Target Centermass

4000 foreign fighters slain

More than 4000 foreign fighters have been killed in Iraq while fighting US-led forces and the American-backed government, al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq said in an audio tape issued on the internet today.

“More than 4000 muhajir (foreign fighters) and many more of the supporters of righteousness (Iraqi fighters) have given their blood to Iraq,” said the speaker, identified as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir.

Iraqi al-Qaida chief calls for kidnapping foreigners

Abu Ayyub al-Masri, chief of the al-Qaida in Iraq, called on his followers to capture foreigners in a bid to free a Muslim cleric jailed in the United States, said an audio tape issued on Internet Thursday.

“I call on every holy fighter in Iraq to strive during this holy month (of Ramadan) … to capture some Western Christians to exchange them for our imprisoned sheikh,” al-Masri said in the tape whose authenticity could not be verified.

He was referring to the Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was jailed in the United States since 1995 over charges linked to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.

Al-Masri also urged Muslims to make the holy month of Ramadan a “month of holy war”. Ramadan began last weekend across the Muslim world.

Al-Qaida seeks to recruit nuclear scientists

The new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, in an audio message posted on a website yesterday, called for explosives experts and nuclear scientists to join his group’s holy war against the West.

“The field of jihad (holy war) can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases (in Iraq) are good places to test your unconventional weapons, whether biological or dirty, as they call them,” said the man, who identified himself as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir — also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri — the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.

They are bleeding, and rather badly at that, but they are desperate and dangerous and always looking to up the stakes.

In the Bullpen‘s Chad Evans has a good bit more analysis on the tape and also looks at an apparent splintering in Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi “army.”

If this is accurate, then it is a surprisingly huge provocative move by the Chinese.

China has secretly fired powerful laser weapons designed to disable American spy satellites by “blinding” their sensitive surveillance devices, it was reported yesterday.

The hitherto unreported attacks have been kept secret by the Bush administration for fear that it would damage attempts to co-opt China in diplomatic offensives against North Korea and Iran.

Sources told the military affairs publication Defense News that there had been a fierce internal battle within Washington over whether to make the attacks public. In the end, the Pentagon’s annual assessment of the growing Chinese military build-up barely mentioned the threat.

“After a contentious debate, the White House directed the Pentagon to limit its concern to one line,” Defense News said.

The document said that China could blind American satellites with a ground-based laser firing a beam of light to prevent spy photography as they pass over China.

According to senior American officials: “China not only has the capability, but has exercised it.” American satellites like the giant Keyhole craft have come under attack “several times” in recent years.

Although the Chinese tests do not aim to destroy American satellites, the laser attacks could make them useless over Chinese territory.

The American military has been so alarmed by the Chinese activity that it has begun test attacks against its own satellites to determine the severity of the threat.

Satellites are especially vulnerable to attack because they have predetermined orbits, allowing an enemy to know where they will appear.

“The Chinese are very strategically minded and are extremely active in this arena. They really believe all the stuff written in the 1980s about the high frontier,” said one senior former Pentagon official.

There has been increasing alarm in parts of the American military establishment over China’s growing military ambitions.

Military experts have already noted that Chinese military expenditure is increasingly designed to challenge American military pre-eminence by investing in weaponry that can attack key systems such as aircraft carriers and satellites.

At the same time, China is engaged in a large-scale espionage effort against American high-tech firms working on projects such as the multibillion-pound DD(X) destroyer programme.

While at times the Chinese may find itself on the same side of an issue as the U.S., that in no ways paints them as friends or even tepid allies. One could argue that this is just a response eventually to be expected by a historically secretive China, but Taiwan and any other nations currently enjoying a relatively stable Asia Pacific should be sweating, especially coupled with the recent Chinese effort to modernize their military. Taiwan’s security is based solely upon the ability to fend off any invasion; should China be able to establish a toehold on the island and defend its logistical lines, if only briefly, then Taiwan is lost. The ability of the U.S. to support Taiwan in such an engagement lies only in prevention — our naval and air forces can only defend the island and our current military can not evict the Chinese from a conquered Taiwan.

Key to all of this is either complete surprise by the Chinese or an established ability to withstand an initial American naval response. China is now working to blind our eyes in space and they have already confronted our intel gathering by air on their borders, and their ability to successfully confront the U.S. Navy on and below the high seas is increasing.

Yes, their intentions are not good. No, we are not keeping pace with or even really seeming to realize their rapidly growing challenge.