Target Centermass

Day: February 1, 2006

  • Hamas-in-Charge Link Dump

    Bush: Hamas Jeopardizes Palestinian State

    In an interview with The Associated Press, Bush also addressed oil’s future, offering a more ambitious hope than in his State of the Union speech for cutting imports from the volatile Mideast.

    However, he said his oft-stated goal of a Palestinian state in the region cannot be realized if a Hamas-led government refuses to renounce its desire to destroy Israel.

    […]

    On the international front, Bush talked about trouble in Iran and in the Palestinian territory.

    He said it was too early to tell what path Hamas would choose in dealing with Israel. “The conditions for peace and the conditions for a settlement will be up to Hamas to make the right decisions,” he said.

    Bush was the first U.S. president to espouse a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel. Those prospects have dimmed with the triumph of Hamas in Palestinian parliamentary elections last week.

    “I made the position of this government very clear,” Bush said. “Hamas must renounce its desire to destroy Israel; it must recognize Israel’s right to exist and it must get rid of the armed wing of its party.”

    “In order for there to be democracy and in order for there to be two states living side by side with peace, you can’t have the party of one state intending to destroy the other state,” he said.

    Hamas rejects Bush’s call to disarm

    Hamas rejected on Wednesday U.S. President George W. Bush’s latest call to disarm following the Islamic militant group’s crushing victory over the long-dominant Fatah faction in last week’s Palestinian parliamentary election.

    “Our resistance is legitimate self-defence in the face of aggression,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas leader in Gaza, referring to Israeli military action.

    In Washington, Bush demanded in his State of the Union address on Tuesday that Hamas “recognise Israel, disarm, reject terrorism and work for lasting peace”.

    Hamas is sworn to Israel’s destruction and has carried out nearly 60 suicide bombings since a Palestinian uprising began in 2000.

    Arabs pressure Hamas to renounce violence

    Egypt and Jordan joined the West in pressuring the militant group Hamas Wednesday, declaring it must recognize Israel and renounce violence if it wants to lead the Palestinians. Hamas held fast to its militant platform but suggested it might extend its cease-fire with the Israelis.

    The message from the two key American allies in the Arab world – both nations have signed peace treaties with Israel – was the strongest yet to the militant group, which calls for Israel’s destruction, opposes peace talks, refuses to lay down its arms and had carried out dozens of deadly suicide bombings against Israelis.

    Rumors had swirled through the Arab world over the past several days that moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah faction was defeated in the vote, would meet by week’s end with Hamas leaders in Gaza to talk about forming a government.

    But all sides have subsequently played down that possibility, with Fatah members saying Abbas was in no hurry, viewing the passage of time as a tool for winning concessions from Hamas.

    In Cairo, however, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit spoke bluntly as he emerging from separate talks between President Hosni Mubarak with Abbas and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

    “When you (Hamas) sit in the (Palestinian) parliament, you talk with your tongue and not with a gun. …(Hamas) should not run away from the reality,” he said.

    Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s intelligence chief and point man on Palestinian issues, was even more emphatic: “Nobody will talk to them before they stop violence, recognize Israel and accept (peace) agreements.”

    Egypt predicts Iran will fill Palestinian cash gap

    Egypt predicted on Wednesday that Iran would step in to fill the finance gap if the United States and Europe stop their aid to the Palestinian Authority.

    “Iran will give them the money, I think,” intelligence chief Omar Suleiman told reporters after talks between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

    Suleiman was answering a question on what would happen if the Palestinians lose financial support from the West after the militant Hamas movement won parliamentary elections.

    The United States and the European Union, main donors to the Palestinian Authority, have threatened to suspend aid to a Hamas government unless it recognizes Israel and renounces violence.

    Hamas says Israel has opened ‘gates of hell’

    The first step towards a major financial crisis came yesterday when Israel made good on a threat to suspend the transfer of about £30 million in customs payments which it collects every month on behalf of the authority. The money is used to pay many of the authority’s 135,000 employees. Saudi Arabia and Qatar promised to give £18.5 million to help keep up payments.

    Farhat As’ad, a Hamas spokesman in the West Bank, said Israel was “opening the gates of hell” by suspending the money transfers and that it would lead to greater extremism and fuel violence.

    […]

    Hamas has consistently rejected the Oslo Agreement as a sell-out of Palestinian rights.

    It is thought that both the failure of Oslo and Mr Abbas’s path of negotiations to bring tangible improvements to Palestinian life contributed greatly to Hamas’s electoral rout of Mr Abbas’s Fatah movement last week.

    Hamas’s electoral platform specifies that it continues to claim rights not only to all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip but also to the territory that comprises Israel within its 1967 borders.

    Fun times ahead, y’all. Note: definition of fun may vary.

  • Tonight’s Reading: Taranto on Today’s Media

    In a lengthy opinion piece, James Taranto takes on the mainstream media for their biased and disingenuous coverage of the Iraqi theater, Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan and the supposed blown cover of Valerie Plame.

    While I agree with Taranto that the media have worked themselves into a growing credibility problem through poor journalistic practices — indeed, I have stated often that my opinion of today’s media was a driving factor in my starting this site — and have been afflicted with an internal rotting since the 1968 Tet Offensive, I find myself far less optimistic than Taranto about the current ability of our media to cost us victory in the present conflict. Taranto’s stance is as follows:

    It would be fatuous to deny that this dour drumbeat of defeatism has some effect on public opinion, which after all is driven by the most fickle members of the public. By last fall, polls consistently showed that a majority of Americans thought it had been a mistake to liberate Iraq, though some 70% had favored the war when the shooting began in March 2003. But a majority continue to oppose a precipitous withdrawal. Most Americans, it seems, do not want another Vietnam, which they understand to mean a self-inflicted American defeat.

    The media’s one-sided coverage may actually undermine the antiwar cause. It does a disservice to antiwar politicians by giving them the impression that the public is fully behind them–an echo-chamber effect similar to that which helped John Kerry lose the election of 2004 (see “Kerry’s Quagmire,” July 20, 2005). Thus in December, when Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean responded to the media panic by declaring that “the idea that we’re going to win this war is an idea that, unfortunately, it’s just plain wrong,” fellow Democrats scrambled to distance themselves from him.

    And the media’s adversarial approach has proved costly in public trust. In a Pew Center survey conducted in early November, just after the indictment of Scooter Libby, only half of those polled said the press was fair to the Bush administration. The president’s approval rating in the same poll was just 36%, so this was far from a pro-Bush poll.

    […]

    With the mainstream media facing a skeptical public and competition from those with other viewpoints, it seems unlikely that Iraq will turn out to be another Vietnam–a war lost in large part because of the media’s opposition.

    I feel differently, believing very strongly that the media still have sufficient power to seize defeat from the jaws of victory but need more bad news and American blood upon which to base their efforts. As it is, their are forced to steadily beat the drum of quagmire and despair, scantily covering success and heroism while carefully restraining from providing historical perspective that may reflect well on our current endeavors.

    Taranto does provide himself a giant caveat — the wild card of another terrorist strike in the American homeland. Hat tip to In the Bullpen‘s Chad Evans, who gives his thoughts on the possible fallout of Taranto’s wildcard situation.

  • Narcs Nab Drug-smuggling Puppies

    Okay, this is simply disturbing.

    A two-year investigation into a Colombian heroin ring netted more than 65 pounds of drugs, resulted in the arrests of more than 20 people and saved the lives of some drug-smuggling Labrador retrievers, the Drug Enforcement Agency said Wednesday.

    Ten wayward pups were found during a raid on a Colombian farm in 2005, and six of them were carrying more than 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) of liquid heroin in their stomachs, said DEA spokesman Rusty Payne.

    Puppy smugglers are another take on the human “mule,” or “swallower” in DEA parlance — someone who ingests packets of drugs and transports them in their stomachs.

    The puppies, however, had little say in the matter.

    In the case of the puppies found during the 2005 raid, the dogs’ bellies had been cut open, and heroin packets were stitched into their stomachs, Payne said. The pups, mostly purebred Labrador retrievers, were sewn back up and prepared for shipment to the United States, he added.