Oct 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
From Reuters (beware of their scare quotes): Syria: Red Cross Attack Harmed Iraqi Interests.
DAMASCUS (Reuters) -- Syria condemned as "terrorism" Wednesday a deadly suicide attack on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Baghdad this week, saying such attacks harmed the Iraqi people's interests."Syria strongly condemns the destructive attack on the ICRC offices in Baghdad," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Bushra Kanafani said in remarks run by the official SANA news agency.
"Such operations that target innocent life and humanitarian and international organizations, severely harm the interests of the Iraqi people. They are terrorist acts," she said.
The attack on the ICRC was one of four suicide missions that killed 35 people and wounded 230 Monday in Baghdad's bloodiest day since Saddam Hussein was overthrown.
A U.S. general has said one attacker captured alive in an attempted suicide bombing on a police station on that day was carrying a Syrian passport.
President Bush has blamed violence in Iraq on members of Saddam's ousted Baath party and foreign "terrorists," and has said he expects Syria and Iran to enforce border controls to stop infiltrators.
Washington has accused the Damascus government of turning a blind eye to militants crossing into Iraq. Syria has also long been on the State Department's list of states that support terrorism.
Oct 29, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From David Holcberg at the Ayn Rand Institute:After closing off 12 million acres of California land to human use and enjoyment in the last 30 years--allegedly to protect desert tortoises, horned lizards and scarab beetles-- environmentalists are now actively seeking to close California's Imperial Sand Dunes to bikers and off-road drivers. The alleged reason this time: to protect milk vetches. Once again, environmentalists are showing their desire to sacrifice man's needs and happiness for the sake of animals, plants and wilderness. Once again, they are showing whose side they are on, and it is not humanity's.
Oct 28, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
From FoxNews last week: Rumsfeld Memo to Inner Circle
[In the War of Terrorism] My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?
We agree with the Secretary of Defense. Bold moves are needed, namely a focus on stopping Iran's sponsorship of Islamic terrorism. We're grateful that there is someone in the administration who is willing to say so.
Oct 28, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Communication is the trade of personal relationships. To hold back on communication in a personal relationship is like holding back on paying what you owe in a business relationship. Those who seek not to communicate with spouses and loved ones are not merely lacking in skills; they are perpetrating a fraud.Oct 27, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From MSNBC:"On Wednesday, NBC News reported on a man who helped the Pentagon develop the Islamic chaplains program for the U.S. armed forces, a man who was later stopped with hundreds of thousands of dollars in his possession -- and some serious questions about his background. Now there is more, and if federal prosecutors are right, this is a man who moved from the shadowy world of terrorism to the centers of power in Washington and back again."
Comments the Concord Crier:
This suggests, as I've long suspected, that jihadis have infiltrated the highest levels of government, as the Reds had, because there is real philosophical acceptance of the tenets of Islam among the Washington types -- and I believe they may be more deeply entrenched and higher up than this man, who founded the U.S. military's Moslem program.
Oct 27, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From a review in the Oct. 20 New York Sun of Anna Politkovskaya's A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya:In the recent presidential election in Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov won with 81% of the vote, despite being so despised by the electorate that his own press secretary admitted that in free voting his man would receive no more than 5%. Fortunately for the Kremlin-backed gangster, the election was not free. The Chechens, Seth Mydans reported in the New York Times, were told, "You must vote for Kadyrov or there will be a mopping-up operation and you will lose all your young people."
...In [an] interview... Mr. Kadyrov said that "A dictator is needed here, in the literal sense of the word." He then went on to praise the NKVD and describe a pacification scheme he would implement were he in power, modeled on the NKVD's midnight visits....
This war is being waged not against terrorists but against civilians.... "The activities that the antiterrorist operation has sought to eradicate--violent hostage-taking, slavery, ransoms for 'live' goods--are now being performed by the new masters, the soldiers."
The atrocities Ms. Politkovskaya documents--routinized slave trading by Federal soldiers, filtration camps where ordinary Chechens are held in pits and tortured until their relatives can pay ransom, deliberate infliction of mass starvation on the population, the destruction of medical equipment at children's hospitals--are entirely comparable to those committed in Bosnia. Not only is there no accountability for soldiers who routinely massacre civilians; they are actively encouraged and given special commendations. Chechens may be rousted from their sleep and made to crawl on all fours for hours while being spat on and beaten by troops of the Ministry of the Interior.
