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Archive for August, 2003

Monday, August 25th, 2003

DEBKA FILE REPORTS CHECHEN INSURGENTS ACTIVE IN IRAQI FIGHTING

One is reminded of tthe Czech Legion which did not liberate Czechoslovakia but instead controlled large swaths of…Siberia.

US intelligence has dissected the makeup of the guerrilla groups lurking in Baghdad and points north in an area enclosed by Tikrit, Haditha, Fallujah and Baquba. They have come up with some alarming findings:

1. Since late June, Chechen terrorists have been coming to Iraq to join the anti-American offensive.

2. The intake of Arab fighters entering Iraq from Syria is beginning to outnumber the indigenous Iraqi guerrillas fighting in the northern Mosul-Haditha district and the central Ramadi-Fallujah region.

3. The commanders of the guerrilla campaign, Saddam Hussein or his henchmen, appear to are imparting Muslim fundamentalist characteristics to units fighting the Americans – both as camouflage and to foster greater cohesion. In at least one case, a group was lent a pan-Arab identity. The deposed ruler or his commanders are clearly giving careful thought to the ideological nature and makeup of their following. Therefore they may not be quite so pressured by the pursuit as believed. Their ability to strike simultaneously in different places also attests to military and intelligence capabilities.

The Chechen fighters arriving in Baghdad are not drawn from the ranks of foreign Muslims fighting the Russians in Chechnya but ethnic Chechens. They were assigned to duty in the Sunni Triangle of central Iraq by the Chechen rebels’ Saudi al Qaeda commander, Abu al-Walid, also known as Emir al-Walid, who succeeded al Khatib who died in a Russian ambush two years ago.

Not much is known about the new commander except that he comes from western Saudi Arabia and receives funds from Saudi Islamic relief organizations funneled through Balkan or Central Asian Islamic organizations.

The report notes that the Chechen insurgents reach Iraq through Syria

For the full article go here.

Monday, August 25th, 2003

WAR ON TERROR DEEPENS US-INDIA MILITARY TIES

Go here. This trend actually precedes 9/11 – very early in the Bush administration – early summer 2001- a high-level Indian delegation, ostensibly in Washington to discuss trade and economic issues, spent a good deal of time closeted with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Friday, August 22nd, 2003

FEELING PEEVISH

Anne Zook welcomes the news that foreign law bodies are demanding civilian trials for enemy combatants held at Guantanamo. The money quote from the article

“”We strongly believe that there are now only two legally acceptable courses of action open to the US authorities. Either the US government must return the detainees to their own home countries where they can be tried under their own national laws, or they should be tried in a US civilian court with full guarantees for a fair trial.”

This is factually incorrect (as the authors of this letter presumably know being, after all, lawyers) as far as the Geneva Convention is concerned and moreover is a position contingent upon no state of war existing between the United States and al Qaida. NATO has already settled that issue legally by invoking the mutual defense clause in response to the attack on 9/11 so as far as international law is concerned, a state of war exists. Belligerents, to be eligible for Geneva Convention protections, must obey it’s protocols which al Qaida does not do, regularly fighting out of uniform and making civilians a primary target of their attacks. These are war crimes punishable by death for good reason. After all,the intent of Geneva is to offer a carrot and a stick to combatants in order to minimize hardship for civilians caught in a war zone and require soldiers to fight soldiers, not women, children and the aged.

The United States is within it’s belligerent rights under international law to try al Qaida members before a court-martial or a special military commission or tribunal ( like….Nuremburg). Critics can point to the requirement for a normal military hearing to adjudicate POW or Illegal Combatant status prior to such an extraordinary trial ( which the Bush administration has delayed doing) but that is not what this group is loudly demanding – they want civilian trials as if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had the misfortune to have been arrested sticking up the local 7-11. It’s ill-intentioned utter nonsense by European leftists designed to delay accountability for Islamist terrorist acts for as long as humanly possible, particularly if the death penalty is a possibility. This is the same crowd of jackasses who think a stiff sentence for a psychopathic Bosnian Serb ” General” who murders 8000 people is 46 years ( bet you he gets out in 10). These leftwing Euro-lawyers like process and they don’t like accountability, justice, the death penalty, George Bush or the United States. Nor do they care a whit for the people al Qaida kills. We should give their letter the credence it deserves.

The United States is not legally obligated to treat war criminals of a paramilitary organization engaged in armed attacks as civilians and citizens when they are neither.

Friday, August 22nd, 2003

CALPUNDIT AND THE PROFESSORIATE

An interesting thread that will not die from Kevin Drum.

Friday, August 22nd, 2003

QUOTE OF THE DAY II.

” The ‘ Americans’ did not immigrate from Europe; the name of the Florentine geographer Amerigo Vespucci designates to-day not only a continent, but also a people in the true sense of the word, whose specific character was born in the spiritual upheavals of 1775 and, above all, 1861-5.”

Oswald Spengler


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