US AND THEM: US, UN & Iraq, version 8.0

June 13, 2005
Middle East votes for jihad
Tiny minority of extremists update. "The Mideast casts its votes for extremists," from the New York Daily News, with thanks to EPG:
...

"The problem [for Bush] is that these elections aren't skewing public opinion, they're reflecting public opinion, which is decidedly against American policies in the region," said Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution.

2001
September 11: The attacks on September 11 kill almost 3,000 in a series of hijacked airliner crashes into two U.S. landmarks: the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, and The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
October 12: Bali car bombing of holidaymakers kills 202 people, mostly Western tourists and local Balinese hospitality staff.
October 17: Zamboanga bombings in the Philippines kill six and wounds about 150.
October 18: A bus bomb in Manila kills three people and wounds 22.
October 19: A car bomb explodes outside a McDonald's Corp. restaurant in Moscow, killing one person and wounding five.

October 23: Moscow theater hostage crisis begins; 120 hostages and 40 terrorists killed in rescue three days later.

Yes, we have opened Pandora's box in Iraq - but freedom has sprung free
Gerard Baker

ON BOTH SIDES of the Atlantic, the Stop The War cries are deafening now. Fold the tents; cut the losses; bring them home.

Some of the pleading comes from people whose motives are purely mischievous. These are the critics who opposed the war in the first place and would like nothing more than to see it end in a humiliating climbdown for its authors. Their concern for the Iraqi people or the lives of British and American troops flows in rivers of crocodile tears; their true emotions will be realised in the warm thrill of self-vindication at the spectacle of coalition tank columns rolling, turrets forlornly down, out of Mesopotamia.

You know exactly what these people would say in the unlikely event they got their way. They wouldn't hail the US and British decision to leave Iraq as the long-delayed but correct decision. It would instead be used as an opportunity to pour scorn on the whole project, to chortle at the hopeless vanity of the Bush and Blair crowd.

But there are many more good, honourable people who have come to the same conclusion not out of a desire for self-justification but because, whether they supported the war in the first place or not, they have come to see it as unwinnable, or at least they believe the situation so dire that the price ?- in further blood and treasure ?- is simply not worth paying. For them the genuine humiliation of retreat is worth suffering if it spares us all greater losses by staying.

This is a wholly understandable reaction. We're overwhelmed every day with the hard statistics of loss: Britain may soon endure its 100th death of a serviceman in Iraq; America has just passed the 2,000 mark; tens of thousands of Iraqis have perished. We have spent billions of dollars, not always efficiently. These are tangible, measurable losses; hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, billions.

Success is less tangible. It is articulated not in the indicative but in the subjunctive: potential threats removed; future wars that don't have to be fought. It is numbered in the unenumerable: the slow awakening of human freedom; the steady, incremental spread of dignity it brings to people cowed and trampled for decades.

And yet it leaves its mark in tangible ways, even in the turmoil of Iraq. In a couple of weeks, Iraqis will go to the polls in their millions for the third time this year (the exercise of democracy can be habit-forming, can't it?). This time they will choose a government that will have real power over the direction of the country. It will be a genuine first in the history of a region where medievalist tyranny has enjoyed five centuries of extra time.

Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein, the most powerful living expression of that legacy, the tormentor of his own people and oppressor of others, stands trial for his crimes.

And the success in Iraq, intangible as it is, was never just going to be confined to the country itself. Look at the broader map of the Middle East.

In neighbouring Syria, another unlovely old regime is cornered. The push for freedom that began in Iraq is steadily wresting Lebanon away from its status as a fief of Damascus. The Syrian dictator is feeling the painful consequences of his attempt to halt the spread of liberty by the old fashioned method of assassination.

In Iran, the proximity to a liberated Iraq is alarming the theocratic thugs who run the country and energising their enemies in the rest of the population.

In Israel, the one people in the region for whom freedom is no novelty, will go to the polls early next year. It looks likely that they will give a new mandate to Ariel Sharon to pursue his unlikely mission of unilaterally settling with the Palestinians.

This, the same Sharon who has been demonised by the same critics of the Iraq war, especially in Europe, is breaking the mould, not only in his own nation, but in the region too. He will push ahead, it seems, with a bold strategy in the teeth of fierce irredentism from the Right, that could result in a Palestinian state on more than 90 per cent of the West Bank and the whole of Gaza, perhaps even with a part of Jerusalem as its capital.

This may not be a direct outcome of the Iraq war, but does anyone really think it would have been possible while Saddam Hussein was actively promoting Palestinian terrorism? The critics of the war were right to say three years ago that it represented the high-risk option. There's no doubt, as they said at the time, that not invading would have been the safer option. But over time, repeatedly exercising the easy option rarely produces long-term stability. By repeatedly deferring difficult decisions, repeatedly seeking accommodations with an ever more unacceptable status quo, we make the ultimate crisis that much larger, its consequences that much more devastating. The fluid of all those easy decisions crusts eventually into a hard carapace that can only be cracked with explosive force.

We would be making the same understandable but lethal mistake now if we were to decide that, in the teeth of the difficulties in Iraq, we should take the easy option and get out of there as quickly as possible.

Tony Blair famously said after September 11, 2001, that the kaleidoscope of geopolitics had been shaken. An alternative way to put it might be to say that we have opened a kind of Pandora's box in the Middle East.

We have, surely, unleashed a violent fury of terrorism and guerrilla war that has a broader reach than Iraq or even the Middle East. But we have also unleashed the great virtue that in time will conquer these vices ?- not hope this time, though we could use some of that, but freedom. It would be a tragic mistake to cut our losses now, long before we have ensured that the virtue triumphs over the vices.

This is the key sentence of that article: "Fed up with corruption and determined to oust governments seen as U.S. lackeys, newly minted voters in key Arab countries have propelled card-carrying terrorists and Islamic extremists into positions of power."

Those youths know that their rewards in fighting you, the USA, is double than their rewards in fighting some one else not from the people of the book. They have no intention except to enter paradise by killing you. An infidel, and enemy of God like you, cannot be in the same hell with his righteous executioner.

… when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said: "I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but Allah is worshipped", Allah who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders.

… to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.

Once again, we repeat our call and send this clear message to our Muslim brothers, warning against fellowship with the Crusaders, the Americans, Westerners and all idols in the Arab Gulf. Muslims should not associate with them anywhere, be it in their homes, complexes or travel with them by any means of transportation.

Prophet Muhammad said "I am free from who lives among idols".

No Muslim should risk his life as he may inadvertently be killed if he associates with the Crusaders, whom we have no choice but to kill.

Everything related to them such as complexes, bases, means of transportation, especially Western and American Airlines, will be our main and direct targets in our forthcoming operations on our path of Jihad that we, with Allah's Power, will not turn away from.

A summary of Letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi July 9, 2005.

The war in Iraq is central to al Qa'ida's global jihad.

The war will not end with an American departure.

Thir strategic vision is one of inevitable conflict with a call by al-Zawahiri for political action equal to military action.

Popular support must be maintained at least until jihadist rule has been established.

More than half the struggle is taking place "in the battlefield of the media."

Letter in English at:
www.dni.gov/letter_in_english.pdf

Al Qaeda's seven phase plan for world conquest:

Phase 1, the "wakeup call." Spectacular terrorist attacks on the West get the infidels to make war on Islamic nations. This arouses Moslems, and causes them to flock to al Qaedas banner. This phase is complete.

Phase 2, the "eye opening." Al Qaeda does battle with the infidels, and shows over a billion Moslems how it's done. This phase to be completed by next year.

Phase 3, "the rising." Millions of aroused Moslems go to war against Islam's enemies for the rest of the decade. Especially heavy attacks are made against Israel. It is believed that major damage in Israel will force the world to acknowledge al Qaeda as a major power, and negotiate with it.

Phase 4, "the downfall." By 2013, al Qaeda will control the Persian Gulf, and all its oil, as well as most of the Middle East. This will enable al Qaeda to cripple the American economy, and American military power.

Phase 5, "the Caliphate." By 2016, the Caliphate (i.e., one government for all Moslem nations) will be established. At this point, nearly all Western cultural influences will be eliminated from Islamic nations. The Caliphate will organize a mighty army for the next phase.

Phase 6, "world conquest." By 2022, the rest of the world will be conquered by the righteous and unstoppable armies of Islam. This is the phase that Osama bin Laden has been talking about for years.

Phase 7, "final victory." All the world's inhabitants will be forced to either convert to Islam, or submit to Islamic rule. To be completed by 2025.

… the U.S., Israel and India as existential enemies of Islam and lists eight reasons for global jihad. These include the restoration of Islamic sovereignty to all lands where Muslims were once ascendant, including Spain, "Bulgaria, Hungary, Cyprus, Sicily, Ethiopia, Russian Turkistan and Chinese Turkistan. . . Even parts of France reaching 90 kilometers outside Paris." Blaming the U.S. for the delusions of these admittedly small groups confers a degree of legitimacy on Islamist extremists and undermines moderate Muslim struggling for the soul of their faith.

Phase 4, "the downfall." By 2013, al Qaeda will control the Persian Gulf, and all its oil, as well as most of the Middle East.

From the Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 book of the year:

http://0-www.search.eb.com.library.uor.edu/eb/article-234819

"The war in Iraq continued to take an extraordinary toll on archaeological sites in the cradle of civilization. Despite the adoption in 2003 of UN Security Council Resolution 1483, which banned the trade in looted Iraqi antiquities, a lawless environment and weak border controls fomented the continued plundering of archaeological sites. Particularly hard hit were numerous 5,000-year-old Sumerian city-states--among them Umma, Isin, Adab, Zabalam, and Shuruppak--in the southern Iraqi province of Dhi Qar. Further destruction of sites came as a direct result of the war, such as the installation of a U.S. military base atop the remains of the ancient city of Babylon. The collapse of substantial portions of the Babylonian temples of Nabu and Ninmah, which dated to the 6th century BC, was attributed to helicopter activity."

icant, You are dense.

ican711nm-

Your quotes are quite good--Good Research. It's a shame that everyone will not read the quotes carefully.
Thank you.

You once asked me something like: Do I understand the left's mentality or motivation. My answer is: I have my hypotheses about that just like you do. However, I'm disinclined to discuss these hypotheses of mine here. Rather my self-imposed mission here is to deny them the excuse "but nobody told me" when they eventually are confronted with the overwhelming reality of the falsity of their doctrines.

You may be familiar with the writings of Bernard Lewis, Ican.

He is the foremost US interpreter of Islam who has written extensively about Islam. Lewis points out that Islam on the whole is a beneficent Religion but that the fringe radicals do indeed believe in the re-establishment of the Caliphate which, in their eyes, would entail the submission of the entire world to the doctrine of Allah- Islam.

Yes, I read Lewis's "What Went Wrong" plus an article or two he wrote in the WSJ.

It's a pity that more people do not understand the meanings of your quotes or the explanations given by Lewis.

More is the pity that they do not want to understand these things.

We are at war with a group which is, although not possessing the Luftwaffe or the V-2 Rocket, may be as dangerous since, like the Japanese Kamakazi, they are willing to act as human bombs.

I agree! 10 to 20 thousand, recruiting, dedicated suicidal murderers of civilians is potentially as big a threat to humanity as the Hitlerists, who murdered millions of civilians, the Hirohitists who murdered 10s of millions of civilians, and the Stalinists who murdered over 100 million civilians.

ican711nm wrote:

Phase 4, "the downfall." By 2013, al Qaeda will control the Persian Gulf, and all its oil, as well as most of the Middle East.

So the agency that is responsible for 9/11 would be a government power, with citizens who openly support it?

Puts me in the mood for a good old-fashioned Hiroshima-style barbeque.

Al Qaeda's seven phase plan for world conquest:

Phase 1, the "wakeup call." Spectacular terrorist attacks on the West get the infidels to make war on Islamic nations. This arouses Moslems, and causes them to flock to al Qaedas banner. This phase is complete.

Phase 2, the "eye opening." Al Qaeda does battle with the infidels, and shows over a billion Moslems how it's done. This phase to be completed by next year.

Phase 3, "the rising." Millions of aroused Moslems go to war against Islam's enemies for the rest of the decade. Especially heavy attacks are made against Israel. It is believed that major damage in Israel will force the world to acknowledge al Qaeda as a major power, and negotiate with it.

Phase 4, "the downfall." By 2013, al Qaeda will control the Persian Gulf, and all its oil, as well as most of the Middle East. This will enable al Qaeda to cripple the American economy, and American military power.

Phase 5, "the Caliphate." By 2016, the Caliphate (i.e., one government for all Moslem nations) will be established. At this point, nearly all Western cultural influences will be eliminated from Islamic nations. The Caliphate will organize a mighty army for the next phase.

Phase 6, "world conquest." By 2022, the rest of the world will be conquered by the righteous and unstoppable armies of Islam. This is the phase that Osama bin Laden has been talking about for years.

Phase 7, "final victory." All the world's inhabitants will be forced to either convert to Islam, or submit to Islamic rule. To be completed by 2025.

(10) Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

(11) Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens;

(20) Whereas Congress has taken steps to pursue vigorously the war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and funding requested by the President to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;

(21) Whereas the President and Congress are determined to continue to take all appropriate actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;

(22) Whereas the President has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States, as Congress recognized in the joint resolution on Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40); and,

(23) Whereas it is in the national security interests of the United States to restore international peace and security to the Persian Gulf region:[/color]

From Encyclopedia Britannica, IRAQ
www.britannica.com
In April 1991 the United States, the United Kingdom, and France established a “safe haven” in Iraqi Kurdistan, in which Iraqi forces were barred from operating. Within a short time the Kurds had established autonomous rule, and two main Kurdish factions—the KDP in the north and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in the south—contended with one another for control. This competition encouraged the Ba'thist regime to attempt to direct affairs in the Kurdish Autonomous Region by various means, including military force. The Iraqi military launched a successful attack against the Kurdish city of Arbil in 1996 and engaged in a consistent policy of ethnic cleansing in areas directly under its control—particularly in and around the oil-rich city of Karkuk—that were inhabited predominantly by Kurds and other minorities.

"American Soldier in Chapter 12 A CAMPAIGN UNLIKE ANY OTHER, CENTCOM FORWARD HEADQUARTERS 21 MARCH 2003, A-DAY, page 483, General Tommy Franks.
The Air Picture changed once more. Now the icons were streaming toward two ridges and a steep valley in far northeastern Iraq, right on the border with Iran. These were the camps of the Ansar al-Islam terrorists, where al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Zarqawi had trained disciples in the use of chemical and biological weapons. But this strike was more than just another TLAM [Tomahawk Land Attack Missle] bashing. Soon Special Forces and SMU [Special Mission Unit] operators leading Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, would be storming the camps, collecting evidence, taking prisoners, and killing all those who resisted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_al-Islam
When the US invaded, it attacked AI [i.e., Ansar al-Islam] training camps in the north, and the organization's leaders retreated to neighboring countries. When the war in the north settled down, the militants returned to Iraq to fight against the occupying American forces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_al-Islam
Ansar al-Islam (i.e., Supporters or Partisans of Islam) is a Kurdish Sunni Islamist group, promoting a radical interpretation of Islam and holy war. At the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq it [i.e., Ansar al-Islam] controlled about a dozen villages and a range of peaks in northern Iraq on the Iranian border.

AI [I.E., Ansar al-Islam] is believed to be responsible for several suicide bomb attacks in Iraq, mostly in the north. The first such was at a checkpoint on February 26, 2003, before the war [March 20, 2003].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_al-Islam
It [i.e., Ansar al-Islam] was formed in December 2001 as a merger of Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam), led by Abu Abdallah al-Shafi'i, and a splinter group from the Islamic Movement in Kurdistan led by Mullah Krekar. Krekar is alleged to be the leader of Ansar al-Islam. He has lived in Norway, where he has refugee status, since 1991. On March 21, 2003 his arrest was ordered by Økokrim, a Norwegian law enforcement agency, to ensure he did not leave the country while accusations that he had threatened terrorist attacks were investigated.

The non-partisan 9/11 Commission Report in Chapter 2.5, page 67, note 78.
www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.htm
The Taliban seemed to open the doors to all who wanted to come to Afghanistan to train in the camps. The alliance with the Taliban provided al Qaeda a sanctuary in which to train and indoctrinate fighters and terrorists, import weapons, forge ties with other jihad groups and leaders, and plot and staff terrorist schemes. While Bin Ladin maintained his own al Qaeda guesthouses and camps for vetting and training recruits, he also provided support to and benefited from the broad infrastructure of such facilities in Afghanistan made available to the global network of Islamist movements. U.S. intelligence estimates put the total number of fighters who underwent instruction in Bin Ladin-supported camps in Afghanistan from 1996 through 9/11 at 10,000 to 20,000.78

The non-partisan 9/11 Commission Report in Chapter 2.4, page 61, note 54".
www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.htm
To protect his own ties with Iraq, Turabi [Bin Laden's Sudanese deputy] reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad's control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin's help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam. There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.54

The non-partisan 9/11 Commission Report in Chapter 2.5, page 66, note 75.
www.9-11commission.gov/report/index.htm
In mid-1998, the situation reversed; it was Iraq that reportedly took the initiative. In March 1998, after Bin Ladin's public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin. Sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these meetings was apparently arranged through Bin Ladin's Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis.

Secretary of State, Colin Powell's speech to UN, 2/5/2003
http://www.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/2003/17300.htm
But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network... Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.

... We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi. The network remains in Baghdad. Zarqawi still remains at large, to come and go.

Charles Duelfer's Report, 30 September 2004
www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/Comp_Report_Key_Findings.pdf
Regime Strategic Intent
Key Findings

Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted.

 Saddam totally dominated the Regime's strategic decision making. He initiated most of the strategic thinking upon which decisions were made, whether in matters of war and peace (such as invading Kuwait), maintaining WMD as a national strategic goal, or on how Iraq was to position itself in the international community. Loyal dissent was discouraged and constructive variations to the implementation of his wishes on strategic issues were rare. Saddam was the Regime in a strategic sense and his intent became Iraq's strategic policy.

 Saddam's primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the Regime. He sought to balance the need to cooperate with UN inspections--to gain support for lifting sanctions--with his intention to preserve Iraq's intellectual capital for WMD with a minimum of foreign intrusiveness and loss of face. Indeed, this remained the goal to the end of the Regime, as the starting of any WMD program, conspicuous or otherwise, risked undoing the progress achieved in undoing the progress achieved in eroding sanctions and jeopardizing a political end to the embargo and international monitoring.

 The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Bagdad's economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.

 By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of the sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo by the end of 1999.

Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability--which was essentially destroyed in 1991--after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop nuclear capability--in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks--but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.

 Iran was the pre-eminate motivator of this policy. All senior level Iraqi officials considered Iran to be Iraq's principal enemy in the region. The wish to balance Israel and acquire status and influence in the Arab world were also considerattions, but secondary.

 Iraq Survey Group (ISG) judges that events in the 1980s and early 1990s shaped Saddam's belief in the value of WMD. In Saddam's view, WMD helped save the Regime multiple times. He believed that during the Iran-Iraq war chemical weapons had halted Iranian ground offensives and that ballistic missile attacks attacks on Tehran had broken its political will. Similarly during Desert Storm, Saddam believed WMD had deterred Coalition Forces from pressing their attack beyond the goal of feeing Kuwait. WMD had even played a role in crushing the Shi'a revolt in the south following the 1991 cease-fire.

 The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policy makers or planners separate from Saddam. Instead, his lieutenants understood WMD revival was his goal from their long association with Saddam and his infrequent, but firm, verbal comments and directions to them.