The Curtain Rises

The US has recalled its ambassador to Syria to indicate its anger at Damascus
over the assasination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

CNN reports:

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States has "made
it clear" it wants Syria, which maintains some 16,000 troops in Lebanon, to
use its influence to prevent such attacks. ... "I have been very careful to
say we really don't know who committed this murder at this point, but we do
know what effect the Syrian presence in Lebanon has," Boucher said. "And we do
know that it doesn't bring security for Lebanese." Ambassador Margaret Scobey
was returning to Washington for "urgent consultations," Boucher said, because
of "deep concern, as well as our profound outrage, over this heinous act of
terrorism."

The diplo-blog

New Sisyphus explains the convention behind the diplomatic signal of
'recalling the ambassador'.

In a move that traditionally signals extreme displeasure with the host
nation, the U.S. today recalled its ambassador to Syria to Washington for
urgent consultations. ... This development is significant in two respects.
First, it is a sign that worsening relations between Syria and the United
States have left the "behind-the-scenes" stage and have moved squarely into
the "active confrontation" stage. Second, it appears to us that USG believes
that Syria was directly involved in the bombing, either as actor or
facilitator.

The Great Ophthalmologist has been gambling for months that he can bleed
the U.S. in Iraq at little cost. To date, that gamble has paid off. With the
Bush Administration facing domestic and international opposition to the Iraq
War, Syria's government has apparently drawn the not entirely unreasonable
conclusion that the U.S. either cannot or will not make Syria pay a cost for
its more or less open support for terrorism in Iraq or for its occupation of
Lebanon. (Note to the Left: there is an unjust, illegal "occupation" of land
in the Middle East, and the name of that land is Lebanon).

We trust that the patience of President Bush is running to an end. No other
act, except maybe for strikes on Iran, would signal our seriousness at
changing the chess board in the Middle East than military strikes aimed at
Syria's command and control infrastructure. The illusion of Syrian
invulnerability must be broken if Syria is ever to have incentive to change
its ways.

If as the New Sisyphus argues, Assad has been "gambling for months that he
can bleed the U.S. in Iraq at little cost" and that it has been waging "war
more-or-less openly on the U.S. in Iraq", the question is what has changed?
It is hard to imagine how the assasination of a Lebanese politician could
provoke a more drastic response than months of Syrian-supported attacks on US
troops in Iraq and harder still to imagine how Washington could have taken the
ultimate diplomatic step without implicitly being prepared to go further. Yet it
has. Unless Washington is playing a hollow hand, where the conclusion has
changed the premises must be re-examined -- the principal one being that America
was too hamstrung by Iraq to take anything else on -- not Syria, Iran or North
Korea.

The aggressive posture taken by America against North Korea, Iran and now
Syria suggests the bonds that held it down in Iraq, if ever they did, may be
loosening. Dan Darling's survey of the Iraqi election results at
Winds
of Change may provide a clue to what is happening. It discusses whether the
recently concluded election has delivered Iraq into the hands of Teheran. He
concludes that it has not, at least, not obviously.

I suspect that much of the regional assumptions about the new Iraqi
government being an Iranian pawn have to do with fears, even fears held by
reasonable people like King Abdullah of Jordan, that the Iraqi Shi'ites will
try and support their co-religionists in other parts of the Arab world,
destabilizing the existing post-colonial order and plunging a number of
neighboring states into chaos. I don't think that this fear is all that
plausible because it conceives of Shi'ites as a monolithic force throughout
the region based in large part on what happened to them in Lebanon and led to
the formation of Hezbollah during the 1980s.

The underlying reason is straightforward: a unitary Iraq, the only context in
which the elections have legitimacy, cannot be totally dominated by any single
group without precipitating civil war. In short, the reason Iraq cannot be
delivered in a ribboned box to Teheran -- even assuming some Shi'ite candidates
wanted to -- is because of the Kurds, and ironically enough, the Sunnis. Hence,
having engineered a Mexican standoff at worst and a functioning democracy at
best in Iraq, it may be possible that the Iraqi campaign is strategically over.
If this proves true it may have been inherent in conception. Whether consciously
or not, the choice of Iraq as a beachead into the mainland of Middle Eastern
terror was a blow directed at a faultline in the Islamic world, just as generals
of the previous century directed attacks at the command boundaries of enemy
armies. If that strategy proved profitable, so would its sequel: Lebanon lies
along another such faultline.

If this speculation is true, the evidence will not be long in coming. The
indicators will be a gradual quieting of Iraq as a military theater and a
corresponding shift of emphasis onto Iran and perhaps, Lebanon. Assuming the
confirming developments are observed, the question will be 'to what end'. There
have been rumors about a 'second front' against Syria for some time. In January,
2004

Janes reported a plan to use US Special Forces in the Bekaa Valley.

According to JID's intelligence sources, US Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld is considering plans to expand the global war on terrorism with
multi-pronged attacks against suspected militant bases in countries such as
Lebanon and Somalia. In a week in which Israel launched airstrikes against
Hizbullah positions, our regional correspondent reports from Beirut. ...
However, sending US special forces into Lebanon - and in particular an area
like the Bekaa Valey (which is virtually Syrian territory) and where the bulk
of Damascus' military forces in Lebanon are deployed - would be an entirely
different matter. Deployment of US forces in the area would almost certainly
involve a confrontation with Syrian troops. ... The US administration has long
considered Damascus as a prime candidate for 'regime-change' (along with
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and possibly even Saudi Arabia). Syria, once a
powerhouse of Arab radicalism that could not be ignored, has been seriously
weakened, both militarily and politically. Washington may feel that the time
is coming to oust Bashir Al-Assad and the ruling generals. Targeting Syria via
Lebanon, the only concrete political influence Damascus has to show following
decades of radical diplomacy, could prove to be a means to that end.

The same information snippet was reported in a

Washington Post article of about the same date in the context of a
supposed debate on the employment of Special Forces in the GWOT. Such plans,
perhaps one of thousands of planning contingencies in what has become a global
war, may have been put on hold pending developments. It is early days yet. All
that can be done is to lay down a few analytical markers against which to
measure the march of events.

Who Killed Rafiq Hariri?

Nobody knows yet. But here's a roundup of plausible speculation.

Larry Johnson at the Counterterrorism Blog thinks it is Syria.

Today's bomb blast in Lebanon, which killed former Lebanese Prime Minister
Rafiq Hariri, is a harbinger that a peaceful, democratic transition of
Governments in the Middle East is a foolish pipe dream. Hariri, aka Fatso, has
been a long time pawn of Saudi Arabia and a favorite of both Washington and
Paris. His murder comes against the backdrop of increased pressure by the
United States and France to force Syria to withdraw its military forces from
Lebanon. This car bombing was probably designed to send an unambiguous message
to both Lebanese and the international community that Syria will not stand
idly by and surrender to pressures from Washington, Paris, and the United
Nations. Hariri, who had been staying on the sidelines in recent months as
political parties in Lebanon jockeyed for position in upcoming parliamentary
elections, was a convenient and potent symbol of a Lebanese power broker
perceived as too close and too accommodating of Western desires. His killers
are providing a simple message, Syria will not leave Lebanon without a fight
and Damascus is willing to destroy Lebanon in order to save itself.

Juan Cole thinks it was either Al Qaeda one of Hariri's business rivals.

Personally, I find the likelihood of the Saudi connection generating
al-Qaeda-type violence against him somewhat more plausible than that it came
out of local politics, since local politics had been fairly civil in Lebanon.
It is also possible, since al-Hariri was worth $4 billion and had all sorts of
shady deals going on even when he was PM, that this assassination had an
economic/ mafia-type background that we are not aware of.

The Cole theory got a boost from a

videotape played on Al Jazeera from "The Organization for Victory and Jihad
in the Levant" claiming responsibility for the attack.

According to the statement, "For the sake of our Mujahideen brothers in
Saudi Arabia ... we decided to implement the just execution of those who
support this regime... This was a martyrdom operation we carried out ... This
is the beginning of many martyrdom operations against the infidels and
apostates in the Levant.�

On the other hand, a

New York Times article suggests the US government strongly suspects
Syria. (Hat tip:

Belgravia Dispatch)

In Washington, the Bush administration, while not accusing Syria of the
killing, reacted today with unusually strong language aimed at Damascus.
President Bush was �shocked and angered� over the killing, said his chief
spokesman, Scott McClellan. Mr. McClellan said the United States would consult
with other governments in the region and members of the United Nations
Security Council about ways �to punish those responsible for this terrorist
attack� and to free Lebanon �from foreign occupation.� And the State
Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said American diplomats may convey
Washington�s anger directly to the Syrians, �given their influence and
interest in Lebanon.�

Moreover, some

Lebanese political figures have pointed the finger straight at Syria.

Exiled Lebanese political leader Michel Aoun accused Syria of
responsibility for the death of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
"They are responsible. It's they who control the security and intelligence
services" in Beirut, he said and added there were "many indications" to back
up his assertion. Lebanese opposition figures blamed Syrian and Lebanese
authorities for the death of Hariri. In a statement after an emergency
meeting, opposition figures also called for Syrian forces to pull out before
elections in May, as well as a three-day strike.

Only a few hours after Hariri's death, the US seemed sure enough of the
perpetrators to set in motion punitive measures against Syria. The

New York Times reports:

The Bush administration, condemning the assassination of the former prime
minister, Rafik Hariri, in Lebanon, suggested Monday that Syria was to blame
and moved to get a new condemnation of Syria's domination of Lebanon at the
United Nations Security Council. ...

"We're going to turn up the heat on Syria, that's for sure," said a senior
State Department official. "It's been a pretty steady progression of pressure
up to now, but I think it's going to spike in the wake of this event. Even
though there's no evidence to link it to Syria, Syria has, by negligence or
design, allowed Lebanon to become destabilized." At the United Nations, the
Security Council called for a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the bombing, but
there was some doubt that the Council would vote to condemn Syria by name. In
a resolution passed last year to condemn Syria's role in Lebanon, Syria's name
was not mentioned; there was only a reference to foreign forces in Lebanon.

In the view of American analysts, Syria has in turn done the bidding of
Iran, using Syrian territory to support Hezbollah, a major presence in
Lebanon, and other Islamic groups that have attacked Israel. The United States
has focused mounting attention on Iran in recent weeks, both because of its
suspected nuclear arms program and because of its support of groups trying to
disrupt a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Hariri's was protected against small-time assasination attemptions by the use
of armored vehicles which equipped with electronic sweeping devices. It can be
safely assumed that the Lebanese billionaire could afford the best private
security that money could buy. Those security forces would employ
countersurveillance, deceptive scheduling and decoys. But those formidable
defenses were defeated by a truly massive bomb of several hundred pounds
possibly detonated by a suicider, hence the "martyrdom" operation referred to in
the videotape. They must have been supported by a surveillance and intelligence
operation of no mean quality. That combination of expertise, access to large
quantities of explosive and ready money makes it almost certain that Hariri's
killers were either state-sponsored or belonged to a very powerful terrorist
organization. Moreover, if Hariri's death was intended to "send a message" it
was one that had to be widely understood by the intended audience without
additional embellishment. As the

Jerusalem Post put it:

The murderers of Rafik Hariri knew their target was among the most
significant figures in Lebanon. The self-made billionaire helped reconstruct
his country after a destructive civil war, knew all the top people in
Washington and was a personal friend of French President Jacques Chirac and
Saudi Arabia's King Fahd. "You can't go any higher than blowing up Hariri in
the middle of Beirut in the middle of the day," said one analyst in Beirut.
"It's a very powerful message to all the Lebanese, and to the opposition."

One Little, Two Little, Three Little Eichmanns

The Christian
Science Monitor has details on the assassination of the former Lebanese
prime minister and the possibility the blame will fall on Syria.

Rafik Hariri, a billionaire businessman and former Lebanese prime minister
who helped rebuild Beirut from its civil war, was killed Monday in a massive
car bomb explosion in the city's downtown district.  ...

Hariri was prime minister for 10 of the 15 years since the end of the
1975-1990 civil war and was the driving force behind the massive multibillion
dollar reconstruction program here. His last term in office, which ended with
his resignation in October, was marred by a cold relationship with the
pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud. Hariri was regarded as a powerful, if de
facto, member of the increasingly robust Lebanese opposition which is pressing
Syria to withdraw its estimated 14,000 troops from Lebanon and cease
interfering in the Lebanese political process.

The bomb exploded as Hariri's mortorcade passed by, killing him and nine
other people. Hariri's body was taken to the American University Hospital
where he was pronounced dead. Some 100 people were injured in the blast,
mainly from flying glass.

Meanwhile, a world away, three
bombs claimed by the Abu Sayyaf have exploded in three Philippine cities.

The Manila bombing occurred about 7:30 p.m. local time on a bus travelling
along a busy highway. Police said three people were killed and at least 60
others injured. A blast outside the Gaisano mall in southern General Santos
city an hour earlier killed at least five people and injured at least 36
others. Another bomb that went off almost simultaneously killed a 12-year-old
boy and injured at least eight people at a bus terminal in Davao, also in the
southern Philippines.

The Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf claimed responsibility for the blasts
in the capital Manila and two other cities, saying the attacks were a Valentine's
Day "gift" to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. ... The group
said the bombings were retribution for a military offensive against Islamic
militants in the southern Philippines. Some 60 people have been killed in
fighting during a government attack on the island of Jolo. "Our latest
operations � planned and executed with precision by the gallant warriors of
Islam � is our continuing response to the Philippine government's atrocities
committed against Muslims everywhere," said Solaiman, promising more
attacks in the future.

How did that Philippine "government attack" on the island of Jolo
start? The BBC
has details:

The fighting began last Monday. An Abu Sayyaf leader, Abu Solaiman, told a
radio station it had joined forces with the Misuari followers to avenge the
death of a couple and their son who were killed by troops. The military says
it returned fire after the couple shot at soldiers. The rebels then attacked
troops at an army base, killing 30, including the battalion commander, the
military says. The government flew in reinforcements, including US-trained
counter-terrorist troops, and said the army has killed more than 60 rebels in
heavy fighting.

(The CBC report should really have said '90 people, including 60
rebels', which is how some other news outlets relate events.) Although events in
the Lebanon and the Philippines have different actors and disparate proximate
causes, they resemble each other in that each represents a campaign by a
determined minority to advance a political agenda with the assistance of outside
help. Both are also manifestations of a terrorist style of war that has proved
difficult, but not impossible, for their opponents to combat; features it shares
with troublespots like southern Thailand and Indonesia, among others. That style
of combat, supported by a loosely coupled, but coherent infrastructure, was once
described as netwar
by RAND researcher John Arquilla. Tracing its development from anarchists in
Seattle, the Zapatistas in Mexico to Al Qaeda, Arquilla
notes:

More than ever before, conflicts revolve around �knowledge� and the use
of �soft power.� Adversaries are learning to emphasize �information
operations� and �perception management��that is, media-oriented
measures that aim to attract or disorient rather than coerce, and that affect
how secure a society, a military, or other actor feels about its knowledge of
itself and of its adversaries. Psychological disruption may become as
important a goal as physical destruction.

Update

The Abu Sayyaf have perfected the 'victim is guilty' line and may be
successfully selling it to the news outlets. According to the local

Inquirer newspaper, the dead and mutilated victims are combatants -- 
"little Eichmanns".

"This is our Valentine gift to Gloria (President Macapagal-Arroyo)," Abu
Solayman, a self-proclaimed Abu Sayyaf spokesperson, said when interviewed by
GMA Network radio station dzBB. Speaking at least 30 minutes after the Makati
bombing, Solayman warned of more attacks.

"We will find more ways to inflict damage," he said. "The defenders of
Islam have struck again. It is our response to unabated atrocities that the
government has been committing against the Muslims, from the harassment and
arrest of innocent Muslims in Manila, to the attack in our own homes (in
Mindanao)." Solayman ominously added: "Grieve and mourn your dead. We will
make no distinction between civilians and (soldiers). You create your own
government."

The "harassment and arrest of innocent Muslims" may be a reference to the

recent rollup of a gang planning to bomb a traditional church procession in
crowded district of Quiapo, ironically only a short distance from a mosque of
fairly new construction.

Some 320 suspected Muslim militants are being hunted in connection with
terrorist plots, including an alleged plan to bomb the Feast of the Black
Nazarene procession in Quiapo, Manila last Sunday, the Philippine National
Police (PNP) said yesterday. ... At least three improvised explosive devices
and hand guns were seized in the raid which police said foiled the planned
bombing of the Black Nazarene procession, in which an ebony image of Jesus was
paraded around Quiapo. The procession pushed through without a hitch.
Organizers said it was the biggest crowd in recent years. ...

Penny Disimbal, national president of the Assalam Bangsamoro People�s
Party, branded as "irresponsible" the CIDG�s claims that the arrested men were
terrorists ... Disimbal added that they have witnesses to prove that the
alleged explosives and firearms seized from the suspects were "planted" by law
enforcers who barged into the Islamic Information Center, located on the
second floor of the Agoncillo Building on Pedro Gil street and Taft Avenue in
Manila, without search warrants.

Witnesses said two members of the raiding team brought black bags where the
supposed explosives and firearms were kept, later presenting these to
reporters as evidence. "We abhor and detest the unceremonious desecration of
the Muslim Mussalla prayer room and learning center and the arrest of 16
innocent Muslim individuals without justifiable reason or basis and the
continuing harassment of the Muslims in Metro Manila and elsewhere," Disimbal
said.

Every Precaution a Provocation

According to the Reuters,
Australia may be guilty of preparing its soldiers to resist interrogation which
goes beyond that allowed by the Geneva Convention.

Australian soldiers are stripped naked, hooded, deprived of sleep and
threatened with physical and sexual abuse, methods banned under the Geneva
Convention, to train them to resist interrogation if captured by hostile
forces. Defence Minister Robert Hill told parliament in a written statement
that Australia had been conducting the training for the past five years. Hill
said no soldier was actually abused and that soldiers who would be conducting
interrogations of prisoners were not permitted to undergo the training.

An Australian civil liberties group criticised the government on Sunday,
when news of the training first became public, saying such training was
unacceptable. ... "These people are people who ultimately may have to
look after prisoners of war and this is not the example that should be set.
It's not a fair enough argument to say that they should be trained by being
tortured," Murphy told reporters. Photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing
prisoners in Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq shocked the world when published in 2004.

If the inner logic of the accusation seems strange, it shouldn't. The US and
Australia are at war with a gentle enemy. Noble insurgents who wouldn't hurt a
fly and against which no such rigorous preparation is necessary, though if they
turned out not to be noble, it wouldn't be their fault. But if any captured
Australians weren't prepared for torture, it would be due to the
negligence of John Howard, just as it is Rumsfeld's fault there aren't enough
armored Humvees in Iraq, despite the fact that it is a waste of money to divert
spending away from social programs and environmental concerns to the War
Machine.

According to Newsweek,
Kim Jong Il can still be dissuaded from building nuclear weapons if America
gives him what he wants.

George W. Bush has given Kim ample reason to worry. The president has long
insisted that North Korea scrap its nukes before Washington makes concrete
offers of aid or other inducements. ... Rice noted hopefully that Pyongyang
still aimed for a "denuclearized Korean Peninsula," and she said
America's approach was to continue diplomacy: "The United States has no
intention of attacking or invading North Korea." But in truth, the
administration has not put any new diplomatic solutions on the table since
June�not least because some senior Bush hawks believe talking and cutting
deals won't work. ...

If bribes are not enough, America should consider laying down a few arms to
show North Korea how much we care.

Some worry that American scientists already are losing a bit of their edge.
"Pakistan is now producing more nuclear pits [the plutonium charge in the
first stage of a fusion weapon] than the U.S. does," says Peter Pye of
the House Armed Services Committee. "Do we really want to lose the
technological lead which we have built up at such cost over the years?"
That concern is fueling talk that even fresh weapons tests may be needed. A
few lawmakers think that some erosion of U.S. nuclear know-how is a risk worth
taking if it will help diplomatic efforts to halt nuclear proliferation. The
spread of nukes, they point out, is perhaps America's biggest nightmare in the
age of terror. And as the propaganda from Pyongyang suggested, Washington will
have a hard time insisting that other nations remain nuclear-free if it
continues to insist on developing new warheads.

It is American strength that has encouraged North Korea to arm; and it will
be American weakness that will induce Pyongyang to disarm. But it is equally
true, according
to US House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi that the reckless Bush
Administration policy of weakening the military has embolded Kim Jong Il, who is
otherwise peace-loving, to threaten to incinerate North Asia.

"This administration has not paid enough attention to the situation in
North Korea," Pelosi said. "The North Koreans know that we are
otherwise occupied in military actions in other parts of the world and they
have taken the liberty to be brazen."

Once upon a time the simultaneous accusations of too much preparation and too
little; not enough bribery and too much; a surfeit of strength and a want of it
could be made without much trouble. If being on the Left meant never having to
say you're sorry; not being on the Left meant being guilty without effort. You
could be a Filipino cook jumping from a 110 storey building and still be a
"Little Eichmann". The miracles of the saints were as nothing to the
transubstantiations of the Left. But the trouble came with memory. The Internet.
And with remembrance the dim recollection of betrayal.

Easy To Be Hard; Easy to be cold

Sometime it is instructive to watch just how much the Left, in its unguarded
moments, shows its love for the poor and downtrodden of the Third World. This snippet
from the New
York Times  account of the conviction of radical lawyer Lynne
Stewart illustrates it clearly.  Stewart was an the attorney for terrorist
Blind Sheik Abdel Rahman and passed messages to and from the mastermind to his
associates. 

The prosecution also showed videotapes of Ms. Stewart saying "good for them" when her client was told in her presence that a militant group in the Philippines had taken hostages. Recordings showed that she seemed to enjoy trying to distract prison guards so they would not know when her translator was giving Mr. Abdel Rahman messages about his followers and their plans.

The New
Sisyphus, which quotes from Stewart's indictment provides more details on
why Stewart said the kidnapping was "good for them": because it was
good for her client.

j. On or about May 19, 2000, during a prison visit to Abdel Rahman by STEWART and YOUSRY, YOUSRY told Abdel Rahman and. STEWART about the kidnappings by the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the Philippines and Abu Sayyaf�s demand to free Abdel Rahman, to which STEWART replied, �Good for them.� STEWART then told Abdel Rahman that she believed he could be released from prison if the government in Egypt were changed. STEWART also told Abdel Rahman that events like the Abu Sayyaf kidnappings in the Philippines are important, although they �may be futile,� because it is �very, very crucial� that Abdel Rahman not be forgotten as a hero of the �Muiahadeen� (Jihad warriors). 

The Superseding
Indictment against Lynne Stewart et al by the Department of Justice
describes how Rahman tried to use his terrorist confederates to spring him
loose, and how Stewart helped.

The superseding indictment charges that, �[a]fter Abdel Rahman�s arrest, a coalition of terrorists, supporters, and followers, including leaders and associates of the Islamic Group, al Qaeda, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the Philippines, threatened and committed acts of terrorism directed at obtaining the release of Abdel Rahman from prison.�...

Also during the May 2000 prison visit, the superseding indictment alleges that Yousry told Abdel Rahman and Stewart about kidnappings by the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the Philippines and �Abu Sayyaf�s demand to free Abdel Rahman, to which Stewart replied, �Good for them.��

A contemporaneous report by CNN
notes that some of the hostages ("good for them") held at the time
were Filipino children.

The Abu Sayyaf is also reportedly seeking the release of three men -- including Ramzi Yousef, the alleged mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Omar Abdel-Rahman, accused of conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks -- from jails in the United States.
...

In addition to the 10 Malaysians, the rebels are believed to be holding 10 international tourists -- from Germany, France, South Africa, Finland and Lebanon. The nationality of the 21st hostage was not known.
The Abu Sayyaf has been linked to two kidnapping situations in the Philippines. The group has reportedly held 27 hostages -- including 17 children -- for nearly six weeks in Basilan province, where it is under attack by Philippine troops. 

Whether the children would be released in exchange for Mr. Rahman is unknown.
But here is the transcript
of the conversation between Rahman, his confederate Yousry (masquerading as a
translator) and radical lawyer Lynne Stewart.

YOUSRY	Mr. Abdeen is eh... I am telling the Sheikh about the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines, and they took hostages...The, in the New York Times, never said that they wanted to free the Sheikh.
ABDEL RAHMAN:	And Ramzi Yousef.
STEWART:	Uhm.
YOUSRY:	But they eh, their demand is to free the Sheikh and Ramzi Yousef.
STEWART:	Good for them, I didn�t read that either.
YOUSRY:	She says, Sir that she never read it in the newspapers either.
ABDEL RAHMAN:	No, I eh, eh....
STEWART:	Amazing, and they never said that.
YOUSRY:	Yeah, they never did, they never did.
ABDEL RAHMAN:	But are they still holding the hostages?
YOUSRY:	Yes Sir, they still hold the hostages.
ABDEL RAHMAN:	Uhm.
YOUSRY:	[Arranging his papers] They are still holding them, they are telling them that unless they respond to their demands, they will kill them.
ABDEL RAHMAN:	Wow!
YOUSRY:	Especially a German female with a heart condition, they are raising a big fuss.
STEWART:	Have they still, are they still holding them?
YOUSRY:	Yeah, and they still have them.

Filipino children and a sick German woman were all expendable in pursuit of
whatever people like Stewart pursue. Leftist professor Ward Churchill, who is
under fire for describing victims of the World Trade Center attack as
"little Eichmanns", said in his book On the Justice of Roosting Chickens 
that perhaps a few thousand would have to die for society to come around to his
point of view. But they were nothing to cry over: just expendable Nazis.

Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire � the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved � and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" � a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" � counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in � and in many cases excelling at � it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

The little Eichmann victims at the World Trade Center included fifteen
Filipinos, sixteen Jamaicans, seventeen Columbians and fifteen Mexicans -- all
dismissed with a wave of a hand. The Rocky
Mountain News records Churchill as saying, "I'm not backing off an
inch. I owe no one an apology". One of the sources of the inhuman
'strength' of the Left is its refusal to acknowledge the existence of anything
smaller than a mass noun. Rhetorical service to the people, masses, workers,
peasants; the poor and the downtrodden are objects worthy of the Left; but love,
pity and sorrow for individuals is sentiment beneath contempt.

I Lied

The

UK Times reports egg on everyone's face in the wake of North Korea's
announcement that it has nuclear weapons.

The political, as distinct from military, significance of North Korea�s
move is considerable. Since being confronted in 2002 with US evidence that it
had cheated on a 1994 agreement to suspend all its nuclear weapons programmes,
the regime has tried bluff, bluster and partial truths. Both forced admissions
and boastful hints emanated from behind closed doors, in official negotiations
or in easily retracted hints to reporters. Never before has it made a formal
public statement that it possesses nuclear bombs.

The regime of Kim Jong Il may not have intended to make life more difficult
for Beijing, but it has surely done so. China�s stance throughout has been
that it opposes a nuclear-armed Korean peninsula, but that since it was
unclear whether North Korea was even close to the point of developing actual
nuclear weapons, the US and Japan should have the patience to fall in with
China�s preferred strategy of gradual engagement. Only last week, US envoys
were in Beijing to show the Chinese evidence of a North Korean sale of a
uranium compound to Libya, and to deliver a letter, from George W. Bush to
President Hu Jintao, speaking of �the greatly heightened urgency� of tackling
the problem. Now that Pyongyang itself has made that case, Beijing must have
been thankful yesterday that the Chinese new year holiday excused it from
early comment.

Well how about that? Kim Jong Il actually lied to Jimmy Carter and Bill
Clinton. Who would have thought it possible? The problem with nuclear weapons
nonproliferation agreements today is that they create the temptation to plan
contingencies on the basis of intent rather than capability. North
Korea is a case in point. The diplomatic approach toward North Korea depended
not on its actual capability but on the perception of its capability. Nothing
changed over 24 hours except the North Korean press release claiming the
possession of nuclear weapons; yet the announcement, not the reality, made all
the difference. The reason the fiction, if fiction it was, lasted so long is
that so many desperately wanted to believe that WMDs could be contained, so that
the music could keep playing and everyone could return to the old games
of saving the whales, dancing in ethnic costumes and clapping their hands.

Faces along the bar

Cling to their average day:

The lights must never go out,

The music must always play,

All the conventions conspire

To make this fort assume

The furniture of home;

Lest we should see where we are,

Lost in a haunted wood,

Children afraid of the night

who have never been happy or good.

--

WH Auden

The alternative is to abandon the "sophisticated" view of a stable
international order and understand that we are a planet in crisis; that in some
meaningful sense humanity is in a death match with terror.

All for One and One for All 2

North Korea has announced that it has href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=486863"
target="_blank">nuclear
weapons.

Seoul, South Korea Feb 10, 2005 � North Korea on Thursday announced for
the first time that it has nuclear weapons and rejected moves to restart
disarmament talks any time soon, saying it needs the armaments as protection
against an increasingly hostile United States. ...

Previously, North Korea reportedly told U.S. negotiators in private talks
that it had nuclear weapons and might test one of them. Its U.N. envoy told
The Associated Press last year that the country had "weaponized"
plutonium from its pool of 8,000 nuclear spent fuel rods.

This had long been suspected. Pyongyang's declaration may be doubted without
a test that proves actual possession. But why announce nuclear status now? North Korea benefited from
an earlier ambiguity for several reasons. The foremost was keeping Japan
non-nuclear. The second was to extort payments from those who preferred to think
that bribes would prevent them from attaining what they already had. Lastly,
there remained the hope that North Korea could sell its secret weaponry for
profit or use it deniably. All these advantages are now foregone.

In exchange North Korea may believe that a nuclear status will confer great power status
and immunity from outside interference. A Pyongyang worried about its stability
would be tempted to use a nuclear status to say 'leave me alone'. But North
Koreas declaration, whether true or false will now force Japan, Australia, Taiwan, South Korea and perhaps
Singapore to either obtain ironclad guarantees of inclusion
under the American nuclear umbrella or develop nukes themselves. It would be
intolerable for those countries to face a North Korean threat without a
comeback. The could trigger a chain reaction of proliferation. For example,
Australian nukes would make Indonesia think of having them.

The acquisition of nuclear weapons by a rogue or lawless state with weak
control systems will create, to a lesser degree, one the instabilities
consequent to a nonstate organization like Al Qaeda getting them. As
target="_blank">All
for One and One for All pointed out, a world in which the possession of
nuclear weapons became commonplace and deniable use possible would create an
environment where smaller nations and eventually nonstate actors would pursue
secret WMD programs not out of superpower fear, but out of mutual dread. In
1962, Israel feared that Nasser of Egypt was preparing a radiological attack on
Israel. In a
meeting with President Kennedy, Golda Meir stated those concerns:

Israel knows that Egypt has, with German help, been building ground-to-ground missiles since 1960. Now Israel has learned, as it didn't know one or two months ago, that the Egyptians are making preparations for radiological warfare. The warheads are to be filled with materials that would contaminate the land for years and years. It seems that if the refugees can't come back, the Egyptians think that at least the land should not be available to Israelis. Now Israel has information that Egypt has established a secret budget of $220-250,000,000 for work of about four years or so on this. 

Whether true or not, such fears may have fueled the secret Israeli nuclear
weapons program. Its history,
with minor changes of date and names, sounds disturbingly familiar.

For reactor design and construction, Israel sought the assistance of France.
... France was a natural partner for Israel and both governments saw an independent nuclear option as a means by which they could maintain a degree of autonomy in the bipolar environment of the cold war.
...  This complex was constructed in secret, and outside the IAEA inspection regime, by French and Israeli technicians at Dimona, in the Negev desert under the leadership of Col. Manes Pratt of the IDF Ordinance Corps.



At the height construction, some 1,500 Israelis some French workers were employed building Dimona. To maintain secrecy, French customs officials were told that the largest of the reactor components, such as the reactor tank, were part of a desalinization plant bound for Latin America.
... President de Gaulle was concerned that the inevitable scandal following any revelations about French assistance with the project, especially the chemical reprocessing plant, would have negative repercussions for France's international position, already on shaky ground because of its war in Algeria.



At a subsequent meeting with Ben-Gurion, de Gaulle offered to sell Israel fighter aircraft in exchange for stopping work on the reprocessing plant, and came away from the meeting convinced that the matter was closed. It was not.
...  In reality, not much changed - French contractors finished work on the reactor and reprocessing plant, uranium fuel was delivered and the reactor went critical in 1964.



The United States first became aware of Dimona's existence after U-2 overflights in 1958 captured the facility's construction, but it was not identified as a nuclear site until two years later. The complex was variously explained as a textile plant, an agricultural station, and a metallurgical research facility, until David Ben-Gurion stated in December 1960 that Dimona complex was a nuclear research center built for "peaceful purposes."

The Jewish-Islamic arms race had begun. There is precious little historical basis to believe that every ethnic hatred in the world will not someday engage in its equivalent.