Iranian outrage continues.

Forced to wear the Islamic head scarf that identifies a woman to be without normal human rights and against the Geneva Convention, a British sailor, is paraded on Iranian TV. I am sure we can shortly expect to hear from all civil libertarians and those interested in international law.

TEHRAN, Iran Mar 28, 2007 (AP)— Iranian state TV showed video Wednesday of the 15 British sailors and marines who were seized last week, including a female captive who wore a white tunic and a black head scarf and said the British boats "had trespassed" in Iranian waters.

The British government protested Iran's broadcast of the captured crew as "completely unacceptable." The British military had earlier released what it called proof that its boats were in the territorial waters of Iraq not Iran when they were seized.

Slaughter in Iraq. Human history predicts much more to come.

History is the only guide that we have to predict future events. Government, religion, politics, and law are all based on the past. There are reoccurring themes. Slaughter and mayhem in World War I and WWII led to the creation of the European Union. The cost was fifty million dead and unimaginable destruction.

When the blood lust was satisfied and all alternatives to war were exhausted, a power of uncontested strength and a demonstrated history of willingness to use that power stepped forward. The US provided the security for a willing Europe to make a meaningful change. That is history. It happened because all parties wanted it to be.

That formula does not exist in the Muslim world. They have not killed enough of each other yet. They will.

50 men 'executed' in Iraq terror carnage
David Byers and agencies

Gunmen have executed up to 50 Sunnis in an ethnically divided Iraqi town, in what appeared to be a horrific revenge attack for the slaughtering of 75 mainly Shia Muslims in a double-truck bombing only hours before.

In signs that the sectarian conflict in the north-western Iraqi community of Tal Afar is rapidly spiralling out of control, dozens of men were randomly shot in the head by rampaging gunmen in an overnight attack at the Sunni district of al-Wahda.

Police and military sources claim that the gang, some of whom may be off duty Shia policemen, stormed through the neighbourhood, firing at their victims at close range and leaving bodies piling up in homes and on Tal Afar's streets.

A doctor at the town's main hospital - still overwhelmed with casualties after the earlier double suicide bombing - this morning confirmed that all those who died had been shot in the head in deliberate execution style.

In the first of yesterday's bombing attacks, one of the bombers was reported to have lured victims to buy wheat loaded onto his truck before blowing himself up. The second exploded was in a used car lot. The death toll from the blasts was still rising this morning, as many of the injured are reported to be in a serious condition.

A doctor at Tal Afar's main hospital said that he was rapidly losing control of the situation.

"I wish you can come and see all the bodies. They are lying in the grounds. We don’t have enough space in the hospital. All of the victims were shot in the head," he told Reuters.

"No less than 45 people were killed. I’ve never seen such a thing in my life." Police and military officials later put the casualty figure at around 50.

The attacks follow an upsurge in violence in Baghdad and outside the capital in recent days which has showed no sign of abating.

US and Iraqi security forces have deployed thousands more soldiers in the Iraqi capital to try to stem a sectarian war threatening to tear the country apart, and the US has increased its own troop deployment in a controversial troop 'surge.'

The Tal Afar carnage is all the more ironic because George W Bush last year used the town as an example of the progress being made in Iraq after US-led forces freed it from al Qaeda in an offensive in 2005.

Inevitable Showdowns

The UN issues anther warning about Sudan and calls for stronger sanctions. In Eqypt, Mubarak pushes through a controversial group of Constitutional Amendments in an election boycotted by the Muslim Brotherhood. Today the US rattled the saber but is it just for show and will Iraq even slow down in the run up to the inevitable showdown between the Islamic world and the West?

As if George Bush didn't have his hands full fighting the "evil doers" abroad, the lynch mob is gathering outside AG Gonzalez's office. Bob Novak wrote a column echoing what I said about George Bush being one of the loneliest lame ducks in Presidential history.

Why are we not getting Carter's advice on Iran? He usually has more to say.

Carter's hand still felt in Iran
Last Updated:March 26. 2007 11:00PM
Published: March 27. 2007 3:30AM
Times Daily

Where is Jimmy Carter when we need him the most? The former president who has spent his post-White House years giving his successors the benefit of his foreign policy expertise whether they wanted it or not, has been curiously reticent when it comes to Iran. After all, no U. S. president past or present has more experience with the Persian menace than Carter.

The latest U.N. sanctions against Iran for its determination to enrich uranium with the quite obvious goal of becoming a nuclear power mark almost 30 years of unsuccessful efforts by the civilized world to control a radical rogue regime that got its start because of Carter's misguided policies.

In fairness, however, the former peanut farmer's mistakes were compounded by the tunnel vision of several other administrations that focused unswervingly on Saddam Hussein, whom we now know was merely a loud mouthed con artist when it came to international dealings and a vicious thug and bully at home.

George W. Bush's willingness to accept the fiction of Iraq's secret efforts to build weapons of mass destruction, as Oliver Hardy used to say, has gotten us into another fine mess, while the Iranians clapped their hands in glee over the demise of their Sunni enemy and the installation of a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad. While Saddam's efforts to develop WMDs turned out to be so clandestine that even he didn't know about them, the Iranians were on the road to the real thing.

It is now hard to believe that these new sanctions imposed unanimously by the U.N. Security Council will have the impact intended. The Iranians are nothing if not resilient and stubborn and hard nosed when it comes to dealing with the West. Their apprehension of 15 British sailors and marines in Iraqi waters is a case in point. They also realize that the super powered United States is in no position to do much more than call them names like "evil,'' strained as its military is with the twin problems of Iraq and Afghanistan. Certainly, no one else, including the Russians, is about to back up the tough language-militarily.

The real laugh in all this, of course, is the constant insistence by Internet dummies that an invasion of Iran is next on the Bush agenda and that such an action is imminent. Invade with what? U.S. forces are so depleted in men and materiel that they would have a tough time staging a successful landing on Granada (anyway, we've already done that). Oh sure, we could bust Tehran with a hydrogen bomb and set off a chain reaction of death and destruction unlike the world has ever seen. But get serious.

There was a time, of course, when the threat to level the Iranian capital, backed up with the righteousness of a country whose sovereignty had been violated, might have nipped all this in the bud. But that was when the religious fanatics broke into our embassy and held Americans hostage for more than a year while Carter dithered, something he did a lot of despite his Naval Academy education. Not to open old wounds, but as a lesson for those who don't subscribe to the past is prologue concept, it was Carter's decision to pull the rug out from America's longtime ally in Iran, the shah, and clear the way for a religious zealot with 11th century ideas, that started us on the road here in the first place.

Carter then reinforced growing Iranian dislike for American infidels by permitting the shah to receive medical treatment in the United States although he had been warned of the consequences. This led to the embassy invasion and his decision to use such powerful negotiators as his onetime baggage hauler and then White House chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, in unsuccessfully trying to free the hostages. Brilliant.

It has been all down hill for the United States in this area since. Ronald Reagan, pressured by the relatives of other victims kidnapped with the backing of Tehran, became embroiled in the Iran Contra nightmare and the first George Bush set the stage for the second's actions by kicking Saddam out of Kuwait in Desert Storm, then wisely withdrawing sooner than some would have liked. We knew then how light a threat Saddam was, but Bill Clinton nurtured the strength illusion.

So, pinning much hope on the economic sanctions is probably unwise. The entire Middle East has been so destabilized by the mess in Iraq that to contemplate what might occur next is an exercise in depression. The radical Persians want to fill the power void and are well on their way to doing so. They really should thank Carter.

Dan Thomasson writes for Scripps Howard News Service.

Iraq headed in right direction? The departing Zalmay Khalilzad says yes.

Departing U.S. Envoy Says Iraq Moving in Right Direction
Voice of America

The departing U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said in farewell remarks that Iraq is headed in the right direction, but there is still much work to be done. From northern Iraq, VOA's Margaret Besheer has more.
Ambassador Khalilzad leaves Iraq after a challenging 21-month tenure.

What started with the promising achievement of a new Iraqi constitution, has ended with a stalled political reconciliation process and rampant sectarian violence in the capital and surrounding areas.

Instead of seeing the withdrawal this year of some American forces, President Bush has authorized the deployment of 30,000 more troops in a bid to stop the violence.

Ambassador Khalilzad told reporters in Baghdad that the recent surge in American troops conducting security operations in these volatile areas provides an opportunity for Iraqis.

"I believe it is very important for the Iraqis to take the opportunity that the presence of these forces provide, to make the decisions and the compromises that are necessary," he said. "And I believe that as long as that is the case, the United States will stay and support Iraq, although the size and composition will vary because our goal is as soon as Iraqis can take matters into their own hands and can stand on their own feet, look after their own security, the better."

The ambassador confirmed a U.S. news report that he and members of his staff have had contacts with representatives from Sunni insurgent groups. He said the talks are aimed at isolating al-Qaida in Iraq.

A few days ago, Ambassador Khalilzad said his good-byes to the people of northern Iraq's Kurdistan region.

At the inauguration of a $200 million water treatment plant financed by the United States, Ambassador Khalilzad pointed to political and reconstruction successes in this part of Iraq as an example of what is possible for the rest of the country.

"The road ahead for the Kurdistan region is one filled with great opportunities and I am excited and invigorated by what is happening here," he said. "I want to assure all my Kurdish colleagues here that the United States will stand with you as you move forward."

On Sunday, Iraqi officials wished the ambassador well in his next post. President Bush has nominated him to be the U.S. envoy to the United Nations.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki thanked Ambassador Khalilzad for his dedication to the Iraqi people and his efforts for Iraq and said he hoped that work would continue.

Ambassador Khalilzad's successor, Ryan Crocker, has had a long career as a diplomat in the Middle East, having served as the top U.S. diplomat in Kuwait, Lebanon and Syria. He leaves his post as ambassador to Pakistan to come to Baghdad.

Note: The picture above of Khalilzad and al-Maliki is of when they were announcing the killing of the the loathsome Zarqawi. I inserted the full size picture (Click on with caution) of the human sewer for the viewing pleasure of some of the EB patrons that needed a smile. I wonder how the virgin thing is working for him?

The Islamic comma.

Every time I hear some Islamic spokesman trying to explain the religion of peace, I always get some variation on,

"It was a terrible thing that your mother's house was blown up by a suicide Muslim girl scout cookie seller, but you have to understand that US support for..."

Always a comma. Always a comma. We shall call it the Islamic comma.
This snippet from an article caught my eye...

"Mrs Lamb, from Fareham, fled Iran in 1988 with her sister after they faced persecution for following the Baha'i faith outlawed by Iran's Islamic fundamentalist leaders.

The 38-year-old accountant said: 'I have all the respect for the sailors and sympathy for their families, and I pray to God they come home as soon as possible, safe and healthy.

'But the British and American governments have got to learn to respect other countries and their boundaries..."

Now here is some Muslim drivel from someone who has been no doubt sponging off the British taxpayer because she had to flee the Iranian cesspool created by the mullahs. Yet she has to revert to the use of the "comma". No simple declaration of support just the normal polite version of ,"we hate your guts."

'Capture was wrong – but so is British presence in Gulf'
Pourtsmouth Today (UK)

AN ACTIVE member of the local Iranian community has said both sides must take some of the blame in the ongoing row over the 15 captured sailors.
Munni Lamb is calling for the prisoners to be released safely but has also questioned why British forces need to be in the Gulf at all.

And as the row escalates over what exactly happened during the raid where eight British sailors and seven Royal Marines were captured, UK diplomats are still trying to gain access to the prisoners. It is not currently known where they are being held, although Iranian sources suggest they have been taken to the capital Tehran.

Mrs Lamb, from Fareham, fled Iran in 1988 with her sister after they faced persecution for following the Baha'i faith outlawed by Iran's Islamic fundamentalist leaders.

The 38-year-old accountant said: 'I have all the respect for the sailors and sympathy for their families, and I pray to God they come home as soon as possible, safe and healthy.

'But the British and American governments have got to learn to respect other countries and their boundaries.

'I think the British government is as answerable as the

Iranian government in this situation.

'I don't think any of the politicians on either side are quite telling the truth, but I do think the sailors were in Iranian waters.'

Muslims in the News

Amir Mohamed Meshal, 24

Imprisoned U.S. citizen says he was in an al Qaida camp in Somalia, but was never a fighter.

WASHINGTON _ A U.S. citizen imprisoned in Ethiopia reportedly told investigators that he was briefly in an al Qaida camp in Somalia and had tried to fire a gun during a clash with foreign troops in the south of the war-torn country, but denied he was a fighter or had undergone military training.

Amir Mohamed Meshal, 24, of Tinton Falls, N.J., made the statements in early January while he was being held in Kenya for illegally entering the country, according to an account provided to McClatchy Newspapers on condition that the source remain anonymous.

His father, Mohamed Meshal, angrily disputed the account, saying that FBI agents who interviewed his son in Kenya had found no grounds on which to charge him, and that four British citizens who had been held with him were freed and sent home.

“This was under coercion or under threat,” he said of the account. “U.S. officials are orchestrating the whole symphony.”

The case is at the center of an international controversy triggered by the disclosure that Amir Mohamed Meshal _ and scores of other people _ who entered Kenya from Somalia were secretly sent back to Somalia without legal proceedings between Jan. 20 and Feb. 10, then turned over to Ethiopian forces.

Read more.

---

Australian Hicks first to face Guantanamo trial

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australian David Hicks will become the first Guantanamo Bay inmate to face a U.S. military tribunal hearing on Monday, but a growing band of supporters want the trial scrapped and his case heard in an Australian court.

Hicks, 31, a Muslim convert and former ranch hand from the sleepy suburbs of Adelaide, is charged with providing material support for terrorism by joining al Qaeda fighters in
Afghanistan.

The arraignment before the newly constituted U.S. military commission comes more than five years after Hicks was captured in late 2001 by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan as he allegedly tried to flee in a taxi.

Australia's conservative government has refused to intervene in the Hicks case, saying he could not be charged at home because his alleged offences were not a crime in Australia at the time.

But growing public support for Hicks, and frustration at the military commission system, has forced Prime Minister John Howard to express frustration at trial delays and could become an issue for national elections due in the second half of 2007.

"At first there was patience, then there was concern, and now there is increased outrage," said Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown, who heckled
President Bush about Hicks when Bush addressed Australia's parliament in 2003.

Several government lawmakers broke ranks in February and demanded Hicks be returned home. Opinion polls show 69 percent of Australians want him to face a civilian trial at home.

NO "BACKPACKING FROLIC"

Howard has raised the issue of delays directly with Bush, and has an agreement allowing Hicks to serve a prison sentence back in Australia if convicted by the U.S. military. But he continues to support the military tribunals and says Hicks must face trial.

"He wasn't in Afghanistan on some kind of backpacking frolic. These are very serious allegations and they should be tested," Howard told Australian radio earlier this month.

A high-school dropout, Hicks worked on cattle stations in the Australian outback, and as a fisherman, before stunning friends and family when he scored a job in Japan as a horse trainer.

But in 1999, angered by media coverage of Serbian atrocities against Muslims in
Kosovo, Hicks traveled to Albania to join the paramilitary Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), although he claimed he saw no fighting.

The U.S. charge sheet against him says Hicks completed military training at a KLA camp and engaged in hostile action before returning to Australia, where he converted to Islam.

In 2000, Hicks went to Pakistan, where he began training with militant network Lashkar e-Toiba. The U.S. charge sheet says Hicks went to Afghanistan in January 2001 where he met al Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden.

BRING HICKS HOME

Hicks' father, Terry Hicks, has spearheaded an international campaign to both humanize his son and seek his return home.

In 2003, he went to Times Square in New York, dressed in orange Guantanamo-style prison overalls, and stood inside a metal cage to highlight how his son was being detained. He followed that with a documentary retracing his son's journey.

Australia's law council, which represents the nation's lawyers, has demanded Hicks be returned to Australia, saying the military trial had an "unacceptably low standard of justice."

High-profile Australian adventurer and businessman Dick Smith also joined the Hicks camp, offering to pay his legal bills.

But not everyone has sympathy.

The Australian newspaper said it would be an injustice if Hicks did not have to face trial to account for joining the KLA, Lashkar e-Toiba, al Qaeda and the Taliban.

"To join one terrorist group could I suppose be regarded as careless," the Australian's foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, wrote in February. "To join four is pretty much beyond the pale."

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib wears a shirt bearing a slogan in relation to the continued detention of Australian citizen David Hicks at Guantanoma Bay, as he talks to his campaign advisors in Sydney March 21, 2007. Australian David Hicks, 31, who has been in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay for five years, will be the first al Qaeda suspect to be formally charged under new military commission rules when his preliminary hearing opens on March 26. (Ed Giles/Reuters)

Jose Padilla - Another setback ruling

IAMI - A federal judge refused to dismiss terrorism support charges against Jose Padilla on Friday, rejecting defense claims that his 3 1/2 years in custody as an enemy combatant violated his constitutional right to a speedy trial.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke agreed with prosecutors that Padilla's years in isolation at a Navy brig did not count because he had not yet been charged.

Read more.

Captured, Interrogated and now to be tried for espionage.

From The Sunday Times
March 25, 2007
Iran ‘to try Britons for espionage’

Uzi Mahnaimi, Michael Smith and David Cracknell
FIFTEEN British sailors and marines arrested by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq may be charged with spying.

A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted.

Referring to them as “insurgents”, the site concluded: “If it is proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is one of the most serious offences.”

The warning followed claims by Iranian officials that the British navy personnel had been taken to Tehran, the capital, to explain their “aggressive action” in entering Iranian waters. British officials insist the servicemen were in Iraqi waters when they were held.

The penalty for espionage in Iran is death. However, similar accusations of spying were made when eight British servicemen were detained in the same area in 2004. They were paraded blindfolded on television but did not appear in court and were freed after three nights in detention.

Iranian student groups called yesterday for the 15 detainees to be held until US forces released five Revolutionary Guards captured in Iraq earlier this year.



Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned newspaper based in London, quoted an Iranian military source as saying that the aim was to trade the Royal Marines and sailors for these Guards.

The claim was backed by other sources in Tehran. “As soon as the corps’s five members are released, the Britons can go home,” said one source close to the Guards.

He said the tactic had been approved by Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who warned last week that Tehran would take “illegal actions” if necessary to maintain its right to develop a nuclear programme.

Iran denounced a tightening of sanctions which the United Nations security council was expected to agree last night in protest at Tehran’s insistence on enriching uranium that could be used for nuclear weapons.

Lord Triesman, the Foreign Office minister, met the Iranian ambassador in London yesterday to demand that consular staff be allowed access to the Britons, one of whom is a woman. His intervention came as a senior Iranian general alleged that the Britons had confessed under interrogation to “aggression into Iran’s waters”.

Intelligence sources said any advance order for the arrests was likely to have come from Major-General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards.

Subhi Sadek, the Guards’ weekly newspaper, warned last weekend that the force had “the ability to capture a bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks”.

Safavi is known to be furious about the recent defections to the West of three senior Guards officers, including a general, and the effect of UN sanctions on his own finances.

A senior Iraqi officer appeared to back Tehran’s claim that the British had entered Iranian waters. “We were informed by Iraqi fishermen after they had returned from sea that there were British gunboats in an area that is out of Iraqi control,” said Brigadier-General Hakim Jassim, who is in charge of Iraq’s territorial waters. “We don’t know why they were there.”

Admiral Sir Alan West, the former head of the Royal Navy, dismissed suggestions that the British boats might have been in Iranian waters. West, who was first sea lord when the previous arrests took place in June 2004, said satellite tracking systems had shown then that the Iranians were lying and the same was certain to be true now.