Italians Debate Indictments Of Americans

Taken from Yahoo News, Fri Mar 16, 2006
By MARIA SANMINIATELLI, Associated Press

ROME - Lawyers for the Italian government appealed to a top court seeking to annul the indictments against 26 Americans - mostly CIA agents - and several Italians who face trial in Milan in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terrorist suspect, a lawyer said Friday.

Attorneys for the state claim that the judiciary - in this case, the Milan judge who issued the indictments - overstepped its authority, relying on secret documents and violating state secrets, said Luigi Panella, a lawyer for Italian secret service agent Marco Mancini, who also was ordered to stand trial.

Prosecutors in Milan declined comment.

The Constitutional Court, which also is examining a previous, similar appeal saying prosecutors had overstepped their authority, was expected to discuss the case April 18.

"We will respect the decision of the Constitutional Court," Panella said.

The Americans and Italian agents were indicted in February in the kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003. Their trial is scheduled to open in June.

It would be the first criminal trial stemming from the CIA's extraordinary rendition program to secretly transfer terror suspects to third countries, where critics say they may have been tortured.

Italian prosecutors say Nasr — suspected of recruiting fighters for radical Islamic causes — was kidnapped from the streets of Milan in February 2003 by CIA agents with help from Italian agents. He was allegedly taken to Aviano Air Base near Venice, then to Ramstein Air Base in southern Germany, and finally to Egypt, where he was imprisoned for four years until Feb. 11. Nasr said he was tortured.

The Americans have all left Italy, and a senior U.S. official has said they would not be turned over for prosecution even if Rome requests it.

Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi has maintained that his government and Italian secret services were not informed about the operation and did not take part in it.

Premier Romano Prodi's government, while so far making no decision, has signaled that it would not press Washington on an extradition request.

The Italian government has tried to avoid souring relations with Washington following the indictments of the 26 Americans and, in a separate case, of a U.S. soldier who shot dead an Italian intelligence officer in Baghdad in 2005.

Friendly Fire Death Was 'Entirely Avoidable', Coroner Rules

Taken from The Times, March 16, 2007
By Philippe Naughton

The widow of a British soldier killed in a “friendly fire” incident in Iraq four years ago said today that she would not be pushing for charges against the American pilot who fired at his convoy even though a coroner ruled that it had been a "criminal" act.

Lance Corporal Matty Hull, 25, was killed in southern Iraq on March 28, 2003, when his armoured convoy came under attack from two US A-10 Tank-buster warplanes. Four other British soldiers were wounded in the incident.

Delivering his verdict on the death, Andrew Walker, the Assistant Deputy Coroner of Oxfordshire, said today: "This was an entirely avoidable tragedy."

Mr Walker also hit out at the US military for its refusal to co-operate with his investigation into the killing. The main piece of evidence considered at the inquest, a cockpit recording of the attack, was only made available to the coroner after it was leaked to The Sun newspaper and widely broadcast on television.

The inquest, at Oxford’s Old Assizes, had heard how the pilot of a US A-10 Tank-buster plane swooped and opened fire on the British convoy from the Royal Household Cavalry Regiment - even though the vehicles were clearly marked with a coalition emblem.

"The attack on the convoy amounted to an assault," Mr Walker said in his verdict. "It was unlawful because there was no lawful reason for it and in that respect it was criminal. I believe that the full facts have not yet come to light."

Lance Corporal Hull’s widow Susan, who has fought a long battle to establish the truth about her husband’s death, burst into tears as Mr Walker delivered his damning verdict.

At a press conference shortly afterwards, Mrs Hull, a primary school teacher, said that she felt "a great sense of relief" at the verdict. "It was what we waited four years to hear," she said.

She said that she felt "badly let down" by the US military, for refusing to cooperate with the inquest even though her husband had been fighting alongside US forces in Iraq as an ally.

Asked about the pilots who carried out the attack, Mrs Hull said: "I hope that they are at peace with themselves and that they can move on with their lives. I'm sure they are feeling remorseful for what they did. I hope so anyway."

But she said that for her the coroner's verdict was "enough truth" and she would not be pursuing her campaign or pressing for legal action or criminal charges against the pilot who pulled the trigger.

"We're drawing a line" she said. "We need to move on. It's been a long time."

Yesterday, Mrs Hull appealed to President Bush to release the full text of a military report on the incident.

She said 11 lines of the US military’s Friendly Fire Investigation Board report into the incident had been blacked out in a copy supplied to the inquest. "We have 1,110 lines of evidence from this document - but 11 are blanked out," she said.

The Hull family says the deleted lines relate to an interview with the ground controller - code-named Manila Hotel - in charge of the two A-10 planes that attacked Hull’s convoy.

Staff Corporal Stuart Matthews, who was serving as a British Forward Air Controller with coalition ground troops in the area of the attack, told Mr Walker that Manila Hotel had not given permission to open fire on the British tanks, which the pilots had mistaken for Iraqi vehicles.

But the Hull family believes that questions he was asked about communications and procedure during the incident have been censored.

Today the Pentagon extended its "deepest sympathies" to Hull's family but reiterated its own finding that the soldier's death was an accident.

“The (US) investigation determined that the incident took place in a complex combat environment, the pilots followed applicable procedures and processes for engaging targets, believing they were engaging enemy targets, and that this was a tragic accident," the Defence Department said in a statement.

In the recording of the incident, one US pilot says, "We’re in jail dude," after realizing his plane’s attack was a mistake. The other pilot, who opened fire, weeps and says: "Goddammit."

The pilots, a major and a lieutenant colonel of the 190th Fighter Squadron, the Idaho Air National Guard, who had no combat experience, say they can see orange panels on top of the armoured vehicles, which were used to identify them as coalition, rather than Iraqi, forces. But they convince themselves that the orange panels are enemy rocket launchers.

The major told investigators later that he was adamant that he did not want to be "the first guy shot down during the war".

Delivering his verdict, Mr Walker said: "I would like to offer my deepest sympathies to members of the family. I have no doubt of how much pain and suffering they have been put through during this inquisition process and to my mind that is inexcusable."

He hit also out at the US authorities’ failure to help his inquiry, saying: "They, despite request after request, have been, as this court has been, denied access to evidence that would provide the fullest explanation to plan out the sequence of events that led to and caused the tragic loss of Lance Corporal Hull’s life."

Mr Walker said that as well as other soldiers being injured in the attack, innocent civilians were "in all possibility" killed and injured.

He said: "The courage and bravery of Lance Corporal Hull and of those in that convoy cannot be underestimated and follow the tradition within our armed forces that we are all justifiably proud of. The determination and courage of the members of Lance Corporal Hull’s family cannot go without mention either."

The coroner said the act was a "criminal one, since the pilots broke with the combat rules of engagement in failing to properly identify the vehicles and seek clearance before opening fire.

"The pilots chose not to take steps to confirm the identity of the vehicles in the convoy - that he could easily have taken," he said.

"The pilot who opened fire did so with disregard for the rules of engagement and acting outside the protection of the law of armed conflict.

"I’m satisfied, having given careful consideration to all the evidence that I have heard in this inquest, that this is a case where I can properly consider whether an unlawful action and manslaughter applies here. I find there was no lawful authority to fire on the convoy."

Harriet Harman, the constitutional affairs minister, expressed frustration at the failure of US authorities to provide witnesses to appear before the coroner.

Ms Harman held several meetings with US Embassy diplomats in London in the hope of persuading them to participate in the inquest.

She told BBC Radio 4’s World at One: “I share the frustration expressed by the coroner and lawyers for the family and the family as well, and I regret that I was not able to persuade them.

For U.S. Troops At War, Liquor Is Spur To Crime

Taken from The New York Times, March 13, 2007
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

In May 2004, Specialist Justin J. Lillis got drunk on what he called “hajji juice,” a clear Iraqi moonshine smuggled onto an Army base in Balad, Iraq, by civilian contractors, and began taking potshots with his M-16 service rifle.

“He shot up some contractor’s rental car,” said Phil Cave, a lawyer for Specialist Lillis, 24. “He hopped in a Humvee, drove around and shot up some more things. He shot into a housing area” and at soldiers guarding the base entrance.

Six months later, at an Army base near Baghdad, after a night of drinking an illegal stash of whiskey and gin, Specialist Chris Rolan of the Third Brigade, Third Infantry Division, pulled his 9mm service pistol on another soldier and shot him dead.

And in March 2006, in perhaps the most gruesome crime committed by American troops in Iraq, a group of 101st Airborne Division soldiers stationed in Mahmudiya raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killed her and her family after drinking several cans of locally made whiskey supplied by Iraqi Army soldiers, military prosecutors said.

Alcohol, strictly forbidden by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan, is involved in a growing number of crimes committed by troops deployed to those countries. Alcohol- and drug-related charges were involved in more than a third of all Army criminal prosecutions of soldiers in the two war zones — 240 of the 665 cases resulting in convictions, according to records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act request.



Seventy-three of those 240 cases involve some of the most serious crimes committed, including murder, rape, armed robbery and assault. Sex crimes accounted for 12 of the convictions.

The 240 cases involved a roughly equal number of drug and alcohol offenses, although alcohol-related crimes have increased each year since 2004.

Despite the military’s ban on all alcoholic beverages — and strict Islamic prohibitions against drinking and drug use — liquor is cheap and ever easier to find for soldiers looking to self-medicate the effects of combat stress, depression or the frustrations of extended deployments, said military defense lawyers, commanders and doctors who treat soldiers’ emotional problems.

“It’s clear that we’ve got a lot of significant alcohol problems that are pervasive across the military,” said Dr. Thomas R. Kosten, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston. He traces their drinking and drug use to the stress of working in a war zone. “The treatment that they take for it is the same treatment that they took after Vietnam,” Dr. Kosten said. “They turn to alcohol and drugs.”

The use of alcohol and drugs in war zones appears to reflect a broader trend toward heavier and more frequent drinking among all military personnel, but especially in the Army and Marine Corps, the two services doing most of the fighting, Pentagon officials and military health experts said.

A Pentagon health study released in January, for instance, found that the rate of binge drinking in the Army shot up by 30 percent from 2002 to 2005, and “may signal an increasing pattern of heavy alcohol use in the Army.”

While average rates of alcohol consumption in the Navy and Air Force have steadily declined since 1980, the year the military’s health survey began, they have significantly increased in the Army and Marine Corps and exceed civilian rates, the Pentagon study showed. For the first time since 1985, more than a quarter of all Army members surveyed said they regularly drink heavily, defined as having five or more drinks at one sitting.

The rate of illicit drug use also increased among military members in 2005, to an estimated 5 percent, nearly double the rate measured in 1998, a trend that the study called “cause for concern.”

The study also found other health problems in the military, from the growing popularity of chewing tobacco to a 20 percent increase during the past decade in service members who are considered overweight.

Lynn Pahland, a director in the Pentagon’s Health Affairs office, said the rising rates of heavy drinking and illegal drug use among active-duty military personnel are particularly troubling inside the Defense Department. “It is very serious,” Ms. Pahland said in an interview. “It is a huge concern.”

In the military, seeking help for psychological problems, including alcohol and drug abuse, is considered a taboo, especially among officers competing for promotions. Several officers interviewed for this article said the Pentagon was not doing enough to reduce that stigma.

Though the Pentagon has spent millions of dollars on several initiatives to reverse the trend, including a new Web site that deglamorizes drinking, financing to combat alcohol abuse has fallen over time, a Pentagon spokesman said. Spending on programs to reduce alcohol abuse, smoking and obesity dropped to $7.74 million in the current fiscal year from $12.6 million in fiscal year 2005 — a 39 percent decline.

Some military doctors and other mental health experts said the Army’s greater use of so-called moral waivers, which allow recruits with criminal records to enlist, may also be a factor in the increased drug and alcohol use.

Getting liquor or drugs in Iraq is not difficult. One of the most common ways to smuggle in brand name gin or clear rum is in bottles of mouthwash sent from friends back home, soldiers said. Blue or yellow food coloring makes the liquid look medicinal. Some Army medics have been known to fill intravenous fluid bags with vodka, Army officers said.

In Iraq, liquor of a distinctly more dubious quality can be purchased from Iraqi Army soldiers or civilian contractors working on American bases, and Iraqi soldiers have sold locally produced prescription drugs to American troops for a tidy profit.

Commanders have not always regarded drinking as a problem. The Army “was a culture in the 1970s that encouraged drinking,” said a retired Army colonel. “You’d go out drinking together and you’d find your buddy hugging the toilet at the officer’s club and think nothing of it.”

Command tolerance for such behavior began changing in the 1980s, and by the 1990s, “if you had more than a couple drinks at the club, people started looking at you strange,” the retired colonel said.

But at a time when the military is fighting two major ground wars, the often serious consequences of heavy drinking has emerged with increasing clarity as more troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other mental health problems, military officials and mental health experts said.

“I think the real story here is in the suicide and stress, and the drinking is just a symptom of it,” said Charles P. O’Brien, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine who served as a Navy doctor during the Vietnam War. There is a high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder among Iraq veterans, he said, adding that “there’s been a lot of suicide in the active-duty servicemen.”

More than 90 percent of sex crimes prosecuted by the military involve alcohol abuse, defense lawyers and military doctors said. Roughly half of the marines charged with crimes in Iraq exhibit clear signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, a Marine defense lawyer said.

“They turn to alcohol and drugs for an escape,” he said.

The health study released in January was produced for the Pentagon by RTI International, a nonprofit research organization. Robert M. Bray, the group’s project director, first agreed to be interviewed for this article but later declined after a Defense Department spokesman said he was not available to comment.

In the past two years, though, top military officials have begun talking publicly about the danger that excessive drinking among the troops.

In 2005, the Army’s deputy chief of staff at the time, Lt. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, wrote in an editorial in a magazine for Army leaders that the rising rate of heavy drinking and drug use “seriously impacts mission readiness.”

General Hagenbeck, now the superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, said more than half of soldiers discharged for misconduct had also been disciplined for drug or alcohol use within the previous year.

“When one soldier has an alcohol or other drug incident, it impacts the whole unit,” General Hagenbeck wrote.

That kind of ripple effect has played out repeatedly in Iraq, military defense lawyers said, as soldiers who drink or use drugs commit crimes and hinder their unit’s combat and support missions.

Specialist Lillis, for example, was given a bad conduct discharge and sentenced to 10 years in prison as punishment for his drunken shooting spree; he is in a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. A military judge sentenced Specialist Rolan, who testified that he drank to relieve depression in Iraq, to 33 years in prison for killing a fellow soldier.

Two of the soldiers charged in the Mahmudiya case pleaded guilty to murder, and a former Army private described as the ringleader, Steven D. Green, is awaiting trial for rape and murder in a federal district court.

Last year, the Pentagon spent $2 million to initiate its “That Guy” campaign, (http://www.thatguy.com/), which recommends that service members “reject binge drinking because it detracts from the things they care about: family, friends, dating, sex, money and reputation.”
The Pentagon is poised to launch another Web-based antidrinking campaign this summer.
Capt. Robert DeMartino, a doctor with the United States Health Service who is coordinating the project, said the hope is that service members returning from Afghanistan and Iraq will use the site to find help coping with post-deployment problems, including alcohol dependency.

Andrew Lehren contributed reporting.

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A major problem with the US forces is sex offences.
The following information was taken from Al-Jazeera News Agency. The US military is pushing hard to recruit female soldiers but struggles to overcome a legacy of sexual harassment, assault and even rape by male colleagues. Women who have been assaulted or raped report poor medical treatment, lack of counselling, incomplete criminal investigations and even threats of punishment for reporting the assaults. The military claims changes made over the last few years, most notably in 2005, have made the military a safer working environment for women. Last year, a shocked US congressional panel sat in silence as Beth Davis, a former cadet at the US air force academy, told them about her experience of being raped in her dorm, and the military's acceptance of such behaviour. She said: "I was told by older cadets that we were likely to be raped, and if we were we shouldn't report it as doing so would end our careers." The US military claims that a woman's average risk of sexual assault and rape, based only on incidents reported through the official chain of command, is six per cent. However, data taken from other government departments such as Veteran's Affairs present a different picture, suggesting massive underreporting of sexual abuse. Independent studies suggest that this risk is as high as 33 per cent. women currently make up 15 per cent of the US military's workforce.

US Soldier Guilty In Iraq Killing

Taken from The BBC, 17 March 2007,

A US soldier has been found guilty on three charges of negligent homicide in the deaths of three Iraqi detainees. Sgt Raymond Girouard was the last of four soldiers to be tried over the killings during a raid on a suspected insurgent camp near Samarra in 2006.

Sgt Girouard, 24, denied ordering his soldiers to shoot the Iraqi prisoners but admitted covering up the deaths.

Two soldiers pleaded guilty to murder and were jailed for 18 years. Another was sentenced to nine months.

A court martial jury in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, also found Sgt Girouard guilty of obstruction of justice and of conspiracy for trying to hide the crime.

Negligent homicide carries a maximum of three years in jail whereas premeditated murder carries a maximum of life without parole.

'Cover-up'
Specialist William Hunsaker and Private First Class Corey Clagett - who admitted to releasing and then shooting the men - received 18-year sentences in a deal with military prosecutors.

Specialist Juston Graber - who said he killed an injured prisoner in what he called a mercy killing - admitted aggravated assault and was jailed for nine months.

Hunsaker testified on Tuesday that Sgt Girouard gave him orders to free the three Iraqi detainees, and then shoot them as they fled.

Hunsaker said that after the squad took the detainees into custody, Sgt Girouard told the soldiers the group's first sergeant was angry the three men were still alive.

Hunsaker said he and Corey Clagett took the detainees outside and told them to run.

"I shot him [the first detainee] where his heart should be. I moved from right to left. I took aim in the same manner and aimed for the heart and the head," Hunsaker told the court.

He said that after the detainees were shot, Sgt Girouard cut him with a pocket knife to make it appear there had been a struggle.

The case is one of two incidents involving allegations of civilian killings involving the 101st Airborne Division.

In the other case, four soldiers and a former soldier are accused of raping and murdering a 14-year-old girl in March 2006, and killing her family.

The End Of Zionism

Israel must shed its illusions and choose between racist oppression and democracy

Taken from The Guardian, UK, September 15, 2003
By Avraham Burg

The Zionist revolution has always rested on two pillars: a just path and an ethical leadership.

Neither of these is operative any longer. The Israeli nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption, and on foundations of oppression and injustice. As such, the end of the Zionist enterprise is already on our doorstep. There is a real chance that ours will be the last Zionist generation. There may yet be a Jewish state here, but it will be a different sort, strange and ugly.

There is time to change course, but not much. What is needed is a new vision of a just society and the political will to implement it. Diaspora Jews for whom Israel is a central pillar of their identity must pay heed and speak out.

The opposition does not exist, and the coalition, with Ariel Sharon at its head, claims the right to remain silent. In a nation of chatterboxes, everyone has suddenly fallen dumb, because there's nothing left to say. We live in a thunderously failed reality. Yes, we have revived the Hebrew language, created a marvellous theatre and a strong national currency. Our Jewish minds are as sharp as ever. We are traded on the Nasdaq. But is this why we created a state? The Jewish people did not survive for two millennia in order to pioneer new weaponry, computer security programs or anti-missile missiles. We were supposed to be a light unto the nations. In this we have failed.

It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis are coming to understand this as they ask their children where they expect to live in 25 years. Children who are honest admit, to their parents' shock, that they do not know. The countdown to the end of Israeli society has begun.

It is very comfortable to be a Zionist in West Bank settlements such as Beit El and Ofra. The biblical landscape is charming. You can gaze through the geraniums and bougainvilleas and not see the occupation. Travelling on the fast highway that skirts barely a half-mile west of the Palestinian roadblocks, it's hard to comprehend the humiliating experience of the despised Arab who must creep for hours along the pocked, blockaded roads assigned to him. One road for the occupier, one road for the occupied.

This cannot work. Even if the Arabs lower their heads and swallow their shame and anger for ever, it won't work. A structure built on human callousness will inevitably collapse in on itself.

Note this moment well: Zionism's superstructure is already collapsing like a cheap Jerusalem wedding hall. Only madmen continue dancing on the top floor while the pillars below are collapsing.

We have grown accustomed to ignoring the suffering of the women at the roadblocks. No wonder we don't hear the cries of the abused woman living next door or the single mother struggling to support her children in dignity. We don't even bother to count the women murdered by their husbands.

Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centres of Israeli escapism.

They consign themselves to Allah in our places of recreation, because their own lives are torture.

They spill their own blood in our restaurants in order to ruin our appetites, because they have children and parents at home who are hungry and humiliated. We could kill a thousand ringleaders a day and nothing will be solved, because the leaders come up from below - from the wells of hatred and anger, from the "infrastructures" of injustice and moral corruption.

If all this were inevitable, divinely ordained and immutable, I would be silent. But things could be different, and so crying out is a moral imperative.

Here is what the prime minister should say to the people: the time for illusions is over. The time for decisions has arrived. We love the entire land of our forefathers and in some other time we would have wanted to live here alone. But that will not happen. The Arabs, too, have dreams and needs.

Between the Jordan and the Mediterranean there is no longer a clear Jewish majority. And so, fellow citizens, it is not possible to keep the whole thing without paying a price. We cannot keep a Palestinian majority under an Israeli boot and at the same time think ourselves the only democracy in the Middle East. There cannot be democracy without equal rights for all who live here, Arab as well as Jew. We cannot keep the territories and preserve a Jewish majority in the world's only Jewish state - not by means that are humane and moral and Jewish.

Do you want the greater land of Israel? No problem. Abandon democracy. Let's institute an efficient system of racial separation here, with prison camps and detention villages.

Do you want a Jewish majority? No problem. Either put the Arabs on railway cars, buses, camels and donkeys and expel them en masse - or separate ourselves from them absolutely, without tricks and gimmicks. There is no middle path. We must remove all the settlements - all of them - and draw an internationally recognised border between the Jewish national home and the Palestinian national home. The Jewish law of return will apply only within our national home, and their right of return will apply only within the borders of the Palestinian state.

Do you want democracy? No problem. Either abandon the greater land of Israel, to the last settlement and outpost, or give full citizenship and voting rights to everyone, including Arabs.

The result, of course, will be that those who did not want a Palestinian state alongside us will have one in our midst, via the ballot box.

The prime minister should present the choices forthrightly: Jewish racism or democracy.

Settlements, or hope for both peoples. False visions of barbed wire and suicide bombers, or a recognised international border between two states and a shared capital in Jerusalem.

Why, then, is the opposition so quiet? Perhaps because some would like to join the government at any price, even the price of participating in the sickness. But while they dither, the forces of good lose hope. Anyone who declines to present a clear-cut position - black or white - is collaborating in the decline. It is not a matter of Labour versus Likud or right versus left, but of right versus wrong, acceptable versus unacceptable. The law-abiding versus the lawbreakers.

What's needed is not a political replacement for the Sharon government but a vision of hope, an alternative to the destruction of Zionism and its values by the deaf, dumb and callous.

Israel's friends abroad - Jewish and non-Jewish alike, presidents and prime ministers, rabbis and lay people - should choose as well. They must reach out and help Israel to navigate the road map toward our national destiny as a light unto the nations and a society of peace, justice and equality.

# Avraham Burg was speaker of Israel's Knesset in 1999-2003 and is a former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Reprinted with permission of The Forward, which translated and adapted this essay from an article that originally appeared in Yediot Aharonot

Does Palestine Have The Right To Exist?

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 16/03/2007
By Bradley Burston (A Special Place In Hell Column)

Nationalism often robs a people of its intelligence even as it grants that people a sense of dignity.
Israel may serve as an instructive example. The Palestinians are giving every indication that they are not far behind.

The Hamas-Fatah government is assuming power at the low-water mark in decades for Palestinian nationalism. The movement for an independent Palestine, at once fueled and hobbled by the occupation, is in a state of atomized despair, the memory of internal blood feuds still fresh, its international standing, no less than the welfare of the people under its rule, slipping from nadir to nadir.

There is a certain stubborn irony in the circumstance that a central stumbling block to international recognition of the legitimacy of the Palestinian government's right to exist, has been that government's refusal to recognize the legitimacy of Israel's right to exist.

Stated differently, the movement to found a Palestinian state has not been well-served by the strategy of suggesting that the very establishment of its neighbor Israel was a historical abomination.

Nor was the cause moved far forward this week, when Hamas, stung by Al-Qaida criticism of its coalition deal with Fatah, declared it was still committed to Israel's destruction.

Defending itself to Osama Bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, who said "They have ditched the movement of martyrdom operations ? for a government that plays with words in palace halls," Hamas was quick to issue a statement of reassurance:

"We will not betray promises we made to God to continue the path of jihad and resistance until the liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine."

"So be assured, Doctor Ayman, and all those who love Palestine like yourself, that Hamas is still the group you knew when it was founded and it will never abandon its path."

Of late, it has become something of a fashion to explain why Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist, by arguing that it was an error for anyone to have ever agreed to do so.

The drumbeat began years ago, with opinion pieces such as Faisal Bodi's Israel simply has no right to exist, which appeared in The Guardian at the outset of the second intifada.

"Certainly there is no moral case for the existence of Israel," Bodi writes, attacking the PLO for having accepted Israel's right to exist as part of the Oslo peace process. With a nod to the intifada, Bodi suggests that grass roots Palestinian society, left to its own, would not have made the same mistake. "As the latest troubles have shown, ordinary Palestinians are not prepared to follow their leaders in this feat of intellectual amnesia."

Neither, apparently, is Saudi-based attorney and author John V. Whitbeck. The demand that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist is "unreasonable, immoral, and impossible to meet." Whitbeck wrote in the Christian Science Monitor last month.

Whitbeck underscores the distinction between "recognizing Israel's existence" and "recognizing Israel's right to exist."

"From a Palestinian perspective, the difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to concede that the Holocaust was morally justified. For Palestinians to acknowledge the occurrence of the Naqba - the expulsion of the great majority of Palestinians from their homeland between 1947 and 1949 ? is one thing. For them to publicly concede that it was 'right' for the Naqba to have happened would be something else entirely."

The invocation of the Holocaust in a different context, direct comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany made by Palestinians and their supporters, has also little advanced the Palestinian drive for legitimacy.

An apparent rise in such comparisons by Germans has triggered apprehension in Israel, even among some leftists whose own criticism of Israel is unsparing, and whose support for a Palestinian state is strong. In a January opinion poll by the Bertelsmann Foundation, 30 percent of German respondents agreed that Israel was doing to the Palestinians "what the Nazis did to the Jews in the Third Reich."

More recently, when a group of German bishops followed a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial with a trip to the West Bank, Bishop Gregor Maria Hanke of Eichstatt told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper:

"In the morning, we see the photos of the inhuman Warsaw Ghetto, and this evening we travel to the ghetto in Ramallah; that makes you angry."

The Palestinian arguments against recognizing Israel are many, and often well-articulated.

Palestinians believe that they should not be made to pay the price of the Holocaust, and they are right. Palestinians believe that they have been subjugated, mistreated, and denied self-determination, and they are right.

Palestinians believe, as well, that the existence of the state of Israel should not come at the expense of the existence of a state of Palestine. And that is true as well.

But if Palestinians are to have a legitimate, internationally recognized state of their own, it must not come at the expense of the existence of the state of Israel.

That is to say, if it is necessary for Hamas to nurse its dreams of destroying Israel by military force in order to establish a Greater Palestine from the river to the sea, it can think again about international recognition.

There is, after all, a name for the kind of government that does that to another country: an occupying power.

Finally In Israel, Some Falash Mura Are Turning To Jesus

Takeen from The Jerusalem Post, Mar. 15, 2007
By URIEL HEILMAN

When an Ethiopian-born Israeli named Dessie finished his compulsory army service three years ago and made plans to travel to Thailand, India and Vietnam, he was hoping to embark on a spiritual quest.

Like many young Israelis, Dessie felt a spiritual void in his life. Though he had studied four years in a religious high school in Jerusalem's East Talpiot neighborhood not long after making aliyah in 1992, he was not very religious.

Dessie hoped he might find in East Asia some of the spirituality he felt was missing from a life in Israel consumed by partying and alcohol.

"I was thirsty for God. I felt empty inside," Dessie said. "That's when I discovered Jesus."

Dessie, 25, now is a devoted member of Shalhevetya, one of a growing number of Protestant churches in Israel that bill themselves as messianic Jewish congregations and cater to Ethiopian Israelis.

Some of the congregants are born Jews, others are Christians who have been part of the 15-year-old Falash Mura migration to Israel, and still others are Ethiopians whose Jewish origins are opaque and Jewish literacy virtually nonexistent.

Recent Ethiopian olim are easy prey for Christian missionaries. They come to Israel with little knowledge of Judaism; some have Christian roots. Most practiced some form of Christianity in Ethiopia before filing their aliyah petitions and moving to the Ethiopian cities of Gondar and Addis Ababa.

Some veteran Ethiopian Israeli leaders are warning that the ongoing Ethiopian aliyah is making matters worse, bringing to Israel many Christians who either are married to Ethiopians of Jewish origin or fraudulently claim to be related to Jews.

"Today the aliyah of the Falash Mura has turned into a business," said Rabbi Yitzhak Zagay, an Ethiopian Israeli rabbi in Rehovot and director of the National Committee of Ethiopian Jews, formed recently to combat missionary activity.

The term Falash Mura is used to refer to Ethiopians of Jewish origin who converted to Christianity several generations ago to escape social and economic pressures.

Initially rebuffed as apostates when Israel decided some 30 years ago to facilitate the aliyah of Ethiopians who had kept their Jewish identity, the Falash Mura began to come to Israel legally after the government changed its policy in the early 1990s.

"If they became Christians 150 or 200 years ago, I am in favor of their aliyah," Zagay said of the Falash Mura, echoing the Israeli Chief Rabbinate's position that the Falash Mura are Christians of Jewish origin who are welcome back to the original faith of their forefathers.

"But not all those coming are Jews. There are those who buy a Jewish identity, and those who sell a Jewish identity," Zagay said. "The rich children of Addis Ababa prey on the Falash Mura and pay them to marry them, get to Israel, then divorce them and try to bring the rest of their families.

"The problem is that after they come here, not only are they not Jews, they are actively missionizing. They are Adventists, Pentecostals and other Protestant groups," he said.
Zagay hosted a conference in Rehovot in February to address the problem.

Other community leaders, like former Knesset member Shlomo Molla, now a department director at the World Zionist Organization, say the proselytizers are mostly outsiders, not Ethiopians.

"This phenomenon exists in various sectors of the Israeli population," Molla said. "I don't think it's connected to the Falash Mura. Unfortunately, missionaries succeed in penetrating the Ethiopian community. They operate on the periphery. They are not loved. They are not supported."

Media Fight Request To Close Parts Of Israel Lobbyists' Trial

Taken from The Washington Post, Thursday, March 15, 2007; Page A06
By Jerry Markon

Defense lawyers and media organizations are objecting to what they say is a government effort to bar the public from the upcoming trial of two pro-Israel lobbyists charged with violating U.S. espionage laws.

A group of media organizations, which includes The Washington Post, filed a motion late Tuesday criticizing "the government's apparent request to close" the trial of Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman. A federal judge in Alexandria had set a hearing on the motion for today, but it was unclear late yesterday whether the hearing would be held.

The media filing follows a motion last week by defense lawyers seeking "to strike the government's request to close the trial," according to the U.S. District Court docket in Alexandria. But the contents of that motion are sealed, and prosecutors declined to comment.

Yesterday, sources familiar with the case characterized the government's proposal as an attempt to close significant portions of the trial but not the entire proceedings. Judges have shielded some evidence from the public in previous national security cases, such as last year's death penalty trial of convicted Sept. 11, 2001, conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, but only in rare and limited circumstances, legal experts said.

Rosen and Weissman are former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. They are charged in what the government calls a conspiracy to obtain classified information and to pass it to members of the media and the Israeli government. Their trial is scheduled for June 4.

The case has First Amendment implications, with some lawyers saying it criminalizes the type of information exchange that is common among journalists, lobbyists and others in Washington. Prosecutors argue that disclosing sensitive defense information could harm national security.

Lucy A. Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which spearheaded the media motion, said she recognizes that the case has "national security interests."

"We're concerned that this case is going to be much more secret than necessary," she said. If a judge grants the motion, it would allow media organizations to file further briefs in the case.

Alleged 9/11 Mastermind Confesses to Attacks

Khalid Sheik Mohammed Claims He Decapitated Reporter Daniel Pearl

Taken from Washington Post, Thursday, March 15, 2007
By Josh White

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, confessed at a Guantanamo Bay military hearing that he planned and funded that al-Qaeda operation and said he was involved in more than two dozen other terrorist acts around the world, according to documents released by the Pentagon yesterday.

======================================

Transcripts
Transcripts of Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearings

at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed (March 10, 2007)
Abu Faraj al-Libi (March 9, 2007)
Ramzi Binalshibh (March 9, 2007)

======================================

Among Mohammed's claims: That he personally decapitated Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan in 2002. Citing records released by the Pentagon on Thursday, wire services quoted Mohammed as telling investigators that he "decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl," but that the incident was not part of an al-Qaeda operation.

The claims about Pearl were withheld from the initial Pentagon release until his family was notified, wire services reported.

In a rambling statement delivered Saturday to a closed-door military tribunal, Mohammed declared himself an enemy of the United States and claimed some responsibility for many of the major terrorist attacks on U.S. and allied targets over more than a decade. He said that he is at war with the United States and that the deaths of innocent people are an unfortunate consequence of that conflict.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z," Mohammed told a panel of military officers through a personal representative, who read off a list of 31 terrorist acts that were either carried out or planned but not executed. According to transcripts released by Defense Department officials last night, Mohammed later spoke in broken English and Arabic, saying, "For sure, I'm American enemies."

Mohammed took responsibility for the attacks on New York and Washington in an interrogation detailed in the Sept. 11 commission's report. But his appearance before the tribunal at Guantanamo Bay marked the first time since his March 2003 arrest that he was allowed to make an extended statement that was not delivered to interrogators.

His capture was followed by years of detention in secret CIA facilities, where he was held without any contact with the outside world.

The Pentagon released the transcript last night along with similar records from two other hearings for alleged terrorists. They were among a group of 14 high-value detainees transferred to Guantanamo Bay from CIA custody last September on orders from President Bush. Each detainee is entitled to such a review to determine whether he is an enemy combatant and whether he should remain in U.S. custody. The hearings may be a prelude to possible charges and, ultimately, military trials.

Mohammed presented evidence, in the form of a written statement, in which he appears to allege abuse. The tribunal president told Mohammed he had received the statement "regarding certain treatment that you claim to have received" before arriving at Guantanamo Bay.

The tribunal president also asked whether any statements he made under interrogation were "as the result of any of the treatment." Mohammed answered: "CIA peoples. Yes. At the beginning when they transferred me . . ." The rest of the sentence is redacted from the transcript.

The other hearings were for Abu Faraj al-Libi, who did not appear at his hearing, and Ramzi Binalshibh, who allegedly played a direct role in the Sept. 11 attacks. He also did not participate in the hearing.

Mohammed described himself as Osama bin Laden's operational director for the Sept. 11 attacks and as al-Qaeda's military operational commander for "all foreign operations around the world."

He claimed to have been "responsible" for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Richard Reid's attempt to ignite a shoe bomb on an airliner over the Atlantic Ocean in December 2001, and the October 2002 bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia.

Mohammed also said he plotted to assassinate several former presidents, including Jimmy Carter, a scheme not previously revealed.

Mohammed described several other plots that never came about, such as attacks on buildings in California, Chicago and Washington state, and on the New York Stock Exchange.

Despite his statements, it is unclear how much involvement he could have had in the 31 separate attacks he listed. The Sept. 11 commission described Mohammed as a flamboyant operative who developed grandiose plans for attacks even as other al-Qaeda leaders urged him to focus on the Sept. 11 plot.

One of those plans revealed Mohammed as captivated by "a spectacle of destruction with KSM as the self-cast star -- the superterrorist," the commission wrote.

Mohammed contended that he and al-Qaeda are not terrorists, but are in engaged in a long struggle against U.S. oppression in the Middle East. He apologizes for killing children in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Because war, for sure, there will be victims," he said. "When I said I'm not happy that 3,000 been killed in America. I feel sorry even. I don't like to kill children and the kids."

Mohammed likened al-Qaeda's quest to Colonial America's struggles in the of America's Revolutionary War, drawing parallels between Laden and George Washington.

"So when we made any war against America, we are jackals fighting in the nights," he said, adding later that had Washington been arrested by the British, he, too, would have been considered an enemy combatant.

"As consider George Washington as hero, Muslims many of them are considering Osama bin Laden. He is doing same thing. He is just fighting. He needs his independence."

Mohammed said he wants to make a "great awakening" to force the United States to stop foreign policy "in our land."

He urged the U.S. military to release numerous detainees who were captured in Afghanistan and are now at Guantanamo, saying that many were wrongly swept up. At one point, he contended that a group of men sent to assassinate bin Laden and captured by al-Qaeda were later taken prisoner by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University, said Mohammed sees himself as a "reluctant warrior and justified" in his actions, as many other terrorists have characterized themselves.

Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So after 4 years in military custody, with daily interrogation, Mohammed admits to a long list of terrorist projects that he was directly or indirectly involved in. I’m just surprised he wasn’t responsible for killing of John F. Kennedy, John Lennon or shooting JR Ewing. The worrying thing is that the cruel methods US interrogators have used since September 11 to "break" prisoners are finally being put on trial with the case of José Padilla recently. There is no need to go so far back to prove that the US military knew full well that it was driving Padilla mad. The army's field manual, reissued just last year, states: "Sensory deprivation may result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression, and antisocial behavior" - as well as "significant psychological distress" If these techniques drove Padilla insane, that means the US government has been deliberately driving hundreds, possibly thousands, of prisoners insane around the world. What makes a mockery of the trials are that the defendants are not entitled to normal rights of legal representation, and the hearings are closed to public scrutiny. In the Defense Department transcript, Mohammed said his statement was not made under duress. But Mohammed and human rights advocates have alleged that he was tortured, and legal experts say that could taint all his statements. According to the document, the military colonel heading the panel hearing his case asked Mr Mohammed: "Is any statement that you made, was it because of this treatment, to use your word, you claim torture. Do you make any statements because of that?" Portions of Mr Mohammed's response have been deleted from the transcript and his immediate answer is unclear. He later told the hearing that his confession to the list of attacks was given without any pressure, threats or duress. The colonel said Mr Mohammed's torture allegations would be "reported for any investigation that may be appropriate" and would be taken into account when considering his "enemy combatant" status. He is understood to have gone through torture, including "waterboarding" when the suspect being interrogated is strapped to a board and placed underwater. According to the New York Times, the use of harsh techniques was approved in his case by the justice department and the CIA. A separate transcript of another top al-Qaida suspect, Abi Faraj al-Libi, also released last night, contains a statement from him in which he refuses to cooperate with the proceedings. "I have been held by the United States for over two years without any indication of how the judicial system is going to deal with my situation. It is my opinion the detainee is in a lose-lose situation," the transcript reads.

The following text has been taken from the Independent, UK, 16.03.06)

The extravagant confession of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief organiser of the September 2001 attacks against the US, should be treated with a pinch of salt.

First, it is unclear to what extent it was influenced by the torture (or in Dick Cheney-speak "harsh interrogation") to which he was subjected by the CIA after his capture in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March 2003.

Second, as the independent 9/11 Commission report noted almost three years ago, Mohammed saw himself as "a self-cast star, the super-terrorist" of al-Qa'ida.

His lead role in the September 11 attacks is beyond dispute and, according to an additional transcript released yesterday by the Pentagon, he boasts of personally beheading "with my blessed right hand" the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. But it seems unlikely that Mohammed was directly involved in all of the 31 terrorist plots - some carried out, others merely intended, and several never made public until now - for which he has claimed responsibility.

Third, he is a man with nothing to lose. Last Saturday's hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where Mohammed is being held, was merely to establish whether he had been correctly designated an "enemy combatant". Sometime in the future a trial awaits, at which he will surely be found guilty and sentenced to death. If he is to die, he doubtless calculates, far better to do so not as a small terrorist fish, but as one of the main architects of what George Bush describes as the first global conflict of the 21st century.

Nonetheless, some of his ruminations on the broader nature of terrorism, conveyed in a mixture of broken English and translated Arabic, are worth listening to, and not only because they come from a man who knows his murderous business inside out. It may be small comfort indeed to hear from this organiser of the deadliest terror attack of the modern era, in which 3,000 people died, that "I don't like to kill children and the kids". But then again, as he notes, "the language of war is victims," and whether the death or suffering of those victims is justified is very much a matter of perspective.

Mohammed likens Osama bin Laden to George Washington, Britain's enemy in the American revolutionary war. In one sense, the comparison is absurd. Random violence and the intimidation of civilians is the terrorist's stock in trade, but it was not the strategy of Washington when he led the 13 colonies to independence. But Mohammed reminds us of a truth the Bush administration often and self-defeatingly ignores, that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Washington might not have been a terrorist. But he most certainly would have been classified as an enemy combatant by the government of King George III and, if had been caught, hanged.

For Americans. however, the first president is a hero of mythical status, just as bin Laden's campaign against the US presence in the Middle East has made him a hero for many Muslims today. As for the seizure of parts of Mexico in the 19th century, Mohammed further notes, that might have been "manifest destiny" in American eyes. But for their opponents, wanton imperialism would have been a better description.

Finally, Mohammed makes a plea for mercy - not for himself, but for the dozens or more detainees being held without trial at Guantanamo Bay, even though the evidence that they were "enemy combatants" is flimsy or non-existent. Five years on, it is ludicrous to argue that these wretched individuals, whose main mistake was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, have some vestigial intelligence value. It is not too late for the Bush administration to heed this suggestion, even if it comes from one of the most lethal enemy combatants of all.

Scrutiny Increases For A Group Advocating For Muslims In U.S.

Taken from The New York Times, March 14, 2007
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

With violence across the Middle East fixing Islam smack at the center of the American political debate, an organization partly financed by donors closely identified with wealthy Persian Gulf governments has emerged as the most vocal advocate for American Muslims — and an object of wide suspicion.

The group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, defines its mission as spreading the understanding of Islam and protecting civil liberties. Its officers appear frequently on television and are often quoted in newspapers, and its director has met with President Bush. Some 500,000 people receive the group’s daily e-mail newsletter.

Yet a debate rages behind the scenes in Washington about the group, commonly known as CAIR, its financing and its motives. A small band of critics have made a determined but unsuccessful effort to link it to Hamas and Hezbollah, which have been designated as terrorist organizations by the State Department, and have gone so far as calling the group an American front for the two.

In the latest confrontation yesterday, CAIR held a panel discussion on Islam and the West in a Capitol meeting room despite demands by House Republicans that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, not allow the event. The Republicans called its members “terrorist apologists.”

Caley Gray, a spokesman for Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey Democrat who helped book the room, rejected that label in a phone interview and said CAIR held similar meetings when Congress was controlled by Republicans. Still, Mr. Gray called back to specify that Mr. Pascrell did not endorse all of the group’s positions.

Last fall, Senator Barbara Boxer of California issued a routine Certificate of Appreciation to the organization representative in Sacramento, but she quickly revoked it when critics assailed her on the Web under headlines like “Senators for Terror.”

“There are things there I don’t want to be associated with,” Ms. Boxer said later of the revocation, explaining that her California office had not vetted the group sufficiently.

CAIR and its supporters say its accusers are a small band of people who hate Muslims and deal in half-truths. Ms. Boxer’s decision to revoke the Sacramento commendation provoked an outcry from organizations that vouch for the group’s advocacy, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the California Council of Churches.

“They have been a leading organization that has advocated for civil rights and civil liberties in the face of fear and intolerance, in the face of religious and ethnic profiling,” said Maya Harris, the executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Northern California.

Government officials in Washington said they were not aware of any criminal investigation of the group. More than one described the standards used by critics to link CAIR to terrorism as akin to McCarthyism, essentially guilt by association.

“Of all the groups, there is probably more suspicion about CAIR, but when you ask people for cold hard facts, you get blank stares,” said Michael Rolince, a retired F.B.I. official who directed counterterrorism in the Washington field office from 2002 to 2005.

Outreach to all Muslims via groups they support is an important aspect of ensuring that extremists cannot get a foothold here as they have in Europe, Mr. Rolince said.

The cloud kicked up by the constant scrutiny is such that spokesmen at several federal agencies refused to comment about the group and some spoke only on the condition of anonymity.

After a brief interview, Ms. Boxer declined to answer additional questions about the commendation to the Sacramento representative, Basim Elkarra. A spokeswoman, Natalie Ravitz, said in an e-mail message that the senator had decided “to put this entire incident behind her.”

Joe Kaufman, who Ms. Boxer’s office said first drew her attention to CAIR’s reputation, is the founder of a Web site that tracks what he calls the group’s extremism, cairwatch.com. Other critics include the Investigative Project, a conservative group that tries to identify terrorist organizations, and the Middle East Forum, a conservative research center that says its goal is to promote American interests in the region.

“You can’t fight a war on terrorism directly when you are acting with a terror front,” said Mr. Kaufman, who advocates shutting down the organization.

Founded in 1994, CAIR had eight chapters at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the group, but has grown to some 30 chapters as American Muslims have felt unjustly scrutinized ever since.

Broadly summarized, critics accuse CAIR of pursuing an extreme Islamist political agenda and say at least five figures with ties to the group or its leadership have either been convicted or deported for links to terrorist groups. They include Mousa Abu Marzook, a Hamas leader deported in 1997 after the United States failed to produce any evidence directly linking him to any attacks.

There were no charges linked to CAIR in any of the cases involved, and law enforcement officials said that in the current climate, any hint of suspicious behavior would have resulted in a racketeering charge.

The group’s officials say the accusations are rooted in its refusal to endorse the American government’s blanket condemnations of Hezbollah and Hamas, although it has criticized Hamas for civilian deaths.

Several federal officials said CAIR’s Washington office frequently issued controversial statements that made it hard for senior government figures to be associated with the group, particularly since some pro-Israeli lobbyists have created what one official called a “cottage industry” of attacking the group and anyone dealing with it.

Last summer, the group urged a halt to weapons shipments to Israel as civilian casualties in Lebanon swelled. In September, it held a dinner for former President Mohamed Khatami of Iran at a time when much of official Washington had ostracized that Islamic republic. In November, the group sponsored a panel discussion by two prominent academics who argue that the pro-Israeli lobby exercises detrimental influence on United States policy on the Middle East.

“Traditionally within the government there is only one point of view that is acceptable, which is the pro-Israel line,” said Nihad Awad, a founder of CAIR and its executive director. “Another enlightened perspective on the conflict is not there, and it causes some discomfort.”

When Mr. Bush visited a Washington mosque in 2001, Mr. Awad was among the Muslim leaders he met. But Dana M. Perino, a White House spokeswoman, said Mr. Awad had not been invited to any recent iftars, annual dinners to break the fast during the holy month of Ramadan. She offered no explanation.

This year, when Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales met with the leaders of half a dozen Muslim and Arab-American organizations in his office, no representative from CAIR was invited.

When Karen P. Hughes, the close adviser to Mr. Bush and under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, started interacting with the group, she was criticized as dealing with “Wahhabis,” shorthand for Saudi-inspired religious extremists, a State Department spokesman said.

CAIR has raised some suspicion by accepting large donations from individuals or foundations closely identified with Arab governments. It has an annual operating budget of around $3 million, and the group said it solicited major donations for special projects, like $500,000 from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia to help distribute the Koran and other books about Islam in the United States, some of which generated controversy.

The donations are a source of contention within CAIR itself. Several branch directors said they had avoided foreign financing and had criticized the national office for it.

Officials at other Arab-American and Muslim organizations said there was a decided split between how the national office operated and how the branches did. The branch offices, which raise their own money and operate largely as franchises, concentrate on local civil rights problems and hence develop close working relationships with law enforcement.

When the Southern California chapter threw itself a birthday party last November, nearly 2,000 people packed the Anaheim Hilton’s ballroom to hear guests of honor praise the organization, including J. Stephen Tidwell, the director of the F.B.I.’s Los Angeles office.

“I am very excited to be here,” Mr. Tidwell told a reporter covering the fund-raiser for an Arab-American television news channel, calling CAIR “an important bridge for the F.B.I. into the Muslim, Arab-American community.”

The Washington office, the officials at the other Arab-American and Muslim groups said, tends to fight more image battles because its main staff members have backgrounds in public relations. Still, they said, CAIR’s contrarian image helps with fund-raising both in the American Muslim community and among Arab governments because both believe that the federal government is biased against them.

Some Muslims, particularly the secular, find CAIR overly influenced by Saudi religious interpretations, criticizing it for stating in news releases, for example, that all Muslim women are required to veil their hair when the matter is openly debated.

But they still support its civil rights work and endorse the idea of anyone working to make American Islam a more integral part of society. One Arab-American advocate compared CAIR to “the tough cousin who curses at anyone who speaks badly about the family.”

Some activists and academics view the controversy surrounding the group as typical of why Washington fails so often in the Middle East, while extremism mushrooms.

“How far are we going to keep going in this endless circle: ‘You are a terrorist!’ ‘No, you are a terrorist!’? ” said Souleiman Ghali, one of the founders of a moderate San Francisco mosque. “People are paying a price for that.”

David Johnston contributed reporting.

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It does seems that there is a witch hunt against CAIR from a few powerful minority. I can't really see the difference between CAIR and AIPAC or CAMERA. All these groups try and raise the profile and awareness of their interests (although with AIPAC it is not always in the best interests of the US). If the members of CAIR are found to promote racial hatred or promote any kind of terrorism in the US or anywhere around the world, then theses people should be arrested and dealt with severely - otherwise they have not done anything wrong and we should all stop the scaremongering. Maybe people like Joe Kaufman have an agenda against Muslims? We should try and get along together whatever our religions and beliefs.

Terrorists Proving Harder To Profile

European Officials Say Traits of Suspected Islamic Extremists Are Constantly Shifting

Taken from Washington Post, March 12, 2007; Page A01
By Craig Whitlock

On the surface, the young Dutch Moroccan mother looked like an immigrant success story: She studied business in college, hung out at the pub with her friends and was known for her fashionable taste in clothes.

So residents of this 900-year-old river town were thrown for a loop last year when Bouchra El-Hor, now 24, appeared in a British courtroom wearing handcuffs under an all-encompassing black veil. Prosecutors said she had covered up plans for a terrorist attack and wrote a letter offering to sacrifice herself and her infant son as martyrs.

"We were flabbergasted to learn that she had become a fanatic," said Renee Haantjes, a college instructor who recalled her as "a normal Dutch girl."

People in Zutphen may have been surprised, but terrorism suspects from atypical backgrounds are becoming increasingly common in Western Europe. With new plots surfacing every month, police across Europe are arresting significant numbers of women, teenagers, white-skinned suspects and people baptized as Christians - groups that in the past were considered among the least likely to embrace Islamic radicalism.

The demographics of those being arrested are so diverse that many European counterterrorism officials and analysts say they have given up trying to predict what sorts of people are most likely to become terrorists. Age, sex, ethnicity, education and economic status have become more and more irrelevant.

"It's very difficult to make a profile of terrorists," Tjibbe Joustra, the Dutch national coordinator for counterterrorism, said in an interview. "To have a profile that you can recognize, so that you can predict, 'This guy is going to be radical, perhaps he will cross the line into terrorism' - that, I think, is impossible."

European authorities said the trait patterns of those arrested on terrorism charges are constantly shifting. In the Netherlands, officials said they are seeing an increase in the number of young teenagers and people of Turkish descent, two groups that used to be low on their radar. Among the key players in the Hofstad group, a cell of Islamic radicals that targeted Dutch politicians and cultural figures, was Jason Walters, the teenage son of a U.S. soldier.

In neighboring Belgium, people are still perplexed over what drove Muriel Degauque, 38, a blond, white Catholic, to convert to Islam and travel to Iraq to blow herself up in November 2005. Nizar Trabelsi, convicted two years earlier of plotting to bomb a NATO base in Belgium, had been a European soccer star before going to Afghanistan to attend al-Qaeda training camps.

In Britain, three of the suspects arrested in last summer's alleged transatlantic airline hijacking plot were religious converts who grew up in north London's affluent suburbs. One was the well-to-do English son of a Conservative Party activist; he worked in a bar and loved the movie "Team America."

A recently completed Dutch study of 242 Islamic radicals convicted or accused of planning terrorist attacks in Europe from 2001 to 2006 found that most were men of Arab descent who had been born and raised in Europe and came from lower or middle-class backgrounds. They ranged in age from 16 to 59 at the time of their arrests; the average was 27. About one in four had a criminal record.

The author of the study, Edwin Bakker, a researcher at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, tried to examine almost 20 variables concerning the suspects' social and economic backgrounds.

In general, he determined that no reliable profile existed - their traits were merely an accurate reflection of the overall Muslim immigrant population in Europe. "There is no standard jihadi terrorist in Europe," the study concluded.

In an interview, Bakker said that many local police agencies have been slow to abandon
profiling, but that most European intelligence agencies have concluded it is an unreliable tool for spotting potential terrorists. "How can you single them out? You can't," he said. "For the secret services, it doesn't give them a clue. We should focus more on suspicious behavior and not profiling."

Bakker and other analysts said more attention should be devoted to understanding the personal experiences that motivate people to become radicals. For example, Dutch researchers said they suspect one reason why more young women are becoming involved in radical networks in the Netherlands is that they come under the influence of "Moroccan lover boys." Authorities use the phrase to describe charismatic Romeos who manipulate emotionally needy women into committing criminal acts. "These are really down-to-earth things that we should not underestimate," Bakker said.

Indeed, there are clear signs that al-Qaeda cells and affiliates are intentionally recruiting supporters from nontraditional backgrounds as a way to avoid detection, according to European intelligence officials and analysts.

In London, eight male al-Qaeda suspects are currently on trial for an alleged plot to blow up unspecified targets in Britain with bombs made of ammonium nitrate, a common ingredient in fertilizers. According to testimony at the trial, which began in March 2006, the defendants persuaded a Canadian woman, whom they had met on the Internet, to wire money on their behalf because she was less likely to attract suspicion.

Zenab Armend Pisheh, a student at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., said a member of the cell asked her to wire more than $5,000 so the defendants could go to Pakistan in 2003 to attend an al-Qaeda training camp. "He said it had to be a woman because sisters don't get caught - brothers get caught if they send money," Pisheh said in a statement to British investigators.

According to trial testimony last fall, Pisheh met one of the defendants, Anthony Garcia, of east London, in an Internet chat room and quickly fell in love; they became engaged without ever meeting face to face. He introduced her to other accused conspirators, including the man who asked her to wire the cash.

Garcia is of Algerian descent, but testified in September that he legally changed his name from Rahman Adam to further his ambitions as a fashion model and because the Latin-sounding name "had a better ring to it." British investigators, however, believe he was trying to conceal his Muslim and Arab background from police.

John Horgan, a senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said terrorist groups are constantly trying to catch law enforcement officials off guard.

"One guiding principle for terrorist groups is to always maintain the psychological edge and the upper hand by doing things that are surprising to the enemy," he said. "So you'll see the use of a child, the use of a woman."

Among those arrested last August in London in the alleged transatlantic hijacking plot, for example, was Cossor Ali, a 24-year-old mother married to another suspect in the case. British investigators suspect that she or her husband planned to smuggle liquid explosives onto a flight in their infant daughter's bottle.

In the Dutch study of terrorism suspects in Europe, only five of the 242 suspects examined were women. But Dutch counterterrorism officials said they have seen a significant rise in the number of female suspects in the past two years.

"It seems that it will be simply a matter of time before these women also become actively involved in violence," the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service, known as AIVD, reported a year ago in a unclassified analysis of terrorism trends in the country.

In May 2006, two months after the intelligence analysis was released, British police stopped Hor, the young Dutch Moroccan mother from Zutphen, and her husband at Luton airport outside London. Although it is unclear what prompted the stop, investigators said they found suspicious files on the husband's laptop computer, including instructions for building a homemade rocket launcher and explosives.

In a search of the couple's home, police said, they found radical literature, including a document titled "A Training Schedule for Committing Jihad." They also discovered a letter written by Hor in which she offered herself and their 6-month-old son as martyrs for an unspecified cause.

Hor was later arrested and charged with failing to disclose information to prevent a terrorist attack. Her husband, Yassin Nassari, 27, was charged with possessing documents for terrorism. They are scheduled to go on trial May 23 in London.

Both had been living in Britain, but they frequently traveled back and forth to the Netherlands, authorities said. Dutch police assisted in the investigation, conducting a search of Nassari's parents' home in Eindhoven. Prosecutors have disclosed few other details.

Bart Nooitgedagt, a lawyer in Amsterdam who represents Hor, declined to answer questions about the case but said his client was innocent. "I'm pretty convinced she will be cleared of all the accusations that are being made," he said. "I cannot believe, and will not believe, that this will lead to a conviction."

In Zutphen, a town of 46,000 people alongside the Ijssel River, former neighbors and friends said they are still struggling to understand how Hor transformed so quickly from a fashion-conscious college student with a secular outlook on life into a burqa-wearing fundamentalist. "She was a modern young girl," Allal Kaddouri, a friend and owner of a pizzeria in the center of town, told the Apeldoornse Courant newspaper.

Zutphen has had a sizable immigrant population since the early 1970s, when Turks and North Africans began arriving to fill low-wage jobs in the booming Dutch economy. About one-sixth of the town is of Turkish or Arab descent.

Adriaan van Oosten, an alderman responsible for immigration issues, said there have been no overt signs of Islamic radicalism. He said civic and religious leaders met after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States to ensure that there were no problems festering under the surface. "We certainly haven't had any tensions," he said.

People who knew Hor speculated that she changed after she married her husband, whom she apparently met in London while on a study-abroad program. Jeroen Ongering, a professor at a nearby community college who taught Hor, said she was a good student but abruptly dropped out in the summer of 2003 without explanation.

"For us, we had no signal at all that there was anything wrong or amiss," Ongering said in an interview. "She was a Moroccan girl, but she was very Westernized. She knew she was a very beautiful woman. It's hard for us to understand."

Former Sailor Accused Of Providing Data To Terrorist Web Site

Taken from The Washington Post, March 8, 2007; Page A08
By Josh White

A former sailor was arrested yesterday in Phoenix on federal charges of providing material support for a conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals amid allegations that he sent classified information about a U.S. Navy battle group's movements in the Middle East to a terrorist Web site in early 2001.

Paul R. Hall, 31, allegedly used his position aboard the USS Benfold and his secret clearance to forward details of the battle group's defensive capabilities and how the ships were going to cross the Strait of Hormuz in April 2001. Federal officials wrote in a criminal complaint that Hall - who is referred to as Hassan Abujihaad throughout the document - was contacting the Web site to order jihad videos and supported the terrorist mission of attacking American targets such as the USS Cole.

The case is unusual because Hall is alleged to have had many e-mail contacts with Britons who ran the Web site while he was at sea, and appears to have passed along information that could have aided in an attack on his own battle group. Hall allegedly sent money to order videos and corresponded with the now-defunct Web site -- http://www.azzam.com-- from a private e-mail account and his official military account.

"Abujihaad described a recent force protection briefing given aboard his ship, voiced enmity toward America, praised Usama bin Laden and the mujahideen, praised the October 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole - which Abujihaad described as a 'martyrdom operation' - and advised the members of Azzam Publications that such tactics were working and taking their toll," according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Kevin J. O'Connor's office in the District of Connecticut. The response from the Web site allegedly encouraged Hall's efforts.

Hall appeared in a Phoenix courtroom yesterday afternoon and consented to allow federal officials to move him to Connecticut, where there are federal terrorism charges pending against the Web site owners, Babar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan. Both of them are facing extradition from the United Kingdom.

A spokesman for O'Connor said that Hall was represented by the federal public defender's office in Phoenix yesterday, and that it is unclear whether Hall has secured a lawyer in Connecticut.

The charges against Hall emanate largely from a classified naval document found on a computer hard drive during a raid on a home in Britain.

At the time the document was forwarded to the Web site, it would have been classified because it contained detailed information about where and when the U.S. ships were moving.

The document also suggests possible places to intercept the ships, such as ports in Australia and when the ships were to enter the Persian Gulf.

Some of Hall's e-mails appear benign, while others praise the work of terrorist organizations and their ability to scare top U.S. officials and the American public just months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He identifies himself as a Muslim in one message and has jihad videos sent to his family's home in California and to his ship.

The battle group was not attacked during its mission to enforce no-fly zones in Iraq and to patrol the Gulf.

FBI agents also describe a pattern of what they call suspicious activities after Hall was honorably discharged in January 2002.

The agents wrote in charging documents that Hall lived in Phoenix with Derrick Shareef, who later allegedly tried to obtain weapons to commit a terrorist act in a shopping mall in the United States. Shareef introduced another man, whom officials did not identify, to Hall, and Hall allegedly tried to buy two assault rifles from the man for $1,300.

In a recorded conversation, Hall played down his contact with the Web site, according to charging documents.

"I corresponded with an e-mail site," Hall allegedly said. "It wasn't nothin' top secret like these people are saying, you know what I mean? I was just talking about, like the Cole . . . whatever."

US Medic In Germany Guilty Of Desertion

Taken from The Independent, UK, 07 March 2007
By Tony Paterson in Berlin

A US Army medic who refused to return to Iraq because of his opposition to the war has been found guilty of desertion by a court martial in Germany. The verdict follows reports from soldiers' counselling groups of a more than threefold rise in American military personnel wanting to leave the armed forces.

Agustin Aguayo, 35, who was born in Mexico, climbed out of a bathroom window at a US base at Schweinfurt, Germany, in September last year and went absent without leave for 24 days to avoid being sent on a second tour of duty in Iraq. Yesterday, in a case closely watched by American anti-war groups, a court martial in Würzburg convicted Aguayo of desertion. He faces up to seven years in prison, a dishonourable discharge and loss of pay.

The presiding judge, Colonel Peter Masterton, did not pass sentence immediately after ruling that Aguayo was guilty of desertion rather than the lesser charge of going absent without leave.

"The accused was supposed to deploy with his unit to face hazardous duty in Iraq. Instead he decided to jump out of his window and run away," Captain Derrick Grace, for the prosecution, told the court martial.

The case came less than a month after the court martial of First Lieutenant Ehren Watada - the first known trial of a US Army officer for refusing to serve in Iraq - and at a time of rapidly waning support for the war in the US. The case ended in a mistrial.

Aguayo denied desertion but admitted going absent without leave. "Yes I deliberately stayed away from the battalion area," he told a panel of senior officers. "I missed the troop movement."

Aguayo served one tour of duty as a combat medic in Iraq in 2004 and claimed he refused to load his weapon while on duty. He subsequently lost an appeal for a military discharge as a conscientious objector.

David Court, his lawyer, said his client did not merely oppose the Iraq war: "We are dealing with somebody who is saying, I don't believe in war at all."

An increasing number of the US Army's 65,000 soldiers based in Germany are seeking to leave.

Michael Sharp, the director of the Military Counselling Network (MCN), a non-governmental body based in Heidelberg, said there had been a surge in calls in January after President Bush announced plans to deploy a further 20,000 troops in Iraq. "We normally get about eight new calls a month, but in January alone we got 30," he said.

The Centre on Conscience and War, based in Washington, said last week that it was receiving an average of two calls a day inquiring about conscientious objection as opposed to two a week after the Iraq war started.

Tim Huber, who also works for the MCN, said higher ranks had begun to join ordinary soldiers in seeking information about how to gain recognition as conscientious objectors.

He said he had received several calls from sergeants and staff sergeants - men and women who had spent between five and seven years in the Army.

"The displeasure with the war and how that can affect your attitude to all wars is beginning to seep through some higher ranks," he added.

Mr Huber said that more than half of all applications for conscientious objector status failed because candidates had to prove their moral opposition to all wars. He said many recruits went absent without leave (Awol), took drugs or committed other offences in order to be discharged from the armed forces.

The US Defence Department has admitted that some 8,000 soldiers have gone Awol since the Iraq war began in March 2003.

Aguayo applied for conscientious objector status in 2004, having enlisted in 2002 to earn money for his education.

Mr Huber said Aguayo decided to go Awol after his appeal was turned down and he was threatened with being forcibly sent back to Iraq. "He had been trying so hard to follow the system by filing for conscientious objection discharge - but he was just ignored," he said.

US Announces Plans To Build New Nuclear Warheads

Some of our brothers are more equal than others! Whilst we tell North Korea and Iran NOT to develop Nuclear Power, let alone Nuclear Weapons, we in the developing world have been upgarding our arseanl. First it was the UK, then France and now the U.S. It's nothing new.

Article taken from The Jerusalem Post, Mar. 2, 2007
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

The US government selected a design Friday for a new generation of atomic warheads, taking a major step toward building the first new nuclear weapon since the end of the Cold War two decades ago.

The military and the Energy Department selected a design developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California over a competing design by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, according to government sources who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of a formal announcement.

The decision to move ahead with the warhead, which eventually would replace the existing arsenal of weapons dating back 40 years, has been criticized as sending the wrong signal to the world at a time the United States is trying to contain nuclear weapons development in North Korea and Iran.

But military and Energy Department officials have argued the new warhead will not add to the nuclear arsenal. They maintain the new design will make the weapons stockpile more secure and reliable without the need for actual underground testing.

The warhead has been the focus of an intense competition between Los Alamos in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore, the government's two premier nuclear weapons laboratories.
The labs submitted separate designs nearly a year ago. Lawrence Livermore's design is based on a warhead actually tested in an underground detonation in the 1980s. Los Alamos had a design based on a fresh approach that has not undergone testing.

One of the assurances given by defense officials to Congress is that the new warhead will not have to undergo actual testing.

Once developed, it would be used in the Trident missles on submarines and eventually also replace warheads in the Air Force's missile arsenal, officials said.

Nuclear Chief Suspected Of selling Uranium

Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, March 10, 2007
By Chris McGreal

THE head of the Democratic Republic of Congo's dilapidated and poorly guarded nuclear reactor plant has been arrested on suspicion of illegally selling enriched uranium.

The commissioner general for atomic energy, Fortunat Lumu, was detained on Tuesday along with an aide. Congo's state prosecutor, Tshimanga Mukeba, said Mr Lumu was being questioned about the disappearance of unspecified quantities of uranium in recent years.

Mr Mukeba said Mr Lumu was suspected of "orchestrating illicit contracts to produce and sell uranium" but he did not name the alleged buyers.

The newspaper Le Phare reported that about 100 bars of uranium had disappeared from the small experimental reactor, the oldest nuclear facility in Africa. The uranium produced by the reactor in Congo's capital, Kinshasa, is enriched but not to weapons grade, although it could be used in a "dirty bomb" to spread radiation.

The International Atomic Energy Agency and foreign governments have expressed concern about lax security at the plant, which the US has tried to get closed for a number of years.

Two years ago the Congolese Government denied reports that uranium was shipped to Iran.

In 2000 Newsweek reported that a Kenyan middleman tried to sell Congolese uranium to Saddam Hussein, but the Iraqi leader was under too much international scrutiny to buy it.

The United Nations nuclear monitor has criticised standards at the site, which is often left unguarded and is protected only by a low fence and rickety gate. Although the reactor has been on standby for nine years, there are 98 bars of enriched uranium stored at the site, submerged in a pool underneath a padlocked metal grate or in the reactor.

Two uranium rods disappeared in the late 1970s, one of which is believed to have been found in 1998 on its way to the Middle East via the Mafia. The other was never recovered.

The nuclear plant was founded in 1958 with help from the US because the then Belgian Congo provided the uranium used in the atom bombs dropped on Japan. It also handles uranium mined in the south of the country for export.

In the chaos of the past 10 years of foreign invasion and civil war in Congo, illegal mining has boomed, with thousands of Congolese making a living from using shovels and their bare hands to hack it from the earth.

The atomic energy agency has also told the Congolese of its fears that an accident at the plant could spread radiation into Kinshasa and contaminate the water supply. Agency officials have been particularly worried that the reactor is built in an area known for subsidence. One of its walls was pierced seven years ago by a metal projectile that was variously identified as part of a missile or having fallen from a plane.

Congo's nuclear scientists are optimistic, however. They hope to get the reactor working again soon for a range of uses from medical research to prospecting.

Last year the commission signed an agreement with a British firm, Brinkley Mining, for the reactor to be used in prospecting for uranium.

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The world's reliance on oil and gas is set to increase sharply as global energy demand soars by 60% over the next 25 to 30 years, but what is going to happen as the oil runs out? We will most definately turn to Nuclear power as energy. Countries that have oil and the problems associated with oil (Coups, power-play, wars, misuse of revenues) will not have any more problems. These problems will go to countries that have uranium deposits. The top ten are: Australia, Kazakhstan, Canada, South Africa, Namibia, Brazil, Russia, USA, Uzbekistan and China. Lets hope these countries do not abuse thier positions like the OPEC countries. Lets hope these countries don't become too attractive with the problems associated with black gold.

Revealed! Tony Blair's Secret Weapon Of Mass Deception

Nothing we didn't really know but it's becoming official...

Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, March 13, 2007

By Associated Press

LONDON: The former United Nations chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has said the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, replaced "question marks with exclamation marks" in intelligence dossiers used to justify the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Dr Blix, who led the UN search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq until June 2003, said a later discredited dossier on Iraq's weapons programs had deliberately embellished the case for war.

Blair's Government published a dossier before the invasion which claimed Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and could deploy some within 45 minutes.

"I do think they exercised spin. They put exclamation marks instead of question marks," Dr Blix said in an interview with Britain's Sky News yesterday.

"I think if they'd allowed us to carry on the inspections a couple of months more then we would have been able to go to all the sites suspected," Dr Blix said, referring to the period immediately before the invasion.

He said that intelligence officials would likely have drawn the eventual conclusion that Iraq had no weapons stockpiles and that their sources were providing poor quality information.
Associated Press