* This dispatch contains more reaction to the American intelligence (NIE) report on Iran. This is one of the most important issues of our lifetimes, and I suggest you read as many of these short items as you can.
* Poll shows just 18% of Americans believe NIE is right when it says Iran no longer has a nuclear weapons program.
CONTENTS
1. Is this the most unintelligent intelligence report in history?
2. Just 18% of Americans believe Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program
3. British spies share Israeli assessment
4. “If Neville Chamberlain weren’t long dead I would wonder whether he had a hand in writing this ‘peace in our time’ intelligence fiasco”
5. So why during the past year has Iran been busy installing 3,000 gas centrifuges?
6. French and Germans: Iran remains a danger
7. IAEA: American intelligence too generous to Iran
8. Shultz and Woolsey: we are skeptical of NIE findings
9. Senator calls for bipartisan panel to explore the NIE’s evidence
10. “The sense of betrayal within the Israeli security system is deep”
11. Israeli expert: “It is a matter of months, not years”
12. “U.S. intelligence reports Auschwitz were faulty too”
13. “Partisan State Department officials behind NIE report”
14. WSJ: “There is no civilian purpose for such Iranian enrichment”
15. The main winners with Iran are Russia and China
16. “Iranian scientists are learning more about the basic means to build a nuclear weapon every day”
17. “Would you buy a used car from our spooks?”
IS THIS THE MOST UNINTELLIGENT INTELLIGENCE REPORT IN HISTORY?
[Note by Tom Gross]
Today marks a week since the release of one of the most unintelligent – and dangerous – intelligence reports in history.
Already, as a result, the Chinese are backing away from whatever support they might have provided for tougher sanctions against Iran, while Russia has used the report as another reason to oppose them. Behind the scenes, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, now fearful that America will not be able to stop Iran going nuclear, have each decided in the last week to expand their own efforts to gain a nuclear capability.
For the Islamic Republic of Iran, the only country which encourages suicide bombing as state policy, to acquire a nuclear arsenal will amount to a threat quite unlike that the world has ever known. Even in the darkest days of the Cold War there was a never any real possibility that the Soviets or Chinese (or Americans or French or British) would unilaterally use a nuclear device. Not so with the regime now running Iran. The danger is not just in the first strike use of a nuclear weapon but also in the use of a “dirty bomb” in a major western or Middle East capital by one of the regime’s proxy terror groups.
Thankfully, many respected commentators and the general public (see extracts below) aren’t buying the NIE report. But will this skepticism about the NIE be enough to leave all options on the table for Western governments before it is too late?
Below is some further reaction since my round-up last Wednesday. (For that, see the dispatch titled: Ahmadinejad doesn’t want a nuclear bomb? Just like there are no gays in Iran?)
JUST 18% OF AMERICANS BELIEVE IRAN HAS HALTED ITS NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM
* The first major opinion poll of the American public on the NIE report, conducted by Rasmussen, shows that just 18% of Americans believe that Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program. Only 19% believe that Iran is not a threat to U.S. national security. Among liberal voters only 29% of believe that Iran has stopped its weapons program, as the NIE claims. Just 8% of Conservatives believe Iran has stopped its program.
BRITISH SPIES SHARE ISRAELI ASSESSMENT
* The (London) Sunday Telegraph reports that “Iran hoodwinked the CIA over its nuclear plans”:
“British spy chiefs have grave doubts that Iran has mothballed its nuclear weapons program, as a U.S. intelligence report claimed last week, and believe the CIA has been hoodwinked by Teheran. Analysts believe that Iranian staff, knowing their phones were tapped, deliberately gave misinformation
“The timing of the CIA report has also provoked fury in the British Government, where officials believe it has undermined efforts to impose tough new sanctions on Iran and made an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities more likely.
“… A senior British official delivered a withering assessment of U.S. intelligence-gathering abilities in the Middle East and revealed that British spies shared the concerns of Israeli defense chiefs that Iran was still pursuing nuclear weapons.
“… A U.S. intelligence source has revealed that some American spies share the concerns of the British and the Israelis. ‘Many middle-ranking CIA veterans believe Iran is still committed to producing nuclear weapons and are concerned that the agency lost a number of its best sources in Iran in 2004,’ the official said.”
* The Wall Street Journal reports today that the Iranian opposition group that first exposed Iran’s nuclear-fuel program said a U.S. intelligence analysis was wrong in that Teheran only briefly shut down its weaponization program in 2003, and relocated and restarted it in 2004.
“IF NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN WEREN’T LONG DEAD I WOULD WONDER WHETHER HE HAD A HAND IN WRITING THIS ‘PEACE IN OUR TIME’ INTELLIGENCE FIASCO”
* Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz called the report “just about the stupidest intelligence assessment I have ever read. It falls hook, line and sinker for a transparent bait and switch tactic employed not only by Iran, but by several other nuclear powers in the past.
“The tactic is obvious and well-known to all intelligence officials with an IQ above room temperature. It goes like this: There are two tracks to making nuclear weapons: One is to conduct research and develop technology directly related to military use. That is what the United States did when it developed the atomic bomb during the Manhattan Project. The second track is to develop nuclear technology for civilian use and then to use the civilian technology for military purposes.
“… If Neville Chamberlain weren’t long dead I would wonder whether he had a hand in writing this ‘peace in our time’ intelligence fiasco.”
SO WHY, DURING THE PAST YEAR, HAS IRAN BEEN BUSY INSTALLING 3,000 GAS CENTRIFUGES?
* Valerie Lincy and Gary Milhollin, both leading experts on nuclear arms control, wrote in a New York Times op-ed:
“During the past year, a period when Iran’s weapons program was supposedly halted, the Iranian government has been busy installing some 3,000 gas centrifuges at its plant at Natanz. These machines could, if operated continuously for about a year, create enough enriched uranium to provide fuel for a bomb. In addition, they have no plausible purpose in Iran’s civilian nuclear effort. All of Iran’s needs for enriched uranium for its energy programs are covered by a contract with Russia.
“Iran is also building a heavy water reactor at its research center at Arak. This reactor is ideal for producing plutonium for nuclear bombs, but is of little use in an energy program like Iran’s, which does not use plutonium for reactor fuel. India, Israel and Pakistan have all built similar reactors – all with the purpose of fueling nuclear weapons. And why, by the way, does Iran even want a nuclear energy program, when it is sitting on an enormous pool of oil that is now skyrocketing in value? And why is Iran developing long-range Shahab missiles, which make no military sense without nuclear warheads to put on them?”
FRENCH AND GERMANS: IRAN REMAINS A DANGER
* President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany issued a joint statement: The leaders of France and Germany believe that Iran remains a danger and that other nations need to keep up the pressure over its nuclear program despite a United States intelligence report’s conclusion that Teheran was no longer building a bomb.
IAEA: AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE TOO GENEROUS TO IRAN
* Not even the diplomats at the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) agree with the NIE. “To be frank, we are more skeptical,” a senior official close to the agency told The New York Times this week. “We don’t buy the American analysis 100 percent. We are not that generous with Iran.”
SHULTZ AND WOOLSEY: WE ARE SKEPTICAL OF NIE FINDINGS
* Former Secretary of State George Shultz, former CIA Director James Woolsey, Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) and Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) issued a joint statement criticizing the NIE report:
“Did Iran drop its nuclear weapons program? To believe so, you must set aside lots of other evidence that the Islamic Republic is hell-bent on developing or acquiring such weaponry, including its boasting about future superpower status and new capabilities; its messianic rhetoric; its stated designs on Israel, the United States, and the West in general; its simultaneous development of long-range missiles; its research into equipping such missiles with nuclear warheads; its two decades (and counting) of deception about nuclear research to begin with; and the desires of at least ten of Iran’s less complacent neighbors to start their own nuclear programs.
“The United States currently lacks anything resembling a serious human intelligence capability vis-à-vis Iran, with such basic elements as ‘eyes on the ground.’ That raises the question of how, exactly, the NIE’s authors have any ‘confidence’ at all in their estimates. Couple that with reports that the earthshaking new information that prompted the intelligence U-turn came from disclosures by Iranian military commanders and defectors, and there is ample reason to greet the new revelations with a healthy dose of skepticism.”
SENATOR CALLS FOR BIPARTISAN PANEL TO EXPLORE THE NIE’S EVIDENCE
* Senator John Ensign, a Nevada Republican, is so skeptical that he wants Congress to establish a bipartisan panel to explore the NIE’s evidence.
“THE SENSE OF BETRAYAL WITHIN THE ISRAELI SECURITY SYSTEM IS DEEP”
* Yossi Klein Halevi, writing from Israel for The New Republic:
“Until now, pessimists in Israel could console themselves that a last-resort Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would likely draw wide international sympathy and even gratitude – very different from the near-total condemnation that greeted Israel’s attack on Saddam’s reactor in 1981. Now, though, the NIE will ensure that if Israel does attack, it will be widely branded a warmonger, and faulted for the inevitable fallout of rising oil prices and increased terror.
“The sense of betrayal within the Israeli security system is deep. After all, Israel’s great achievement in its struggle against Iran was in convincing the international community that the nuclear threat was real; now that victory has been undone – not by Russia or the European Union, but by Israel’s closest ally.
“What makes Israeli security officials especially furious is that the report casts doubt on Iranian determination to attain nuclear weapons. There is a sense of incredulity here: Do we really need to argue the urgency of the threat all over again?
“… Adds a key security analyst: ‘The report didn’t surprise me. The [American intelligence] system isn’t healthy. It has been thoroughly politicized. I saw it when I brought hard evidence to them through the 1990s about how the Palestinian Authority was violating its commitments. Their responses weren’t professional but political. This report only deepens the crisis of confidence we feel.’
“… ‘The Syrians were working on their nuclear project for seven years, and we discovered it only recently,’ says one security analyst. ‘The Americans didn’t know about it all. So how can they be so sure about Iran?’”
ISRAELI EXPERT: “IT IS A MATTER OF MONTHS, NOT YEARS”
* Ephraim Asculai, of the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies and a 40-year veteran of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission: “Today the Iranians are enriching uranium at four percent; to make a bomb, you need 90 percent. From there, the transition doesn’t require a lot of time. Most of the work has been done to get to the four percent. It is a matter of months, not years.”
“U.S. INTELLIGENCE REPORTS AUSCHWITZ WERE FAULTY TOO”
* Israeli government minister Yitzhak Cohen compared the NIE report to what he said were faulty reports released by the U.S. during the Holocaust that Jews were not being killed in spite of information possessed by American intelligence of the existence of concentration camps:
“In the middle of the previous century the Americans received intelligence reports from Auschwitz on the packed trains going to the extermination camps. They claimed then that the railways were industrial. Their attitude today to the information coming out of Iran on the Iranians’ intention to produce a nuclear bomb reminds one of their attitude during the Holocaust.”
“PARTISAN STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIALS BEHIND NIE REPORT”
* Writing in The Washington Post, John Bolton points out:
“Many involved in drafting and approving the NIE were not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department, brought into the new central bureaucracy of the director of national intelligence. These officials had relatively benign views of Iran’s nuclear intentions five and six years ago; now they are writing those views as if they were received wisdom from on high. In fact, these are precisely the policy biases they had before, recycled as ‘intelligence judgments.’”
* Many other commentators have also accused the NIE’s primary authors, Thomas Fingar, Vann Van Diepen and Kenneth Brill, of harboring partisan agendas. All three are State Department officials on loan to the office of the Director of National Intelligence. According to the press reports, all three have reportedly worked studiously for years to downplay the danger of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
WSJ: “THERE IS NO CIVILIAN PURPOSE FOR SUCH IRANIAN ENRICHMENT”
* A Wall Street Journal editorial says:
“What’s amazing in this case is how the White House has allowed intelligence analysts to drive policy. The very first sentence of the national intelligence estimate (NIE) is written in a way that damages U.S. diplomacy: ‘We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Teheran halted its nuclear weapons program.’ Only in a footnote below does the NIE say that this definition of ‘nuclear weapons program’ does ‘not mean Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.’
“In fact, the main reason to be concerned about Iran is that we can’t trust this distinction between civilian and military. That distinction is real in a country like Japan. But we know Iran lied about its secret military efforts until it was discovered in 2003, and Iran continues to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, with 3,000 centrifuges, in defiance of binding U.N. resolutions. There is no civilian purpose for such enrichment. Iran has access to all the fuel it needs for civilian nuclear power from Russia at the plant in Bushehr. The NIE buries the potential danger from this enrichment, even though this enrichment has been the main focus of U.S. diplomacy against Iran.”
THE MAIN WINNERS WITH IRAN ARE RUSSIA AND CHINA
* The Middle East Times says:
“The main flaw of the report is that it may deny the U.S. administration the credible threat of the use of force as a foreign policy tool. This should never be the case.
“The main winners [besides Iran] include Russia, China, and Germany... Russia and China are major suppliers of military and nuclear technology to Iran. Teheran spends billions building an arsenal of increasingly long range ballistic missiles. Iran also invested a fortune in educating hundreds of nuclear physicists and engineers in the best military technology colleges in Russia and around the world. German companies will be happy to continue business as usual in Iran.”
“IRANIAN SCIENTISTS ARE LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE BASIC MEANS TO BUILD A NUCLEAR WEAPON EVERY DAY”
* The Christian Science Monitor reports since the NIE reports was released:
“Iran’s nuclear know-how is continuing unimpeded. At a remote site 200 miles south of Teheran, Iranian scientists are learning more about the basic means to build a nuclear weapon every day. The facility – named Natanz, after the nearest town – is where Iran has begun the process of producing fissile material. Thousands of thin, vertical tubes spin at outrageous speeds, atom by atom enriching raw uranium gas into more useful material.”
“WOULD YOU BUY A USED CAR FROM OUR SPOOKS?”
* Claudia Rosett in The Philadelphia Inquirer writes:
“There’s lots to wonder about in the Key Judgments of the latest National Intelligence Estimate, which informs us with “high confidence” that Iran halted its nuclear bomb program four years ago. This contradicts its 2005 warning that Iran was “determined to develop nuclear weapons.” That followed the 2003-2004 zig-zag from our intelligence community on Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s interest in weapons of mass destruction; which followed the intelligence failure to zero in on the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers before they slammed airplanes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.
‘Would you buy a used car from our spooks?’”
* “British nurses ordered to stop all medical work five times every day to turn Muslims’ beds to face Mecca”
* Teddy bear fiasco: “The delight and mutual congratulations between the Sudanese dictator and the British authorities – a nauseating picture”
* Steyn: “She wasn’t so foolish as to name the teddy Mohammed herself. But, in an ill-advised Sudanese foray into democracy, she’d let her grade-school students vote on what name they wanted to give the classroom teddy, and being good Muslims they voted for their favorite name: Mohammed. Big mistake. There’s apparently a whole section in the Koran about how if you name cuddly toys after the Prophet you have to be decapitated”
CONTENTS
1. Ahmadinejad doesn’t want a nuclear bomb? Just like there are no gays in Iran?
2. “British nurses told to turn Muslims’ beds to face Mecca”
3. Libera-Ted
4. No Picnic
5. Britain’s most popular paper urges readers to “put a teddy in their window to show support for Gillian”
6. 5,600 websites now spreading al-Qaeda’s ideology worldwide, says Saudi expert
7. Bin Laden considered targeting Japanese economy
8. Has the Palestinian Authority given up its aim of wiping out Israel?
ON NUCLEAR BOMBS AND TEDDY BEARS
[Note by Tom Gross]
Below are some of the items I have written for the National Review’s Media Blog in recent days.
Because I am giving an intensive round of lectures, media workshops and interviews this month, there will be fewer dispatches than normal.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
AHMADINEJAD DOESN’T WANT A NUCLEAR BOMB? JUST LIKE THERE ARE NO GAYS IN IRAN?
I don’t think we can rely too much on the National Intelligence Estimate report yesterday if we want to avoid nuclear war in future. The chances that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is telling the truth about not wanting a nuclear bomb – or at least a dirty bomb he can give to one of his client militias like Hizbullah or Hamas – are about the same as the chances that he is telling the truth when he says there are no homosexuals in Iran.
Ahmadinejad, however, was thrilled by the American intelligence report’s contents and the timing of its release. He told cheering crowds this afternoon that it was “Iran’s biggest victory in 100 years”.
Here are a few more realistic comments on it. Even the left-leaning mainstream media are not dismissing the incredibly serious Iranian nuclear threat too readily:
* “The Thin Line Between Civilian and Military Nuclear Programs” is the headline of William J. Broad’s piece in The New York Times:
When is a nuclear program a nuclear weapons program? The open secret of the nuclear age is that the line between civilian and military programs is extraordinarily thin…
One threshold is enriched uranium. Enriched to low levels, uranium can fuel a reactor that produces electrical power – which is what Tehran says it wants to do. But if uranium is purified in spinning centrifuges long enough, and becomes highly enriched, it can fuel an atom bomb…
* “Relax? Don’t. Iran Can Still Build Its Bomb” writes Bronwen Maddox, foreign editor of The Times of London:
The newly published U.S. intelligence report supports fears that Iran could soon have nuclear weapons. It argues that Iran has been deterred from pursuing them mainly by the fear of U.S. military action, a fear that has now faded. … The report makes clear the seriousness of the threat, not the opposite…
* And here are extracts from The Washington Post editorial:
… But there is bad news, too, which seems likely to be overlooked by those who have been resisting sanctions and other pressure on the mullahs all along, such as Russia, China and some members of the European Union. While U.S. intelligence agencies have “high confidence” that covert work on a bomb was suspended “for at least several years” after 2003, there is only “moderate confidence” that Tehran has not restarted the military program. Iran’s massive overt investment in uranium enrichment meanwhile proceeds in defiance of binding U.N. resolutions, even though Tehran has no legitimate use for enriched uranium. The U.S. estimate of when Iran might produce enough enriched uranium for a bomb – sometime between late 2009 and the middle of the next decade – hasn’t changed.
“Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons,” says the summary’s second sentence. Yet within hours of the report’s release, European diplomats and some U.S officials were saying that it could kill an arduous American effort to win support for a third U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning Iran for failing to suspend uranium enrichment. It could also hinder separate U.S.-French efforts to create a new sanctions coalition outside the United Nations. In other words, the new report may have the effect of neutering the very strategy of pressure that it says might be effective if “intensified.”
So why was such a startling National Intelligence Estimate report released yesterday?
* “Was Bush Behind the Iran Report?” asks Robert Baer (who is a former CIA field officer) in TIME magazine:
Bombing Iran, it seems, is now off the table. There’s no other reasonable take on the latest National Intelligence Estimate that concludes Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. But there is also no doubt that the Bush White House was behind this NIE and that a 180-degree turn on Iran like this one was greenlighted by the president.
… The real story behind this NIE is that the Bush Administration has finally concluded Iran is a bridge too far. With Iranian-backed Shi’a groups behaving themselves, things are looking up in Iraq.
… Then there are the Gulf Arabs. For the last year and a half, ever since the Bush Administration started to hint that it might hit Iran, they have been sending emissaries to Tehran to assure the Iranians they’re not going to help the U.S. But in private, the Gulf Arabs have been reminding Washington that Iran is a rabid dog: Don’t even think about kicking it, the Arabs tell us. If you have to do something, shoot it dead. Which is something the U.S. can’t do. So how far is Iran from a nuke? The truth is that Iran is a black hole, and it’s entirely conceivable Iran could build a bomb and we wouldn’t know until they tested it…
* [Tom Gross adds:]
And Baer might have added: Then there is Israel, whose own intelligence services differ sharply with the NIE findings, believing that the Iranian nuclear threat is as grave as ever.
So perhaps the message coming out of the Bush White House is: Israel, you are on your own. And just like when you removed Saddam’s nuclear threat in 1981, don’t expect the American government to publicly back you up when you remove Iran’s.
The only problem here is that it is very unclear whether tiny Israel can successfully remove the Iranian nuclear threat by itself. So does Bush want to go down in history as the president who stood by while Iran moved at full steam ahead to build a nuclear bomb? Does Bush want to be remembered by historians as a Churchill, or as a Chamberlain?
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
“BRITISH NURSES TOLD TO TURN MUSLIMS’ BEDS TO FACE MECCA”
This is the latest challenge facing Britain’s National Health Service (the rundown institution much beloved by Michael Moore), according to today’s Daily Express, a mid-market British newspaper. Let’s hope the nurses don’t develop back problems from all that bed turning.
Nurses told to turn Muslims’ beds to Mecca
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
The Daily Express
Overworked nurses have been ordered to stop all medical work five times every day to move Muslim patients’ beds so they face towards Mecca.
The lengthy procedure, which also includes providing fresh bathing water, is creating turmoil among overstretched staff on bustling NHS wards.
But despite the havoc, Mid-Yorkshire NHS Trust says the rule must be instigated whenever possible to ensure Muslim patients have “a more comfortable stay in hospital”.
And a taxpayer-funded training programme for several hundred hospital staff has begun to ensure that all are familiar with the workings of the Muslim faith.
The scheme is initially being run at Dewsbury and District Hospital, West Yorkshire, but is set to be introduced at other hospitals in the new year.
It comes on the back of the introduction in some NHS hospitals last year of Burka-style gowns for Muslim patients who did not wish medical staff to see their face while operating or caring for them.
Last night critics slammed the procedure and claimed the NHS would be better off investing its resources in tackling killer superbugs such as C.diff and MRSA.
One experienced nurse working at Dewsbury said: “It would be easier to create Muslim-only wards with every bed facing Mecca than have to deal with this.
“Some people might think it is not that big a deal, but we have a huge Muslim population in Dewsbury and if we are having to turn dozens of beds to face Mecca five times a day, plus provide running water for them to wash before and after prayers, it is bound to impact on the essential medical service we are supposed to be providing.
“Although the beds are designed to be moved, the bays are not really suitable for having loads of beds moved around to face a different direction, and despite our best efforts it does cause disruption for non-Muslim patients.”
… Last night Conservative MP David Davies said: “Hospitals should be concentrating on stopping the spread of infections than kow-towing to the politically correct brigade.”
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
LIBERA-TED
The flight carrying Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher jailed in Sudan for letting her class of 7-year-olds name a teddy bear Mohammed, arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport a short time ago.
Gibbons, who was greeted by her two children, told waiting reporters that she was in “total shock” at what had happened. “I’m just an ordinary middle-aged primary school teacher,” she said.
Asked about the predicament in which she had found herself, she admitted that the word “terrifying” was an understatement.
She said she was held in two jails before the Sudanese Ministry of the Interior sent her a bed – “probably the best present I’ve ever had”.
The British government thanked Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for her “early” release. Al-Bashir is an Islamic hard-liner who has been encouraging genocide by Sudan’s Arab tribes of the indigenous non-Arab African population of the country's Darfur region.
Gibbons had been held at a secret location in Sudan since thousands of protesters marched on Friday carrying weapons and demanding she be killed. (See the posting below this one.)
Meanwhile, now that Gibbons has landed back home safely, British press reaction online has been quick to condemn Sudan.
* Britain’s most popular newspaper, The Sun, has a banner heading on its website with the word “LIBERATED,” with the “TED” in big red letters.
The paper writes: “Good-natured Gillian Gibbons would cross a busy street to avoid giving offence. She left a safe and comfortable home to help some of Africa’s most tragically deprived children… But she was jailed for a crime she did not commit. The trumped-up charges put her life at risk from sabre-wielding mobs.”
* Under the heading “Cruel state is laid bear” The Daily Mirror says: “We must hear those thousands of innocent Sudanese victims of intolerance who have nobody to speak out for them – because they aren’t British.”
* The Daily Telegraph, echoing the feelings of many about the weak British government reaction to the incident, writes:
“[Britain’s] foreign secretary David Miliband expressed gratitude for the intervention of Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir in the process of freeing her. The president had, he said, “brought common sense” into what had been a case of “innocent misunderstanding”.
But common sense and innocence are concepts that seem rather bizarrely inappropriate in any discussion of President Bashir’s murderous regime.
The delight and mutual congratulations that have characterised the agreement between the Sudanese dictator and the British authorities on the release of a blameless schoolteacher presents a nauseating picture.
… For Sudan to be able defiantly to humiliate a major democratic nation from which it receives large amounts of aid by holding one of its citizens to ransom speaks of the impunity with which it believes it can operate in the world.
… Bashir, who has been responsible for some of the worst atrocities in post-war history, has successfully blocked the deployment of peacekeeping forces that would protect Darfur civilians.
It is that failure of international resolve which encourages him to believe that he can flout moral and diplomatic conventions. As we argued last week, we should recall our ambassador and consider sanctions against the regime.
* And leading syndicated columnist Mark Steyn has this to say on the matter:
Last week, Gillian Gibbons, a British schoolteacher working in Khartoum, one of the crummiest basket-case dumps on the planet – whoops, I mean one of the most lively and vibrant strands in the rich tapestry of our multicultural world – anyway, Mrs. Gibbons was sentenced last week to 15 days in jail because she was guilty of, er, allowing a teddy bear to be named “Mohammed”. She wasn’t so foolish as to name the teddy Mohammed herself. But, in an ill-advised Sudanese foray into democracy, she’d let her grade-school students vote on what name they wanted to give the classroom teddy, and being good Muslims they voted for their favorite name: Mohammed.
Big mistake. There’s apparently a whole section in the Koran about how if you name cuddly toys after the Prophet you have to be decapitated.
Friday, November 30, 2007
NO PICNIC
Following up my earlier post (below) on this subject: Just to be clear, the thousands of Islamists calling for poor innocent Ms. Gibbons to be executed today are not carrying small pocket knives, as one can see from the photo here. (See also here, from The Daily Mail.)
Every other media report I have read on this (even The Guardian) has cited 10,000 or so people shouting “kill her, kill her” in Sudan today, but The New York Times (reporting not from Sudan but from Kenya) lowers the number to “hundreds” to downplay the true magnitude of the Islamist threat. It is not untypical of The New York Times, the publication that wrongly calls itself “the paper of record,” to change the facts to suit its politics in this way.
***
Calls in Sudan for Execution of British Teacher
The New York Times
Published: December 1, 2007
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov. 30 — Hundreds of demonstrators in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, poured into the streets on Friday demanding the execution of a British teacher who was convicted of insulting Islam because her class of 7-year-olds named a teddy bear Muhammad…
***
Protesters demand execution of teddy row teacher
The Guardian
Friday November 30, 2007, 4.30 pm version
Thousands of knife-wielding protesters took to the streets of Khartoum today to demand the execution of the British primary school teacher who let children in her class name a teddy bear Muhammad
AP reported about 10,000 attended the protest outside the presidential palace in Khartoum’s Martyr’s Square, demanding the Liverpudlian be killed by firing squad. The rally was held after Friday prayers.
Pick-up trucks carrying Sudanese demonstrators drove around the capital blaring out messages to Gillian Gibbons.
Protesters shouted: “No tolerance: execution” and “Kill her, kill her by firing squad”…
Friday, November 30, 2007
BRITAIN’S MOST POPULAR PAPER URGES READERS TO “PUT A TEDDY IN THEIR WINDOW TO SHOW SUPPORT FOR GILLIAN”
Many in the British press are aghast at the almost complete lack of reaction by the British Foreign Office over the outrageous jailing of British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons in Sudan on the charge of insulting religion and inciting hatred, after her class of 7-year-olds named their teddy bear “Mohammed.”
Gibbons, a teacher with an impeccable record who went to Sudan to help local children, is now being held in a crowded cell with 20 hardened criminals in Khartoum’s notorious mosquito-infested Omdurman prison.
The jail was originally designed for 50 people, but now houses up to 1,400.
Yet the British Foreign Office said, “We are treating the issue as a consular matter. This issue should not be seen as part of a diplomatic or political dispute.”
Some commentators, noting that the inaction over the teddy bear incident follows similar inaction after Iran kidnapped 15 British sailors several months ago, said “great” should now be dropped from the name Great Britain.
“Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher would never have put up with this nonsense. The SAS would already have been dispatched to free Gillian Gibbons,” noted one commentator. “The British today are doing precisely nothing.”
Meanwhile, Britain’s most popular newspaper, The Sun, notes on its website at the present time that “ten thousand people, some carrying knives and sticks, have marched on the capital of Sudan calling for the teacher jailed for naming a teddy bear Mohammed to be shot.”
The Sun is also urging people to “put a teddy in their window to show their support for Gillian.”
In America, at least one moderate Islamic group, the American Islamic Congress, called on Gibbons to be released and launched an online letter-writing campaign at www.FreeGillian.org.
But the double standards of other Islamists knows few bounds. The SimplyIslam website, for example, is selling a teddy bear named Adam.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
5,600 WEBSITES NOW SPREADING AL-QAEDA’S IDEOLOGY WORLDWIDE, SAYS SAUDI EXPERT
And those numbers don’t include all the American and European publications and blogs which are apologetic, and in some cases even sympathetic, to al-Qaeda’s “grievances” and goals.
Note that the Saudi expert quoted by Reuters below says that “for al-Qaeda, media coverage is more important than the actual operations.”
Al Qaeda-linked Web sites number 5,600: researcher
Dec. 4, 2007
By Ibtihal Hassan
RIYADH (Reuters) - There are now about 5,600 Web sites spreading al-Qaeda’s ideology worldwide, and 900 more are appearing each year, a Saudi researcher told a national security conference on Tuesday.
… “Research shows there are more than 5,600 sites on the Internet promoting the ideology of al-Qaeda,” Khaled al-Faram told the Information Technology and National Security conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
“There are some 900 news sites appearing every year, and despite the retreat of some media outlets specifically run by al-Qaeda, extremist Web sites are constantly on the rise.”
He said it was difficult to track most of the sites, though hardcore al-Qaeda sites often change addresses to avoid detection or start up again elsewhere once infiltrated.
… “The real battle with al-Qaeda is no longer on the ground, but rather a media battle, and it is a real threat to national security,” Faram told Reuters. “For al-Qaeda media coverage is more important than the actual operations,” he said.
The Islamist network al-Qaeda is headed by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, but analysts say al-Qaeda has transformed from a close-knit militant group to a brand that disseminates radical ideas for sympathizers to act on independently.
“The Internet, chat lines, text messages – these are the new warriors,” said Alessandro Zanasi, an expert on Internet monitoring known as “text mining.”
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
BIN LADEN CONSIDERED TARGETING JAPANESE ECONOMY
Some commentators wrongly think that al-Qaeda is only interested in attacking Jews, Christians and Hindus. But as this piece from China’s largest news agency reminds us, others have been on Bin Laden’s target list too.
Bin Laden considered hitting Japanese economy
Xinhua news agency
Dec. 4, 2007
Tokyo – Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden considered doing some harm to Japan’s economy by attacking tankers heading to the country, Kyodo News reported Tuesday, quoting a former member of the terrorist group.
The former member a Saudi Arabian citizen who was one of bin Laden’s guards in Tora Bora mountains, told Kyodo’s correspondent in Egypt that bin Laden expressed the idea in late 2001 due to frustration with Japan’s decision to support the US-led war on terror.
“Japan can’t stand any attack against its interests. We could destroy Japan’s economy. We could attack tankers headed to Japan,” the al-Qaeda leader was quoted by the former member as telling a close aide when they were hiding in Tora Bora mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
HAS THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY GIVEN UP ITS AIM OF WIPING OUT ISRAEL?
Yesterday, in front of President Bush and representatives of over 40 other governments, Palestinian Authority President and PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas publicly committed his government to peace with Israel.
Today the official Palestinian Authority TV, which is under his control, broadcast a map of “Palestine” in which all of Israel is erased.
Which is it, Mr. Abbas?