Terror in Norway: Shootout, bomb explosions kill 11

There sure are a lot of snoopy people around here, aren't there, Parados?

How many people, over the last 10 years, in the US, UK, Spain, Bali, India, Denmark, Italy and Holland (or for that matter the whole world) been injured or killed by Islamist terrorists, and how many by far right extremists?

Backyard terrorism
The US has been training terrorists at a camp in Georgia for years - and it's still at it

...

For the past 55 years it has been running a terrorist training camp, whose victims massively outnumber the people killed by the attack on New York, the embassy bombings and the other atrocities laid, rightly or wrongly, at al-Qaida's door. The camp is called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or Whisc. It is based in Fort Benning, Georgia, and it is funded by Mr Bush's government.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/30/afghanistan.terrorism19

... this into being about US terrorism.

Terrorist attacks like 9/11 and 7/7 show that Islamic terrorism is a problem. It's not as big a problem as your media likes to make out. The 9/11 attacks were not that hard to perpetrate, and their success is down to the inadequacies of airport security than anything else.

As I've noted, you seem to have a problem with consistency. The latest evidence is that on one hand you accuse the American Media of exaggerating the problem of Islamist terrorisim, but on the other hand you support Charlie brooker's accusation that it is the British media that is guilty of this sin.

What do you believe the actual scope of "the problem" to be?

Is it, as you seem to suggest, limited to 9/11 and 7/11?

What about the attacks in Bali, Madrid, Mumbai, Glasgow and Ft Hood Texas (to name but a few)? Were they insignificant blips on the radar screen of global peril?

And the failed attacks:

*The attempt to blow up a passenger plane en route to Detroit on Christmas
*The attempt to detonate a car bomb in Times Square
*The attempted London car bombings in July 2005 and June 2007
*The disrupted plan to blow up an office building in Dallas

(To name but a few)

These, of course, failed and so what is the big deal?

Right?

My list is far from exhaustive and doesn't include any Islamist attacks committed in Israel or Muslim countries, but it's simply a case of a childish fear of the bogeyman, ginned up by the American media (and maybe the UK media as well) because they are the pawns of the Military Industrial Complex.

Why stop there? Has it ever crossed your mind that the the Military Industrial Complex may be funding the Islamist terrorists? What better way to assure sales of your weapons then to assure that there are enemies against which they will be needed?

In another thread you have had the nerve to accuse me of inhumanity, let alone insensitivity concerning the death of a single individual and yet here you blithely dismiss the murder of 3,000 people as merely the result of the inadequacy of airport security.

Blame a security system which is not allowed to differentiate between young men of Middle Eastern origins and small children from Kansas, or old ladies from Minnesota. By no means blame the organizations that commit and attempt to commit these crimes. Security, not the terrorists are the problem.


Ever since the end of the cold war the defence industry has been looking for another bogeyman to justify all the money that gets spent on it. Unfortunately by ratcheting up the danger of Islamic terrorism, they've resurrected the danger of the far right

You keep making this argument but you keep failing to offer at least a logical explanation of how this may be the case, let alone anything approaching evidence.

The Soho nail bombings were claimed to be the work of British far right extremists - The White Wolves. I don't really doubt that they probably were, but was that ever proved? Were arrests made and criminals convicted?

In any case this terrorist attack took place in 1999, well before an even remotely credible argument can be made that American or British media were exaggerating the threat of Islamist terrorisim.

How does it follow that an exaggeration of the the Islamist threat has led to the "ressurection" of the threat of far right extremism, when one of your two examples took place years before the 9/11 attacks?

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When was the last event, similar to the massacre in Norway, due to far right extremists? How does the frequency of Islamist terrorist attacks compare to that of far right extremist attacks?

Brick Lane on UK soil, but it all intends what you mean by far right. Islamic Terrorist groups in Moslem Countries are exactly the same as the far right. They fear their country is being taken away from them by 'Hordes of Crusaders.' At the end of the day it works, the defence industry is doing better than ever, and people like yourself unwittingly spout their propaganda for them.

So the last time was in 1999, more than 10 years ago. How many Islamist terrorist attacks have occurred between 1999 and 2011?

Finally just to point out the difference between Charlie Brooker and the ravening demagogue that is Beck, here is Mr. Brooker. Watch it, you may learn something about manipulation.

The relevance of this clip is beyond me, but then I lack the sophisticated wit of a Brit. Brooker does a nice job of demonstrating the familiar pattern of TV broadcasts, which is somewhat clever but hardly eye-opening. While he seems to be suggesting this pattern is designed to manipulate (at least that's what you are claiming) virtually all of the men and women in the street he features in his piece are telling us it doesn't work.

And if it did work, are you really suggesting that an approach that is so familiar to us all that it makes Brooker's piece humerous, has only been employed to advance right-wing notions?

Why you are insiting on differentiating Beck and Brooker is also beyond me. I certainly haven't made the claim that they are birds of a feather, except to the extent that I don't like either of them.

But wait, I think I get it. You are trying to reconcile that fact that you hate Beck because he suggested the Norweigion Labor Party youth camp was similar to the Nazi Youth League, and you love Brooker because he lamented the fact that no one was around who might pull off the assasination of a sitting US president.

Yep, this clip sure does that.

I think most extremists are beyond repugnant.

Which extremists do you not find repugnant?

I don't care if it's religious or political. While I can sympathize a cause, I deplore violence.

I hold a special hatred for people like the Norway bomber. I find it ironic that this man cited many of my heros as his own. I find it hard to believe many of their messages could be lost him, considering the privileges he enjoyed, in a society that had made him rich enough to finance his evil ways. He was well educated, never knew famine, war or disease. He's never know a day of hardship. He lived in a peaceful place and yet he found a reason to inflict pain and suffering on so many.

Because he is evil and insane. For some reason you believe either that affluence should preclude evil insanity or poverty justifies it.

While much of the above could describe Osama Bin Ladin et al, I can't for the life of me understand why someone in England, Norway, Canada or the US could possibly be bothered with far right fundamentalist thinking. I don't understand people who go looking for a fight. I can't for the life of me understand why a person who lived a life like his would have so much to hate. I can't understand why people who live a gilded life compared to so many in the world would have time to burn a cross on someone's lawn or publish a 1500 page manifesto, or bomb and shoot at people who aren't the enemy. It blows my mind.

Mine too, but you, while perhaps acknowledging that bin Laden enjoyed a greater degree of affluence than Brievik, fail to understand that most of the masterminds of Islamist terrorism share the same profile. Even Mohammed who knew he would not return from his his holy attack, was far from an impoverished peasent. The poor bastards who might actually be dirt poor and uneducated are used by the masterminds as bomb-vest fodder.

This is why I hold an especially hateful position on extremism, or most specifically white extremism. I hope that clarifies my position.

It certainly does. You have a bigotry for whites. You assume, with no supporting evidence, that all white extremists are affluent and all non-while terrorists are impoverished.

.....9/11 had absolutely nothing to do with Iraq. ..

In a major development, potentially as significant as the capture of Saddam Hussein, investigative journalist Richard Miniter says there is evidence to indicate Saddam’s anthrax program was capable of producing the kind of anthrax that hit America shortly after 9/11. Miniter, author of Losing bin Laden, told Accuracy in Media that during November he interviewed U.S. weapons inspector Dr. David Kay in Baghdad and that he was "absolutely shocked and astonished" at the sophistication of the Iraqi program.

Miniter said that Kay told him that, "the Iraqis had developed new techniques for drying and milling anthrax—techniques that were superior to anything the United States or the old Soviet Union had. That would make the former regime of Saddam Hussein the most sophisticated manufacturer of anthrax in the world." Miniter said there are "intriguing similarities" between the nature of the anthrax that could be produced by Saddam and what hit America after 9/11. The key similarity is that the anthrax is produced in such a way that "hangs in the air much longer than anthrax normally would" and is therefore more lethal.

"Hey, fools, some of my friends just knocked your two towers down and if you try to do anything about it, this is what could happen. F*** you, and have a nice day!!"

'Cheney?s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, quickly questions the wisdom of mentioning state sponsorship. Tenet, sensitive to the politics of Capitol Hill and the news media, terminates any discussion of state sponsorship
with the clear statement:

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"I'm not going to talk about a state sponsor."

'Vice President Cheney further drives the point home:

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"It's good that we don't, because we're not ready to do anything about it."

There's a story that the new CIA director, David Petraeus, likes to tell which harks back to his days as a four-star general in Iraq.

Early in 2008, during a series of battles between the US and Iraqi army on one side and the Shia militias on the other, Petraeus was handed a phone with a text message from the Iranian general who had by then become his nemesis.

The message came from the head of Iran's elite al-Quds Force, Qassem Suleimani, and was conveyed by a senior Iraqi leader. It read: "General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Quds Force member. The individual who's going to replace him is a Quds Force member."

Petraeus hardly needed to be told. Much of the US military's work with Iraq's Shia Muslims had been undermined by Suleimani and the client militias of the Iranian general's al-Quds force. So too had US government diplomatic efforts elsewhere in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon.

Petraeus last year told a thinktank, the Institute for the Study of War, about the problem Suleimani created for him: "Now, that makes diplomacy difficult if you think that you're going to do the traditional means of diplomacy by dealing with another country's ministry of foreign affairs because in this case, it is not the ministry. It is a security apparatus."

As he prepared for the job of the US's most senior spy, Petraeus would surely have been preparing for further shadow boxing. Suleimani's reputation as the most formidable operator in the region has not diminished in the past three years. By some measures it has actually increased: Syria now also comes within Suleimani's sphere of influence.

Iraq's former state security minister, Sharwan al-Waeli is one who knows Suleimani well. A formal conversation between the Guardian and al-Waeli last year took on a very different tone as soon as Suleimani's name was mentioned.

The Shia legislator was a known ally of Iran, so much so that he was seen by secularists and Sunnis in parliament as someone prepared to do Iran's bidding. He denied Iran played a pervasive role in Iraq until he was interrupted with a question that Iraqi officials have long prefered to ignore: when was the last time Qassem Suleimani came to the Green Zone, the fortified government district in the heart of Baghdad?

Al-Waeli's left hand trembled slightly and his brow furrowed. "You mean Sayed Qassem Suleimani," he said, giving Suleimani an Arabic honorific reserved for the most esteemed of men. He refused to elaborate.

In Baghdad, no other name invokes the same sort of reaction among the nation's power base – discomfort, uncertainty and fear.

"He is the most powerful man in Iraq without question," Iraq's former national security minister, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, said recently. "Nothing gets done without him."

Until now, however, few Iraqis have dared to talk openly about the enigmatic Iranian general, what role he plays in Iraq and how he shapes key agendas like no one else.

"They are too busy dealing with the aftermath," said a senior US official. "He dictates terms then makes things happen and the Iraqis are left managing a situation that they had no input into."

Suleimani's journey to supremacy in Iraq is rooted in the Islamic revolution of 1979, which ousted the Shah and recast Iran as a fundamentalist Shia Islamic state. He rose steadily through the ranks of the Iranian military until 2002 when, months before the US invasion of Iraq, he was appointed to command the most elite unit of the Iranian military – the al-Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards Corp.

The al-Quds force has no equal in Iran. Its stated primary task is to protect the revolution. However, its mandate has also been interpreted as exporting the revolution's goals to other parts of the Islamic world.

Shia communities throughout the region have proved fertile grounds for revolutionary messages and have formed deep and abiding partnerships with the al-Quds force. So too have several Sunni groups opposed to Israel – first among them Hamas in Gaza.

But Iraq has been Suleimani's key arena. The last eight years have witnessed a proxy war between Suleimani's Quds force and the US military, the full effects of which are still being played out, as the US prepares for a full departure from Iraq and Iraq's leaders ponder over whether to ask them to stay.

Arabian heartland

At stake is no less than who gets to shape the destiny of the heartland of Arabia. "His power comes straight from (the country's lead cleric Ayatollah) Khamenei," said one of Iraq's three deputy prime ministers, Saleh al-Mutlaq, a secular Sunni. "It bypasses everyone else, including Ahmadinejad.

"There is a saying in Islam that you should never get angry with your father or mother. The [Shia] interpret that as meaning what (Khamanei, via Suleimani) says has to be respected by every [Shia] inside, or outside Iran.

"All of the important people in Iraq go to see him," said Mutlaq. "People are mesmerised by him – they see him like an angel."

A second MP – a senior member of Prime Minister Nour al-Maliki's inner circle who regularly meets Suleimani in Iran – said the general has only travelled once to Iraq in the past eight years. He described him as "softly spoken and reasonable, very polite". "He is simple when you talk to him. You would not know how powerful he is without knowing his background. His power is absolute and no one can challenge this."

Silver-haired, slight and with a perennial serene smile, Suleimani comes across as the most unlikely of warlords. Those who met him during the one time he traveled to Baghdad at the height of the 2006 sectarian conflict say he walked around the compounds of his two key hosts without bodyguards. The Americans did not know he had been in the capital until he was back in Iran and were deeply unhappy to learn that their arch enemy had been among them.

"He is indeed like Keyser Söze," said a senior US official this week – in reference to the legendary villain in the The Usual Suspects, whose ruthlessness and influence terrified everyone. "Nobody knew who he was and this guy's the same. He is everywhere, but nowhere."

The senior Shia MP added: "He has managed to form links with every single Shia group, on every level. Last year, in the meeting in Damascus that formed the current Iraqi government, he was present at the meeting along with leaders from Syria, Turkey, Iran and Hezbollah. "He forced them all to change their mind and anoint Maliki as leader for a second term."

Over the five years that Maliki has been in power in Iraq, all his key advisers have been granted court in Iran by Suleimani. Iraq's president, a Kurd – Jalal Talabani, has also regularly met the general, sometimes along the border separating both countries.

The Syrian uprising has added a new dimension. The al-Quds Force has been involved in suppressing the Syrian uprising, according to multiple sources inside and outside the country.

The US has slapped personal sanctions on Suleimani and two other generals in the Iranian security forces who it accuses of helping orchestrate the crackdown that is believed to have killed more than 1,600 civilians."

Tehran has heavily invested in the survival of embattled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, whose ruling Allawite clan has links to Shia Islam. Assad's fall would be a serious strategic setback for Iran and Suleimani. It is perhaps the only part of the region where the general's preferred mix of strategic diplomacy with aggressive operations is being strongly tested.

In the meantime, the work of the al-Quds force continues in Iraq. All but two of the US troops killed in June – the highest number in more than two years, were killed by client militias directly under Suleimani's control, the Keta'ib Hezbollah and the Promised Day Brigades.

"It is clear that the al-Quds force is responsible," said the director general of the intelligence division in Iraq's interior ministry, Hussein Kamal. "There has been a systematic flow of weapons into Iraq for the past eight years. Of course they try to say it is not state-sponsored. But when weapons are flowing from the borders of a sovereign state, it is very clear where the blame lies.

"They are destructive weapons and they cannot deny the responsibility for them."

Another Shia MP said he had personally asked Suleimani why his al-Quds force continued to smuggle weapons, many of which are fired into the Green Zone, where he and most of Maliki's inner circle live. "He just smiled and said it is nothing to do with me," the MP said. "He said he had no idea where the weapons were coming from."

Suleimani has been variously described by those who dislike him – Iraq's Sunnis, and those who have spent years trying to get his measure – as a "talented extortionist" and a highly skilled wheeler-dealer.

US officials who have spent years trying to disrupt the work of his loyalists say they would like to meet him, while at the same time being puzzled as to his objectives.

"I would simply ask him what he wants from us," said a senior US military official. In addition to the soldiers killed this year, the US ambassador in Baghdad, James Jeffrey, said last summer that Iranian proxies accounted for roughly a quarter of US combat casualties in Iraq – around 1,100 deaths and many thousands more injuries.

Despite this, the US has landed few public blows on Suleimani's close circle.

In March 2007, the British SAS captured a senior Hezbollah official, Ali Moussa Daqduq, who had allegedly planned an operation that killed seven soldiers in Karbala. The same year, US troops also captured two men in the Kurdish north who they believed were al-Quds leaders. Apart from that, the trophy cabinet remains bare – at least publicly. More troubling than the apparent dearth of tactical victories is how the rest of the year will play out.

The US – and some key neighbouring Sunni states – believe Iran's strategy in Iraq as the conflict winds down is to keep the country in a permanent but manageable state of chaos.

"They keep it on simmer and turn it up and down when they want to," said one Lebanese official in Beirut.

The senior US military spokesman in Iraq, Major General Jeffrey Buchanan agreed. "Their overall strategy has been to keep [Iraq] isolated from the rest of its neighbours and from the US, because that makes it likely that it will depend on Iran. They want Iraq to play a subordinate, weak role."

Only Iraq's lawmakers can stop the master-client relationship from becoming entrenched here. It's a task that Kurdish legislator in the national parliament, Mahmoud Othman, fears may prove to be beyond his colleagues.

"Qassem Suleimani is the key man to every decision taken in Iraq," he said.

"It is a shame to have such a man playing such a role in this country. There should be a relationship between equals like normal relations with normal states."

Iraq did have nothing to do with 9/11.

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Iraq did have nothing to do with 9/11.

I asked if you had any MORE lies for us this morning, Poop; I didn't ask you to repeat the original lie.

Whatever happened to Ican? Is he dead?

Saddam Hussein was provably involved in the anthrax attacks which followed 9-11.

In August 2008, Department of Justice and FBI officials announced a breakthrough in the case and released documents and information showing that charges were about to be brought against Dr. Bruce Ivins, who took his own life before those charges could be filed. On February 19, 2010, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service formally concluded the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks and issued an Investigative Summary.