Professionalization that leads to impersonal/indiscriminate killing of humans in `joystick` fashion as Zeemax has suggested, is quite worthless and not at all ``superior`` in anyway judging from humanitarian criteria. The US military is part and parcel of US imperialism, you cannot condemn imperialism while singing praises of the US military.

Re: # 152 masadi {``...The US military is part and parcel of US imperialism, you cannot condemn imperialism while singing praises of the US military...``}

First, let me make it clear that no matter what other philosophic differences we may have, on the issue of ``US-based global imperialism`` we have far more commonality of ideas than we have disagreements. So any discussion I have with you on this topic is not an antagonistic one, but one amongst comrades.

I agree that the US military IS THE ULTIMATE INSTRUMENT of Global imperialism (US-baed) and therefore an integral part thereof. But my contention with zeemax was about his assertion of the US military personnel being COWARDS. All I said was that they were not cowards. And I said that their soldering ability was par excellence. Now what is soldering abaility? It is the ability to destroy the opponent with efficiency with minimal loss to self. I didn`t say they were an army saints, or holy men... no. A ``good`` soldier is not necessarily a ``good`` thing in humanitarian terms. He is a trained killer. And in terms of humanitarianism he is evil incarnate. But call them evil if you want, don`t call them cowards... because they are not.

Now we come to the question of individuals. Let`s take naPak fauj for example. Most of us will agree that the institution in its net historical effect on the country is an evil entity. Yet I know many, many individual human beings, who are (or have been) members of that (evil) organization, yet as people they are very moral, pious, honest, clean and principled. I am sure you know such individuals also. Similarly, I happen to know some individuals in the US military who, likewise, are honest and upright people. That`s all I was saying. It was a minor point, but one worth making.

...SR

When President Bush arrived in Vienna for his one day Summit with Europe`s Heads of State, he faced questions from the European press he is entirely unused to receiving from the ``servile`` American press.

A European journalist asked a question about opinion polls which show that most Europeans now believe the US to be a greater menace than Iran or North Korea. ``It`s absurd, is my statement,`` Mr Bush snapped. ``We`ll defend ourselves. But we are working with our partners to spread peace and democracy around the world.`` It is well known to Europeans that the US has military bases all over the Middle East as well as all around the world. Europeans are reminded daily about the bases the US still has all over Europe. The US Armed Forces never left the Continent since D- Day on June 6, 1944 and the Europeans know this. It is in this context that we must try to understand the near spontaneous reaction by many Europeans to Mr Bush`s: ``We`ll defend ourselves.``

America`s standing has dived across Europe to post war depths. One reason for this is that the European press, including large parts of the British press, have engaged in much more in depth reporting about events in Iraq and across the broader Middle East than Americans back in the US ever get a look at. It follows from this that seeing the American President saying that the US is only defending itself would strike most Europeans as the height of absurdity.

The Departure Of The (No Longer) ``Willing``:

Japan has announced the withdrawal of its engineering troops from Iraq inside a month. Italy`s new foreign minister, Mr D`Alema, met US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice last week to discuss the Italian pullout by the end of the year, which means an end to Italian operations by September. Spain withdrew its 1,300 soldiers from Iraq back in 2004 after a change of government. The Netherlands, Ukraine, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Honduras have also pulled out. Only a few thousand coalition troops (mostly British) remain alongside some 130,000 US soldiers. Iraq is being left for the US to handle alone.

``The United States can be successful in this war if and when it succeeds in convincing the majority of the people in the Muslim and Arab nations of the inherent superiority and universality of its ideas over those espoused by militant Islamic groups and is successful in equating its ideals of political constitutionalism and social equality, for example, with the ideals of egalitarianism, which exist within Islam, as a religion, itself. ``

That`s just it - it`s tough to convince the majority of people in this region of the ``inherent superiority and universality`` of western ideals. Many people may like Western values, but many don`t care for what they see as the ills of Westernization - a focus on the self above all else, greed as a primary virtue, the breakdown of the family unit, lack of a strong foundation of ethics, increasing societal fragmentation and alienation (just today I read an article about the increasing social fragmentation in the US), and so on.

``The greatest misfortune of the politics in the Arab and Muslim lands has been its inability to offer any leadership or a future to its people and historically speaking, there has been no leadership in the Arab-Muslim world capable of voicing the sentiments of its populations and nor has it been historically successful in realizing them in the last hundred years...Therefore, the United States should allow the Islamic world to see and experience what a tolerant, democratic and progressive society and free peoples of the world are capable of and it should let them experience this option.``

This is an argument that is commonly used to explain Islamic militantism, but I remain unconvinced of it. History is littered with examples of an oppressed people with no voice coming together when aggrieved and overthrowing the established order. What makes so many people, including the author here, so sure the Muslims in these repressive regimes are incapable of doing the same?

It`s not a popular point to make these days, but these regimes have stuck around for as long as they have because they have the tacit approval of at least a significant percentage of the population. Many people have tried to fit Muslims in the Western ideological box, and conclude that Muslims live the way they live in so many countries because they just don`t know a better way.

Many do know a better way, but prefer a more ``Islamic`` (if it may so be called) mode of existence. And that is because there *IS* a clash of civilizations, Islamic and Western cultures *are* inherently different. Not that I am claiming, however, that Arab muslims don`t want democracy, stability, peace and progress. I`m just saying that the specific variant of democracy and progress they want is very different from the Western mindset. Let`s keep in mind that the majority of the world`s muslims live in freedom - so muslims have already experienced what the ``free people of the world`` are capable of.

Now that the two cowards have had their heads handed to them after having been `led away`, the yankees are crying `desecration`.



Great ...

To All:

Thank you, for posting your comments to this article and though I would attempt to venture a reply to your comments, it would not be possible given the volume of comments, which have recorded. Some of you have agreed and some have disagreed and others have simply debated what they wished to discuss, irrespective of what was being suggested. Still, such is the nature of expression that one must bow before it and accept it.

The idea was not to prove a point as much as it was learn, from a perspective analysis, based on the comments on how a policy option would be greeted, where it to be implemented. The debate on this conflict, for a lack of a better defining term, cannot be limited into an intellectual niche, but it is possible and it is even a requirement given the sense of the times, to challenge the old accepted conventional wisdom behind this debate. Old orthodoxies have to be confronted and periodically asked to justify themselves, because the self-accepted truisms, which are not critically questioned and debated, often lead to a perpetuation of injustices.

Hamidm, some times it is better to be considered wrong when the end result ends in the right decision. :)

Ciao

#144, masadi {``#143, tahmed, people arent as dumb as you assume them to be. They can recognize by reading your posts that what you`re selling is dung, all dressed up to hide its ugliness.``}

Asadi Sahib,
Whether I totally agree with you or not, I must compliment you on your ability to recognize a hypocrite and a racist. In trying to ape the white man, this paindoo really believes that he owns a plantation down south full of dark-skinned people over whom he can decide in matters of life and death.

#143, {``Masadi: So I see you are now back to Rule 2 that I mentioned in #120 (encouraged no doubt with Salim`s gibberish). ``}

When this imposter can`t debate effectively, he just assumes that his opponents are uttering gibberish. He will keep quiet for a few days and then return with another ludicrous and nonsensical remark - finally establishing that in addition to being a hypocrite, a charlatan, and a bigot, he is foremost a fool.

#143, tahmed, people arent as dumb as you assume them to be. They can recognize by reading your posts that what you`re selling is dung, all dressed up to hide its ugliness. You can fool the blind who have lost their sense of smell, but not the seeing thinking folk.

Masadi: So I see you are now back to Rule 2 that I mentioned in #120 (encouraged no doubt with Salim`s gibberish). Strong words, and weak arguments are the mark of a loser - and in your post, it is a case of Hollow Insults and zero arguments.

tahmed writes in #140 <<< those like me who try to understand the facts in an unbiased manner. >>>

If your understanding of ``facts`` is unbiased then Jeffery Dahmer must be an angel in disguise. Hypocrite, slave of the US elite, idolator, oppressor of poor people around the globe, stay on the dung you call ``facts`` because that is where you belong.

masadi #139 {``It is because of people like you, the faithful slaves of the tyrants, that the vast majority of humanity suffers including Pakistanis. I would never like to be in your shoes when your maker judges you. ...On all counts you have been stumped, but you cling to falsehood like a fly clings to dung.``}

Masadi,
I must compliment you on your keen sense of perception - you have figured out this hypocritical octogenarian perfectly. While not taking sides in your lively debate, I must concede that you are at least focused, determined, and sincerely believe in your faith. This scoundrel, on the other hand, has the audacity to preach Islam, Muslim unity, and modernity while he wanks off his mantra of prejudice, bigotry, and racism in the dark closet of his indecent mind. Imagine a man who vehemently defends (in fact he has mentioned ``over my dead body``) the illegal, cruel, unjust, and miserly act of the Paki Punjoo-dominated Government of Pakistan in not repatriating Muslim Paki citizens ``stranded`` in Bangladesh. He finds it convenient to brush off these unfortunate Pakis as ``Biharis,`` somehow justifying in his perverted and racist mind that cruelty against dark-skinned ``Biharis`` is justified. This bastard of Aryan descent and European features with Alexander`s fine homosexual genes is going to speak about the true meaning of Islam. Is there no shame left among Paki Punjoos? Can`t you put this miserable man in his place before he hurts Islam, Pakistan, and humanity?

masadi #139 What you say would make a fine Friday afternoon sermon in Mansoora. Like the rest of your posts, it studiously fails to acknowledge the simple, specific thing I have been bringing to your attention.

As for what the Almighty Maker has to say about this discussion (assuming he has been following your illuminating posts, leaving aside His other tasks like keeping the planets from colliding into one another, ensuring that the Planck Constant assigned to this universe is not monkeyed with by the likes of you, ensuring peace among those little green men in galaxies far, far away), I think my friend that it is you who need to be concerned with.

RBM (Read the Blessed Manual)!! Learn about what happens to individuals like you who give Friday afternoon sermons pretending to be God`s spokesmen vs. those like me who try to understand the facts in an unbiased manner. Then get your act together.

#137, tahmed, most people are not as dumb as you think them to be, they can read your posts and my replies and arrive at the obvious conclusion that you have no point, the only purpose behind your post was to worship the colonial elite, you never miss an opportunity to do. It is quite obvious where you unconditional submission lies. It is because of people like you, the faithful slaves of the tyrants, that the vast majority of humanity suffers including Pakistanis. I would never like to be in your shoes when your maker judges you. Not only did these tyrannous elite take the barbarous trade in flesh to new levels, linked it with religiously inspired racism, ``the curse of Ham``, and took it to levels of inhumanity never before seen, when they ended it they did it for economic reasons, not moral ones and did nothing to alleviate the effects of this slavery, and as far as opposition goes, those in the West that were vested in this also opposed it tooth and nail. On all counts you have been stumped, but you cling to falsehood like a fly clings to dung.

strategic depth..in reverse..zeemax..your buddies are taking over parts of Pakistan..soon you will be able to live in an environment where everyone is a believer in your kooky conspiracy theories..

Visitors to the conflict zone describe soldiers as being largely confined to their outposts.

In Tribal Pakistan, a Tide of Militancy

Influence of Taliban Said to Be Spreading Beyond Border Areas Near Afghanistan

By Pamela Constable

Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 20, 2006; Page A11


PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- In North Waziristan, barbers are ordered not to shave off beards, and thieves have been swiftly beheaded. In Swat, television sets and VCRs have been burned in public. In Dir, religious groups openly recruit teenagers to fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan. In the Khyber area, armed squads have burst into rooming houses, forcing people to pledge to obey Islamic law.

A tide of Islamic militancy is spreading across and beyond the semiautonomous tribal areas of northwest Pakistan that hug the Afghan border, despite the deployment of some 70,000 Pakistani army troops there, according to a variety of people with close family, professional or political ties to the tribal regions.

Senior army officers in this provincial capital say they are making steady progress in pacifying the restive tribal belt and reining in religious extremists, who U.S. and Afghan authorities say have fomented much of the violence that has led to more than 500 deaths in Afghanistan in the past two months.
``We have them on the defensive now,`` Lt. Gen. Mohammed Hamid Khan, commander of the 11th Army Corps, said in an interview. ``The miscreants have gone into their shells, and things have cooled down tremendously.`` Khan said the army had shifted from mass raids to ``snap operations`` based on intelligence and now controls key towns once in the hands of militants.

But other observers say the army`s aggressive efforts since 2004 have backfired, alienating the populace with heavy-handed tactics and undermining the traditional authority of tribal elders and officials. They say the local Taliban movement, which has close ethnic and theological links to the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan, has won new supporters and been able to carve out enclaves of alternative power.

``Things are starting to spin out of control,`` one Western diplomat in Islamabad said of the tribal areas, which have historically been deeply conservative. ``In some areas, it`s beginning to look like they are setting up a government within a government.``

The tribal areas are off-limits to foreign visitors, including journalists, except for periodic, brief helicopter visits with military authorities. But in recent interviews here, tribal lawyers, educators and politicians with knowledge of events in the areas described growing fundamentalist influence and intimidation that is spilling beyond the sparsely inhabited tribal zones and edging closer to settled, government-run localities.

In the past six months, they said, dozens of tribal elders and officials have been killed, including an uncle of the current provincial chief minister. Fundamentalist clerics have freely used FM radio stations to preach holy war and set up public recruiting offices in towns such as Dir and Bannu just outside the tribal areas. Music stores have been shut down and thieves executed before crowds.

``North and South Waziristan are in the grip of Talibanization`` and all of the seven federally administered tribal agencies ``can come under its grip, too,`` said Afrasiab Khattak, a human rights activist and official of the secular Awami National Party. ``The army has put up an honest fight, but it has failed, and the government has failed. The traditional system has been made ineffective, and the Taliban have moved into the vacuum.``

One university instructor, who comes from South Waziristan, said that when he visited a year ago the area was blanketed with army troops, but that when he went back several months ago for a funeral, not a uniformed soldier was in sight while armed men in Taliban-style turbans patrolled in trucks. He asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.

``The situation is not what the government says,`` he said. ``The Taliban are totally in control. The people welcome them and the youths idolize them. There is no government, only the security forces who kill people. The Taliban settle disputes and deliver justice on the spot. The tribal areas are becoming nurseries for the Taliban, and the army can`t stop it.``

Last week, the discovery that a journalist in North Waziristan had been assassinated generated expressions of alarm and protests in multiple cities. Hayatullah Khan, who had been missing since December after reporting that the United States appeared to have staged a missile attack on Pakistani soil, was found shot in the head and handcuffed. Officials blamed religious extremists, but Khan`s relatives and others said they suspected Pakistani intelligence agencies were behind his killing.

Many government critics here accuse the intelligence services of fomenting religious extremism in the tribal areas as a means of keeping Afghanistan unstable and vulnerable to Pakistani control. Senior Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai, have also made such claims, which Pakistani officials deny.
``In my view, stability for Afghanistan is the best thing for Pakistan,`` said Hamid Khan, the army corps commander. ``All the turmoil there affects us; we get the refugees, the criminals, the drugs, the weapons. The miscreants have much safer sanctuaries on that side than on ours. If we want strategic depth, better we should have good relations than instability.``

The Pakistani army has suffered numerous casualties since it entered the tribal areas two years ago under pressure from Washington to crack down on Islamic radicals. There have been repeated bloody clashes with tribal militiamen and, more recently, a spate of roadside bombings and one suicide bombing that targeted an army convoy. Visitors to the conflict zone describe soldiers as being largely confined to their outposts.
Until recently, most religious violence was limited to North and South Waziristan, the poorest and most isolated of the tribal areas, where Islamic fervor has always been strong. Although a recent truce has calmed South Waziristan, the fundamentalist fervor now seems to be erupting in other parts of the region.

In Swat, a peaceful agricultural valley, Islamic preachers persuaded people to hand over their television sets in May and burned stacks of them in public. In the Khyber Agency, a prosperous commercial area that straddles a major highway into Afghanistan, armed followers of an Islamic preacher burst into shops and lodging houses in early June, demanding at gunpoint that people pledge to follow Islamic law. In the ensuing clashes with another religious militia, several dozen people were killed.

``There are elements that have decided to create Taliban enclaves and to `Waziristanize` the other tribal agencies,`` said Khattak, the human rights activist. ``The government says it is taking action, but it is not. The source of the problem is here, not in Afghanistan. If such a bloody drama can happen in Khyber, it can happen anywhere.``

Even in Peshawar, a huge city with a landscaped military district and a modern university, support for the revived Taliban movement is evident among students and worshipers at numerous mosques. Secular politicians say the militant fervor is being encouraged by the Islamic political parties that dominate the provincial government.

On a recent Friday, men emerging from prayer services said they were upset about army attacks on civilians in tribal areas and worried that U.S. forces in Afghanistan would enter Pakistan as well. One man, an English teacher, said the U.S. forces were ``savages and barbarians`` while the Taliban were ``religious scholars and sincere people.``

Another man with a black turban and bushy beard proudly identified himself as a former Taliban member who had fought in the capture of Kabul in 1996. Today, he said, the same conditions of lawlessness and immorality have returned on both sides of the border, demanding new action.

``Under the Taliban there was peace, there was order, there was justice. Now our people are facing cruelty, injustice and crime. It has all come back, and it cannot be allowed to continue,`` said Wahidullah, 32, who runs a religious academy for boys. ``If I didn`t have other responsibilities now, I would love to join the fight again.``

masadi: I detached the part that related to the point I have kept repeating - namely, the opposition of the maulvis to the removal of slavery in the ottoman empire, while it was the brits who pressured the ottoman caliph to end it. I did this because you had earlier detached a part that left out the key thing, namely the mullah`s pro-slavery role.

So, 80 posts later, you are still trying to wiggle out of this one by pretending not to understand. What else dont you understand? Let`s see - you dont understand plain english or simple numbers (as you demonstrated earlier).

I am seriously thinking of having you transferred from Chowk to the School for Remedial Adult Education!!

...Two soldiers of our Haditha army in Iraq have disappeared in thin air --

Yeah the report was that the two soldiers were `led` away ... hmmm ... wonder what happened to their M-32`s to resist their being `led` away. The poor kids must be pissing in their pants so were led away like stray puppies on a rope leash ...

This army is only good for joystick bombing from the air, or shooting 2 month babies in their mother`s laps. When confronted with real `soldiers`, they`re most obliged to be `led` away rather than fight. Cowards !

Re: # 135 zeemax {``...This army is only good for joystick bombing from the air, or shooting 2 month babies in their mother`s laps. When confronted with real `soldiers`, they`re most obliged to be `led` away rather than fight. Cowards ! ...``}


I must take very serious exception to this broad characterisation of the fighting men and women in the US military... If you had made this broad statement about the naPak fauj I would have agreed.

You know that I am a staunch critic and a vocal protester of the US imperialism, but I cannot disagree with this characterisation more.

I have known many US military people, at all levels from NCO to flag level, several of them very closely, and I can tell you that the average US military man is a far, FAR superior professional than anything you see in Pak-o-Hind or for that matter even in Western Europe. Give the devil his due. American military might is not just because of superior weaponry, its largely also superior, and I mean far superior, training and personnel development.

Having said that, I`ll grant you that the soldiers in Iraq are at a psychological disadvantage because most of them are not convinced that they are there for a just cause. This effects morale, no doubt, and its brings the worst out in people.

...SR

Re: # 135

Bravo......the new knight from the United Jehadist Front on Chowk is indeed keeping the flag of his cyber Jehad flying high............

#133 tahmed writes <<< How is this different than what I wrote in #121 >>>

You detached a part of your post from its context, without which is it a mere bit of information that makes little sense. Don`t try to fool people on here, they can go back and read the posts

masadi: So you think you can slip away by digging to #50. Bad idea!! If you wish to go to #50 - then quote what I wrote there on this point I have been repeating over and over again trying to get your attention on. This is what I wrote:

`` in the 19th century , the west ended human slavery and put pressure on the ottomans to do the same - while the mullahs opposed it tooth and nail as being a western conspiracy to attack Islam (and it is of course implicitly sanctioned by the Quran). Saudi Arabia, as usual did not get around to abolishing slavery until 1962!! (all this is of course, now forgotten by muslims who never talk of resurrecting slavery anymore even though they passionately oppsed it in the 19th century). ``

How is this different than what I wrote in #121, except that it also mentions the wonderful record of the Dwellers of the Birthplace of Islam, the Custodians of the Holy Places, the Saudi Arabians, wrt slavery. No amount of wiggling and pointing fingers is going to change what I wrote above!!

If you dont like a fact, that is not enough to make that fact go away. Need I repeat Omar Khayyam to refresh your memory on this point?

tahmed in #127 <<< Mr. Masadi goes looking into #50. I see you have trouble not just with understanding plain english, but with comprehending simple numbers as well >>>

Your argument about emancipation started in post #50, without which all your other posts are senseless. Trying to weasel out of the position your bs has trapped you in? What else is new, Cheney and his gang are doing that ad nauseum as we speak.

#130 bharath: Try me. :-)

PS: Just make sure what you are saying is factual and makes sense. E.g. Trying to portray all muslims as terrorists does not make sense. Similarly, ignoring violence conducted in the name of hinduism while pointing fingers at muslims does not make sense. Kapeesh???

#128 yes indeed. :-)

America needs to realize that it`s at war with militant Islam and not terrorism..it`s at war with people like these

A War on Schoolgirls
Unable to win on the battlefield, the Taliban are fighting to prevent half the country`s children from getting an education.

By Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai
Newsweek

June 26, 2006 issue - Summer vacation has only begun, but as far as 12-year-old Nooria is concerned, the best thing is knowing she has a school to go back to in the fall. She couldn`t be sure the place would stay open four months ago, after the Taliban tried to burn it down. Late one February night, more than a dozen masked gunmen burst into the 10-room girls` school in Nooria`s village, Mandrawar, about 100 miles east of Kabul. They tied up and beat the night watchman, soaked the principal`s office and the library with gasoline, set it on fire and escaped into the darkness. The townspeople, who doused the blaze before it could spread, later found written messages from the gunmen promising to cut off the nose and ears of any teacher or student who dared to return.

The threats didn`t work. Within days, most of the school`s 650 pupils were back to their studies. Classes were held under a grove of trees in the courtyard for several weeks, despite the winter chill, until repairs inside the one-story structure were complete. Nearby schools replaced at least some of the library`s books. But the hate mail kept coming, with threats to shave the teachers` heads as well as mutilate their faces. Earlier this month, NEWSWEEK visited and talked to students and faculty on the last day of classes. Nooria, who dreams of becoming a teacher herself, expressed her determination to finish school. ``I`m not afraid of getting my nose and ears cut off,`` she said, all dressed up in a long purple dress and headscarf. ``I want to keep studying.``

Schoolgirls need that kind of courage in Afghanistan. Unable to win on the battlefield, the Taliban are trying to discredit the Kabul government by blocking its efforts to raise Afghanistan out of its long dark age. They particularly want to undo one of the biggest changes of the past four years: the resumption of education for girls, which the Taliban outlawed soon after taking power in 1996. ``The extremists want to show the people that the government and the international community cannot keep their promises,`` says Ahmad Nader Nadery of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). Today the Ministry of Education says the country has 1,350 girls` schools, along with 2,900 other institutions that hold split sessions, with girls-only classes in the afternoon. (Coeducation is still forbidden.) More than a third of Afghanistan`s 5 million schoolchildren are now girls, compared with practically none in early 1992. In the last six months, however, Taliban attacks and threats of attacks have disrupted or shut down more than 300 of those schools.

Most of the closures have been in the far south, where the Taliban are strongest, but schools are also getting hit in areas that used to be relatively safe, like the fertile river valleys of Laghman province. The rock-walled compound where Nooria attends classes is one of six schools for girls in the province that have been torched so far this year. The damage at two of them was so bad that they remain closed. In nearby Logar province, arsonists have struck 10 sister schools—all within 50 miles of Kabul. ``People are extremely frightened,`` says Palwasha Shaheed Kakar, the AIHRC representative in neighboring Nangarhar province, where at least eight other schools have burned. ``These extremists need to attack only one or two schools to send a strong message.``

The girls` school in Haider Khani village, just up the main road from Mandrawar, has suffered a sharp drop in attendance since January, when masked gunmen forced their way in and torched the place. Before the attack, up to 80 percent of the families in Haider Khani were sending their daughters to school, according to the principal, Fazal Rabi. An American military Provincial Reconstruction Team quickly repaired the damage and reopened the school. Even so, the principal reckons that only 40 percent of the village`s preteen girls came back, and only 10 percent of the teenagers. Parents dread what might happen on the walk to school. Teachers get scared, too. Since the Mandrawar attack, Nooria`s teacher, Farida, has traveled to and from school every day wearing a burqa and escorted by a male relative. ``Otherwise I fear my nose and hair will be cut off,`` she told NEWSWEEK.

#115, Tahmed4 {``the last but one sentence in #114 to masadi should read `` You are a slave because you are a prisoner not because you are bound by physical chains, but because of your own mental limitations.``
Now you can go an lick the feet of your Arab masters.``}

This piece of nonsense is coming from a Paki Punjoo racist who is adamant on denying the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of ``stranded`` Pakis in BD. This charlatan is a prisoner of his own provincial and ethnic bigotry and has the nerve to call others to lick feet. People of his flavor of hypocrisy have no business in telling others to lick anyone`s feet, especially his own - unless they relish the prospect of having athelete`s tongue.

#121 I wrote ``The point I was making is provided in the example to Rule 1 in #120.``

Mr. Masadi goes looking into #50. I see you have trouble not just with understanding plain english, but with comprehending simple numbers as well.

In the pre-9/11 world, an Islamist`s most dreaded nightmare was America`s potential to emerge as the moral torch bearer of the world; a Godless moral torch bearer if I might add.

tahmed writes in #123 <<<#121 Masadi Logic: ``He brought out the point of British opposition to slavery to show their moral superiority``

This is not the point I was making >>>>

That was exactly the point you were trying to make, you never lose an opportunity to do sajood to your ``gods``, the US elite. I reject them, you want me to submit to them, I do not.

Tahmed wrote in # 50 <<< this begs the question, of course, of what is the ``greater good``. from everything i have seen, there is no question that things coming from west have been for the greater good while things coming from muslim countries lately (i.e. in the past few centuries) have been for the greater bad.
in the 19th century , the west ended human slavery and put pressure on the ottomans to do the same - while the mullahs opposed it tooth... >>>

There, stumped again.

Two soldiers of our Haditha army in Iraq have disappeared in thin air -- captured by the insurgents in broad day light -- and carried away -- and we can`t find them -- no clues -- no leads --

no Iraqis -- like that Panchtantra famous Rishi Muni -- ``my eyes may have seen it but they they can`t talk, my tongue can talk but it hasn`t seen it -- are telling us -- if they have seen anybody with the two american captives --

this pretty much sums up how good our `intelligence` is -- and how liked we are in Iraq.....

.......Khalilzad memo or no Khalilzad`s memo....

#121 Masadi Logic: ``He brought out the point of British opposition to slavery to show their moral superiority``

This is not the point I was making. The point I was making is provided in the example to Rule 1 in #120. Are you having trouble understanding plain English?? or are you merely reading selectively hoping no one will notice?

The rest of your post is an illustration of Rule 2 in #120.

``The Russian public has a generally negative view of the United States’ foreign policy at the present time. Clear majorities feel that the United States has a mainly negative influence in the world (61% and 25% positive), view America’s use of military force and the threat of force unfavorably (74% and 13% favorable), and judge the effect of U.S. foreign policy over the past few years as negative for Russian interests (56% and 22% positive). Most Russians also have an unfavorable view of President Bush (59% and 25% favorable). Many other countries share the view that the United States has a mainly negative influence in the world, according to global polls.`` (WORLDPUBLICOPINION.ORG)

Tahmed writes in #120 <<< End of Discussion >>>

End of discussion because tahmed has been stumped. He brought out the point of British opposition to slavery to show their moral superiority, saying that the Mullah`s opposed ending it at that time, so I asked him if in his selective presentation of history detached from economic and historical contexts,

1. He had forgotten about the Atlantic Slave Trade where when their economic benefit from slavery was profitable they took trade in human flesh to levels never before seen in human history

2. I provided academic references to that effect, that prove that the so called Islamic slavery never approached in numbers the Atlantic Slave Trade and the racism that linked slavery and its trade was a European endeavour.

3. I asked him to explain to me his ``morality`` claim when the cause of this oppositon was economic and why it wasn`t extended to indentured servants and factory workers who were brutalized in a similar manner by these colonial elite.

As usual he had no answers because he has taken an oath to unconditionally worship the colonial elite and their successors, the US elite.

Masadi`s Rules of Discussion:

Rule 1: When unable to provide a rational response, change the subject.

Examples: I point to the fact that mullahs opposed the abolition of slavery in the ottoman empire in the early 19th century on the grounds that this was part of their ``Islam``, while the brits put pressure on the ottoman caliph to abolish slavery. Unable to respond, Masadi ignores that and instead changes the subject to start talking about ``Atlantic Slavery``.

Rule 2: When the other individual brings up the point again, call the other individual an idiot and/or a hypocrite and/or a ``full of slogans`` and/or accuse him of not being rational.

End of Discussion.

HP`s post #118 <<< Fuel lines have grown so long that one staffer spent 12 hours in line on his day off. ``Employees all confirm that by the last week of May, they were getting one hour of power for every six hours without.....One staff member reported that a friend lives in a building that houses a new minister; within 24 hours of his appointment, her building had city power 24 hours a day.`` >>>

The brave people of Iraq are going through a very tough period in their history. They are at the forefront of the resistance against the mutual tyranny of both the petty barbarians and the higher barbarians, fueled by the US elite~ look how they`ve destroyed an entire nation and still strutt around justifying it with BS, claiming to be ``civilization``. The struggle of the people of Iraq is the struggle of oppressed folk around the globe. Inshallah they will prevail and this war will mark the beginning of the end of the Empire and its enslaving of humanity. A new day will dawn soon.

`Wash Post` Obtains Shocking Memo from U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Details Increasing Danger and Hardship

By Greg Mitchell

Published: June 18, 2006 6:20 PM ET
NEW YORK The Washington Post has obtained a cable, marked ``sensitive,`` that it says show that just before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, ``the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees.``

This cable outlines, the Post reported Sunday, ``the daily-worsening conditions for those who live outside the heavily guarded international zone: harassment, threats and the employees` constant fears that their neighbors will discover they work for the U.S. government.``

It`s actually far worse than that, as the details published below indicate, which include references to abductions, threats to women`s rights, and ``ethnic cleansing.``

A PDF copy of the cable shows that it was sent to the SecState in Washington, D.C. from ``AMEmbassy Baghdad`` on June 6. The typed name at the very bottom is Khalilzad -- the name of the U.S. Ambassador, though it is not known if this means he wrote the memo or merely approved it.

The subject of the memo is: ``Snapshots from the Office -- Public Affairs Staff Show Strains of Social Discord.``

As a footnote in one of the 23 sections, the embassy relates, ``An Arab newspaper editor told us he is preparing an extensive survey of ethnic cleansing, which he said is taking place in almost every Iraqi province, as political parties and their militiast are seemingly engaged in tit-for-tat reprisals all over Iraq.``

Among the other troubling reports:

-- ``Personal safety depends on good relations with the `neighborhood` governments, who barricade streets and ward off outsiders. The central government, our staff says, is not relevant; even local mukhtars have been displaced or coopted by militias. People no longer trust most neighbors.``

-- One embassy employee had a brother-in-law kidnapped. Another received a death threat, and then fled the country with her family.

-- Iraqi staff at the embassy, beginning in March and picking up in May, report ``pervasive`` harassment from Islamist and/or militia groups. Cuts in power and rising fuel prices ``have diminished the quality of life.`` Conditions vary but even upscale neighborhoods ``have visibly deteriorated`` and one of them is now described as a ``ghost town.``

-- Two of the three female Iraqis in the public affairs office reported stepped-up harassment since mid-May....``some groups are pushing women to cover even their face, a step not taken in Iran even at its most conservative.`` One of the women is now wearing a full abaya after receiving direct threats.

-- It has also become ``dangerous`` for men to wear shorts in public and ``they no longer allow their children to play outside in shorts.`` People who wear jeans in public have also come under attack.

-- Embassy employees are held in such low esteem their work must remain a secret and they live with constant fear that their cover will be blown. Of nine staffers, only four have told their families where they work. They all plan for their possible abductions. No one takes home their cell phones as this gives them away. One employee said criticism of the U.S. had grown so severe that most of her family believes the U.S. ``is punishing populations as Saddam did.``

-- Since April, the ``demeanor`` of guards in the Green Zone has changed, becoming more ``militia-like,`` and some are now ``taunting`` embassy personnel or holding up their credentials and saying loudly that they work in the embassy: ``Such information is a death sentence if overheard by the wrong people.`` For this reason, some have asked for press instead of embassy credentials.

-- ``For at least six months, we have not been able to use any local staff members for translation at on-camera press events....We cannot call employees in on weekends or holidays without blowing their `cover.```

-- ``More recently, we have begun shredding documents printed out that show local staff surnames. In March, a few staff members approached us to ask what provisions would we make for them if we evacuate.``

-- The overall environment is one of ``frayed social networks,`` with frequent actual or perceived insults. None of this is helped by lack of electricity. ``One colleague told us he feels `defeated` by circumstances, citing his example of being unable to help his two-year-old son who has asthma and cannot sleep in stifling heat,`` which is now reaching 115 degrees.

-- ``Another employee tell us that life outside the Green Zone has become `emotionally draining.` He lives in a mostly Shiite area and claims to attend a funeral `every evening.```

-- Fuel lines have grown so long that one staffer spent 12 hours in line on his day off. ``Employees all confirm that by the last week of May, they were getting one hour of power for every six hours without.....One staff member reported that a friend lives in a building that houses a new minister; within 24 hours of his appointment, her building had city power 24 hours a day.``

-- The cable concludes that employees` ``personal fears are reinforcing divisive sectarian or ethnic channels, despite talk of reconciliation by officials.``

The final line of the Cable is: KHALILZAD``


Anyone rememebr the flypaper theory?

tahmed writes <<< You are a slave because you are incapable of reflection, and therefore incapable of changing your views on anything. >>>

And yet my posts are full of logical analysis and yours full of slogans and ad nauseum repititon. You follow mainstream bs, I challenge that bs using reason and that makes me a slave and you a free thinker? As always, your reasoning is lop sided. I don`t have any ``Arab`` masters, neither do I defend ethnicities like you defend the `Anglo Saxon`` ethos. You wont even condemn the worst barbarism of these elite, you support colonization and brush aside the mass slaughter of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and I have not said a single word to support the Arab practice of slavery, just pointed the BS in your argument assigning morality to the British colonials~ that my ignorant friend makes YOU a slave not I.

the last but one sentence in #114 to masadi should read `` You are a slave because you are a prisoner not because you are bound by physical chains, but because of your own mental limitations.``

Now you can go an lick the feet of your Arab masters.

masadi #113 I am a free man and it is you who is the slave.

I am a free man because I use my eyes and brains to reach my conclusions and so can rationally present by views, and by the same token I can change my views on specific issues (as I have sometimes done on chowk) if I am presented with additional evidence.

You are a slave because you are incapable of reflection, and therefore incapable of changing your views on anything. This is the worst form of slavery: Your slavish mentality makes you one step worse than slaves who were forced into slavery by Arabs. You are a slave because you are a prisoner not of your own mental limitations. So, go lick the feet of your Arab masters.

Re: # 114
#114 by tahmed32 on June 18, 2006 8:18pm PT
{{{{I am a free man because I use my eyes and brains to reach my conclusions}}}}

Really!!!?

{{{{You are a slave because you are incapable of reflection, and therefore incapable of changing your views on anything}}}

And you are very much capbale of reflection and changing your views on many many many many things!!!!

hamidm writes <<< ................. it has nothing to do with masadi`s love of the culture of death - for god`s sake, the man is one stick of dynamite short of blowing himself up !............... >>>

Meaningless rhetoric, using bs and fox newsesque caricatures to cover up the fact that he has been stumped in every claim he has brought forth from the intellectual whorehouse of shock-troop republicanism.

tahmed, I didn`t claim moral superiority for anyone, you claim that for your colonial (and now neo-colonial) masters (note here that when I condemn them, I am not talking about the vast majority of the masses of the Western world), and I use YOUR criteria to prove that no such claim of moral superiority is justified. It has nothing to do with being God appointed. Don`t hide behind slogans. They are the worst barbarians and hypocrites that have lived to date. Whether you worship them or don`t worship them does not alter this fact.

nasah: could there be a teeny tiny possibility that this kind of enablement by muslims is the problem..

Divided loyalties
Sociology prof warns multiculturalism `creates nations within a nation`

By Licia Corbella

Dr. Mahfooz Kanwar recently attended Calgary`s largest mosque for a funeral.

At one point in the proceedings, a man Kanwar has known for more than three decades led the prayers.

``He was saying in Urdu (the official language of Pakistan): `Oh, God, protect us from the infidels, who pollute us with their vile ways,``` recalls Kanwar, a professor of sociology at Mount Royal College in Calgary.

``I stood up and grabbed him by the lapels, which was shocking even to me because I have never done anything like that in my life and I said: `How dare you attack my country.` And then I addressed the crowd and said: `I have known this man for more than 30 years and he has been on welfare for almost all of those years.` ``

Kanwar chuckles at the memory.

``Then I said to this semi-literate man, `you should thank me and those you call infidels.`

``He asked me why and I said: `Because the taxes I pay are putting food on your table as are the taxes of the so-called ``infidels.` ``

Most Canadians and many Muslims would applaud Dr. Kanwar`s righteous outburst. But guess which of the two men is no longer welcome at the Sarcee Tr. S.W. mosque?

Not the intolerant, hate-spewing semi-literate. No, it`s Dr. Kanwar who`s persona non grata.

That, says Kanwar, is just one of numerous instances he has experienced as a result of the culture of ignorance and intolerance that permeates so many mosques in Canada and throughout the world.

In light of the arrests two weeks ago of 17 young Muslim Canadian men who are alleged to have planned terrorist attacks against their fellow Canadians that included attacking Parliament, seizing the CBC and beheading the prime minister, Kanwar says it`s vitally important for Canadians to start making more demands of those who immigrate to this country.

Kanwar says we now know one of the 17 accused was allowed to spew hatred and calls to violent jihad at a Toronto-area mosque and he was never once told by the leadership there to stop.

``Multiculturalism creates nations within a nation and divides the loyalty of people,`` says the 65-year-old Pakastani-born Kanwar, who immigrated to Canada in 1966.

``It allows people to marginalize themselves. It endangers us all as these recent arrests show.``

Because of Kanwar`s open and published opposition to Ontario`s proposal last year to consider allowing sharia law for arbitration purposes in that province, Kanwar says he has been issued with fatwahs -- not the death-threat versions made famous by the one issued against Salman Rushdie for writing the novel The Satanic Verses -- but more like a shunning.

Kanwar, a devout Muslim, says he has essentially been excommunicated by Calgary`s mosques because he is too tolerant of others.

Six of the young men who listened to him are also charged in the plot.

Kanwar is pretty certain, if he spoke up at that mosque, however, with his message that Canada`s culture is better than the culture found in any Islamic-based country, he`d be kicked out.

``The policy of official multiculturalism is a disaster,`` says Kanwar, who ironically once headed a government-funded multicultural organization in Calgary in the early `70s.

Every year, Kanwar`s organization would host a large food and crafts festival in the basement of the Jubilee Auditorium.

#103 by nasah on June 18, 2006 10:25am PT

while i have no idea who Diana West is and I don`t usually read the editorials from the moonie times, she`s dead on..the enemy isn`t terrorism..the enemy is militant Islam and it`s enablers..the muslims who live here in the west and know who`s buying and selling the jihadi videos but chose to do nothing about it...


why don`t you address the points she`s making..

Why is it that the majority of the muslim world support OBL..why is it that the majority of people in the land of Islam`s holiest shrines and the majority of pakis - allah`s chosen people - support OBL and are against the war in Afghanistan?

Why is it that brit-pakis - with all the opportunities available to them - still decide to blow up a bunch of fellow brits

Jihadist of Mass Destruction


By Paul Cruickshank and Mohanad Hage Ali
Sunday, June 11, 2006; Page B02
Washington Post

`Dirty bombs for a dirty nation.``

The slogan appeared on a jihadist Web site in December 2004, its author lamenting that the planes that struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, did not also carry weapons of mass destruction. He pressed for a WMD attack against the United States, and proposed that deadly new dirty-bomb catchphrase to rally his followers.

No al-Qaeda figure, not even Osama bin Laden, has dedicated more effort to thinking through how to destroy the United States than the author of that Web posting, Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, the veteran Syrian jihadi whom Pakistani police arrested last fall. He is arguably al-Qaeda`s most influential strategist since 9/11, and has been at the center of al-Qaeda`s efforts to develop WMD capabilities since the late 1990s.

But this is a rapidly changing war in which the arrest or death of any one leader may not matter. The new al-Qaeda promoted by Setmariam and Zarqawi is an al-Qaeda that lives on the Internet and in the swelling ranks of jihadists worldwide.

Indeed, Setmariam`s exhortations and ideas, posted over the years on jihadist Web sites, offer a public dossier on al-Qaeda`s strategies for global jihad and its internal debates on WMD. Our examination of thousands of pages of Setmariam`s writings and videos of his speeches reveals just how influential the 47-year-old Syrian has been in redirecting al-Qaeda toward a more decentralized and hard-line jihad -- one that will be that much harder to defeat because it is now so diffuse.

Setmariam`s vision centered on a few key ideas: Al-Qaeda needed to remake itself to become looser, meaner and more resilient. And to defeat the United States, jihad should be waged globally and with many more recruits.

This vision has become reality. After the London bombings of July 2005, which were undertaken by a local, autonomous cell and resembled attacks in Casablanca, Istanbul and Madrid, Setmariam gloated on a jihadist Web site: ``I swear to God that I have in me a joy stronger than the joy of the farmer who sees the harvest of his fruits after a long planting.``

Setmariam developed his strategy at the al-Ghuraba camp in Afghanistan from 1998 to 2001, where he instructed the best and brightest of al-Qaeda -- those who could recruit and plan operations.

His Afghanistan lectures were filmed and distributed across the Muslim world and in Europe; his videotapes turned up in Naples in 2000, when police raided the homes of members of a militant Islamist group. His lectures were later incorporated into a 1,600-page publication, ``The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance,`` which was disseminated widely on the Internet beginning in December 2004.

We obtained more than 20 hours of video of Setmariam`s lectures, in which he addresses his students, clad in white Islamic garb, with the obligatory Kalashnikov propped against a wall. Even then, Setmariam was urging future operatives toward the new structure and strategy al-Qaeda would adopt after 9/11.

Setmariam argued that ``individual terrorism`` should replace the group`s hierarchically orchestrated attacks. He believed al-Qaeda should move away from centrally coordinated actions led by teams from Afghanistan -- the model for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and later the 9/11 attacks -- and should instead rely on local groups launching spontaneous attacks. He offered a harsh critique of al-Qaeda`s rigid hierarchy, even drawing a diagram to show how easy it was to round up a cell and then trace its members back to a leader.

Setmariam`s courses also offered tips on how to encourage more Muslims to become jihadis. ``This should be done,`` he said, by ``highlighting Jewish-Crusader-Hindu oppression of Muslims`` and emphasizing the ``degeneracy of the Non-Muslim world.`` He claimed his teaching was informed by years of living in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s, where he blended in because of his fluent Spanish and French and his red hair and fair complexion. ``I am one of the few jihadis who understand the Western culture and mentality,`` he said later.

Many of the students Setmariam trained in Afghanistan now recruit jihadis worldwide. His protégé Amer Azizi is wanted by Spanish authorities in connection with the 9/11 plot, the Madrid bombings of March 2004 and the buildup of al-Qaeda`s presence in Spain. Before Zarqawi`s death, Azizi was thought to be one of his key aides in Iraq.

But clearly it is through the online postings of his writings that Setmariam exerted the greatest impact, both because he cogently expressed jihadist strategies and because the medium spreads his ideas across the world instantly. Setmariam`s online writings may well have influenced the manner of recruitment and even targets for the perpetrators of the attacks in London and Madrid.

The power of the Internet to foment jihad was reaffirmed earlier this month with the arrests of suspected bombing plotters outside Toronto. The suspects reportedly became radicalized through militant Web sites and received online advice from Younis Tsouli, the Britain-based webmaster for Islamic extremist sites who called himself ``Terrorist 007,`` before he was arrested late last year.

According to U.S. authorities, Setmariam helped al-Qaeda`s WMD chief, Abu Khabab al-Masri, instruct recruits on the use of such weapons at the Derunta training camp in Afghanistan before 9/11. Setmariam and Masri were particularly determined to develop the ability to explode radioactive material over a large area by inserting it into a conventional bomb. In a letter written before 9/11 and discovered in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, Masri instructed al-Qaeda operatives to work with contacts in Pakistan to learn how to use ``the charges from a traditional nuclear reactor for military ends.``

``I feel sorry that there were no weapons of mass destruction in the planes that attacked New York and Washington on 9/11,`` Setmariam said in his December 2004 Web posting. He argued that the attacks were not destructive enough to justify the loss of al-Qaeda`s sanctuary in Afghanistan following the U.S. backlash. Bin Laden had not fully thought through how to destroy the United States, which is ``a life and death issue for all Muslims,`` Setmariam wrote.

In Iraq today, Setmariam`s hopes for ``thousands, even hundreds of thousands of Muslims participating in jihad`` are becoming reality. Iraq is evolving into what Setmariam refers to in his 2004 book as ``an open front`` -- a necessary area to build ``individual terrorism`` because it offers a ``haven`` and a rich recruiting environment.

But even with the Iraqi insurgency and an increasingly globalized jihad, Setmariam realized that defeating the United States through conventional means would take ``many years and enormous sacrifices,`` as he wrote in the December 2004 online posting. Therefore, ``an attack on the United States with WMD has become necessary . . . by means of decisive strategic operations with weapons of mass destruction including nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.``

In his 2004 book, Setmariam said that ``Strategic Operations Brigades`` should be established and given ``very high-level financial capabilities`` to acquire an ``operational knowledge and potential to use WMD.`` Then Americans, he argued, could be subjected to a ``back-breaking policy of collective massacres.``.

Despite his capture, Setmariam`s strategic advice will remain influential. His final, chilling proposal, made before his arrest and posted online in December 2005 by unknown followers, argues that with Washington and its allies bogged down in Iraq, the time is ripe for al-Qaeda to strike again: ``I reiterate my call for mujahideen who are spread in Europe and in our enemies` countries or those able to go there, to move fast to hit countries that have a military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan or the Arab peninsula or to hit their interests in our countries and all over the world.``

A PALESTINIAN LIFELINE
Hamas has only benefited from the West`s attempt to starve its government

Editorial
Saturday, May 20, 2006; Page A22
Washington Post

A WESTERN effort to tame the Islamic government of the Palestinian Authority is foundering. The United States, European Union and Israel have been withholding aid -- and in Israel`s case, customs receipts -- from an administration that depends on those funds to pay some 165,000 employees. The outside nations, the chief source of support for the Palestinian Authority before Hamas won an election, have been demanding that the Hamas movement accept Israel, renounce terrorism and abide by existing Israeli-Palestinian accords before funding is restored. But Palestinian leaders have a long tradition of exploiting the suffering of their own people for political ends; Hamas has been content to foster a humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The result is that Israel and the Western donors are negotiating among themselves about how much funding should be restored to the Palestinians and in what form. They have little choice, since the collapse of the Palestinian Authority would do more damage to Israel, and lingering hopes for a Middle East peace, than it would to Hamas. But the governments need to be careful in their retrenchment: What`s needed is an approach that spares average Palestinians from hunger and disease while continuing the political isolation of Hamas.

European governments are taking the lead in creating a new mechanism for international aid that would bypass Hamas-run ministries. In theory, money would be paid directly to institutions and their employees. All sides agree that Palestinian hospitals and clinics should be provided with funds to buy medicines and supplies and to pay the salaries of their staff, who make up about 8 percent of the government workforce. Some Europeans also would like to fund schools and teachers, who constitute another 22 percent of employees. Israel and the Bush administration are more skeptical; they question whether a Hamas-run curriculum should receive Western funding. And what of garbage workers? Gas stations? By increments, international donors could soon persuade themselves to fund most of the Palestinian government.

That may be necessary to avoid the authority`s collapse: The Palestinians have scant revenue other than that collected -- and currently restricted -- by Israel. Despite its understandable rejection of Hamas, it is in Israel`s larger interest to allow Palestinian money to be used for legitimate Palestinian needs and to ease its current chokehold on the movement of goods in and out of Gaza. But Western governments should draw the line at providing for Hamas cadres now installed in ministries or the salaries of the 75,000 gunmen who are on the Palestinian payroll -- unless these take decisive action against terrorism. Palestinians who are supplied with necessities but denied a government that can negotiate for their statehood will more likely place the blame where it belongs -- at home

Stay the Course? What Course?

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, June 16, 2006; Page A25
Washington Post

Fresh from his triumphal visit to Baghdad -- a place so dangerous he had to sneak in without even telling the Iraqi prime minister -- George W. Bush is full of new resolve to stay the course in his open-ended ``global war on terror.`` That leaves the rest of us to wonder, in sadness and frustration, just what that course might be and where on earth it can possibly lead.

This is a ``war`` in which three men held for years without due process at the Guantanamo Bay prison kill themselves by hanging, and their jailers are so unnerved and self-absorbed that they see the suicides as an attack. Rear Adm. Harry Harris`s all-about-me lament -- ``I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us`` -- was worthy of delivery from Oprah`s couch.

Bush claimed at his news conference the other day that he`d ``like to close Guantanamo`` if only the people being held there weren`t so ``darn dangerous.`` These bad people, in other words, are forcing him to hold them indefinitely under conditions that mock international norms. But if the inmates are indeed beyond redemption, why order them to be hog-tied and force-fed when they go on hunger strikes? Why not just let them starve? Why freak out when three of the evildoers hang themselves? Why not pass out rope and tell the rest to bring it on?

In this amorphous, open-ended ``war`` that we`re spending precious lives and billions of dollars to wage, the rules of engagement seem to be shoot first and apologize later.

We`re sorry if U.S. Marines massacred 24 civilians in Haditha. We`re even more sorry than we were after U.S. military personnel tortured and humiliated those prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Bush`s stalwart ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is sorry if London police, conducting an anti-terrorist raid this month, shot and wounded an innocent man whose only ``crime`` was to come downstairs in his underwear to see who was breaking into his house. But not as sorry as Blair was after the London subway bombings, when commandos shot dead an innocent Brazilian electrician whom they mistook for a possible, potential, just-might-be terrorist.

Nobody`s sorry, though, about secret CIA prisons or extralegal detention or interrogation by brutal ``waterboarding`` or an Orwellian blanket of domestic surveillance. After all, we`re at ``war.``

The military announced yesterday that the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq has reached 2,500, another of those awful, round-number milestones. It is widely expected that the new Iraqi government will consider an amnesty for some of the insurgents who killed some of those American servicemen and women -- drawing a distinction between roadside bombs placed by Sunni Muslims in ``resistance`` to the U.S. occupation and those placed by foreign al-Qaeda jihadists. If this happens, we`ll have taught the Iraqis well. They`ll be saying ``pardon me`` just like their American tutors.

Today`s generation of jihadists was forged in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupation. How long will the next generation, being forged in Iraq fighting the American occupation, be with us?

Iraq is just one theater in Bush`s ``war.`` Elsewhere, Afghanistan is once again ablaze as the resurgent Taliban counterattacks. Somalia is coming under the sway of an Islamic militia that may harbor al-Qaeda militants. America`s popularity in the world continues to fall.

But George W. Bush forges ahead, trying vainly to kill a poisonous, retrograde ideology with bullets and bombs. His ``war`` is self-perpetuating, and no one even knows what victory would look like. Long after he`s gone, we`ll still be looking for a way to end the mess he began.

masadi sahab
the problem is these brown sahabs have not read history written by the brits.

``In the 1860s, when Chinese labourers immigrated to the United States to build the Central Pacific Railroad, a new population with both physical and cultural differences had to be accommodated within the racial worldview. While industrial employers were eager to get this new and cheap labour, the ordinary white public was stirred to anger by the presence of this “yellow peril.” Political party caucuses, labour unions, and other organizations railed against the immigration of yet another “inferior race.” Newspapers condemned the policies of employers, and even church leaders decried the entrance of these aliens into what was seen as a land for whites only. So hostile was the opposition that in 1882 Congress finally passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.




The large migrations from southern and eastern Europe that started in the 1880s required the reassessments of other new people and their incorporation into the racial ranking system. Old-stock Americans (English, Dutch, German, Scandinavian) were horrified at the onslaught of large numbers of people speaking Italian, Greek, Hungarian, Russian, and other “foreign” languages. They held that such “races” could not be assimilated into “Anglo-Saxon” culture, and policies and practices had to be put into place to separate them from the mainstream.

Despite much opposition, these European groups soon lost their inferior race status, and within a few generations their descendants not only assimilated into the “white” category, they also incorporated the racial worldview. More than half the ancestors of late 20th-century American whites immigrated to the United States during the period 1880–1930. The “white” racial category was constructed flexibly enough to enclose even those who could not claim an Anglo-Saxon background.

During the 19th century, the idea of race was diffused throughout the European colonial systems, reinforced by the fact that the peoples conquered and colonized by western European powers were also physically different. Such conquests buttressed the idea of European racial superiority. The racial worldview with its tenets regarding the limited capacities of inferior races was employed to justify the extermination of peoples, including the Tasmanians, most of the Maori, and many indigenous Australians. It was an essential ingredient in the colonial policies and practices of the British in India and Southeast Asia and, later, in Africa. Numerous British writers of the 19th century, such as Rudyard Kipling, openly declared that the British were a superior race destined to rule the world.``

{people like him should be publically ridiculed, their faces blackened and then driven out of town on a jackass - at a minimum they should be spanked and sent to bed without any pudding ..................}

Yup, no pudding for these types. Didn`t you know they are halwa eaters?

nasah #103 You mean the one where Ann Coulter talks about families of 9/11 victims ``enjoying`` the deaths of their loved ones?

Re: # 104

yes tahmed that hyperthyroid-eyed poiso-spitting turkey-necked cobra beauty -- there are times one would like to simply wring that turkey neck....for the venoms she spews -- like the one you quoted.....:)

Arjun mian thanks for Diana West paste -- now how about one from Ann Coulter.....:)

A war that isn`t

By Diana West
June 16, 2006

Discussing the war on ``terror`` has been endlessly awkward. Terror — like blitzkrieg, sneak attack or even disinformation — is a tactic not an enemy. But in our politically correct era, we dwell on the tactic, never defining the enemy. Drop 500-pound bombs on his head if we must — and we must — but don`t describe him as an Islamic jihadist in the age-old tradition of Islamic jihadists going back to Muhammad. Such historical precision might be hurtful and insensitive, and we wouldn`t want that.
Indeed, as a matter of American foreign policy, we don`t want that. Better to keep things vague and indirect, much as the Victorians are reputed to have done to avoid giving offense in the drawing room. Once upon a time, ``We the People`` were crass enough to have repelled German blitzkrieg, defied Japanese sneak attack and even to have combated Soviet disinformation. Now, ``We the Peoples`` are enlightened to the point where we send armies out for years to fight generic terror — no matter how specifically Islamist that terror is.
There are many reasons why this matters, not least of which is that without understanding the religious nature of jihad, along with its sister institution of dhimmitude (inferior status of non-Muslims under Islam), there can be no triumph over jihad and no avoiding dhimmitude. There can also be no understanding of the religiously rooted attitudes toward jihad movements among even non-violent Muslims, generally ranging from tacit ambivalence to wild adulation.
In fighting our war on terror, we have simultaneously fought against any such understanding. Maybe the reason goes beyond reflexive political correctness. Maybe we in the West simply don`t want any enemy at all; maybe we simply want to safeguard ourselves against terror. Maybe our elites believe that, in targeting only terror, the enemy will learn to like us, and terror will go away.
This mindset may explain why the United States exhausts itself trying to disclaim a connection between Islam and jihad, opening Islamic centers on U.S. military bases (most recently at Quantico at the behest of a Wahhabi-educated cleric), thus, as Paul Sperry writes at frontpagemag.com, ``facilitating the study of the holy texts the enemy uses, heretically or not, as their manual of war``; treating those same holy texts reverentially by military order at Guantanamo Bay; and even sending in the Marines to donate prayer rugs to an Iraqi mosque (Operation Cool Carpet).
Such tactics suggest we no longer seek a military triumph over Islamist jihad — if we ever did. Had we engaged in such a war, it would be over by now. The president would have directed the military to eradicate, freeze or neutralize jihad threats where they exist — from Iran to Syria and from Gaza to Fallujah. Concurrently, we would have closed our own borders as a post-September 11 security precaution, and implemented an immigration policy designed to avoid repeating the European example of Islamization through massive Muslim immigration, or, as some are calling it, ``reverse colonization.``
But no. Such a war on terror long ago gave way to the Struggle to Make Everyone Think We`re Swell. In this no-win fight, we must watch what we say — as when the government distances itself from an official`s frank characterization of three suicides at Guantanamo Bay as a jihadist ``PR stunt.``And we must watch what we do — as when we repeatedly send our military on dangerous house-to-house missions with restrictive rules of engagement rather than using air power. In a war in which an interrogation could save a city, we rewrite our interrogation rules to make sure that they won`t. ``If this debate were limited to what`s best for interrogation purposes, the decision [about whether to soften interrogation techniques] would be pretty easy,`` a senior Defense Department official told the New York Times. ``But then you have to look at what we lose diplomatically.``
Why? What are we, Lichtenstein? We sure act like it. This newspaper`s Tony Blankley recently noted the defeatism in America`s about-face with jihadist Iran — the looming front in the war. By offering non-military nuclear technology or else threatening non-military sanctions, the Bush administration seems to have acquiesced to what Mr. Blankley describes as ``the only `respectable` position`` among both European and American elites: namely, ``the absolute exclusion of a military option.``
If true, this would mean that the already inadequately titled ``war on terror`` would no longer refer to war at all. And that would leave only...

Re: # 102
Diana West not withstanding , at least some of the professionals in Washington know exactly why it`s got to back-pedal on some issues. If these draft dodgers had not piled onto Iraq they could have pretty much done what they wanted in Afghanistan . They`ve left that half done , they are screwing up in Iraq because they will never have public support , and offering a few sops to the world at large.
West`s op-ed piece is trash and she`s a twit. The foreign office boys know better, there`s a bit of economics to worry about. You can`t push the pretence of high moral ground if you don`t offer a few sops, to keep the business end going.

now that should discourage the liberal illegals.....

(Enter the Players)

Masadi (M): jaane kyaa toone kahee
Tahmed32 (T): jaane kyaa maine sunee
Chowk (C): baat kuchh ban hee gayee

Uncle Sam (US): sanasanaahat see huyee
Mushy (M): tharatharaahat see huyee
Democracy-inclined people: jaag uthhe khwaab kaee
World (W): baat kuchh ban hee gayee

French leaders: nain zook zook ke uthhe,
Present Iraqi leaders: paanw ruk ruk ke uthhe
Future Iraqi leaders: aa gayee chaal nayee
W: baat kuchh ban hee gayee

Pakistani business (trying to attract the world): julf kaandhe pe mudee,
W (holding nose): ek khushaboo see udee
ISI (egg in face): khul gaye raaj kaee
W: baat kuchh ban hee gayee

(Exit the Players)

masadi: you write ``What you are doing is repeating your old post (for the third time now) without answering even one claim that I have raised in my posts.``

I keep repeating my point since you keep avoiding it and hiding behind strong words (i.e., calling me a liar) and weak and irrelevant arguments (i.e. the ``moral superiority`` of brits vs muslims - as if you are God appointed you to judge) and ``scholarly references``.

So let me repeat the point you keep ignoring a fourth time. And I repeat it since it is of central relevance today since it puts in perspective the hollowness of your ``west is evil, islam is great`` views. ...

actually, I wont bother repeating it - just go back and re-read what I wrote and address that issue in an honest manner.

Manitoba Herald, Canada

The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The actions of President Bush are prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they`ll soon be required to hunt, pray, and agree with Bill O`Reilly.

Canadian border farmers say it`s not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.

``I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn,`` said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. ``He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn`t have any, he left. Didn`t even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?``

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields. ``Not real effective,`` he said. ``The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn`t give milk.``

Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves.

``A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions,`` an Ontario border patrolman said. ``I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. ``They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though.``

When liberals are caught, they`re sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about the Bush administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watch NASCAR races.

In recent days, liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers on Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney hits to prove they were alive in the `50s.

``If they can`t identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get suspicious about their age,`` an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies. ``I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can`t support them,`` an Ottawa resident said. ``How many art-history majors does one country need?``

In an effort to ease tensions between the United States and Canada, Vice President Dick Cheney met with the Canadian ambassador and pledged that the administration would take steps to reassure liberals, a source close to Cheney said. We`re going to have some Peter, Paul & Mary concerts. And we might put some endangered species on postage stamps. The President is determined to reach out,`` he said.