran, and the coming of the Middle East War

Well guys, it would seem that in the Middle East, we are facing the imminent shift from a Proxy War and a full fledged one.

Currently, Syria and Israel are on the edge of war. Al this due to Israel's attempts to either confirm or deny what turkey has sent them in terms of Syria's Nuclear program.

Now, personally, I agree with the Turks, after all, they have shown that peace and stability are important, and at the same time, are not willing to betray their Muslim Brothers unless there is a major threat to the stability of the Middle East.

Also, at the same time, the UK is massing its forces along the Iran-Iraq border, ostensibly for border patrol, but possibly also to force the Iranians into a situation similar to that where they captured the Royal Navy Vessel that was operating in Iraqi waters.

We are facing the very real possibility of war in the Middle East, one unlike any other. And, as the battle Lines are drawn, I foresee the following alliances.

Israel-US-UK-Kuwait-U.A.E.-Saudi Arabia-Turkey-Lebanon-Eu vs. Iran-Syria-Arabians-Egypt-Terrorist Forces-Gaza

The very real possibility is that China and Kazakhstan could get involved, Kazakhstan on the side of the US, and the Chinese on their own side.


Guys, I have been saying this for years. WWIII is coming, and it shall be a three-way war. Here is hoping that Einstein was as wrong about WWIII's outcome as he was about his High School Algebra Tests.

The Bomb in my Garden

Recently, the online newsmagazine, Slate, wrote about a new book coming out, written by Saddam Hussein's former Chief Nuclear Physicist that dealt with this subject. This is a very interesting find.

It's a good coincidence that the Duelfer report appears in the same week as The Bomb In My Garden, a memoir by Saddam Hussein's chief nuclear physicist. Between them, or taken together, the two bodies of evidence enable two quite different yet quite compatible conclusions. The first is that the Saddam regime was more disarmed than perhaps even its leadership knew. The second is that it would have been very unwise to proceed on any assumption except that of its latent danger.

Continuing

Few felt this need more strongly than Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, whose crucial evidence we would never have acquired without the invasion. His book is one of the three or four accounts that anyone remotely interested in the Iraq debate will simply have to read. Apart from its insight into the workings of the Saddam nuclear project, it provides a haunting account of the atmosphere of sheer evil that permeated every crevice of Iraqi life under the old regime. It is morally impossible to read it and not rejoice at that system's ignominious and long-overdue removal.

Having been forcibly recruited, with his family as hostage, into the Saddam nuclear program, Obeidi describes the hysterical pressure exerted by the crime family that ran Iraq. Almost weeping with fear, scientists were lashed into prostituting their skills in the rush for a usable nuke. In the meantime, their country's deepest veins were being drained to finance the enterprise. It's alarming to read how easy it was for Obeidi, backed by an open checkbook, to acquire blueprints and components on the open market: Saddam was in this business in much the same way as A.Q. Khan, the former sales director of Pakistan's nuclear bazaar. Only now can we know how close he came, and we came. Having starved and bled his people, Saddam sought to revive them by invading Kuwait: a mistake we must all be very glad he made. He might have got the nuclear capacity before he invaded, in which case we would be living in a rather different world. As it was, his insane bluff was called—and as the coalition struck back, Iraqi scientists were taken to offices run by illiterate brutes who screamed at them to produce just one "dirty" bomb on short notice. Providentially, this was not quite possible.

The subsequent arrival of the inspectors meant that Saddam, despite elaborate deceptions and dummyings (very well-described by Obeidi) was never able to get back up to speed again. His regime also began to suffer from interclan warfare with the defection of the Kamel brothers to Jordan and the further exposure of the Baathist arms racket. However, there was a secret that the Kamel brothers were not able to betray. Under the orders of Qusai Hussein, Dr. Obeidi had buried a huge barrel in his back garden. The barrel contained Iraq's crowning achievement in perverted physics: the components of an actual centrifuge for the enrichment of uranium. It also contained all the hard-won printed instructions and expertise on the subject. Dr. Obeidi was "interviewed" by many inspectors in the run-up to last year's war under the same conditions of open blackmail that Saddam had imposed on all his other scientists, and they got no nearer finding out the truth than one would have expected.

His conclusion is that, given an improvement in the economic and political climate, Saddam could and would have done one of two things: reconstitute the program or share it with others. Had it not been for 9/11, it is sobering to reflect, there would have been senior members of even this administration arguing that sanctions on Iraq should be eased. And, through the open scandal of the oil-for-food program, there were many states or clienteles within states who were happy to help Saddam enrich himself. Moreover, within the "box" that supposedly "contained" him were also living Kim Jong-il, A.Q. Khan, and Col. Qaddafi. We know from the Kay report that, as late as March of last year, Saddam's envoys were meeting North Korea's team in Damascus and trying to buy missiles off the shelf. It would never have stopped: this ceaseless ambition to acquire the means of genocide. If anything, we underestimated that aspect of it.

The supposed overestimate was, in reality, part of a wider underestimate. Libya and Iran turned out to be even more dangerous than we had thought, and the A.Q. Khan network of "Nukes 'R' Us" even more widespread. But now Iraq can be certified as disarmed, instead of wishfully assumed to be so, Libya's fissile materials are all under lock and key in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the traces "walked back" from Qaddafi's capitulation helped expose A.Q. Khan. Of course, we could always have left Iraq alone, and brought nearer the day when the charming Qusai could have called for Dr. Obeidi and said: "That barrel of yours. It's time to dig it up."

This is a vital piece of the puzzle Sir Knightly, one of the most important ones if you ask me.

And, in the Washington Post back in July of 2004, they reported that

over the past 10 days two major official reports, by the Senate intelligence committee and a special British commission, have concluded that the claim in the "sixteen words" may, after all, have been justified. Britain's Butler report called it "well-founded"; the bipartisan Senate investigation said the conclusion was a reasonable one at least until October 2002 -- and that Mr. Wilson's report to the CIA had not changed its analysts' assessment.

For those of you who have forgotten what the "Sixteen Words" contained, they can be read in their entirety here:

"the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,"

We need to realize as well, that despite what Sir Knightly has said, the chemical weapons since discovered, or detonated by terrorists, are part of the weapons stockpile. While Bush may have been using hyperbole about the nuclear weapon, he was right in the warning about the dangers of Iraq with Nuclear weapons.

The 9/11 Commission Report themselves said that Saddam had provided funds and supplies to various Terrorist factions, including Al-Qaeda, for use against American Targets, and Saddam had a slush fund to pay off families of Terrorists.

Now, while it may not have been a very steady alliance, it could best be described as the one between the USSR and the Allies during WWII, in which they where more interested in wiping out a common enemy than worrying about each other.

In fact, there is evidence that Saddam had directly supported Islamic Jihad, these Intel Reports have yet to be refuted by any source that I have seen.

Personally, I doubt that Saddam had any direct involvement beyond possibly providing funds for the families of the terrorists who killed thousands that day, and I doubt that even happened.
However, the links between Saddam and Terrorism are very real, and once more, I turn to the 9/11 Commission Report for the evidence.

Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda—save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against "Crusaders" during the Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army. To protect his own ties with Iraq, Turabi reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad’s control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin’s help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam. There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.

With the Sudanese regime acting as intermediary, Bin Ladin himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995. Bin Ladin is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request. As described below, the ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish connections. There is also evidence that around this time Bin Ladin sent out a number of feelers to the Iraqi regime, offering some cooperation. None are reported to have received a significant response. According to one report, Saddam Hussein’s efforts at this time to rebuild relations with the Saudis and other Middle Eastern regimes led him to stay clear of Bin Ladin. In mid-1998, the situation reversed; it was Iraq that reportedly took the initiative. In March 1998, after Bin Ladin’s public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin. Sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these meetings was apparently arranged through Bin Ladin’s Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis. In 1998, Iraq was under intensifying U.S. pressure, which culminated in a series of large air attacks in December. Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Ladin declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides’ hatred of the United States. But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.

Interesting what a little time spent digging will find you, isn't it?

Calling out Sir Knightly

Sorry buddy, but you are wrong in this issue. Saddam Hussein DID have WMD's, and had the capabilities to use them.

Examples

1. We found Mobile Weapons Labs in Iraq that had been used for the sole purpose of continuing the manufacture of Chemical Weapons

2. The United States gave, GAVE, Saddam Hussein a large amount of WMD's, mainly chemical weapons, but a few biological ones as well.

3. Based on the amounts that we gave him, the amounts that he used in his various atrocities, and the Mustard and Sarin gas shells discovered back in 2004, the tally comes up short. Way too short to be qualified as coming from corroded shells and payloads.

4. Earlier this year, terrorists blew themselves up in Iraq and used Chlorine Gas that some have claimed came from the United States, stockpiles that we gave to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war.

5. In his infamous Nerve Gas Atrocity, Saddam used VX Nerve gas to massacre 5,000 Kurds. As far as I can tell so far, we didn't give him VX Nerve Gas.

6. Saddam had sent people to Niger to open up under-the-table talks to open up trade. Niger exports 3 things, Uranium (79.6%), Live Animals (11.1%), and Beverages and Tobacco (4.7%).

Iraq, during Saddam's Time, had no problems with raising the last two.

7. In fact, several generals have claimed that in 2002, worried that we were going to invade over the, transported the materials to Syria for safekeeping. Interesting that it is a FORMER IRAQI GENERAL.

8. Now, while I agree that the Liberal style spending sickens me, and I feel that Bush should have used his veto power to slow it down, from what I have seen, Greenspan has not provided evidence for this claim. I will have to look at this later, but right now, I am going to take Bush at face value on this issue.

9. Saddam actually had extensive terrorist ties. In fact, he was a major financier of Terror Organizations, and while they might not have agreed on most things in this war, Saddam recognized that he needed a foreign enemy to continue to support his Fear Society, so he payed to compensate the families of Suicide Bombers who died attacking American Targets.