Thursday, March 5, 2009
FBI Takes Over SOUTH ASIA and BOOBY Jindal GROOMS for America
FBI Takes Over SOUTH ASIA and BOOBY Jindal GROOMS for America
Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams: Chapter 177
Palash Biswas
Primary threat to US comes from Pak and Afghanistan: FBI Chief
Home » South Asia. Primary threat to US from Pak and Afghanistan: FBI Chief ... Delivering a speech on FBI's role in global terrorism at the Council on ...
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FBI Role in Mumbai Investigation - News - All the information you ...
I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to discuss the FBI’s role in ... to U.S. interests in South Asia and, to a lesser extent, the U.S. Homeland. ...
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FBI seeks to question more individuals
9 Jan 2009 ... threat to US interests in South Asia and, to a lesser extent, the US homeland. ... Briefing the Committee on FBI's role in Mumbai attack ...
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FBI seeks questioning of more individuals in India's custody ...
... said FBI assesses that LeT remains a threat to US interests in South Asia and, ... Briefing the Committee on FBI's role in Mumbai attack investigations, ...
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FBI in New Delhi
22 Sep 1999 ... South Asia Analysis Group Notes and Updates .... and threat – as long as the role of that "office" is clearly defined and circumscribed, ...
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BBC NEWS | South Asia | Bin Laden 'probably' dead
The FBI's counter-terrorism chief says he believes Osama bin Laden is "probably" ... 18 Sep 01 | South Asia. Who is Osama Bin Laden? Internet links:. FBI ...
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Indiainfo.com -> News -> South Asia -> Pak police, FBI nab doctor ...
Islamabad: Pakistani police and United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents have arrested a doctor and eight of his family members in a joint ...
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Federal Bureau of Investigation - Employment
The FBI has a critical need to hire new Special Agents and Professional Support personnel to ... FBI.gov is an official site of the U.S. Federal Government, ...
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Bobby Jindal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (born June 10, 1971) primarily known (using his self-adopted nickname) as Bobby Jindal, is the current Governor of the U.S. state of ...
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22 May 2008 ... Bobby Jindal, however, is much less well known -- though that's an ..... McCain will never chose Bobby Jindal as his running mate, ...
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"Democratic leaders say their legislation will grow the economy. What it will do is grow the government, increase our taxes down the line, and saddle future generations with debt"
Feb 24, 2009 Sify (2046 occurrences)
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U.S. not to open new military base in Central Asia! Obama has centered the WAR against Terror in the Indian Ocean Peace Zone which has already been transformed as a war zone thanks to INDO US NUKE DEAL and strategic realliance in US ISRAEL lead. US FOREIGN POLICY Shift highlighting AFGAN PAK Military Action did the rest.
Now South Asia is under the UMBRELLA of FBI CIA MOSSAD Nexus!
DESI ILLUMINITI in making would get a lifetime BOOST if BOBBY Jindal takes over United States of AMERICA. Nuclear Global Hindutva aspires to lead the GLOBAL MANUSMRITI APARTHEID Order!
AMERICAN AGENCY FBI is all set to take up INTERNAL SECURITY SETUP in the AMERICANISED Colonies in South Asia. The Plan is on Progress to create a NODAL Agency led by FBI understandably with CIA and MOSSAD Connection!
The director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, arrived in Pakistan yesterday as security officials detained about two dozen people for questioning over the deadly ambush of the Sri Lankan cricket team.
The Lahore police chief, Haji Habibur Rehman, gave few details but indicated that none of those detained was among the attackers who opened fire on the team bus with grenades and guns on Tuesday, he said.
Up to 12 masked men attacked the team bus, killing at least eight people and injuring several team members before escaping into the teeming streets of the city.
Police have been conducting an intensive manhunt throughout the eastern city in a bid to arrest the gunmen.
Photos of two of the militants have been published and the Government has offered a $US126,000 ($197,000) reward for help to find the men. The Punjab provincial government took out advertisements in newspapers offering the reward.
The ad showed two attackers, one dressed in brown and the other blue, and both carrying backpacks and guns. The image was taken from TV footage of the event.
Most of Pakistan's press yesterday blamed Pakistani Islamist militants and al-Qaeda for the attacks.
The leading English-language newspaper, Dawn, criticised the Government's policy of negotiating with militants in an attempt to neutralise extremist Islamist insurgencies along the country's north-west border with Afghanistan. "If the state resorts to negotiating with militants from a position of weakness, what we will get is disaster, across the board," it said.
But writing in The Wall Street Journal, President Asif Ali Zardari defended his Government's policy. He said the "traditional local clerics" he had negotiated with in Swat valley were not the Taliban and said Pakistan would not negotiate with "extremist Taliban and terrorists".
He warned that the stakes in Pakistan's battle against extremism were high: "If we lose, so too will the world."
In his first public comments on the attack, the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said Pakistan must clamp down on "terrorists" in its midst. Mr Brown said the "vast majority" of al-Qaeda fighters were in Pakistan, adding the Government must make arrests to show it is "fulfilling its role in the world community".
But earlier, Pakistan's Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, who is close to Mr Zardari, said: "We suspect a foreign hand behind this incident. The democracy of the country has been undermined, and foreigners are repeatedly attacked to harm the country's image."
Officials said Mr Mueller was in Pakistan to help investigate last year's Mumbai attacks. New Delhi blamed the attacks on Pakistan-based militants.
The assault in Lahore bore many similarities to last year's three-day hostage drama in Mumbai, security officials said.
In Lahore, the attackers appeared to be in their early 20s. They wore trainers and loose pants and carried backpacks loaded with weapons and high-energy snacks of dried fruit and chocolate, all characteristics of the Mumbai gunmen. The gunmen in Lahore walked casually as they fired, a stance that appeared to be part of the training of the attackers in Mumbai, security experts said.
One South Asia specialist also raised the possibility that Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka may have asked Lashkar-e-Taiba militants in Pakistan to attack the cricket team. If true, this would be an ominous sign of collaboration between regional terrorist groups.
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and SRILANKA have sought FBI support to address INSURGENCY and Terror. Contrarily, U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan Tracey Ann Jacobson said the United States will not open a new military base in Central Asia to replace the Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan, local media reported Thursday. Backgrounder: Manas air base According to reports reaching here from Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, Jacobson said in an interview with a local Russian-language newspaper that she never heard of any plan about opening a new military bases in Central Asia from her colleagues in the Pentagon. Jacobson refuted some analyses which said the United States would seek to open a new military base in Tajikistan or Uzbekistan.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has agreed to help Bangladesh in forensic investigation into the border guards mutiny on Feb. 25, private news agency UNB reported on Wednesday quoting a U.S. government spokesman.
Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina sought the FBI assistance during telephone conversation with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Richard Boucher on March 1.
Boucher spoke on behalf of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and offered the U.S. assistance.
In New Delhi,Home Minister P Chidambaram rubbished Pakistan's allegations of an Indian hand in the Lahore attack asserting India "does not tolerate terror and does not export it." "This is complete rubbish. They did this a month and a half ago when there was another incident. We want peace in South Asia. We want no terror in South Asia. We don't export terror. We have zero tolerance for terror whether it is within India or outside India," Chidambaram told a TV channel when his response was sought to an allegation by some Pakistan ministers and officials of an Indian link in the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team yesterday.
The Home Minister also said that Pakistan is paying a price for not heeding India's advice.
"Pakistan is only taking half measures in the fight against terrorism. Pakistan is paying the price for not heeding our advice," he said.
Cautioning Pakistan, Chidambaram said, "Unless you dismantle terror, one day or the other you'll be hurt." "We have put enormous pressure on Pakistan, but the response is in Pakistan's hands... They have not gone the whole distance to dismantle terror infrastructure. We advised them that it is not enough if they nab one or two people whom they suspect to be the masterminds," he said.
Gov. Bobby Jindal's Republican Address to the NationGood evening. I’m Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana.
Tonight, we witnessed a great moment in the history of our Republic. In the very chamber where Congress once voted to abolish slavery, our first African-American President stepped forward to address the state of our union. With his speech tonight, the President completed a redemptive journey that took our nation from Independence Hall … to Gettysburg … to the lunch counter … and now, finally, the Oval Office.
Click here to read the entire speech.
http://www.bobbyjindal.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52&Itemid=1
The United States and the United Kingdom have assured Bangladesh intelligence support as they investigate the killing of army officials at the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) headquarters last month.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Robert Mueller Tuesday discussed security and terrorism-related issues with Indian officials, particularly in the context of last November's terror attack in Mumbai.Adding urgency to the atmosphere of the security issue talks were Tuesday's events in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, where masked gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team, leaving seven persons dead in the latest terrorism to strike Pakistan.
In a first major indication of a thaw in recent tension between Pakistan and India, top diplomats of the nuclear- armed neighbours had a first meeting recently - in Colombo, Sri Lanka - since the Mumbai terror attack last year. The development came ahead of the next week's regional visit of chief of US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who will help the two countries in the Mumbai probe.
According to a Pakistani foreign ministry press statement, the foreign secretaries of the two countries held talks on the sidelines of a meeting of South Asian Association of Regional Countries (SAARC)standing committee and agreed to work together for regional peace and stability.
The normalization of Indo-Pak ties had been set in motion before the arrival of FBI chief Robert Mueller to help complete Mumbai terror probe in which US agency played key role by assisting exchange of information between the two countries.
Read more: "Pakistani-Indian top diplomats meet ahead of FBI chief's visit" - http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/article_1461758.php/Pakistani-Indian_top_diplomats_meet_ahead_of_FBI_chiefs_visit_#ixzz08t6SB3Rb
The head of the United States' federal criminal investigative body and domestic intelligence agency met federal Home Minister P Chidambaram, National Security Adviser MK Narayanan and Intelligence Bureau chief Rajiv Mathur.
'We have discussed terrorism around the world, particularly the Mumbai attacks ... each of us has the intent to ensure all those responsible are brought to justice,' Mueller was quoted as saying by PTI news agency after his meeting with Narayanan.
The FBI has been collaborating with Indian agencies in investigations into the November attacks, which left more than 170 people dead.
Indian agencies charged that the terrorists involved in the attack came from neighbouring Pakistan and were supported by elements in that country.
The FBI team and Intelligence Bureau officials shared evidence on the Mumbai attacks during the meeting Tuesday, PTI reported citing official sources.
Both sides agreed that Pakistan should cooperate and hand over wanted terrorists for questioning to unravel what appeared to be a global terror network, the sources said.
The FBI has helped Indian investigators with the analysis of voice over internet protocol (VoIP) and global positioning systems of satellite phones used by the gunmen in Mumbai.
India allowed the FBI to examine evidence related to the attack and interrogate accused in custody.
The US agency is believed to have played a key role in investigations by assisting an exchange of information between India and Pakistan.
Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Dipu Moni met with U.S. Ambassador James Moriarty and British High Commissioner Stephen Evans and told reporters that each nation has assured Dhaka that they will give support.
"We have sought assistance from different countries. We have got positive response from the U.S. and the UK. We have sought assistance for forensic investigation," the foreign minister said after the meeting with the U.S. envoy.
Moriarty informed reporters that the foreign minister had sought support to the ongoing investigations and that he assured her that he would do his best.
"I will do my best to pass the Bangladesh government's formal request to my government," the U.S. diplomat told reporters.
When asked about the modality of the assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), he said it was too early to say.
On Sunday, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Richard Boucher telephoned Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and offered U.S. assistance in the probe.
Sheikh Hasina on Sunday told the parliament that apart from help from the two powerful investigation agencies of the U.S. and the U.K., the government will also seek assistance from the United Nations in investigating the BDR headquarters incident.
Read more: "FBI chief Robert Mueller meets Indian officials (Roundup)" - http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/article_1462569.php/FBI_chief_Robert_Mueller_meets_Indian_officials__Roundup__#ixzz08t5uTLUQ
Read more: "FBI chief Robert Mueller meets Indian officials (Roundup)" - http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/article_1462569.php/FBI_chief_Robert_Mueller_meets_Indian_officials__Roundup__#ixzz08t5uTLUQ
How FBI helped India probe Mumbai terror attacks
By Arun Kumar
An FBI agent working in New Delhi was preparing to play cricket one day last November. Instead he flew off to Mumbai to coordinate the US investigation agency's efforts to help India deal with the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks.
These little known details about FBI efforts to assist Indian authorities probing the November siege by conspirators with ties to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist group in Pakistan, were disclosed Monday for the first time by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations here.
Special Agent Steve Merrill, a legal attache posted to the bureau's office in New Delhi, was on his way to Jodhpur to play cricket for the American team competing at the Maharajah's annual tournament when he learned of the unfolding terrorist attack in Mumbai, he recalled. "Suddenly, cricket was the last thing on his mind."
Terrorists had landed on the shoreline of India's largest city at sundown, armed with automatic weapons and hand grenades. Within hours, buildings were ablaze and civilians were dead. During the three-day siege, more than 170 people were killed and 300 wounded.
Merrill was FBI's first agent on the scene. All he had were the clothes on his back, his Blackberry, and his cricket gear. "Amid gunfire and explosions, he established lines of communication with his Indian and intelligence community counterparts, coordinated the arrival of our Rapid Deployment Team, and helped rescue trapped Americans inside the Taj Hotel."
In Mumbai, FBI investigation began even before the crisis ended. Agents from FBI offices in New Delhi and Islamabad joined forces with the Indian government, the CIA, the State Department, MI-6, and New Scotland Yard, Mueller said.
"Through these partnerships, we had unprecedented access to evidence and intelligence. Agents and analysts conducted more than 60 interviews, including that of the lone surviving attacker.
"Our forensic specialists pulled fingerprints from improvised explosive devices. They recovered data from damaged cell phones, in one case by literally wiring a smashed phone back together."
At the same time, FBI collected, analysed, and disseminated intelligence to its partners at home and abroad -"not only to determine how these attacks were planned, and by whom, but to ensure that if a second wave of attacks was in the offing, we possessed the intelligence to stop it."
FBI work in Mumbai was not out of the ordinary, Mueller said noting "To counter these threats, we must first understand them through intelligence. Once we gain an understanding, our law enforcement authorities allow us to move against individuals and networks."
IANS, Washington, 24 February 2009
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Pakistan, Cricket, Mossad, Saudi Arabia, CIA
http://www.prisonplanet.com/pakistan-cricket-mossad-saudi-arabia-cia.html
aangirfan
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
A strategically important region.
1. Someone appears to want to get Pakistan and India into a war.
1. To weaken and divide Pakistan, and possibly India.
Why?
(The Iran-Iraq war was designed to weaken Iran and Iraq)
2. To make money for the military-industrial complex.
3. To frustrate China, which is a friend of Pakistan.
4. To make it easier for the powers-that-be to control strategically important parts of Asia.
5. To reinforce the idea that Moslems are a bunch of terrorists.
2. “Cricket matches between Pakistan and India, dubbed cricket diplomacy, are credited with healing the rift between the two neighbors and paving the way for peace talks in 2004.” (Attack on cricket team shakes Pakistan)
So, the bad guys do not want cricket matches.
Pakistan’s spooky Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik, allegedly a friend of Mossad, said: “If foreigners are attacked, we will not have foreign investment.” (Attack on cricket team shakes Pakistan)
3. In Pakistan, Lt. General (retd.) Hamid Gul, a former head of Pakistan’s ISI security service, told one TV channel that India’s RAW security service got Sri lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to carry out the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket bus in Pakistan. (In Pakistan, India is emerging as prime suspect)
India’s RAW is reported to be close to Mossad. (RAW & Mossad: The Secret Link)
In 2006, this map, prepared by retired US Col. Ralph Peters, was presented at the NATO’s Defense College in Rome. It shows Iran reduced in size, by having a Free Kurdistan and a Free Balochistan. It shows Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey and other countries losing territory.
4. Sistan-Baluchestan is a province in the southeast of Iran, bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan.
On 8 Dec 2008, we read Saudis ‘behind Jundullah hostage taking’
In June 2008, sixteen Iranian police officers were abducted by Jundullah (Soldiers of God) terrorists at a checkpoint in the southeastern city of Saravan in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan Province.
Jundullah, is linked to al Qaeda (CIA), and was formerly headed by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (theinformer.vox.com/library/post/us-recruits-…)
A report reveals Saudi Arabia supported Jundullah in carrying out this hostage taking in Iran.
The report reveals Saudi Arabian intelligence agencies were behind the abduction.
The Arabic Nahrainnet website cited sources in Pakistan’s Peshawar on 8 December 2008 who claimed that Saudi Arabian intelligence agencies have significantly increased the number of their covert operations.
The sources also reported that Saudi Arabia has extended its channels of communication across Pakistan and particularly Peshawar over the past three months.
According to information obtained from sources in Peshawar, Saudi Arabia has been directly supporting Jundullah to carry out the hostage taking of Iranian police officers.
The report claims Saudi Arabia and the CIA have been using Jundullah to destabilize Iran.
In July 2008, Pakistan’s former Army Chief, General Mirza Aslam Baig, said Jundullah is the main recipient of US financial and military aid.
Bush sanctions ‘black ops’ against Iran - Telegraph
Baig said Washington has been providing Jundullah with training facilities to fuel unrest in the area and strain Tehran-Islamabad relations.
ABC News, in 2007, citing US and Pakistani intelligence sources, said that the group, which “has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of Iranian soldiers and officials”, “has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials.”
In another report in July 2008, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that US Congressional leaders secretly agreed last year to President George W. Bush’s $400-million funding request for a major escalation in covert operations in Iran.
Jundullah was formerly headed by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. ( theinformer.vox.com/library/post/us-recruits-…)
5. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the so-called mastermind of 9-11, is believed to have attended college in North Carolina.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed worked for the CIA in Afghanistan. (http://www.nogw.com/cia.html)
In Manila, he met associates in karaoke bars and giant go-go clubs filled with mirrors, flashing lights and bikini-clad dancers. He held meetings at four-star hotels. He took scuba-diving lessons at a coastal resort. When he wasn’t with the go-go dancers, he courted a Filipina dentist.
Once, he rented a helicopter and flew it over her office, then called her on his mobile phone and told her to look up and wave. Other members of the terror cell Mohammed led had local girlfriends as well. (Dancing girls and romance on road to terrorist attacks - smh.com.au)
The real Shaikh Mohammed is considered by many analysts to be an agent of the Pakistan intelligence service ISI, which is generally considered to be controlled by the CIA.
Robert Fisk, 3 March 2003, in the Independent, wrote:
“Mr Mohammed was an ISI asset; indeed, anyone who is ‘handed over’ by the ISI these days is almost certainly a former (or present) employee of the Pakistani agency, whose control of Taliban operatives amazed even the Pakistani government during the years before 2001. Mr Pearl, it should be remembered, arranged his fatal assignation in Karachi on a mobile phone from an ISI office.” A Breakthrough in the War on Terror? I’ll Believe it When We See …
US counter-terrorism officials claim Shaikh Mohammed was in Germany before the 9 11 attacks, liaising with Mohamed Atta. A secretive U.S. eavesdropping agency monitored telephone conversations. But, the Germans weren’t told about it – and when they asked Washington for further information, none was forthcoming.
There was already a $2 million reward for Mohammed in 1998. In 2000, the CIA monitered his presence at an al Qaeda meeting, yet they didn’t arrest him. Why wasn’t the 9/11 plot discovered in June 2001 when US intelligence learned Mohammed was sending terrorists to live in the US. (Context of ‘May 11, 2004: White House Gives Top Prisoner Access to … )
And is the real Shaikh Mohammed still alive?
Asia Times, 30 February 2002:
“Ever since the frenzied shootout last month on September 11 2002 in Karachi there have been doubts over whether Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed head of al-Qaeda’s military committee, died in the police raid on his apartment.
“Now it has emerged that Kuwaiti national Khalid Shaikh Mohammed did indeed perish in the raid, but his wife and child were taken from the apartment and handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in whose hands they remain.” Asia Times
“The person making the confession in the secret military tribunal in Cuba can barely speak English. The real KSM, on the other hand, was educated in the United States and had obtained a degree in mechanical engineering from an American university in 1986.”( Terror Mastermind KSM is an Imposter - The Confession is Fake )
Research related articles:
U.S. court rules Saudi Arabia immune in 9/11 case
Saudi Arabia - You are next?
Terror at the Test match: Seven die as Sri Lankan cricket team is attacked by gunmen in Pakistan
Saudi Arabia slams Israel’s ‘racist extermination’ war
Bin Laden Firm to Build Saudi Arabian Prisons to Replace Guantanamo Bay
Attack on cricketers in Pakistan; MI6, CIA, Mossad
‘Al-Qaeda helps curb Saudi unrest’
Saudi king urges consumers to get used to high oil prices
India-Pakistan tensions may pull in U.S.
WeAreChangeLA ‘debriefs’ former CIA Case Officer Robert Baer about apparent Mossad and White House 9/11 foreknowledge, and more
India PM says Pakistan “agencies” linked to attack
India says war with Pakistan “no solution”
BDR Massacre: Killers fleeing to Saudi Arabia
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
According to a report published in Dhaka’s leading vernacular daily Manabzamin, four killer Bangladesh Riffles [BDR] men fled the country on March 2, 2009 by Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight number BG-049 to Saudi Arabia. With the help of a very influential quarter in the government, not only the flight was delayed for two hours, but the killer BDR men were boarded on the aircraft through a special passage of the boarding bridge, minutes before the flight.
Members of the intelligence agencies arrested another BDR troop named Rafiqul Islam, when he was also attempting to flee to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. Rafiqul was trying to leave the country by Saudia, Saudi Arabian Airlines flight number SB-801 in the noon.
It is further learnt that, some influential quarters managed safe exit of these killers to a number of foreign destination right after the brutal massacre ended at the Bangladesh Riffles headquarters. Passports and visas of a number of killers were arranged in advanced prior to staging of the brutal massacre. Photographs and other details of the fugitives will also be put online on the websites of Rapid Action Battalion and Bangladesh Police, a source said.
Meanwhile, people in the know have been requested to inform the Army Headquarters control room, apart from the nearest police station, about the runaway BDR rebels from the Bangladesh Rifles headquarters and different camps.
“Confidentiality of the informers will be protected,” said an ISPR release issuing the public notice on Wednesday when a countrywide drive code-named 'operation rebel hunt' for rounding up the mutineers is already underway.
The contact numbers of the Army Headquarters control room are: [880-2] 8712197, [880] 01713333 256.
It is further learnt that investigating agencies are trying to publish the photographs of the absconding BDR men and suspected killers.
US Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] has agreed to help Bangladesh in forensic investigation into the BDR carnage.
Acting Deputy State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told a regular press briefing in Washington Tuesday that they have received a request from the Bangladesh government for the FBI help in forensic investigation.
“I believe the FBI has agreed to do that,” Duguid told a correspondent. He, however, could not give further details about when, where and how the FBI will work.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina sought the FBI assistance during telephone conversation with US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Richard Boucher on March 1. Boucher spoke on behalf of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and offered the US assistance.
In another development, the Bogra unit of RAB-12 arrested Azizar Rahman Nannu, father of rebel BDR soldier Abdur Rahman Nilu, and seized goods worth TK 1.2 million including TK 300,000 in cash, ornaments and other valuables which were robbed from the officers’ residences in the BDR headquarters. RAB arrested him, after receiving secret information, at Chalitabari and seized the valuables and money which were buried.
Nilu on February 26 called in his father Nannu, 60, to his rented house at Hazaribagh in Dhaka and handed over TK 300,000 in cash, gold ornaments, a Siemens mobile set, a wrist watch and a bottle of shampoo, said RAB sources.
A team of RAB-12, led by Major Abu Nasar Mohammad Mostafa, conducted a drive at Bidupara village of Lahiripara union at 4am on Wednesday after getting secret information. Nannu was nabbed in Chalitabari, a nearby village.
Nannu confessed the truth during primary interrogation. Acting on the information provided by him, the team recovered a sack full of valuables and money that was buried in a rice-field at Chalitabari, said sources.
Nannu, said his son on Saturday called him to his house at Hazaribagh and gave him the sack in the presence of another soldier, Jahangir, and told hip to keep it carefully. He, however, claimed he did not know anything about the things inside the sack.
Major Mostafa said that Nannu knew about the money. He will be sent to the BDR headquarters as the incident took place there. He also informed reporters that the six bundles of TK 500 notes were withdrawn on February 10 from the Trust Bank’s principal branch and Sonali Bank of Dhaka.
Meanwhile, according to reports, it was learnt that, during the 2-day long massacre inside the BDR headquarters, at least 500 Arges grenades and a large number of arms and ammunitions disappeared from the place of occurance. Security experts fear that disappreared grenades and arms would remain as a potential threat to country’s law and order situation.
The police on Wednesday recovered two live grenades from a toilet of outpatient department of Rangpur Medical College Hospital.
In another incident, grenade explosion on the premises of Chapainawabganj police station left a police inspector’s son dead and two other children injured on Wednesday noon.
The police said three children, two of them sons of two assistant sub inspectors, were injured as a bomb went off inside the boundary of the police station in the district headquarters at about 12:45pm.
‘A bomb exploded with a big bang when the children were playing behind the police barracks,’ said a police officer. The injured — Al Amin, 10, son of ASI [Assistant Sub Inspector] Ataur Rahman, Mamun, 7, son of ASI Rafique, and Mehedi, 10, son of cook of thana mess Khodeza — were taken to Sadar Hospital. They were shifted to Rajshahi Medical College Hospital with critical condition. Al Amin died at RMCH at about 6:30 pm on Wednesday, the sources said.
Political and defense analysts in Bangladesh believe it is of crucial importance in the interest of the nation that the February 25-26 massacre by troops against officers at the Bangladesh Rifles headquarters in the capital Dhaka and the concomitant carnage are thoroughly investigated, and the perpetrators and their instigators, if any, identified, arrested, prosecuted and punished. Such actions are needed to put all Bangladesh defense forces, military and paramilitary, on a stronger footing, which is very important for a nation state to thrive on in the international state system.
http://www.weeklyblitz.net/index.php?id=444
South Asia Analysis Group
Notes and Updates
FBI in New Delhi
[ Some may have missed the Hindustan Times front page story by Jay Raina on 22 September 1999. It is reproduced at the end. ]
The story is too brief and does not give much details, but it is probably due to the nature of the story. It may also be due to the fact that the country is in what is quaintly described as "election mode".
My first reaction is some concern at implied definitions of certain terms. For instance, "anti" in the title and "counter" in the story seem to be treated as synonymous and interchangeable; similar is the case with "terrorism" and "insurgency". "Anti", as used in anti-terrorism or anti-corruption, refers to steps taken by state authorities to combat the dusruptive activities when such are already in motion. "Counter", as in counter-insurgency, counter-espionage or counter-intelligence, involves steps to prevent the concerned disruptive activity before it happens and to take the "anti" steps if it does.
"Insurgency" is normally a mass-based or at least mass-backed movement, in reaction to perceived specific grievances. We saw glimpses of it in Nagaland, Mizoram and Naxalbari. It may include terrorist acts against symbols of established authority and some high-profile individuals. On the other hand, "terrorism" is basically a cowardly act. Many innocent people and many infra-structural entities are the targets merely because they are there. Essentially, terrorism starts when the proponents cannot muster a mass base or mass support for their objectives and actions.
Osama Bin Laden is known more for his mercenary militancy than for insurgency or terrorism as such. He does not need a specific cause (other than furthering his brand of Islamic fundamentalism) or grievance to exercise his "skills". His disruptive activities are almost always trans-national and have no respect for accepted (or unaccepted) international borders. Bin Laden is quite capable of biting the hand that feeds him if that is what he feels impelled to do. His activities would erupt into terrorism (as in the USA) only when he is unable to generate adequate local mass support for his "jehad". Osama Bin Laden and his ilk are called "international terrorists" and their disruptive activities termed as "international terrorism" for want of better descriptive terms.
International cooperation to meet challenges and threats from outfits like that of Osma Bin Laden is essential, as the source of threat does not respect national boundaries and is trans-national in its character and activities. Collaboration between countries which face a common threat is a natural defensive development. USA and India have been declared by Bin Laden to be targets of his "jehad". Lack of cooperation and collaboration between the security forces (charged with meeting the threat) in the two countries would be quite imprudent. It is therefore a good development if the two governments have agreed to set up a standing mechanism to engender such cooperation and collaboration; the shape, scope and extent of which should be carefully worked out in detail.
Raina’s story mentions training to Indian security personnel in sophisticated counter-insurgency combat. I doubt if India needs the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to provide training in that specific area. There is enough expertise in our Army and the specialised National Security Guards to train state level personnel as required. It may, however, be worthwhile for our planners and trainers to be given further training and support in planning and setting up (including equipping) outfits like the US Delta Force and SWAT teams. This may not by itself require a permanent FBI presence in India.
Counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism, particularly to meet trans-national threats and challenges, would involve the infiltration of the terrorist outfits and the pooling of all available information about them – to devise cordinated counter-actions and responses. It would also be necessary to develop the capability to use such pooled information as evidence in cases to be tried in either country or even in an international tribunal. These can be achieved only through either a continuing presence in New Delhi of the FBI (or any other designated US authority) or a similar continuing Indian presence in Washington or both, established by legally acceptable agreements. The details would have to be discussed and outlined by the concerned organisations in the two governments at the working level. The Indian negotiators should ensure that the FBI office in New Delhi would not be permitted to raise sources amongst Indians and that the office would have no investigatory authority of its own on Indian territory.
The matter of cooperation and collaboration to meet the new international terrorist challenges and threats should not be made a political issue, however tempting it may be to do so. In such a matter of national security, it would be the responsibility of the government-of-the-day to share its information and concerns with major political parties (which are not part of the government) and to evolve a national consensus. The government should be able to ignore the time-honoured custom of classifying as "Secret" or "Top Secret" all information relating to national security and overcome the inhibition against sharing any such information with parties outside the government; especially so in our present "coalition mode" in politics.
There have been many precedents in international relations for such cooperation and collaboration to meet a common threat and for the establishment of "offices" of a security agency of one country in the territory of another country. The best known such instances would include the British Army of the Rhine, US bases abroad, the NATO and measures to counter the international trafficking in narcotics. More specific to India, concerned US security agencies had a continuing presence in India immediately after the Chinese incursions in the autumn of 1962 – to help establish, equip and train specialised agencies like the Aviation Research Centre, the Special Service Bureau, the Special Frontier Force and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. Much later, when there was a serious threat to the life of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and other Indian government leaders from misguided Sikh protagonists in India and abroad, the US Government accepted the regular presence in Washington of a senior Indian security official for liaison with the FBI, the US Secret Service and the Executive Protection Service. There is no loss of sovereignty or territorial integrity in accepting the presence of a foreign security establishment on our soil for the specific purpose of meeting an identified or perceived common challenge and threat – as long as the role of that "office" is clearly defined and circumscribed, is monitored for compliance and periodically reviewed for its usefulness to us.
(R.Swaminathan, ex-Special Secretary, Directorate General of Security, Govt of India)
{The Hindustan Times : Wednesday, September 22, 1999, New Delhi}
US offers anti-terrorist training : Jay Raina (New Delhi, September 21)
The US is understood to have offered to train Indian security personnel in sophisticated counter-insurgency combat following the open declaration of jehad against the two countries by internationally-wanted Islamic terrorist Osama bin Laden.
India would not be averse to acceding to the US’s long-standing plea to have a permanent presence of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in New Delhi. An agreement on these two crucial issues is reported to have been firmed up last week during US coordinator for counter-terrorism Michael A. Sheehan’s visit here.
Sources said even as a broad agreement had been reached between the two countries to collaborate in meeting the challenge from terrorist outfits, a formal announcement was withheld following a request from India. Indian officials are reported to have requested the US to await the installation of a popular government after the completion of the ongoing LS elections.
The sources said that broader contours of the "collaboration" would be made public immediately after the new Government took over. "Whatever be the form of the new Government, clinching of a formal agreement between the two democratic countries would not pose problems in the light of a broad-based consensus among the various political parties in India over the issue," they averred.
India’s readiness to permit the opening of FBI office in New Delhi follows the US’s keen desire to evolve an international legal framework among the targeted countries to punish terrorists.
Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Dipu Moni met with U.S. Ambassador James Moriarty and British High Commissioner Stephen Evans and told reporters that each nation has assured Dhaka that they will give support.
"We have sought assistance from different countries. We have got positive response from the U.S. and the UK. We have sought assistance for forensic investigation," the foreign minister said after the meeting with the U.S. envoy.
Moriarty informed reporters that the foreign minister had sought support to the ongoing investigations and that he assured her that he would do his best.
"I will do my best to pass the Bangladesh government's formal request to my government," the U.S. diplomat told reporters.
When asked about the modality of the assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), he said it was too early to say.
On Sunday, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Richard Boucher telephoned Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and offered U.S. assistance in the probe.
Sheikh Hasina on Sunday told the parliament that apart from help from the two powerful investigation agencies of the U.S. and the U.K., the government will also seek assistance from the United Nations in investigating the BDR headquarters incident.
Indian-American profile up, from politics to film
The years-long wave of Indian immigration is creating a rising tide of visibility for Indian-Americans in the United States, three of whom are shown in file photos. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, left, was picked to give the Republican response to President Barack Obama's speech to Congress. Model and cooking author Padma Lakshmi finished another "Top Chef" TV season, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta is under consideration to be Obama's surgeon general. (AP Photos/Alex Brandon, Matt Sayles, Diane Bondareff, File) (Alex Brandon - AP)
TOOLBOX
State of the Union Response
Good evening. I’m Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana.
Tonight, we witnessed a great moment in the history of our Republic. In the very chamber where Congress once voted to abolish slavery, our first African-American President stepped forward to address the state of our union. With his speech tonight, the President completed a redemptive journey that took our nation from Independence Hall … to Gettysburg … to the lunch counter … and now, finally, the Oval Office.
Regardless of party, all Americans are moved by the President’s personal story - the son of an American mother and a Kenyan father, who grew up to become leader of the free world. Like the President’s father, my parents came to this country from a distant land. When they arrived in Baton Rouge, my mother was already 4 ½ months pregnant. I was what folks in the insurance industry now call a “pre-existing condition.” To find work, my dad picked up the yellow pages and started calling local businesses. Even after landing a job, he could still not afford to pay for my delivery - so he worked out an installment plan with the doctor. Fortunately for me, he never missed a payment.
As I grew up, my mom and dad taught me the values that attracted them to this country - and they instilled in me an immigrant’s wonder at the greatness of America. As a child, I remember going to the grocery store with my dad. Growing up in India, he had seen extreme poverty. And as we walked through the aisles, looking at the endless variety on the shelves, he would tell me: “Bobby, Americans can do anything.” I still believe that to this day. Americans can do anything. When we pull together, there is no challenge we cannot overcome.
As the President made clear this evening, we are now in a time of challenge. Many of you listening tonight have lost jobs. Others have seen your college and retirement savings dwindle. Many of you are worried about losing your health care and your homes. And you are looking to your elected leaders in Washington for solutions.
Republicans are ready to work with the new President to provide those solutions. Here in my state of Louisiana, we don’t care what party you belong to if you have good ideas to make life better for our people. We need more of that attitude from both Democrats and Republicans in our nation’s capital. All of us want our economy to recover and our nation to prosper. So where we agree, Republicans must be the President’s strongest partners. And where we disagree, Republicans have a responsibility to be candid and offer better ideas for a path forward.
Today in Washington, some are promising that government will rescue us from the economic storms raging all around us.
Those of us who lived through Hurricane Katrina, we have our doubts.
Let me tell you a story.
During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I’d never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: “Well, I’m the Sheriff and if you don’t like it you can come and arrest me!” I asked him: “Sheriff, what’s got you so mad?” He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn’t go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, “Sheriff, that’s ridiculous.” And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: “Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!” Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.
There is a lesson in this experience: The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and enterprising spirit of our citizens. We are grateful for the support we have received from across the nation for the ongoing recovery efforts. This spirit got Louisiana through the hurricanes - and this spirit will get our nation through the storms we face today.
To solve our current problems, Washington must lead. But the way to lead is not to raise taxes and put more money and power in hands of Washington politicians. The way to lead is by empowering you - the American people. Because we believe that Americans can do anything.
That is why Republicans put forward plans to create jobs by lowering income tax rates for working families … cutting taxes for small businesses … strengthening incentives for businesses to invest in new equipment and hire new workers … and stabilizing home values by creating a new tax credit for home-buyers. These plans would cost less and create more jobs.
But Democratic leaders in Congress rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history - with a price tag of more than $1 trillion with interest. While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a “magnetic levitation” line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called “volcano monitoring.” Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, DC.
Democratic leaders say their legislation will grow the economy. What it will do is grow the government, increase our taxes down the line, and saddle future generations with debt. Who among us would ask our children for a loan, so we could spend money we do not have, on things we do not need? That is precisely what the Democrats in Congress just did. It’s irresponsible. And it’s no way to strengthen our economy, create jobs, or build a prosperous future for our children.
In Louisiana, we took a different approach. Since I became governor, we cut more than 250 earmarks from our state budget. And to create jobs for our citizens, we cut taxes six times - including the largest income tax cut in the history of our state. We passed those tax cuts with bipartisan majorities. Republicans and Democrats put aside their differences, and worked together to make sure our people could keep more of what they earn. If it can be done in Baton Rouge, surely it can be done in Washington, DC.
To strengthen our economy, we need urgent action to keep energy prices down. All of us remember what it felt like to pay $4 at the pump - and unless we act now, those prices will return. To stop that from happening, we need to increase conservation … increase energy efficiency … increase the use of alternative and renewable fuels … increase our use of nuclear power - and increase drilling for oil and gas here at home. We believe that Americans can do anything - and if we unleash the innovative spirit of our citizens, we can achieve energy independence.
To strengthen our economy, we also need to address the crisis in health care. Republicans believe in a simple principle: No American should have to worry about losing their health coverage - period. We stand for universal access to affordable health care coverage. We oppose universal government-run health care. Health care decisions should be made by doctors and patients - not by government bureaucrats. We believe Americans can do anything - and if we put aside partisan politics and work together, we can make our system of private medicine affordable and accessible for every one of our citizens.
To strengthen our economy, we also need to make sure every child in America gets the best possible education. After Katrina, we reinvented the New Orleans school system - opening dozens of new charter schools, and creating a new scholarship program that is giving parents the chance to send their children to private or parochial schools of their choice. We believe that, with the proper education, the children of America can do anything. And it should not take a devastating storm to bring this kind of innovation to education in our country.
To strengthen our economy, we must promote confidence in America by ensuring ours is the most ethical and transparent system in the world. In my home state, there used to be saying: At any given time, half of Louisiana is under water - and the other half is under indictment. No one says that anymore. Last year, we passed some of the strongest ethics laws in the nation - and today, Louisiana has turned her back on the corruption of the past. We need to bring transparency to Washington, DC - so we can rid our Capitol of corruption … and ensure we never see the passage of another trillion dollar spending bill that Congress has not even read and the American people haven't even seen.
As we take these steps, we must remember for all our troubles at home, dangerous enemies still seek our destruction. Now is no time to dismantle the defenses that have protected this country for hundreds of years, or make deep cuts in funding for our troops. America’s fighting men and women can do anything. And if we give them the resources they need, they will stay on the offensive … defeat our enemies … and protect us from harm.
In all these areas, Republicans want to work with President Obama. We appreciate his message of hope - but sometimes it seems we look for hope in different places. Democratic leaders in Washington place their hope in the federal government. We place our hope in you - the American people. In the end, it comes down to an honest and fundamental disagreement about the proper role of government. We oppose the National Democrats' view that says -- the way to strengthen our country is to increase dependence on government. We believe the way to strengthen our country is to restrain spending in Washington, and empower individuals and small businesses to grow our economy and create jobs.
In recent years, these distinctions in philosophy became less clear - because our party got away from its principles. You elected Republicans to champion limited government, fiscal discipline, and personal responsibility. Instead, Republicans went along with earmarks and big government spending in Washington. Republicans lost your trust - and rightly so.
Tonight, on behalf of our leaders in Congress and my fellow Republican governors, I say: Our party is determined to regain your trust. We will do so by standing up for the principles that we share … the principles you elected us to fight for … the principles that built this into the greatest, most prosperous country on earth.
A few weeks ago, the President warned that our nation is facing a crisis that he said “we may not be able to reverse.” Our troubles are real, to be sure. But don’t let anyone tell you that we cannot recover - or that America’s best days are behind her. This is the nation that cast off the scourge of slavery … overcame the Great Depression … prevailed in two World Wars … won the struggle for civil rights … defeated the Soviet menace … and responded with determined courage to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The American spirit has triumphed over almost every form of adversity known to man - and the American spirit will triumph again.
We can have confidence in our future - because, amid today’s challenges, we also count many blessings: We have the most innovative citizens …the most abundant resources … the most resilient economy … the most powerful military … and the freest political system in the history of the world. My fellow citizens, never forget: We are Americans. And like my dad said years ago, Americans can do anything.
Thank you for listening. God bless you. And God bless America.
Drive-Bys Try to Marginalize Jindal
RUSH: The Democrats are trying to tie Bobby Jindal to me in hopes of making him out to be an extremist. That's exactly what Obama was trying to do when he called me out in that meeting with Republican and Democrat leaders in the White House when he said, "Don't listen to Limbaugh." The Obama theory is get rid of the playing field, you know, clear it, don't level it. So yesterday got some great Jindal sound bites, governor of Louisiana, Meet the Press yesterday. David Gregory said, "Let me spend our last couple minutes here with you, Governor Jindal, talk about politics. What is the state of the Republican Party?"
JINDAL: Look, our Republican Party got fired with cause these last two election cycles. We became the party that defended spending, corruption that we never should have tolerated, and we stopped offering relevant solutions to the problems that Americans care about. I think now is the time, it's a great opportunity for Republican governors and other leaders to offer conservative-based solutions to the problems. For example, whether it's the mortgage crisis, how we can help people keep their homes; whether it's the banking crisis, we won't have time to talk about, you know, mark to market and some of the other reforms that could be done; whether it's the stimulus package, the Republican Party has gotta offer conservative alternative solutions. I think our obligation is to work with the president every chance we can, to be bipartisan, we've done that in Louisiana, we've cut taxes six times, reformed ethics. We need to work with the president every chance we can, but on principle, when we disagree with him, we should be unafraid to stand up on principle and to point out our alternative solutions.
RUSH: David Gregory says but, but, but the party has to expand, you believe that if it's going to be successful?
JINDAL: Absolutely. Look, we lost both elections 'cause we got less than 51% of the votes. Obviously we gotta expand. But I don't think we expand by becoming an imitation of the other party. I think we expand by standing on principle for what we believe in. I think that attracts voters. I think that attracts supporters. They may not agree with us on everything, but they'll respect our honesty. Most importantly, they'll respect the results.
RUSH: And he's exactly right. This is why when I interviewed Bobby Jindal for the Limbaugh Letter a year and a half ago or so I immediately thought I was talking to the elected version of the next Ronald Reagan, the closest thing we've got to an elected version of the next Ronald Reagan in the United States today. And he was mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate for McCain, but I don't think he was interested in it at the time, I don't think McCain was, either. But regardless, he's exactly right: stand on principle. It sounds so quaint. When I hear people say that, I get the impression that a lot of Americans laugh. The whole notion of doing the right thing, standing on your principles, that sounds so old-fashioned, so quaint, come on, what do you mean, stand on your principles, isn't going to get anybody anywhere. But it does, particularly shoring up the base of the Republican Party, which needs to happen anyway. But he's exactly right. Conservatism -- we haven't tried it. Do you realize that conservatism has not been articulated by an elected bunch of Republicans or conservatives since 1994? It's been 15 years.
Now, of course conservatism is having problems. But if it's articulated -- national elections particularly -- every time it's tried it works, because it is founded on principle, founded on liberty, founded on freedom, seeing the best in people, the best in the country, wanting to expand opportunity for everybody. It's colorblind, it's sex blind, it's religion blind, all of these things, and it has roots to the founding of the country. Nobody's articulated it.
Now, we've talked about the reasons left and right. Most of it is the fact that once these guys get to Washington, they get cowed by the media, the social and political structures there, and even our so-called conservative intelligentsia and the media. We gotta get control of Big Government. The American people want Big Government. We just have to tell 'em we can do it better, we can do it smarter, we gotta go out to the Walmart people, we gotta go after the Hispanics and the other minorities. That's not the way you do it. It's what Jindal is saying, you don't go out as imitators. Here Jindal explains why he is thinking about rejecting the Porkulus money. Gregory says, "Why would you turn down a hundred million dollars for federal unemployment assistance for your state?"
JINDAL: You're talking about temporary federal money that would require permanent change in state law.
WHO'S BLOGGING» Links to this article
By DAN SEWELL
The Associated Press
Saturday, February 28, 2009; 1:34 PM
CINCINNATI -- Jai Ho! The years-long wave of immigration from India is creating a rising tide of visibility for Indian-Americans in the United States.
The past few weeks have underscored their increasingly high profile: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal gave the Republican response Tuesday night to President Barack Obama's speech to Congress, while Dr. Sanjay Gupta is under consideration to be Obama's surgeon general.
Model and cooking author Padma Lakshmi finished another "Top Chef" TV season, then became the celebrity face for a new Procter & Gamble Co. Pantene shampoo line as well as a Hardee's hamburger promotion. Anoop Desai, dubbed "Noop Dogg," drew fans with his singing on this year's "American Idol," and Aziz Ansari was in TV's medical comedy "Scrubs" before moving to a regular role in the upcoming comedy series "Parks and Recreation."
Meanwhile, Americans have embraced "Slumdog Millionaire" and the cast of the India ghetto-to-glory movie that won eight Oscars, including for Best Picture and the song "Jai Ho" ("Be Victorious"), and dominated last week's entertainment talk shows.
"It's just been amazing," Sreenath Sreenivasan, a professor and dean of student affairs for Columbia University's journalism school in New York, said of the soaring profile of Indian-Americans. "And it's only going to grow. The more visible you get, the more acceptance you get. It's a chicken-and-egg thing."
Indian-Americans have been one of the fastest-growing and most successful immigrant groups, though Sreenivasan and other Indian-Americans are quick to point out that some Indians continue to struggle economically and socially in this country.
U.S. Census estimates two years ago showed some 2.6 million people of Indian ancestry, including immigrants and U.S.-born, a jump of nearly 1 million from 2000.
For years, they have proliferated in this country in the fields of health care, information technology and engineering, with higher education levels and incomes than national averages. And recent years have brought more Indian heads of major U.S. companies _ PepsiCo Inc.'s Indra Nooyi is among about a dozen current CEOs.
They also are making their presence felt in journalism. Gupta, a neurosurgeon and medical correspondent, and Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, have their own weekend shows on CNN, for example.
And Gupta and Jindal demonstrate a deepening role in U.S. politics and government.
While Jindal's potential as a 2012 presidential candidate may have been set back by his widely criticized and even ridiculed TV rebuttal to Obama, Louisiana demographer and political analyst Elliott Stonecipher said the governor has good support among Republican Party leaders and conservatives.
Stonecipher thinks Jindal, only 37, is being pushed too quickly by Republicans, such as some in the South who see him as a bridge over the historically troubled waters of white-black division _ particularly in a state where David Duke, a former Klan leader, was still a political force in the 1990s.
"Conservatives are pleased to find an ethnic group that is politically correct in America behind which they can gather," Stonecipher said, adding that Indian-Americans are respected for a reputation for dedication to family, work and education.
Cleveland attorney and former prosecutor Subodh Chandra ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for attorney general of Ohio in 2006, but said he was well-received even in rural areas with no Indian population or even anyone who knew how to pronounce his name (It's Soo-BOHD CHUN-druh).
"With some people, that might be an initial obstacle, but you can very quickly demonstrate that you share their Ohio values, their American values _ hard work, education," said Chandra, 41, who remembers anti-Indian backlash as a youth but says there has been increasing acceptance and understanding.
Fellow Indian-American Democrat Jay Goyal was elected to Ohio's Legislature in 2006 at age 26 and, in his second term, has already risen to become the House's majority whip. In Maryland, Democrat Kumbar Barve is the House majority leader.
Actor Kal Penn was a campaign surrogate for Obama across the country last year and floor manager for the Virginia delegation at the Democratic national convention. Besides movies, he's a regular in "House."
And Americans will be seeing more of Lakshmi, in promotions for the new Pantene Nature Fusion products, for a Hardee's burger, and in the upcoming launch of her own jewelry line, before she returns to Bravo's "Top Chef."
"Even in the last decade, I have seen a great shift towards embracing people of color or multiethnic people, just in mainstream life," she said. "For what I do, it doesn't matter what ethnicity I am ... We are all co-mingled in each other's lives. I think it makes for a more well-rounded and interesting society."
___
On the Net:
Jindal:http://www.bobbyjindal.com
Lakshmi:http://www.padmalakshmi.com/
Gupta:http://tinyurl.com/bxu7k
Israel may face Gaza war crimes trial
PETER BEAUMONT
Mon, Mar 02, 2009
THE INTERNATIONAL criminal court is urgently considering whether the Palestinian Authority is “enough like a state” for it to bring a case alleging that Israeli troops committed war crimes in the recent assault on Gaza.
The deliberations would potentially open the way to putting Israeli military commanders in the dock at The Hague and set an important precedent for the court over what cases it can hear.
The court’s head of jurisdictions is examining every international agreement signed by the Palestinian Authority to decide whether it behaves – and is regarded by others – as a state, which would open the way for it to become a signatory to the court.
Sources at the ICC say that it is also looking at whether the court can consider war crimes allegations on the basis of the dual nationality of either victims or alleged perpetrators whose second passport is with a country party to the court. A decision is expected within months.
The issue arises because although the ICC potentially has “global jurisdiction”, Israel – despite having signed the Rome statute that founded the court – is not a party. The ICC, which has 108 member states, has not so far recognised Palestine as a sovereign state or as a member.
The latest moves in The Hague come amid mounting international pressure on Israel and a growing recognition in Israeli government circles that it may eventually have to defend itself against war crimes allegations.
A confidential inquiry by the International Committee of the Red Cross into the actions of Israel and Hamas during the conflict is expected to accuse Israel of using “excessive force” – prohibited by the fourth Geneva convention.
The Red Cross has been collecting information for two inquiries, one into the conduct of Israel and a second into Hamas.
In the case of Israel, the Red Cross is expected to highlight three areas: the Israeli Defence Forces’ “choice of weapons in a complex and densely populated environment”; the issue of proportionality, and concerns over the IDF’s lack of distinction between combatants and non-combatants.
Hamas is likely to be challenged over its use of civilian facilities as cover for its fighters, its summary executions and kneecappings of Palestinians during the campaign and its indiscriminate firing of rockets into civilian areas. – (Guardian service)
© 2009 The Irish Times
What They Are Saying: Governor Jindal’s Republican Address To The Nation
Fox Focus Group: Governor Jindal “Performed Exemplarily,” “Sounded Fabulous,” And “Believed In The Individual”. Frank Luntz: “Compare Obama with this great scenario with Bobby Jindal with no audience behind him. How well did the governor of Louisiana perform?” Focus Group Respondent: “I thought Jindal performed exemplarily. I thought that his calmness, perhaps lulled people into a Mister Rogers-like effect, but in point-of-fact he was trying to be comprehensible to a large American audience that may not know him.” Luntz: “What's your reaction to the governor?” Focus Group Respondent: “I think Governor Jindal sounded fabulous. He did not provide quite enough statistics, but I certainly think all of his comments and his patriotism was the overriding thing of what he had to say.” Focus Group Respondent: “He was upbeat and he believed in the individual American as opposed to the government doing everything for us.” (Fox News’ Coverage, 2/24/09)
Watch The Video Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_6LYrMlXL0
Michelle Malkin: “I’ll take Bobby Jindal’s genuine faith in American entrepreneurship over Barack Obama’s fear-mongering-turned-faux Reaganism any day.” (Michelle Malkin, “Bobby Jindal and the expectations game; plus: which MSNBC host said ‘Oh, god?,’” Accessed 2/24/09)
Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review: “And [Jindal] forces the point that politics should be about ideas — competing ideas — and that the best ones should win.” (Kathryn Jean Lopez, “Jindal,” NRO’s The Corner, 2/24/09)
Matt Lewis, Townhall: “Instead of responding to President Obama, Jindal instead offered a positive alternative vision for America. Jindal also wisely avoided any direct criticism of Obama, and instead focused his attention on easier targets -- Democratic Congressional leaders in Washington. Still, his personal stories of growing up as an immigrant were what most real people watching at home will take from this speech.” (Matt Lewis, “Jindal's ‘Advance’,” Townhall, 2/24/09)
Lewis: “Jindal tonight was likable, his personal story was compelling, and he offered a positive vision of conservatism for America.” (Matt Lewis, “Jindal's ‘Advance’,” Townhall, 2/24/09)
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air: “Jindal laid out what will be the way back for the GOP — positive alternatives to massive government growth by relying on the strength of the American people. He gave what I think will be a key line for Republicans in the next two years … “‘Who among us would ask our children for a loan, so we could spend money we do not have, on things we do not need?’” (Ed Morrissey, “Obama moving away from fear-based politics?,” Hot Air, Accessed 2/25/09)
Jed Babbin, Human Events: “A ray of hope came from the Republican response by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. Jindal spoke eloquently of the faith he learned in the power that derives from freedom.” (Jed Babbin, “Obama’s On Path To An American Welfare State,” Human Events, 2/24/09)
Babbin: “His most important points -- that Democrats want to expand the power of government over American life while Republicans want to empower Americans to help themselves -- were couched in the terms his father taught him: that Americans can do anything. And we can.” (Jed Babbin, “Obama’s On Path To An American Welfare State,” Human Events, 2/24/09)
Babbin: “Jindal appears a mild man, one who inspires confidence as a leader must. His solid conservative core was reflected again and again in arguments that we shouldn’t spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need. Which, he said, was what the trillion-dollar spending spree the Democrats legislated as a ‘stimulus.’” (Jed Babbin, “Obama’s On Path To An American Welfare State,” Human Events, 2/24/09)
John Fritz, USA Today: “[Bobby Jindal] called on his party to return to core values and object to massive government spending intended to boost the economy.” (John Fritz, “Jindal calls on GOP to return to its roots,” USA Today, 2/25/09)
The Boston Globe: “Jindal, political observers note, is one of the few figures able to synthesize several of them: He embodies a return to both the party's ideological purity (he is a religious conservative) and reputation for competence (he is a technocrat with experience in healthcare policy), while preaching inclusion.” (Sasha Issenberg, “Governor Jindal: Restore GOP ideals,” The Boston Globe, 2/25/09)
The Boston Globe: “In recent days, as congressional Republicans have complained that their fiscal views were ignored by Democratic leaders in drafting the $787 billion stimulus package, Jindal has become a national conservative hero for announcing that his state would refuse some of its money from the bill.” (Sasha Issenberg, “Governor Jindal: Restore GOP ideals,” The Boston Globe, 2/25/09)
Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times: “[Bobby Jindal] does a pretty good job complimenting the president’s achievements while taking issue with his positions.” (Robin Abcarian, “We know the GOP messed up, says Jindal. We'll make it up to you,” Los Angles Times’ Top of the Ticket, 2/24/09)
Reuters: “Rising Republican star Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal took on Democratic President Barack Obama and his own party faithful on Tuesday with a fresh call for fiscal responsibility and American optimism.” (Thomas Ferraro, “For Republicans, Jindal Strikes Hopeful Note,” Reuters, 2/24/09)
Perry Bacon, Washington Post: “Jindal defended the virtues of small government that he said even his own party had abandoned in recent years.” (Perry Bacon, “In GOP Response, Jindal Blasts Stimulus,” Washington Post, 2/25/09)
Kenneth Millstone, CBS: “Jindal seemed to harkening back to the vital, small-government party of Ronald Reagan, or at least Newt Gingrich, rather than the one that suffered major losses in the last two elections.” (Kenneth Millstone, “With A Dash Of GOP Contrition, Jindal Stresses Small Government,” CBS’S Political Hotsheet, 2/24/09)
Jonathan Tilove, New Orleans Times-Picayune: “Jindal, while hewing closely to conservative orthodoxy, presented himself as capable, thoughtful and not especially confrontational.” (Jonathan Tilove, “Gov. Bobby Jindal says debt will cost next generation, New Orleans Time’s Picayune, 2/24/09)
David Brody, CBN: “Bobby Jindal is going to be a star. Correct that. He is a star already. His star turn came tonight when the Louisiana Governor gave the Republican response to President Obama's speech tonight.” (David Brody, “Jindal's Star is Shining Bright,” Christian Broadcasting Network, 2/24/09)
Brody: “In Jindal, the GOP has a new fresh face who is ridiculously bright, very convincing and folksy. He's a little bit of everything. You see it's all about how you package it. It's all about how you are defined as a candidate. Jindal has the advantage of being a guy who has huge upside in the way he's defined. By being a different sort of looking Republican, he has a built in advantage already in a party looking to redefine itself. It molds perfectly together.” (David Brody, “Jindal's Star is Shining Bright,” Christian Broadcasting Network, 2/24/09)
Michael Gerson, Washington Post: “In recent days, Jindal has displayed another leadership quality: ideological balance. He is highly critical of the economic theory of the stimulus package and turned down $98 million in temporary unemployment assistance to his state -- benefits that would have mandated increased business taxes in Louisiana. But unlike some Republican governors who engaged in broad anti-government grandstanding, Jindal accepted transportation funding and other resources from the stimulus -- displaying a program-by-program discrimination that will serve him well in public office. Jindal manages to hold to principle while seeing the angles. While Clintonian in manner, knowledge and political sophistication, Jindal is not ideologically malleable.” (Michael Gerson, “The Jindal Phenomenon,” Washington Post, 2/25/09)
http://carolmoore.net/nuclearwar/israelithreats.html
Note: This was a temporary version at Wikipedia that was gutted by Israeli partisans in Fall of 2007. I've learned more about Wiki policies since then and probably can beef up the article successfully now when I get around to it.Return to "Is World Nuclear War Inevitable?" at CarolMoore.Net
"SAMSON OPTION"
ISRAELI NUCLEAR THREATS AND BLACKMAIL
This page is being revamped. Meanwhile read article to left.
(Please LINK only; do not mirror. Content changes frequently.)
The Samson Option is a term used to describe Israel’s alleged deterrence strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons as a “last resort” against nations whose military attacks threaten its existence, and possibly against other targets as well.[1] Israel refuses to admit it has nuclear weapons or describe how it would use them, an official policy of nuclear ambiguity, also known as "nuclear opacity." This has made it difficult for anyone outside the Israeli government to definitively describe its true nuclear policy, while still allowing Israel to influence the perceptions, strategies and actions of other governments.[2]
It is estimated Israel has as many as 400 atomic and hydrogen nuclear weapons.[3] These can be launched from land, sea and air.[4] This gives Israel a second strike option even if much of the country is destroyed.[5]
Some mis-identify Israel’s whole nuclear weapons program as the "Samson Option".[6] The phrase also has been mis-applied to situations where non-nuclear actors, such as Saddam Hussein[7], Yassir Arafat[8] and Hezbollah[9] threatened conventional weapons retaliation, and even to United States President George W. Bush's foreign policy.[10]
Original Deterrence Doctrine
The original conception of the Samson Option was only as deterrence. According to American journalist Seymour Hersh and Israeli historian Avner Cohen Israeli leaders like David Ben-Gurion, Shimon Peres, Levi Eshkol and Moshe Dayan created the term in the mid-1960s. They named it after the Biblical figure Samson, who is said to have pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistines who had gathered to see him humiliated. They contrasted it with ancient siege of Masada where Jewish radicals greatly outnumbered by Roman legions committed mass suicide rather than be defeated and enslaved by the Romans.[11]
Although nuclear weapons were viewed as the ultimate guarantor of Israeli security, as early as the 1960s the country avoided building its military around them, instead pursuing absolute conventional superiority so as to forestall a last resort nuclear engagement.[12] Nevertheless, during the Cold War one major use of the nuclear threat was to convince the United States to support Israel with conventional weapons sales to prevent it from using its nuclear weapons and possibly sparking a world nuclear war.[13]
Another use of the weapons was to discourage the former Soviet Union, which Israel regarded as its greatest enemy, from arming and aiding Arab nations. Israel went on nuclear alert during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, threatening to use nuclear weapons against Egypt, to encourage the United States to supply weapons to it and discourage the Soviet Union from interfering.[14] No nation has attacked Israel since 1973, though some have supported terrorist attacks on it.[15]
More Aggressive Doctrine After 1977
Seymour Hersh writes that once a coalition of right-wing political parties made Menachen Begin Prime Minister in 1977, the goal of Israel’s Samson Option began to change from deterrence only to also using “Israeli might to redraw the political map of the Middle East.”[16] Israel Shahak, an Israeli critic of its policies, claims: "Israel clearly prepares itself to seek overtly a hegemony over the entire Middle East...without hesitating to use for the purpose all means available, including nuclear ones."[17]
The political parties, which united in 1988 as the Likud Party, shared the goal of expanding the state of Israel to the Israeli-occupied territories.[18] Ariel Sharon, who was named Minister of Defense in 1981, publicly proclaimed that “his major goals included the overthrow of King Hussein of Jordan and the transformation of that country into a Palestinian state, to which Palestinian refugees would be ‘transferred’ or driven.” Sharon put his allies in charge of Israeli intelligence and Israel’s nuclear weapons.[19]
Because of the Soviet Union’s support for Arab nations, Begin immediately “gave orders to target more Soviet cities” for nuclear attack, which necessitated better targeting information.[20] Israel increased its espionage efforts, including by convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, in order to obtain nuclear targeting information on Soviet cities.[21]
In 1998 Israeli defense analyst Zeev Schiff opined in Haaretz: "Off-the-cuff Israeli nuclear threats have become a problem, even before the onset of the Iraqi crisis."[22] David Hirst notes that “The threatening of wild, irrational violence, in response to political pressure, has been an Israeli impulse from the very earliest days.” and “Israel will remain at least as likely a candidate as Iran, and a far more enduring one, for the role of 'nuclear-crazy' state.”[23] Some “Samson Option” threats seem to be directed against nations which have not attacked Israel. Ariel Sharon has said: "We are much more important than (Americans) think. We can take the middle east with us whenever we go."[24] and "No longer 'Masada Option' - now 'Samson Option.’”[25] A “former Israeli govt official” with “first hand knowledge of his government’s nuclear weapons program” told Seymour Hersh: “You Americans screwed us” for not supporting Israel in its 1956 war with Egypt. “We can still remember the smell of Auschwitz and Treblinka. Next time we’ll take all of you with us.”[26]
High profile Israeli supporters also brandish such threats. Martin Van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem stated: "We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: ‘Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.’...We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under."[27] In 2002 the Los Angeles Times, published an opinion piece by Louisiana State University professor David Perlmutter in which he wrote: "What would serve the Jew-hating world better in repayment for thousands of years of massacres but a Nuclear Winter. Or invite all those tut-tutting European statesmen and peace activists to join us in the ovens? For the first time in history, a people facing extermination while the world either cackles or looks away--unlike the Armenians, Tibetans, World War II European Jews or Rwandans--have the power to destroy the world. The ultimate justice?"[28]
During the build up to the United States 2003 invasion of Iraq, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stated: "If our citizens are attacked seriously - by a weapon of mass destruction, chemical, biological or by some mega-terror attack act - and suffer casualties, then Israel will respond." Israeli military commentator Zeev Schiff explained: “Israel could respond with a nuclear retaliation that would eradicate Iraq as a country.” It is believed President Bush gave Sharon the green-light to attack Baghdad in retaliation, including with nuclear weapons, but only if attacks came before the American military invasion.[29]
Louis René Beres, a professor of Political Science at Purdue University, chaired Project Daniel, a group advising Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and issued a year 2004 final report. Beres’ 2004 article Israel and Samson. Biblical Insights on Israeli Strategy in the Nuclear Age recommends Israel use the Samson Option threat to “support conventional preemptions” against enemy nuclear and non-nuclear assets because “without such weapons, Israel, having to rely entirely upon nonnuclear forces, might not be able to deter enemy retaliations for the Israeli preemptive strike.”
Current Concerns
Currently, the United States fears Israel will attack Iran pre-emptively because Iran’s nuclear power program could be used eventually to produce nuclear weapons.[30] Iranian threats to retaliate against Israel with 600 missiles if either Iran or Syria are attacked[31] raise concerns about Samson Option retaliation. Dr. Jerome Corsi, author of “Atomic Iran,” states that “Israel's Samson Option” could be “a preemptive strike against Iran, even if the international military and diplomatic reprisals that follow might bring disastrous consequences upon Israel itself.”[32]
Russia is still considered an Israeli target.[33] Russia provides technical assistance to, and diplomatic support for, Iran’s nuclear program.[34] It also has sold advanced missiles to Syria.[35] In January 2007 Israeli officials voiced "extreme concern" over Russia's sale of advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. They warned: "We hope they understand that this is a threat that could come back to them as well."[36] On November 8, 2007 President George Bush said: "If you want to see World War Three, you know, a way to do that is to attack Israel with a nuclear weapon."[37]
^ Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, Random House, 1991, 42, 136-137, 288-289; Israel’s Strategic Doctrine.
^ Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, Columbia University Press, 1998, 2, 7, 341; Avner Cohen, Israel's Nuclear Opacity: a Political Genealogy, published in “The Dynamics of Middle East Nuclear Proliferation,” Chapter 9, 187-212, edited by Steven L. Spiegel, Jennifer D. Kibbe and Elizabeth G. Matthews Symposium Series, Volume 66, The Edwin Mellen Press, 2001.
^ U.S. Air Force: Israel has 400 nukes, building naval force
^ Douglas Frantz, Israel Adds Fuel to Nuclear Dispute, Officials confirm that the nation can now launch atomic weapons from land, sea and air, Los Angeles Times, Sunday, October 12, 2003.
^ David Eberhart, Samson Option: Israel's Plan to Prevent Mass Destruction Attacks, NewsMax.Com, October 16, 2001.
^ Examples include: Chris Hedges Bush’s Nuclear Apocalypse, Monday, October 9, 2006; George Perkovich, “The Samson Option: The story behind one of the world's worst-kept secrets: the Jewish state's atomic arsenal”, a review of Michael Karpin’s book “The Bomb in the Basement” in the Washington Post, February 19, 2006, BW03; Press Release: Syndicated Radio Talk Show Host Paul McGuire Has Called President Bush To More Actively Support The Nation Of Israel, And Work For Peace In The Middle East, July 2, 2006.
^ Tom Holsinger, Staying Alive - Saddam's Samson Option, June 20, 2002.
^ Herb Keinon, Selling the 'Samson option'.
^ Michael Young, The Samson Option, Is Hezbollah on the verge of destroying Lebanon? Slate Magazine, Monday, August 7, 2006.
^ Stephen Lendman, George Bush's Samson Option, March 12, 2007.
^ Seymour Hersh,129, 136-137; Avner Cohen, 236.
^ Israel’s Strategic Doctrine, Global Security.Org.
^ Seymour Hersh, 225-227; Avner Cohen, 236.
^ Seymour Hersh, 17, 40, 66, 174-75, 177, 216, 220, 223-231.
^ Recognizing Changes in the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
^ Seymour Hersh, 259-261.
^ Israel Shahak, ‘’Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies,’‘ London, Pluto Press, 1997, 2.
^ Encyclopedia of Orient on Likud; Likud Party Manifesto.
^ Seymour Hersh, 288-289.
^ Seymour Hersh, 260.
^ Seymour Hersh, 286, 291-296
^ United States Information Agency’s Foreign Media Reaction Report, Middle East section, February 4, 1998.
^ David Hirst, The War Game, a controversial view of the current crisis in the Middle East, The Observer Guardian, September 21, 2003.
^ Seymour Hersh, 288-289.
^ Hal Lindsey, The Samson Option, StandingWithIsrael.Org, July 14, 2007; personal account of conversation with Sharon outside Israel’s Knesset.
^ Seymour Hersh, 42.
^ David Hirst, September 21, 2003.
^ David Perlmutter Opinion Page piece “Israel: Dark Thoughts and Quiet Desperation,” Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2002.
^ Ross Dunn, Sharon eyes 'Samson option' against Iraq, November 3, 2002.
^ Israel denies planning Iran nuclear attack, U.K. newspaper reports Israel intends to strike up to three targets in Iran, The Associated Press, January 7, 2007; Israel Takes Issue With Iran Weapons, The Associated press, September 29, 2004; Tom Baldwin, James Hider, Francis Elliott, US fears Israeli strike against Iran over latest nuclear claim, The Times Online, November 8, 2007.
^ Julie Stahl, Iran Threatens Missile Strike on Israel, US Targets if Syria Attacked, CNSNews.com, September 17, 2007.
^ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1367264/posts Atomic Iran excerpt: The Samson Option, Israel's Preemptive Strike], by Dr. Jerome Corsi, originally at now defunct IranFreedomFoundation.Org, March 21, 2005; reprinted at FreeRepublic.Com web site.
^ H. Brown column item on “Samson Option”, San Francisco Call, May 3, 2002.
^ Michael Jasinski, Russia's Nuclear and Missile Technology Assistance to Iran; Nasser Karimi, Russian Fuel Ready for Iran, Associated Press, September 16, 2007; Putin warns against any attack on Iran from Caspian Sea, Associated Press, October 16, 2007.
^ Herb Keinon, "Jerusalem sees Russian interests behind arms sales to Damascus, The Jerusalem Post, August 20, 2007
^ Yaakov Katz and Herb Keinon, Israel warns Russia on Iran arms sale, Jerusalem Post, January 16, 2007
^ Bush defends World War Three comments on Iran, Reuters, November 7, 2007.
Other Relevant links
Israel's Nuclear Strategy, InfoIsrael.Net.
Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction, A Threat to Peace: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal by John Steinbach, GlobalResearch.Ca, March 2002.
Strategic Doctrine (of Israel), Federation of American Scientists.
“Share the Pain” Samson Option-related page, Masada2000.Org.
Warner D. Farr, LTC, U.S. Army in The Third Temple's Holy Of Holies: Israel's Nuclear Weapons, USAF Counterproliferation Center,Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.
Hal Lindsey, The Samson Option, StandingWithIsrael.Org, July 14, 2007; Iran could ignite catastrophe, WorldNetDaily.Com, August 25, 2007.
Israeli nuclear plant at Dimona, left. Two Mordechai Vanunu photos at right.
More Photos at vanunu.freeserve.co.uk/ htdocs/documentary.htm
ISRAEL NUCLEAR TIME LINE
(collected from various sources)
1949: French and Israel atomic researchers start to exchange information. Israeli Defence Force Science Corps begins two year geological survey of the Negev desert in search of recoverable Uranium.
1952: Israeli Atomic Energy Commission is created. Its chairman, Ernst David Bergmann of Israel's Weizman Institute of Science, "the father of Israel's bomb," has been promoting nuclear armed missiles for Israel since arriving after World War II. Newly elected President Eisenhower will refuse to sell arms to Israel during his two terms, ending in 1960. France sells them to Israel from 1955 to 1967.
1955: Under Atoms for Peace program, overseen by pro-Israel Lewis Stauss who was head of America's Atomic Energy Commission, U.S. helps fund a small Israeli nuclear research reactor. Strauss learned about Dimona and its purpose before the U.S. government but did not inform the U.S. government.
1953: Israeli researchers perfect a process for extracting Uranium, and developing a new method of producing heavy water, which is a key ingredient in the process. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be raised to build Israel's nuclear bomb over the next twenty years, mostly from American Jews; effort is led by Abraham Feinberg who financially backs both Presidents Truman and Johnson, as well as presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. (John F. Kennedy accepts his money but is incensed by the pro-Israel lobbying.)
1956: France and Israel formally and secretly agree to build a nuclear reactor in the Negev desert. Britain, France and Israel invade Egypt (Suez Canal crisis) and the Soviet Union threatens to use rockets against them if they do not desist, leading to a cease-fire. U.S. begins U-2 spy flights over targets world wide, including Israel.
1957: France and Israel sign a revised agreement calling for France to build a 24 MWt reactor; unwritten was the agreement to build a plutonium reprocessing plant.
1958: Israel breaks ground at Dimona, with assistance of French scientists and contractors, and U-2 spy planes provide evidence Israelis are building nuclear plant there.
1960: Israeli scientists witness first French atomic explosion in South Pacific. French President Charles DeGaulle threatens to cut off reactor fuel if Israel doesn't accept international inspections, but eventually accepts Israel's assertions Dimona is only for peaceful purposes and work continues. United States intelligence leaks to the press that Israel is building a secret nuclear facility that will eventually produce a nuclear bomb. Israel admits this to its Parliament and world but claims it is only for peaceful purposes.
1961: President Kennedy makes the man who leaked Israel's bomb to the press head of the CIA. Kennedy is very opposed to Israel having the bomb and tells Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion so in many letters and in meeting in New York about the purpose of Dimona. Ben-Gurion tells him its purpose is peaceful and refuses to allow international inspections. Israel launches its first rocket.
1962: Ben-Gurion allows inspections by American inspectors only in return for sales of Hawk surface-to-air missiles. Israel builds a fake control room and bricks off parts of buildings to hide from inspectors the true size and purpose of the reactor (three times bigger than admitted) and that it was connected to a plutonium reprocessing plant; this feint continues during seven such inspections until they end in 1969. Reactor at Dimona goes into operation.
1963: Kennedy refuses to sign any security arrangement with Israel. After Kennedy assassination brings the very pro-Israel Lyndon Johnson to power. (Not surprisingly there is an assassination conspiracy theory that the Mossad killed Kennedy.)
1964: Dimona plutonium processing plant goes online. In first official visit by an Israeli Prime Minister (Eshkol) to Washington, Johnson promises Israel offensive fighter jets and other weapons if it refrains from producing nuclear weapons. Israel's Eshkol eventually agrees to Johnson's terms and holds off on producing the bomb for a few years. China explodes first nuclear bomb.
1965: Israel performs its first plutonium extraction, and France assists Israel in developing its Jericho missiles.
1966: U.S. begins fighter jet and arms shipments to Israel. Johnson discourages further reports on Israel nuclear situation from U.S. embassy in Israel. Israel refuses money for nuclear desalination plant which is tied to international inspections of Dimona.
1967: Six Day War when Israel pre-emptively attacks an Egyptian military buildup in the Sinai Peninsula. Israel attacks USS Liberty surveillance vessel, killing 34 sailors; (see BBC allegation below that Israelis wanted to instigate a U.S. nuclear attack on Cairo). Soviet Union supports Arabs militarily, sends ships to the region and breaks diplomatic ties with Israel. Americans unofficially inform Israel that the Soviet Union has put four Israeli cities on its nuclear target list.
1968: Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, believing Israel cannot depend on the U.S. to defend it, unilaterally orders full production of nuclear weapons, averaging four to twelve per year, depending on size. Israel illicitly imports two hundred tons of uranium.
1969: President Richard Nixon takes office and fully supports Israel's nuclear weapons, as does his National Security chief Henry Kissinger. Ends American inspections at Dimona and shares some nuclear targeting information about the Soviet Union. CIA tries to inform President Johnson about Dimona, but he brushes off information, signs Nonproliferation Treaty, and sends Israel advanced Phantom fighter jets.
1973: Israelis catch Soviet spy ring in high levels of Israeli government and make it clear to Soviets they have produced "suitcase nukes" they could sneak into Russia. Egypt and Syria attack unprepared Israeli forces in Sinai and Golan Heights on the Jewish fast in Yom Kippur War. Israel goes on nuclear alert and begins to ready nuclear weapons for actual use, forcing the U.S. to airlift them weapons and to start redeploying nuclear armed ships and airplanes. When Soviets started talking about sending in Russian troops, Israel again goes on nuclear alert. Washington pressures Israel to accept a cease-fire.
1974: Defense Minister Dayan visits South Africa to discuss testing a nuclear weapon there.
1975: Israel receives nuclear-capable Lance missiles from the United States, even as U.S. remains in official denial about Israel having nuclear weapons.
1976: South Africa's Prime Minister visits Israel to sign several nuclear and other agreements.
1977: Menachem Begin's right wing expansionist Likud Party takes power in Israel and is determined with reshape Middle East to suit Israel's needs, including through using the nuclear threat. Commits to nuclear targeting of even more cities in the Soviet Union. President Carter does not take on the issue, despite conducting Camp David peace talks between Egypt and Israel.
1979: President Carter provides Israel ability to see American spy satellite photos for defense purposes only, but Israelis manage to get them for pre-emptive strikes against Middle East and Russia. Israel and South Africa explode first nuclear bomb in South Indian Ocean but appointed U.S. committee refuses to conclude it was a nuclear explosion.
1981: Israel, using U.S. spy satellite photos, sends F-16s to bomb and destroy Iraqi nuclear reactor under construction at Osirak. U.S. strictly limits further access to spy photos. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon recruits American Navy employee Jonathan Pollard as a spy to obtain satellite photos plus massive amounts of other classified information about Israel's enemies, some of which Israel turns over to the Soviet Union to try to win over its adversary. Ariel Sharon talks President Reagan into a formal Israel-U.S. military alliance against the Soviet Union but Defense Chief Weinberger delays and sabotages it.
1982: Under Ariel Sharon's military leadership, Israel invades Lebanon to attack Palestinian militants as first part of plan to drive Palestinians into Jordan, using the threat of nuclear weapons to intimidate any adversaries. However, despite destroying Beruit and killing more than ten thousand Arabs and 500 Israelis, Sharon's efforts in Lebanon fail. Israel eventually withdraws and Sharon loses his position.
1985: Jonathan Pollard captured leaving office with stolen papers. Eventually sentenced to life in prison.
1986: Mordechai Vanunu, a disaffected Dimona technician who left with photographs and other evidence of nuclear weapons production, publishes details in the London Sunday Times newspaper; reveals Israel has over 100 nuclear weapons. Israel starts disinformation campaign then lures him to Italy where he is kidnaped, taken to Israel and imprisoned for 18 years. He was released in spring of 2004 and remains under house arrest because of his continuing contact with the media.
1987: Israel test-fires a Jericho 2 missile capable of carrying a nulcear weapon. UN General Assembly and the IAEA General Conference passes first of more than a dozen resolutions calling on Israel to join the Nonproliferation Treaty.
1988: Israel launches its first spy satellite into orbit.
1991: U.S. convinces Israel to refrain from attacking Iraq with nuclear weapons, even if Iraq uses chemical or biological weapons against it, but Israel's nuclear weapons remain on alert.
1999: US Department of Energy document ranks Israel sixth among countries with nuclear weapons.
2000: Knesset debates Israel's nuclear weapons program for first time. Germany sells Israel three state-of-the-art 800-class Dolphin submarines and Israel tests first submarine-launched missile in the area of the Indian Ocean. Ariel Sharon is elected Prime Minister of Israel, still intending to use nuclear weapons to bully other nations and remake the Middle East for the benefit of Israel. George Bush is elected in the United state and his neoconservative allies fully intend that the United States help Sharon fulfill that mission. Right wing Israelis begin freely talking about attacking other nations, including with nuclear weapons.
2001: Bush inflames Arabs by clearly taking sides with Israel's expansionist aims, part of the reason for the September 11 attacks against the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. He obsesses about attacking Iraq, not defending America against known Al Queda terrorists. Starts planning war against Iraq after September 11 attacks, including option of using nuclear weapons.
2002: George Bush gives Israel the go-ahead to use nuclear weapons against Iraq if Saddam attacks Israel before the American invasion of Iraq. Pentagon Office of Special Plans uses information from Iraqi dissidents and Israel's Mossad to convince Americans that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction that are an imminent threat against America. Israel launches Ofek-5 satellite with a powerful new inter-continental missile.
2003: Israel repeatedly demands sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program and threatens to bomb Iran's operating nuclear power plant, despite Iran's threats to retaliate hard against Israel. Russia may have sold Iran additional advanced missiles capable of shooting down Israeli bomber and fighter jets. Russian President Putin proposes Security Council formally call for establishment of a Palestinian state and arrests last of the Jewish "oligarchs" who bought state industries for pennies on the dollar under Yeltsin. Arab and other nations repeatedly ask that Israel nuclear facilities come under international inspections. So does the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammed el-Baradei. United Nations General Assembly passes resolution that Israel join the nonproliferation treaty by a vote of 164-4. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tells Israeli newspaper that Israel will not dismantle its “special measures” because the U.S. will not remain in the Middle East forever.
2004: Israel buys two more German submarines for delivering nuclear tipped cruise missiles, making a total of five. Mordechai Vanunu's prison term ending spring 2004.
Mainstream, Vol XLVII No 11, February 28, 2009
South Asia: Peace and Conflict in the Context of the War on Terror
by Ninan Koshy, 2 March 2009
South Asia has been one of the most volatile regions of the world. The nature of its volatility and that of the conflicts has been redefined by the US-led war on terror in which the rulers of the region have joined. Tensions within the region have been heightened and conflicts have been made more intractable as states sought alliance with the USA. Peace and conflict in South Asia are today sought to be defined in terms of US interests and objectives in the region or in a framework imposed by the USA. The major factor in the new relationship of the US with South Asia, projecting its interests and objectives in an unprecedented manner into the region, is the strategic partnership with India, with its prono-unced military dimension.
Change in India’s Foreign Policy
INDIA was one of the first, if not the first, countries to declare unequivocal support for the US war on terror. India enthusiastically applauded President Bush’s “with us or with the terrorists” declaration. There was a deliberate departure from the decades-old policy of refusing to get drawn into military entanglements with any power. At work in New Delhi was the beginning of the calculated dismantling of the entire rationale of non-alignment and the edifice of an independent foreign policy subjugating India’s national interests to US war plans.
While Indian leaders including Prime Minister Vajpayee claimed that India and US were ‘natural allies’, it was explained this was natural between the two largest democracies. In fact what made it natural was the neo-conservative ideology of militarism as the policy of the Bush Administration finding its ally in the BJP’s ideological commitment to militarism, in a common enterprise against “Islamic terrorism”.
From the beginning of the war on terror, the Bush Administration had made it clear that what it wanted primarily with India was a military relationship. On the eve of his leaving the ambassadorial post in India, Robert Blackwill wrote in a leader page article (“US India Defence Cooperation”) in The Hindu on May 12, 2003:
Taken together our defence cooperation and military sales activities intensify the working relationship between the respective armed forces, build mutual cooperation for future joint military operations and strengthen Indian military capability which is in America’s interest… An Indian military that is capable of operating efficiently alongside its American counterparts remains an important goal of our defence bilateral relationship. What we have achieved since 2001 builds a strong foundation on which to consummate this strategic objective which will promote peace and freedom across Asia and beyond.
Blackwill made the nature of US-India defence relationship abundantly clear. The ‘strategic objective’ is to have ‘an Indian military that is capable of operating efficiently alongside its American counterparts’. The cooperation is for future joint military operations. All this, he candidly admits, is in America’s interests.
It was to “consummate this strategic objective” which Blackwill anticipated, that the (then) Defence Minister Pranab Mukherji and his US counterpart Donald Rumsfeld signed on June 20, 2005 the ‘New Framework for US-India Defence Cooperation for the next ten years’. It stressed that defence relationship would support and be part of the larger bilateral strategic partnership conducting joint exercises and exchanges and collaborating in multinational operations where it is in their common interests. The defence agreement goes far beyond defence matters. Some of the provisions clearly go against the tenets of an independent foreign policy. These include the ‘intention to collaborate in multinational operations’, which means imperial wars waged by the US-led military coalition.
It is important to note that the Defence Agreement was made just twenty days before the much heralded Joint Statement of President Bush and Prime Minister Singh in which the nuclear deal was first revealed. There is reason to believe that the agreement was a condition precedent for the nuclear deal. An article written by Nicholas Burns, the chief architect of the deal on the US side, in Washington Post, put the nuclear agreement in perspective when he described it as “the symbolic and public centerpiece of the new partnership”. He added: “We can do much more to create a strategic military partnership.” Again while presenting the deal to the media in Washington on July 27, 2007 Burns in a prepared statement said: “I think now that we have consummated the civil nuclear deal between us, if we look down the road in the future we are going to see far greater defence cooperation between the USA and India.”
The Hyde Act, which governs the nuclear agreement, clearly brings out the US objectives with regard to India’s foreign policy. The first, perhaps the most important, is to ensure that India’s foreign policy is “congruent” to that of the USA, with this deal expected to “induce greater political and material support to the achievement of US goals”. India’s growing economic and political role in the world is seen as a “new and strategic opportunity to advance US goals”.
The implications of the changes in India’s foreign policy need close examination. It is only by regaining independence in foreign policy that India can effectively contribute to resolution of conflicts and peace in the region.
South Asia—the Central Front in the War on Terror
THE day after he assumed office, the new President of the USA, Barack Obama, said: “Afghanistan and Pakistan are the central front in America’s war against terrorism and the deteriorating situation in the region poses grave threat to global security.” He added that “this is the central front in our enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism”.
In a way there is nothing new in the statement. Already in 2002 it was officially stated by the USA: “September 11 put South Asia on the frontline of the global war on terror.” “It has now become clear that the most vital interests of the USA are affected by events in South Asia.” But it is disquieting to note that he continues to maintain the ‘war on terror’ framework with its dangerous doctrines which violate international law. For him also “America’s war against terrorism” is “enduring” and he seems to believe that it should continue to be the overarching framework of his foreign policy.
Already on October 7, 2001 B. Raman had expressed his concern “over the US projecting the (US-led) coalition’s operation against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda as a war against terrorism with the total emphasis on the military aspect of the operation instead of as a counter-terrorism operation and over the way the rest of the world and particularly the other countries of Asia had accepted such a projection without carefully examining the implications of it.” (Asia Times, April 23, 2003) Some implications need to be mentioned. For seven years and four months, the US has been engaged in a monumentally flawed and destructive campaign that President Bush described as “all-out effort against terrorism and terrorist groups of global reach” with devastating consequences for South Asia and West Asia in particular.
A reading of the SAARC Charter brings out a vital fact that there is no definition of what precisely constitutes South Asia. It may be due to the desire of the founding members to leave scope for expansion. But is Afghanistan really part of South Asia?
This is not a facetious question. Of course, we know Afghanistan was formally inducted as member of SAARC in 2007. By doing so, one could argue that SAARC was legitimising an illegitimate war and occupation, approving US strategic objectives in the region and justifying NATO entry into Asia. This is not to deny that even otherwise the Afghan war had not impacted the original members of SAARC, especially Pakistan and India. It is clear that the incorporation of Afghanistan in SAARC is the result of the eagerness of the US to incorporate the war-ravaged country under an institutional framework so that it can obtain legitimacy.
South Asian nations did not raise any questions about the questionable entry of NATO into Asia to fight a war and then through the induction of Afghanistan appeared not only to legitimise its actions but to welcome it. Zbignew Brzezinki in his book, The Grand Chessboard, defines the North Atlantic alliance as part of an integrated comprehensive and long-term strategy for all Eurasia in which NATO would eventually reach Asia, where another military alliance would connect Pacific and South-East Asian states. This prediction is coming true.
From the beginning of the ‘war on terror’, the US tried to perform a balancing act to keep both Pakistan and India as its allies. The war on terror which was supported by both the countries only heightened the tensions between the two countries bringing the two countries at least on two occasions and leading to an arms race on an unprecedented level. It has led to militarisation of the whole region.
Framing Conflicts under the War on Terror
THE war on terror has refashioned conflict situations in the region. Two of the most prominent conflict situations may be examined: Kashmir and Sri Lanka.
M.K. Narayanan, currently the National Security Adviser, in an article written less than a month after the terror attacks in the USA (in Asian Age online) argued that there was “a connection between the September 11 attacks in the US” and “the ongoing conflict in Jammu and Kashmir”. He concluded that a war against terrorism must address the violence in Kashmir well as in Afghanistan. “Something drastic needs to be done to curb Islamist outfits currently engaged in cascading violence in J&K. ..The Alliance for the Battle Against Terrorism must gear itself to deal with a situation which is fraught with dangerous possibilities.”
The dynamics of the Kashmir conflict underwent a drastic change since 9/11 due to dramatic changes wrought by the US war on terror in the region. Three competing perspectives emanated from Islamabad, New Delhi and Washington. Pakistan continued to describe the happenings in Kashmir as ‘liberation struggle’ and insisted Washington should solve the Kashmir problem so that Pakistan can fully participate in the war on terror. India’s support to the war on terror proceeded on the assumption that the US would have to accept that the happenings in Kashmir are due to ‘cross-border terrorism’. India thus tried to combine the issues of war on terror and Kashmir so as to draw the maximum benefit from the changed international opinion in favour of fighting terrorism lock, stock and barrel. India strongly challenged Pakistan’s credentials to be partner of the US in the war on terror and repeatedly urged on the US to include Kashmir in its war on terror. The US, which needed both Pakistan and India in the war on terror, did not do so.
A recent statement by David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, gave rise to high level of moral indignation in New Delhi. He said in an article in The Guardian: “Although I understand the current difficulties, resolution of the dispute over Kashmir would help deny extremists in the region one of their main calls to arms.”. Actually this statement did not warrant the kind of reaction that came from New Delhi. It only reinforced the impression that when it comes to Kashmir, our rulers adopt a denial mode—that there is no dispute and that if at all there is any problem we know how to deal with it. Indian sensitivities on the Kashmir issue are understandable. India can legitimately take credit for the apparently new political climate in J&K. But to treat the Kashmir problem as solely or primarily due to “international terrorism” is to invite the kind of international intervention which India says it does not want. In spite of the present rupture in relationship between India and Pakistan, diplomacy and peace are the only options
Sri Lanka was one of the first countries to use the ‘war on terror’ concept and framework for its internal conflict. Unfortunately, the LTTE by its own actions fitted itself into that framework.
On January 16, 2009 the Wall Street Journal wrote: “For all those who argue that there is no military solution for terrorism, we have two words, Sri Lanka.” “We recount this history at length to make a simple point: Colombo’s military strategy against Tamil terrorists has worked; negotiations have not.” This victory in the war on terror should be a lesson for Israel as it ‘focuses on its terror problem’ and for the US in Iraq, the esteemed Journal advised: “Take note Barack Obama”.
The US embassy in Colombo issued a statement on January 13, 2009 that welcomed the Sri Lankan state’s recent victories in the war with the LTTE and urged the Sri Lankan Government and military to press forward with the destruction of the LTTE. The key passage in the statement said, “The US does not advocate that the government of Sri Lanka negotiate with LTTE, a group designated by America as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation.” While reports about US plans for bases in the island nation are routinely being denied, senior officials of the US Pacific Command have regularly visited Sri Lanka on missions and there are enough indications of US ‘facilities’ being developed.
The subsuming of the ethnic conflict under the war on terror has shifted focus from the underlying political problems and the legitimate rights of the Tamil people. While the mantra of a political solution is repeated, there is no evidence of any clear plan to resolve the problem and no negotiations are in sight.
From 1984 to 1991 India followed a policy of adhocism, ambivalence, adventurism and advocacy towards Sri Lanka. From 1991 its policy may be called ‘non-policy’. It appears that at crucial stages of the negotiations under the aegis of Norway, the Indian Government declined to make any contribution. General statements about solution of the Sri Lanka problem are made but most of them seem to reflect India’s own experience in federalism without taking into account the special circumstances in Sri Lanka.
During his recent visit to Sri Lanka, India’s Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon “agreed that a moment of political opportunity has been made available to Sri Lanka today to bring about an inclusive peace process with credible political representation by the Tamil people in the country’s democratic process”. Menon extended his appreciation of “the positive role played by Sri Lanka both militarily and in the regional context in combating terrorism”. This was of course not only renewed support for Sri Lanka’s war on terror but also recognition of Sri Lanka’s role in combating terrorism in the region.. Such statements invariably raise questions about India’s policy on Sri Lanka.
The time has come for India to re-engage in Sri Lanka maintaining the good bilateral relations and through policies based on careful examination of all issues providing coherent and constructive support in finding a political solution that would ensure the legitimate rights of the Tamils within a united Sri Lanka.
[Paper presented at the National Seminar on “Peace, Conflict and Development in South Asia” organised by Asian Centre for Peace and Development. Coimbatore in association with Centre for Asia Studies, Chennai, at Chennai, January 30-31, 2009]
Dr Ninan Koshy is formerly Director, International Affairs, World Council of Churches, Geneva and Visiting Fellow, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, USA, and the author of War on Terror Reordering the World and Under the Empire: India’s New Foreign Policy.
http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1199.html
Peace messengers from across border
5 Mar 2009, 0136 hrs IST, Avinash Kalla, TNN
JAIPUR: At a time when Pakistan is desperately trying to come to terms with Monday's Lahore attack, that happened days after Taliban took over the
Swat valley, a 10- member delegation crossed the border into India to spread the message of peace.
The delegation ran a signature campaign in unison with their Indian counterparts condemning the 26/11 Mumbai carnage. Carrying the signatures of more than 35,000 Pakistani citizens who condemned the attack, the delegates want to hand it over to the Indian authorities. "We understand that Indian officials have been busy in New Delhi, but we will hand over the document and will be joined by our Indian counterparts who also want to hand over their document," said Saeeda Diep, head, Institute of Secular Studies, Lahore.
The group feels this is a right time to travel with the peace message because people should understand that the mode of operation of those involved in the Lahore attack was similar to the 26/11 attack in Mumbai and hence they too are victims.
"Pakistan shouldn't be seen in a negative light, people should understand that because democracy isn't strong in our country, the administration is helpless in dealing with terrorists and giving the charge of Swat to Taliban was an indication of this," said Diep.
The members were of the view that the perception towards their country isn't right and people still think they live in medieval times. They maintained peace can prevail between the two neighbors if governments, instead of thinking emotionally, take a positive approach. According to Punhal Khan, a delegation member, terrorism isn't a Pakistani phenomenon ---- it's rather a problem in South-east Asia, he said, "Illiteracy is the breeding ground of terrorism and wherever in the region we have illiteracy there is some form of terror activities taking place."
According to the delegation members, if India relaxes the strict visa guidelines for travelling to Pakistan and more people are allowed to mingle things will improve between the neighbours. However, a member had a word of caution for India's proximity to the USA, "We have suffered for our proximity to the US and want to get away from it at the earliest. You on the other hand want to embrace them. As neighbours we would say look how dearly has such friendship cost us."
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Jaipur/Peace-messengers-from-across-border/articleshow/4225474.cms
Our perpetual denial mode
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Apparently, the security reservations by the Australian and Indian cricket teams were not all unfounded regarding playing cricket in Pakistan. After their refusal to play, to save Pakistan cricket the valiant Sri Lankans volunteered and agreed to play despite the known and hostile presence of all kinds of Kasabs (a derivative of Ajmal Kasab of Mumbai fame) in Pakistan. And this is how they are rewarded. Cricket is like a second religion in South Asia. The people of South Asia get hypnotised when a cricket series is played there. For the Pakistani nation cricket is the one thing that doesn’t create divisions -- in fact it unites us all. And now this has been taken away from us.
Over the past twenty odd years, Pakistan has become a country living in a state of denial. The most handy scapegoat is India’s RAW. Our ruling class (read the military) wants us to believe that everything that goes wrong in the country is because of either RAW or -- the next preferred scapegoat -- the Jewish lobby. Now as the investigations are launched into this incident, we are sure to see a finger pointed at an Indian hand in the incident -- this in fact has already begun. And this will be taken well in public, of course, so as to settle the score for Mumbai.
If we could come out of our perpetual denial mode, we would see why it is people from among us who go around beheading others and burning girls’ schools. We should also realise that the targeting of the country’s most popular sport is going to benefit the jihadis in a big way because the youth can then be more easily recruited by militant outfits. So the attack on a foreign cricket team may have had this sinister purpose as well.
The people of Pakistan need to realise that the enemy is from within and if they don’t then they will be behaving like ostriches and such an attitude which ignores the clear extremist and militant tendencies found inside Pakistan will not help at all. We see rallies taken out against US drone attacks but when will we ever see large public rallies against such attacks? There is only so much that the government can do -- people also need to play a part, and the most important is to understand who the real enemy is.
Bahadar Ali Khan
Markham, ON, Canada
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=165774
Pakistan a greater threat to world than Afghanistan
5/03/2009 1:00:00 AM
Despite Pakistani promises to foreign cricketers of presidential-level security, we should remember there were four assassination attempts against former president Pervez Musharraf, and he will count himself lucky to have survived his period in office.
So far there has only been one attempt against President Asif Ali Zardari, but his days are probably numbered. Terrorist attacks on sporting teams globally have been a rare occurrence, but the danger arises from a team's identification with their country of origin and, in contemporary cases, that country's perceived ''anti-Muslim'' policies.
Islamist extremists regard all nationals of a target country as responsible for its policies because, in their view, they were the ones who voted in the Government.
There are no innocent bystanders for extremists. It is unclear why the Sri Lankans were attacked Sri Lankans are not an Islamist target. The attack seems to have been intended mainly to embarrass and destabilise the Pakistan Government.
The way it was conducted suggests the aim may have been to take hostages, rather than kill cricketers which could have been achieved by using a bomb against the team bus.
Hostage-taking could have caused the incident to be prolonged and the Government forced to make concessions. Fortunately that outcome was avoided. A long shot is the Tamil Tigers were in some way involved in the attack. The Tamil Tigers have not previously had any operational relationship with Pakistani groups other than for weapons procurement and drug trafficking. Even so, perhaps that angle should not be dismissed until we know more.
Australians particularly are at risk in Pakistan because of our foreign policies and military involvement against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The Afghan Taliban are mainly Pashtun but there are more Pashtuns in Pakistan than there are in Afghanistan. It is little wonder the deteriorating security situation in Pakistan is largely related to the steadily increasing power of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Taliban in Pakistan have strengthened their hold over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North-West Frontier Province since Zardari became president.
They are responsible for a rise in violence in urban areas. Attacks attributed to the Taliban include Benazir Bhutto's murder in 2007 and the 2008 Marriott Hotel bombing in Islamabad. Often their attacks are characterised by young suicide bombers from Pakistani madrassas.
The Pakistan Government has no effective answer to the deteriorating security situation. Zardari seems to be trying appeasement, obviously ineffectively, while the military seems to be overwhelmed by the scale of the insurgent problem. Pakistan's governments are largely to blame for the resurgence of the Taliban, which it has supported covertly through the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, both pre- and post-September 11, as a counterbalance to Indian influence in Afghanistan.
This was facilitated after September 11, 2001, by the Bush administration failing to see the significance of the Taliban resurgence because it was too preoccupied with Iraq. Pakistan has supported a range of Pakistani Islamist extremist groups covertly through the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, to keep pressure on India over the Kashmir issue. The Government seems to have little control over some of them as well.
The major militant group, Lashkar e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) was responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and has a reach extending beyond South Asia into the Middle East. Lashkar e-Taiba has been implicated in providing terrorism training to Australians in Pakistan. Not one of the post-September 11 terrorists who have concerned Western countries, including Australia, have come from Afghanistan.
They have all been radicalised and trained in Pakistan. While the West has been focused on Afghanistan, it seems to have overlooked the fact that Pakistan is far more important to regional security. This is not only because of its pivotal location in South Asia, but also because it is a nuclear weapon state. The Lahore attack underlines the continuing deterioration of security in Pakistan.
Action is needed now to try and turn the situation around not with financial handouts that would disappear in one of the world's most corrupt countries but with hands-on economic development, counter-radicalisation programs, more resources to border areas, closing the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, ending air attacks, improving the public schooling system, and more resources for the military and police. Pakistan should be a higher Australian priority than Afghanistan which historically tends to be preoccupied with internal disputes that do not have external implications.
Clive Williams is a Visiting Fellow with the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre
at the ANU.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/world/world/general/pakistan-a-greater-threat-to-world-than-afghanistan/1450806.aspx
About 100 Days
As Barack Obama readies to take the office of president, which of his predecessors offers the best model for getting off on the right foot? The 100 Days blog seeks to answer just that question during Mr. Obama's first three months in office. Five presidential biographers will discuss the early days of five 20th-century presidents – Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan – shedding new light on the struggles faced by those men entering the Oval Office and comparing their experiences with those Mr. Obama will face in his first 100 days.
Nixon was going to pull out of Vietnam, then decided to win it. Now Obama faces similar decisions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Nixon walked in, tanned and smiling after a weekend in Florida, though typically ill at ease as he moved through quick handshake introductions. He began brief remarks with self-conscious ingratiation, commiserating with the staff for having to deal with what he called “all those impossible fags” in the State Department, oblivious that most in the room were Foreign Service officers on temporary assignment. “Ignore the bureaucrats,” he told them after a swift, fluent run-down of international trouble spots. “I want you to handle the rest of the world.” Turning to Kissinger, he added softly, in what seemed as much an intimacy as a boast, “And you and I will end the war.”
For a moment there was guarded silence, as if we had overheard a private confidence. Then the staff broke into warm applause, and Nixon, visibly surprised yet pleased, abruptly left. Many of the men there that day prided themselves on their worldliness. None could have guessed the irony of what they had seen.
The Vietnam war. No hope so followed Richard Nixon into office as the national yearning to end it. No issue would so haunt and consume his presidency from the first hundred days through the next four years. Though the he enjoyed that winter of 1969, a political honeymoon with the press, public and Congress, the war that drove Lyndon Johnson from office raged on, killing 1,200 Americans and untold Vietnamese every month.
Nixon’s 1968 election victory owed much to his ringing if vague promise to stop the war, as well as to the divisions over Vietnam that split the camp of his Democratic opponent, Hubert Humphrey, and the country at large. “We will end this one and win the peace,” Nixon pledged in a constant campaign line, avoiding specifics on grounds of not interfering with a sitting president, but giving the clear impression he had a plan. He seemed under no illusion about his political stakes. “If the war goes on six months after I become president,” he told The Times’s Harrison Salisbury, “it will be my war.” He was determined “not to end up like L.B.J., holed up in the White House, afraid to show my face in the street. I’m going to stop the war — fast.”
After two decades on the national scene, including eight years as vice president and extensive travel abroad, foreign policy was seen as the new president’s forte as well as first priority. His press conference after a February 1969 trip to Europe The Times pronounced a “tour de force” — part of a chorus of national media acclaim, including one editorial headlined “Mission Accomplished.” It was understood from Kissinger background briefings that the European talks dealt with ending the war and the administration was working intensively on “Vietnam withdrawal scenarios.” At a March 4 press conference, the president hinted broadly at United States troop reductions. Asked about reawakened public protest if the war wore on “for months or even years,” he replied offhandedly, “Well, I trust that I am not confronted with that problem, when you speak of years.”
As with most of Richard Nixon’s first hundred days, the reality of Vietnam policy behind the public façade was starkly different. Even as he was treating questions about a prompt peace as if it were a foregone conclusion, Nixon’s private resolve was to win the war — or at least to avoid the appearance of losing it — even if it took as long as the remainder of his term. Soon after they arrived in office, White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman scribbled one of the president’s frequent and typical ruminations:
VN [Vietnam] enemy
Misjudges two things
—the time—has 3 years + 3 mo
—the man—won’t be first P to lose war
“Once Nixon was installed in the presidency, the promised stopping of the war was stood on its head to become one of prolonging it,” wrote Barbara Tuchman in “The March of Folly.” “The new president was as unwilling as his predecessor to accept non-success in the war aim and as fixed in the belief that additional force could bring the enemy to terms.”
Strategy took shape in the first secret “policy reviews” of a National Security Council dominated by Nixon and Kissinger, whose foreign policy dictates were absolute from the outset. To blunt domestic protest, they would begin American troop withdrawals. To coerce and subdue North Vietnam, something Johnson had not accomplished with 500,000 American troops, they would intensify bombing and vastly expand the forces of South Vietnam, a process known as “Vietnamization.”
Early visitors to his basement office in the White House that winter often advised Henry Kissinger not to fall into past errors in Vietnam. “We won’t repeat the old mistakes,” he would reply. “We’ll make new ones.” Typically clever, the quip proved tragically both true and false as they pursued the war for four more years in Vietnam with American forces on the ground, and for years beyond with bombing and billions in aid in conflicts open and covert across Southeast Asia.
As for new mistakes, Nixon and Kissinger would leave their own legacy with the unprecedented bombing in Cambodia as well as Vietnam, the fitful negotiations with North and South Vietnam involving treachery on all sides, an American invasion of Cambodia, a disastrous South Vietnamese invasion of Laos, and at home a bitter reaction to dissent that ultimately led to the ruin of the Nixon presidency.
At the same time, sure that their two-man rule was superior to the conventional foreign policy regime of politicians and bureaucracy they both deplored, they repeated the blunders of America’s past quarter century in Asia. Like their predecessors, they made policy in cultural-historical ignorance of Vietnam, mistaking its place in the geopolitics of the cold war and underestimating North Vietnam’s stake and will in uniting the divided country. Like officials before them, they took a corrupt regime in the South, spawned by war and American money, for a vital interest of the United States, and pursued manifestly failed policies on contrived grounds of strategic necessity, national honor and partisan compulsion.
The inner effects of the war policy were virulent. The administration was scarcely 50 days old when the President ordered the first secret bombing of Cambodia, with successive waves in April and May. There were soon dark hints to Russia and other powers that the United States exit would involve some brutal escalation of the war if North Vietnam were not forced to settle. “The train has left the station,” Kissinger, on Nixon’s instructions, warned Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin in one early off-the-record meeting, “and is roaring down the tracks.”
On May 9, The Times’s William Beecher broke the story of the Cambodian bombing, arousing relatively little public reaction but fresh tirades in a White House already enraged at leaks of classified information. As early as April 25, Kissinger had been summoned to the Oval Office to discuss how to stop the leaks with Nixon and F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover — “two maniacs trying to outdo each other,” as Kissinger once described the frequent Nixon-Hoover meetings. Ahead lay the infamous wiretaps on journalists and officials, including Kissinger’s own staff, and a twisting sequence leading to the White House “plumbers” and the crimes of Watergate.
Meanwhile, the inherent inconsistencies in the war policy spiraled out in blood and betrayal. Troop reductions, first announced in June, did not long stay domestic protest, further hardening of the self-destructive siege mentality in the White House. Withdrawal from ground combat did work to reinforce the North’s grim determination to outlast the Americans, despite more punishing bombing. Just as predictably, the drawdown ate at the already infirm morale of South Vietnam, and the political-diplomatic intractability of the Saigon regime grew as its position worsened. By the first anniversary of the Nixon Inaugural, 150,000 American troops would be scheduled to leave over the course of 1970, with more to follow. The war had become, wrote one historian, “a race between Vietnamization and the withdrawals.”
The Associated Press President Nixon conferred with Henry A. Kissinger in 1972, after the presidential adviser returned from secret negotiations in Paris with North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho. The White House announced later that the president was “confident that we will achieve the right kind of settlement” in Vietnam.
Over the winter of 1969-’70, there would be the first of the ultra-secret Paris talks between Kissinger and the North Vietnamese, negotiations that got far nearer a settlement than any account has ever indicated. Yet they were shattered by a military junta overthrowing King Norodom Sihanouk in Cambodia. It was that coup, along with the United States bombings and May 1970 invasion of Cambodia, that fired the rise of the once-minor Khmer Rouge, ending in the holocaust of the killing fields.
Military escalation, whether in bombing or a quick punitive invasion of Cambodia (what a later era might call a “surge”), was the paradoxical urge of the combined coercion and exit. “Tulips in Arlington,” was what N.S.C. staff members called the Pentagon’s perennial proposals for a military solution to the problem at hand. When Kissinger assembled his own planners in the autumn of 1969 to consider an all-out punishing blow against North Vietnam —“I can’t believe a little fourth-rate power like North Vietnam doesn’t have a breaking point,” he told aides — attack scenarios, including use of a nuclear weapon to close the main supply route from China, were at hand in the files of the N.S.C.’s military liaison officers. It was a reminder that the Nixon-Kissinger policy was never simply the product of two men, however powerful, but of a broader culture in government that either acquiesced in or actively supported their policy.
It was all to climax in a flurry of savage B-52 bombing and serpentine Kissinger diplomacy in the winter of 1972-1973; and then, with Congressional prohibitions on American bombing and aid, the defeat of a collapsing South in 1975, an end far worse than might have been had by negotiation in 1969.
In the meantime, of course, Nixon had been overwhelmingly reelected, his troop withdrawals conquering protest in the end, but then only to suffer his own fall in Watergate, a besieged president holed up in the White House after all. Among his legacies would be more than 20,000 of the 58,195 names on the long black wall of Washington’s Vietnam Memorial. In 1995, Vietnam finally announced casualty figures of four million civilians dead, North and South, and more than a million military, the toll of their own share of wantonness and folly.
For all the obvious differences in men and moment, how Richard Nixon dealt with Vietnam leaves haunting questions for the Obama administration as the new president has announced his own exit from Iraq and a policy review in Afghanistan. Are the policy makers of 2009 in the Middle East and South Asia free of the cultural-historical ignorance that haunted their forerunners in Southeast Asia? Is the new presidency free of the old Washington demons at last — the mistaking of national interest, habits of overreaction, the illusions of omnipotence, the cognitive dissonance at evidence of failure or futility, the military’s preference for the military solution, the absence of reflective thought, the failure to reach out beyond the supposed experts of bureaucracy or establishment for another sensibility and perspective?
Exorcised or not, ghosts of Vietnam hover over the Obama foreign policy, not least in key officials like former National Security Adviser James L. Jones Jr. and the special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke — men whose formative career experiences were in Vietnam, and who have not yet told us what they think of the chilling relevance of that history to what they now face.
One parallel is plain as early as the first hundred days. As with Richard Nixon and Vietnam, Barack Obama’s political fate will be inextricably tied to the wars he inherits.
http://100days.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/how-not-to-end-another-presidents-war/?ref=opinion
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Palash Biswas
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