"Pat Tillman. The man gave up his career dream $3.6 MILLION DOLLAR FOOTBALL CONTRACT to fight and die for something greater than anything money could buy."Male 30 years old --- Heaven, United States --- Pat Tillman,R.I.P. is a true American Hero. This is not a political platform this was solely created to enshrine a hero Pat Tillman.Pat was the star NFL Defensive Back who, after the 9/11 attacks, walked away from his $3.6 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist as an elite Army Ranger and go off to Afghanistan to whip some terrorist butt. No matter what your opinion on the U.S. Invasion of Iraq there is no denying that Pat Is a hero.Patrick Daniel Tillman (November 6, 1976 – April 22, 2004) was an American football player who left his professional sports career and enlisted in the United States Army in May 2002. [1] He served in Iraq and later in Afghanistan, where he was killed. Reports in the media of his death and the background of his sacrifice symbolized a heroic image in the minds of many Americans.Born in San Jose, California, Tillman started his college career at the linebacker position for Arizona State University in 1994, when he secured the last remaining scholarship for the team. Tillman excelled as a linebacker at Arizona State, despite being relatively small for the position at five-feet eleven-inches (1.80 m) tall. As a senior, he was voted the Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year. Academically, Tillman majored in marketing and graduated in three and a half years with a 3.84 GPA.In the 1998 NFL Draft, Tillman was selected as the 226th pick by the Arizona Cardinals. Tillman moved over to play the safety position in the NFL and started ten of sixteen games in his rookie season.In May 2002, eight months after the September 11, 2001 attacks and after completing the fifteen remaining games of the 2001 season which followed the attacks (at a salary of $512,000 per year)[4], Tillman turned down a contract offer of $3.6 million over three years from the Cardinals to enlist in the U.S. Army. [5] He enlisted along with his brother Kevin, who gave up the chance of a career in professional baseball. The two brothers completed training for the elite Army Ranger school in late 2002 and were assigned to the second battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment in Fort Lewis, Washington. Both Pat and Kevin were deployed to the Middle East as part of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.Tillman was subsequently redeployed to Afghanistan, where, on April 22, 2004, he was killed in action by friendly fire while on patrol. His unit, according to the Army, was attacked in an apparent ambush on a road outside of the village of Sperah about twenty-five miles (forty km) southwest of Khost, near the Pakistan border. An Afghan militia soldier was killed, and two other Rangers were injured as well. The U.S. Department of Defense concluded that Pat Tillman's death was due to friendly fire aggravated by the intensity of the firefight. It was later learned that, in fact, no hostile forces were involved in the firefight and that two allied groups fired on each other in confusion over an exploded mine or remote controlled bomb. U.S. Army Special Operations Command, however, initially claimed that there was an exchange with hostile forces. A later investigation conducted by Brigadier General Jones found that the Army was slow to correct the story of a hostile exchange of fire after learning that it was false.Tillman was the first professional football player to be killed in combat since the death of Bob Kalsu of the Buffalo Bills, who died in the Vietnam War in 1970. Tillman was posthumously promoted from Specialist to Corporal. He also received posthumous Silver Star and Purple Heart medals. He is survived by his wife Marie.After his death, the Pat Tillman Foundation was established to carry forward Tillman's legacy by inspiring and supporting those striving for positive change in themselves and the world around them. A highway bypass around the Hoover Dam will have a bridge bearing Tillman's name. When completed in 2008, the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge will span the Colorado River between Nevada and Arizona.The Cardinals retired his number 40, and Arizona State did the same for the number 42 he wore with the Sun Devils. The Cardinals said that they will also name the plaza surrounding their new stadium, currently under construction in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, "Pat Tillman Freedom Plaza."Pat Tillman's high school, Leland High School in San Jose, California, renamed its football field after him.On Saturday, April 15, 2006, more than 10,000 participants turned out for Pat's Run in Tempe, Arizona. The racers traveled along the 4.2-mile course around Tempe Town Lake to the finish line, located on the Sun Devil's 42 yardline. For this its second year, participants in the race nearly doubled from 5,500.please CLICK www.pattillmanfoundation.org
CLICK NOW THE DEMOCRATS SAY PRESIDENT BUSH LIED, THAT THERE NEVER WERE ANY WMD'S AND HE TOOK US TO WAR FOR HIS OIL BUDDIES??? ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------------------"O ne way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------That is our bottom line." ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998 ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------- We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998- ------------------------------------------------------------ -----------------------------"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ --------- For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face." -- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------- Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." - ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998-- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."-- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------- Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998-------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."--------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------ Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998-------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------- "Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."--------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------ Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999-------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------"T here is no doubt that . Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs.--------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------ Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status.----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------- In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."---------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------- Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL, ) and others, Dec, 5, 2001-------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------"W e begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------- Sen. Carl Levin (d, MI), Sept. 19, 2002.------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ -----------------"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002- ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002-------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seing and developing weapons of mass destruction." Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002 ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons,- ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..." ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ --------- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002 ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force if necessary to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ --------- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2000 *----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years .- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------We also should remember we have alway s underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ --------- Sen. Jay Rockerfeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002,------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------"He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do." ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------ Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002-------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability,------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- and his nuclear program.---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ --------- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002-------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction.------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------"[W]ithout question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ --------- He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation.- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------And now he has continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ --------- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003-------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------NOW THE DEMOCRATS SAY PRESIDENT BUSH LIED, THAT THERE NEVER WERE ANY WMD'S AND HE TOOK US TO WAR FOR HIS OIL BUDDIES??? ---------- CLICK HERE ------ BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP --------- The United States currently grants automatic U.S. citizenship to almost all children born in the United States, regardless of whether the parents are U.S. citizens, legal residents, temporary visitors, or illegal aliens in the United States. Some 380,000 children are born in the United States each year to illegal-alien mothers, according to U.S. Census data. The only exceptions to this automatic granting of citizenship are the children of foreign diplomats stationed in the United States, whose citizenship at birth is governed by international treaty.---------- "ANCHOR BABIES" --------The children born in the United States to illegal-alien mothers are often referred to as "anchor babies." Under current practice, these children are U.S. citizens at birth, simply because they were born on U.S. soil.They are called anchor babies because, as U.S. citizens, they become eligible to sponsor for legal immigration most of their relatives, including their illegal-alien mothers, when they turn 21 years of age, thus becoming the U.S. "anchor" for an extended immigrant family.While there is no formal policy that forbids DHS from deporting the illegal-alien parents of children born in the U.S., they rarely are actually deported. In some cases, immigration judges make exceptions for the parents on the basis of their U.S.-born children and grant the parents legal status. In many cases, though, immigration officials choose not to initiate removal proceedings against illegal aliens with U.S.-born children, so they simply remain here illegally.Thus, the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens not only represent additional U.S. population growth, but act as 'anchors' to eventually pull a large number of extended family members into the country legally. In fact, an entire industry has built up around the U.S. system of birthright citizenship. Thousands of pregnant women who are about to deliver come to the United States each year from countries as far away as South Korea and as near as Mexico so that they can give birth on U.S. soil. Some come legally as temporary visitors; others enter illegally. Once the child is born, they get a U.S. birth certificate and passport for the child, and their future link to this country is established and irreversible.Fourteenth Amendment DebateBirthright citizenship is based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was originally enacted to ensure civil rights for the newly freed slaves after the Civil War. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment states, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."A serious and scholarly debate has been on-going for years about whether illegal aliens (and temporary visitors) are, in fact, "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States. Some scholars insist that the phrase has no real meaning of its own, but rather is essentially another way of saying "born in the United States." They believe the Fourteenth Amendment requires that any child born on U.S. soil be granted U.S. citizenship. Other scholars look to the legal traditions observed by most courts, including the presumption that all words used in a legislation are intended to have meaning (i.e., not simply be restatements) and that, if the meaning of a word or phrase is unclear or ambiguous, the congressional debate over the legislation may indicate the authors' intent. These scholars therefore presume that "subject to the jurisdiction" means something different from "born in the United States," so they have looked to the original Senate debate over the Fourteenth Amendment to determine its meaning. They conclude that the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment did NOT want to grant citizenship to every person who happened to be born on U.S. soil.The jurisdiction requirement was added to the original draft of the Fourteenth Amendment by the Senate after a lengthy and acrimonious debate. In fact, Senator Jacob Merritt Howard of Michigan proposed the addition of the phrase specifically because he wanted to make clear that the simple accident of birth in the United States was not sufficient to justify citizenship. Sen. Howard noted that the jurisdiction requirement is "simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already." Sen. Howard said that "this will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons."Sen. Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, who was the only Democrat to participate in the Senate debate, was even more explicit about the meaning of the jurisdiction requirement: “[A]ll persons born in the United States and not subject to some foreign Power -- for that, no doubt, is the meaning of the committee who have brought the matter before -- shall be considered as citizens of the United States.†Sen. Johnson's reading of the jurisdiction requirement also is consistent with our naturalization requirements. Since at least 1795, federal laws governing naturalization have required aliens to renounce all allegiance to any foreign power and to support the U.S. Constitution. Such allegiance was never assumed simply because the alien was residing in the United States; instead an affirmative oath was required.In light of these and other statements made during the Senate debate over the Fourteenth Amendment, it appears clear that the authors intended only to grant citizenship to persons born here who were also "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States. They understood that phrase to have the same meaning as the phrase "and not subject to any foreign Power," included in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which these same Senators had earlier drafted. And by "subject to the jurisdiction," they meant "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States in every sense," and "[n]ot owing allegiance to anybody else."It would be difficult to argue that illegal aliens and temporary visitors are "not subject to [a] foreign [p]ower" or that they do not "ow[e] allegiance to anybody" but the United States. The Supreme Court, however, has never decided the issue. The closest it has come is a case involving the U.S.-born child of lawful permanent residents in which, of course, it held the child to be a U.S. citizen. In the absence of a ruling by the Supreme Court, it will remain up to Congress to clarify the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment or to accept the status quo.Original intent of the 14th Amendment The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads in part:"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside."Babies born to illegal alien mothers within U.S. borders are called anchor babies because under the 1965 immigration Act, they act as an anchor that pulls the illegal alien mother and eventually a host of other relatives into permanent U.S. residency. (Jackpot babies is another term).The United States did not limit immigration in 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. Thus there were, by definition, no illegal immigrants and the issue of citizenship for children of those here in violation of the law was nonexistent. Granting of automatic citizenship to children of illegal alien mothers is a recent and totally inadvertent and unforeseen result of the amendment and the Reconstructionist period in which it was ratified.Post-Civil War reforms focused on injustices to African Americans. The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 to protect the rights of native-born Black Americans, whose rights were being denied as recently-freed slaves. It was written in a manner so as to prevent state governments from ever denying citizenship to blacks born in the United States. But in 1868, the United States had no formal immigration policy, and the authors therefore saw no need to address immigration explicitly in the amendment.In 1866, Senator Jacob Howard clearly spelled out the intent of the 14th Amendment by stating:"Every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country."This understanding was reaffirmed by Senator Edward Cowan, who stated:"[A foreigner in the United States] has a right to the protection of the laws; but he is not a citizen in the ordinary acceptance of the word..."The phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was intended to exclude American-born persons from automatic citizenship whose allegiance to the United States was not complete. With illegal aliens who are unlawfully in the United States, their native country has a claim of allegiance on the child. Thus, the completeness of their allegiance to the United States is impaired, which therefore precludes automatic citizenship.Supreme Court decisions The correct interpretation of the 14th Amendment is that an illegal alien mother is subject to the jurisdiction of her native country, as is her baby.Over a century ago, the Supreme Court appropriately confirmed this restricted interpretation of citizenship in the so-called "Slaughter-House cases" [83 US 36 (1873) and 112 US 94 (1884)]13. In the 1884 Elk v.Wilkins case12, the phrase "subject to its jurisdiction" was interpreted to exclude "children of ministers, consuls, and citizens of foreign states born within the United States." In Elk, the American Indian claimant was considered not an American citizen because the law required him to be "not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction and owing them direct and immediate allegiance."The Court essentially stated that the status of the parents determines the citizenship of the child. To qualify children for birthright citizenship, based on the 14th Amendment, parents must owe "direct and immediate allegiance" to the U.S. and be "completely subject" to its jurisdiction. In other words, they must be United States citizens.Congress subsequently passed a special act to grant full citizenship to American Indians, who were not citizens even through they were born within the borders of the United States. The Citizens Act of 1924, codified in 8USCSß1401, provides that:The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: (a) a person born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof; (b) a person born in the United States to a member of an Indian, Eskimo, Aleutian, or other aboriginal tribe.In 1889, the Wong Kim Ark Supreme Court case10,11 once again, in a ruling based strictly on the 14th Amendment, concluded that the status of the parents was crucial in determining the citizenship of the child. The current misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment is based in part upon the presumption that the Wong Kim Ark ruling encompassed illegal aliens. In fact, it did not address the children of illegal aliens and non-immigrant aliens, but rather determined an allegiance for legal immigrant parents based on the meaning of the word domicil(e). Since it is inconceivable that illegal alien parents could have a legal domicile in the United States, the ruling clearly did not extend birthright citizenship to children of illegal alien parents. Indeed, the ruling strengthened the original intent of the 14th Amendment.The original intent of the 14th Amendment was clearly not to facilitate illegal aliens defying U.S. law and obtaining citizenship for their offspring, nor obtaining benefits at taxpayer expense. Current estimates indicate there may be between 300,000 and 700,000 anchor babies born each year in the U.S., thus causing illegal alien mothers to add more to the U.S. population each year than immigration from all sources in an average year before 1965. (See consequences.)American citizens must be wary of elected politicians voting to illegally extend our generous social benefits to illegal aliens and other criminals.HINDU PERSPECTIVE ON TERROR: Las Vegas Symposium ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------Does Militant Islam pose a serious threat to liberal democracies?------------------------------------------ Should we believe in the sanctimonious rhetoric that Islam is a peaceful religion?------------------------------------------ Has the “Clash of Civilization†already taken roots? Should Muslim immigration be stopped to democratic countries? Why 95% of the terrorist activities are conducted by the followers of Islam?------------------------------------------ Should Qur’anic injunctions which preach hatred, extol the virtue of violence, carry commandments to kill infidels, be modified?------------------------------------------ Is Pakistan still the epicenter of the terrorism? Is Pakistan using sophistry and subterfuge, as a weapon to advance its diabolical designs to spread terrorism?------------------------------------------ Is Pakistan playing duplicitous and disingenuous role in the war on terror?------------------------------------------ Should Islam be treated as a Religion or a Political Party?------------------------------------------ How to prevent fifth column of jihadists from promoting, recruiting and financing Islamic terrorism?------------------------------------------ These were some of the difficult questions that were raised and debated in the two-day educational Symposium on November 10 and 11, 2006 organized in Las Vegas, Nevada by America’s Truth Forum.------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------America's Truth Forum is a non-partisan, fact-based organization whose mission is to educate the American people on controversial topics of national security.------------------------------------------ Their primary objective is to disseminate critical information that is not readily available, via conventional channels, to the concerned public.------------------------------------------ The Forum has close working relationship with the former CIA, FBI officials, other top-notch experts on counter-terrorism, influential intelligence officials and opinion makers in the country.---------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------Indian American Intellectuals Forum (IAIF) was invited to participate in this high profile Symposium to present the Hindu perspective on terror.------------------------------------------ The Symposium was appropriately titled “Understanding the Threat of Islamist Terrorism.†------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------Addressing those present as ‘the leaders with vision, perspicacity, competency and sense of History,’ Dr. Babu Suseelan, a Clinical Psychologist from Pennsylvania, and a Board Member of IAIF said:------------------------------------------ “First of all, we should understand in unambiguous terms that the terrible terrorist events such as the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on 9/11/2001 in which more than 3000 people perished,------------------------------------------ the attack on underground London Subway System on July 7, 2005 in which about 60 people were killed,------------------------------------------ the terrorist attack on Madrid railway station on March 11, 2004 in which more than 200 people were killed,------------------------------------------ the killing of 344 innocent children on September 4, 2004, at a Beslan school in Russia,------------------------------------------ the terrible bomb blast in Bali, Indonesia on October 12, 2002 in which 200 innocent tourists were killed,------------------------------------------ the attack in Mumbai, India in 1993 in which 58 people were blown to bits,------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------another bomb blast again at Mumbai in 2006, in which 200 more people were murdered, the roasting alive of 58 Hindu pilgrims on Feb. 27, 2002 at Godhra Railway station in India, are not isolated incidents but a part of the much broader pan-Islamic strategy to bring the entire world under the Islamic domination and thereby establish the rule of Allah all over the world.†------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------Dr. Suseelan accused the political class the world over for their willful prevarication in handling the Islamic militancy.------------------------------------------ He warned that religious bigotry and terrorism cannot be countered by dilettantism.------------------------------------------ He accused the world’s liberal intelligentsia for being downright hypocrite, suffering from stifling close-mindedness and practicing charlatanism.----------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------Today, the Islamic militancy has assumed an astronomical dimension.------------------------------------------ Militant Islam is actuated by the strong desire to achieve its objectives by the process called Jihad.------------------------------------------ Jihad is the dangerous Muslim doctrine of permanent warfare against all infidels (Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, etc.).------------------------------------------ Jihad is to be persistently waged until all the unbelievers are eliminated from the enemy territory and the Sharia (Islamic law) is firmly established there.------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------Some of the speakers described as to how London is being turned into Londonistan (à la Pakistan) and Europe into Eurabia (à la Arabia).------------------------------------------ The others spoke about Hamas, Palestine, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Chechnya, and Iran.------------------------------------------ But Dr. Suseelan narrated the poignant and inhuman condition of 25 million Hindus-Buddhists and Christians in Bangladesh who could be completely eliminated through violence in the next two to three decades.------------------------------------------ “The best way to protect these minorities from the jaws of death in Bangladesh is to carve out a separate nation for them on the lines of East Timor,†advocated Dr. Suseelan. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------“The Hindus in India have witnessed unprecedented barbarism at the hands of Islamic brutes since the 8th century, shortly after the new faith was founded in Arabia.------------------------------------------ Tracing India’s History, Dr. Suseelan said that in the year 712 the Governor of Iraq had ordered to bring about the destruction on unbeliever Hindus of India, ------------------------------------------ if they did not accept the rule of Allah. The merciless slaughter of Hindus continued for three days in which 26,000 men were murdered and 20,000 women were enslaved and dispatched to Khalifa, the supreme religious head of Islam in Baghdad. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------“Eleventh century also saw the barbaric assault of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni on Hindustan starting in the year 1000.------------------------------------------ He launched 17 plundering, looting and slave-taking expeditions to India.------------------------------------------ Abu Nasr Muhammad Utbi, Sultan Mahmud’s secretary, gloats in his official chronicle that after attacking Waihind in November 1001, Mahmud’s army slaughtered 15,000 fighting men in “splendid action†before capturing 500,000 men and women as slaves.----------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------“At the time of India’s partition in year 1947, a non-stop reign of rape, murder and loot was unleashed against Hindu-Sikh civilian population of what was to soon become Pakistan.--------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------They were ethnically cleansed from each and every city and town. Again, in 1971 ten million Hindus were driven out from then the East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). ------------------------------------------ In 1989-1990, the 400,000 Hindus of the Indian Kashmir were given two choices by Islamic terrorists: accept Islam or leave the country.---------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------“In an article dated July 24, 2006, M.A. Khan of Islam Watch (a web site by ex-Muslims who no longer believe that the Islam is a religion of peace as portrayed by many Islamists and other Islamic apologists) mentions that effective displacement of 30 million Hindus took place in 1947 and 1971.------------------------------------------ However, it is a matter of shame and disgrace that when the biggest human exodus in the world history took place in 1947 and 1971, no historian, either in India or outside India, even took a note of it.â€------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------In his forceful half-an-hour speech, Dr. Babu Suseelan squarely blamed the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Islamic theories of Dar-ul-Islam (House of Islam) and Dar-ul-Harab (enemy nation), the incomprehensible antediluvian Islamic religious teachings of the medieval times for the spread of suicide attacks and terrorism all over the world.------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------A more recent Pentagon briefing paper titled, “Motivations of Muslim Suicide Bombers†also points to the Qur’an as the source of the motivation of Islamist bombers. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------Quoting another recent study undertaken by CIA, Dr. Suseelan said that there presently are two to three percent of Muslims out of their total number of 1.4 billion who support the Jihadi terrorism.------------------------------------------ This amounts to a staggering 35 million dangerous and religiously inspired individuals trotting around the globe.------------------------------------------ Again, according to Daniel Pipes, Director of the Middle East Forum, there are 10-15% of Muslims in the world, which amounts to 140 to 210 million respectively, who sympathize with the Islamic militants.------------------------------------------ If the above prognostications are to be believed, the total number of Islamic terrorists operating on this earth is more than the combined size of the armies of all major military powers today.------------------------------------------ “That is a very depressing and dangerous scenarioâ€, lamented Dr. Suseelan. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------It is about time we recognize the magnitude of danger from Islamic militancy to the entire humanity.------------------------------------------ Our mollycoddling mindset towards terrorism could create a pervasive sense of debilitation in the society.------------------------------------------ Dr. Suseelan vehemently ridiculed the so called liberal cosmopolitan intelligentsia for mumbling bromides and urged them to get rid of nonsensical twaddle.------------------------------------------ We owe a duty toward our future generation.------------------------------------------ We cannot afford to act as nonchalant spectators at this dangerous juncture in our history.------------------------------------------ He castigated the proponents of root cause theory who propound that Muslims resort to mayhem and murder because of the poverty and illiteracy they suffer from.------------------------------------------ Countering this silly argument, Dr. Suseelan said: “In the Indian state of Orissa, Hindu people earn less than one dollar a day, but they do not go about blowing themselves up or killing other innocent people.------------------------------------------ Remember, none of the 9/11 terrorists was uneducated or came from the impoverished Gaza strip near Israel†------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------At the end, Dr. Suseelan suggested that it was absolutely essential that America, Israel, UK, India, Russia and other victim nations who have extensively experienced the Islamic savagery and annihilation, should form a coalition to crush this ideology of violence and subjugation.------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------Dr. Suseelan delivered his speech with electric clarity coupled with anguishing historical facts and prescient veracity.------------------------------------------ He warmed the cockles of audience’s mind and thereby won their accolades.------------------------------------------ He was warmly praised for dishing out voluminous and stupefying data detailing enormous brutalities heaped on Hindus by Islamic militants.------------------------------------------ Many counter-terrorism experts urged Dr. Suseelan to keep them posted with all such vital information in the future also. Mr. Jeffrey Epstein, President of America’s Truth Forum expressed happiness at the participation of American Hindus in the Symposium.-------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------The two-day Symposium was addressed by the following high-profile dignitaries who are frequent guests of national TV networks and are often consulted by CIA, FBI and other agencies on the question of terrorism. Robert Spencer, the Director of Jihad Watch, talked on “The West’s Misidentification of the Challenges Faced from Global Jihad.â€------------------------------------------ Dr. Bruce Teft, a founding member of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center in 1985 talked on “Islam: The Foundation of Islamic Terrorismâ€.------------------------------------------ Dr. Harvey Kushner, an internationally recognized authority on terrorism who has advised and provided training to the government agencies including the FBI, spoke about “Holy War on the Home Front.â€--------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------Dr. Paul Williams, a journalist, author and former consultant to FBI spoke about “Al Queda’s Plans for Further Attacks on US Soil including an ‘American Hiroshima’â€. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------Dr. Wafa Sultan, a secular Syrian-American Psychiatrist said: “In spite of the death threats to my life, I am determined to educate the world about the pitiable conditions to which Muslim women are subjected in Islam.â€------------------------------------------ Walid Shoebat, a reformed PLO terrorist said that it was virtually impossible to reform Islam. The other speakers were:------------------------------------------ Joe Kaufman, the Chairman of Americans Against Hate,†James Gilchrist, and Paul Schiffer. Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist who talked about “A Journalist’s Perspective of Al Queda’s Threat to the West and the Mindset of Osama bin Laden,†was a little bit uneasy at seeing a group of American Hindus exposing Pakistan’s reprehensible agenda in the presence of very influential American leaders.---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------- .----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------- STOP THE INSANITY In WWII we did NOT ALLOW Italians, Germans and the Japanese to enter The USA. So why are we allowing These Trojan Horse (Terror CELLS) all Muslims to enter The USA in wartime? I am not saying that all Muslims are bad. I know that these Radical Islamic Terrorists will lie and deceive us to infiltrate The USA.-------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------- CHO THE VIRGINIA TECH GUNMAN is an evil deciple of muslim hatred. In the package that he sent to NBC he used his Arabic name A. Ishmael and a UK addressá'à writings consider him a lesser prophet. --- Do Not Be fooled. CHO THE VIRGINIA TECH GUNMAN is an evil deciple of muslim hatred. In the package that he sent to NBC he used his Arabic name A. Ishmael and a UK addressá'à writings consider him a lesser prophet.---------------------------------------------------- --------------------------The disturbing and cryptic video clips, photographs and manifesto the killer Cho Seung Hui sent to NBC News instantly reminded me of the taped testimonials suicide bombers leave behind to justify their crimes.It looked so familiar -- an angry young man dressed in battle clothing preaching a message full of hate in front of a drab background. I have seen many of these videos over the years in the Middle East.The attackers always stress a desire to battle injustice and moral turpitude; they all believe they are avengers of the righteous. The videos are also replete with religious references. Cho's message seems little different.Cryptic religious references Cho repeatedly mentions Christ, suffering and isolation. There appear to have also been references to the Koran.On the package sent to NBC, Cho uses the name "A. Ishmael." He is also reported to have had the words "Ismail Ax" tattooed or written on one arm.Ismail is the Koranic name of Abraham's first-born son. In one of the central stories of the Koran, God orders Abraham (called Ibrahim) to sacrifice Ismail as a test of faith, but then intervenes and replaces him with a sheep. Muslims reenact this story by sacrificing a sheep on Eid al-Adha (feast of the sacrifice) during the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.While it is still unclear what Cho may have intended, his repeated references to Ismail (he signed his manifesto 'Ismail Ax') has been generating a lot of attention on Arab/Islamic blog sites on the Internet.Internet speculation The Islamic Threat website said: Cho "knew exactly the significance of the name in Islam as far as blood sacrifices are concerned which leads me to think that there might have been Islamic motivation behind the madness he displayed."The Angry Arab News Service website said: "The Chicago Tribune reports that Virginia Tech University massacre perpetrator, Cho Seung-Hui, died with the words "Ismail Ax" in red ink on one of his arms. Hmmm . . . Ismail -- the Arabic name for Ishmael -- considered the father of all Arabs and a very important figure in Islam. I'm sure it's just a coincidence, right? Doesn't mean anything. Right. Maybe "Ismail Ax" is the name of a friend of his. Or maybe he wanted to remind himself to buy an Ax for his friend Ismail for next Ramadan. Or I'm sure we'll hear some other similarly absurd ‘explanation.’ We'll see."Cho clearly was confused and angry. His manifesto seems the same: a confusing mix of martyrdom, religion, pop culture and multimedia technology.------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- IshmaelYiÅ¡ma?êl; Arabic: ???????, Isma'il; translates as ------"God will hear" ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------- Judaism has generally viewed Ishmael as wicked though repentant.-------------------------------------------------- -----------------[1] Islamic tradition, however, has a very positive view of Ishmael, ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------------ascri bing a larger role to Ishmael in comparison to the Bible and viewing him ------------------------------------------------------------ -------as a prophet ------------------------------------------------------------ -------and the son of sacrifice ------------------------------------------------------------ -------(according to certain early theologians whose ideas prevailed later).[1][2] The Bah ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------- Since the massacre of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech, the mainstream media have obsessed over the fact the crazed gunman was able to buy a Glock in the state of Virginia. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------Little attention has been paid to the Richmond legislators who voted to make "Hokie Nation," a Middle American campus of 26,000 kids, a gun-free zone where only the madman had a semi-automatic. ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------Almost no attention has been paid to the fact that Cho Seung-Hui was not an American at all, but an immigrant, an alien. Had this deranged young man who secretly hated us never come here, 32 people would be heading home from Blacksburg for summer vacation. ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------What was Cho doing here? How did he get in? ------------------------------------------------------------ ------Cho was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation's doors open to the greatest invasion in history, an invasion opposed by a majority of our people. Thirty-six million, almost all from countries whose peoples have never fully assimilated in any Western country, now live in our midst.------------------------------------------------------ ------Cho was one of them. ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------In stories about him, we learn he had no friends, rarely spoke and was a loner, isolated from classmates and roommates. Cho was the alien in Hokie Nation. And to vent his rage at those with whom he could not communicate, he decided to kill in cold blood dozens of us. ------------------------------------------------------------ What happened in Blacksburg cannot be divorced from what's been happening to America since the immigration act brought tens of millions of strangers to these shores, even as the old bonds of national community began to disintegrate and dissolve in the social revolutions of the 1960s. ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------To intellectuals, what makes America a nation is ideas – ideas in the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, Gettysburg Address and Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech. ------------------------------------------------------------ -----------------------------------------------But documents no matter how eloquent and words no matter how lovely do not a nation make. Before 1970, we were a people, a community, a country. Students would have said aloud of Cho: "Who is this guy? What's the matter with him?" ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------Teachers would have taken action to get him help – or get him out. ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------------Since the 1960s, we have become alienated from one another even as millions of strangers arrive every year. And as Americans no longer share the old ties of history, heritage, faith, language, tradition, culture, music, myth or morality, how can immigrants share those ties? ------------------------------------------------------------ -------Many immigrants do not assimilate. Many do not wish to. They seek community in their separate subdivisions of our multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual mammoth mall of a nation. And in numbers higher than our native born, some are going berserk here. ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------The 1993 bombers of the World Trade Center and the killers of 9-11 were all immigrants or illegals. Colin Ferguson, the Jamaican who massacred six and wounded 19 in an anti-white shooting spree on the Long Island Railroad, was an illegal. John Lee Malvo, the Beltway Sniper, was flotsam from the Caribbean. ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------Angel Resendez, the border-jumping rapist who killed at least nine women, was an illegal alien. Julio Gonzalez, who burned down the Happy Land social club in New York, killing 87. ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------Ali Hassan Abu Kama, who wounded seven, killing one, in a rampage on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, was a Palestinian. As was Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy. ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------The rifleman who murdered two CIA employees at the McLean, Va., headquarters was a Pakistani. When Chai Vang, a Hmong, was told by a party of Wisconsin hunters to vacate their deer stand, he shot six to death. Peter Odighizuwa, the gunman who killed the dean, a teacher and a student at the Appalachian School of Law, was a Nigerian. ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------Hesham Hadayet, who shot up the El Al counter at LAX, killing two and wounding four, was an Egyptian immigrant. Gamil al-Batouti, the copilot who yelled, "I put my faith in Allah's hands," as he crashed his plane into the Atlantic after departing JFK Airport, killing 217, was an Egyptian. ------------------------------------------------------------ -----------------------------------------------Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, the UNC graduate who ran his SUV over nine people on Chapel Hill campus and said he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah," was an Iranian. ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------Juan Corona, who murdered 25 people in California, was a Mexican. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------"In our diversity is our strength!" So we are endlessly lectured. ------------------------------------------------------------ --But are we really a better, safer, freer, happier, more united and caring country than we were before, against our will, we became what Theodore Roosevelt called "a polyglot boarding house for the world"? ------------------------------------------------------------ -----------------------------------------there are less than 400 Border Patrol agents along the 4,000 mile border with Canada, and less than 2,000 agents for interior enforcement. Further, there are at least 314,000 illegal aliens within the U.S. who were ordered deported (including 6,000 from the Middle East - excluding Israel) here on he loose. Those here claiming persecution include the '93 WTC bombing mastermind, and a Pakistani who undertook a shooting spree at CIA headquarters. Another entryway is through marriage - eg. Osama's personal secretary (and many others) became a U.S. citizen in '89 after marrying an American.It is estimated that one-fourth of "legal" immigrants are those who came illegally and then paid $1,000 and got someone to petition for residency.In the six months post 9/11, the Department of State issued 200,000 visas to those from the Mid-East (excluding Israel) and southern Asia. Part of that is facilitated through bribes. About 200,000 enter the U.S./year through H1-B visas (supposedly for high-tech personnel, though also allows fashion models and "essential support personnel"), over 1 million student visas/year (some provide bribes to achieve requisite grades and English proficiency scores), 11,000 enter as religious workers, and the biggest group - visitors - comprises 17 million/year.Our high tolerance for illegal Mexican immigration helps terrorists blend in, and they even helped the 9/11 terrorists obtain false identity documents. The varying, and sometimes close to non-existent standards for drivers' licenses are another major problem. Our split-personality on the topic is further reflected in NYC Mayor Bloomberg's promise to provide services to but not inform on the illegals within New York City - while the World Trade Center site was still smoking! (Previously Mayor Giuliani sued the federal government to ban enforcement of a law prohibiting local governments from banning their employees from informing the federal government about illegals.)In a chapter titled "Serial Incompetence" Malkin covers the case of Angel Resendiz ("Railway Killer") who freely entered and left the U.S. over a 25 year period while amassing convictions for trespassing, burglary, grand theft auto, etc., and being deported at least 7 times. In December of 1998 his fingerprints were found on a Houston murder victim's car. The INS was contacted for help, but failed to enter Resendiz' information into their computer system, and again they deported him. By June of 1999, Angel had killed four more before turning himself in; he subsequently admitting nine murders. Malkin also documents a general litany of INS computer breakdowns, and staff failure to use the computer systems.---------------What does it all mean? ----------- ------In a nutshell, it means this: ----------- The constitution of the United States does not grant citizenship at birth to just anyone who happens to be born within American borders. It is the allegiance (complete jurisdiction) of the child’s birth parents at the time of birth that determines the child’s citizenship--not geographical location. If the United States does not have complete jurisdiction, for example, to compel a child’s parents to Jury Duty–then the U.S. does not have the total, complete jurisdiction demanded by the Fourteenth Amendment to make their child a citizen of the United States by birth. How could it possibly be any other way?The framers succeeded in their desire to remove all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. They also succeeded in making both their intent and construction clear for future generations of courts and government. Whether our government or courts will start to honor and uphold the supreme law of the land for which they are obligated to by oath, is another very disturbing matter.The current birthright-citizenship rule is harmful in many ways, but its most harmful and dangerous impact is to reduce the political power of current citizen-majorities. If the current rule is maintained, and illegal immigration continues to grow and spread to new areas – especially if it is combined with the current practice of counting illegal aliens in the census for apportionment – the decline in such political power will be increasingly likely to make a significant difference in legislative votes at the national and state levels, and in electoral votes for President.This process threatens the ability of the majority of Americans today to ensure that political control at every level of government will always remain with them and their descendants – plus those persons, and only those persons, to whom they have given their consent to join the American political community.At stake is whether or not the current majority of Americans will have the democratic right to control the nation’s future – including, most fundamentally, whether the composition of the American people will be determined solely by them or instead will continue to be influenced to a significant degree by individuals whose very presence in this country is against the will of most Americans and against the law enacted by their representatives.Every week, thousands more children of illegal aliens are born in this country, and each is now granted citizenship. The political impact of such individuals increases greatly when they reach voting age and when they begin to petition for the legal immigration of their spouse and their blood relatives, each of whom can naturalize, and hence vote, and each of whom can petition for additional immigrants, who may also become citizens and voters.The needed change can likely be accomplished by statute. But if not, then a constitutional amendment should be pursued until ratification is achieved.Home www.EyeOnTerrorism.com
Losing Control of the Nation's Future -- Part Two -- Birthright Citizenship and Illegal Aliens The Social Contract (Winter 2005) by Charles Wood Email this article to a friend View original formatEvery year, hundreds of thousands of children are born in the United States to illegal-alien mothers. Most likely, there are over 1,000 born every day. Under current law, each one of them becomes a U.S. citizen at birth. Under the prevailing interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, a change would require a constitutional amendment. It is likely that this interpretation is wrong and a change may be made by statute. But one way or the other, change is imperative because current law causes serious harm to the national interest.I. Birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens causes serious harm-------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------Loss of control over the nation’s future ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------Any nation, if it is to continue in the form desired by a majority of its existing citizens, must be able to select which aliens will be allowed to live within its territory – and which of them will be granted full membership in its political community, with the right to vote and thereby gain a share of control over the nation’s future.Automatically granting citizenship to the children of persons who are in the United States against the will of the majority of Americans undermines this process. It takes away a part of the decision-making power from the American people, and transfers it to illegal aliens.Over time, the current rule will make it possible for what would otherwise be citizen majorities in particular areas to be outvoted by new majorities consisting in significant part of persons whose membership in the political community is derived from this rule, and thus is not based on the consent of the American people. Because of the uneven distribution of illegal aliens, such effects are much greater in certain areas of the country, such as Southern California, where large numbers of citizen-children are now adults – with the right to vote and to petition for the immigration of certain family members without limit, and each of these can in time naturalize and become voters.----------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------Increased number of citizens without traditional American values ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------Because the parents are illegal and concerned about being apprehended, their children are less likely to participate in the wider community, learn English, and otherwise assimilate fully. If they are not fully Americanized before they reach voting age, their votes are less likely to be based on traditional American values and priorities, and more likely to favor policies opposed by a majority of other Americans.-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------Increased number of dual citizens ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------Because most illegal-alien parents are nationals of countries that grant automatic citizenship to their citizens’ children wherever born, the number of new U.S. citizens with dual citizenship and dual loyalty is substantially higher now than if current law were amended. And the primary loyalty of a citizen-child of illegal aliens may not be to the United States.----------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------Dilution of the rights and privileges of current citizens ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------A wide range of “zero-sum†rights and privileges based on citizenship or legal residence is obtained by the new citizens without the consent of preexisting citizens, whose own such rights and privileges are diluted. Examples include not only voting power and political representation, but rights to petition for immigrants, public benefits such as government employment and services, and affirmative-action “entitlements.â€----------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------Incentive for illegal immigration ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------A substantial fraction of illegal-alien mothers giving birth in this country come here so that their child is born a U.S. citizen. See, e.g., Judith T. Fullerton et al., Access to Prenatal Care for Hispanic Women of San Diego County, CPS Report, California Policy Seminar (now California Policy Research Center), University of California, Berkeley (Aug. 1993) and Rex Dalton, Born in the USA – Births to Illegal Immigrants on the Rise, San Diego Union-Trib., Feb. 20, 1994, at A1.--------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------Greater difficulty deporting the parents ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------If illegal aliens have a U.S.-citizen child, the political, if not the legal, difficulty of deporting the parents and siblings is significantly increased.-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------Higher welfare costs ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------Each of the large number of children born in the United States every year to illegal aliens instantly qualifies for all of the benefits citizenship provides, including welfare and other social services. Over 40 percent of such children born in 1993 in San Diego County immediately began receiving welfare. See L. Rea & R. Parker, Illegal Immigration in San Diego County An Analysis of Costs and Revenues, State of California, State Senate Office of Publication, viii–ix, 146–150 (1993).----------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------Higher levels of immigration ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------Many, probably most, of the hundreds of thousands of such children who are born each year petition for the immigration of relatives at some time in their life. Often it is under immigrant categories not subject to numerical limits and thus causes a real increase in total immigration. And when the immigration is in categories subject to limits, it harms law-abiding prospective immigrants abroad who would otherwise receive the visa numbers.---------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------II. Counter-argument, with rebuttal Increase in illegal aliens; reduced assimilation ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------Defenders of the current rule argue that the proposed change would increase the number of illegal aliens. They point out that the number of U.S.-born children who would be illegal aliens after the change is likely to be greater than the number of aliens who would decide that illegal immigration was no longer worthwhile. As a result, it is argued, the problems associated with the presence of a large number of illegal aliens – such as failure to report crimes or public health problems, or to testify in legal proceedings – would likely increase. Defenders also assert that the change would interfere with the process by which the children of illegal aliens assimilate into American society.Rebuttal – Most of these problems already exist in connection with such children. It is the immigration status of the adults in the family that is the source of most of those problems, and that status does not change when a new child, one who is a citizen, joins the family. Therefore, if current law is amended – so their new U.S.-born children are not citizens – such problems would continue, but likely not get significantly worse.With regard to the assimilation delay, that too would probably not significantly change if current law were amended, at least in the short run. More fundamentally, the limited assimilation of illegal-alien families is as it should be. It is not desirable for them to fully and permanently join American society.The national interest would be best served if the entire family returned to their homeland. And this result could actually be brought about if an adequate effort were made to enforce current laws against hiring illegal aliens and providing them most forms of welfare, and if penalties for violating immigration law were increased.But even if Congress and the President cannot, or will not, make such an effort, the current birthright-citizenship rule should still be changed – and the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens treated the same as their foreign-born siblings living here. It would be better for America to accept any problems caused by an increase in the number of such aliens than to endure the serious and increasing harm the current rule causes.----------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------Unfairness ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------A second counter-argument is that it would be unfair to “punish†U.S.-born children for the immigration-law violations of their parents.Rebuttal – It is neither unfair nor a punishment to refuse to allow illegal aliens to create new U.S. citizens against the will of the American people.The group whose interests it is the primary obligation of U.S. government officials to promote is the majority of U.S. citizens. Officials fail to fulfill that obligation when they continue a process that is reducing the political control that the current citizen-majority has over their nation’s future, and that is causing them so much other harm.In addition, this claim of unfairness is inconsistent with most of the country’s immigration-control policies – which can result in the deportation of a U.S.-born child’s equally innocent foreign-born siblings who similarly are young and have been in the United States most of their lives. Why is their moral claim to stay in this country weaker than that of the U.S.-born? And why does the presence in the U.S. of either of these groups of children give them a greater moral claim to a life here than millions of equally innocent children abroad? Indeed, the moral claim of the children abroad could be seen as greater – because they most likely have not had the benefit of any time in the United States, and because their circumstances are frequently much worse than those under which the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens would live if returned to their parents’ home country.---------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------III. Current birthright-citizenship law may be changed by statute ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------The prevailing view is that the Constitution requires that the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens be recognized as U.S. citizens at birth—and therefore an amendment would be required to change current law. In my view, this is incorrect. The Constitution neither requires nor forbids the current rule. The controlling language in the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment (the Citizenship Clause) states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.†(Emphasis added.)The “subject to†language about jurisdiction is ambiguous. Does it refer only to formal legal authority to bring the person before a court for violations of the law? Or rather to a combination of formal authority and some degree of actual power to exercise the authority, power to bring the person to justice?Framers of the Citizenship Clause understood it to codify traditional common-law principles – under which citizenship derives from birth “within the allegiance.â€Members of Congress who wrote the Citizenship Clause believed that they were putting into the Constitution the then-existing common law, with a clarification of its application to two minorities in special circumstances, blacks and Indians.The leading Supreme Court case interpreting the Citizenship Clause, and the common law it was intended to constitutionalize, is United States v. Wong Kim Ark. (1898). The Court held that the U.S.-born child of a legal immigrant from China was a U.S. citizen at birth, and described the English common law that underlies the American rules in this area. It described the general rule and also certain so-called “exceptionsâ€(1) First, the general rule – To be born a British subject, a person had to be born “within the allegiance.†This meant born on British soil under circumstances in which there was a duty of allegiance, including obedience, on the part of the person born, and a reciprocal duty of the sovereign to provide protection. Each was considered a “compensation for the other.†To be born within the allegiance, a person had to be born under the “protection and control†of the Crown.(2) The common law contained at least two “exceptions†(A), a person whose parent was a foreign diplomat or on a foreign public ship, and (B), a person whose parent was a member of a foreign military force occupying the territory where the birth took place. Actually, these “exceptions†were not really exceptions, but rather applications of the general rule to specific factual circumstances, since the requirements of birth “within the allegiance†were not satisfied in either case – neither the duty of obedience nor the duty of protection.The Wong Kim Ark Court implied that some aliens outside the common-law “exceptions†might also not qualify for Birthright citizenship. It stated that “[s]uch allegiance and protection … were predicable of aliens in amity so long as they were within the kingdom†[Emphasis added.] – meaning that allegiance and protection are among the attributes of the legal relationship between aliens “in amity†and the sovereign while such aliens are within the sovereign’s territory. “Amity†is defined by Webster’s 1828 dictionary as “friendship, in a general sense, between individuals, societies or nations; harmony; good understanding…â€The Wong Kim Ark Court’s reference to “aliens in amity†came from Calvin’s Case (1608), described by the Court as the “leading case†on the “fundamental principle of the common law with regard to English nationality.†A commentator recently stated that“[Sir Edward] Coke’s report of Calvin’s Case was one of the most important English common-law decisions adopted by courts in the early history of the United States. Rules of citizenship derived from Calvin’s Case became the basis of the American common-law rule of Birthright citizenship, a rule that was later embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment.†(Polly J. Price, 9 Yale Review of Law & the Humanities, 73,74, 1997)Coke (1552–1634) seems to have understood the phrase in a way that would exclude more than hostile enemy soldiers, more even than the subjects of foreign sovereigns with whom the English monarch was at war. Although it could not have been Coke’s intention to exclude from the meaning of “aliens in amity†any alien who was in England in violation of its immigration law (there were no such laws), he did make statements with an apparently similar meaning.Coke explained that an alien was either a friend (amicus) or an enemy (inimicus), and could be a friend only if there was a “league†between the alien’s sovereign and England’s. If a league existed, the alien was a friend (amicus) and could enter England without “license†of the English sovereign. The implication is that if aliens requiring a “license†came into England without one, they would be regarded as not “in amity.†Thus, their children born in England would not be born “within the allegiance.â€---------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------Children of illegal aliens are not born “within the allegiance.†------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------The essential elements of common-law Birthright citizenship are not present for the U.S.-born child of an illegal-alien mother. It makes no sense to say that an illegal alien has a duty of allegiance, including full obedience, to the United States – because the duty cannot ever be fulfilled. A person cannot at the same time be both an illegal alien and obedient to the U.S.The disobedience of an illegal alien is fundamentally different from that of other lawbreakers, whether citizen or lawful alien. Except during the limited periods of time when the latter are engaged in committing particular criminal acts, they are in obedience to law. But the illegal-alien mother is disobeying the United States and its law by her very presence in the country and does so at every moment she is here. At no time does she, or can she, fulfill, even for an instant, the duty of obedience which is an essential component of allegiance.In addition, the child is not born “under the protection and control†of the U.S. Government. The mother does not receive full protection – not even that given to nonresident aliens if they are in a lawful status. For example, the protection provided to an illegal alien omits the most basic element – enforcement of the right to be at liberty on the sovereign’s territory, free to act at will within the law. With respect to the government’s control – that too is, of course, absent.Finally, illegal aliens are not “in amity†with the United States. They are on U.S. territory against the will of the American people, in a continuous state of disobedience to U.S. law, and despite the efforts of the U.S. Government to apprehend them.Thus, if the Citizenship Clause is interpreted as a codification of the common law, it is reasonable to argue that there is no constitutional requirement that the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens be granted U.S. citizenship.The actual language of the Citizenship Clause is consistent with such an interpretation because the “subject to†clause requires actual power (not merely formal authority) to bring to justice.The importance of the degree of U.S. jurisdiction was emphasized repeatedly by the congressional sponsors of the Fourteenth Amendment. In their view, Birthright citizenship required the U.S.-born child to be completely subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. This meaning was necessary if one of the intended results of the Amendment was to be achieved – the exclusion of Indians still living in a tribe. They were seen as primarily subject to the jurisdiction of the tribe in their daily activity within the United States.Senator Jacob Howard, floor manager of the Fourteenth Amendment, referred to “the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.â€Senator George Williams, a member of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, said something suggesting that the language requires more than formal jurisdictionAll persons living within a judicial district may be said, in one sense to be subject to the jurisdiction of the court in that district, but they are not in every sense subject to the jurisdiction of the court until they are brought, by proper process, within the reach of the power of the court. I understand the words here … to mean fully and completely subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. [Emphasis added.]Such a view is consistent with some formulations of the common-law concept of birth “within the allegiance†– which have stated that the person must be born under “the protection and control†of the sovereign. (Emphasis added.)The common-law-based rationale for denying Birthright citizenship to the children of parents who are not fully subject to the formal jurisdiction of the United States applies also to parents who are formally subject (they have no formal immunity), but cannot be “brought within the reach of the power of the court†(in the words of Senator Williams).The rationale is this: if an individual has no duty of obedience (or the duty does not exist in any meaningful sense, because full obedience is impossible because of the nature of the individual’s status under the law), if the individual is not answerable for disobedience within the sovereign’s territory, then the reciprocal duty of the sovereign to provide protection is not in effect – and thus essential elements of allegiance are not present neither a duty of obedience by a subject, nor control and a duty of protection by a sovereign.Therefore, the jurisdiction over an individual which is required in the Citizenship Clause may include the sovereign’s having more than some minimum degree of power to bring the individual to justice for violating the law.This interpretation is consistent with the meaning of the words “subject to.†Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines “subject†in its adjective form as “being under the power and dominion of another…†This definition refers to an actual (not merely theoretical) control relationship between a controlling party and a party controlled.Finally, it would be reasonable for Congress to conclude that illegal aliens are not “subject to†the jurisdiction of the government in a manner similar to citizens and lawful aliens, and that the federal government’s actual power to bring illegal aliens to justice is insufficient to satisfy the constitutional standard. It seems indisputable that, in general, such power is less than the government’s power with respect to other violators of the law. The ongoing violation committed by illegal aliens – presence in the United States without legal authority (for which they may be deprived of their liberty and then deported) – is not visible in the way unlawful actions are, although the violation continues for every instant illegal aliens are in the country. When it is only their unlawful status (not their actions) that distinguishes them from the law-abiding persons around them, the probability of their being apprehended and brought to justice is not equivalent to that for other lawbreakers.------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------IV. Counter-argument, with rebuttal Required jurisdiction is purely formal. ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------The most frequent counter-argument is that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof†means formally liable to prosecution for violating U.S. law. It means that the government has the legal authority to prosecute, not necessarily the actual power to do so. In this view, any person present in the United States is subject to its jurisdiction – whether citizen or alien (resident or visitor) – unless the person has formal immunity, the kind of immunity a diplomat has.Proponents have cited Wong Kim Ark and several earlier cases for the proposition that the common law conferred citizenship upon all persons born within the territory of the United States, unless one of the traditional exceptions applied.Rebuttal – None of the cases that proponents cite involved an illegal-alien parent, and hence none of the holdings of these cases cover the citizenship of their U.S.-born children.Most of the cases were decided before enactment of the first federal immigration statute that made the presence in the United States of certain aliens unlawful. As a result, unqualified statements made in such cases – referring, for example, to “all persons†or “every person†born in the United States – could not have been understood to cover them. In Wong Kim Ark the alien parents were in lawful status. Therefore, statements in the Court’s opinion asserting that the U.S.-born children of all aliens are citizens at birth, unless one of the common-law exceptions applies, are not authoritative or binding.The framers of the Citizenship Clause did not choose language that expressly excludes specific groups. Instead, they chose abstract general language which they believed excluded Indians still living in tribes, as well as the persons covered by the traditional common-law “exceptions,†but which may reasonably be read to exclude other groups also.------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------Jurisdiction requirement is the same as in Equal Protection Clause. ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------The second major counter-argument is based on the fact that the Equal Protection Clause contains a jurisdictional requirement with similar language. Its proponents argue that persons “within [a state’s] jurisdiction†for purposes of the Equal Protection Clause must be “subject to the jurisdiction†of the United States for purposes of the Citizenship Clause. Therefore, they argue, because illegal aliens are covered in the Equal Protection Clause, they must be covered by the jurisdiction language of the Citizenship Clause. Proponents cite a footnote from the majority opinion in the Supreme Court case of Plyler v. Doe (1982) in which Justice Brennan quoted, with approval, a statement to that effect in the Wong Kim Ark opinion.Rebuttal – Wong Kim Ark did not concern illegal aliens, so the quoted statement, as applied to illegal aliens, was not part of the holding in the case. Justice Brennan provided no other support for his view beyond citing a 1912 treatise-writer, whose assertion, as described by Brennan, about the common-law Birthright citizenship rule’s “historical emphasis on geographic territoriality, bounded, if at all, by principles of sovereignty and allegiance†is quite misleading. The “if at all†phrase questions the significance of what has been a central element of the common law in this area – â€birth within the allegiance.†Finally, the view Justice Brennan expressed in the Plyler footnote was not a part of the Court’s holding in the case. The holding did not depend on the Citizenship Clause’s jurisdiction language being as comprehensive as that in the Equal Protection Clause. For all these reasons, Brennan’s Plyler statements on this issue are neither binding nor convincing.There are, moreover, good reasons for believing that persons covered by one clause are not necessarily covered by the other. Birthright citizenship is like a “zero-sum game.†Additional citizens dilute the political power, and other rights and privileges, of preexisting citizens. This is not the case with equal protection. The possession by illegal aliens of the fundamental right to equal protection of the laws does not adversely affect the equal-protection right of citizens and lawful aliens. Furthermore, the common-law histories of the two clauses are entirely different.-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------V. Conclusion ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------The current birthright-citizenship rule is harmful in many ways, but its most harmful and dangerous impact is to reduce the political power of current citizen-majorities. If the current rule is maintained, and illegal immigration continues to grow and spread to new areas – especially if it is combined with the current practice of counting illegal aliens in the census for apportionment – the decline in such political power will be increasingly likely to make a significant difference in legislative votes at the national and state levels, and in electoral votes for President.This process threatens the ability of the majority of Americans today to ensure that political control at every level of government will always remain with them and their descendants – plus those persons, and only those persons, to whom they have given their consent to join the American political community.At stake is whether or not the current majority of Americans will have the democratic right to control the nation’s future – including, most fundamentally, whether the composition of the American people will be determined solely by them or instead will continue to be influenced to a significant degree by individuals whose very presence in this country is against the will of most Americans and against the law enacted by their representatives.Every week, thousands more children of illegal aliens are born in this country, and each is now granted citizenship. The political impact of such individuals increases greatly when they reach voting age and when they begin to petition for the legal immigration of their spouse and their blood relatives, each of whom can naturalize, and hence vote, and each of whom can petition for additional immigrants, who may also become citizens and voters.The needed change can likely be accomplished by statute. But if not, then a constitutional amendment should be pursued until ratification is achieved.--------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------- Charles Wood was Counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, 1995-97, 1985, 1987-82; Special Assistant, Office of Legal Policy, United States Department of Justice, 1986-89. This article is adapted from a larger paper, “Losing Control of America's Future – The Census, Birthright Citizenship, & Illegal Aliens†published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy (Spring 1999), describing the harm caused by the current policies of counting illegal aliens in the Census and granting citizenship to their U.S.-born children – and arguing that Congress has the Constitutional authority to change these policies. A copy of the paper is available at www.thesocialcontract.com/archives. Answering Our Critics----------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------Contact us via our online form or e-mail. Or phone us toll free at 1.800.352.4843.--------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------Subscribe to The Social Contract quarterly journal: Click HERE.------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------Action Alerts and Site Updates List (i.e., yourname@ yourISP.net) Subscribe Unsubscribe------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------Order a Back Issue of The Social Contract Journal! Click HERE! Main | Journal Archives | Bookstore | Related Sites | About Us | Contact Us Answering Our Critics © 2000-2005 by The Social Contract Press
Nuclear Enabler: Pakistan today is the most dangerous place on Earth. By Jim Hoagland The discovery that North Korea has been secretly enriching uranium for the nuclear weapons program it promised to freeze in 1994 demonstrates the dangers of putting faith in a confirmed and practiced liar. So does the news that Pakistan provided the nuclear technology and perhaps uranium to Kim Jong Il's regime.Pakistan's role as a clandestine supplier shatters the Bush administration's efforts to paint that country as a flawed but well-meaning member of the coalition against terror. Pakistan today is the most dangerous place on Earth, in large part because the administration does not understand the forces it is dealing with there and has no policy to contain them.Pervez Musharraf's Pakistan is a base from which nuclear technology, fundamentalist terrorism and life-destroying heroin are spread around the globe. American and French citizens and Christians of any nationality, including Pakistani, are indiscriminately slaughtered by fanatics as occasion arises. This nuclear-armed country is in part ungoverned, in part ungovernable.The Bush administration's response is to protect both the life and reputation of President-for-life Musharraf and pretend that he is moving toward democracy. Huge amounts of American aid pour into Pakistan -- even as Washington's ability to monitor how that money is spent or stolen declines sharply.This response pushes toward a disaster that Bush officials -- and a Congress that has been negligent to cowardly in exercising oversight on Pakistan -- will one day protest that they could not have seen coming. The truth will be that they ignored warnings that were in plain sight, as the first Bush administration did on Iraq's Saddam Hussein.The second Bush administration sees the dangers that "axis of evil" members Iraq and North Korea pose. It is fashioning considered, realistic responses to those dangers. But it seems paralyzed by the perceived need to secure Musharraf's help in fighting al Qaeda and stabilizing Afghanistan. Official Washington will not even tell the truth to or about Musharraf, much less hold him accountable for his lies and subterfuge.U.S. policy today amounts to giving money to Pakistan, which agrees to take it. This is a country where American diplomats are limited to one-year tours and not allowed to bring dependents. Nongovernmental organizations that normally would help the U.S. Agency for International Development gauge how aid money is being spent have closed down out of fear. The remaining AID personnel would take their lives in their hands by insisting on effective monitoring.Elections rigged by Musharraf in his favor this month were praised extravagantly by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher as "an important milestone in the ongoing transition to democracy." That praise cannot be applied to the process or to the outcome, which gave new prominence to a fundamentalist Islamic coalition that promptly said it would seek to ban coeducation.Rewards rule in all areas: The sanctions on U.S.-Pakistani military-to-military cooperation imposed in 1998 after Pakistan's nuclear tests were personally lifted last week by Central Command's Gen. Tommy Franks, who attended a joint exercise involving a grand total of 330 troops.This came on Oct. 17, as David Sanger of the New York Times led the way in identifying Pakistan as the source of North Korea's uranium-enrichment process. A secret barter arrangement was suspected during the Clinton administration. It continued after Musharraf came to power in 1999 and was finally confirmed last summer, U.S. officials report.Pyongyang sent missiles and missile technology to Islamabad in return for nuclear technology. There are strong indications that both nations have helped Iran develop nuclear and missile programs as well.Asked about Pakistan's supplier role, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on television last Sunday that Musharraf had promised him that Pakistan was not engaged in this trade now. Powell then refused to talk about Pakistan's past role and would not even explain his silence on it.Talking about the past would have exposed Musharraf's pattern of lies and evasions, which Powell has increasingly tolerated and covered for as they have become more flagrant. The secretary knows Musharraf lied publicly when giving pledges last spring to end cross-border terrorism -- pledges he has broken. Musharraf even lied about whether President Bush had talked to him about that subject in a September meeting in New York.The past provides no reason to hope that Musharraf is telling the truth about not helping North Korea now, either. He has paid no price for lying to Powell about ending terrorism in Kashmir or about cooperating fully in crushing al Qaeda. The only consequences for duplicity have been rewards and protection. Why in the world would he suddenly change an approach that is working on every level for him?Copyright 2002 - The Washington Post CompanyPakistani religious seminariesBy Amir Mir in Lahore Three years after Pakistan's fourth military ruler General Pervez Musharraf promised sweeping reforms to modernize the country's over 10,000 religious seminaries, primarily to ensure that they are not used any further to propagate extremist Islam, the country's traditional religious school system continues to oper-ate as the key breeding ground for the radical Islamist ideology and as the recruitment centre for some deadly terrorist networks.A cursory glance over the present state of madrassahs in Pakistan show that contrary to Musharraf's much-publicized claims which were chiefly meant to appease the Bush administration, little has been done in practical terms to reform either the madrassas or failed public schools. General Musharraf's claims on the madrassah front have met with little success primarily because of his administration's failure to enforce the Madrassa Registration and Regulation Ordinance 2002, which was enforced to reform religious seminaries by bringing them into the educational mainstream.A cursory glance over the present state of madrassahs in Pakistan show that contrary to Musharraf's much-publicized claims which were chiefly meant to appease the Bush administration, little has been done in practical terms to reform either the madrassas or failed public schools. General Musharraf's claims on the madrassah front have met with little success primarily because of his administration's failure to enforce the Madrassa Registration and Regulation Ordinance 2002, which was enforced to reform religious seminaries by bringing them into the educational mainstream.Musharraf's campaign to reform the country's notorious deeni madaris was described as an attempt to fight extremism in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States. Many of the Pakistanis who fought alongside al-Qaeda and Taliban troops in Afghanistan had been educated in these religious seminaries, which are spread across the country. The privately funded Islamic schools are commonplace throughout Pakistan and a majority of them owe their existence to General Zia's Islamisation drive. The curriculum offered there is undeveloped and pertains mostly to religious instruction. Some of the books taught, including Mathematics, date back hundreds of years. The result is, the madaris graduates simply cannot compete against others for employment. Absent any real understanding of society and social complexities, they want destruction. They seek to bring society onto their own level, and the only thing they identify with is the religion. Yet these madaris do provide free education along with boarding and lodging, and this attracts the poor. There are no exact figures about how many madaris may be operating in Pakistan, but rough estimates suggest that there are some one million students studying in over 10,000 madaris.Since the beginning of 2002, Musharraf has campaigned to reform the religious schools. In a televised address to the nation in January 2002, the General unveiled a new strategy which would see madaris teach Mathematics, Science, English, Economics and even Computer Science alongside their traditional Islamic programme. "My only aim is to help these institutions overcome their weaknesses and providing them with better facilities and more avenues to the poor children at these institutions. These schools are excellent welfare set-ups where the poor get free board and lodge. And very few madaris run by hardliner parties promote negative thinking and propagate hatred and violence instead of inculcating tolerance, patience and fraternity", said Musharraf in his address.While embarking on several initiatives to combat zealotry and broaden educational offerings, the Musharraf administration announced a number of measures to make deeni madaris participate in the modernization programme. These reforms included a five-year, $1 billion Education Sector Reform Assistance (ESRA) plan to ensure inclusion of secular subjects in syllabi of religious seminaries; a $100 million bilateral agreement to rehabilitate hundreds of public schools by United States Agency for International Development (USAID), besides increasing access to quality education and the enforcement of Madrassa Registration and Regulation Ordinance 2002 which required deeni madaris to audit their funding and foreign students to register with the Government. At the same time, a Federal Madaris Education Board was established to enable the students at the religious schools to benefit from the national education system by learning Mathematics, English and vocational sciences in addition to the normal madrassa education.However, three years down the road since Musharraf's historic January 2002 announcement, the so-called modernization campaign has largely failed, and hardly a few cosmetic changes could be introduced in the madrassa system. Most of the religious leaders and Islamist organisations rejected the Government legislation requiring religious seminaries to register and broaden their curricula beyond rote Koranic learning. Under the reform programme, drafted on the advice of the Bush administration and financed by USAID, special Government committees were constituted to supervise and monitor the educational and financial matters and policies of deeni madaris. Most of these schools are sponsored by the country's leading religious parties, be it Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, Jamiat Ulema-Pakistan, or Jamat-e-Islami Pakistan, while many others are affiliated with jehadi groups which preach an extremist ideology of religious warfare.The result is that the deeni madaris are increasingly seen as breeding grounds for the foot-soldiers of the global menace of militant Islam, who are motivated and trained to wage jehad - be it in Kashmir, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, or other parts of the world. Thus the Bush Administration believed that there were madaris in Pakistan that, in addition to religious training, give military training to their students. Probably acting under these very apprehensions, the office of US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld leaked in October 2003 a secret memo, perhaps deliberately, to the American media. In the memo, which was actually intended for Rumsfeld's top military and civilian subordinates, the American Defence Secretary wondered: "Is the US capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical Muslim clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against America?"Three months later in January 2004, the International Crisis Group (ICG) report titled, Unfulfilled Promises: Pakistan's Failure to Tackle Extremism further strengthened the American fears. The report stated: "The failure to curb rising extremism in Pakistan stems directly from the military Government's own unwillingness to act against its political allies among the religious groups. Having co-opted the religious parties to gain constitutional cover for his military rule, Musharraf is highly reliant on the religious right for his regime's survival." The ICG report observed that Pakistan's failure to close madrassas and to crack down on jehadi networks has resulted in a resurgence of domestic extremism and sectarian violence."The Government inaction continues to pose a serious threat to domestic, regional and international security… If the US and others continue to restrict their pressure on Musharraf to verbal warnings, the rise of extremism in Pakistan will continue unchecked. By increasing pressure on Pakistan, a major source of jehadis will be shut off and Islamic militancy, as a whole will decrease", the ICG stated in its concluding paragraph.Almost a year later, in December 2004, a report produced by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) presented to the American Congress pointed out: "Although General Musharraf vowed to begin regulating Pakistan's religious schools, and his Government launched a five-year plan to bring the teaching of formal or secular subjects to 8,000 willing madrassas, no concrete action was taken until June of that year, when 115 madrassas were denied access to Government assistance due to their alleged links to militancy… Despite Musharraf's repeated pledges to crack down on the more extremist madrassas in his country, there is little concrete evidence that he has done so. According to two observers, most madrassas remain unregistered, their finances unregulated, and the Government has yet to remove the jehadist and sectarian content of their curricula. Many speculate that Musharraf's reluctance to enforce reform efforts is rooted in his desire to remain on good terms with Pakistan's Islamist political parties, which are seen to be an important part of his political base."The Lahore-based Daily Times wrote in its February 25, 2005, editorial titled 'Madrassa registration has become a joke': "The National Security Council, we are being told, is going to discuss the issue of registering the madrassas. Might we ask what has happened to the much-touted madrassa registration ordinance 2002? Apparently nothing!…The facts are interesting. Registration forms were sent out to all the madrassas after which the Government waited for the seminaries to get themselves registered. That did not happen. The number of madrassas that did register was a bit of a joke. What did the Government do? Nothing! Why cannot the all-powerful General Musharraf follow up on an eminently sensible scheme?"However, a World Bank-sponsored working paper published in February 2005 came up with a new angle, stating that "enrolment in the Pakistani madrassas, that critics believe are misused by militants, has been exaggerated by media and a US 9/11 report." The study claimed that less than one per cent of the school-going children in Pakistan go to madrassas, and the proportion has remained constant in some districts since 2001. The study titled 'Religious School Enrolment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data', conducted by Jishnu Das of the World Bank, Asim Ijaz Khwaja and Tristan Zajonc of Harvard University and Tahir Andrabi of Pomona College, sought to dispel general perceptions that enrolment was on the rise saying: "We find no evidence of a dramatic increase in madrassa enrolment in recent years". The funding for the report was provided by the World Bank through Knowledge for Change Trust Fund.The World Bank study found western media reports highly exaggerated in terms of number of student and total religious schools. "The figures reported by international newspapers such as the Washington Post, saying there were 10 per cent enrolment in madrassas, and an estimate by the International Crisis Group of 33 per cent, were not correct. It is troubling that none of the reports and articles reviewed based their analysis on publicly available data or established statistical methodologies. Bold assertions have been made in policy reports and popular articles on the high and increasing enrolment in Pakistani religious schools". The study found no evidence of a dramatic increase in madrassa enrolment in recent years, stating that the share of madrassas in total enrolment declined before 1975 and has increased slowly since then. Since 2001, total enrolment in madrassas has remained constant in some districts and increased in others, the report added.However, the South Asia Director of ICG, Samina Ahmed, has challenged the findings of the World Bank study, which questioned the validity of madrassa enrolment statistics provided by the ICG and other expert analysts. Ahmed was quoted in the Dawn newspaper on March 11, 2005, stating: "The authors (of the World Bank report) have insisted that there are at most 475,000 children in Pakistani madrassas, yet Federal Religious Affairs Minister Ejazul Haq says the country's madrassas impart religious education to 1,000,000 children." She asserted that the World Bank findings were directly at odds with the ministry of education's 2003 directory, which said the number of madrassas had increased from 6,996 in 2001 to 10,430. She added that the madrassa unions themselves had put the figure at 13,000 madaris with the total number of students enrolled at 1.5 to 1.7 million.Questioning the methodology of the World Bank study, Ahmed said: "The trouble is that the authors based their analysis on three questionable sources: the highly controversial 1998 census; household surveys that were neither designed nor conducted to elicit data on madrassa enrolment, and a limited village-based household educational census conducted by the researchers themselves in only three of 102 districts." She said the 1998 census was not only out of date as the authors themselves admitted, but their 2003 educational census was also of little value because it was based on a representative sample of villages, suggesting madaris were mainly a rural phenomenon. She quoted a 2002 survey conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies which found that a majority of madrassa students came from backward areas. "If the findings of the World Bank study were to be taken at face value, then Pakistan and the international community had little cause to worry about an educational sector that glorified jehad and indoctrinated children in religious intolerance and extremism", the ICG director concluded.In short, the Musharraf regime's failure to reform the country's 10,000 religious seminaries and to crack down on jehadi networks has resulted in a resurgence of extremism and sectarian violence in the country. The Pakistani military dictator's priority has never been eradicating Islamic extremism, but rather the legitimization and consolidation of his dictatorial rule, for which he seems dependent on the clergy. And the mushroom growth of extremists will continue unabated until and unless the Mullah-Military alliance in Pakistan is effectively put to an end.Asked to comment on the present state of religious schools in Pakistan, a senior analyst and the former chairman of Punjab University Lahore's Political Science Department Dr. Hassan Askari rightly observed: "Terrorists can be defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, but if nothing is done to end the intolerance and the teaching of hard-line Islam in classrooms, militants will have a never-ending supply of new recruits. And nowhere is this more evident than in Pakistan, whose schools have already been dubbed as 'incubators for violent extremism by the 9/11 commission".(Cobrapost News Features) Just whose side is Pakistan really on? Friday, August 18 2006 @ 06:56 PM CDT An ally in the war on terror or a haven for jihadists? After every outrage, it’s the state in the spotlight, says Christina Lamb For budding suicide bombers all roads seem to lead to Pakistan — and last week’s global alert over a suspect massive terrorist attack did nothing to dispel that view. “The moment I heard the first news about the airline plot, I knew it was just a matter of time until we heard the word Pakistan,†said a US intelligence agent. “Whether it’s 9/11, the Bali bombs, 7/7 and now this, Pakistan is always the connection. That’s gotta raise some questions." The roots of Pakistan’s reputation as a haven for jihadists run deep. It was, after all, in the city of Peshawar that Al-Qaeda was born after ISI, Pakistan’s military intelligence, started to recruit Arabs to fight in the Afghan jihad. It was ISI that turned the Taliban from a bunch of religious students into a movement that took over Afghanistan. According to Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, ISI continues to provide a safe haven, training them to fight British soldiers in Helmand. Whose side is Pakistan on? After September 11, when Pakistan’s leadership was given the blunt choice by President Bush — “you’re either with us or against us†— it had little option. The decision to support Bush’s war on terror turned President Pervez Musharraf from a pariah dictator to a feted world leader.It was a lucrative move. Pakistan has again become one of the biggest recipients of US aid — just as it was during the Afghan war against Soviet occupiers when ISI was the main conduit for arms and funds. Since September 11, America has dismissed $1.5 billion in debt and provided Pakistan with more than $3 billion in military assistance. Last year Pakistan was one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. It recently placed a $2.5 billion order for American F-16 jet fighters — as much as Afghanistan’s entire annual foreign aid. However, Musharraf has been walking a tightrope. At home he has been the target of three assassination attempts and much criticism, while abroad his commitment is under increasing question. Critics point out that the six top Al-Qaeda officials so far captured, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammad (KSM), the mastermind of 9/11, were all arrested in Pakistan. They were not hiding in caves but living in cities like Karachi and Faisalabad. KSM was picked up in the military cantonment of Rawalpindi.It was in Pakistan where Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, was murdered in 2002. Pakistan has refused to extradite Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-born Muslim convicted of the killing, prompting speculation that it fears what he might say. Sheikh was in ISI custody for a week before the FBI was informed and is reported to have given himself up to his former ISI handler. We also know from official reports that two of the July 7 bombers, Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammad Sidique Khan, travelled to Pakistan. It was Khan’s second trip. It is still unclear what they did there, but British intelligence believes they underwent training and made martyrdom tapes. What is certain is that on their return the pair rented a place to build bombs. Pakistan’s problem is that extremist organisations and training camps, such as those linked to the London bombers, were either created by, or supported and used by, ISI.The camps were set up in the late 1980s with US backing to train fighters for jihad in Afghanistan. Their mission was expanded in the 1990s to send jihadis to the contested province of Kashmir to fight a proxy war with India. “Pakistan is still in denial,†said Husain Haqqani of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington whose book, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, looks at state sponsorship of jihadi groups. He points out that many senior figures in Pakistan’s military establishment had probably run camps: “The attitude of condoning extremist behaviour is so pervasive that it may be difficult for people to adjust to a new attitude of cracking down on them.â€The difficulty is establishing links between Al-Qaeda and jihadi groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-i-Toiba, Musharraf’s failure to rein them in suggests that they are out of control. “We might have created a Frankenstein,†one Pakistani military officer admitted. How much the West has been willing to turn a blind eye was shown by its lack of censure over Abdul Qadeer Khan, the nuclear scientist who provided weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Musharraf’s ludicrous claim that these were the actions of an individual without the knowledge of the state was apparently accepted by Washington, despite evidence of military planes transporting parts. Those involved in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden have long believed that Pakistan knows more than it has let on and may have tipped off Al-Qaeda leaders, letting them escape. They point out that any time Pakistan has come under pressure from Washington it has diverted attention by arresting an Al-Qaeda leader.Pakistan is a not an ally against terrorism Matt Thundyil A terrorist state has been defined as one "that offers shelter and sustenance to terrorists". Examples of states characterized as 'terrorist states' include Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea. In most cases, the state in question has been directly linked to acts of terror. In the wake of the attacks of 9-11 came the recognition that states that sheltered and sustained numerous groups that utilized terror were themselves terrorist states. This is what led to the attacks on Afghanistan. However, geopolitics has led to the media overlooking another terrorist state. One of the states that is apparently a 'frontline ally' in this war against terrorism is Pakistan. The facts indicate that Pakistan is itself a terrorist state that needs to be brought in line with acceptable norms of behavior.In the context of the attacks on the US, Pakistan's record is extensive. The mastermind of the first attack on the WTC was Ramzi Yousef, a Pakistani national with links to the Pakistani government. The attacks on the US embassies in Africa were masterminded by terrorists based from Pakistan. The finances used by Mohammad Atta (the ring-leader of the hijackers that attacked the WTC-Pentagon) were wired by terrorists with links to Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence - an agency with deep links to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. All the 19 terrorists, as well as Zacarias Moussaoui (the suspected 20th hijacker) and Richard Reid (the shoe-bomber) are known to have spent time training in Pakistan in institutions funded by the Pakistani intelligence.In addition to this are the extensive links between the Al Qaeda/Taliban and Pakistan. The Taliban forces that occupied and controlled Afghanistan were supported militarily, politically and logistically by Pakistan. The links between the Taliban and the Pakistani government were so extensive that all Taliban Ministries could only be reached through Pakistani area codes. It was in recognition of the linkage between the Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and in turn between the Taliban and Pakistan that Richard Armitage threatened the Pakistanis with cooperating with us or being 'bombed back to the Stone Age.' It was only in the face of this threat that Pakistan grudgingly agreed to permit US-over flights.And then, in order to thwart US military operations, an attack on a State Legislature in India was authorized and conducted by Pakistani directed terrorists. Jaish-e-Mohammad, one of the 12 groups that comprise the Islamic Front led by Al Qaeda, claimed credit for the attack. Jaish-e-Mohammad continued to raise funds and train its men in Pakistani controlled territory. After this gambit failed, Pakistan continued to sustain the Taliban and Al Qaeda with military, financial, logistic and fuel in the midst of the US strikes into Afghanistan. As the pressure grew, Musharraf attempted to get them breathing space by demanding a break for Ramadan. Pakistani officers continued to be directly involved in the fighting in Afghanistan, and were airlifted out of Kunduz as that city fell. Most of the "foreign fighters" that were responsible for the prison uprising in Mazar-e-Sharif that killed US personnel were Pakistani. Following the fall of the Taliban, in order to forestall the capture of Osama Bin Laden and the upper echelon of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Pakistan ordered the attack on India's Parliament. This was designed as a classic diversionary attack intended to take American focus away from the terrorists to the threat of nuclear-war on the Indian subcontinent. Even after this, thousands of Al Qaeda and Taliban agents are known to have slipped into Pakistan for safe haven.In addition to the support for the WTC attackers, the embassy attackers, the Taliban and Al Qaeda are the Pakistani government?s support of other terrorist groups. Al Qaeda is but one of 12 groups that make up the Islamic Front that has issued a jihad on the United States. In addition to Al Qaeda are Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Tayyba, and Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin. These three groups are classified as Foreign Terrorist Organizations by the US State Department. All four, including Al Qaeda are known to raise funds openly, train openly and receive military and logistic support from the Pakistani government agencies. This support continues to this day. Interestingly enough the website that Lashkar-e-Tayyba uses for fundraising and propaganda is located on a Pakistani Army server. Finally, numerous Pakistani scientists are under suspicion of having transferred nuclear technology to Al Qaeda and other terrorist outfits.Compared to other terrorist states (such as Iraq and Libya) where the sponsorship of terrorism is embodied in the leadership, Pakistan represents the institutionalized sponsorship of terrorism. In other words, while Iraq and Libya are dangerous terrorist states, the elimination of Saddam Hussein or Col. Gaddafi may be enough to return them to the comity of nations. However, Pakistan has used terrorism as an instrument of state policy through the tenure of General Zia ul-Haq, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and now General Musharraf . What this means is that state sponsorship of terrorism in Pakistan is institutional in nature rather than embodied in the leadership. The most obvious analogy is to the Soviet Union where the antipathy to freedom outlasted numerous leaders.Like the Soviet Union in 1941, Pakistan is an 'ally' in the fight against what is perceived to be a greater evil. In reality, like the Soviet Union then, Pakistan is part of evil that it purports to be fighting. Like the Soviet Union, in 1945, the Pakistani threat is still extant. And it needs to be dismantled. The major world powers that are likely to be affected by Pakistan and its terrorist acts are likely to be the United States, India, Israel, Russia, and China. In fact, it has had a direct effect on terrorist acts committed in across the globe from the United States to India in just the last 3 months. These five states must act now, to prevent the problem metastasizing.Originally published in the BR Monitor (Reprinted with permission).FeedbackPakistan can't be an ally against terrorism, its part of the problem of war against terror. It has become global terror factory. Its not Iraq, which was needed to correct BUT Pakistan - a nuclear terror nation. Jupit Switzerland Does Gen. Musharraf think that he can get away as a double-crosser without being detected? Bernard Henri Levy, France?s best-selling author, thinks to the contrary. He warns the US government in darkest terms: ?Pakistan supposedly President Bush?s brave ally in fighting terrorism is playing a ?double, even triple game? and could even have helped plot the September 11 attacks. What a mistake to be obsessed with Iraq when the real rogue is a fanatical and nuclear-armed Pakistan? (The Economist, May 24, 2003). Tarique Niazi South Asia Tribune"There is no export that Pakistan has except for textiles and terrorists that has a global market." (LA Times, June 25, 2003) Stephen Cohen Brookings Institution"Mr. Cheney lumped terrorists and tyrants into one interchangeable mass, saying that Mr. Bush could not tolerate a dictator who had access to weapons of mass destruction, was allied with terrorists and was a threat to his neighbors. Sounds a lot like the military dictator of Pakistan, not to mention the governments of China and North Korea." Maureen Dowd New York Times"...two-thirds of the organizations designated as having a terrorist link by the United States and the United Nations have a connection in Pakistan, according to the Treasury Department..." Carlotta Gall New York Times"It's true the Pakistanis have helped us to capture some of the leading al-Qaeda figures, but you also have to wonder: Why do we find them all in Pakistan?" Professor Jessica Stern, Harvard New York Times"The most dangerous place of all is Pakistan, because Pakistan, one day it has already the nuclear arsenal. At least half the army are Islamists and they will overthrow (President) Musharraf one day, and they will then have the atomic bombs at their disposal. And then ?the first thing they will do, they will give some to Bin Laden because these tribal people are friends of Bin Laden." Omar Sharif Austalian Broadcasting Corporation"USA in its perceived self interest, has infact created a rogue state headed by Musharraf, a dictator, a double crosser and liar. Bush has done immense damage to America's moral standing in the world. After all whatever Bush has done is against America's declared moral values. It is ridiculous that Bush keeps saying that Pakistan is USA's most loyal ally in its War on Terrorism. If the biggest terrorism exporter and nuclear proliferator rogue nation is America's ally, then questions will be asked what is USA? Q. Meher IndonesiaQ. "If you were a terrorist leader today, where would you locate your base?" A. Pakistan Source - The 9/11 Commision as it asked the top American and foreign government officials the question during its investigation of the 9/11 attacks.Could terrorists wage nuclear jihad? Thursday, April 20 2006 @ 08:36 PM CDT Tony Perry If America is making a list of villains of the modern world, A.Q. Khan has to be near the top. Khan is the Pakistani nuclear scientist who smuggled secrets from Europe to help his native country build a bomb to compete with archenemy India. Not finished reshaping the world, he then went into business for himself and, with or without his government's connivance, peddled nuclear secrets and technology to Iran, North Korea, Libya and who knows who else. It is the thesis of "Nuclear Jihad: Can Terrorists Get the Bomb?," set for broadcast tonight on Discovery Times Channel, that Khan has hastened the day when terrorists not linked to nation-states will have access to nuclear bombs.It's a nightmare scenario — backed by reporting that is detailed and solid, much of it done by two reporters for the New York Times. Today, a freelancer can fashion a roadside bomb out of an artillery shell and take out a Humvee full of Marines. Tomorrow, according to "Nuclear," the same person might be able to smuggle a nuke into a U.S. or European city or any city in any nation considered friendly to the West. How this happened — largely under the nose of the CIA, which had long known that Khan was slippery — is a story that is equally chilling and morbidly fascinating. The Dutch were about to arrest Khan in 1975, according to "Nuclear," but the CIA asked them to back off so that they could catch bigger fish.Much of the story revolves around America's complex relationship with Pakistan and its military strongman, Pervez Musharraf. The U.S. needs him, and Musharraf has been helpful in fighting the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. But the Islamic movement is strong in his country, and Khan is a hero to the movement for having produced an "Islamic bomb" to rival the Christian, Jewish (Israel) and Hindu (India) bombs. Even though Musharraf made Khan apologize publicly once his black-market enterprise was unmasked, Khan faces no more criminal charges. He lives in quiet retirement in a suburb of Islamabad and cannot be questioned by the CIA or other outsiders. Musharraf dare not punish Khan. This is a country where Osama bin Laden gets a 65% approval rating, "Nuclear" tells us. Musharraf has survived several assassination attempts, and the degree of Islamic influence on his army is unknown.Using the port at Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Khan set up a supply chain of parts that was Wal-Mart-esque, the narrator intones. Khan hardly kept a low profile. After Pakistan exploded its first test nuke in 1998, he was a national celebrity. He owned schools, restaurants, even a disco. He lived large. "A.Q. Khan was in love with himself," says a Pakistani scholar. Was he getting help from his government when he was selling things like an updated centrifuge that is considered a shortcut to making enriched uranium? If not, how did he get permission to travel to North Korea so frequently and why was he riding in that Pakistani air force cargo plane? "How many religious pilgrimages could he make to a country like North Korea?" asks former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.Pakistan’s Nuclear Money Trail There have been many contradictory reports about Pakistan’s nuclear program both leading up to and following the bizarre confession by Pakistani nuclear figure Dr.A.Q.Khan and his subsequent pardon by Gen.Musharraf. In this context, one can infer interesting conclusions by following the money trail and correlating it with the involvement of foreign nations or persons in the Pakistani nuclear program.Zulfiqar Bhutto, who was then prime minister, initiated Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program at a meeting of high-level military and civil bureaucrats and scientists in the city of Multan on January 20 1972. Needing financial support, Bhutto openly propounded the need for the “Islamic civilization†to possess nuclear weapons since the Christian and Jewish societies already had it. Bhutto went on tour to the oil rich Arab nations, challenging their rulers to demonstrate their Islamic solidarity.Bhutto immediately won pledges of support from three rich Islamic states – Iran, Saudi Arabia and Libya. Under the patronage of Saudi King Faisal, Bhutto hosted the 1974 Islamic Summit in Lahore, Pakistan. It was here that Bhutto and Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Qaddafi sealed a deal by which Libya would contribute substantial sums of money to Pakistan’s nuclear program in return for Pakistani transfer of nuclear know-how at a future date. Bhutto even arranged for Qaddafi to tour Pakistan’s new Canadian built nuclear reactor in Karachi guided by the long term chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Munir Khan, who some say was the real “father†of Pakistan’s bomb.Mohammed Beg, former European Director for Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and Bhutto confidante later revealed that Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Qaddafi personally supervised transfers of suitcases filled with US Dollars to Pakistan on PIA flights, sometimes up to $100 million in a single flight. Saudi King Faisal also generously contributed funds to Pakistan’s nuclear program during this time. Bhutto’s indebtedness to these two leaders was made clear when he named the largest Cricket Stadium in Pakistan after Qaddafi and renamed the old Colonial city of Lyallpur as Faisalabad, in honor of King Faisal. In the year following the deal with Libya, Bhutto convinced the Shah of Iran to contribute up to $500 million, ostensibly for crushing a Baloch rebellion near Pakistan’s Iran border, but widely believed to be earmarked for the nuclear program. Put together, the Islamic contribution to Pakistan’s atomic program reached many billions by the late 1970s.After dictator General Zia-ul-Haq overthrew and later executed Bhutto in 1979, the Pakistani military took firm control of the nuclear program. Thanks to the Afghan jihad, Pakistan was by then swimming in cash, both due to direct aid from the US as well as contributions from the Saudis. However, despite ambitious goals, Pakistan lacked the scientific base needed for the many thousands of sophisticated components needed for a nuclear weapons program. But by leveraging his European contacts, A.Q.Khan set up a network, supervised by the Pakistan Army’s Special Works Organization as well as the sinister spy agency, the ISI, which could acquire virtually any desired item from Western European nations as well as the US and Canada to a lesser extent. During this time, failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International played a critical role in financing this Pakistani nuclear smuggling ring. In 1992, a report into from a US Congressional sub-committee headed by Senator John Kerry, said that there was “good reason to conclude that BCCI did finance Pakistan's nuclear program.By the late 1980s Pakistan had acquired the ability to make an atomic device as well as the nuclear fuel needed for it. It was time for the lenders to come calling for a return on investment. Iran was the first to approach Pakistan. Then Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg openly called for a Pakistan-Iran strategic alliance that included nuclear co-operation. An aide to then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif recently revealed that Gen. Beg and a senior Iranian military official met with Mr. Sharif and informed him of a deal to sell nuclear technology to Iran for an additional $12 billion. We now know that Pakistan did transfer nuclear technology to Iran around this time. We also know that sometime later, Libya also approached Pakistan and obtained nuclear technology for further cash transfers to the tune of more than $100 million.Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto recently mentioned in an interview that she had sanctioned the purchase of ballistic missile technology from North Korea. Western analysts now believe that Pakistan transferred nuclear technology to North Korea in return for the missiles since it lacked foreign exchange during the mid 1990s. The recent Saudi connection is also important. After Pakistan’s nuclear tests in 1998, Saudi Arabia provided almost a billion dollars worth of free oil supplies to Pakistan every year. In 1999, Saudi Defense minister Prince Sultan became one of the few foreigners to tour secret Pakistani nuclear facilities - places were even former elected Pakistani Prime Ministers weren’t welcome. Arnaud de Borchgrave recently broke a story on a secret Pakistan-Saudi deal on nukes. Interestingly, the Saudi oil facility was stopped right after that report and there are now talks of a large Pakistan army contingent moving to Saudi Arabia - both possible signs of a deal clinched.Another pointer to the financial aspect of Pakistan’s proliferation was revealed in 2000, when the Pakistan commerce ministry issued advertisements in prominent English language Pakistani papers announcing intended sale of enriched uranium, plutonium and 17 types of equipment, including nuclear power reactors, reactor control systems and many other similar technology. Days after this, the Pakistan government withdrew the ads and said that it was a “mistakeâ€. Despite this Gen. Beg commented that selling “surplus†nuclear material to fellow Islamic nations was a "respectable way of earning money."The bottom line is that an analysis of the money trail shows that the drivers behind Pakistani nuclear proliferation were essentially that of a state and not some rogue individuals. Even though A.Q.Khan and some of his assistants may have had a major role in the nuclear network, the Pakistani Army essentially supervised it. That oversight is not dependent on whether goods were coming in or going out of Pakistan. As the 2000 advertisement saga shows, Pakistan government was seriously pursuing the usage of its nuclear technology as a tradable commodity. The huge sums of money involved also point to state involvement. Given this, it would not be possible to break this nuclear network without bringing to account the various Pakistani state entities, overt and covert, and their representatives abroad. Unfortunately, by buying Gen.Musharraf’s incredulous claims of no state involvement and focusing on A.Q.Khan, the US and its allies are ensuring that the nuclear network remains alive, albeit more underground. What's Related Los Angeles Times More from Nuclear ProliferationPakistan once again terrorism central Saturday, August 12 2006 @ 01:45 PM CDT Peter Goodspeed Once again, the road to terror runs through Pakistan. Despite Islamabad's claims to have played a crucial role helping Britain uncover a plan to blow up airliners flying to the United States, Pakistan remains a breeding ground for terror and is the most likely hiding place for Osama bin Laden. Terror groups operating out of Pakistan may already have taken over al-Qaeda's functions in a global terror network. Operating virtually unmolested under dozens of different identities, they are recruiting, radicalizing and training young militants for future attacks on Western targets. As details of a plot to blow up as many as 10 U.S.-bound airliners surface, it not only highlights Pakistan's role as an active partner in the war on terror, it underlines the fact that Pakistan remains a global centre for terrorism linked to al-Qaeda.Yesterday, senior government officials in Pakistan proudly announced it was their own counterterrorism work that triggered a global terror alert and Britain's moves to arrest 24 alleged plotters who intended to stage the largest terrorist attack since 9/11. Pakistani officials say they arrested two British nationals of Pakistani origin last week who provided information on the latest plot. The men were detained in Lahore and Karachi. Yesterday Pakistani officials identified a "key suspect" in the case as Rashid Rauf, a British citizen whom they described as "an al-Qaeda operative with linkages in Afghanistan." It's believed Mr. Rauf may be the brother of Tayib Rauf, arrested in Birmingham on Thursday as part of the airline bomb plot. "We arrested him from the border area and on his disclosure we shared the information with U.K. authorities, which led to further arrests in Britain," Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said.Pakistan is believed to have arrested 10 others in the airline bomb plot whom it has identified as local "facilitators" who met with or assisted the foreign terror suspects.Yesterday, ABC News in the United States reported U.S. counter-terrorism officials think the ringleader of the airliner plot may be Matiur Rehman, a 29-year-old al-Qaeda commander who once tried to assassinate Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf. The Guardian newspaper in Britain also reported investigators there rushed to arrest airliner bomb suspects after being tipped off by Pakistan that it had intercepted and decoded a message sent to the British plotters telling them to "Do your attacks now." The go-ahead message was issued immediately after the arrest of the two British suspects in Pakistan. Other British news reports say Pakistani officials tipped their Western counterparts to the fact substantial sums of money were wired from Pakistan to two alleged bomb plot ringleaders in Britain to help them buy airline tickets. As details of the plot trickle out, it reinforces the image of Pakistan as a politically fragile and chaotic state that increasingly has become a magnet for religious fanatics and terrorists.Following last year's July 7 subway bombings in London, which killed 52 innocent people and injured 700, it was learned three of the four suicide attackers were British Muslims of Pakistani origin. One of the bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan, had travelled to a pro-Taliban madrassa or seminary run by the hardline Jamaat al-Dawat group in Lahore just before the attacks. Jamaat al-Dawat claims to be a religious-based charity but the United States has branded it a terrorist front group with close links to Lashkar-e-Taiba (the Army of the Pure), which has recruited volunteers to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan and sponsored terrorism in Kashmir. Most recently, Lashkar-e-Taiba was implicated in the bombing of crowded commuter trains in Mumbai, India, on July 11. Lashkar-e-Taiba has also been linked to an alleged terrorist plot in Canada in which police have arrested 18 men on charges of plotting to attack government targets in Toronto and Ottawa. International terrorism officials claim Lashkar-e-Taiba has direct links to al-Qaeda and now serves as a stand-in for the group, attracting young Islamic militants to Pakistan, where they receive terrorist training and indoctrination before returning to their homelands bent on launching attacks of their own.Pakistan's military and intelligence services are also riddled with Islamic extremists who played major roles in establishing the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. Lately they have been criticized for not doing enough to stop pro-Taliban and al-Qaeda forces from trekking over Pakistan's western border to attack NATO forces in Afghanistan. Yesterday, the U.S. embassy in India highlighted the threat posed by Pakistani-based terrorists when it issued a travel advisory warning U.S. citizens of possible al-Qaeda-sponsored bomb attacks in New Delhi and Mumbai ahead of India's 60th Independence Day celebrations on Aug. 15. The same day the British airline bomb plot was revealed, Pakistan slapped a month-long period of house arrest on Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, who now operates Jamaat al-Dawat. It also ordered the expulsion of all foreign students attending some 13,000 madrassas, which frequently preach the glories of jihad and martyrdom in the name of Islam.Still, even as Pakistan co-operates in the war on terror, there is a growing chorus of complaints it isn't doing enough to suppress militant Islamist groups, which merely change their names to avoid periodic government crackdowns. Pakistan's tortured politics has created a political vacuum in which radical Islamist parties thrive. As a result, while the vast majority of Pakistanis are overwhelmingly secular, Pakistan is still fast becoming a stronghold for militant Islamic fundamentalists
India helped FBI trace ISI-terrorist links (to 9/11) $100,000 was wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen Mahumd. NEW DELHI: While the Pakistani Inter Services Public Relations claimed that former ISI director-general Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmad sought retirement after being superseded on Monday, the truth is more shocking. Top sources confirmed here on Tuesday, that the general lost his job because of the "evidence" India produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the World Trade Centre. The US authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen Mahumd.Senior government sources have confirmed that India contributed significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played by the dismissed ISI chief. While they did not provide details, they said that Indian inputs, including Sheikh’s mobile phone number, helped the FBI in tracing and establishing the link.A direct link between the ISI and the WTC attack could have enormous repercussions. The US cannot but suspect whether or not there were other senior Pakistani Army commanders who were in the know of things. Evidence of a larger conspiracy could shake US confidence in Pakistan’s ability to participate in the anti-terrorism coalition.Indian officials say they are vitally interested in the unravelling of the case since it could link the ISI directly to the hijacking of the Indian Airlines Kathmandu-Delhi flight to Kandahar last December. Ahmad Umar Sayeed Sheikh is a British national and a London School of Economics graduate who was arrested by the police in Delhi following a bungled 1994 kidnapping of four westerners, including an American citizen.MANOJ JOSHI TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ TUESDAY, OCTOBER 09, 2001 11:08:55 PM ] Regional Terror Goes Global Friday, August 18 2006 @ 06:43 PM CDT Alyssa Ayres A week after the arrest of 23 would-be airline bombers in Britain, information about their background, networks and training continues to emerge. The common thread appears to link the plot to Pakistan's Jama'at ud-Dawa (JUD), previously known as the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET). The New York Times reports that investigators are focusing on the group's role in funding the bombers. If so, this marks a new level of ambition for a terrorist outfit that has thus far restricted its mayhem to India. In the past, despite well-documented evidence of JUD/LET's activities, the international community has done little to impel Pakistan to shut it down. Now that must change. With this globalization of regional terror, a problem far away has made itself ours, and we must solve it. Despite a flimsy attempt to disguise this, Jama'at ud-Dawa is simply a new name for Lashkar-e-Taiba -- which has battled India since 1997, when it began sending suicide-jihadists into Indian Kashmir to "free" the population. In effect this has meant butchering those who don't subscribe to their seventh-century worldview -- Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims alike -- a program to which the group brings flourishes such as slicing off the noses and ears of those deemed insufficiently pious. Lashkar's brutality and fervor injected a new instability into Kashmir. They also brought the region to the brink of war by attacking India's parliament in December 2001, in response to which India mobilized half a million troops on its border with Pakistan.In 2002, Pakistan's Gen. Pervez Musharraf, under intense pressure from the U.S., banned several terrorist groups that had operated with impunity on Pakistani soil, including Lashkar. But the emptiness of this gesture became obvious when the group merely changed its name to escape arrests and asset seizure. Newly minted as the Jama'at ud-Dawa, with the same leader -- Hafiz Mohammad Saeed -- it continued to churn out jihad recruitment material, under the same titles, and to convene massive jihad jamborees to call more of the faithful to arms. For a brief while, two years ago, it appeared as though the Pakistani military had finally become serious about stamping out terrorism emanating from its territory. A peace process between India and Pakistan moved forward bolstered by the growing confidence that this time bombings would not derail it. But the lull was shortlived. Last year serial bombings in a Delhi market on the eve of the Hindu new year, an attack on a temple in the holy city of Varanasi, and the murder of a mathematician at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore all bore Lashkar's fingerprints. And then, last month, came the Mumbai blasts that killed more than 200 train commuters and injured another 700. Indian officials have implicated Lashkar in this atrocity, and Indo-Pak relations have naturally suffered another sharp setback.Like Hamas and Hezbollah, Lashkar excels at both terrorism and humanitarian relief. The funds for the airline bombers are alleged to have been diverted from those gathered in British mosques after last year's massive earthquake in South Asia. This combination of jihadism with social work makes tackling such groups infinitely more tricky, but tackle them we must, and for that Gen. Musharraf's regime must be held to account. Five years after 9/11, Pakistan remains a deeply problematic ally in the war on terror. Despite regular promises of cooperation -- and the occasional arrest of an al Qaeda bigwig from a safehouse in Karachi or Lahore -- the country continues to draw terrorists from Birmingham to Bangalore. Gen. Musharraf presents himself as the last line of defense between the mullahs and Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, but in fact, as has been amply documented by the Pakistani diplomat and scholar Husain Haqqani, the relationship between the army and the jihadists is symbiotic rather than adversarial. The army plays up the terrorist threat in order to consolidate its position in Western capitals, while at best turning a blind eye to the violence they export.All this was bad enough. But now with the airline bombing plot implicating the LET specifically, this problem has arrived on our doorstep. A coordinated trans-Atlantic effort must make the closure of Lashkar -- and also the resurgent Taliban, which increasingly uses Pakistani bases to launch attacks on NATO troops in Afghanistan -- the highest priority. Pakistan must take responsibility for the activities of these groups that operate from its soil, and cosmetic gestures, such as the recent house arrest of Saeed and the arrest of low-level Taliban in a Quetta hospital -- will not suffice. For its own sake, the sake of the neighborhood, and indeed the security of our homeland, it is time Islamabad backed its platitudes about fighting terror with real action.Musharraf and the West As has been seen in previous sections Musharraf is conscious to project himself as being very liberal and modern. His personal life to some extent bears this out. In an article in the Washington Post, Pamela Constable and Kamran Khan write: "Musharraf's personal life is distinctive in a number of ways. He is a mohajir, one whose family migrated from India in the 1940s, in an army dominated by clannish natives of what is now Pakistan. He enjoys Western music and occasionally drinks alcohol, even in his Islamic country. He speaks precise English, his son and brother live in the United States, and both his parents are naturalized U.S. citizens -- all of which augurs well for his stated desire to develop "friendly relations" with the United States."Many western experts shared such a benign view during the Kargil war (1999), and in the aftermath of General Musharraf's coup that toppled the elected government of Nawaz Sharif. Most notable in their endorsement of the General were his former colleague from the CIA-Afghan Jihad days and some scholars who had visited Pakistan numerous times during the same period.Milton Bearden, a CIA operative from that period defended General before the sub-committee of the Senate foreign relations committee for South Asia, reminding its members that Pervez Musharraf had been a part of 19th Baluch/SSG and had trained with US troops, and that he had rendered valuable service in the Afghan War. The same people also did enough to ensure that President Bill Clinton visited ..Musharraf's Pakistan' as long as he visited India.The most glaring example of General Musharraf's backers is General Anthony Zinni (formerly the chief of CENTCOM). In his statement to CBS 60 minutes soon after the coup in Pakistan, General Zinni said:"Musharraf may be America's last hope in Pakistan, and if he fails, the fundamentalists would get hold of the Islamic bomb."Post September 11, 2001 US officials rallied around General Musharraf. The basic idea of the ..Last Hope' was used to plead his case when doubts were raised in the US about General Musharraf's ability to deliver in a war against terror.Stephen Paul Cohen of the Brookings Institute and author of a book on the Pakistan army, went to the extent of comparing him to the former American President Harry Truman,"His situation is like that of Harry Truman, a man of average abilities but placed in opportune circumstances."This attraction for General Musharraf is shared by segments of the Pentagon and some in the British Defense establishment. This is at least in part due to the fact that General Musharraf has done a higher training course in the UK and at least one secret training course at Fort Bragg in the US.However not everyone in the western establishments shares this liking. Shri. B. Raman points out that Narcotics Control officials of the US had reservations about him on account of his contacts with the drug barons.Yet others see Musharraf as a high stakes gambler. Andrew Kennedy, Asia director of London's Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies says, "He's either going to win big or lose big."Not all reporters are taken in by his style either. Mark Corcoran offers us this account of what happens when one accidentally scratches below the surface of ..CEO Musharraf': "Asked why he calls himself the chief executive, he answers matter-of-factly: "For your consumption - might I say it's a very palatable name instead of chief martial law administrator, which is draconian in concept and name. I want to give it a civil façade."Instantly realizing the gaffe, he asks to "take my words back". In the background, the brigadier-press secretary suddenly looks as if he is about to face a firing squad. For the next 15 minutes I am told the general did not really mean what he said. More contradictions."However western observers and diplomats continue to feel that 'Western goodwill is at the core of the Pakistani President's great gamble'.Summary General Musharraf has traditionally enjoyed support from sections of the US Govt. most notably from his friends in the military and the CIA. He also has caught the eye of at least a few academics in the US. These persons have vested agendas, and they seem to believe that Musharraf will prove an easy tool for them to achieve their aims. Perhaps Stephen Paul Cohen gives Shekhar Gupta, the editor of the Indian Express, the most interesting insight into this type of thinking in an interview:"If India had not been partitioned, I would have been sitting here not with you but with a Chinese and we would be talking about how to contain this mighty India that straddles all the oil routes, dominates central Asia and so on."Media persons who have come into close contact with him have come away with wildly varying impressions of his nature. It seems very plausible that in the post 9-11 period, General Musharraf seeks to skillfully use the media catering to western opinion to generate the same feeling of bonhomie that dominated his earlier relationship with the west.In the next section we discuss Musharraf's relationship with the Islamists.Musharraf and the Pan-Islamist Clique After Pakistan lost the 1971 war, the bulk of conventional war fighting ideas were discredited, as was most of the military. This created a vacuum in critical areas of strategic thought. This vacuum was filled with two types of thinkers, firstly those in favor of nuclear deterrence and secondly those in favor of unconventional warfare. With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the birth of the American supported ..Afghan-Jihad', ..unconventional warfare? was enshrined into the doctrine of the Pakistan Army. It became very difficult for any reasonably ambitious officer to resist the temptation of participating in this sort of warfare. Money, power, and promotions came easily to those would help with this work. It is here that the bulk of the Pan-Islamist clique that sits atop the Pakistan Army today made their bones. Pervez Musharraf was no exception. Former Additional Secretary (Govt. of India), Shri. B. Raman writes about General Musharraf: "When Zia accepted this job of contract killing of the Soviet troops for the Americans, he chose for the task Musharraf and Lt.General Mohammad Aziz, now a Corps Commander at Lahore (presently CJCSC). They worked out a plan, which provided for a clear division of responsibilities---the Afghan Mujahideen and the Arab mercenaries including Osama bin Laden to be trained by the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment with American-British-French assistance, and the clandestine Pakistani Army of Islam to be raised and trained by the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment without any external assistance, but to be equipped by the CIA.""For training this Army of Islam, Musharraf and Aziz, assisted by Major General (r) Mahmud Durrani, selected 100 of the then existing madrasas, almost all Deobandi, and introduced military training by serving and retired officers of the Pakistan Army attached to them.""The most important and the most active of these madrasas chosen by them were the Jamiya Uloom-e-Islami in the Binori mosque, Karachi, set up by Maulana Yusuf Binori soon after independence in 1947 the Darul Uloom Akora Khattak in NWFP, and the Jamiya Ashrafiya in Lahore. Most of the Mullahs leading lights of the clandestine Army of Islam, including Maulana Masood Azhar, graduated in terrorism from these three madrasas, with Maulana Azhar himself passing out of the Binori mosque madrasa. In the 1990s, many of the Taliban leaders also passed out of this madrasa." The direct result of this however was the arming of militant Sunni radicals in Pakistan itself. These radicals weren't always occupied in fighting Soviet troops and in 1988 as Soviet operations weakened in Afghanistan, Brigadier Musharraf and the Pan-Islamist clique initially put these ..spare-Jihadis' to ..good' use. As per B. Raman, "In May 1988, the Shi'ites, who are in a majority in Gilgit (Search), rose in revolt against the Sunni-dominated administration. Zia put an SSG group commanded by General Musharraf in charge of suppressing the revolt. General Musharraf transported a large number of Wahabi Pakhtoon tribesmen from the NWFP and Afghanistan, commanded by bin Laden, to Gilgit to teach the Shi'ites a lesson. General Musharraf started a policy of bringing in Punjabis and Pakhtoons from outside and settling them in Gilgit and Baltistan in order to reduce the Kashmiri Shi?ites to a minority in their traditional land and this is continuing till today."It is also believed that in this time General Musharraf came into contact with the various elements of the ..Al Qaeeda' and the narco-terrorist syndicates that operate in Pakistan."The first assignment given by Zia to him was in the training of the mercenaries recruited by various Islamic extremist groups for fighting against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. It was during those days that General Musharraf came into contact with Osama bin Laden, then a reputed civil engineer of Saudi Arabia, who had been recruited by the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and brought to Pakistan for constructing bunkers for the Afghan Mujahideen in difficult terrain.""It was alleged that General Musharraf also developed a nexus with the narcotics smugglers of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). Even though the CIA valued his services in Afghanistan, the Narcotics Control officials of the US had reservations about him because of suspicions of his contacts with the narcotics smugglers."The end of Afghan-Jihad in 1991 created a glut of ..Islamic Warriors' in Pakistan. Rather then demobilize and disarm them, these ..victorious warriors? were channeled into the Pakistani sponsored Jihad against the democratically elected government of the state of Jammu and Kashmir in India. In an interview to an Islamic news site, ..Brother Salahuddin' by his own admission an ..Amir of the Kashmiri Mujahideen' says:"There are strong links between the two, the Kashmiri Mujahidun have poured their blood in the land of Afghanistan in defiance of the Russian Imperialists. Hundreds of them had been martyred there, and after the liberation of Afghanistan from the grip of the Russians, they returned to Kashmir, as have many Afghan Mujahidun poured their blood inside occupied Kashmir. However, we are saddened by the fighting taking place amongst the Afghans, the underlying causes of which are the external imperialist, and some of the Mujahideen forces have been lumbered with. The enemies of this Umma are benefiting from this division, and especially India. The media continually comment that as soon as Kashmir is liberated, the same fighting as occurring in Afghanistan will take place in Kashmir. This misrepresentation has effect on the common people, we pray to Allah to establish a strong government in Afghanistan, and unite them in the light of Islam. We regard the Afghan Jihad as the mother of Jihad, many Jihad movements in the Umma have sprung from it, it has moved the spirit of Jihad inside Kashmir without doubt."The Pakistani government shared his concerns regarding the Afghan situation and in order to recover the mess created by infighting among the Mujaheddin factions in post-soviet Afghanistan created a military force comprised of Islamic super-radicals. This was the so-called ..Taliban'. In 1993 again as DGMO, Pervez Musharraf helped Major General (r) Naseerullah Khan Babar build the Taliban. At lot ..taliban' were graduates of the same seminaries that churned out the ultra-sectarian militants that comprised the Anjuman Sipah Saheba Pakistan. At the time this must have seemed like a ..good' idea as it gave the ..boys' something to do.Every thing seemed settled for a while but in the Kashmir theatre of operations, the fanatically Islamist groups created from the dregs of the Afghan war, for the Kashmiri Jihad, quickly alienated the Kashmiris. The locals initially welcomed them as guests (..Mehman') but soon grew to intensely dislike them. This created a recruitment crunch in Kashmir and manpower had to be brought in from Pakistani-Punjab and NWFP. To this end organizations like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, and Jaish-e-Mohammed were raised with active support from the Pakistan army. Some analysts see this as a shift in Pakistani policy, from a ..get-Kashmir' objective to a ..keep-India-off-balance'.When Pervez Musharraf finally took over as the COAS in 1998, this policy held sway over GHQ Rawalpindi. In Afghanistan the Pakistani sponsored ..Taliban' were now making rapid progress against the last vestiges of resistance from other factions and they were in control of most of Afghanistan. This in turn created slight surplus of Jihadi manpower in Pakistan. This manpower was slowly bled into the Northern Areas of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. The strength of Force Command Northern Areas (until then a division sized formation) was raised by a factor of three. This increase in manpower and the ..keep-India-off-balance-in-Kashmir' policy led to the initiation of operation ..Badr' in the Kargil Sector by the Pakistani army...Operation Badr' despite its initial successes was in the long run an abysmal failure. The failure of ..Operation Badr' in the Kargil Sector, caused a lot of problems. In order to avoid a serious revolt within the Pakistan Army itself, Musharraf shifted the blame for the disaster onto Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. This was not enough to stem indiscipline and in at least one incident a Pakistani Army captain accused his senior officer and the military High Command of betraying the Islamist cause, and shot the officer dead. Barring this it appeared as though Musharraf had successfully ridden out the Kargil debacle.All this while however internally in Pakistan however there was a lot more trouble. Pakistan's participation in the Afghan jihad had completely broken down gun control laws in Pakistan. To finance the war army officers like General Musharraf had become closely involved with drug smugglers and arms traffickers. This unwholesome marriage was labeled variously as ..International Jihad Inc.' and ..the Guns-Drug-Jihad circle' by international observers.Sunni paramilitaries like the Anjuman Sipah Saheba Pakistan and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi ran amuck murdering hundreds of Shi?ites in the rest of Pakistan. This created a massive credibility problem for any Pakistani government (military or democratic). This was made worse by the fact that the violence between Shi'ites and Sunnis soon spread to violence between the Brelvi, Pakistani-Deobandi and Alhe-Haddithi sects within the Sunni pantheon. This was an incredibly dangerous and divisive struggle that shook the very foundations of Pakistan. With the passage of time, the Sunni radicals took to assassinating the Shi'ite professional classes, this led to a flight of trained manpower from Pakistan and vitiated relations between communities at the highest level and brought sectarian extremism to the fore.At the international level by 1998 with suicide bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the dangers posed by Osama Bin Laden's International Islamic Jihad were becoming clearer. This in turn fueled an international hunt for Osama Bin Laden and his colleagues. In Pakistan however Osama Bin Laden was a welcome guest, and it is alleged that possibly on the orders of General Musharraf, a kidney dialysis machine was provided to help him overcome his difficulties.Musharraf was not unaware of the so-called ..Talibanization' of Pakistani society. In his tenure at COAS he had frequently spoken for sectarian unity but in Sindh province where the sectarian wars raged uncontrollably, little was actually done to stem the tide. A lot of hopes were raised after Lt. General (r) Moinuddin Haider, reputed to be a close confidante of General Musharraf was made Governor of Sindh Province and later Federal Interior Minister (after Musharraf's coup), but there was absolutely no performance to show for it.A similar lack of performance was also displayed in response to requests by Govt. of India to curb cross-border terrorism. The most glaring example of this was the seen in the hijacking of IC814 in December 1999. The hijackers and the released terrorists were secretly moved back from Kandahar into Pakistani Punjab while General Musharraf and the Pakistan FO denied their presence in Pakistani territory.This sort of double-speak was seen again during the Hizb Ceasefire initiative and the Agra Summit of 2001. Internally in Pakistan, all attempts at gun control and disarmament of sectarian groups (after Musharraf took over as CEO of Pakistan) also failed completely despite public proclamations to the contrary.In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, General Musharraf affected a complete shift in the Pakistan's Afghan policy. He publicly ..ditched? the Taliban, and became an ally in the US led global war against the ..Al-Qaeeda' terrorists. Those that wanted to believe General Musharraf's speech on 19th September 2001, were left baffled by his drawing of the following analogy between Pakistan's present situation and the ..Migration of the Prophet of Islam':"The significance of migration is manifested from the fact that the Holy Prophet (PBUH) went from Makkah to Madina. He (PBUH) migrated to safeguard Islam. What was migration? God forbid, was it an act of cowardice. The Holy Prophet (PBUH) signed the charter of Madinah (Meesaq-e-Madinah) with the Jewish tribes. It was an act of sagacity. This treaty remained effective for six years. Three battles were fought with non-believers of Makkiah during this period - the battle of Badr, Uhad and Khandaq. The Muslims emerged victorious in these battles with the non-believers of Makkah because the Jews had signed a treaty with the Muslims. After six years, the Jews were visibly disturbed with the progress of Islam, which was getting stronger and stronger. They conspired to forge covert relations with the non-believers of Makkah.Realising the danger, the Holy Prophet (PBUH) signed the treaty of Hudaibiya with the Makkhans who had been imposing wars on Islam. This was a no war pact. I would like to draw your attention to one significant point of this pact. The last portion of the pact was required to be signed by the Holy Prophet (PBUH) as Muhammad Rasool Allah. The non-believers contested that they did not recognize Muhammad (PBUH) as the Prophet of Allah. They demanded to erase these words from the text of the treaty. The Holy Prophet (PBUH) agreed but Hazrat Umar (R.A) protested against it. He got emotional and asked the Holy Prophet (PBUH) if he was not the messenger of God (God forbid) and whether the Muslims were not on the right path while signing the treaty.The Holy Prophet (PBUH) advised Hazrat Umar (R.A) not to be led by emotions as the dictates of national thinking demanded signing of the treaty at that time. He (PBUH) said, this was advantageous to Islam and as years would pass by you would come to know of its benefits. "This is exactly what happened. Six months later in the battle of Khyber, Muslims, by the grace of Allah, again became victorious.It should be remembered that this became possible because Makkhans could not attack because of the treaty. On 8 Hijra by the grace of Allah glory of Islam spread to Makkah. What is the lesson for us in this? The lesson is that when there is a crisis situation, the path of wisdom is better than the path of emotions. Therefore, we have to take a strategic decision".A few attempted to explain these comments as aimed at a ..domestic audience?, which needed to be reassured in Islamic terms. Most analysts however saw a strain of duplicity in the choice of analogy. This strain of duplicity resurfaced when the State Department targeted the Rabita Trust as an entity supporting the Al-Qaeeda. General Musharraf was on the board of the Trust, and refused to resign from it. Similar such strains also appear in the context of General Musharraf's utterances on the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, and Islamabad church bombing.Most western analysts love to blame a ..mysterious, rogue and radicalized' Pakistani intelligence organization called the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) for all the ..bad? stuff in Pakistan. Perhaps General Musharraf's recent comments as they appear in USA Today cast a very different light on the validity of these ideas:"The ISI is doing whatever I tell them, of that there is no doubt in my mind."Summary General Musharraf has been an inseparable part of the ..Jihad Machine', which has dominated the Pakistani Military for the past 20 years. He has helped build the Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin, which according to some analysts comprises the sinews of Osama Bin Laden's international Islamic Jihad organization. A lot of the people in the dock for helping Al-Qaeeda operate in Pakistan and Afghanistan are associates and colleagues of General Musharraf.The Islamist groups appear to share a synergistic relationship with the dictatorship of General Musharraf. By carefully planned acts of terror they project the Pakistani stake in Jammu and Kashmir, thus giving General Musharraf the leverage he needs vis-à -vis India. By steadily maintaining a state of sectarian violence in Pakistan, they hold the minorities and political classes in their thrall. It seems perfectly natural that these groups may play a similar role in keeping the American activities in check in Pakistan in the post 9-11 period.General Musharraf for his part understands this relationship quite well. He is unwilling to do anything to disturb it. He therefore chooses the ..easy' option of keeping the ..boys' occupied. This makes him an unreliable ..ally' in the global war against terrorism.Concluding Remarks The ..composite' created so far of General Musharraf, points in strictly military terms to an aggressive and sometimes rash commander with a flair for unconventional warfare. In political terms it shows a very skillful and agile manipulator. In both contexts he retains the appearance of unpredictability. Since international politics resembles a game of poker, it is unlikely that General Musharraf will ever voluntarily surrender this vital appearance of unpredictability. The career chart of General Musharraf makes it impossible to see him as being distinct from the Pan-Islamist-terror syndicates of Pakistan. Throughout his career, two basic trends in his handling of armed Islamist groups that are apparent are:1. He does not seem to exert complete control over their actions. This is evidenced from the vast number of terrorist actions that have had unfavorable results for him personally. In all probability Musharraf uses a ..special forces style' of leadership with the Islamic groups. He discusses a wide range of policy guidelines with them, and leaves the operational aspects to them. The author feels that the act of giving guidelines is most likely done through a steering committee and to some extent a joint planning staff of some sort. It is also quite clear that he maintains a fairly open ended public posture that enables him to deflect criticism for the actions of the groups.The closest he has come to addressing the responsibility issues about ..human factors and costs' was at the Agra summit when he said to the editors at the infamous breakfast meeting in the Amar Vilas Hotel: "Well, these things are inevitable. In any struggle innocent people die. As far as I am concerned that is that."2. On several occasions after the start of the Afghan Jihad, the Pakistani Army as faced a Jihad surplus, either in manpower itself or in the infrastructure ability to support it. In all cases rather then de-mobilize the Jihadis it has promptly dumped them into another conflict. This occurs first at points during the Afghan war, most notably in 1988 as the soviet resistance slowed measurably. At this point the spare-Jihadis were used to sort out the Shi?ites of Karakorum. It occurs yet again at the end of the Afghan war, in 1991 when there were a large number of ..mujaheddin' with nothing else to do in Pakistan are shipped to Jammu and Kashmir. In 1993, the infrastructure of the madrassahs in Pakistan and their Saudi funding mechanisms built up from the afghan war was reused to build the ..Taliban'. In 1998, when the Taliban's hold on Afghanistan was growing pretty strong. At this time the Pakistanis channeled some of the extra manpower into the Kargil operations.At all these times General Musharraf was a part of the decision making process. We are faced with a similar situation today as vast numbers of ..former-Taliban' are collecting in Pakistan and the infrastructure used to support the Taliban is lying fallow once again. Given Musharraf's weak political position and the fractious nature of Pakistani polity, it must seem very tempting to him to just shove these ..former' Taliban into another zone of conflict.At the very least these Islamist groups are to him what hounds are to hunters. Against this backdrop it is very hard to see General Musharraf doing anything serious to curtail their activities. What seems more likely is that General Musharraf may create a zone of conflict (like other Pakistani leaders in the past) that will serve as a ..venting ground' for these groups. He will most likely prefer (due to historical factors) to choose the ..venting ground? in the context of Kashmir. Other choices like Xingjiang or Iran would cause him deeply personal losses.His admiration of Ataturk is more a worship of raw power. General Musharraf does not intend to carry out massive social or political reform. His ..liberal' personal lifestyle is merely a nervous expression of his personal likes-and-dislikes, which are often offensive to his fundamentalist associates and can be carefully hidden from public view by hundreds of armed guards. The same luxury however is not really available to millions of Pakistanis. As General Musharraf has stifled democracy and aggrandized power, we have no way of knowing if the rest of Pakistan wants to share such his brand of ..liberal lifestyle'.This tendency towards stylish ..absolutism' means that General Musharraf most likely personally holds the nuclear trigger with him at all times.With a carefully sculpted public image and the use of Orwellian phrases like ..counter-coup', ..dictatorship to restore true democracy' etc. General Musharraf has achieved acceptance in the west. His skill and ease with the media has enabled him to carry out sophisticated media stunts and psywar operations. Post 9-11, this ability has enabled him to skillfully project himself as the ultimate powerbroker between ..Islamists' and ..Modernists' in Pakistan. It is unclear how long he will be able to perpetuate this two-timing style despite all the admiration from western sources.In the west a great degree of ignorance about General Musharraf and Pakistan prevails. The bulk of the material presented to western audiences comes in the form of motivated statements from highly entrenched lobbies. The absence of any form of enlightened interest in the details of what General Musharraf is actually doing is sharply felt. Most western observers seem very attached to the notion of ..South Asia'. It dominates their long-term thinking. They fail to grasp the intricacies of Musharraf's position on issues, and a ravenous media has for their benefit turned Mr. Hyde into Dr. Jekyll.All of these things cause an extraordinary reliance on double-speak. This reliance makes it impossible to maintain any sort of public posture vis-à -vis General Musharraf over any reasonable length of time. The damaging nature of any association (public or otherwise) with General Musharraf is a lesson some Indian policymakers have learnt the hard way. It appears that American policymakers are refusing to learn it any other way.The events after 9-11 speak to an interesting aspect of Musharraf?s personality. Musharraf comes across as a survivor. From crisis to crisis he appears to make ..hard' choices and live out the consequences. The author cautions against taking this in a broader sense, as with his ..liberalism', ..secularism' etc this ..survival instinct' is limited to his person alone. The other way of saying this is that the General only appreciates commitments that force the issue of his personal survival to the fore.Ultimately to the author's eyes, the enduring image, a sum of all the contradictions is that of an urban Mafioso commanding the nuclear-armed Pakistani Army, and allied with the Jihadi terror syndicates. In a ..gentleman' such as this, there is no Dr. Jekyll, only Mr. Hyde.Originally published in the BR Monitor. Please refer to original for complete set of references. (Reprinted with permission)Terror in Mumbai threatens us all Thursday, July 13 2006 @ 09:43 PM CDT Pakistan must stop harbouring terrorists to be a true ally THE seven blasts that ripped through Mumbai's commuter rail system during the Tuesday evening peak hour, killing at least 190 people and wounding countless others, were more than just the worst terrorist atrocity India has suffered in more than a decade. Beyond maiming and killing innocent civilians on the way home from work, the co-ordinated attacks were a dagger aimed at the heart of the world's largest democracy and one of the most open and rapidly growing states in the developing world. The financial hub of a Western-oriented democracy with especially close ties to the English-speaking world, Mumbai should be remembered along with London, Madrid, New York and Washington as a city that has been stricken by the nihilist madness that is 21st-century terrorism.Although no one has yet claimed responsibility, all indicators suggest the attacks were carried out by a Pakistan-based and al-Qa'ida linked group such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (or Army of the Faithful), possibly in conjunction with the local Student Islamic Movement of India. India is home to the world's second-largest Muslim population after Indonesia, and this minority group harbours a series of grievances that range from perceptions of discrimination to anger over India's sovereignty over the northern provinces of Jammu and Kashmir. But regional events may have provided the trigger to the attacks. While the country already has a handful of paramilitary police stationed in Afghanistan, the Government of Manmohan Singh is debating sending troops to that country under the banner of NATO. This possibility infuriates Pakistanis, who are loath to see Indian troops stationed on both its eastern and western fronts. And the prospect of Hindu Indian soldiers fighting fundamentalist Taliban insurgents is anathema to radical Muslims. SIMI and other associated Islamic radicals have carried out a series of attacks in India over the past decade, including last year's bombings in New Delhi, which killed 60 people.Assuming that Lashkar-e-Taiba or one of its affiliates were responsible, yesterday's bombings highlight the two-faced nature of the Pakistani regime and its relations with the West, particularly Washington. While on the one hand, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has been a valuable ally in the war on terror, his regime has all too often provided succour to Islamic terrorists. He has done little to smash local terrorist infrastructure such as training camps and madrassas. The Taliban is reasserting itself in Afghanistan now precisely because it was able to regroup in Pakistan. And Osama bin Laden is thought to still be hiding within Pakistan's borders. Yesterday's attacks make it all the more incumbent for the world community, and in particular the US, to take a much firmer line with Pakistan. Australia has a stake in this as well: Lashkar-e-Taiba has made repeated attempts to infiltrate this country and has close links with Southeast Asian jihadi groups. While the group has at its foundations grievances over Kashmir, from the mid-1990s it morphed into a more sinister organisation that sees itself as an arrowhead for al-Qa'ida's worldview determined to take the fight to non-believers wherever they might be – including Australia. Australian-born Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks joined Lashkar-e-Taiba before taking up arms with the Taliban. Convicted would-be terrorist Faheem Khalid Lodhi is said to have acted as Lashkar-e-Taiba's "quartermaster" for foreign troops at its camps in the mountains of Pakistan, and a Sydney medical student currently faces charges of having trained with the group. And when French terror suspect Willie Brigitte came to Sydney in 2003 to meet Lodhi and activate a sleeper cell, it was allegedly at the behest of a Lashkar-e-Taiba official named Sajid.As horrific as the scenes of carnage were, yesterday's bombings must not be allowed to derail India's progress as one of the most promising nations in the developing world. Although still desperately poor in many ways, India's economy is growing at 8.1 per cent annually – the second-highest rate of any major economy – and is home to a thriving middle class. India's vibrant and open political culture is a living rebuke to everyone who says democracy is incompatible with economic development. This fact punches an irreparable hole in the sneakily racist argument mounted by many progressives opposed to toppling Saddam Hussein, namely that democracy cannot take root in non-Western cultures. Economically, India boasts a vast entrepreneurial class that has forced the Government to embrace reform. Besides being "the world's back office" India is home to vast numbers of competitive private enterprises and a modern financial sector. John Howard rightly condemned the attacks as "an attack on the democratic way of life". And Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has pledged intelligence and forensic investigation resources to the Indian Government. This is a good start. But Australia can do more to come to India's aid. For too long, General Musharraf has been allowed to walk both sides of the street in the war on terror and to claim that essentially his country is in such a bad way that any improvement should result in Western reward. In the wake of the Mumbai outrage, that is no longer acceptable. Australia should bring diplomatic weight to bear on Pakistan, both directly and by encouraging the US to do likewise, to clean up its act and crack down on the likes of Lashkar-e-Taiba The trouble with Pakistan Sunday, July 09 2006 @ 09:38 PM CDT A country that everyone should worry about TERRORISM has many sources and claimed justifications, but if it can be said to have a centre, it lies in the training camps, madrassas and battlefields of northern Pakistan and south-eastern Afghanistan. There the Taliban and their ally, al-Qaeda, were both formed. From there, in hellish diaspora, jihadis have fanned out across the globe. Add to that Afghanistan's lawlessness and ability to produce vast amounts of opium, not to mention Pakistan's wretched history of venal democrats and clumsy dictators, and its lamentable record on nuclear proliferation, and it is clear why what happens in those two places is of huge importance to the rest of the world. From neither place is there much good news.The West has invested a huge amount in Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in October 1999. This newspaper was prepared to give him a chance on condition that he acted swiftly and firmly to rein in extremism and sort out the economy, and then returned to barracks. He failed to do any of that. After September 11th 2001, however, he was recast as a provider of relative stability in a dangerous neighbourhood, and an essential ally in the “war on terrorâ€. Money was showered upon him; he was feted in Washington, DC, and London. Only gradually has it started to dawn on his admirers that, in the past five years, he has not done very much to make Pakistan a less dangerous place.A destroyer of democracy True, the economy has improved quite a bit since 2001—and not just because of all that donor money. But promises, made even before September 11th, to bring the country's most radical madrassas under control have not been kept. The training camps that Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has long tolerated because of their usefulness against India and in Afghanistan still exist, though they have been told not to mount any operations for now. The most dangerous outfits, such as Lashkar-e-Toiba (the Army of the Pure), have been banned, only to reappear under new guises. Not until 2004 and under the most intense American pressure did Pakistan arrest Abdul Qadeer Khan, the scientist who had cheerfully sold nuclear secrets to anyone prepared to pay.But perhaps the most damning criticism of General Musharraf is that he continues to do grave damage to the long-term political health of Pakistan (see our survey). In his seven long years in office, he has insinuated the army into every nook and cranny of Pakistani public life, weakening institutions that were feeble already, emasculating its political parties and reducing parliament to a squabbling irrelevance. He has sacked judges when it suited him, created and dismembered parties at his own convenience, rigged a referendum on his presidency and used Pakistan's constitution to write his own job description. None of this bodes well for a post-Musharraf future—which could arrive at any moment given the enthusiasm of his enemies for trying to kill him. Like a previous “caretaker†dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, who held power for 11 years before being killed, General Musharraf has been unable to resist the temptation to play politics with Islam, even if, unlike Zia, he has also had some success at purging fundamentalists from the top ranks of the army. He has forged a disparate group of Islamic political parties into a block that has helped him outmanoeuvre the democratic opposition; these Islamists are pushing hard for the extension of sharia law.
THE DC SNIPER - WHAT YOU WILL NOT BE TOLD - John Mohammed - WAS A MUSLIM - KILLING FOR THE GLORY OF ALLAH!------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- There is a general propensity of the major media to soft sell when it comes to Islam. The entire major media in the United States sells the official lie that Islam is a religion of peace and that only a small percentage of American Muslims follow the original barbaric words of Islamic founder, Mohammed. Another fact you will not be told concerns the getaway car. You probably were told that it had been turned into a "killing machine," with a hole in the trunk to shoot through, and a specially built sniper’s platform. What you will not be told is that Mohammed registered that killing machine with the DMV on September 11, 2002, and when the form asked for the time of registration, he wrote in "8:52 AM." That, of course, was the exact time when the first jet had slammed into the World Trade Center the year before. People may have died at the hands of the Muslim sniper here in the Washington, DC area because of political correctness and reverse racism. There are white racists and there are black racists in America. Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose, who led the investigation, is a black racist. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- Because the first murders known about at the time occurred in Montgomery County, Chief Moose maintained "jurisdiction" over the case even though there were more shootings outside of his county than in it. From the outset federal officials knew that the investigation was tainted by Chief Moose’s racism but did nothing because he is black. Had he been a white racist the case would have been taken away from him.-------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------ How badly did the racism of Chief Moose affect the investigation into the sniper shootings? In my opinion people died because of the conduct of Chief Moose.------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- Early on, Moose decided that the killer had to be a white man because no African-American would do anything like this. As a result the law enforcement establishment looked only for a lone white male. Police ran the plate number of the two killers, John Mohammed and John Lee Malvo at least ten times. Three times their plate number was run at road blocks set up after the shootings. They were never questioned, and the trunk of the car they had set up as a sniper’s nest was never checked. Blacks, Arabs and Muslims of whatever race were not being questioned or searched, per the orders of Chief Moose.------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- Had all vehicles been checked at road blocks instead of just those driven by white males, as many as five victims would not have been shot!------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------- MORE RACISM------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- It gets worse. The Muslim killers actually called the police hot line to talk and to make known their demands, but the authorities hung up on them. John Mohammed in his last note to police said he had to kill more people to get their attention because he had tried to call the hot line and that people answering the phones had laughed at him and hung up.--------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- Why did police or their assistants working the phones hang up on John Mohammed when he called? Because he had a "black voice." Since Moose had given the order that the killer was white and to disregard all other leads, no one taking the calls would talk to John Mohammed, assuming that he must be a black crackpot. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- Had anyone manning the hot line actually talked to John Mohammed, they would have been able to figure out that he did indeed know about the shootings and that he was indeed a black Muslim killing for the glory of Allah.------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- The only difference between Chief Moose and a good ol' boy southern sheriff in the KKK is the color of his skin. Moose has been declared a hero in the Washington area when he, in fact, not only botched the investigation but has blood on his hands.------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND THE SNIPER------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- There were more problems with the police and federal investigation of the shootings by Muslim sniper John Mohammed than the racism of Chief Moose. Even when the federal authorities finally did get involved, the political correctness that engulfs law enforcement did not allow a proper investigation.---------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------------- There were two major rules the police and FBI were operating under: first that the shooter had to be white and second that the shooter could not possibly be a Muslim. Given the terror alerts and the discovery of Al Qaeda training manuals which teach sniper killing to disrupt society, why would the FBI from the start discount any Muslim link?------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------- The Justice Department appears to be under direct orders from the White House not to offend any more "American" Muslims than absolutely required in the war on terror. The White House sees itself under fire from groups such as the ACLU for "targeting" Muslims. Also the Republican party still believes that Muslims can be convinced to vote for their candidates. Indeed there is a big drive to recruit Muslims into the Republican Party. Thus there was political pressure not to investigate Muslim connections to the shootings.-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------ MEDIA CAN’T SEE MUSLIM SNIPER CONNECTION-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------ When the shootings began in the Washington, DC area, in October, the big media outlets immediately trotted out "expert" profilers to tell us all that no Muslim could be involved. The profilers all said the same thing: "the shooter" was a "self-centered, weak- minded, power hungry white male age twenty-five to fifty-five." ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC all touted the same line ... the shooter is a lone gunman; he can’t be black, Hispanic or Asian. All serial killers are lone white males, they said. The problem is that this is just not true. The infamous Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, was Jewish. Paul Bernardo & Karla Homolka, known as "Barbie and Ken," were a male/female team of serial killers. Charles Ng, who killed young girls, was Chinese and Richard Ramirez, who killed dozens in the United States, was Hispanic. Atlanta even had a black serial killer who preyed on young boys. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- According to serial killer expert James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University professor, 55 percent of sniper killers are white and 43 percent are black. About 22 percent of all serial killers are black. Because these were sniper shootings there was about a fifty-fifty chance the killer was black. Where did this "serial killers are always white males" information come from that was on the major news shows everyday?--------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------- The major TV networks pushed the "lone white male" theory because of simple political correctness. Worse, this media political correctness focused the attention of citizens in the Washington, DC area away from anyone other than a white male as a suspect. If a black, Hispanic or Middle Easterner were acting "strangely" or if they were away from home during the times of the shootings, it was to be ignored.---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------- There is a general propensity of the major media to soft sell when it comes to Islam. The entire major media in the United States sells the official lie that Islam is a religion of peace and that only a small percentage of American Muslims follow the original barbaric words of Islamic founder, Mohammed.--------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------- The Fox News network was the only major media outlet which explored the idea that there could be more than one shooter and that those shooters might be Islamic or have terrorist connections. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- During this three week period of the shootings I was not alone in demanding that investigators look for an Islamic link. On many occasions former Presidential candidate Gary Bauer also said the killers may have Islamic links. WorldNetDaily, an Internet news outlet, also ran screaming headlines stating that the pattern of the killings showed an Islamic connection. Now that it is proven the shooters are Muslims, now what?------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------- MEDIA AND AUTHORITIES: "Shooters Not Really Muslim"----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------- Now the authorities and major media are saying the acts of John Mohammed and John Malvo are not really terrorism because they were not involved in a larger group. ABC, CBS and NBC have already run lengthy stories trying to let off the hook Islam and the racist Nation of Islam of which John Mohammed was a part. John Mohammed was converted to Islam more than a decade ago under Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. When men convert to the radical racist Nation of Islam, many change their last name to Mohammed. The shooter, John Mohammed, did not change his name until just after the 9-11 jihad attack on the United States. This alone should alert the media that he was indeed standing for the cause of Islam in these shootings.-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------ Although the media down plays John Mohammed’s association with the Nation of Islam, it has been learned that he worked at Louis Farrakhan’s "Million Man March" in October of 1995. Some media outlets reported that he actually was a part of Louis Farrakhan’s security detail at the event; however, even this detail was downplayed.------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------- The media is also trying to portray John Lee Malvo as a "misled" youth and for that reason the truth about his conversion to Islam several years ago in Jamaica has not been generally revealed. He was a Muslim before he met John Mohammed.--------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------- Another fact you will not be told concerns the getaway car. You probably were told that it had been turned into a "killing machine," with a hole in the trunk to shoot through, and a specially built sniper’s platform. What you will not be told is that Mohammed registered that killing machine with the DMV on September 11, 2002, and when the form asked for the time of registration, he wrote in "8:52 AM." That, of course, was the exact time when the first jet had slammed into the World Trade Center the year before. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- What you probably will hear, though, is the current bizarre media theory that John Mohammed planned on killing his ex-wife and that the other killings in four different states were intended as a cover up. This has to be the single biggest joke so far. To believe this, one must ignore all the evidence and the written and verbal pronouncements form the killers.---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------- These two men were simply killing people for the glory of Allah. The political correctness of the police and the media will only allow them to attack Christians and Christian leaders.---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------- John Mohammed’s Islamic connections and his behavior did alert civilians in the past, even if the media and the authorities remained oblivious. On two different occasions the FBI was notified that John Allen Mohammed might have terrorist ties. At a homeless shelter where John Mohammed lived in Washington state, the director was so suspicious of his behavior that he notified the authorities just after the 9-11 jihad attack on America. Although living in a homeless shelter, Mohammed had a car and a wad of money, and traveled extensively.------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------- He also tried to recruit someone to help him shoot a tanker truck full of gasoline. That individual reported the incident to police but again, no action was taken.------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- THE ARMY AND THE SNIPER------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- Col. Oliver North became livid on the Fox network’s Hannity and Colmes show when Alan Colmes asked him about the training John Mohammed received in the Army. North shot back, "The media in describing this guy always says first he is a veteran. Why don’t they describe him as a member of the Nation of Islam?"----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------- I was angry too. The Washington Post, the New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, and NBC were all the same in describing John Mohammed as a veteran, as if to say that having served in the Army somehow caused him to become a terrorist. Everyone who serves in the Army receives the same weapons knowledge in basic training as did John Mohammed. Even cooks receive this kind of weapons training. Why? The day could come when the cooks have to help defend a base against an attack. Does this mean the Army creates terrorists and murderers? Since I am white and received an "expert" rifleman’s badge in the Army does that make me a potential serial killer?----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------- John Mohammed was not a trained sniper. His only weapons training was in basic training, as I mentioned above. There has never been, in the entire history of the U.S Army, a real trained sniper who has become a serial killer. Yet, it was John Mohammed’s army training that got the attention, not the fact that he was a part of the Nation of Islam.------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- It is odd, however, that Fort Lewis, where John Mohammed served, has the largest number of Muslims of any Army base. John Allen Mohammed became a Muslim in 1985, the same year he joined the Army. The Army reports that there are a total of 4,000 practicing Muslims in the Army, with fifteen active-duty Muslim chaplains. (Islamic organizations of course claim there are 10,000 Muslims in the Army. No Islamic organization can be honest about numbers, any numbers.)--------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------- For this small band of Muslims in the Army there are special meals and special time off. Muslims in the Army receive certified "halal" religiously approved meals. There are even MRE (Meals, Ready to Eat) that are "halal." MRE are used in the field when no prepared food is available.-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------ The Army does not release the cost of preparing these special meals; however, consider this: Most units have no Muslims and some have only one or two Muslims. Thus a special meal is often prepared for a single Muslim in a brigade of hundreds of men.-------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------ AND THEN THE INS--------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- One of the two shooters, John Lee Malvo, age 17, was in the United States illegally. On December 19, 2001 the Border Patrol arrested Malvo and his mother in Bellingham, Washington. At the time she confessed that she and her son had both come to the United States as stowaways on a ship. The Border Patrol set in motion immediate deportation. That recommendation was overturned by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The INS is the same agency that allowed in most of the Saudi terrorists who were part of the 9-11 jihad against the United States.----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------- Mrs. Malvo was released on a $1,500 bond by the INS while a deportation hearing was pending. Her son, John the killer, was then released to her with no bond required. Just a few weeks later John Malvo was on the road with John Mohammed. No one has bothered to check on or report the source of the $1,500 Mrs. Malvo obtained while in custody of the INS. She had no means of support other than some previous jobs in restaurants such as the Red Robin chain.------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- Authorities now believe that much of the money John Mohammed and John Malvo were spending without working a day the last year came from other crimes such as robberies. In Alabama at least one store clerk was killed and it was Lee Malvo’s fingerprints that were found. Had the INS done their job in protecting the borders of this nation from illegal immigration, at least one of the murderers would not have been here to do his dirty deeds.------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- BLACK LEADERS FEAR BACKLASH---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------- Responsible black leaders, who promote Americans living and working together as one people, fear a great backlash against all blacks because of the actions of black Muslims. Black civil rights leader Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, has asked for a meeting with Attorney General John Ashcroft because of a "clear and present danger" posed to U.S. race relations by Black Muslim groups.----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------- The CORE chairman, who has promoted race equality in the United States for decades, said that if the next act of terrorism has Black Muslim "fingerprints"on it, that it could destroy decades of progress in race relations in America. He fears that Al Qaeda terrorists leaders are going to exploit young blacks who have "non-spiritual" jail house conversions to Islam. He told NewsMax in an exclusive interview that the conversions in jail were often done just to join gangs for safety and to still be able to "express their hostility using religious cover." Innis pointed out that even fighter Mike Tyson became a Muslim in prison as did Al Qaeda shoe bomber Richard Reid, and dirty-bomb suspect Jose Padilla.---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------- JERRY FALWELL AND ISLAM------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------- The major media loves to hate Dr. Jerry Falwell. Shortly after the Islamic Jihad attack of 9-11 both Dr. Jerry Falwell and Dr. Pat Robertson said that the attacks on the United States were caused by the moral slide of the nation. The media attacks against Falwell were so great that he said little about it for a year.------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------- On the other hand, I began pointing the figure at Islam from the very day of the attack. As time went on, others, including Franklin Graham, added their voices to mine. Now Dr. Jerry Falwell has spoken out about the true nature of Islam. On October 6th on CBS Sixty Minutes, Dr. Falwell finally said that Mohammed was indeed a "man of war" and a "terrorist." Falwell made the comments when pushed into comparing the acts of Mohammed with those of modern terrorists. If a terrorist is one who kills innocent civilians, then indeed Mohammed was a terrorist.-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------ I was not surprised by the media attacks following Dr. Falwell’s comments on 60 Minutes; however, the rather bizarre attack by the National Council of Churches (NCC) was surprising. The NCC claims to represent 50,000,000 Americans in thirty-six denominations. This is of course a lie. In reality the NCC has shrunk to become a small far left-wing political organization that is forced to borrow money on future dues to survive. Its politics are out of sync with most of the Christians it claims to represent.-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------ Still the attack on Falwell by the NCC was not only vicious but strange. The resolution of their board released on October 15th said that Falwell’s words were, "not Christian and shockingly uninformed" and his words would "...create ideal conditions for breeding terrorism...."---------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------------- Let me sum it up. The NCC said that Islam is a religion of peace but that if you say bad things about it, Islam’s adherents will kill Christians. Indeed the NCC said, that Falwell’s "... inflammatory words put at increased risk the lives of thousands of Christian missionaries." ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- This bizarre document can be found online at www.ncccusa.org/news/o2news86.html. I urge you to read the full story and the resolution of their board at their Internet site. At one point in the story they actually blame Falwell for an attack on a Christian hospital in Pakistan by Islamic forces. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- If your church or denomination is affiliated with the National Council of Churches, this is what part of your tithe is financing. You may want to talk to your pastor about the continued support of the NCC by your church.----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------- FALWELL / ROBERTSON / GRAHAM HAVE ISLAMIC DEATH SENTENCE---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------- Did the National Council of Churches’ harsh condemnation of Dr. Falwell cause a death decree to be issued against him by Iranian clerics? Death warrants have now been issued by Iranian Islamic leaders against Dr. Falwell, Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham. The "Fatwa " has apparently been issued by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as relayed by his spokesman Hohsen Mojtahed Shabestari who said, "The death of these men is a religious duty."------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- The National Council of Churches leadership can see no difference between Christianity and Islam. Indeed the NCC spends most of its time and resources condemning fellow Christians. The NCC has made no comment against the recent terrorist acts by Muslims in Bali, in Russia or even the sniper shootings in the United States. Apparently the NCC leadership believes that the censorship of Jerry Falwell is far more important than the lives of Christians in a Moscow theater.---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------- ISLAMIC ATTACK OF THE MONTH------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------- Even while the Muslim snipers in the Washington, DC were being brought to justice, a theater in Moscow, Russia was being taken over by Islamic terrorists. More than 800 people were held hostage for three days. Every few hours a few civilians were shot. One woman had her fingers broken one at a time before she was shot.------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------- ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC referred to the terrorists as "Chechnyan rebels." Not once on any major network during the three day ordeal in Moscow did the media refer to the terrorists as Muslims. Video clips showed some of the "rebels" were Muslim women draped in Islamic burkas and with explosives attached to their bodies, but the words "Muslim" or "Islamic" were never used. Why?-------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------ The Muslim terrorists set dawn on the third day as the deadline for the Russian government to give in to their demand for a separate Islamic state in Russia. At dawn they said they would begin killing the rest of the 800 captives. When shots were heard just before dawn the Russian special forces used gas to knock out the terrorists. The gas was used so the terrorists could not explode the bombs they were carrying. About fifty terrorists were killed, but more than 100 of the hostages died from the gas used by the Russian special forces.----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------- The major media outlets in the United States and Europe immediately began to blame Russia for the deaths and question why the Russian government will not just allow an independent Muslim state to break away. Good question ... and why don’t the United States and France and Germany just set aside large sections of their territory for independent Islamic states?----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------- When India set aside over one third of its national territory to establish the Islamic state known as Pakistan, did the terrorism stop? No. This year Pakistani Islamic terrorists attacked the democratically elected Parliament of India. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- Also, Islamic terrorists in the Philippines killed more innocent civilians with bombs during the weeks the Islamic sniper was killing people here. The Islamic terrorists say they will stop bombing markets in the Philippines when they receive an "independent" Islamic state made up of many of the southern islands in the Philippines. The Australian newspaper, The Age, reports that Al Qaeda documents have been seized by police that show a plan to forge a major Islamic region in the Pacific that includes of all things parts of Northern Australia! What of the Christians, Jews and others who live in those lands now? They can move, say the Muslims. Do we see a pattern here?------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------- SENATOR LIEBERMAN "Saudi Finances Terror"----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------- Just after the Jihad attack against us on 9-11, I was really alone in my criticism of Saudi Arabia. Many recall that I had to buy advertisements in the Washington Times and other newspapers to get the point across that Saudi Arabia was and is the financier of Islamic terror in the world.------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- No one in government has come forward to agree with me until now. Former vice presidential candidate Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CN) took the plunge into truth on Fox News Sunday to make the charge that Saudi Arabia is the main culprit. He said that the Saudi support of our enemies "...not only is unacceptable, it’s outrageous."------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------- What he said next shocked the news media and was not repeated by any network other than Fox or by the print media. Senator Lieberman said, "In my 14 years in the Senate, I have never seen such bipartisan anger toward the Saudis and the willingness to really alter this relationship as I see today."----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------- With that statement Senator Lieberman admitted that virtually the entire Senate agreed with me that Saudi Arabia is the kernel of evil and also, because of political correctness run amuck in the nation, no one in the Senate will publicly say what they believe on this issue.------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- HATE CRIMES------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------- If Senators Kennedy and Clinton pass their "hate crimes" law, virtually everything I have said so far in this newsletter would be banned speech. My references to "racism" and "Islam" could be construed by the authorities as "creating a climate of hate" for which I could be jailed. The real question about "hate crimes is, who gets to decide what speech is "hate" and what is not?-------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------ Can someone be fired for "hate speech"? The Kodak Corporation thinks so. Kodak fired a 23-year veteran employee because he asked not to be sent e-mails promoting homosexual behavior. Kodak had sent all employees an e-mail about a homosexual "coming out day." Mr. Rolf Szabo, a millwright, responded, "Please do not send this type of information to me anymore, as I find it disgusting and offensive. Thank you." He was fired on the spot the same day, because his boss did not believe he was in line with "Kodak values." Keep in mind that it was determined that Mr. Szabo was guilty of "hate" and had to be terminated even though all he did was request that material about homosexuality not be sent to him.-------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------ I personally will not be buying any more Kodak products.--------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------- Christians In Peril------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------- Why has there been such a great exodus of Christians from the Middle East, with some two million fleeing in the past 20 years alone? Why has not the media reported on this great migration of fleeing Christians from Islamic nations?---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------- One of the most important aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has been overlooked is the plight of Christians in the Holy Land. Christians in the Palestinian territories have dropped from 15 percent of the Arab population in 1950 to just two percent today. This Christian exodus is a result of many factors, including the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, the related decline of the economy, but perhaps most significantly, the religious persecution these Christians encounter from their Muslim neighbors.-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------ English-speaking French journalist Pierre Rehov addresses this alarming trend in his new film, The Holy Land: Christians in Peril. The film is a documentary containing interviews with Christians as well as exclusive footage showing how dangerous their situation is under Islamic rule. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- Do Not Be fooled. CHO THE VIRGINIA TECH GUNMAN is an evil deciple of muslim hatred. In the package that he sent to NBC he used his Arabic name A. Ishmael and a UK address. IshmaelYišma?êl; Arabic: ???????, Isma'il; translates as "God will hear" ---------- Judaism has generally viewed Ishmael as wicked though repentant.[1] Islamic tradition, however, has a very positive view of Ishmael, ascribing a larger role to Ishmael in comparison to the Bible and viewing him as a prophet and the son of sacrifice (according to certain early theologians whose ideas prevailed later).[1][2] The Bahá'à writings consider him a lesser prophet. Islam And Politics: ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- As we first suspected, the six imams bounced from a US Airways flight misled the public about the incident and likely staged the whole thing as a scheme to weaken security.,-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------- Their actions undermine any good will and trust Muslim leaders have built since 9/11. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- And they call into question what we really know about these supposedly virtuous men we invite to the White House and other halls of power in gestures of tolerance.,------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------- Are they really moderate? ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- Do they really mean it when they renounce terrorism? ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- Do they really have America's best interests at heart?,----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------- The police report detailing the US Airways flap gives us serious pause. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- The imams acted more like provocateurs than victims. At the gate before boarding, they angrily cursed the U.S. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- Then they bowed to Mecca and prayed "very loud," chanting "Allah, Allah, Allah," according to the gate agent and another witness.,--------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------- On the plane, ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- they didn't take their assigned seats and instead fanned out to the front, middle and rear of the plane. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- One even "pretended to be blind" to gain access to another passenger's seat, according to a flight attendant.,------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------- Some ran back and forth speaking to each other in Arabic.,---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- Adding to suspicions, most of them asked for seat belt extensions even though they didn't need them — or even use them.,------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------ Yet the ringleader, ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- Omar Shahin, claimed before the police report was released that they "did nothing" unusual. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- "It's obvious discrimination," he insisted.,-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------- When the story first broke, the imams denied they chanted "Allah." ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- Yet, several witnesses in the police report say they did. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- The imams also claimed they were handcuffed and harassed by dogs. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- "Six imams. Six leaders in this country," Shahin complained. "Six scholars in handcuffs." ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- But the police report puts the lie to both those claims, too.,------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------- Shahin also claimed that a local FBI agent pleaded with US Airways to sell the Saintly Six imams another plane ticket, ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- telling airline reps that the government had "no problem" with the men. "Never happened," says an FBI spokesman in Minneapolis.,----------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------- Shahin and his fellow imams, who were educated in Sudan and Saudi Arabia, says he and the imams are all moderates who love the U.S. and denounce terror. He doubts Muslims were responsible for 9/11.,------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------ "We have been asked by God and by the prophet Muhammad to respect all human life," he said. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- "The Quran is very clear, to save one life he saves all human life, and whoever kills one person he kills all humankind, and that is what Islam is all about.",---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- But Shahin engages in more dissembling. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- He leaves out a key part of the verse (5:32) that condones killing those who murder fellow Muslims or spread "mischief in the land." ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- Mischief is defined as "treason against Allah," and the very next verse calls for guilty infidels to be beheaded.,-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------- ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- Shahin himself has ties to terrorism. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- He served (unknowingly, he now says) as an agent and fundraiser for a Hamas front. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- He ran a mosque in Tucson, Ariz., attended by several al-Qaida operatives including the hijacker who flew the plane into the Pentagon. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- And he now runs an imam federation that counts an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing among its trustees.,-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------- Shahin also teaches at an Islamic school fully accredited by an Egyptian university tied to the dangerous Muslim Brotherhood. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- The school's founder preaches sharia law. One of the imams kicked off the US Airways flight, an Egyptian native, praised sharia law, according to a passenger who sat next to him.,------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------- "He expressed views I consider to be extreme fundamentalist Muslim views," said the witness, a clergyman who has traveled to the Middle East. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- "He indicated that it was necessary to go to whatever measures necessary to obey all that's set out in the Quran.",---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- But most disturbing, these imams aren't the fringe. Shahin's group, the North American Imams Federation, represents more than 150 mosque leaders across the country. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- It works in concert with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which wasted no time slamming US Airways for "stereotyping" Muslims and calling on Congress to pass legislation to outlaw passenger profiling.,------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------- Both CAIR and NAIF work closely with Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, D-Minn., ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- the first Muslim member of Congress. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- Conveniently enough, he immediately stepped in on their behalf to pressure US Airways and the local airport to change security policies.,-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------- If it were an orchestrated stunt to create public sympathy and force airports to look the other way when groups of Muslim men fly, it's working. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- The Minneapolis airport plans to add a prayer room for Muslims, and Democrats plan to hold hearings on Muslim profiling. ,----------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- This could have a chilling effect on efforts to investigate terror suspects in the Muslim community.,------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------- Such hearings would only confer legitimacy on bogus complaints by Muslim leaders. We need to take a harder look at them, not airlines' security policies.,-----
"Pat Tillman. The man gave up his career dream $3.6 MILLION DOLLAR FOOTBALL CONTRACT to fight and die for something greater than anything money could buy." DO NOT LET PAT TILLMAN DIE IN VAIN. We are in a life and death struggle. READ ABOUT what the enemy has planned for US. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ Is it Legitimate to Use Nuclear Weapons Against the West? A Debate on An Islamist ForumThe Islamist website Al-Firdaws recently posted an article by a certain Abu Zabadi titled "Religious Grounds for [Launching] a Nuclear Attack." [1] The article, presented as a response to "recent rumors about Al-Qaeda's plan to attack the U.S. with WMDs such as a nuclear bomb," unequivocally opposes the use of WMDs by Muslims against the West, and attempts to counter the legal justifications for their use recently put forward by some prominent religious scholars affiliated with Al-Qaeda and other jihad movements. [2]The article sparked a fierce debate among participants on the forum, with some participants supporting the author's reasoning and conclusions, and others forcefully rejecting them.The following are the main points of Abu Zabadi's article, and excerpts from some of the responses to it.A Nuclear Attack Results in Indiscriminate Killing, Which Is Forbidden by Islam The author's main concern is not the legitimacy of obtaining WMDs for purposes of deterrence, but whether Islam sanctions a first-strike nuclear attack by Al-Qaeda against the U.S. or Europe. The author states that such an attack is forbidden, and presents several arguments in support of his position.Using WMDs May Provoke U.S. WMD CounterattackAbu Zabadi first points out that a nuclear attack results in indiscriminate killing of both innocent and guilty, which violates Allah's commandment to preserve the lives of the innocent.Next, he dismisses the claim that the U.S. itself has used WMDs - such as phosphor bombs, cluster bombs or depleted uranium - against its enemies, which makes it legitimate to attack it with WMDs. The author states that these are conventional weapons, and that, unlike nuclear weapons, "they do not kill millions at a single strike." From a practical point of view, he adds, "using WMDs against America and its allies will provoke them... to aim a painful blow at Muslims, and this time not with conventional weapons but with WMDs." Such provocation, he states, stands in contradiction to the Prophet's conduct as attested in the Islamic tradition. "Since America and its allies are stronger than the Islamic nation," he says, "circumstances forbid us to provoke America and its allies... even if Al-Qaeda succeeds in obtaining a nuclear bomb.""If God Wishes to Wipe America Off the Face of the Earth... The Matter Is In His Hands"Abu Zabadi next addresses the claim that the U.S. must be destroyed because it is an immoral country that encourages corrupt behavior such as consuming alcohol and visiting brothels. He responds that a similar argument can be used to "sanction the killing of our brothers in Yemen, Egypt, and other [countries]." Pointing out that the murder rate in Yemen is very close to that of the U.S., he asks: "Are we therefore permitted to destroy Yemen... with WMDs because of [its]... moral corruption?" He concludes, "If God wishes to wipe America off the face of the earth because of its great corruption, the matter is in His hands [and not in the hands of the mujahideen].""If Bin Laden and His Followers Wish to Respond [to U.S. Attacks] in Kind, They Should [Confront] the Evil Troops on the Battlefield"The author rejects the argument that killing innocent Americans can be regarded as legitimate retribution for attacks on Muslims, which some claim is sanctioned by several Koranic verses. [3] When bin Laden used this argument to justify the attack on the World Trade Center, says Abu Zabadi, he was basing his claims on a flawed understanding of the Koranic text. The Koran, he explains, permits to take revenge on a person who commits an act of aggression, but not to take revenge on his family or friends, as the verse says: "Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors [2: 190]." He therefore concludes, "If bin Laden and his associates wish to respond [to the U.S. attacks] in kind, they should go out and [confront] the evil troops on the battlefield. However, they are not permitted to target unarmed civilians.... men, women, children and elderly people. This is... not permitted by Islamic law."Forum Participant: The Article "Is All Distortions, It Laughs in the Faces of the Muslims"Most of the forum participants who criticized the article took up religious arguments made in the past by prominent contemporary Islamist sheikhs (see endnote 2).A participant calling himself Abdal Al-Sham began with a personal attack on the author, saying: "This article was not written by a Muslim... but by an American, and more specifically, by [someone from] one of their strategic centers for countering the Islamic jihad..." Regarding the content of the article, he said: "The essence of the article.... is that the U.S. bears no responsibility for the killing of Muslim children... And [even in cases] where it is proven that the U.S has killed Muslim women, children and elderly, [the article stipulates that it is permissible] to take revenge only on the one [directly] responsible for the killing... This is a distortion. [The article] laughs in Muslims' faces... It essentially [misrepresents] some of the [texts] it quotes from the Koran and the sunna...""The Destructive Power of the... Bombs Dropped on Afghanistan Alone Was Greater Than That of the Atomic Bomb Dropped on Hiroshima"Abdal Al-Sham then argues against Abu Zabadi's legal reasoning: "The distinction between WMDs and conventional weapons, based on the extent of death and destruction they cause... is theoretically valid. But in reality, this distinction is false!!!... The amount of destruction... and the number of deaths to Muslim civilians - women, children, and the elderly - caused by the... conventional weapons used by the U.S. throughout its years-long Crusader war against Islam is equivalent to the [extent of death and destruction] caused by WMDs!!... The destructive power of the one-ton bombs dropped on Afghanistan alone is greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima... The ignorant writer should consider this fact!!!"It Is Permitted to Strike the Infidels When Their Women and Children Are with ThemAbdal Al-Sham continues: "The principle of retribution in kind applies, for example, when the infidels do something that is completely forbidden to Muslims, such as mutilating corpses. It is prohibited for Muslims [to do such a thing] unless the infidels commit [this crime] against Muslims!!!... However, striking the infidels when their women and children are with them is permitted independently [of] the principle of retribution in kind."Legally, Americans Are Considered a Single Individual"It is clear that the elected American government..., the military and civil organizations associated with it, and [the American] nation [as a whole] legally constitute 'a single individual' when it comes to [responsibility for] the killing of women, children and the elderly... by U.S. troops in Muslim lands. This aggression is committed by every American who is [a citizen of] the United States and does not wash his hands of it or keep away from it... Legally, all of them are considered 'one individual.' An American who is against this aggression against Muslims should emigrate from America to a safe place... in order to avoid the punishment [meted out by] the Muslim mujahideen. It is not the concern of the mujahideen to distinguish him from... those Americans who do support the aggression."Americans Have Used Biological, Chemical and Nuclear WeaponsAnother forum participant supported Abdal Al-Sham's position, saying: "[WMDs] include biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, which the Americans - as admitted by their [own] judicial authorities - have used to varying degrees. The U.S. sanctions the killing of civilians day and night, and claims that it is an unavoidable [consequence] of war... It is permissible to kill the infidels..."