Want to strut your opinions? Chad at In the Bullpen is looking for guest bloggers (as well as offering reciprocal links). To help you understand the focus of his site, here’s a great terror round-up Chad put together today.
Category: War on Terror
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Two Interesting Links on Iraq
Is it a unilateral action? Chrenkoff makes it obvious the, despite the scheduled and unscheduled departure of some members, the Coalition is still a great representation of the international community.
Are we losing? Dean Esmay examines the trends of Coalition combat deaths.
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Wood: Rescue Shows Policy Working
Douglass Wood, the Aussie recently freed from captivity in Iraq, has returned home and has had some choice statements regarding his capture and rescue.
The Australian hostage held captive for nearly seven weeks in Iraq before being freed last week has said his rescue by Iraqi troops is a sign that U.S. and Australian policies are working.
“I actually believe that I am proof positive that the current policy of training the Iraqi army — of recruiting, training and buddying them worked — because it was the Iraqis that got me out,” Douglas Wood told reporters in Melbourne after returning to Australia Monday morning.
The 64-year-old engineer also apologized to U.S. President George W. Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard for statements he made at gunpoint in a DVD his captors released to the news media.
On the DVD, Wood pleaded for Australian, U.S. and British troops to withdraw from Iraq.
[…]
Wood was kidnapped April 30 and released [sic, as I’m just sure CNN meant to type rescued] June 15, when Iraqi forces supported by coalition forces stumbled across him during an unrelated raid in the Al Adel neighborhood of Baghdad.
“Perhaps I’m proof positive that the current policies of the American and Australian governments is the right one,” he said.
Wood would not even rule out a return to Iraq, despite his ordeal.
I blogged last week that Wood’s immediate requests after rescue were for beer and football updates. Now, Wood gives even more reason to admire him.
Asked what he thinks of his captors, Wood needed little time to reflect.
“Arseholes,” he shot back.
Wood said he did not know who the men were who kidnapped him.
“I didn’t know whether it was al Qaeda or who it was,” he said. “I didn’t know … obviously, my head is intact, so it wasn’t al Qaeda.”
I’d really love to buy this bloke a brew.
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The Counter-Recruiters
A must-read from the Indepundit.
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Turning to the Blogroll
I’m not in the mood to blog tonight, as should be obvious from my feeble previous post. I don’t know why — it just ain’t there.
I have been in the mood to read and surf, however, so I’ll just poach some goodies off my blogroll.
Let’s open with Kevin Aylward at Wizbang! as he slaps around Congressman Conyers on the Downing Street memo.
Rep. John Conyers, as predicted here 10 days ago, will hold one of his patented “fake hearings” on the Downing Street Memo Thursday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. EST. Pay no attention to the fact that the witnesses list is lead by the same lead witness (John Bonifz) who presented at his Ohio vote-rigging “hearing,” or that Conyers will trot out Valerie Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, who can regale the “hearing” with tales of yellowcake and book sales. Luckily for Wilson no members of the Senate Intelligence Committee will be present to bitch-slap him again. Given the lack of reporting about his cratered credibility, Wilson probably sounded like a great witness to Conyers.
Now let’s turn to the favorite (and deservedly so) target of the day: Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and his pathetic loss of perspective on Gitmo.
Let’s open with Paul at Powerline:
Scott gave me credit for “anticipat[ing] the rabid foaming at the mouth” of Durbin and his partner in defamation Senator Leahy. In fact, however, I never expected that any U.S. Senator would express such absurd sentiments. I didn’t realize that leftist fever swamp extends so profoundly into the Senate.
Just for the record (as if that matters to the left) Rowan Scarborough in the Washington Times reminds us of the following:
Adolf Hitler – About 9 million dead
Soviet gulags – About 2.7 million dead
Pol Pot – About 1.7 million dead
Gitmo – zero dead
Gitmo – five instances of Koran abuse by prison guards
Gitmo-15 instances of Koran abuse by prisoners.Then we’ll move on to Steve Verdon at Outside the Beltway, whose headline “What a Dick” really says it all:
Apparently Dick Durbin doesn’t think much about the Holocaust, the genocide of the Khmer Rouge and Josef Stalin and its victims. Calling the detention center at Guantanamo Bay a death camp is just stupid.
Chad at In the Bullpen chimes in with “Another Day, Another Nazi Comparison“:
Over 13 million people died in the above mentioned camps throughout the years. The majority of those held in those camps were innocent whereas the vast majority of detainees in Guantanamo were found on the battlefields of Afghanistan. Can Senator Durbin not tell the difference?
In an update, Chad turns his aim to liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas ‘Kos’ Zunigas and his site The Daily Kos (lack of link intentional). Dr. Rusty Shackleford of the Jawa Report comes out guns a-blazin’ at Kos (emphasis in original, and you should consider yourself warned that he really means it).
You, Kos, are a certifiable idiot whose blind partisanship is disgusting and unethical.
Warning: Graphic images follow.
Speaking of Gitmo, Ace explains at length the justifiability and reasoning behind the detentions there. I particularly liked this nugget (emphasis again in the original):
Okay. Let’s take you at your word.
Given the fact that by your own admission that not only is the Global War on Terrorism not over, but we are actually losing this war, why the f*** are you constantly agitating to release enemy combatants so that they may rejoin their allies and kill more of our soldiers and citizens?
Leaving Gitmo, over at Eric’s Grumbles Before the Grave (great banners, by the way), our caped crusader Eric has apparently found an arch-nemesis and has been waging a one–man war. For a moment, he almost seems to lose his edge, but not quite:
I realize that I have gotten a bit personal with some on the left lately and have attacked them directly. If that offends anyone, I’m sorry you’re offended. But I’m not sorry for what I’ve said.
In fact, Eric decides to adapt to the enemy’s tactics (EDIT: I doubt Eric will actually change course; he seems quite happy having actual facts on his side):
Yep, just like the Left, I’m just going to make crap up out of thin air, allege that I have evidence to prove it, promise to tell you at some undetermined date in the future what my evidence is and insist that it’s worth “checking out”.
Fight the good fight, Eric.
Above all these important issues, you can never beat Scott at The Fat Guy for some good ol’ Texas-style common sense.
Man, I do love my Blogroll so.
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Australian Hostage Rescued by US-Iraqi Troops
I wanted to blog about this story, the tale of the rescue of a hostage in Iraq.
US and Iraqi forces rescued an Australian hostage in Baghdad while the death toll continued to rise across the country with suicide bombers killing 26 soldiers and eight policemen.
Douglas Wood, a 64-year-old engineer, had been held for 47 days in Ghazaliyah, a western suburb of the capital. His kidnappers had demanded that the Australian government withdraw its 1,400 troops from Iraq and pay a substantial ransom.
I wanted to blog about it, but was unhappy with the information currently available about what I’m certain was a quite dramatic event. I shrugged it off until I found the following glimpse at Mr. Wood, post-rescue.
Freed hostage craves beer and football resultsFreed after being held for 47 days by Iraqi insurgents, Douglas Wood just wanted a beer and to know how his favorite Australian Rules Football team was faring.
Wood has not lived in Australia for years — he’s a U.S. resident married to a Californian woman — but he has not lost his typically Australian love of beer or his team from the southern city of Geelong where he grew up.
At an emotional news conference in Canberra, two of his brothers, Malcolm and Vernon, recalled Thursday their first telephone conversations with their older brother since his dramatic rescue Wednesday from the clutches of Iraqi insurgents.
“Doug sounded remarkably composed,” Malcolm Wood, 57, told reporters. “He asked me whether the Geelong Cats would win the premiership this year.”
Wood, a 64-year-old engineer, is recovering in Baghdad after being held for more than six weeks by insurgents who kicked him in the head, shaved off his hair and demanded Australia remove its 1,400 troops from Iraq.
One of his first questions to Australia’s counterterrorism chief Nick Warner, who headed Australia’s six-week quest to secure the engineer’s release, was whether he had any beer.
Granted, he’s talking about soccer, but substitute any sport I really care for, keep the beer aspect, and I’d safely say we’re talking about a man I view as a kindred spirit. Here’s a tip of the brew to Douglas Wood.
I’ll keep hunting for details on the actual rescue mission.
EDIT: I stand corrected. As JohnL of TexasBestGrok pointed out in the comment section, the Geelong Cats are not a soccer team. Apparently, Douglas Wood is a huge fan of Aussie rules football, a very cool sport I used to be able to watch in the early days of ESPN. All the more reason to celebrate Mr. Wood’s rescue.
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Spain Claims Terror Pipeline to Iraq Cut
It was certainly bad enough that, through a bloody terror strike, al Queda was able to gut Spain, affecting the country’s elections and precipitating an early withdrawal of Spanish forces from the Iraqi theater. Adding insult to injury, the terror network continued to abuse the nation, using it as a conduit to move jihadists into the same battleground Spain had fled. Now, Spain has made a move to cut the terror flow through its nation.
The Spanish Interior Ministry said Wednesday that the police had arrested 16 people on charges of involvement with Islamic terrorism, including 11 men suspected by the police of having worked for a network that provided recruits for the insurgency in Iraq.
Spain, which is described by terrorism experts here as a major logistical center for Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Europe, was not thought to be a significant supplier of fighters for the Iraq insurgency.
But the announcement on Wednesday suggests that the flow through Spain of recruits to Iraq may be heavier than previously estimated, at least publicly.
The Interior Ministry said in a statement that the 11 men, most of them Moroccans and Algerians, had recruited Islamic fighters for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the militant leader who is America’s most wanted man in Iraq, and for Ansar al-Islam, a group of mostly Kurdish guerrillas who are suspected of collaborating with Zarqawi.
“The activities of this Islamist network centered on the recruitment and sending of jihadists to Iraq with the goal of committing suicide terrorist activities against the coalition forces,” the ministry statement said.
Officials asserted that the network appeared to have been directed from Syria, although its activities were largely financed locally through drug trafficking, document fraud and robbery.
The ministry also announced Wednesday that the police had arrested five more suspects in the 2004 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and wounded at least 1,000. That attack, which Spanish investigators say was carried out by Islamic militants with ties to Al Qaeda, has led to the arrests of more than 100 people and the jailing of about 25.
This is a possibly significant achievement, especially if Spain follows up the arrests with a successful haul of intelligence. I would like to point out, however, that the success probably is not nearly grand as it sounds — the country is merely treating symptoms of the Islamist movement within its borders, having already run away from the attempt in Iraq to provide an alternative to the Arab world, a possible last ditch to salvage a huge chunk of the world’s population from falling hopelessly into sheer barbarism and madness.
This kind of success, while dramatic and helpful, is fleeting. Al Queda will find other ways to move its jihadists, much as the human nervous system can sometimes find alternate routes when nerve pathways are severed. Unfortunately for Spain and the rest of Europe, other paths already exist and this one will be replaced, thus making it obvious that simply treating local symptoms of radical Islam while ignoring the global disease is not enough. That, and it may eventually be painful and deadly to those only trying to police the waypoints of jihad within their borders, as the article points out ominously.
In describing the men suspected of ties with the insurgency in Iraq, the Interior Ministry’s statement said that several had already vowed to carry out suicide attacks in the name of Islam, a fact that “highlights the extreme radicalism and the danger of most of those arrested in this operation.”
The statement also suggested that the men were prepared to carry out attacks before reaching Iraq, and perhaps even before leaving Spain. “Several members,” it said, were “willing to commit a suicide terrorist act as soon as the leaders of the organization ordered it.”
Pain and blood will come again to Europe via the Islamists. I hold it as a certainty. This is not a game where the sidelines are safe. This is not a game at all.
Chad has more at In the Bullpen.
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France Refuses to Explain Hostage Release
Ah, the French. Why do they, as a nation, make it so easy to question their fortitude?
France, which denied it paid a ransom to win the release of French journalist held in Iraq, refused Monday to give any details that led to winning freedom for the reporter and her Iraqi guide after five months of captivity.
Florence Aubenas and Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, who were freed Sunday, had been missing since Jan. 5, when they were seen leaving Aubenas’ hotel in Baghdad. French officials have never identified the kidnappers, although authorities in both France and Iraq suggested they were probably seeking money rather than pressing a political agenda.
Despite mounting calls for the government to explain how the releases were achieved, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy refused to identify the captors, because he said they are still holding other people.
“I can say absolutely nothing about that,” Douste-Blazy said on RTL radio. “There are still some hostages in the place of detention where Florence and Hussein were a few hours ago.”
Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said France paid no ransom.
“There was absolutely no request for money,” Cope said on Europe-1 radio. “No ransom was paid.”
Former Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, who worked the case until leaving the government this month, also said there was no ransom.
But questions persisted.
“Now the time of joy is over, the time for explanations has come,” said Annick Lepetit, a spokeswoman for the main opposition Socialist Party. “The public authorities, the president, the government must explain themselves.”
If there are legitimate questions, they deserve to be answered. Note I said if. There is nothing in this article, other than a lack of forthcoming, that suggests the French government would acquiesce to a foe. There is, however, history.
The article does go on to allow Aubenas to be praised to a silly degree.
Liberation director Serge July, in an editorial Monday, called the captors “professionals in kidnapping, who hold an important – if not central – role in the atrocious market for hostages” in Iraq. He did not elaborate.
July, a Liberation co-founder who shuttled to and from the Middle East during the hostage crisis, joined many others in praising Aubenas’ tenacity.
Aubenas, 44, is “an incredible fighter, with a considerable psychological resistance, who in many ways simply didn’t crack,” he said on France-Inter radio.
The kidnappers had their biggest prize since the lying Sgrena. Just how the hell was Aubenas, a career-long reporter for France’s “leading left-wing tabloid,” going to crack? By promising to write a story denouncing American efforts … again?!!
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Time Report Fuels Guantanamo Criticism
A new storm is building around Gitmo, and the winds this time around are blowing from a pressure system built on a report in Time of a detainee interrogation log.
The U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay drew fresh criticism Sunday following a Time magazine report on a logbook tracing the treatment of a detainee who officials believe was intended to take part in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Time’s report on the treatment received by Mohammed al-Qahtani prompted a quick defense from the Pentagon along with outrage from several members of Congress.
Al-Qahtani was denied entry to the United States by an immigration officer in August 2001 and later captured in Afghanistan and sent to the detention camp at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The 84-page logbook obtained by Time and authenticated by Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita is the “kind of document that was never meant to leave Gitmo,” a senior Pentagon official told the magazine.
According to the logbook, which covers al-Qahtani’s interrogations from November 2002 to January 2003 [emphasis added], the Time article reports that daily interviews began at 4 a.m. and sometimes continued until midnight.
Remember those dates, folks.
The interrogation techniques included refusing al-Qahtani a bathroom break and forcing him to urinate in his pants.
“It’s not appropriate,” said Sen. Chuck Hagel on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “It’s not at all within the standards of who we are as a civilized people, what our laws are.
“If in fact we are treating prisoners this way, it’s not only wrong, it’s dangerous and very dumb and very shortsighted,” the Nebraska Republican said.
“This is not how you win the people of the world over to our side, especially the Muslim world.”
During the period covered by the logbook, Time reported, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved 16 additional interrogation techniques for use on certain detainees.
Afterward, interrogators began their sessions with al-Qahtani at midnight and awakened him with dripping water or Christina Aguilera music if he dozed off, the magazine article reported.
Okay, I’ll grant that Christina Aguilera music may be a tad much.
The magazine said the techniques approved by Rumsfeld included “standing for prolonged periods, isolation for as long as 30 days, removal of clothing, forced shaving of facial hair” and hanging “pictures of scantily clad women around his neck.”
Hagel said such treatment should offend the sensibilities of “any straight-thinking American, any straight-thinking citizen of the world.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said on the same program that the treatment outlined in the article presents “a kind of ludicrous view of the United States.”
“I don’t know what tree we’re barking up,” she said. “It is a terrible mistake.”
“I don’t know why we didn’t learn from Bagram,” she added, referring to a U.S. base in Afghanistan. “I don’t know why we didn’t learn from Abu Ghraib [prison in Iraq], but here we are in Guantanamo with many of the same things surfacing.”
I said pay attention to the dates. That is something seemingly beyond Feinstein’s capabilities. Apparently, by the senator’s reasoning, the discovery of the Abu Ghraib abuses in late 2003 and their resulting media frenzy in April 2004 should have caused these Gitmo interrogation tactics to cease in late 2001 and early 2002. That, my dear senator, is an impossibility without a functioning flux capacitor. Please be so kind as to check your facts, senator, before denouncing our efforts before the world.
Hagel raised questions about the quality of leadership that would allow such things to happen, drawing a comparison to his own experience fighting in Vietnam.
“We’ve been reassured for the last two years it’s not happening when in fact it is happening,” he said.
Again, check the dates.
Maybe, somewhere in this story, we can find a voice of reason.
Others, however, said they did not see the treatment as abuse.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, defended the Guantanamo facility and flatly rejected suggestions that prisoners are mistreated.
“I think that’s accepting a falsehood and giving to the American people that somehow we don’t treat prisoners right,” said Hunter, a Republican from California.
Hunter cited a menu of food served to prisoners Sunday — including oven-fried chicken, rice pilaf, fruit and pita bread — as a sign that they are treated well.
“These are the people who tried to kill us,” he said. “It includes the guy — the 20th hijacker, that was Mr. Qahtani who was caught coming in — who didn’t make it to the planes that drove into New York,” Hunter said following an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”
Congressman Hunter, how about a money shot?
Earlier on the program, Hunter said the “legend” of Guantanamo Bay is “different than the fact” and repeatedly cited the menu.
“Here you have a guy who was on his way to kill 5,000 Americans,” he said. “And we have people complaining because he had a dog bark at him in Guantanamo.”
Keep in mind the story of the actual detainee in question.
Nineteen hijackers commandeered four commercial airliners on September 11, 2001, piloting two into the World Trade Towers and one into the Pentagon. Another, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in a Pennsylvania field. The death toll from the attacks was just under 3,000.
All the planes were hijacked by five men except Flight 93, which was commandeered by four. Some officials have speculated that al-Qahtani might have been the missing hijacker on Flight 93.
According to the Time article, lead hijacker Mohammed Atta was waiting for al-Qahtani outside the airport in Orlando, Florida, when he was detained by an immigration officer a month before the attacks.
In the CNN piece’s “Related” links, there’s a brief collection of extracts from the interrogation log in question. Please allow me to extract from the extracts.
13 December 2002
1115: Interrogators began telling detainee how ungrateful and grumpy he was. In order to escalate the detainee’s emotions, a mask was made from an MRE box with a smily face on it and placed on the detainee’s head for a few moments. A latex glove was inflated and labeled the “sissy slap” glove. The glove was touched to the detainee’s face periodically after explaining the terminology to him. The mask was placed back on the detainee’s head. While wearing the mask, the team began dance instruction with the detainee. The detainee became agitated and began shouting.20 December 2002
1115: Detainee offered water—refused. Corpsman changed ankle bandages to prevent chafing. Interrogater began by reminding the detainee about the lessons in respect and how the detainee had disrespected the interrogators. Told detainee that a dog is held in higher esteem because dogs know right from wrong and know how to protect innocent people from bad people. Began teaching the detainee lessons such as stay, come, and bark to elevate his social status up to that of a dog. Detainee became very agitated.That is as bad as the extracts get — a smily-face mask, a “sissy slap” glove, and dog training. Add to that repeated offers of food and water, as well as attention to bandages to prevent chafing.
I can only actually hope that there is far worse in the unextracted log. No, I don’t hope for abuses and violations. I do, however, hope that it takes far more than the treatment detailed in the story and linked extracts, treatment I would have laughed at as a fraternity pledge, to stir the need in the media to feed our enemy’s propaganda. I doubt anybody involved with the publishing of this story does not believe we are dealing with an actual terrorist here, and yet, this story and it’s “tortures” will echo.
Close Gitmo — a detainee’s face was touched with an inflated latex glove, condemning him as a sissy! Shut it down! Move the sissies!
This is beyond a lost sense of perspective. The utter recklessness and disregard for our security efforts shown by our media is simply disgusting.