One of Ours

...North Korea is potentially more dangerous than the mess in Iraq. It probably has at least 1 to 3 nuclear weapons already, it is producing both plutonium and uranium, and it is on track to have close to 10 nuclear weapons by the end of this year.

Yet because President Bush's policy has failed in North Korea, Washington is determinedly looking the other way. When we next focus on North Korea, after the election, it could be a nuclear Wal-Mart.

North Korea not only has genuine nuclear weapons programs, but it is also the model of a rogue state: it gets its U.S. currency by printing it. That's right; it counterfeits excellent American $100 bills.

...the father of Pakistan's bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, claims that North Korea showed him three nuclear weapons in 1999...

...To his credit, Vice President Dick Cheney forthrightly raised concerns about North Korea's nuclear program during his trip to Beijing last week. But the administration still has no effective plan to deal with the crisis.

Soft-liners in the administration would like to negotiate a "grand bargain" with North Korea in which Kim Jong Il would accept C.V.I.D. — that's the latest hot term, standing for "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement." In exchange, the U.S. would present security assurances, and Asian countries would offer bribes of investment, energy and aid. Such a negotiated deal is the only hope, but to hard-liners, it sounds suspiciously Clintonian...

...Mr. Bush has his hands full with Iraq and doesn't want attention paid to the North Korean nuclear threat, which is substantially worsening on his watch. Mr. Kim figures that he may as well wait to see whether John Kerry is elected, and he'd also like to finish reprocessing the plutonium and enriching the uranium...

...Mr. Bush, who listened way too much to Mr. Cheney on the topic of Iraq, should reflect on something Mr. Cheney said on his China trip about negotiations over North Korea's nuclear programs: "Time is not necessarily on our side."...

Four young British Muslims in their twenties - a social worker, an IT specialist, a security guard and a financial adviser - occupy a table at a fast-food chicken restaurant in Luton..."As far as I'm concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better," says Abdul Haq, the social worker. "I know it's going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid - I pray for it, I look forward to the day."...

"I agree with you, brother," says Abu Yusuf, the earnest-looking financial adviser sitting opposite. "I would like to see the Mujahideen coming into London and killing thousands, whether with nuclear weapons or germ warfare. And if they need a safehouse, they can stay in mine - and if they need some fertiliser [for a bomb], I'll tell them where to get it."

His friend, Abu Musa, the security guard, smiles radiantly. "It will be a day of joy for me," he adds...

...the Luton branch of al-Muhajiroun, an extremist Muslim group with about 800 members countrywide, who regard Osama bin Laden as their hero...

...The group is led by the exiled Saudi, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad, from his base in north London. Yesterday, in a magazine article, Bakri warned that several radical groups are poised to strike in London...

...three were born here, two came as young children from Pakistan; all were educated in local Luton schools; and they grew up in families of full employment - one of their fathers is a retired local businessman, two are engineers, and two worked in the local Vauxhall car plant...

...parents of the arrested men have spoken anxiously of the "radicalising influence" of al-Muhajiroun militants who " corrupt" their children at mosques...

...exploits include covering the town with " Magnificent 19" posters glorifying the 11 September suicide bombers. "When I joined al-Muhajiroun four years ago, there were five local members," he says. "Now there are more than 50, and hundreds more support us."...

...He no longer works, even though he is able-bodied, he admits, preferring instead to claim housing benefit and jobseeker's allowance. He smiles sheepishly and says the irony is not lost on him that the British state is supporting him financially, even as he plots to "overthrow it"...

... "When I watched those planes go into the Twin Towers, I felt elated," he says. "That magnificent action split the world into two camps: you were either with Islam and al Qaeda, or with the enemy. I decided to quit my job and commit myself full-time to al-Muhajiroun." Now he does not consider himself British. "I am a Muslim living in Britain, and I give my allegiance only to Allah."..

...the aim of al-Muhajiroun ("the immigrants") is nothing less than Khilafah - "the worldwide domination of Islam". The way to achieve this, he says, is by Jihad, led by Bin Laden. "I support him 100 per cent."

Does that support extend to violent acts of terrorism in the UK?

"Yes," he replies, unequivocally. "When a bomb attack happens here, I won't be against it, even if it kills my own children...

...Referring to the latest truce offered by Bin Laden, and Britain's scathing rejection of it, Abu Malaahim adds: "He tried to make a peace deal. When terrorism happens, you will only have yourselves to blame."

How far are you prepared to go? I ask.

"You want to know how far I will go," says Abu Musa, his high-pitched lisp rising an octave. "When Allah said in the Koran 'kill and be killed', that's what I want. I want a martyr operation, where I kill my enemy."

Are you saying, I probe, that you are looking to kill people yourself ? "Yes," Abu Musa says, "to kill and to be killed." He emphasises each word...

...Sayful and his friends laugh at the idea that they are local pariahs. "The mosques say one thing to the public, and something else to us. Let's just say that the face you see and the face we see are two different faces," says Abdul Haq. "Believe me," adds Musa, "behind closed doors, there are no moderate Muslims."

They also mock the idea that they are attracted to al-Muhajiroun because they have suffered alienation from white society. "Do we look like scum?" they ask. "Do we look illiterate?"...

..."Islam is not like Christianity, where they turn the other cheek. If they raid our homes, it could lead to the covenant of security being broken.

"Islam allows us to retaliate. That would include" - he tugs his "Jihad" coat tight against the night air - "by violent means."

To some, I suppose, the hideous slaughter of so many innocents in suicide bombings in southern Iraq is another reason to worry that the occupation is doomed. I have a different response. It reminds me why we are in this war in the first place. It reminds me of the nihilist, fascist forces that killed thousands in New York and Bali and Madrid. These forces were not created by the toppling of Saddam nor by the end of the Taliban. They are killing people in Saudi Arabia. They were there all along - and had to be fought and defeated at some point. They now realize that they must sow terror and mayhem in the new Iraq in order to prevent any kind of representative government and free society from forming. We have the difficult task of fighting them, while protecting innocents in a war where the enemy deliberately and cynically conflates the two. That isn't easy anywhere - but better to have drawn these elements out and to fight them in a struggle for Arab and Muslim democracy than to play constant, fitful defense at home...

The radical Hamas movement now enjoys the support of more Palestinians than veteran leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement for the first time ever, according to to poll published Wednesday.

Asked for whom they would vote if general elections were called, 31% said Hamas, while 27.1% opted for Fatah...

It was the first time Hamas has registered a lead over Fatah in polls among Palestinians as a whole although it has long been the most popular faction in the Gaza Strip...

Meanwhile, 50.4% said the Palestinian uprising launched in September 2000 was "not in the interests" of the Palestnians...

A total of 76.5% of those surveyed said they supported the continuation of suicide attacks against Israel while 15.4% were opposed to them...

Which idiot can mistake the identity of these criminals: particularly, the crime of today - all the typical characteristics of Al Qaeda: the simultaneity, the car bombs, the calculation of the time at the rush hour and particularly at the start of schools just when the children are on their way. Everything is so typical. Yet this is what the “objective” reporter Diar Al Ommary (a well known ex-you know who, by the way): “most people are saying that the explosions were caused by rockets fired from Helicopters of the British Army (and he repeats the allegation that it was the American Army!). People say that the actually saw the Helicopters firing the missiles. And you know they say that the British troops avoided these locations today which was contrary to their daily routine” As for the reason why the British (or American) forces should do something like that, it is suggested hurriedly just because they want to attack and hurt the Iraqi people, and on and on of the same talk. This kind of allegation was repeated every time an outrage like this happened, especially immediately in the aftermath of the crimes.

I don’t know whom these people are trying to fool. No gentlemen, it is not the British, nor the Americans, not the Jews. It is your pious “Salafi” friends (your financiers) and a motley collection of assorted criminals so well known by everybody including you.

As for the U.S. and allies, I don’t know why they allow you to spread such lies, when they can crush you like cockroaches with a mere whisper into some certain ears; especially after such heartbreaking outrages. You murder children and don’t even have some remnant of decency left to at least keep quiet, but have to blame it on others, to shelter the true criminals. But let me just tell you this: Every little drop of blood from a severed limb of a child going to school, every school bag with their books and pencils strewn on the scene of the crime, the little poor shoes soaked in blood with bloodied remains of little feet still inside them; these before anything else spell your eternal damnation. You have no God. I mean you may think that you have a God, but it is some terrible bloodthirsty figure of hate and rage, a figment of your insane imagination; most certainly not the Compassionate the Merciful Allah we believe in. Your filthy beards and turbans are covered with blood and excrement forever, rabid dogs, unbelievable monsters, misanthropes...

ABC News claims to have found a smoking gun in the UNSCUM/UNSCAM/Oil-for-Food Scandal that directly implicates Benon Sevan, the UN undersecretary general who ran the program for six years:...

...Kofi Annan has resisted investigating what is probably the biggest aid heist of all time...In this kind of situation, normally the media would be on his neck, calling for the most thorough investigation possible; but thus far, with the exception of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and a handful of others, they have been curiously silent. As a supporter of the United Nations (yes, I believe it necessary), I find this potentially immensely destructive to the organization. If the Oil-for-Food allegations are true, and it increasingly looks as if they are, without a deep and full bloodletting (probably including the resignation of Annan) the UN will never recover the confidence of the American people, nor should it. By not being on this with Watergate-style intensity, the media is aiding and abetting the downfall of the organization they wish to save...

...a blog entitled FRIENDS OF SADDAM has just been established to deal exclusively with this scandal...

...[Robert] Fisk (of the UK Independent) lauded the rag-bag of extremists and terrorists making trouble in Iraq as an "anti-American resistance". Unchallenged, he pointedly referred to the four US contractors brutally murdered in Fallujah as "mercenaries". He nonsensically compared the occupation of Iraq with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - because they are both about "two occupying forces coming up against unstoppable opposition" - and in a stunning piece of moral relativism equated both with the French occupation of Algeria...

It was on, then it was off, then it was on again, and now it will be off again...

Air America Radio, the recently launched liberal talk-radio network that became embroiled last week in a financial dispute with the owner of its Chicago and Los Angeles stations, will cease broadcasting over WNTD-950 AM in Chicago April 30...

The network also said it will remain off the air for the time being in Los Angeles...

...the network must seek new homes in the nation's second- and third-largest markets just 2 1/2 weeks into its life...

...Chicago and Los Angeles combined constitute 37 percent of Air America's potential audience, and both are regarded by industry insiders as essential to selling national advertising...

...Air America is on the air in nine other markets, including New York and Minneapolis. Its programs are also available on the Sirius and XM satellite radio services.

France's president Jacques Chirac is reported to be in a particular fix. He is under strong domestic pressure - from what the Guardian describes as "virtually the entire French political class" to call a referendum. The president, still smarting from a spanking in March's regional elections, and waiting with some trepidation for another in June's EU vote, is wary of offering voters yet another chance to tan his hide.

Blair's decision, however, might make a French referendum inevitable. Chirac will doubtless work overtime to capitalise on Britain's referendum as yet another example of Anglo-Saxon obstruction in Europe but may be unable to avoid calling a vote himself.

...France's opposition Socialists have published their manifesto for June's elections. Their strategy...includes several initiatives which run directly counter to the EU.

The EU, they claim, has been hijacked by free market liberals. It is the present government's struggle to balance EU-introduced reform with France's social identity that has caused much of the current unrest. They plan to build a "Europe of the left" which will scupper any liberal reform EU-wide.

[...]

"The pessimistic view is that the constitution is dead and buried if Britain has a referendum. Brits are likely to say no and that is likely to encourage others to do the same."

Other EU nations lined up to hold a referendum include the Czech Republic, Denmark, Luxembourg, Ireland, Holland, Portugal and Spain.

[...]

Eurocrats claim that if a smaller nation voted against the constitution, three courses are open. The nation could be booted out of the EU; the nation could be forced to vote again and again until it came up with an answer that pleased Brussels, as happened in Ireland during the Nice Treaty vote; or the EU could carry on as normal, with the other nations within the constitution and the dissident state remaining outside.

If a large country like Britain rejected the constitution, however, it could sink the treaty. It is hard to imagine Britain being shown the door at the EU - not least because it is one of the union's biggest contributors.

With ten new members, mostly cash-hungry, due to enter the union within a fortnight, booting rich nations out would not make sense - no matter how much it appeals to Brussels.

Moreover, a British rejection of the treaty would increase pressure on other states to ask their people what sort of Europe they want.

Closer integration is popular in Brussels but there is no evidence that it is popular with voters. Almost every time voters have been asked to approve EU integration, they have rejected it.

A British No might open the door to a complete reappraisal of what the European Union stands for. And this, perhaps, is what frightens Brussels most of all.

Another attack on the civilians, children, & Iraqi Police! This time in Basrah the only port city which is in the South of Iraq. We may describe the terrorist again by all the dirty language and filth that they deserve but in fact none suite them! Next time we may describe the worst things by saying e.g.; Oh smell filthy like a terrorist! Or Oh my God; dirty like a terrorist, and so on!.

The most important is who are they and why we do not get any answer for this question? Who is responsible to get them for justice?
OK; let us by our reasoning look to all the possibilities including ourselves me and you! Who attacked and killed the children while they were in their Bus going to school?...

...The Coalition forces! Not in their interest either.

Iraqis! High suspicion but who are they? Very unlikely to be ordinary people. But likely to be among the Baathist regime and the fanatical terrorist. We will see the conclusion.

Iran! They are able to do it but it is not good for them to kill Iraqi children. They are government and not terrorist organisation but the suspicion remain that people among them may help the perpetrators!

Israel! They got their own problems of suffering from the same attacks against their civilians and it is not good for them to look as terrorist outside their territories. It is for their interest to show goodwill to the Iraqis for a better future for both sides.

Kuwait! The government and most the people interest is to see stable Iraq but again that does not prevent some fanatic to help in carrying it out as individuals and not as state. We will see this in the conclusion.

Saudi Arabia! Certainly the terrorist Wahabis may do it for too many reasons. Thousands of them exist in Iraq to do the same thing. They consider the Coalition forces, Shias, IP, and others as infidels to be killed. The killer will go to paradise for 77 virgin wives waiting for him and will have a sexual desire of more than 100 men! This possibility is high with red alert. But we have to say that the Saudi government again will not do it because they are also targeted by the terrorists. They may be blamed for their inability to prevent the influx of the terrorist.

Qaeda and Zarqawi! Number one on the top of the list with flag.

Syria, Jordan, and other states! Not as government but influx of money, terrorists and other means could come from there.

The Palestinians! It is not of their interest but among them and according to their announcement to attack the US forces and those who work with them we keep suspicion. Many still support Saddam regime including Jordanians.

Qatar! Possible role by their media like Al-Jazeera but not direct.

UAE! Indirect role exist by media like Al-Arabyiah and their support for the previous members of the Iraqi regime. Many in their lands including Saddam family.

Conclusion: I will leave every one suspicious and invite you to put your unbiased analysis to help us to identify the killers! You and me would like to see who kills the children, civilians, and perpetrate all this devilish acts? Who got the answer?

How many Wahabis from Jordan and Saudia exist in Falluja and Rowmadi?