The Egyptian Newspaper Al Youm Al Sabeh reports: In a communication to the Attorney General of Egypt, Dr. Yasser Najib Abdel Mabboud, has accused Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, former Director General of International Atomic Energy Agency and a candidate in the Egyptian presidential elections, of receiving funds exceeding $7 million (US) from Iran’s leadership as support for ‘political reform in Egypt’.

Abdul Mabboud , a candidate of the National Party and who like El Baradei is also running for the Egyptian Presidential election, was informed of the Iranian leadership’s willingness to support ElBaradei financially via an Arab businessman living in Europe. The check in the amount of $ 7 million is said to be meant to cover the financial costs of the election campaign and the activities of the Front for Change.

According to the Egyptian newspapder, a meeting between the Arab businessmen who is said to be close to El Baradei and who has only identified by the initials A. E. and Iranian official took place in a hotel in Bucharest, the capital Romania. After weeks of covert contact, the Iranian regime’s envoy apparently met with the businessman to complete a business deal. Reportedly the Iranian envoy told the businessman to convey to ElBaradei that he has Iran’s complete support. – Planet Iran

(H/T Weasel Zippers)

After Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to task for participating in peace talks with Israel, Abbas had a message for Iran: Butt out.

The Palestinian president went even further in a statement released by his spokesman, essentially calling Ahmadinejad an illegitimate leader who oppresses his own people.

“He who does not represent the Iranian people, who forged elections and who suppresses the Iranian people and stole the authority, is not entitled to talk about Palestine, or the President of Palestine,” Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said Saturday.

Iran supports Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group that controls the Gaza Strip. Abbas is part of the rival Palestinian faction Fatah, which controls the West Bank and has been more open to peace talks — and openly dismissive of Iran.

Abbas was in Washington last week to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, kicking off a U.S.-backed effort to jumpstart peace talks. They will meet for a second round of talks in Egypt on Sept. 14 and 15 and thereafter about every two weeks while lower-level negotiations continue on ironing out specifics of compromises that both sides will have to make.

Ahmadinejad, whose disputed re-election as president last year sparked unrest in the country and then a crackdown, dismissed the peace talks, said Friday, “The fate of Palestine will be decided in Palestine and through resistance and not in Washington.”

Iran’s suspected nuclear ambitions have surfaced as a new motivating factor for a Mideast resolution. There have been growing Israeli warnings that the nation might take military steps to blunt Iran’s nuclear program, and even some of Israel’s Arab neighbors have shown concerns.

The Obama administration believes that a successful Mideast peace deal would limit Iran’s ability to use Mideast tensions to justify its behavior.

“I think that time is not on the side of either Israeli or Palestinian aspirations for security, peace and a state,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday. Iranian-sponsored “rejectionist ideology” and a “commitment to violence” by those opposed to peace make reaching an agreement quickly all the more necessary, she said.

“The United States,” Clinton added, “wants to weigh in on the side of leaders and people who see this as maybe the last chance for a very long time to resolve this.” – FOX News

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Iran is paying Taliban fighters $1,000 for each U.S. soldier they kill in Afghanistan, according to a report in a British newspaper.

The Sunday Times described how a man it said was a “Taliban treasurer” had gone to collect $18,000 from an Iranian firm in Kabul, a reward it said was for an attack in July which killed several Afghan government troops and destroyed an American armored vehicle.

The treasurer left with the cash hidden in a sack of flour, the newspaper said, and then gave it to Taliban fighters in the province of Wardak. In the past six months, the treasurer claimed to have collected more than $77,000 from the company.

The Sunday Times said its investigation had found that at least five Kabul-based Iranian companies were secretly passing funds to the Taliban.

The newspaper’s correspondent, Miles Amoore, said he met and interviewed the treasurer, who he said had been an illiterate farmer who was taught to read and write, plus basic accountancy, by the Taliban last winter.

“We don’t care who we get money from,” the treasurer was quoted as saying. He described the relationship with Iran as a “marriage of convenience.” Iran is a predominantly Shiite country, while the Taliban is dominated by Sunni Muslims.

‘For jihad’

“Iran will never stop funding us because Americans are dangerous for them as well. I think the hatred is the same from both us and Iran. The money we get is not dirty. It is for jihad,” the treasurer told Amoore.

In addition to the $1,000 bounty on U.S. troops, the unnamed man said Iran paid $6,000 for the destruction of a U.S. military vehicle.

“I have to sign off on all the receipts and I have to add up how much each fighter deserves after each operation. I also have to communicate in the Iranian language,” the treasurer told the newspaper.

The report came as the Taliban threatened Sunday to derail elections this month and warned Afghans to boycott the vote in their first explicit threat against the poll.

The Sept. 18 parliamentary election is seen as a litmus test of stability in Afghanistan before U.S. President Barack Obama conducts a war strategy review in December that will examine the pace and scale of U.S. troop withdrawals from July 2011.

Despite the presence of almost 150,000 foreign troops, violence is at its worst across Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001.

“This (election) is a foreign process for the sake of further occupation of Afghanistan and we are asking the Afghan nation to boycott it,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.

“We are against it and will try with the best of our ability to block it. Our first targets will be the foreign forces and next the Afghan ones. So we are asking people to not take part,” he told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Security is a major concern ahead of the vote, with four candidates killed already in recent weeks, according to the United Nations and government officials.

Another candidate was wounded, and 10 of his campaign workers killed, in an air strike in northern Takhar province on Friday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is investigating the incident but maintains it killed a senior member of the al-Qaida-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in the air strike. – MSNBC

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A well-known Australian Muslim cleric has called for the beheading of Dutch anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders, a newspaper said on Friday.

Wilders’ Freedom Party scored the biggest gains in June 9 polls and is currently negotiating to form a new minority government with the Liberals and Christian Democrats. Polls show Wilders would win a new election if one were called now.

Wilders demanded to know why he had learnt about the threat from the newspaper and not from Dutch authorities who are guarding him after a film and remarks he made angered Muslims around the world.

De Telegraaf, the Netherlands’ largest newspaper, led its front page on Friday with a story on the speech by Feiz Muhammad.

The Sydney-born Muhammad has gained notoriety for, among other things, calling on young children to be radicalized and blaming rape victims for their own attacks.

The paper posted an English-language audio clip in which he refers to Wilders as “this Satan, this devil, this politician in Holland” and explains that anyone who talks about Islam like Wilders does should be executed by beheading.

De Telegraaf did not say when the speech was given but said it and the Dutch secret service both had copies. According to his website, Muhammad is based in Malaysia.

Wilders told Reuters it was “really terrible news” and that he was taking it seriously.

“I will ask for clarification from the Dutch minister of interior/justice why the secret service and anti-terrorism unit NCTb have not informed me before and what the consequences will be for me,” he said in an email.

A spokesman for the Dutch secret service referred inquiries on the threat to the NCTb. A spokeswoman for the NCTb was not available to comment.

Wilders is currently on trial in the Netherlands for inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims.

The Freedom Party leader made a film in 2008 which accused the Koran of inciting violence and mixed images of terrorist attacks with quotations from the Islamic holy book.

Wilders was also charged because of outspoken remarks in the media, such as an opinion piece in a Dutch daily in which he compared Islam to fascism and the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf.”

Of late he has been in the news for plans to speak out against a planned mosque in New York City on September 11, the ninth anniversary of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

But his views have also made him extremely popular with a segment of the country uneasy about the Netherlands’ commitment to multiculturalism.

(CNSNews.com) – Behind the polite talk at Thursday’s re-launch of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at the State Department was a deep gulf on what Israel calls a make-or-break issue – Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Addressing Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas directly in English, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu identified what he called “two pillars of peace that I think will enable us to resolve all the outstanding issues … legitimacy and security.”

“Just as you expect us to be ready to recognize a Palestinian state as the nation-state of the Palestinian people, we expect you to be prepared to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” Netanyahu said, adding that the more than one million non-Jews living in Israel enjoy full civil rights.

“I think this mutual recognition between us is indispensable to clarifying to our two people – our two peoples – that the conflict between us is over.”

Abbas’ response, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton turned the floor over to him minutes later, was that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had already recognized Israel – in September 1993, when his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, and then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had signed “a document of mutual recognition.”

“And in this document, we give enough to show that our intentions are good, our intentions with respect to recognizing the state of Israel,” he added, speaking in Arabic through a translator.

Left unsaid was the fact that neither in 1993 nor since then has the PLO agreed to recognize Israel specifically as a Jewish state.

On the contrary, Abbas and other Palestinian leaders have repeatedly rejected this Israeli requirement.

“Palestinians reject the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state,” PLO Executive Committee member Wassel Abu Yousef told reporters in Ramallah less than a fortnight ago, after Netanyahu told his cabinet that “recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people” was a necessary component of a peaceful settlement to the conflict.

At a landmark convention in Bethlehem last year, Abbas’ Fatah faction of the PLO adopted a platform rejecting recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

It linked the stance to the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees who left present-day Israel in 1948 and their descendants, now 4.7 million in number, according to the U.N. (Israel’s total population is 7.5 million, 1.5 million of whom are Arabs.)

Asked at a press briefing Thursday about the Jewish state dispute, U.S. Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell acknowledged that differences between the sides were “many,” “deep” and “serious” and that both sides would need to be willing to make “difficult concessions.”

But he said he believed Netanyahu and Abbas were “committed to doing what it takes to achieve the right result.”

PLO positions

As the talks began in Washington Thursday, back in the region the PLO released a statement through its news agency Wafa outlining its vision for a peace agreement.

On the issues which repeatedly have proven to be stumbling blocks over the years since the Oslo accords were signed in 1993, the PLO stance was clear:

– There could be no viable Palestinian state without East Jerusalem as its capital, it said, claiming that the city had been the Palestinians’ political, administrative, cultural and religious center “for centuries.”

– The borders of a Palestinian state must be those that were in place before the 1967 Six Day War, it said – Gaza, all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Palestinians would have to have control over airspace and territorial waters “with no residual Israeli presence or control,” and there would also have to be a “territorial link” between the West Bank and Gaza.

– Israeli settlements in the West Bank “pose the single greatest threat to a viable two-state solution, and hence, to a just and lasting peace.”

– All Palestinian refugees must have “the right to return to their homes,” and to choose how to exercise that right, the PLO document said.

Neither those stances, nor Israel’s rejection of them, have changed substantively over the years since 1993.

What has changed is that Abbas goes into the talks with much weaker support among Palestinians than his predecessor, a reality underlined by a protest rally in Ramallah on Wednesday and a terrorist press conference in Gaza City on Thursday.

At the rally, leaders of the Palestinian National Initiative, a left-leaning movement, said Abbas was going into the talks without the support of confidence of the Palestinian people

The Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported that hundreds of protestors chanted slogans including, in reference to Abbas, “President of Palestine, we are not with you.”

Among other things, Abbas’ legitimacy is frequently called into question by Palestinian critics who note his presidential term formally ended in January 2009.

At the time he argued that Palestinian law called for presidential and legislative elections to be held simultaneously, so he was entitled to extend his tenure until legislative polls, due in January 2010. But those elections were postponed because of the ongoing rift between Fatah and Hamas.

Hamas has controlled Gaza since seizing control in mid-2007, leaving Abbas’ authority limited to the West Bank.

‘Resistance’ to continue

In Gaza Thursday, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told a press conference Abbas does not represent the Palestinian people and has no mandate to negotiate on their behalf.

He also said “resistance” operations will continue in the West Bank.

A man identified as Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’ “military wing,” said 13 armed groups have now agreed to cooperate in carrying out more effective attacks against “the Zionist enemy.”

Hamas has claimed responsibility for two shooting attacks in the disputed territory in recent days – the killing of four Israelis in a shooting near Hebron on Tuesday and the wounding of another two Israelis in a similar incident near Ramallah on Wednesday.

Another terrorist organization, Islamic Jihad, praised the attacks on Thursday and called for more. The group’s leader, Khaled Al-Batsh, said in Gaza the negotiations with Israel must stop, Ma’an reported.

Abbas’ security forces reportedly rounded up hundreds of Islamists in the West Bank after the deadly Hebron shooting. Hamas issued a statement calling the arrests “a national crime.”

The next set of Netanyahu-Abbas talks has been scheduled for Sept. 14-15, “in the region” – reportedly Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt – and Clinton and Mitchell are due to take part.

Mitchell said Thursday the Israeli and Palestinian leaders have also agreed to meet every two weeks over the coming months, with U.S. representatives attending at least some of those meetings.

The last U.S. combat forces exit Iraq this week. The argument over Iraq is still nowhere near finished.

The costs of the Iraq war are evident to all. Now consider an alternative universe, with different choices –and weigh those costs.

As president, George Bush assessed his options in 2002, oil prices averaged less than $23 a barrel. These low prices had squeezed Iraq’s income and therefore Saddam Hussein’s power.

But war or no war, the price of oil would zoom upward in the 2000s. China had more than 90 times as many cars on the road in 2010 as in 1990. Chinese oil imports grew 7.5% a year, Indian oil imports only slightly less fast. Soaring oil demand from China and India pushed prices higher and higher: averaging $28 a barrel in 2003, $38 in 2004, $50 in 2005, $64 in 2007 and $91 in 2008. A surviving Saddam would have been a wealthy Saddam.

Not only wealthy, but empowered. The international sanctions regime had collapsed in the late 1990s, freeing Saddam to import more or less what he wished, potentially including the instrumentalities of war.

As we now know, Saddam Hussein had not in fact succeeded in reconstituting his nuclear program as of 2003. But Saddam did try twice before to gain a nuclear weapon: He had a program in the 1970s that was wrecked by Israeli airstrike in 1981, and then a second program in the 1980s that was discovered by UN arms inspectors after the First Gulf War.

It seems incredible that a Saddam still in power in the 2000s, unconstrained by sanctions and enriched by Chinese and Indian oil money, would not have tried a third time. Even if Saddam had not sought to build a nuclear bomb, an additional $100 billion or so in annual oil revenues would still have paid for a lot of mischief in the Middle East.

Would Saddam have competed with Iran to fund Hamas? Would he have made common cause with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez to support anti-government insurgents in Colombia? Would Iraq have offered haven to al-Qaeda terrorists escaping Afghanistan?

A Saddam-ruled Iraq would not have been a quiet or comfortable place. And when the regime finally did end, it would have ended violently. When the U.S.-led coalition overthrew Saddam, violence erupted between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis, leading to an estimated 100,000 civilian deaths. Does anybody imagine that things would have gone better if the regime had ended instead with a Saddam assassination or heart attack?

Blame the Americans, if you like, for not having a better plan ready to contain the violence. But it was not the United States that caused the violence, much less the United States that committed the violence.

Now Iraq is finding its way to stability. For all the country’s many problems, it has an elected government and an effective post-Saddam security force. Would this have happened in the absence of international forces? Or would Iraq have looked like Lebanon between 1975 and 1991, a cauldron of sectarian violence for a generation, with casualties of many multiples of 100,000? Again: We cannot know, but the ugly scenarios are the most plausible.

With hindsight, everybody would fight the Iraq war differently. That is always true for any war. But it should also be true that with hindsight, some war critics should rethink their criticism. The outcome the critics wanted — a long-term stable future for Iraq without the cost and trauma of international intervention — was as much a fantasy as hopes for a swift and easy transition to democracy.

Iraq was on its way to an explosion in 2002. The U.S.-led intervention brought that explosion forward in time, and exposed Americans and allies to the shrapnel wounds. But the intervention may also have accelerated Iraq’s post-Saddam stabilization — opening the way to internal reconciliation and Iraq’s return to the community of nations.

Critics of the Iraq war often compare it to Vietnam. I wonder if the better comparison is not Korea: a war that once looked like a pointless stalemate, but that gained a strategic rationale as South Korea grew into a wealthy democracy. I remember a conversation I had with an American officer when I visited Iraq in 2005.

“What do you hope to achieve here?” I asked. “I mean, you personally?”

He answered: “Someday I’d like to bring my kids to visit a successful Iraq and tell them, ‘I made this possible.’” It’s early yet for this officer to begin planning his return trip. But comparing Iraq today to Iraq then — that trip has come a lot closer. – Frum Forum

PREVIOUS: No November Election Ballots for Military Overseas?

Protecting the rights of active duty military to have their vote counted is apparently not a priority for this administration.

In Washington, politicians always like to release bad news on a Friday, as fewer people notice. Today, the Pentagon announced that it had granted the waiver requests of five states seeking to escape requirements to protect military voters.

I have written previously here at PJM that all waiver requests should be denied. Unfortunately, if you are an overseas servicemember from Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, or Washington, the protections in the MOVE Act aren’t going to apply to you this year. And if you are from one of the states who still aren’t in compliance with MOVE — like Colorado, Wisconsin, or Alaska — don’t be surprised if you get scant help from Attorney General Eric Holder.

Waivers can be granted from MOVE only if states find a way to make sure the votes of servicemembers are still counted.

Washington, despite having plenty of time after an August 17 primary to get the job done, received a waiver today. Washington was unwilling to change their schedule of ballot preparation to allow for 45 days mailing time. Though modern printing technology makes the Washington waiver unnecessary, it was granted.

Delaware election director Elaine Manlove says the state can get ballots out in time — but applied for a waiver “just in case.” Delaware’s waiver was motivated by caution, but caution isn’t a basis for the granting of a waiver. The law says “undue hardship.” However, waiver granted.

Rhode Island shared Delaware’s risk aversion: Spokesman Chris Barnett says they asked for a waiver in case they had a recount in the primary. A hypothetical “undue hardship.” Waiver granted.

Since MOVE passed last October, Massachusetts did nothing to adjust their late September 14 primary to comply. (This was the same state that introduced and passed legislation in mere days so that Senator Paul Kirk could be sworn in to vote for ObamaCare. The legislature previously stripped Republican Mitt Romney of the power to appoint replacements and required a special election.) It’s a shame soldiers aren’t as important as Senator Kirk’s vote was. Waiver granted.

New York sought a waiver. No surprise there: seven years after the passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, New York still wasn’t in compliance. Waiver granted.

Calls to Bob Carey, the director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP), were not returned in time for this article, but a spokesman told me that these waivers are in compliance with the MOVE Act standards.

FVAP never published the waiver requests prior to today — including the Hawaii request received back on March 24, 2010. Many state officials, such as Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin, made no mention whatsoever of the waiver requests on their websites.

Given that few things could make Americans angrier than another 17,000 lost votes from soldiers — as happened in 2008 — the secrecy was understandable.

Some waivers place undue faith in technology to compensate for the delays. One waiver grant cites the use of the electronic “FVAP Voting Wizard Project” and a state’s comprehensive plans to use fax and email transmission of ballot forms. Yet Congress expressly rejected such work-arounds when debating the MOVE Act in 2009.

Congress rejected computer solutions because they knew that forward deployed troops don’t have computers.

Those most hurt by reliance on technology as a solution are the frontline soldiers like the Navy Seals, the 10th Mountain Division, the Marines, and others who hear the sounds of bullets whistling by but don’t see a computer screen for weeks. They eat MREs and sleep under the stars — they don’t carry laser printers and iPads. Waivers based on technological solutions are useful to servicemembers back in Wiesbaden, Okinawa, and Molesworth. But those solutions don’t help those directly fighting the War on Terror.

Anyone remember that war?

Bureaucracies tend to creek and groan when they have something new to do, and the creaking and groaning was deafening with MOVE Act implementation. Take the failure of the Department of Justice Voting Section to ever respond to the Pentagon’s draft final waiver guidance for states. FVAP officials wanted to give states early guidance about what would or would not justify a waiver, and the Pentagon wanted to publish the information well in advance of the July 28 deadline for states to submit waiver applications. So FVAP sent draft guidance to bureaucrats in the Voting Section last spring.

While they waited for the DOJ, the Pentagon had to issue “interim” guidance on May 24, 2010. It foreshadowed the problem:

Please be advised that [FVAP] will not to be able to provide guidance … until detailed guidance is available.

In a dereliction of their responsibility to provide advice to FVAP, officials in the Voting Section allowed the Pentagon draft to gather dust. In fact, the Department of Justice never replied. As a result, states never received the long-promised final waiver guidance, and were forced to submit waiver applications at the last minute without any hint of administration policy.

Back in March 2010, Hawaii was begging for policy clarity from the Pentagon. Scott Nago, the Hawaii chief election official, wrote to them:

We were told your office was still in consultation with the attorney general and that we would be informed once that consultation was complete. It is our understanding that no application has been submitted by any jurisdiction with a late primary election as they are waiting for further guidance from your office.

We all are still waiting. This abdication of MOVE Act duty by DOJ officials may explain why this article about waiver decisions is appearing in late August, instead of late May.

This example also demonstrates the difference between a bureaucracy run by Robert Gates, and one run by Eric Holder. General Holder should find out on whose desk the Pentagon’s draft was allowed to gather dust for months, and he should take swift and appropriate action against the bureaucrat. Because states submitted late waivers, full implementation of MOVE waiver policy was delayed to the outer limits of the statute.

To complicate matters further, DOJ officials were actively undermining MOVE Act protections throughout the spring. Not only did one Voting Section official tell states that the provisions of the new law were “vague” and a lawsuit “was a last resort,” an analysis Senator John Cornyn has characterized as laughable, they encouraged states to apply for waivers.

State election officials who were in attendance for Justice Department presentations said they couldn’t believe what they were hearing.

Worse yet, these same Justice Department officials told multiple officials that once a MOVE waiver was granted, it might be permanent, carrying over to the 2012 presidential election, despite express statutory language to the contrary. Such staggeringly bad legal advice came from both political appointees as well as career attorneys in the Voting Section. So embarrassing was the position, that senior political DOJ appointees retreated from the position once Senator Cornyn heard about it.

The apologists for the waivers and lack of DOJ enforcement cite the fact this is a “transitional year,” a term that appears nowhere in the law. They say the waiver provisions contemplate a “late” primary. But every state with a late primary could have done something about it to comply with MOVE.

Florida did. Georgia did. Vermont did.

It was simply a question of legislative priorities, and states like New York, Massachusetts, and Colorado did nothing to fix the problem.

The ball is now in the Justice Department court once again. Will they sue the states like Colorado and Wisconsin who are blatantly noncompliant with the MOVE Act?

Ballots need to mail in just a few weeks to Iraq and Afghanistan. We all know who is breaking the law, right now. It isn’t rocket science. Every day that DOJ delays a lawsuit means some solider guarding a dangerous frontier will lose their vote. Shameful bureaucratic inaction by the DOJ in the days ahead will have real and tragic consequences. The attorney general should immediately order the Voting Section to file lawsuits against Colorado, Alaska, and Wisconsin.

It would take diligent Justice lawyers a day, at most, to draft and file a complaint. Our heroes serving overseas don’t have the luxury of going AWOL. – J. Christian Adams @ PJM

Netanyahu asks Putin to stop deal involving sale of advanced P-800 Yakhont supersonic cruise missiles; Israel considers this weaponry dangerous to its navy vessels in Mediterranean Sea.

Israel is trying to prevent an arms deal between Russia and Syria, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to stop the arms sale involving advanced anti-shipping missiles.

The deal involves the sale of advanced P-800 Yakhont supersonic cruise missiles to the Syrian military. Israel considers this weaponry capable of posing significant danger to its navy vessels in the Mediterranean Sea.

In a conversation with Putin, Netanyahu told the Russian leader that missiles his country had delivered to Syria were then transferred to Hezbollah and used against IDF troops during the Second Lebanon War.

Meanwhile, Ehud Barak is scheduled to travel to Moscow for what will be the first-ever visit by an Israeli Defense Minister to the Russian capital, where he plans to discuss the matter with his host, Anatoly Serdyukov.

A senior Israeli official who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the issue, said Israel and Russia have been engaged in discreet dialogue over arms deals to the region.

But as these talks have not yielded any results, the decision was made to upgrade the level of discussions with a senior political figure.

“We have been working on such a visit for more than a year and it is very important to us,” the official said.

As the Russian Defense Ministry is considered to be overwhelmingly pro-Arab, the opportunity for an Israeli Defense Minister to make an official visit is considered a historic development.

Netanyahu called Putin on Friday, after a long period of time in which the two had not communicated. The prime minister updated his Russian counterpart on the direct talks with the Palestinians that are expected to begin next week, and some of the conversation centered on the arms deal with Syria.

In addition to Syria’s transfer of advanced Russian anti-tank missiles to Hezbollah, Netanyahu also mentioned the incident in which Syrian-acquired Chinese-made C-802 anti-shipping missiles were used by Hezbollah to target an Israeli destroyer. He expressed Israel’s concern that the new missiles from Russia will also make their way to Hezbollah.

The latest arms deal was first reported in the foreign press in late 2009, and is said to include P-800 missiles which now come in models that can be launched from land.

The highly accurate missiles have a maximum range of 300 kilometers and carry a 200-kilogram warhead. The weapon’s unique feature is its ability to cruise several meters above the surface, making it difficult to identify on radar and therefore intercept.

The C-802 missiles currently in the Syrian arsenal have a range of 120 kilometers, carry a smaller warhead and lack the accuracy of the more advanced missiles.

Israel’s defense analysts are concerned that these missiles in the hands of Hezbollah would pose a serious threat to Israel Navy ships operating out of the Haifa port, and possibly also out of Ashdod. – HAARETZ

WASHINGTON – The good will tour of the Middle East by the imam behind the proposed mosque near ground zero is just part of the U.S. government’s efforts to reach out to the Muslim world.

This year, the Obama administration will spend nearly $6 million to restore 63 historic and cultural sites, including mosques and minarets, in 55 nations, according to State Department documents.

Under a program established by Congress in 2001, the department will fund at least five projects in as many countries at a cost of more than $271,000.

The contributions include $76,135 for the 16th century Grand Mosque in Tongxin, China, and $67,500 for the 18th century Golden Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan. An additional $62,169 will be spent on restoring a 19th century minaret in Mauritania’s ancient city of Tichitt; $50,437 for the Sundarwala Burj, a 16th century Islamic Monument in New Delhi, and $15,450 to restore the 18th century Gobarau Minaret in Katsina, Nigeria.

The amount spent on mosque restoration projects is a fraction of the total in the 2010 Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, which also will fund projects to restore Christian and Buddhist sites as well as museums, forts and palaces.

Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent almost $26 million on the program to fund about 640 cultural preservation projects in more than 100 countries.

“The fund has demonstrated America’s respect for the world’s cultural heritage,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last month in announcing the 2010 projects. “Cultural heritage serves as a reminder of historical experiences and achievements of humanity. Ancient structures and objects offer important lessons for us today.”

A Saudi Arabian court has ruled that a convicted man’s spinal cord should be severed so he is paralyzed as part of the kingdom’s Islamic-law-oriented retribution for similar injuries he is said to have inflicted upon another man in a fight.

The ruling has prompted an outcry from human rights groups and an intervention from Saudi officials who say they are trying to persuade the victim to accept monetary compensation for his injuries instead of the punishment against the criminal.

According to reports from Saudi Arabia, the court in Tabuk, on the northwest coast of the kingdom, has approached a number of hospitals about the possibility of cutting the convicted man’s spinal cord.

So far at least two hospitals have refused to carry out the procedure, citing ethical concerns.

In the Saudi justice system, the court establishes guilt and the family of the victim or the victim himself has the option of inflicting the same injury upon the guilty party, seeking blood money or offering a pardon.

“The sentence of ‘an eye for an eye’ has always been in conflict with medical ethics,” said Christoph Wilcke, a senior researcher for Saudi Arabia at Human Rights Watch, adding, “This case is a new angle in the sense that doctors are speaking out.”

Amnesty International urged Saudi authorities not to deliberately paralyze the man.

The punishment amounts to “nothing less than torture,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, acting director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Amnesty International.

“While those guilty of a crime should be held accountable, intentionally paralyzing a man in this way would constitute torture, and be a breach of its international human rights obligations,” she added.

The defendant, whose identity has not been revealed, was sentenced to seven months imprisonment for the offense and was convicted after a trial where he was said to have had no legal assistance.

The victim, 22-year-old Abdulaziz al-Mutairi, was struck with a cleaver in a fight more than two years ago. The injuries left him paralyzed.

A Saudi Embassy spokesman in Washington did not return phone calls for comment.

It is unusual for such cases to come to light.

“That is always the caveat when you deal with Saudi Arabia and court verdicts. As a rule, nobody sits in on court verdicts except for the person concerned. … So you can take for granted that we don’t hear of a vast majority of those cases,” Mr. Wilcke said.

Other cases of retribution sentences, known in Arabic as “qisas,” have included eye-gouging, tooth extraction, and death in cases involving murder. Under the Saudi justice system, people are flogged for some offenses, thieves have their limbs amputated and those found guilty of murder, rape, drug smuggling or blasphemy are beheaded in public.

Saudi officials, meanwhile, say they are trying to persuade the paralyzed man to drop the demand that the defendant’s spinal cord be severed and instead accept compensation.

A spokesman for the court said it had ruled for monetary compensation to be paid to Mr. al-Mutairi and that the Tabuk provincial governor, Prince Fahad Bin Sultan, had ordered mediation between the two parties, according to a Reuters news agency report from Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

“Mutairi did request that the attacker face the same bodily harm he received, but the court ruled that he is to obtain a financial compensation agreed upon between the two parties,” the spokesman said.

“When Mutairi insisted that the assailant face the same condition he is in, we contacted hospitals to persuade him that such operation may cause death. The governor is sending envoys to mediate,” he added.

Retaliation cases in which organs are removed have been exceedingly rare over the past few years in the kingdom and get very little Saudi attention.

It is customary in Saudi Arabia and many other parts of the Islamic world for people of good intention to try to persuade the victim’s family to either issue a pardon or accept compensation.

In the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, an official committee is tasked with intervening with the families.

Saudi royals usually contribute toward any financial settlement, while ordinary Saudis also often give money.

“There will be a lot of pressure, political and social, not to inflict the same punishment, but to accept money or issue a pardon,” Mr. Wilcke said.

But, he added, there have been cases in which even exceedingly poor families have turned down millions of riyals and insist that they want the punishment to be meted out. – The Washington Times

WASHINGTON — U.S. officials have confirmed a significant breach of military computers caused by a flash drive plugged into a laptop computer in the Middle East in 2008.

In an article set for publication Wednesday, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III says malicious code placed on the drive by a foreign intelligence agency uploaded itself onto a network run by the U.S. military’s Central Command, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

“That code spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control,” Lynn says in the article to appear in Foreign Affairs. “It was a network administrator’s worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary.”

Declassifying an incident officials had kept secret reflects the Pentagon’s desire to raise congressional and public awareness of threats facing U.S. computer systems, experts said. The article says the Pentagon’s 15,000 networks and 7 million computing devices are probed thousands of times daily by attackers who are difficult to identify.

Infiltrating the military’s computer system is significant, a former intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said.

“This is how we order people to go to war. If you’re on the inside, you can change orders. You can say, ‘turn left’ instead of ‘turn right.’ You can say ‘go up’ instead of ‘go down.’”

Now, he said, the “Pentagon has begun to recognize its vulnerability and is making a case for how you’ve got to deal with it.”

JPost.com  
by JPOST.COM STAFF 
August 20, 2010
Report: Al-Shehri warns against “the greater state of Israel.”

Al-Qaida is ready to exploit a war “by the Jews against Iran,” the Sunni group’s second-in-command in Yemen, Saeed al-Shehri, said in an audio message this month, according to the Daily Beast.

The mostly Shi’ite nation of Iran is an enemy to Al-Qaida, and al-Shehri predicted that after Israel attacked Iranian nuclear installations, Iran would blame Saudi Arabia – which reports say may let Israel fly through its airspace to attack Iran – and use the opportunity to seize the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

Al-Shehri said Israel would then seize territory from surrounding Arab nations to establish “the greater state of Israel,” and the Sunni Arab population of the Middle East would be trapped between the “Jews in the Middle East and Iran in the Peninsula,” the Daily Beast reported.

According to the Daily Beast, Al-Qaida would benefit from an Israel-Iran war because if Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear installations, Iran would use its proxies to lash back at Americans in the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

BUSHEHR, Iran — Iranian and Russian engineers began loading fuel Saturday into Iran’s first nuclear power plant, which Moscow has promised to safeguard to prevent material at the site from being used in any potential weapons production.

After years of delays, the fueling of the Bushehr plant in southern Iran marks the startup of a facility for energy production that the U.S. once hoped to block as a way to pressure the country to stop separate nuclear activities of far greater concern.

There have not been strong objections to the Bushehr plant itself as there have been with Iran’s separate efforts at other sites to accelerate uranium enrichment — a process that makes the fuel for power plants but which can also be used in weapons production.

Even as Iran’s nuclear chief said the plant demonstrated the country has only peaceful aims, he celebrated it as a defiant “symbol of Iranian resistance and patience” in the face of Western pressure.

“Despite all pressure, sanctions and hardships imposed by Western nations, we are now witnessing the startup of the largest symbol of Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities,” Ali Akbar Salehi told reporters inside the plant.

Washington and other nations do not oppose Iran’s stated aim of producing nuclear energy, but are concerned that if Iran masters the enrichment cycle it would have a pathway to weapons production under the convenient cover of a peaceful energy program. Iran denies such an intention.

It is the enrichment work that has been the target of four rounds of U.N. Security Council sanctions.

Russia, which helped finish building Bushehr, has pledged to prevent spent nuclear fuel at the site from being shifted to a possible weapons program. After years of delaying its completion, Moscow says it believes the Bushehr project is essential for persuading Iran to cooperate with international efforts to ensure Iran does not develop the bomb.

The United States, while no longer formally objecting to the plant, disagrees and says Iran should not be rewarded while it continues to defy U.N. demands to halt uranium enrichment.

On Saturday, a first truckload of fuel was taken from a storage site to a fuel “pool” inside the reactor building under the watch of monitors from the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency. Over the next two weeks, 163 fuel assemblies — equal to 80 tons of uranium fuel — will be moved inside the building and then into the reactor core.

Workers in white lab coats and helmets led reporters on a tour of the cavernous facility.

It will be another two months before the 1,000-megawatt light-water reactor is pumping electricity to Iranian cities.

The Bushehr plant is not considered a proliferation risk because the terms of the deal commit the Iranians to allowing the Russians to retrieve all used reactor fuel for reprocessing. Spent fuel contains plutonium, which can be used to make atomic weapons. Additionally, Iran has said that IAEA experts will be able to verify that none of the fresh fuel or waste is diverted.

Of greater concern to the West, however, are Iran’s stated plans to build 10 new uranium enrichment sites inside protected mountain strongholds. Iran said recently it will begin construction on the first one in March in defiance of the U.N. sanctions.

Nationwide celebrations were planned for Saturday’s fuel loading at Bushehr.

“I thank the Russian government and nation, which cooperated with the great Iranian nation and registered their name in Islamic Iran’s golden history,” Salehi said. “Today is a historic day and will be remembered in history.”

He spoke at a news conference inside the plant with the head of Russia’s state-run nuclear corporation, Sergei Kiriyenko, who said Russia was always committed to the project.

“The countdown to the Bushehr nuclear power plant has started,” Kiriyenko said. “Congratulations.”

Iran’s hard-liners consider the completion of the plant to be a show of defiance against U.N. Security Council sanctions that seek to slow Iran’s other nuclear advances.

Hard-line leader Hamid Reza Taraqi said the launch will boost Iran’s international standing and “will show the failure of all sanctions” against Iran.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated Friday that Tehran was ready to resume negotiations with the six major powers trying to curb Iran’s enrichment work — the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany.

Ahmadinejad, however, insisted Iran would reject calls to completely halt uranium enrichment, a key U.N. demand. The president had earlier said the talks could start in September, but in an interview with Japan’s biggest newspaper, The Yomiuri Shimbun, he said the talks could start as early as this month.

Russia signed a $1 billion contract to build the Bushehr plant in 1995 but has dragged its feet on completing the work.

Moscow had cited technical reasons for the delays, but analysts say Russia used the project to try to press Iran to ease its defiance over its nuclear program.

The uranium fuel Russia has supplied for Bushehr is well below the more than 90 percent enrichment needed for a nuclear warhead. Iran is already producing its own uranium enriched to the Bushehr level — about 3.5 percent. It also has started a pilot program of enriching uranium to 20 percent, which officials say is needed for a medical research reactor.

The Bushehr plant overlooks the Persian Gulf and is visible from several miles (kilometers) away with its cream-colored dome dominating the green landscape. Soldiers maintain a 24-hour watch on roads leading up to the plant, manning anti-aircraft guns and supported by numerous radar stations.

There are several housing facilities for employees inside the complex plus a separate large compound housing the families of Russian experts and technicians. The site is about 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) south of Tehran.

Russians began shipping fuel for the plant in 2007 and carried out a test-run of the plant in February 2009.

Iran says it plans to build other reactors and says designs for a second rector in southwestern Iran are taking shape.

The Bushehr project dates backs to 1974, when Iran’s U.S.-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi contracted with the German company Siemens to build the reactor. The company withdrew from the project after the 1979 Islamic Revolution toppled the shah.

The partially finished plant later sustained damages after it was bombed by Iraq during its 1980-88 war against Iran.

Before making the Russian deal to complete Bushehr, Iran signed pacts with Argentina, Spain and other countries only to see them canceled under U.S. pressure.

PREVIOUS RELATED: Israel Has Until Week’s End to Strike Iran Nuclear Facility, Bolton Says

Saudi judge asks hospital if it can damage convict’s spine as punishment for paralyzing man
August 19, 2010
FoxNews.com

A Saudi judge has asked several hospitals in the country whether they could damage a man’s spinal cord as punishment after he was convicted of attacking another man with a cleaver and paralyzing him, the brother of the victim said Thursday.

Abdul-Aziz al-Mutairi, 22, was left paralyzed and subsequently lost a foot after a fight more than two years ago. He asked a judge in northwestern Tabuk province to impose an equivalent punishment on his attacker under Islamic law, his brother Khaled al-Mutairi told The Associated Press by telephone from there.

He said one of the hospitals, located in Tabuk, responded that it is possible to damage the spinal cord, but it added that the operation would have to be done at another more specialized facility. Saudi newspapers reported that a second hospital in the capital Riyadh declined, saying it could not inflict such harm.

Administrative offices of two of the hospitals and the court in Tabuk were closed for the Saudi weekend beginning Thursday and could not be reached for comment.

A copy of the medical report from the King Khaled Hospital in Tabuk province obtained by the AP said the same injury al-Mutairi suffers from can be inflicted on his attacker using a nerve stimulant, and inducing the same injuries in the same locations. The report was dated six months ago.

Saudi Arabia enforces strict Islamic law and occasionally doles out punishments based on the ancient legal code of an eye-for-an-eye

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf To Represent The U.S. In The Middle East
August 10, 2010 –
by Eric Shawn FoxNews.com

The best thing that this freaking scum-bag Islamic degenerate could do for the U.S. is stay in the Middle East and never return to the U.S.

He’s the Imam behind the controversial Mosque scheduled to be built near Ground Zero, and he will be traveling the world representing the United States.

It turns out the Obama administration thinks Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is the right man to participate in a State Department trip to Muslim countries in the Middle East.

“The State Department has no responsibility to send fruitcakes around as if they are representatives of America,” says former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, who told Fox News that Imam Rauf should be dumped from the trip and that the State Department should investigate how he was included in the first place.

“I am just amazed that he could be selected to represent our country speaking around the world,” Bolton observes.

Imam Rauf has been a lightning rod for many.

While Time magazine called him “The Moderate Imam Behind The ‘Ground Zero Mosque,’” he recently refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization and he has said that the United States was partly to blame for the terrorist attacks on 9-11.

In an interview with “60 Minutes,” in 2001, Rauf claimed that U.S. policies were quote, “an accessory” to the 9-11 attacks.

He also was quoted in a 2008 interview for “Malaysia Matters” saying that “when people feel they’ve been humiliated, when people feel they’ve been frustrated, when people feel they’ve been ignored, when people feel justice is not meted, then they feel the need to conflagrate.”

The controversy over the Mosque, and the Imam’s views, haven’t stopped the Obama administration from planning to send him soon as part of a special State Department cultural program, that reportedly includes stops in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Abu Dhabi.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley praised the Imam, calling him “a distinguished Muslim cleric,” who is part of a program where “we send people from Muslim communities here in this country around the world to help people overseas to understand our society and the role of religion within our society.”

Crowley also said that fundraising on the Imam’s trip for the Islamic Center would not be allowed.

It turns out that this government supported trip will be the Imam’s third with the State Department. Crowley said the first was in 2007, during the Bush administration, and that Rauf went to Egypt this past January.

“We have a long term relationship with him,” Crowley explained. “His work on tolerance and religious diversity is well known and he brings a moderate perspective to foreign audiences on what it is like to be a practicing Muslim in the United States.”

But Bolton points to the Imam’s controversial comments as proof that he should not go.

US State Dept Sends Mosque Imam to Mideast

WASHINGTON – State Department officials on Monday confirmed Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque, will soon be going on a trip of the Middle East and the U.S. government will be picking up the tab.

The planned construction of a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City has set off a contentious national debate over religious freedom in the U.S., drawing impassioned opposition from some families of 9/11 victims.

Rauf has emerged as a controversial figure because of his refusal to acknowledge Hamas as a terrorist organization, which is how the U.S. government classifies the group. The imam also has been quoted as saying U.S. foreign policy was in part responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

“He is a distinguished Muslim cleric,” said State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley. “We do have a program whereby, through our Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau here at the State Department, we send people from Muslim communities here in this country around the world to help people overseas understand our society and the role of religion within our society.”

Rauf and his partners are preparing to build a $100 million Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero, where on September 11, 2001 two airliners hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists, slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 innocents.

The project, known as Park 51, cleared a final hurdle on August 3rd, when decision by New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission cleared the way for construction. The tower could span up to 15 stories and will house a mosque, a 500-seat auditorium and a pool.

The State Department has not yet divulged a detailed itinerary of Rauf’s trip, although Arab media is reporting he will visit the oil rich states of Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates and Abu Dhabi.

“It is to foster greater understanding and outreach around the world, among… Muslim- majority communities,” said Crowley. “We’ve done this many, many times, with many leading figures… over the past few years.”

The project has also drawn outspoken criticism from Sarah Palin who famously tweeted, “Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation. It stabs hearts.”

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has forcefully defended the project as a symbol of America’s religious tolerance.

British Couple Reportedly Killed In Suspected Honor Killing In Pakistan
August 8, 2010
FoxNews.com

When will the PC media of the West stop calling these so called “honor killings” what they should be called and that is “Family Terrorist Dishonor Murders”?

A British couple was murdered last week in Pakistan in a suspected “honor killing,” Sky News reported Sunday.

The couple, Gul Wazir and his wife, Bagum, of Birmingham, England, reportedly traveled to the country to resolve a dispute over a wedding and were gunned down in the village of Salehana in the remote Nowshera province.

British police confirmed the deaths over the weekend, adding that a murder inquiry is already being carried out by the Pakistani authorities, according to the network.

The pair was reportedly shot dead by their daughter’s fiancee after the woman called off the wedding.

The couple has already been buried and the British Foreign Office is providing consular assistance to the family, Sky News reported.

MIAMI – A suspected al-Qaida operative who lived for more than 15 years in the U.S. has become chief of the terror network’s global operations, the FBI says, marking the first time a leader so intimately familiar with American society has been placed in charge of planning attacks.

Adnan Shukrijumah, 35, has taken over a position once held by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in 2003, Miami-based FBI counterterrorism agent Brian LeBlanc told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. That puts him in regular contact with al-Qaida’s senior leadership, including Osama bin Laden, LeBlanc said.

Shukrijumah (SHOOK’-ree joohm-HAH’) and two other leaders were part of an “external operations council” that designed and approved terrorism plots and recruits, but his two counterparts were killed in U.S. drone attacks, leaving Shukrijumah as the de facto chief and successor to Mohammed — his former boss.

“He’s making operational decisions is the best way to put it,” said LeBlanc, the FBI’s lead Shukrijumah investigator. “He’s looking at attacking the U.S. and other Western countries. Basically through attrition, he has become his old boss.”

The FBI has been searching for Shukrijumah since 2003. He is thought to be the only al-Qaida leader to have once held permanent U.S. resident status, or a green card.

Shukrijumah was named earlier this year in a federal indictment as a conspirator in the case against three men accused of plotting suicide bomb attacks on New York’s subway system in 2009. The indictment marked the first criminal charges against Shukrijumah, who previously had been sought only as a witness.

Shukrijumah is also suspected of playing a role in plotting of potential al-Qaida bomb attacks in Norway and a never-executed attack on subways in the United Kingdom, but LeBlanc said no direct link has yet emerged. Travel records and other evidence also indicate Shukrijumah did research and surveillance in spring 2001 for a never-attempted plot to disrupt commerce in the Panama Canal by sinking a freighter there, LeBlanc said.

Shukrijumah, who trained at al-Qaida’s Afghanistan camps in the late 1990s, was labeled a “clear and present danger” to the U.S. in 2004 by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. The U.S. is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture and the FBI also is releasing an age-enhanced photo of what he may look like today.

It’s natural he would focus on attacking on the U.S, LeBlanc said.

“He knows how the system works. He knows how to get a driver’s license. He knows how to get a passport,” LeBlanc said.

Shukrijumah’s mother, Zurah Adbu Ahmed, said Thursday on the front stoop of her small home in suburban Miramar, Fla., that her son frequently talked about what he considered the excesses of American society — such as alcohol and drug abuse and women wearing skimpy clothes — but that he did not condone violence. She also said she has not had contact with her son for several years.

“This boy would never do evil stuff. He is not an evil person,” she said. “He loved this country. He never had a problem with the United States.”

LeBlanc said the new charges were brought after the New York subway bomb suspects identified him to investigators as their al-Qaida superior. The New York suspects provided other key information about his al-Qaida status.

“It was basically Adnan who convinced them to come back to the United States and do this attack,” LeBlanc said. “His ability to manipulate someone like that and direct that, I think it speaks volumes.”

Before turning to radical strains of Islam, Shukrijumah lived in Miramar with his mother and five siblings, excelling at computer science and chemistry courses while studying at community college. He had come to South Florida in 1995 when his father, a Muslim cleric and missionary trained in Saudi Arabia, decided to take a post at a Florida mosque after several years at a mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y.

At some point in the late 1990s, according to the FBI, Shukrijumah became convinced that he must participate in “jihad,” or holy war, to fight perceived persecution against Muslims in places like Chechnya and Bosnia.

That led to training camps in Afghanistan, where he underwent basic and advanced training in the use of automatic weapons, explosives, battle tactics, surveillance and camouflage.

“What’s dangerous about an individual that understands the U.S. is he may have a better sense of our security vulnerabilities and insights into how to terrify the American people using smaller attacks for large, political impact,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation. “This increases the risk of attacks outside traditional places we normally worry about like New York and Washington.”

Shukrijumah was born in Saudi Arabia. He is a citizen of Guyana, a small South American country where his father was born. His father died in 2004.

While still in Afghanistan, he met another young recruit — Jose Padilla, an American citizen once suspected of plotting to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb” and now imprisoned on a 2007 terrorism material support conviction in Miami. At one point, according to interrogations of Padilla and other al-Qaida detainees, Shukrijumah and Padilla were paired in a plot to fill apartments in several high-rise apartment buildings with natural gas and blow them up, but they had a falling out.

“They just couldn’t get along. It’s like two guys that could not work together,” LeBlanc said.

The FBI is still hoping to bring charges in South Florida against Shukrijumah, but key information about him was provided by Guantanamo Bay detainees such as Mohammed, whose use as a witness would be difficult.

“For us, it’s never been a dry hole. It’s always been an active investigation and it’s global in nature,” LeBlanc said. “We have never stopped working it.”

Israel Objects to U.S. Supplying Weapons to Lebanon’s National Army

(CNSNews.com) – Israel plans to urge the U.S. and other countries arming the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to stop doing so, following a deadly border skirmish Tuesday.

Government officials cited by Israeli media organizations Wednesday said Israel would launch a diplomatic offensive, arguing that weapons intended to be used against terrorists were instead being used against Israelis.

The arming of the LAF has drawn opposition before, with critics voicing concern that some of the equipment could end up in the hands of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia which views itself as the “resistance” against Israel.

Tuesday’s border clash brought a different concern – that the LAF itself could use weaponry provided by the U.S. and European countries directly against Israel.

Initiating the firefight, the LAF says it “confronted the enemy’s forces with weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.” An Israeli lieutenant-colonel killed and a second officer critically wounded.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) returned fire with light arms and a helicopter fired at a nearby LAF command center, killing three soldiers and a journalist.

Four months ago, a shipment of U.S. equipment provided to the LAF included “1,000 M16A4 rifles, 10 missile launchers, 1,583 grenade launchers, and 538 sets of day/night binoculars and night-vision devices,” according to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.

The clash between the two countries’ militaries sparked a flurry of accusations and counter accusations from the two sides. Israel said its troops came under fire while using a crane to remove a tree on Israeli soil; the LAF said its troops opened fire after the Israelis entered Lebanese territory.

Despite the sensitivity of the issue, some wire services seemed ready to accept Lebanon’s claim.

Reuters captioned a photograph: “An Israeli soldier is seen on a crane on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Israeli border near Adaisseh village, southern Lebanon August 3, 2010.”

The Associated Press carried a similar caption, and an AP news story contained a sentence reading: “An Associated Press photo shows an Israeli standing on a crane reaching over the fence that separates the two sides on the Lebanese side of the border.”

Although the photographs do show a crane extending beyond a fence, the IDF pointed out that the fence was not the international-recognized border known as the “Blue Line.” Instead, it is an Israeli fence built dozens of meters inside the Israeli side of the border. Both sides of the fence are therefore Israeli territory.

The IDF released an aerial photograph reflecting this.

AP later corrected its caption to clarify that that the location of the tree was in dispute, describing it as being “near the border with Lebanon.”

The role played by the U.N. peacekeeping force UNIFIL before and during the clash remains unclear.

Israel claims to have notified the U.N. force in advance of its intention to remove the tree.

In its statement, the LAF said it had opened fire after an Israeli patrol crossed the border “despite UNIFIL attempts to stop it.”

In response to queries overnight UNIFIL on Thursday provided a statement from spokesman Lt. Col. Naresh Bhatt, who said that while investigations into the incident were continuing UNIFIL had established that “the trees being cut by the Israeli army are located south of the Blue Line on the Israeli side.”

A similar, although not fatal, incident occurred along the border in February 2007, when Lebanese troops fired on Israeli soldiers searching for Hezbollah mines between the Israeli fence and the Blue Line. Israeli tanks fired back.

On that occasion UNIFIL confirmed the following day that Israeli troops had been on Israeli soil and had not violated Lebanese sovereignty.

Arabs see Israel at fault

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman accused Israel of violating U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, the 2006 measure that ended a month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

Western governments’ cautious reaction and appeals for restraint following the skirmish contrasted sharply with the stance taken by some Arab and Islamic governments, which condemned Israel and accused it of entering Lebanon in violation of Resolution 1701.

Syrian President Bashir Assad voiced support for Lebanon in the face of “the heinous aggression launched by Israel on the Lebanese territories.”

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit accused Israel of violating Lebanon’s sovereignty and Resolution 1701. He said Egypt had contacted the U.S. and French governments and the U.N. to urge them to apply pressure on Israel.

Jordanian Prime Minister Samir Rifai “expressed Jordan’s support for Lebanon, saying the kingdom rejects any aggression against Lebanon,” according to a report by Jordan’s state-run Petra news agency. The Jordanian cabinet in a statement also accused Israel of violating Resolution 1701, and voiced “support for Lebanese people in defending their homeland.”

Iran said in a statement carried by the IRNA news agency that it “strongly condemns the Zionist regime’s incursion in the southern regions of Lebanon which resulted in the martyrdom of a handful of children of the Lebanese army.”

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that Lebanon would not tolerate the “violation of even one hand span of its sacred land,” accusing Israel of thousands of violations of Resolution 1701.

He told supporters in a speech that his fighters in the south had been on alert through the day and Hezbollah had told the LAF it was at its disposal should it be required.

‘Countering extremism inside Lebanon’

Ironically, a key element of Resolution 1701 requires Hezbollah to surrender its arms. It calls for “the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that … there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state.”

Far from disarming, Hezbollah has by its own admission been rapidly building up its arsenal since the 2006 conflict – with support from Syria and Iran. Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government, which has taken no steps to enforce the disarmament requirement in 1701.

Earlier this year the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) said it was concerned about U.S. weaponry going the Lebanon’s national army.

“The LAF is 30 percent Shi’ite and there are close relations between members of the LAF and members of Hezbollah – sometimes family relations,” it said.

Noting that before now the U.S. had only provided night-vision systems to fellow NATO states and other leading allies, JINSA added, “Hezbollah would find them very handy.”

More than 170 Lebanese officers and officials have undergone training courses provided by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Near East and Southeast Asia Center.

Last week, U.S. Assistant Defense Secretary Michael Vickers met with the Lebanese defense minister and the LAF commander in Beirut, according to the U.S. Embassy.

It said Vickers “reaffirmed U.S. commitment to providing the LAF special operations forces with the advanced training and equipment necessary to continue countering extremism inside Lebanon, extending the Government of Lebanon’s authority throughout Lebanon’s territory.”

What on earth are you doing here, in the western world? … You have looked at magazine girls, wishing that they were you …

TIME Magazine runs a starkly honest cover picture about who/what we’re dealing with and their merciless and barbaric ideology … then spends much of the write-up pressing the apology-type angle and half-hearted rationalizing for running the picture because of readers’ possible negative reactions:

Our cover image this week is powerful, shocking and disturbing. It is a portrait of Aisha, a shy 18-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced by a Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off for fleeing her abusive in-laws. Aisha posed for the picture and says she wants the world to see the effect a Taliban resurgence would have on the women of Afghanistan, many of whom have flourished in the past few years.

[...]

I’m acutely aware that this image will be seen by children, who will undoubtedly find it distressing. We have consulted with a number of child psychologists about its potential impact. Some think children are so used to seeing violence in the media that the image will have little effect, but others believe that children will find it very scary and distressing — that they will see it, as Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston, said, as “a symbol of bad things that can happen to people.” I showed it to my two young sons, 9 and 12, who both immediately felt sorry for Aisha and asked why anyone would have done such harm to her. I apologize to readers who find the image too strong, and I invite you to comment on the image’s impact. [...]

Yeah, traumatic … Sounds more like TIME sensationalizing, if you ask me. Keep in mind, these are the same people in the boat with those who angrily and loudly insisted, no … demanded we needed more images of U.S. troops dying or lying dead on the battlefield, and their Flag-draped coffins arriving home from Iraq so that the American people could experience the truth about the cost of the war. Give them time and the same nagging press will be demanding the same for the Afghanistan War KIAs.

The fact is, THIS kind of barbaric and horrific injustice was going on long before we went into Afghanistan. It obviously continues while we are there (here … here … here … OH! yes, and here, just to toss out a few). Is TIME insinuating this sort of treatment of Afghan women/girls in the Islamic culture/faith only comes about as a result of our military and policy interloping in their country for a decade? Somehow it would be our fault Muslim men treat their women … their own people and families in such an inhuman and evil manner? We’ve pissed them off so badly by freeing their females, giving them back their lives and dignity by making an education and security possible? But then even the Afghan leadership has no “Golden Rule” where its women are concerned.

The much publicized release of classified documents by WikiLeaks has already ratcheted up the debate about the war. Our story and the haunting cover image by the distinguished South African photographer Jodi Bieber are meant to contribute to that debate. We do not run this story or show this image either in support of the U.S. war effort or in opposition to it. We do it to illuminate what is actually happening on the ground. As lawmakers and citizens begin to sort through the information about the war and make up their minds, our job is to provide context and perspective on one of the most difficult foreign policy issues of our time. What you see in these pictures and our story is something that you cannot find in those 91,000 documents: a combination of emotional truth and insight into the way life is lived in that difficult land and the consequences of the important decisions that lie ahead.

Sounds a bit to me as if TIME is debating throwing up its hands on Afghanistan. You know the, It’s ‘unpleasant’, but it’s their culture and we might just have to leave them to it, meme of the left. After all, Obama defends the culture we lowly Westerners, we infidels, always so misunderstand.

Once again the question demands re-asking: Exactly where are the Western world’s feminists and women’s rights groups in support and defense of the oppressed , tortured and executed women/girls in the Muslim/Islamic/Arab world? I guess they are letting the United Nations handle it, eh?

Tammy Bruce (11/28/07): “The American feminist movement has not taken one stand to support the women of Iraq, the women of Afghanistan, the women of Iran … It is the United States Marines who have been doing the feminist work by liberating women and children around the world.”

Something else to chew on about all of this … The Western world (particularly European countries and especially Great Britain) have appeased the Islamic culture that has migrated to their land(s) by permitting Sharia Law and courts to be practiced outside their own territorial jurisdiction(s) and in spite of indigenous “rule of law”. Under the current mind-set in this country of accommodating and enabling any and all outside influences contrary to our own laws and structured republic, how long until we hear our states permitting Sharia Law/courts jurisdiction to carry out their own kind of justice-served that runs completely contrary to life, liberty, and justice in the United States? We have seen elements of it that have lead the news headlines, yet, not outraged the population or the American feminists of this bastion of 21st century modernity. We are cutting off our nose to spite our own face. As for TIME Magazine, what took them so long? This isn’t anything I, and our troops, haven’t seen in the last ten or more years.

Cross-Posted @ Babalu Blog