Archived news and commentary: July 4 - 10, 2005

2005/07/04 - 2005/07/10
2005/06/27 - 2005/07/03
2005/06/20 - 2005/06/26
2005/06/13 - 2005/06/19
2005/06/06 - 2005/06/12
2005/05/30 - 2005/06/05

› From 2001/09/11 -

Sunday, July 10, 2005

News and commentary:

"Face up to the truth" (Nick Cohen, The Observer, 2005/07/10)
7/7 VIII: "In these bleak days, it's worth remembering what was said after September 2001. A backward glance shows that before the war against the Taliban and long before the war against Saddam Hussein, there were many who had determined that 'we had it coming'. They had to convince themselves that Islamism was a Western creation: a comprehensible reaction to the International Monetary Fund or hanging chads in Florida or whatever else was agitating them, rather than an autonomous psychopathic force with reasons of its own. In the years since, this manic masochism has spread like bindweed and strangled leftish and much conservative thought.
All kinds of hypocrisy remained unchallenged. In my world of liberal London, social success at the dinner table belonged to the man who could simultaneously maintain that we've got it coming but that nothing was going to come; that indiscriminate murder would be Tony Blair's fault but there wouldn't be indiscriminate murder because 'the threat' was a phantom menace invented by Blair to scare the cowed electorate into supporting him.
I'd say the 'power of nightmares' side of that oxymoronic argument is too bloodied to be worth discussing this weekend and it's better to stick with the wider delusion.
On Thursday, before the police had made one arrest, before one terrorist group had claimed responsibility, before one body had been carried from the wreckage, let alone been identified and allowed to rest in peace, cocksure voices filled with righteousness were proclaiming that the real murderers weren't the real murderers but the Prime Minister. ...
There are many tasks in the coming days. Staying calm, helping the police and protecting Muslim communities from neo-Nazi attack are high among them. But the greatest is to resolve to see the world for what it is and remove the twin vices of wilful myopia and bad faith which have disfigured too much liberal thought for too long."

"Matt Cooper's Source: What Karl Rove told Time magazine's reporter" (Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, from the 2005/07/18 issue)
"It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation ..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA. ...
Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... "
Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published."

"India and Pakistan's Code of Dishonor" (Salman Rushdie, The New York Times, 2005/07/10)
"The so-called Imrana case, in which a Muslim woman from a village in northern India says she was raped by her father-in-law, has brought forth a ruling from the powerful Islamist seminary Darul-Uloom ordering her to leave her husband because as a result of the rape she has become "haram" (unclean) for him. "It does not matter," a Deobandi cleric has stated, "if it was consensual or forced." ...
Darul-Uloom's rigid interpretations of Shariah law are notorious, and immensely influential - so much so that the victim, Imrana, a woman under unimaginable pressure, has said she will abide by the seminary's decision in spite of the widespread outcry in India against it. An innocent woman, she will leave her husband because of his father's crime. ...
In the Imrana case, the All-India Muslim Law Board has unsurprisingly backed the Darul-Uloom decision, though many other Muslim and non-Muslim organizations and individuals have denounced it. Shockingly, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, has also backed the Darul-Uloom fatwa. "The decision of the Muslim religious leaders in the Imrana case must have been taken after a lot of thought," he told reporters in Lucknow. 'The religious leaders are all very learned and they understand the Muslim community and its sentiments.'"

"A Hawk Questions Himself as His Son Goes to War" (Eliot A. Cohen, The Washington Post, 2005/07/10)
"You supported the Iraq war when it was launched in 2003. If you had known then what you know now, would you still have been in favor of it? ...
But a pundit should not recommend a policy without adequate regard for the ability of those in charge to execute it, and here I stumbled. I could not imagine, for example, that the civilian and military high command would treat "Phase IV" -- the post-combat period that has killed far more Americans than the "real" war -- as of secondary importance to the planning of Gen. Tommy Franks's blitzkrieg. I never dreamed that Ambassador Paul Bremer and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the two top civilian and military leaders early in the occupation of Iraq -- brave, honorable and committed though they were -- would be so unsuited for their tasks, and that they would serve their full length of duty nonetheless. I did not expect that we would begin the occupation with cockamamie schemes of creating an immobile Iraqi army to defend the country's borders rather than maintain internal order, or that the under-planned, under-prepared and in some respects mis-manned Coalition Provisional Authority would seek to rebuild Iraq with big construction contracts awarded under federal acquisition regulations, rather than with small grants aimed at getting angry, bewildered young Iraqi men off the streets and into jobs.
I did not know, but I might have guessed." (Hat tip: Barry Kaplovitz.)

"Suicide Attacks Kill at Least 48 in Iraq" (Frank Griffiths, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/07/10)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - A man strapped with explosives blew himself up Sunday at an Iraqi military recruiting center in Baghdad, one of a series of suicide attacks that killed at least 48 people and ended a relative lull in violence in recent days. ...
The deadliest bombing hit the army recruiting center at Muthana airfield in central Baghdad when a man dressed in civilian clothes detonated two explosive-laden belts among a crowd of recruits, killing 25 others and wounding nearly 50, U.S. and hospital officials said. Most of the dead were believed to have been recruits. ...
In other violence, a Shiite mother and seven of her children were found shot dead in their beds Sunday in Baghdad. One boy survived, police said. The father, who was not at home at the time, blamed the killings on sectarian hatred.
"This is because we are Shiites. I have no enemies," the distraught father, Hussein al-Tarash, told reporters. "We have no political leanings."
Tensions between minority Sunnis and majority Shiites have risen. Most insurgents are believed to be Sunnis, and Shiites dominate the new Iraqi government."

"Secret plan to quit Iraq" (Simon Walters, Mail on Sunday, 2005/07/10)
"Britain And America are secretly preparing to withdraw most of their troops from Iraq - despite warnings of the grave consequences for the region, The Mail on Sunday has learned.
A secret paper written by Defence Secretary John Reid for Tony Blair reveals that many of the 8,500 British troops in Iraq are set to be brought home within three months, with most of the rest returning six months later.
The leaked document, marked Secret: UK Eyes Only, appears to fly in the face of Mr Blair and President Bush's pledges that Allied forces will not quit until Iraq's own forces are strong enough to take control of security.
If British troops pull out, other members of the Alliance are likely to follow. The memo says other international forces in Southern Iraq currently under British control will have to be handled carefully if Britain withdraws. It says they will not feel safe and may also leave.
Embarrassingly, the document says the Americans are split over the plan - and it suggests one of the reasons for getting British troops out is to save money. Mr Reid says cutting UK troop numbers to 3,000 by the middle of next year will save £500 million a year, though it will be 18 months before the cash comes through.
The document, Options For Future UK Force Posture In Iraq, is the first conclusive proof that preparations for a major withdrawal from Iraq are well advanced."

"Downed US Seals may have got too close to Bin Laden" (Tony Allen-Mills and Andrew North, The Sunday Times, 2005/07/10)
"The story of Operation Red Wing, a US-led search for Taliban and Al-Qaeda guerrillas in the mountain wilderness of Kunar province, contains remarkable human drama and an unresolved military mystery.
For five days amid the hostile peaks and ravines along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, a lone American commando eluded the guerrillas who had killed at least two of his colleagues and destroyed the Chinook helicopter.
When the unnamed Seal finally collapsed from exhaustion he was found by a friendly Afghan villager who summoned US forces. The subsequent search for his colleagues turned up two bodies and the manhunt for the fourth commando continues this weekend despite claims by Taliban guerrillas yesterday that he had been captured and beheaded.
“We killed him at 11 o’clock today; we killed him using a knife and chopped off his head,” declared Abdul Latif Hakimi, a Taliban spokesman who has made several false claims in the past.
Yet whatever the final death toll from the worst incident in the history of the Seals — the Sea Air Land Commandos — there were tantalising hints that the original mission had been far from routine.
According to former special forces officers and other military sources, the four-man Seal strike team may have come too close to one of the US-led coalition’s highest-priority targets — perhaps Mullah Muhammad Omar, the former Taliban leader, or even Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda."

"The horror" (The Observer, 2005/07/10)
7/7 VII: "Here, based on interviews with all the key participants, and many of the victims, we piece together for the first time the full story of the day that terror came to London.":
"It started innocuously enough. The reports came through just before nine o'clock. There was some kind of small scale explosion on the underground, probably due to a power surge. The details were sketchy. Maybe a few people injured; British Transport Police were investigating. Above ground London went about its normal business, the capital basking in the glory of having won the bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games the previous day.
But underground a horrific narrative was starting to unfold. Terrified commuters were choking on dust in the dark. An explosion had ripped through the floor of the third carriage of a tube train as it was coming into Liverpool Street station. It was 8:51 AM. The tube, travelling on the Circle line from Aldgate station, was packed with commuters.
George O'Connell, 16, was on his first day of work experience in the City. 'I remember the moment the blast happened, I saw white light, I thought I was dead. I heard a massive bang, I was covered in blood. The doors blew off from the force of the blast. People were screaming get us out.'" (See also: "The horror - part two" (The Observer, 2005/07/10))

"For a Decade, London Thrived as a Busy Crossroads of Terror" (Elaine Sciolino and Don Van Natta Jr., The New York Times, 2005/07/10)
7/7 VI: "In a sermon attended by more than 500 people in a central London meeting hall last December, Sheik Omar vowed that if Western governments did not change their policies, Muslims would give them "a 9/11, day after day after day." ...
Even last week's bombings did little to curtail the rhetoric of some of the most radical leaders, who criticized Prime Minister Tony Blair for saying that the bombings appeared to be the work of Islamic terrorists.
"This shows me that he is an enemy of Islam," Abu Abdullah, a self-appointed preacher and the spokesman for the radical group Supporters of Shariah, said in an interview on Friday, adding, "Sometimes when you see how people speak, it shows you who your enemies are."
Mr. Abdullah declared that those British citizens who re-elected Mr. Blair "have blood on their hands" because British soldiers are killing Muslims. He also said that the British government, not Muslims, "have their hands" in the bombings, explaining, "They want to go on with their fight against Islam." ...
So far, there appears to be little effort to restrain outspoken clerics, including prominent extremists like Sheik Omar, who has reportedly been under investigation by Scotland Yard.
Sheik Omar, who remains free, is an example of the double-edged policies in Britain. He is a political refugee who was given asylum 19 years ago and is supported by public assistance. Asked in an interview in May how he felt about being barred from obtaining British citizenship, he replied, 'I don't want to become a citizen of hell.'"

"In London, Islamic Radicals Found a Haven" (Steve Coll and Susan B. Glasser, The Washington Post, 2005/07/10)
7/7 V: "As bin Laden's ideology of making war on the West spread in the years before Sept. 11, 2001, London became "the Star Wars bar scene" for Islamic radicals, as former White House counterterrorism official Steven Simon called it, attracting a polyglot group of intellectuals, preachers, financiers, arms traders, technology specialists, forgers, travel organizers and foot soldiers.
Today, al Qaeda and its offshoots retain broader connections to London than to any other city in Europe, according to evidence from terrorist prosecutions. Evidence shows at least a supporting connection to London groups or individuals in many of the al Qaeda-related attacks of the past seven years. Among them are the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; the assassination of Afghan militia leader Ahmed Shah Massoud on Sept. 9, 2001; outer rings of the Sept. 11 conspiracy, involving Moussaoui and the surveillance of financial targets in Washington and New York; Reid's attempted shoe bomb attack in December 2001; and the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002."

"The hate" (David Leppard and Nick Fielding, The Sunday Times, 2005/07/10)
7/7 IV: "Intelligence experts and Islamic leaders agree that Thursday July 7 marks the bloody emergence of home-grown Islamic terrorism in Britain rather than the arrival of Al-Qaeda’s bombers on these shores. The favourite hypothesis of investigators is that the bomb teams comprised a cell of some eight or nine young British Muslims, led by a foreign-born “talisman” figure who controlled and directed them.
“This is a very worrying situation,” said M J Gohel, head of the London-based Asia Pacific Foundation which monitors Islamic terrorism. “We’re looking at a new generation of terrorists — people who are not directly linked to Osama Bin Laden or Al-Qaeda so they can slip under the net of the security services. These are people born or brought up in western Europe, so they fit in but are infected by Bin Laden’s ideology.”
His view was echoed by a former radical who sometimes leads prayers at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London where Abu Hamza, the blind hook-armed cleric, used to preach.
“There is a growing phenomenon of angry young Muslims in Britain,” said this man, who wished to remain anonymous. ... 'There is an absolute majority among Muslims who share the anti-US sentiment of Al-Qaeda and it is easy to harness that.'"

"Leaked No 10 dossier reveals Al-Qaeda’s British recruits" (Robert Winnett and David Leppard, The Sunday Times, 2005/07/10)
7/7 III: "Al-Qaeda is secretly recruiting affluent, middle-class Muslims in British universities and colleges to carry out terrorist attacks in this country, leaked Whitehall documents reveal.
A network of “extremist recruiters” is circulating on campuses targeting people with “technical and professional qualifications”, particularly engineering and IT degrees.
Yesterday it emerged that last week’s London bombings were a sophisticated attack with all the devices detonating on the Underground within 50 seconds of each other. The police believe those behind the outrage may be home-grown British terrorists with no criminal backgrounds and possessing technical expertise.
A joint Home Office and Foreign Office dossier — Young Muslims and Extremism — prepared for the prime minister last year, said Britain might now be harbouring thousands of Al-Qaeda sympathisers.
Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan police chief, revealed separately last night that up to 3,000 British-born or British-based people had passed through Osama Bin Laden’s training camps."

"Mastermind of Madrid is key figure" (Nick Fielding and Gareth Walsh, The Sunday Times, 2005/07/10)
7/7 II: "The terrorist believed to have organised last year’s Madrid train attacks is emerging as a figure in the hunt for the London bombers.
Spanish security sources are said to have warned four months ago that Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a 47-year-old Syrian, had identified Britain as a likely target.
Coded commands from the Syrian, thought to have included threats to other European countries including Britain, were found in a flat raided after the Madrid bombings in March 2004.
Spanish investigators said Nasar, now believed to be in Iraq, had set up a “sleeper” cell of terrorists in Britain. But they believed he was planning an attack to coincide with the British general election in May, rather than the G8 summit last week. ...
When Nasar moved to London in June 1995 he was already under surveillance by Spanish police, who made a video recording of his departure with his wife Elena. They were accompanied by Abu Dahdah, a Syrian later arrested in Spain, accused of recruiting bombers and now on trial for providing support to the 9/11 conspiracy.
Once in London, Nasar moved his family into a house in Paddock Road, Neasden. From there, he edited the Al Ansar magazine, a newsletter of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group. He became an associate of the cleric Abu Qatada, one of the detainees released from Belmarsh prison last year and accused of being Al-Qaeda’s ambassador to Europe."

"British police clear Birmingham area in new alert" (Mark Trevelyan, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2005/07/10)
7/7 I: "LONDON (Reuters) - Police evacuated thousands of people and sealed off the center of England's second city Birmingham on Saturday night in the biggest security alert since four bombs exploded in London killing more than 50 people.
Acting in response to what they said was intelligence of a threat, police cleared the city's entertainment and Chinatown districts of some 30,000 people and carried out a controlled explosion on a bus.
But they stressed the security alert was not connected to last Thursday's bomb attacks in London.
Pubs and restaurants were shut and hotels were evacuated as the huge operation swung into action. Police blocked all roads into the center while helicopters flew overhead and ambulances were positioned around the central Broad Street district.
At 6 a.m. (0500 GMT) on Sunday, the operation was still under way but police said they had begun reopening some of the areas to the public."

Saturday, July 9, 2005

News and commentary:

"The Mother of All Connections" (Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn, The Weekly Standard, from the 2005/07/18 issue)
"We know from these IIS documents that beginning in 1992 the former Iraqi regime regarded bin Laden as an Iraqi Intelligence asset. We know from IIS documents that the former Iraqi regime provided safe haven and financial support to an Iraqi who has admitted to mixing the chemicals for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. We know from IIS documents that Saddam Hussein agreed to Osama bin Laden's request to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state-run television. We know from IIS documents that a "trusted confidante" of bin Laden stayed for more than two weeks at a posh Baghdad hotel as the guest of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
We have been told by Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden's longtime mentor Abdullah Azzam, that Saddam Hussein welcomed young al Qaeda members "with open arms" before the war, that they "entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organization to confront the occupation," and that the regime "strictly and directly" controlled their activities. We have been told by Jordan's King Abdullah that his government knew Abu Musab al Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war and requested that the former Iraqi regime deport him. We have been told by Time magazine that confidential documents from Zarqawi's group, recovered in recent raids, indicate other jihadists had joined him in Baghdad before the Hussein regime fell. We have been told by one of those jihadists that he was with Zarqawi in Baghdad before the war. We have been told by Ayad Allawi, former Iraqi prime minister and a longtime CIA source, that other Iraqi Intelligence documents indicate bin Laden's top deputy was in Iraq for a jihadist conference in September 1999.
All of this is new -- information obtained since the fall of the Hussein regime. And yet critics of the Iraq war and many in the media refuse to see it."

"Yes, London Can Take It" (Christopher Hitchens, The Weekly Standard, from the 2005/07/18 issue)
7/7 VI: "But last Thursday the blood wasn't dry on the wall of the British Medical Association in Bloomsbury, with the lower stairway covered in body parts, before the call for surrender was being raised.
First out of the trap was George Galloway, the renegade Member of Parliament who has been Saddam Hussein's chief propagandist in Britain. Within hours of the atrocities, he had diagnosed their cause, or causes. These included the presence of British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, the photographs from Abu Ghraib, and the state of affairs at Guantanamo. This can only mean that Galloway knows what was in the minds of the bombers, and knows that it was these subjects (and not, say, the Wahhabi hatred of unveiled women, or their fury at the liberation of East Timor) that had actually motivated the attacks. If he really knows that much about the killers, he should be asked to make a full disclosure of his sources to Scotland Yard. If he doesn't know, he should at least have waited until the blood was dry before opening his ugly mouth. Scant chance of the latter.
Galloway is an open supporter of the other side in this war, and at least doesn't try very hard to conceal the fact. Far more depressing are the insincere and inauthentic statements made by more "mainstream" types. The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone--another Blair-hater and another flirter with any local Imam who can bring him a few quick votes--managed to say that the murders were directed at "the working class," not the "powerful." That's true enough, but it doesn't avoid the implication that a jihadist bomb in, say, the Stock Exchange would have been less reprehensible." (See also: "The twisted logic of Galloway" (Graeme Wilson, Daily Mail, 2005/07/08))

"Making Cole-slaw of history" (Martin Kramer, Sandstorm, 2005/07/09)
"For a trained historian, even in Middle Eastern studies, Juan Cole is scandalously incompetent when it comes to cause and effect. Here's his latest gaffe, made in the context of the London bombings:

According to the September 11 Commission report, al-Qaeda conceived 9/11 in some large part as a punishment on the US for supporting Ariel Sharon's iron fist policies toward the Palestinians. Bin Laden had wanted to move the operation up in response to Sharon's threatening visit to the Temple Mount, and again in response to the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp, which left 4,000 persons homeless. Khalid Shaikh Muhammad argued in each case that the operation just was not ready.

Did Cole read the same 9/11 report as the rest of us? There's not a single passage in the 9/11 report mentioning Sharon's (or Israel's) policies, and I challenge him to produce one. Cole just made it up. And in point of fact, the report's narrative definitively contradicts him. ...
In short, the 9/11 operation could hardly have been "conceived" as a response to U.S. support for Sharon's "iron fist policies." It was conceived, its operatives were selected, and it was put in motion, long before Sharon took the helm.
And what of Cole's claim that Bin Laden wanted to launch the attacks "in response to the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp, which left 4,000 persons homeless"? The Jenin operation took place in April 2002, seven months after 9/11. Apparently, in the bizarre universe of the Colesque, Sharon's horrid deeds are always at fault for 9/11, even if he committed them after the event."

"A Moron Speaks" (Scott Burgess, The Daily Ablution, 2005/07/09)
Listen to the audio version for instant nausea: "I felt that a brief Saturday post was called for - as I went out of my way yesterday to defend a Fox presenter from unwarranted attacks from the left, I feel honour-bound to condemn a different one for his stupidity. Today's Guardian reports:

"Another Fox News host, John Gibson, said before the blasts that the International Olympic Committee 'missed a golden opportunity' by not awarding the 2012 games to France. 'If they had picked France instead of London to hold the Olympics, it would have been the one time we could look forward to where we didn't worry about terrorism. They'd blow up Paris, and who cares?'"

How utterly reprehensible. John Gibson is a moron."

"Police: London Blasts Were Seconds Apart" (Matt Moore, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/07/09)
7/7 V: "Three bombs containing sophisticated explosives hit the London Underground within less than a minute of each other, police said Saturday as a clearer picture emerged of the coordinated attacks last week that killed at least 49 people.
The bombs on the subway went off within a span of 50 seconds Thursday, suggesting detonation by synchronized timers rather than suicide bombers, police said, revising earlier accounts that the blasts occurred within a 26-minute span. An explosion tore through a double-decker bus nearly an hour later.
The explosions were so destructive that authorities haven't been able to identify a single body and were depending on fingerprints, dental records and DNA analysis, detectives said Saturday. ...
The first bomb exploded at the Aldgate station in east London. Two more went off within seconds, they said.
Police said the bombs were composed of "high explosive" — probably not homemade material. Investigators said Friday that the bombs were lighter than 10 pounds each and could be carried in a backpack."

"Where is the Gandhi of Islam?" (Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/07/09)
7/7 IV: "What strikes one again and again about the reaction of the public authorities, of commentators, of the media, is the terrible lethargy about studying what it is we are up against. We are dealing with an extreme interpretation of one of the great religions of the world.
We flap around, looking for moderates and giving them knighthoods, making placatory noises, putting bits of Islam on to the multi-faith menu in schools, banishing Bibles from hospital beds, trying to criminalise the expression of "religious hatred", blaming George Bush and Tony Blair. But if we do not know the way the faith in question works, its history, its quarrels, its laws and demands, we will not have the faintest chance of distinguishing the true moderate from the fellow-traveller or of bearing down on the fanaticism. ...
When did you last hear criticisms of named extremist groups and organisations by Muslim leaders, or support for their expulsion, imprisonment or extradition? How often do you see fatwas issued against suicide bombers and other terrorists, or statements by learned men declaring that people who commit such deeds will go to hell?
When do Muslim leaders and congregations insist that a particular imam leave his mosque because of the poison that he disseminates every Friday? When did a British Muslim last go after a Muslim who advocates or practises violence with anything like the zeal with which so many went after Salman Rushdie?"

"I resent your success. I hate you and your kind. So I bomb you" (Roger Scruton, The Times, 2005/07/09)
7/7 III: "Apologists for terrorism (and they are not in short supply) argue that it is a weapon used by people who despair of achieving their goals in any other way. It is a cry from the depths by those deprived of a voice in the political process. The terrorist is not an aggressor but a victim, and we must disarm him not by violence but by addressing the grievance that motivates his deeds. This argument has been used to excuse Palestinian suicide bombers, IRA kneecappers, Red Brigade kidnappers, and even the mass murderers of September 11. Its main effect is to blame the victim and excuse the crime.
If you look at the actual condition of terrorists down the ages, however, you will soon discover that the excuse does not match the reality. ...
Someone who has suffered an injustice may very well hate the person who committed it. However, such hatred is precisely targeted, and cannot be satisfied by attacking some innocent substitute. Hatred born of resentment is not like that. It is a passion bound up with the very identity of the one who feels it, and rejoices in damaging others purely by virtue of their membership of the targeted group. Resentment will always prefer indiscriminate mass murder to a carefully targeted punishment. Indeed, the more innocent the victim, the more satisfying the act. For this is the proof of holiness, that you are able to condemn people to death purely for being bourgeois, rich, Jewish, or whatever, and without examining their moral record."

"Al Qaeda's Smart Bombs" (Robert A. Pape, The New York Times, 2005/07/09)
7/7 II: "In December 2003, the Norwegian intelligence service found a lengthy Qaeda planning document on a radical Islamic Web site that described a coherent strategy for compelling the United States and its allies to leave Iraq. It made clear that more spectacular attacks against the United States like those of 9/11 would be insufficient, and that it would be more effective to attack America's European allies, thus coercing them to withdraw their forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and increasing the economic and military burdens that the United States would have to bear.
In particular, the document weighed the advantages of attacking Britain, Poland and Spain, and concluded that Spain in particular, because of the high level of domestic opposition to the Iraq war, was the most vulnerable. ...
That prediction, of course, proved murderously prescient. Yet it was only one step in the plan: "Lastly, we emphasize that a withdrawal of the Spanish or Italian forces from Iraq would put huge pressure on the British presence, a pressure that Tony Blair might not be able to withstand, and hence the domino tiles would fall quickly."
No matter who took the bombs onto those buses and subways in London, the attacks are clearly of a piece with Al Qaeda's post-9/11 strategy. ...
The bottom line, then, is that the terrorists have not been fundamentally weakened but have changed course and achieved significant success. The London attacks will only encourage Osama bin Laden and other Qaeda leaders in the belief that they will succeed in their ultimate aim: causing America and its allies to withdraw forces from the Muslim world." (See also: "Qa'idat al-Jihad, Iraq, and Madrid: The First Tile in the Domino Effect?" (Reuven Paz, PRISM, 2004/03/13))

"Police give warning that bombers may strike again" (Sean O’Neill et al., The Times, 2005/07/09)
7/7 I: "The al-Qaeda terrorists who killed more than 52 people in the London rush-hour bombings are still at large and could strike again, security sources gave warning yesterday.
Investigators are increasingly convinced that only one bomber — who killed 13 people in the explosion on a double-decker bus — died in the blasts.
The others are thought to have left their bombs — consisting of less than 10lb of high explosive hidden in rucksacks and fitted with timed fuses — on the floors of three Tube trains before escaping. ...
A main concern is that they are dealing with “clean skins”, possibly British-born terrorists who have not crossed the intelligence radar before. Whoever the killers are, they have access to high explosives and bomb-making expertise.
A police source told The Times: “Our main fear is that this group is out there still sitting on a cache of high explosives knowing that their bomb designs worked.
'We know from the two most recent atrocities in Europe that those groups always intended to make two attacks. Instead of going for perfect synchronicity in one spectacular, they have tried to hit the same target twice.'"

Friday, July 8, 2005

News and commentary:

"We Cannot Surrender" (Christopher Hitchens, Daily Mirror, 2005/07/08)
7/7 XI: "We know very well what the "grievances" of the jihadists are.
The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way. ...
They demand the impossible - the cessation of all life in favour of prostration before a totalitarian vision. Plainly, we cannot surrender. There is no one with whom to negotiate, let alone capitulate.
We shall track down those responsible. States that shelter them will know no peace. Communities that shelter them do not take forever to discover their mistake. And their sordid love of death is as nothing compared to our love of London, which we will defend as always, and which will survive this with ease."

"The twisted logic of Galloway" (Graeme Wilson, Daily Mail, 2005/07/08)
7/7 X: "George Galloway has been condemned for claiming London had 'paid the price' for Tony Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. ...
The comments of Mr Galloway - who was thrown out of the Labour Party for his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq - contrasted sharply with the cross-party condemnation of the terrorist attacks.
And he again took up the theme in the House of Commons, claiming that the "occupation" of Iraq and Afghanistan had made Britain a target.
"Ten thousand Osama Bin Ladens have been created at least by the events of the last two years," he told the Chamber.
He added that yesterday's atrocities would not be the last, saying there was "nothing unpredictable about this attack this morning". ...
At the end of the debate - which was about defence issues - Armed Forces minister Adam Ingram accused Mr Galloway of "dipping his poisonous tongue in a pool of blood".
Mr Galloway hit back by branding the minister a 'thug' but was called to order by the Deputy Speaker, Sylvia Heal.
While Mr Galloway went on to describe yesterday's attacks as "despicable", he faced a hail of criticism last night.
Senior Labour backbencher Stephen Pound said: "I thought George had sunk to the depths of sickness in the past but this exceeds anything he has done before." (See also: "Idiocy, Thy Name Is George Galloway" (Tim Russo, democracy guy, 2005/07/07))

"People Power" (William Saletan, Slate, 2005/07/08)
7/7 IX: "'Britain is burning with fear and terror, from north to south, east to west,' the Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe crowed after yesterday's London bombings. "We warned the British government and the British people repeatedly." ...
The terror talk and the compass points are just two of the patterns in al-Qaida's post-attack messages. A third is the pairing of Iraq with Afghanistan. A fourth is the punishment theme, which deflects blame from them to us. But the most telling pattern is a constant distinction between the "people" of the West and their governments. ...
Now comes the message to "the British people" that "the British government" has brought more death on them. It's Blair's fault. It's Bush's fault. Turn against them, and the pain will stop. But it won't. As yesterday's message made clear, the bombers want us out of Afghanistan as well as Iraq.
Bin Laden's whole game plan is to turn the people of the democratic world against their governments. He thinks democracies are weak because their people, who are more easily frightened than their governments, can bring those governments down. He doesn't understand that this flexibility — and this trust — are why democracies will live, while he will die. Many of us didn't vote for Bush's government or Blair's. But we're loyal to them, in part because we were given a voice in choosing them. And if we don't like our governments, we can vote them out. We can't vote out terrorists. We can only kill them."

"The Same Old, Same Old..." (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2005/07/08)
7/7 VIII: "The British may react very differently than the Spanish did after Madrid — by doing nothing rather than by retreating from Iraq.
In the corrupt West these days, that is something. ...
Look for the same scripted crocodile tears and “concern” from the Middle East’s illegitimate leaders, even as much of the Islamic Street takes a secret delight in the daring of the jihadists, and the governments sense relief that the target was Westerners and not themselves.
Anticipate Western leaders condemning the terrorists in the same breadth as they call for “eliminating poverty” and “bringing them to justice” — as if the jihadists and their patrons are mere wayward and impoverished felons.
In the short term, Bush and Blair will appear as islands in the storm amid an angry and anguished public. But as 7/7 fades, as did 9/11, expect them to become even more unpopular, as the voices of appeasement assure us that if they just go away, maybe so will the terrorists.
It is our task, each of us according to our station, to speak the truth to all these falsehoods, and remember that we did not inherit a wonderful civilization just to lose it to the Dark Ages."

"War in Pieces: The Blood Feud" (Lee Harris, Tech Central Station, 2005/07/08)
7/7 VII. As I noted a year ago: "Sometimes I get the feeling that Islamism basically is tribalism gone global and that Islamic terrorism is best understood as a blood feud spanning continents and centuries.":
"After the London bombing, I feel more than ever that the war model is deeply flawed, and that a truer picture of the present conflict may be gained by studying another, culturally distinct form of violent conflict, namely the blood feud.
In the blood feud, the orientation is not to the future, as in war, but to the past. In the feud you are avenging yourself on your enemy for something that he did in the past. Al Qaeda justified the attack on New York and Washington as revenge against the USA for having defiled the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia by its military presence during the First Gulf War. In the attack on London, the English were being punished for their involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the blood feud, unlike war, you have no interest in bringing your enemy to his knees. You are not looking for your enemy to surrender to you; you are simply interested in killing some of his people in revenge for past injuries, real or imaginary -- nor does it matter in the least whether the people you kill today were the ones guilty of the past injuries that you claim to be avenging. In a blood feud, every member of the enemy tribe is a perfectly valid target for revenge. ...
You don't feud to win, you feud to keep your enemy from winning -- and that is why the anthropologist of the Bedouin feud, Emrys Peters, has written the disturbing words: The feud is eternal."

"Time to hit the suicide factories" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2005/07/08)
7/7 VI: "Cyrus the Great used camels as a weapon when he conquered Babylon. Hannibal used elephants for his raid on Rome. The Islamist terror leaders who wish to conquer the world and convert entire mankind to their brand of "true Islam" have gone one better by using the human body as a weapon.
But like all others, this weapon is designed by some people, financed by investors, manufactured somewhere and deployed by leaders who can be identified and destroyed. These human weapons are designed and shaped by a constant flow of anti-Western propaganda from Arab satellite TV, the so-called Islamic associations and countless madarassahs (Islamic schools) and mosques throughout the world, including in London itself. ...
The London attack was not the work only of the few individuals who carried it out. It was the bitter fruit of a faith that has been hijacked by a minority of extremists while the majority of its adepts watch with a mixture of awe and ill-concealed pride. The real fight against this enemy of humanity will start only when the so-called "silent majority" in Islam speaks out against these murderers and those who brainwash, train, finance and deploy them." (See also: "And this is why they did it" (Amir Taheri, The Times, 2005/07/08))

"If It's a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2005/07/08)
7/7 V: "Because there is no obvious target to retaliate against, and because there are not enough police to police every opening in an open society, either the Muslim world begins to really restrain, inhibit and denounce its own extremists - if it turns out that they are behind the London bombings - or the West is going to do it for them. And the West will do it in a rough, crude way - by simply shutting them out, denying them visas and making every Muslim in its midst guilty until proven innocent.
And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. ...
The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks. When Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden. ...
The double-decker buses of London and the subways of Paris, as well as the covered markets of Riyadh, Bali and Cairo, will never be secure as long as the Muslim village and elders do not take on, delegitimize, condemn and isolate the extremists in their midst."

"Our Ally, Our Problem" (Peter Berger, The New York Times, 2005/07/08)
7/7 IV: "Why have so many of these terrorists come from Britain? Many British Muslims are young and poorly integrated into society and therefore vulnerable to extremism. In fact, Muslims have the youngest age profile of any religious group in Britain; around a third are under the age of 16. The unemployment rate among British Muslims runs almost 10 percentage points above the national average of about 5 percent. In the case of 16- to 24-year-old Muslim men, the unemployment rate is 22 percent. Not surprisingly, polls of British Muslims show a considerable sense of anger. Eight out of 10 believe that the war on terrorism is a war on Islam, while a poll conducted last year, under the auspices of the Guardian newspaper, found a surprising 13 percent who said that further attacks by Al Qaeda or a similar organization on the United States would be justified. One rap video that surfaced in Britain last year called "Dirty Kuffar" had lyrics that included the following verse: "O.B.L. [bin Laden] pulled me like a shining star! Like the way we destroyed them two towers, ha-ha!" ...
As declining populations in Europe are replaced in part by rising Muslim emigration from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, economic resentment and sectarian strife seem likely to grow. Tinkering with visa regulations might help, but it is unlikely to change the reality that Islamic militant groups in Britain, as in several other major European countries, represent a growing threat to the United States that will continue for many years to come."

"Simple 20th-century techniques in the service of 14th-century fanaticism" (Gerard Baker, The Times, 2005/07/08)
7/7 III: "WHEN THE IMMEDIATE shock and grief at yesterday’s carnage subsides, a hard, almost callous, question will be on the lips of all those who seek to understand its true meaning.
Is this the best they can do? ...
It will be asked first by The Power of Nightmares crowd, the documentary film-makers and columnists and left-wing politicians who argue that the terrorist threat has been got up by right-wing ideologues in Washington and their pliant poodle in London.
At first, of course, yesterday’s events do not look good for the “al-Qaeda was all an invention” party. The bombings surely demonstrated, to those who doubted it, that there really are people out there with the motive and the capacity to inflict mass murder on the innocent.
But on deeper reflection, the conspiracy theorists will, quietly, claim a kind of vindication for their argument. They will say that for all the fear and terror inspired yesterday, the first and much anticipated attack on London in the post-September 11 era was a conventional and, by any standards, a rather limited business. ...
They’ll take the argument further, too. They’ll say that the terrorists wouldn’t even have been capable of this if we had not bolstered their cause by invading Iraq and producing thousands more martyrs for their cause. There was no threat before, they’ll say: if there is one now, it’s our own fault.
Somehow I think that most people, especially Londoners, will see through the emptiness of this argument."

"How could we have forgotten that this was always going to happen?" (Ian McEwan, The Guardian, 2005/07/08)
7/7 II: "The mood of a city has never swung so sharply. On Wednesday there was no better place on earth. After the victory in Singapore, Londoners were celebrating the prospect of an explosion of new energy and creativity; those computer-generated images of futuristic wonderlands rising out of derelict quarters and poisoned industrial wastelands were actually going to be built. The echoes of rock 'n' roll in Hyde Park and its wave of warm and fundamentally decent emotions were only just fading. In Gleneagles, the summit was about to address at least - and at last - the core of the world's concerns, and we could take some satisfaction that our government had pushed the agenda. London was flying high and we moved confidently about the city - the paranoia after 9/11 and Madrid was mostly forgotten and no one had second thoughts about taking the tube. The "war on terror", that much examined trope, was an exhausted rallying cry, with all the appearance of a moth-eaten regimental banner in a village church. ...
We have been savagely woken from a pleasant dream. The city will not recover Wednesday's confidence and joy in a very long time. Who will want to travel on the tube, once it has been cleared? How will we sit at our ease in a restaurant, cinema or theatre? And we will face again that deal we must constantly make and remake with the state - how much power must we grant Leviathan, how much freedom will we be asked to trade for our security?"

"'We were like sardines in there, just waiting to die'" (Sally Pook et al., The Daily Telegraph, 2005/07/08)
7/7 I: "The Piccadilly Line train was only minutes out of King's Cross when, without warning, a blast tore through one of the carriages.
It was 8.56am. Many passengers on the crowded train heading for Russell Square had been standing, crushed shoulder to shoulder.
Injured and shaking survivors spoke of bodies slumped on seats, commuters who had lost limbs, glass tearing through skin and choking smoke. Many were unable to breathe. All thought they were going to die.
"We were like sardines in there, just waiting to die," said Angelino Power, 43, a barrister on his way to a court hearing. He was catapulted out of his seat as the bomb exploded. ...
Fiona Trueman, 26, a television marketing executive, was on her way to Chelsea for a training course.
Still covered in shards of glass, she described endless screaming coming from the carriage in front and the fear that she would die.
"I knew it was a bomb because of the force of the blast," she said. "There was a huge whoosh of smoke then glass went flying through the train. We all went flying, even though the train was packed."
Miss Trueman, from St Albans, Herts, said she kept closing her eyes and tried to think of the outside as she struggled to breathe."

"Iran, Iraq to OK Military Pact, Including Troop Training Help" (Reuters/Los Angeles Times, 2005/07/08)
"TEHRAN — Former foes Iran and Iraq said Thursday that they would sign a military cooperation agreement that would include Iranian help in training Iraq's armed forces, despite likely U.S. opposition.
The agreement marks a breakthrough in relations between the two countries, which fought a bitter 1980-88 war. And it comes in spite of repeated U.S. accusations that Shiite Muslim Iran has undermined security in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003. ...
Iran last year offered to train Iraqi border guards, but Iraq declined the offer. Relations have steadily improved since Iraq's Shiite majority sealed its political dominance in elections this year.
A large Iraqi government delegation, headed by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, is to visit Tehran next week.
Dulaimi said Iran had offered $1 billion in aid to show its support for Iraq's quest for postwar recovery. He did not give further details.
Asked about possible U.S. opposition, Shamkhani said, 'No one can prevent us from reaching an agreement.'"

Thursday, July 7, 2005

News and commentary:

"Walking wounded..."
(Edmond Terakopian, AP, 2005/07/07)
"Walking wounded leaving Edgware Road tube station, after the explosion, to be treated at the London Hilton Metropole on Edgware Road Thursday July 7, 2005."
(More photos at Yahoo! News.)

"The war arrives on British soil" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2005/07/07)
7/7 XI: "Touching and heartening messages of sympathy and solidarity have been arriving in Britain from across the world after today's horrendous acts of mass murder in London. For me, however, the most poignant are those which call up the heroic image of the British wartime spirit: that stoical, phlegmatic response which is determined to continue as before in the face of unspeakable acts because to do otherwise is to give terror its victory. And yes, there's plenty of that stoicism and quiet heroism around, and it was on display today.
But alas, there is something else, something horrible and warped, also lurking just below the surface. It is the belief that this monstrous event would never have occurred had Tony Blair not taken us to war in Iraq, that that war has created more not less terror and that the British would not have been a target at all had we distanced ourselves from the US. It is a view which has so far only been expressed openly, as far as I am aware, by far left groups such as the SWP. But it is believed far more widely than that, and I expect to see mainstream writers saying as much over the next few days. The great question is which of these rival impulses will define the mood among the British public as a whole. Are Britons still the people of the Blitz, or have they become like Spain after the Madrid bombings? ...
How they react to today's obscenity will be a critical turning point in this war. As we grieve for those who have lost their lives or who have sustained terrible injury in today's act of war, we must also hold our breath."

"The attacks on London - and the battles to come" (Johann Hari, The Independent/johannhari.com, 2005/07/08)
7/7 X: "In the scarred miles between each explosion – walking from Moorgate to Liverpool Street down to King’s Cross – you could see several fights taking shape yesterday that will grip us for years. The fight against Islamic fundamentalism became clearer. Anybody who tells you these bombers are fighting for the rights of Muslims in Iraq, occupied Palestine or Chechnya should look at the places they chose to bomb. Aldgate? The poorest and most Muslim part of the country. Edgware Road? The centre of Muslim and Arab life in London and, arguably, Europe.
Does anybody need greater evidence that these Islamic fundamentalists despise Muslims who choose to live in free societies, and they would enslave Muslims everywhere if they were given the opportunity? Nor is this tit-for-tat revenge for deaths in Iraq: very similar jihadist plots have been foiled in France and Germany, countries that opposed the invasion. Anybody who doubted that the fight against Islamic fundamentalism – a murderous totalitarian ideology – was always our fight should know better now."

"The Anticipated Attack" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2005/07/07)
7/7 IX: "Timed for the rush hour, and at transit stations that serve outlying and East London neighborhoods, the bombs are nearly certain to have killed a number of British Muslims. None of this, of course, has stopped George Galloway and his ilk from rushing to the microphone and demanding that the British people be removed "from harm's way" by an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. ...
In any event, there are two considerations here. The first is Britain's role as a leading member of the "Coalition" in Iraq and Afghanistan. The second is its role as a host to a large and growing Muslim minority. The first British citizens to be killed in Afghanistan were fighting for the Taliban, which is proof in itself that the Iraq war is not the original motivating force. Last year, two British Muslims pulled off a suicide attack at an Israeli beach resort. In many British cities, there are now demands for sexual segregation in schools and for separate sharia courts to try Muslim defendants. ...
If, as one must suspect, these bombs are only the first, then Britain will start to undergo the same tensions — between a retreat to insularity and clannishness of the sort recently seen in France and Holland, and the self-segregation of the Muslim minority in both those countries — that will start to infect other European countries as well. It is ludicrous to try and reduce this to Iraq. Europe is steadily becoming a part of the civil war that is roiling the Islamic world, and it will require all our cultural ingenuity to ensure that the criminals who shattered London's peace at rush hour this morning are not the ones who dictate the pace and rhythm of events from now on."

"Frenzied speculation over London 'suicide' bus bomber" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2005/07/07)
7/7 VIII: "A day after the worst ever terror attack on London speculation was rife over the possible involvement of a suicide bus bomber behind one of four attacks on the British capital's transport network which killed at least 37 people and injured hundreds more.
Several passengers on a number 30 bus, which had its roof torn off by a blast, reported seeing a dark-skinned man in his mid-20s rummaging in a bag seconds before the blast tore through the bus at Tavistock Square.
"I was standing next to a young gentleman who kept diving into a bag," 61-year-old project manager Richard Jones told reporters.
"He looked foreign. I noticed him as he looked nervous.
"He kept bending over into this bag," said the Scot, who got off the bus just seconds before the explosion caused mayhem, peeling off the vehicle's roof.
Television images showed blood spattered over the walls of nearby buildings moments after the blast, which occurred 56 minutes after the first of three attacks on underground stations.
As many as 20 people were feared to have died on the bus.
Were the suicide bomber hypothesis to be confirmed it would be the first time such an attack had been perpetrated anywhere in Europe."

"Officials: Unexploded Devices Discovered in London" (ABC News, 2005/07/07)
7/7 VII: "In what appears to be the first major break in the London terrorist attacks, U.S. authorities tell ABC News that British police have recovered two unexploded bombs in London.
In addition, British investigators say that parts of timing devices have been recovered from several of the blast sites. The unexploded devices and timing mechanisms should provide important evidence that could help determine who was behind the attacks, sources told ABC News."

"'The whole of the front of the building was covered with blood'" (Debbie Andalo, The Guardian, 2005/07/07)
7/7 VI: "A GP who helped treat casualties following today's bus explosion outside the London headquarters of the British Medical Association has described the scene.
Dr Laurence Buckman, from the BMA's GPs committee, said the front of BMA House in Tavistock Square was splattered with blood and body parts were strewn across the road.
The building was turned into a mini hospital while casualties were moved away from the road and were waiting to be taken to hospital.
Dr Buckman told SocietyGuardian.co.uk that he was on his way to a meeting at the BMA and arrived 10 minutes after the bus exploded outside the building.
He said: 'I arrived at the BMA just as the first ambulance arrived. My first impression was about the amount of blood. The whole of the front of the building was covered with blood - quite high up, I suspect that was because the upstairs of the bus had been blown off.'"

"Mayor denounces attack on ‘ordinary Londoners’" (Roger Blitz and Peter John, Financial Times, 2005/07/07)
7/7 V: "London Mayor Ken Livingstone launched a blistering attack on the perpetrators of Thursday's London bomb attacks, denouncing them for “mass murder” and a “cowardly terrorist attack”. ...
Mr Livingstone said: “I want to say one thing. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful, it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners.
"That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith, it's mass murder. We know what the objective is. They seek to divide London." ...
Addressing the perpetrators directly, Mr Livingstone said: “I know that you do fear you may fail in your long term objective: to destroy our free society. And I will show you why you will fail.
'In the days that follow, look at our airports, look at our seaports and look at our railways. Nothing you do, however many of us you kill will stop that life ... where freedom is strong and people can live in harmony ... whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.'" (Note: Ken Livingstone hosted the notorious Hijab Conference last year, where Sheikh Youssef Al-Qaradawi, a Muslim cleric who views female suicide bombings as "one of the most praised acts of worship", was a special guest of honour.)

"Idiocy, Thy Name Is George Galloway" (Tim Russo, democracy guy, 2005/07/07)
7/7 IV. Via Instapundit, who has a roundup of interesting links:
"The Guardian blog is reporting that George Galloway has taken the opportunity of the terrorist attacks in London today to score political points.

1513 Respect MP George Galloway says: "We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings."

London's been a target. London will be a target. For a long time. Anyone who thinks anything Britain has or hasn't done since September 11 has increased or decreased London's likelihood of being a target for Al Queda is simply a damn fool. And to make a statement like that on a day like today, while bodies are still being pulled out of tube stations, reveals precisely the sort of sub-human George Galloway is." (See also: "Vile" (Stephen Pollard, stephenpollard.net, 2005/07/07): "I would say this comment from the SWP [Socialist Workers Party] is beyond belief: "The British government cannot avoid its responsibility for these terrible attacks, which are a consequence of its support for war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The best way to ensure that there are no more such terrible attacks is for British troops to be withdrawn from there immediately." But it's all too believable from these people.")

"In this image provided by commuter..."
(Alexander Chadwick, AP, 2005/07/07)
"In this image provided by commuter Alexander Chadwick, taken on his mobile phone camera, passengers are evacuated from an underground train in a tunnel near Kings Cross station in London, Thursday, July 7, 2005."
(See also: "Eyewitness Images of the Attack" (TIME, 2005/07/07))

"'Everyone was terrified'" (Sky News, 2005/07/07)
7/7 III. Eyewitness accounts: "Loyita Worley, 49, was travelling to work on the Tube between Liverpool Street and Aldgate when an explosion struck the neighbouring carriage.
"There was a big bang and then all the ash. I could not breathe. It was falling down everywhere and over everything. Everyone was stunned for a moment. We could see a flickering light and everyone was terrified there was going to be a fire."
She said she had seen some seriously injured people down in the tunnel and that they could not open the door of the carriage at first.
"Some people started to panic but most were okay. We tried to open the doors but the doors were fixed shut and the ash was settling everywhere."
She saw walking wounded after the blast. 'There was blood dripping off them, they were all white. Eventually they opened up the front of the carriage. We walked along the track in between Aldgate and Liverpool Street.'"

"Al Qaeda says kills Egypt envoy in Iraq-Web" (Reuters, 2005/07/07)
"DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda group in Iraq said in an Internet statement on Thursday it killed Egypt's top envoy to Iraq who it had kidnapped, claiming he represented a "tyrannical" government allied to the "Jews and Crusaders."
"We al Qaeda in Iraq announce that the judgment of God has been implemented against the ambassador of the infidels, the ambassador of Egypt. Oh enemy of God, Ihab el-Sherif, this is your punishment in this life," said the group, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The group posted a video showing the hostage speaking but did not show the actual killing.
On the video, Sherif appeared blindfolded. He identified himself by name and said he was the head of the Egyptian mission in Iraq and also carried the rank of ambassador at the Egyptian foreign ministry.
"Previously...I was deputy to the Egyptian ambassador to Israel," Sherif said on the video in which he appeared alone without militants.
Al Qaeda Organization for Holy War in Iraq said it would provide details of Sherif's interrogation.
"The ambassador of the infidels gave information that showed the infidelity of his regime and his allegiance to the Jews and Christians," the group said in a statement." (See also: "Egypt ambassador 'to be killed'" (BBC News, 2005/07/06))

"Purported Al-Qaida Letter Claims Responsibility for Bombings" (Yassin Musharbash, Der Spiegel, 2005/07/07)
7/7 II: "A letter posted on a Web site frequently used by al-Qaida claims that the "Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe" is responsible for today's massive terrorist attack in London. In it, the group also issues warnings to Denmark and Italy.
In a letter located by SPIEGEL ONLINE on a Web site trafficked by al-Qaida, a document that claims to be written by the interntional terror group claims responsibility for the London attacks.
"Rejoice, community of Muslims," the letter states. "The heroic mujahedeens today conducted an attack in London," it continues. All of Great Britain is now shaken and shocked, "in the north, the south, west and east." "We've warned the British government and the British people time and again," the letter adds. "We've kept our promise and have carried out a blessed military operation."
"We continue to warn the governments of Denmark and Italy and all other crusader governments." We demand that all countries pull their troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, states the letter, which has been signed by the 'Secret Organization -- al Qaida in Europe.'" (See also the full text of the statement: "Statement claiming London attacks" (BBC News, 2005/07/07))

"Injured tube passenger is escorted..."
(Jane Mingay, AP, 2005/07/07)
"Injured tube passenger is escorted away from Edgware Road Tube Station in London following an explosion, Thursday July 7, 2005."

"Tube passengers are escorted away..."
(Jane Mingay, AP, 2005/07/07)
"Tube passengers are escorted away from Edgware Road Tube Station in London following an explosion, Thursday July 7, 2005."

"A video grab from ITN..."
(Reuters, 2005/07/07)
"A video grab from ITN shows the wreckage of a London bus after an explosion on the bus in Tavistock Square, London, July 7, 2005."

"Four London Blasts Kill 37, Injure 700" (Jane Wardell, AP/ABC News, 2005/07/07)
7/7 I: "Four explosions rocked the London subway and tore open a packed double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday, sending bloodied victims fleeing in the worst attack on London since World War II. At least 37 people were killed and more than 700 were wounded, according to the official count.
A clearly shaken Prime Minister Tony Blair called the coordinated attacks "barbaric" and said they were designed to coincide with the G-8 summit opening in Gleneagles, Scotland. ...
The bus explosion seemed to go off at the back of the vehicle, said bystander Raj Mattoo, 35. "The roof flew off and went up about 10 meters (30 feet). It then floated back down," he said. "There were obviously people badly injured. A parking attendant said he thought a piece of human flesh had landed on his arm."
Doctors from the nearby British Medical Association rushed into the street to treat the wounded from the bus. "The front of BMA house was completely splattered with blood and not much of the bus was left," said Dr. Laurence Buckman.
"It was chaos," said Gary Lewis, 32, evacuated from a subway train at King's Cross station. 'The one haunting image was someone whose face was totally black and pouring with blood.'"

"Shiite Morality Is Taking Hold in Iraq Oil Port" (Edward Wong, The New York Times, 2005/07/07)
"The once libertine oil port of Basra, 350 miles south of the capital and far from the insurgency raging in much of Iraq, is steadily being transformed into a mini-theocracy under Shiite rule. There is perhaps no better indication of the possible flash points in a Shiite-dominated Iraq, because the political parties that hold sway here also wield significant influence in the central government in Baghdad and are backed by the country's top clerics. ...
The growing ties with Iran are evident. Posters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Iranian revolution, are plastered along streets and even at the provincial government center. The Iranian government opened a polling station downtown for Iranian expatriates during elections in their home country in June. ...
In the music bazaar, a tattered warning sign appears on a shuttered instrument shop owned by a famous musician known as Kareem Trumpet. The sign denounces as "soldiers of Satan" the city's "whorehouses and dealers in porn DVD's and gambling shops and music stores."
The bazaar is just blocks away from a strip where sidewalk alcohol vendors once thrived, before armed vigilantes and policemen drove them away."

"West turns blind eye as police put Saddam's torturers back to work" (James Hider, The Times, 2005/07/07)
"Iraqi security forces, set up by American and British troops, torture detainees by pulling out their fingernails, burning them with hot irons or giving them electric shocks, Iraqi officials say. Cases have also been recorded of bound prisoners being beaten to death by police.
In their haste to put police on the streets to counter the brutal insurgency, Iraqi and US authorities have enlisted men trained under Saddam Hussein’s regime and versed in torture and abuse, the officials told The Times. They said that recruits were also being drawn from the ranks of outlawed Shia militias.
Counter-insurgencies are rarely clean fights, but Iraq’s dirty war is being waged under the noses of US and British troops whose mission is to end the abuses of the former dictatorship. Instead, they appear to have turned a blind eye to the constant reports of torture from Iraq’s prisons.
Among the worst offenders cited are the Interior Ministry police commandos, a force made up largely of former army officers and special forces soldiers drawn from the ranks of Saddam’s dissolved army. They are seen as the most effective tool the coalition has in fighting the insurgency."

Wednesday, July 6, 2005

News and commentary:

"Cruel Britannia" (Robert S. Wistrich, Azure, from the Summer 2005 issue)
Wistrich on the "mainstreaming of anti-Semitism" in Britain:
"While many European countries have come to associate anti-Semitism with the forces of either the extreme Right, radical Left, or the increasingly vocal Muslim minorities, in Britain anti-Semitic sentiment is a part of mainstream discourse, continually resurfacing among the academic, political, and media elites. Indeed, while a great deal of attention has been focused on anti-Semitism -- often masquerading under the banner of anti-Zionism -- across Western Europe in the past few years, and especially in France, in some ways British anti-Semitism is more prevalent, and enjoys greater tolerance in public life, than in any other country in Europe. ...
The mainstreaming of anti-Semitism and demonization of Israel is felt most acutely, however, in the public culture of the capital city of London. In the past decade, the United Kingdom’s undisputed political, economic, and cultural center has also become a major world center of political Islam and anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American activism. Through its Arabic-language newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses, not to mention its flourishing network of bookshops, mosques, and community centers, radical Islam has taken full advantage of what British democracy has to offer for its anti-Western goals, reaping the benefits of London’s significance as a hub of global finance, electronic media, and mass communications technology.46 The effect of this with regard to anti-Semitism and virulent anti-Zionism has therefore been quite different from that found elsewhere in Europe: Although Britain’s Muslim population of about 1.5 million is only a quarter of that of France, the growing influence of London’s Muslims has given the most inflammatory of ideas a greater legitimacy in the capital’s political and cultural discourse than they enjoy virtually anywhere else." (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

"Iran's Nuclear Lies" (Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, from the 2005/07/11 issue)
"If Iran is to be believed, then the world has nothing to fear from its nuclear program. ... But neither the United States nor Europe nor the United Nations is ready simply to believe Iran, at least not easily, and not without verification. Its record of concealment and deceit about its nuclear program goes back at least 20 years. Its extensive uranium-enrichment program was uncovered in detail only two years ago; its promise of "full disclosure" and "transparency" since then has been something considerably less. The election of a new hard-line Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, last month raises still more questions about how far Tehran can be trusted about its nuclear programs, if at all.
Iran's concealments have been as vast as a secret underground facility at Natanz that was being readied for 50,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium when it was exposed in 2002. They have seemed as small as some undeclared milligrams of plutonium from a research laboratory. In a cat-and-mouse game reminiscent of the lead-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, the Iranians have claimed to be cooperating while throwing up what often seem to be petty obstacles in front of inspectors. Iranians have bulldozed suspect sites. They have declined to allow investigators access to some military areas. They say they just can't find key documents that would show where and how they acquired key designs when they started their enrichment program in the 1980s. (Typically, under heavy international pressure this year, they finally produced one page from 1987 for inspectors to look at, but wouldn't turn it over.)"

"Egypt ambassador 'to be killed'" (BBC News, 2005/07/06)
"A website statement claiming the kidnapping of the Egyptian ambassador to Iraq by an Islamist group has announced he will be killed.
The message, signed by the al-Qaeda in Iraq group, came after Ihab al-Sherif's ID cards appeared on the internet.
Mr Sherif, it said, had been convicted by the group's Islamic court of apostasy, or changing his religion.
The message said Egypt, the biggest Arab state and a strategic US partner, was an ally of "Jews and Christians".
It did not appear to offer any conditions for sparing the life of the envoy, who was seized in Baghdad on Saturday as he bought a newspaper. ...
"The sharia court of al-Qaeda in Iraq has decided to hand over the apostate, the ambassador of Egypt which is allied to Jews and Christians, to the mujahideen to carry out the punishment of the apostate ... and to kill him," it said."

"Moroccan Preacher Said to Have Met With 9/11 Plotters" (Terry McDermott, Los Angeles Times, 2005/07/06)
"TANGIER, Morocco — A Moroccan preacher imprisoned here for inspiring deadly bombings in Casablanca and implicated in the Madrid train bombings last year also had significant contact in Hamburg with leaders of the Sept. 11 attacks, say members of a Muslim congregation in Germany.
The preacher, Mohammed Fizazi, frequently gave sermons at Hamburg's Al Quds mosque while three of the hijack pilots were living in the city, attending Al Quds and becoming more involved in radical Islam.
Fizazi initiated several private meetings with the future pilots, says Fath Franzmathes, a member of the Al Quds congregation who later assisted German law enforcement. A second member of the congregation, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, confirmed that there had been frequent contact between the future hijackers and Fizazi.
It is not clear how much influence Fizazi had on the Sept. 11 hijackers, but he appears to be the first person linked to participants in three of the biggest terrorist assaults of recent years: the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.; the Casablanca attacks of May 2003 that killed 45 people; and the Madrid attacks in March 2004 that killed 191 people."

"Syria seen stepping up aid to Iraq-bound insurgents" (Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, 2005/07/06)
"Syrians are increasing assistance to foreign fighters preparing to enter Iraq and kill civilians and U.S. troops, despite months of pressure on Damascus from Washington to crack down on the jihadists.
A U.S. official said recent intelligence shows that Syria is the home to Web sites that exhort militants to come to the country for preparation to fight and die in Iraq.
Syrians also are providing barracks-like housing as the recruits from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Morocco and other Muslim countries prepare for a jihad, or holy war. The fighters also receive weapons, training and money in Syria. ...
Previously, officials have said that terrorists receive phony identification cards and passports in Syria and that they use the papers to cross Iraq's porous border. But fresh intelligence reports show that the staging in Syria is becoming more elaborate, the official said."

"Schools in Thailand Under Ethnic Siege" (Seth Mydans, The New York Times, 2005/07/06)
"YALA, Thailand - On the weekends now, the military firing range here is crowded with teachers - in shifts of 50 - trying out their pistols, an essential new accessory in a place where teaching school has become one of the most dangerous professions.
In an escalating campaign of violence here in the largely Muslim south of mostly Buddhist Thailand, government-run schools and the teachers who work in them have become particular targets of bombs and gunmen. ...
Duangporn Visinchai, 49, is the principal of Baan Trang School in the countryside just outside Yala, in one of the most dangerous areas in the south. She carries her pistol with her everywhere now, even inside her little schoolhouse, where her walkie-talkie crackles throughout the day with police chatter. ...
"It's every day," Ms. Duangporn said. "People die every day. This is the situation we live in." As a result, she said, "we are all living with weapons."
On the weekends, she too can be found at the firing range, getting the hang of her new .22-caliber pistol. ...
The whole rhythm of life is changing in the south, Ms. Duangporn said. "Everything happens in daylight," she said. "At night, everybody stays home." People have stopped inviting each other for dinner. Traditional evening funeral ceremonies have been moved to the afternoon.
The economy is collapsing as well. Wholesale buyers no longer come to the fruit and fish markets or buy fabric and clothing."

"Attack at Temple in India Leaves 6 Dead; Sectarian Strife Is Feared" (Somini Sengupta, The New York Times, 2005/07/06)
"NEW DELHI, July 5 - A brazen attack on India's best-known tinderbox of Hindu-Muslim strife, the heavily fortified Hindu temple compound in the northern town of Ayodhya, left six gunmen dead on Tuesday and raised the specter of a fresh bout of sectarian tension.
After a two-hour firefight in the morning, the police said the temple compound had been secured, six men killed and six weapons, mostly AK-47 assault rifles, recovered. Neither the identities of the men nor their motives have been established.
The compound at Ayodhya, less than 400 miles southeast of the capital, was the source of deadly riots between Hindus and Muslims that shook the nation in the early 1990's and ultimately helped carry the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party to power in 1998."

Tuesday, July 5, 2005

News and commentary:

"Iraq Insurgents Target Foreign Diplomats" (Sinan Salaheddin, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/07/05)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents mounted attacks against Arab and Muslim diplomats in Iraq on Tuesday, wounding Bahrain's top envoy in a kidnapping attempt. Pakistan's ambassador also escaped an assault on his convoy.
The attacks came three days after gunmen seized Egypt's top envoy to Iraq as he was buying a newspaper in the capital, appearing to signal an insurgent campaign to discourage Islamic countries from bolstering ties with the U.S.-backed Iraqi government. ...
The Bahraini diplomat, Hassan Malallah al-Ansari, was shot on his way to work in the Mansour district of western Baghdad, said Dr. Muhanad Jawad of Yarmouk Hospital. The Bahraini diplomat was treated for a shoulder wound and released, witnesses said.
"There was an attempt to kidnap him by gunmen when he was on his way from his house to the Bahrain mission in Baghdad," Bahrain Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Yousef Mahmoud was quoted as saying by the official Bahrain News Agency.
Pakistan's Ambassador Mohammed Younis Khan said gunmen riding in two cars opened fire on his convoy as he was on his way home from work in the same neighborhood, but he wasn't wounded.
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry said it has asked Khan to leave country temporarily after the attack."

"The mask is off and no one cares" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/07/05)
Ahmadinejad II: "Speaking to The New York Sun, Iranian dissident Ahmad Batebi said last week that Ahmadinejad founded the Revolutionary Guard's Jerusalem Brigade. The unit is responsible for engineering Iranian support for Palestinian terrorism. Sponsorship of Hizbullah is also the direct responsibility of the Revolutionary Guards. Then, too, the Jerusalem Brigade is responsible for liaison activities with al-Qaida. According to a 2003 Washington Post report, the unit's members have protected senior al-Qaida terrorists such as Saad bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's son, who have been living in Iran since the US invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks. ...
In a nutshell, Ahmadinejad is the personification of everything that the US and its erstwhile European allies claim that the war against global terrorism is seeking to defeat. He is a religious fanatic, a terror commander with global reach who seeks to destabilize the world and he is planning a no holds barred sprint to the finish line of Iran's race to acquire nuclear weapons which, he promises, will be used to protect the entire Islamic world.
This naturally begs the question, now that the mask of "reform" has been removed from the Iranian face, what will the US and Europe do? Will they accept that there is no diplomatic way of dealing with a regime that, in selecting Ahmadinejad as president has finally admitted that it remains fully committed to the destruction of Western civilization? Or will they try to ignore the obvious and tell themselves that a deal can still be reached if the payoff is high enough? The signs are mixed but discouraging."

"The Prez & The Hit Squad" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2005/07/05)
Ahmadinejad I: "The allegation that Ahmadinejad was one of the hostage-holders at the U.S. Embassy is based on an Associated Press photo unearthed and published hours after the election on a Web site supporting his opponent. In it, a bearded youth holding the arm of a blindfolded American is identified as Ahmadinejad. But it is not: The man in the photo has almost slanted eyes, with eyebrows that point upwards. Ahmadinejad, however, has almond eyes with almost drooping eyebrows.
And the man in the photo has been identified as Jaafar Zaker, one of the student leaders during the embassy raid. Zaker's younger brother Mohsen told journalists in Tehran that he recognized his brother, who died in the Iran-Iraq war in 1984. ...
Ahmadinejad's presence at the killing of the Kurdish leaders in Vienna on July 13, 1989, however, is an established fact. He was wounded in the shoot-out and spent a day in a Vienna hospital before being whisked out of Austria with a diplomatic passport. ...
The Kurds and Ahmadinejad's opponents claim that he was the effective head of the hit squad. But then why was he shot and abandoned as the gunmen fled? It was the Austrian police that took Ahmadinejad and a wounded Kurd to hospital. Had the decision-makers in Tehran decided to kill Ahmadinejad to leave no witnesses?" (See also: "Ex-Iranian Agent: Photo Not Ahmadinejad" (Ali Akbar Dareini, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/07/03), "Iran's New Leader Suspected in '89 Attack" (William J. Kole, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/07/02) and "Iran leader linked to '79 embassy crisis" (Joyce Howard Price and David R. Sands, The Washington Times, 2005/06/30))

"Sunni Group in Iraq Urges Members to Vote" (James Glanz, The New York Times, 2005/07/05)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 4 - In what might be a sign of a new political landscape, a major Sunni umbrella group called on its members on Monday to register for the next round of elections and take part "despite our reservations."
Adnan al-Dulaimi, the head of the group, called the Sunni Endowment, said in a briefing in Baghdad that clerics would be asked to issue fatwas, or religious rulings, essentially ordering Sunnis to vote in elections. Among its other functions, the Sunni Endowment is charged with oversight of Sunni Arab mosques and holy sites throughout Iraq, giving it wide influence among clerics.
"I ask all Sunni people to register their names for the next election, be