Only uneducated losers in the military....

At least according to John "D Student" Kerry. Guess I need to turn back in my Bachelors and Juris Doctorate degrees... Kerry Gaffe Campaigning in California for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, Senator John Kerry committed a notable gaffe, seeming to suggest that American troops in Iraq are uneducated losers. From the Pasadena Star-News: Kerry then told the students that if they were able to navigate the education system, they could get comfortable jobs - "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq," he said to a mixture of laughter and gasps. Local talk-show host John Ziegler has audio of the statement.

Pakistani Raid on School Kills 80

By HABIBULLAH KHAN Associated Press Writer CHINGAI, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistani troops backed by missile-firing helicopters on Monday struck a religious school purportedly being used as an al-Qaida training center, killing 80 people in what appeared to be the country's deadliest-ever attack against suspected militants.The country's top Islamic political leader said American planes were used in the pre-dawn strike against the school - known as a madrassa - and called for nationwide protests Tuesday, claiming all those killed were innocent students and teachers. Both Pakistani and the U.S. military officials denied any American involvement in the attack in northwestern Pakistan, less than two miles from the Afghan border.An al-Qaida-linked militant who apparently was a primary target of the strike had left the building a half hour beforehand, a Pakistani official said. Anger over the missile strike scuppered the signing of a peace accord, expected Monday, between tribal elders linked to militants. The United States has urged Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to do more to stop militants from crossing from tribal regions into Afghanistan, where Taliban-fanned violence has reached its deadliest proportions since the American-led invasion in 2001.Musharraf, along with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, met with President Bush last month in Washington to address the issue.Helicopter gunships fired four to five missiles into the madrassa in Chingai, said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan. The blasts tore apart the building and all inside, spraying body parts, blood and debris across a wide area. Sultan said initial estimates indicate the attack killed about 80 suspected militants from Pakistan and other countries. Only three people - all seriously wounded - were believed to have survived, a hospital official said."These militants were involved in actions inside Pakistan and probably in Afghanistan," Sultan told The Associated Press.Sultan said the attack was launched after those in charge of the building refused warnings to close it down. Among those killed was Liaquat Hussain, a Pakistani cleric and associate of al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, locals and an intelligence official said. Another al-Zawahri deputy, Faqir Mohammed, was believed to have been in the madrassa and left 30 minutes before the strike, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was unauthorized to speak to the media.In Islamabad, Qazi Hussain Ahmed - an opposition political leader - blamed the U.S. for the attack and said claims that the madrassa was a terrorist training center were "rubbish." He claimed 30 children were killed; an Associated Press reporter at the scene said no accurate count - or even identification - of many of the dead was possible due to the mutilated state of the remains."It was an American plane behind the attack and Pakistan is taking responsibility because they know there would be a civil war if the American responsibility was known," said Ahmed.In Afghanistan, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Matt Hackathorn denied the U.S. was involved in the strike. "It was completely done by the Pakistani military," he told the AP.Sultan said that no children or women were inside the madrassa when it was attacked and denied involvement by American or NATO forces in the raid.Mohammed - the al-Qaida deputy who escaped the raid - addressed a crowd of 10,000 mourners at a mass funeral for the victims, criticizing Musharraf's government and promising widescale protests. "We were peaceful, but the government attacked and killed our innocent people on orders from America," Mohammed told the rally as dozens of militants surrounded him, brandishing semiautomatic weapons. On Saturday, Mohammed denounced the Pakistani and U.S. governments and praised Osama bin Laden during a rally in the area attended by 5,000 pro-Taliban and al-Qaida tribesmen.Before burial, the remains of at least 50 people were laid on traditional wooden beds placed side by side in rows and covered with colored blankets. Locals walked among the beds and offered prayers."The government has launched an attack during the night, which is against Islam and the traditions of the area," Siraj ul-Haq, a Cabinet minister from the North West Frontier Province, told the AP. Ul-Haq said he would resign in protest."We heard helicopters flying in and then heard bombs," said one of the villagers, Haji Youssef. "We were all saddened by what we have seen."Thousands of people traveled from nearby villages to inspect the destroyed madrassa, some crying and others chanting "Long live Islam." The blast leveled the building, tearing mattresses and scattering Islamic books, including copies of the Quran.In the nearby town of Khar, some 2,000 tribesmen and shopkeepers marched through the main street. "Death to Musharraf, Death to Bush," the procession chanted.The attack happened about two miles from Damadola, where in January a U.S. Predator drone fired a missile that purportedly targeted - and missed - al-Zawahri, but killed several al-Qaida members and civilians instead.The attack coincided with Monday's planned signing of a peace deal between Bajur tribal leaders and the military aimed at stopping militants operating in the area and crossing into Afghanistan. U.S. and Afghan officials criticized a similar deal for North Waziristan, saying it could turn the area into a terrorist haven. Pakistani authorities say the deal returns power back to traditional tribal elders, but the military also stresses that it will crack down if militant activity resumes.Pakistan became a key U.S. ally in its war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and has deployed about 80,000 soldiers in the poorly marked Pakistan-Afghan frontier, where bin Laden is believed to be at large.

Youths force Paris riders off, burn buses

Important to keep an eye on what is happening in mainland Europe- this is going to be a national defense issue next decade.. By Cecile Brisson ASSOCIATED PRESS October 26, 2006 PARIS -- Youths forced passengers off three buses and set the vehicles on fire overnight in suburban Paris, raising tensions today ahead of the first anniversary of the riots that engulfed France's run-down, heavily immigrant neighborhoods. No injuries were reported, but worried bus drivers refused to enter some suburbs after dark, and the prime minister urged a swift, stern response. The riots in October 2005 raged through housing projects in suburbs nationwide, springing in part from anger over entrenched discrimination against immigrants and their French-born children, many of them Muslims from former French colonies in Africa. Despite an influx of funds and promises, disenchantment still thrives in those communities. About 10 attackers -- five of them with handguns -- stormed a bus in Montreuil east of Paris early today and forced the passengers off, the RATP transport authority said. They then drove off and set the bus on fire.Late yesterday, three attackers forced passengers off another bus in Athis-Mons, south of Paris, and tossed a Molotov cocktail inside, police officials said. The driver managed to put out the fire. Elsewhere, between six and 10 youths herded passengers off a bus in the western suburb of Nanterre late yesterday and set it alight. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said the events "should lead to an immediate response." "We cannot accept the unacceptable," he told reporters in the northern suburb of Cergy-Pontoise. "There will be arrests. ... That is our responsibility." Mr. de Villepin also said efforts should be directed to "revitalize" troubled neighborhoods and repeated the government's insistence that authorities rid France of "lawless zones" where youth gangs operate. The overnight attacks and recent ambushes on police have raised concern about the changing character of suburban violence, which seems more premeditated than last year's spontaneous outcry and no longer restricted to the housing projects. The use of handguns was unusual -- last year's rioters were armed primarily with crowbars, stones, sticks or gasoline bombs.

Iran again calls for destruction of United States..

As always the wonderful Captain at www.captainsquarters.com: "Iran held its Quds Day celebrations on the last Friday of Ramadan, and last Friday it indulged itself in an orgy of hatred towards Israel and America, demanding the destruction of both. As Steven Stalinsky notes at the New York Sun, the only aspect of Quds Day more astonishing than the day-long hate festival was the utter lack of interest in it by the Western media:It is disturbing when the entire leadership of one nation, along with hundreds of thousands of its citizens, comes out with celebrations and parades every year that call for the annihilation of another country. It is more twisted that no world leaders or international bodies, including the United Nations, have denounced the activities surrounding Quds Day, an Iranian holiday introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini that is marked on the last Friday of Ramadan. ... President Ahmadinejad gave a series of speeches leading up to and on Quds Day. At an Iftar address on October 14, he discussed his "connection with God" and said: "The president of America is like us. That is, he too is inspired ... but [his] inspiration is of the satanic kind. Satan gives inspiration to the president of America."Mr. Ahmadinejad delivered his Quds Day speech under a banner that read, "Israel must be wiped off the face of the world." He described the holiday as "a day for confrontation between the Islamic faith with the global arrogance." ... A who's who of the Iranian leadership marched in the main Quds Day parade before crowds chanting "death to Israel" and "death to America." The marchers included a former Iranian president, Mohammed Khatemi, and a spokesman for the parliament presidency board, Mohsen Kouhkan, who predicted a quick "final and total defeat of America and the Zionist regime." Mohammed Khatami often gets sympathetic press in the West as a "reformer" on the inside of the Iranian mullahcracy. The Bush administration reportedly tried to connect with Khatami on his recent visit to the US as a back channel for negotiations with Teheran in an attempt to get them to stop uranium enrichment. It's a mark of the nature of the regime when their reformers march to the rhythm of a chant of annihilation directed at the United States and Israel. Nor was Khatami alone amongst "reformers" at the hate-in, nor the only former president. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani also spoke at Quds Day in 2001, telling rapturous listeners that their jihad would lead to a conflict between forces of "colonialism" and martyrs, apparently leaving no doubt as to the victors in the coming war, and this was just weeks after 9/11. This year, Rafsanjani upheld Quds Day as an important factor for Muslim jihad, and emphasized that all 1.5 billion Muslims supported it.Do you recall the massive coverage provided to this event, in which present and former heads of state held a national celebration calling for our destruction? Have CQ readers seen any journalists covering the massive rallies, complete with burning effigies of George Bush and Tony Blair and burning flags of the US and Israel? Did any TV network note that the winner of Iran's Quds Day engineering competition, Isfahan University, produced a design for a pilotless plane to replace suicide bombers in the glorious jihad? I certainly don't recall hearing anything about this, and I'm a person inclined to follow several media outlets on a daily basis. Western media didn't have any interest in providing this information to its consumers, and one has to wonder why. In the middle of midterm elections, does the media want to keep us from considering this particular threat, and if so, why?"

Weapons in Space..

Spacing Out By The Editors National Review Online Almost 20 years to the day after the U.S.-Soviet summit in Reykjavik, where Mikhail Gorbachev desperately but unsuccessfully tried to persuade Ronald Reagan to abandon the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Bush administration released a revised National Space Policy (NSP). The document, whose unclassified portion was made public on October 6, commits the United States “to the exploration and use of outer space by all nations for peaceful purposes.” It also promises to “deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests.” Because America relies so heavily on satellites for national security, economic activity, and scientific research, these are important priorities. Yet a domestic coalition of liberals and peaceniks that has consistently opposed ballistic-missile defense since the early days of SDI is trying to make the NSP controversial. The Center for Defense Information, whose board of advisers includes such military experts as Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s and the actor Paul Newman, has condemned the new document for its “tonality.” They must resort to such trivialities because the substance of the latest NSP isn’t much different from the version issued by the Clinton administration in 1996. This earlier document called for “assuring that hostile forces cannot prevent our own use of space” and “countering, if necessary, space-systems and services used for hostile purposes.” Although the Bush administration has done some updating and rewriting, it has essentially affirmed a policy that has been in place for a decade.What’s really going on here is a conflict of visions between hawks who recognize the importance of space power in the 21st century and doves who think international treaties restricting America’s technological advantages in space would make the world safer. They are no fringe movement: At the United Nations last year, 160 countries called for negotiations on a proposal to ban weapons from space, and the United States was the only nation to vote against it. An administration led by John Kerry might have acted differently: Kerry has called space weapons “very disturbing” and has indicated that he favors a ban on them. This would be devastating to American interests. For one thing, ICBMs are space weapons. As they travel from their launch pads to their destinations, they leave the earth’s atmosphere. Likewise, anti-ballistic missiles, such as those currently deployed in Alaska and California, are meant to intercept ICBMs in space — they don’t merely travel through space, but actually engage their targets up there. Eliminating these would hobble the United States in its effort to protect itself from the likes of North Korea, which of course would pay no attention to what any treaty said. Sharper differences will emerge upon the arrival of weapons that don’t spend just a few minutes zipping through space on their way to targets. A truly robust system of national missile defense eventually may demand the deployment of space-based interceptors and lasers. Moreover, foes of the United States are sure to develop anti-satellite technologies whose purpose is to cripple our indispensable national-security hardware. It may make sense to give satellites the power to take evasive actions, including, perhaps, the ability to defend themselves with weapons. Yet a treaty written by European diplomats and Chinese Communists could very well eliminate this option before it’s even technologically feasible. We’d be much better served by a new kind of Monroe Doctrine that permits foreign powers to use space for commerce and science but denies them the ultimate high ground for military adventurism. Such a debate is only a few years away. For now, however, the NSP takes a commonsense approach to the last frontier. Reagan didn’t let Gorbachev tie his hands in 1986; we shouldn’t let the enemies of American space power limit our options now.

Iran expands nuclear program..

Mon Oct 23, 2006 11:55am ET By Mark Heinrich VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has launched a second batch of centrifuges at its pilot nuclear fuel plant despite possible U.N. Security Council sanctions, diplomats said. Tehran fired up the new cascade of 164 interconnected centrifuges, which can enrich uranium for either power plant or nuclear bomb fuel, earlier this month to go with an initial network of 164, they said.But Iran appeared to be only testing the second cascade, without feeding "UF6" uranium gas into it, as it has generally done with the first cascade, which first yielded a tiny amount of home-grown enriched uranium in April. A senior diplomat familiar with U.N. nuclear inspections in Iran said Tehran remained a long way from "industrial scale" capacity that would signal its emergence as a nuclear power, as North Korea showed on October 9 by detonating an atomic device. "The second cascade was brought on line earlier this month but they appear to be just running it empty. That is, vacuum-testing to assess durability," said the diplomat, close to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency."What they are not doing is building a stockpile of enriched uranium that would give them a bomb breakout ability, something like 100-200 kg (240-480 pounds). It is just a few grams here, a few grams there," he said.There was no immediate comment on the centrifuges from Iran, but President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday that Western powers were wrong if they thought his country would retreat under political pressure from its nuclear plans.The Islamic Republic says it wants to enrich uranium only to generate electricity. The West suspects that OPEC's No. 2 oil exporter is trying to build bombs under the guise of a civilian program to threaten Israel and Western interests.

A NATO-Russia missile defense exercise

From the always up to date Colonel Austin Bay: Yes, it’s theater anti-missile defense (not strategic), but it’s also another step to a “global” limited protection system against North Korea and Iran type nuts. "Under the aegis of the NATO-Russia Council (NRC), the Theatre Missile Defence Ad Hoc Working Group (TMD AHWG) will conduct the third joint NATO-Russia TMD Command Post Exercise (CPX) from 16-25 October 2006 at the Russian Simulation Facility located in the Research and Development Center of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation.The purpose of this third CPX is to validate the Experimental Concept and associated Experimental Concept of Operations (CONOPS) developed by the joint NATO-Russia TMD Ad Hoc Working Group. Over sixty participants from eleven NATO nations and eighty participants from the Russian Federation are going to take part in CPX3. Additional support and participation will be provided by the NATO Military Authorities (NMAs), the International Staff (IS), the tri-national(1) Extended Air Defence Task Force (EADTF) and the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. This is the third in a series of joint NATO-Russia TMD exercises. The initial CPX was conducted at the Joint National Integration Center (JNIC) in the United States in 2004. Last year The Netherlands hosted Cooperative Optic Windmill (CPX2) at De Peel Airbase. This third CPX will build on the work conducted previously and be a prelude for a first Field Training Exercise, provisionally scheduled for autumn 2007. Here’s a NATO backgrounder. The program ultimately intends to protect “alliance forces, territory and populations against missile threats.” I guarantee this program leverages US ABM research and development.Someone tell Nancy Pelosi her European pals are worried. And they want ABMs. (Scroll through the post to find Pelosi’s quote. Also look through the comments and find Comment 19. Read the quote gleaned from Rep Ellen Tauscher’s site."

Rice Vows 'Full Range' Defense of Japan

By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer Wednesday, October 18, 2006 (10-18) 04:46 PDT TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday the United States is ready to use the "full range" of its military might to defend Japan in light of North Korea's nuclear weapons test, and her Japanese counterpart drew a firm line against developing a Japanese bomb.The United States is concerned that Japan, South Korea or perhaps Taiwan may want to develop their own nuclear weapons programs to counter the threat from North Korea. Such moves would anger China, which already has nuclear weapons, and raise tensions in the region.Part of Rice's assignment on this week's hastily arranged trip to China, Russia, Japan and South Korea is to lessen the temptation to develop separate national nuclear programs by reaffirming the U.S. intention to defend the nations most at risk. In Japan, Rice said she reaffirmed President Bush's pledge, made the day of the North's test last week, "that the United States has the will and the capability to meet the full range — and I underscore the full range — of its deterrent and security commitments to Japan," Rice said following discussions with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso.Rice's words were a reminder to U.S. allies that the United States does not want to see a new nuclear arms race in Asia, but will likely be taken also as a warning to North Korea that it could face the U.S. nuclear arsenal if it used a nuclear weapon on a neighbor.The United States has repeatedly said t does not intend to attack North Korea or topple its communist regime.Shortly before Rice arrived, Aso said Japan should openly discuss whether it wants to possess nuclear weapons. He told a parliamentary committee the government has no plans to stray from its post-World War II policy of not allowing nuclear bombs on Japanese soil, "But I think it is important to discuss the issue."Even discussing the issue is extremely sensitive in Japan, with its troubled military history and experience as the only nation where nuclear weapons were used in wartime.With Rice at his side, Aso did not repeat the need for a discussion."The government is absolutely not considering a need to be armed by nuclear weapons," Aso said. "We do not need to acquire nuclear arms with an assurance by Secretary of State Rice that the bilateral alliance would work without fault."Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has ruled out developing nuclear weapons, but a ruling party policy director raised that possibility soon after the North's test.Speaking to reporters Tuesday en route to Japan, Rice said North Korea's recent underground nuclear test "does carry with it the potential for instability in the relationships that now exist in the region." "That's why it's extremely important to go out and to affirm, and affirm strongly, U.S. defense commitments to Japan and to South Korea," Rice said. In addition to settling nerves among allies, Rice's Asia trip is meant to reinforce pressure on South Korea and especially China to enforce economic sanctions. Those include what the United States describes as an aggressive inspection and interdiction program that stops short of a full blockade of North Korean trade. China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya said Tuesday that China would implement the resolution to the degree of inspections, but not interdiction."Inspection is different than interdiction and interception," Wang told reporters on Monday. "I think different countries will do it different ways."Rice would not comment in detail about worries by the U.S. and other governments that the North may be preparing for a second test explosion."We're concerned about further action by the North Koreans," Rice said, "but further action by the North Koreans will only deepen its isolation, which is pretty deep right now."Concern over a second test stems partly from new satellite imagery showing increased activity around at least two other North Korean sites, a senior defense official said Tuesday.The activity, started a number of days ago, included ground preparation at one site and construction of some buildings and other structures, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it involved intelligence gathering. He said that although the purpose of the structures was unclear, officials were concerned because North Korea has left open the possibility of another test.At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that while it was unclear what role the U.S. military might take in enforcing new U.N. sanctions, he did not expect the United States or any other nation to do so unilaterally.

Tanker Becomes Air Force's Number 1 Priority

The Air Force makes the acquisition of refuelers its No. 1 priority. By Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writer October 13, 2006 WASHINGTON — After more than a decade of focusing on its prized F-22 fighter program, the Air Force announced Thursday that it was changing its top acquisition priority to a fleet of 450 aerial refueling tankers, a star-crossed program that landed one Pentagon procurement official in jail last year. The shift in priorities marks the return of a program that once drew the ire of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is expected to become the new chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee if Republicans retain control of the Senate in November. McCain contended that the program was an unnecessary sop to Boeing Co., which initially was chosen shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to build a fleet of 100 refuelers using converted 767 jetliners. An investigation led by McCain resulted in the resignation of Boeing Chief Executive Philip Condit after it was revealed that the company's chief financial officer, Michael Sears, was working to hire Air Force official Darlene Druyun while she was still overseeing the service's procurement program. Druyun and Sears served prison terms, and James Roche, then secretary of the Air Force, retired in the scandal's wake.The Boeing contract was canceled but will be put up for bid again.The revitalized tanker program could be a boon for Southern California's beleaguered aerospace industry. Although Pentagon budget projections put the cost of the program at $13 billion from 2008 to 2013, replacing all of the Air Force's current fleet of tankers, many of which are already more than 40 years old, could run as much as $100 billion. "It may end up being the biggest weapons program of this generation," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the nonpartisan Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. Century City-based Northrop Grumman Corp. is preparing a bid that would offer the Air Force an aerial refueler based on Airbus' A330 aircraft, recently selected by Britain and Australia for their tankers. Chicago-based Boeing will probably bid its 767 again. Although the aircraft would be built in Washington state, converting it into a tanker probably would occur elsewhere, possibly at Boeing's Long Beach facility, where the company assembles the C-17 military transport plane — a program at risk of being canceled. Traditionally, however, Boeing handles such aircraft conversions at its plant in Wichita, Kan. European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co., Airbus' Franco-German parent, has already committed to converting its A330s in Mobile, Ala.Air Force officials acknowledged that the program had a troubled history, but they emphasized that they had made it their No. 1 priority because even if it took delivery of 10 to 15 new tankers a year, it would still take decades to replace the aging fleet. That means some of the last to be replaced would be in service for 70 years."The airman who is going to be the last pilot of the KC-135 fleet has not yet been born," said Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne, using the military's designation for the oldest model of current tankers.The Air Force is expected to send out a formal request for bids by mid-December and award a contract by September. One person close to the program, however, said an award could come as early as July.Air Force officials said the program also was essential because of the long distances being flown by transport, bomber and fighter aircraft in the global war on terrorism, which has taxed the current fleet of KC-135 and newer KC-10 tankers.Even so, the shift from the F-22 — now in production — to the tanker program is an important change culturally for the Air Force because it has frequently been criticized for putting its high-end fighters above all else.Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff, said its next new fighter, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, was now only its No. 4 priority."You guys have watched us over time and even written every once in a while that this is a fighter-pilot-dominated Air Force and all we care about is white scarves and fighters," Moseley told reporters Thursday. "I am a fighter pilot, been one all my life. Isn't it interesting that this chief's No. 1 priority is the tanker?"

Trying to Put the Squeeze on North Korea..

Harsh consequences may be coming, but the U.S. is running into roadblocks in seeking agreement on what those consequences should be By TONY KARON Analysis: What North Korea Wants Posted Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006 It might have been expected that, three days after North Korea announced a nuclear test in defiance of the international community, the rogue regime would be suffering harsh consequences. Not yet, anyway. The U.N. Security Council appears divided as to just how harsh those consequences ought to be. What's more, the Bush Administration's strenuous assurances that it has no plans to attack North Korea — even as it defends its continued refusal to talk directly to the regime in Pyongyang — are pointers to some of the difficulties facing Washington's efforts to put the squeeze on Pyongyang. The Security Council appears unlikely to pass a sanctions resolution before the end of this week. The Council appears unanimous in condemning North Korea, and in the belief that the regime must pay a price for crossing a red line. But veto-wielding Council members such as Russia and China, as well as South Korea, want to ensure that any U.N. response advances, rather than retards, a plausible scenario for resolving the crisis — and the only endgame they're prepared to countenance is a return to the negotiating table. "We condemn this [nuclear test]," Russia's President Vladimir Putin told a German newspaper Wednesday, "but we must not break off the process of talks." And China, while joining the call for its longtime friend and neighbor to face sanctions as punishment for its transgression, nonetheless added that such sanctions would have to be "appropriate" and "prudent." Added a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman: "The only way to resolve this issue is to get all the parties back to the negotiating table." China and South Korea — nations that North Korea depends on for vital food and energy supplies — have traditionally opposed sanctions that would put the squeeze on the regime, for fear that its collapse would send millions of refugees across their borders, and that a sense of mortal danger would likely provoke the heavily armed North Korean regime to lash out militarily. There is also a fear that proposed measures such as the interdiction of all shipping in and out of North Korean ports might actually escalate the confrontation. Its track record suggests that North Korea tends to respond to pressure by raising the ante rather than by folding. North Korea continued talking tough Wednesday, suggesting that if international pressure continues, it will conduct a second nuclear test. (That, of course, could be the cynical spin on a second test that may already be in the works.) But North Korea is also playing a diplomatic game, stressing that it is "ready for both dialogue and confrontation." It has blamed the U.S. for the collapse of the six-party process, and insisted that it remains ready to return to those talks if existing sanctions are dropped. To the extent that it indicates a willingness to revive the basic deal discussed at those talks, that could put diplomatic pressure on the U.S. Dropping sanctions, of course, is the last thing anyone has in mind right now. Japan has already implemented some new ones of its own, cutting all imports from North Korea (mushrooms, coal and shellfish) and prohibiting North Korean vessels from docking at its ports. Although the U.S. has no trade or similar ties with North Korea, it could also use its dominant role in the international banking system to tighten the squeeze on North Korean funds imposed by the financial sanctions adopted a year ago. But the appetite of others to follow suit appears to be limited. The U.S. may also be struggling to get its way at the Security Council because of doubts over the wisdom with which the Bush Administration has handled North Korea until now. Its refusal to talk directly with the North Korean regime over the past six years is seen in Beijing and Seoul as partly responsible for the failure of the existing diplomatic process to prevent North Korea testing a nuclear weapon, and pressure for the U.S. to reverse its refusal to talk directly to Pyongyang continues. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on Wednesday reiterated the call for direct talks. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's rejection of such talks on the grounds that the U.S. alone lacks leverage with North Korea is unlikely to impress those who see offering Pyongyang security guarantees as the key to achieving its disarmament. The U.S., after all, and not China or South Korea, is the country that North Korea most views as a mortal threat. So, while the Security Council this week will certainly punish North Korea for its nuclear provocation, the likelihood is that such punishment will be measured with a view to restarting the six-party process. The end game, as ever, remains persuading North Korea to disarm in exchange for a package of political, economic and security incentives.

North Korea threatens war over sanctions

By HANS GREIMEL, Associated Press Writer October 11, 2006 North Korea stoked regional tensions Wednesday, threatening more nuclear tests and saying additional sanctions imposed on it would be considered an act of war, as nervous neighbors raced to bolster defenses and punish Pyongyang.South Korea said it was making sure its troops were prepared for atomic warfare, and Japan imposed new economic sanctions to hit the economic lifeline of the communist nation's 1 million-member military, the world's fifth-largest.North Korea, in its first formal statement since Monday's claimed atomic bomb test, hailed the blast as a success and said attempts by the outside world to penalize North Korea with sanctions would be considered an act of war.Further pressure will be countered with physical retaliation, the North's Foreign Ministry warned in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency."If the U.S. keeps pestering us and increases pressure, we will regard it as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical corresponding measures," the statement, said without specifying what those measures could be.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States would not attack North Korea, rejecting a suggestion that Pyongyang may feel it needs nuclear weapons to stave off an Iraq-style U.S. invasion. Rice told CNN that President Bush has told the North Koreans that "there is no intention to invade or attack them. So they have that guarantee. ... I don't know what more they want."But she also said that the decision by Pyongyang to go ahead with its nuclear program means it likely will see "international condemnation and international sanctions unlike anything that they have faced before."North Korea's No. 2 leader Kim Yong Nam threatened in an interview with a Japanese news agency that there would also be more nuclear tests if Washington continued what he called its "hostile attitude." Kim, second to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, told Kyodo News agency that further nuclear testing would hinge on U.S. policy toward his communist government."The issue of future nuclear tests is linked to U.S. policy toward our country," Kim Yong Nam was quoted as saying when asked whether Pyongyang will conduct more tests. Along the razor-wired no-man's-land separating the divided Koreas, communist troops were more boldly trying to provoke their southern counterparts: spitting across the demarcation line, making throat-slashing hand gestures, flashing their middle finger and trying to talk to the troops, said U.S. Army Maj. Jose DeVarona of Fayetteville, N.C., adding that the overall situation was calm.On the streets of North Korea's capital, it seemed like business as usual. Video by AP Television News showed people milling about Kim II Sung square in Pyongyang and rehearsing a performance for the 80th anniversary of the "Down with Imperialism Union."South Korean Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung said that Seoul could enlarge its conventional arsenal to deal with a potentially nuclear-armed North Korea.Scientists and other governments have said Monday's underground test has yet to be confirmed, with some experts saying the blast was significantly smaller than even the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. North Korea appeared to respond to that Wednesday, saying in its statement that it "successfully conducted an underground nuclear test under secure conditions."In rare direct criticism of the communist regime from Seoul, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said the security threat cited by North Korea "either does not exist in reality, or is very exaggerated," according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.He spoke even as South Korea's military was checking its readiness for nuclear attack, Yonhap said. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended improving the military's defenses, possibly with state-of-the-art weapons to destroy nuclear missiles, the report said. The top U.S. general in South Korea said that American forces are fully capable of deterring an attack despite the North's still-unconfirmed nuclear test. "Be assured that the alliance has the forces necessary to deter aggression, and should deterrence fail, decisively defeat any North Korean attack against" South Korea, U.S. Army Gen. B.B. Bell said in a statement to troops. "U.S. forces have been well- trained to confront nuclear, biological and chemical threats." About 29,500 U.S. soldiers are deployed in the South, a remnant of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a cease-fire, not a formal peace treaty. Bell said seismic waves detected after the claimed test were still being analyzed and it had not been yet determined if the test was successful. Japan took steps to punish North Korea for the test, prohibiting its ships from entering Japanese ports and imposing a total ban on imports from the impoverished nation. North Korean nationals are also prohibited from entering Japan, with limited exceptions, the Cabinet Office said in a statement released after an emergency security meeting late Wednesday. A total ban on imports and ships could be disastrous for North Korea, whose produce like clams and mushroom earns precious foreign currency on the Japanese market. Ferries also serve as a major conduit of communication between the two countries, which have no diplomatic relations. Tokyo has already halted food aid and imposed limited financial sanctions against North Korea after it test-fired seven missiles into waters between Japan and the Korean peninsula in July, including one capable of reaching the United States. A report that North Korea may have conducted a second test rattled nerves Wednesday before the Japanese government said there was no indication of a blast. Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported around 8:30 a.m. that unidentified government sources were saying "tremors" had been detected in North Korea. South Korean and U.S. seismic monitoring stations said they hadn't detected any indications of a second test, findings backed by White House spokesman Blair Jones. With the United Nations debating how to respond to North Korea, China agreed to punishment but not the severe sanctions backed by the U.S. Beijing is seen as having the greatest outside leverage on North Korea as a traditional ally and top provider of badly needed economic and energy aid. The United States asked the U.N. Security Council to impose a partial trade embargo including strict limits on Korea's weapons exports and freezing of related financial assets. All imports would be inspected too, to filter materials that could be made into nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

Why Is Ahmadinejad Smiling?

The intellectual sources of his apocalyptic vision. by Waller R. Newell Weekly Standard 10/16/2006, Volume 012, Issue 05 "Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is often smiling, as if he knows something we don't, or at least not yet. It is tempting to view him as a madman. That way, when he speaks of wiping Israel off the face of the earth, we might convince ourselves that he is no more than a fanatical front man for the Iranian Republic's desire to possess nuclear weapons so as to assert itself in the manner of China or any other aspiring great power. Unfortunately, whether mad or not, Ahmadinejad has a coherent ideological vision in which the call to wipe out Israel is no ordinary manifestation of anti-Semitism. Instead, it is the beckoning of an apocalyptic event that will usher in a millennium of bliss for all believers, indeed all mankind. Nuclear weapons are the indispensable means to this end since they are the most reliable way of exterminating the Jewish state. They are therefore not to be negotiated away in exchange for other economic or security benefits. The revolution needs nuclear weapons to carry out its utopian mission. How dangerous is Ahmadinejad? He has made his aims clear many times in public. At a "World Without Zionism" conference in Tehran in October 2005, at which his supporters chanted "Death to America," he said: "They [ask]: 'Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?' But you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved." At the same conference, he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," adding that "very soon, this stain of disgrace will vanish from the center of the Islamic world. This is attainable." Iran's senior-most Islamic leaders gave their full support to this genocidal aim. Ahmadinejad has announced that he intends to return Iran to the purity of the revolution that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power in 1979. The annihilation of Israel, he claimed, was a goal first announced by Khomeini himself, thus a project endowed with the highest possible revolutionary authority. We would do well to take the Iranian president seriously, for he is proving himself a charismatic and clever leader. As he demonstrated recently at the United Nations, Ahmadinejad is adroit at putting aside Islamist themes when convenient and joining secular dictators like Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe in their Marxist cant protesting American imperialism and economic hege mony. Like many totalitarian rulers, including Hitler and Stalin, he professes a love for mankind and world peace. In these ways, Ahmadinejad reflects the Iranian revolution's assimilation of traditional Islamic categories of faith to a Marxist lexicon of violent revolution. It is therefore more important than ever to realize that the Iranian revolution's brand of jihadism has close structural similarities to--and is historically descended from--strains of European revolutionary nihilism, including that of the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks, and the Nazis, and extending to later third world offshoots like the Khmer Rouge. All of these revolutionary movements have a common set of genocidal aims, now reemerging in Ahmadinejad's lethal rhetoric. They all envision a return to what the Jacobins called the Year One, a grimly repressive collectivist utopia in which individual freedom is obliterated in the name of the common good, and people are purged of their vices, including property, freedom of thought, and the satisfactions of family and private life. Returning to a past so pure and distant requires the destruction of all received tradition, including religious traditions, extending back centuries, and so is, paradoxically, at the same time a radical leap into the future. That is why neither the purportedly Sunni vision of the Taliban nor the purportedly Shiite vision of the Iranian revolution bears any close resemblance to the traditions and restraints imposed by those faiths, especially restraints on this-worldly political extremism, terrorism, and the slaughter of noncombatants. The second aim that all these revolutionary movements share is the identification of one class or race enemy whose extermination is the crucial step necessary to bring about the utopian community where all alienation and vice will end forever. The class or race enemy becomes the embodiment of all human evil, whose destruction will cleanse the planet. In Ahmadinejad's flirtation with nuclear Armageddon, the destruction of Israel plays the same apocalyptic role that the Nazis assigned to the destruction of European Jewry. Stalin assigned the identical role to the destruction of the "kulaks," the so-called rich peasants--an utterly fictitious category bearing no closer resemblance to actual Russian peasants than the Nazis' demonized Jews bore to actual Jews. Now it is the Jews' turn again. When Ahmadinejad promises Muslims "a world without Zionism," he means it quite literally. A number of writers including Bernard Lewis and Paul Berman have stressed connections between al Qaeda and European ideologies of revolutionary extremism. The Iranian revolution's connections with these ideologies are, if anything, even better documented. The key figure here is the acknowledged intellectual godfather of the Iranian revolution, Ali Shariati. To understand Ahmadinejad's campaign to return to the purity of the revolution and why it leads him to flirt with nuclear Armageddon, it is necessary to understand Ali Shariati.Ali Shariati (1933-1977) was an Iranian intellectual who studied comparative literature in Paris in the early 1960s and was influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon. He translated Sartre's major philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, into Farsi, and coauthored a translation of Fanon's famous revolutionary tract The Wretched of the Earth. Sartre and Fanon together were responsible for revitalizing Marxism by borrowing from Martin Heidegger's philosophy of existentialism, which stressed man's need to struggle against a purposeless bourgeois world in order to endow life with meaning through passionate commitment. By lionizing revolutionary violence as a purifying catharsis that forces us to turn our backs on the bourgeois world, Sartre and Fanon hoped to rescue the downtrodden from the seduction of Western material prosperity. Fanon was even more important because he imported from Heidegger's philosophy a passionate commitment to the "destiny" of "the people," the longing for the lost purity of the premodern collective that had drawn Heidegger to National Socialism. This potent brew of violent struggle and passionate commitment to a utopian vision of a collectivist past deeply influenced Ali Shariati, just as it had influenced another student in Paris a few years earlier, the Cambodian Pol Pot. Fanon in effect replaced the international proletariat of classical Marxism with the existentialist Volk of Heidegger's Nazi period, repudiating both liberal democracy and Marxist-Leninist politics as too materialistic. As applied in practice by the Khmer Rouge, this led to the bloodbath of 1975-1979 in which the cities of Cambodia were forcibly evacuated and the Cambodian people were purified of the taint of Western corruption by being reduced to a primitive collective of slave labor. Just as the the Jacobins had literally started the calendar over at the Year One, so Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, on assuming power, proclaimed the Year Zero. Ali Shariati aimed to politicize the Shiite faith of his fellow Iranians with this same existentialist creed of revolutionary violence and purification. He sought to turn Shiism from pious hopes for a better world to come to the creation of a political utopia in the here and now. Although one cannot look into another man's heart and assess the sincerity of his religious beliefs, Ali Shariati's critics argue with some plausibility that Islam was in many ways no more than a religion of convenience for him. It was the most powerful social force in Iran, these critics contend, so Ali Shariati subverted its categories with a neo-Marxist agenda alien to true faith. Following Fanon, Ali Shariati believed that "the people" had to return to its most distant origins and so create what Fanon termed a "new man" and a "new history." Like Fanon as well, Ali Shariati defined a people as sharing "a common pain" inflicted on them by Western oppression. Frequently citing Sartre, Ali Shariati proclaimed existentialism superior to all other philosophies because, in it, "human beings are free and the architects as well as masters of their own essence." This assertion of man's absolute control over his own destiny violates all three Abrahamic faiths, which stress that human beings are servants of God and powerless without Him. When Ali Shariati was criticized in 1972 by traditionalists among the Iranian clergy, he wrote to his father arguing that those who had fought French colonialism in Algeria like his teacher at the Sorbonne, Victor Gurvitch--also much influenced by Sartre and Fanon--were closer to the true revolutionary spirit of Shiism than traditionalists like the Ayatollah Milani, who avoided all involvement in politics. Throughout Ali Shariati's discussions of Shiism, religion is harnessed to revolutionary politics. He tried to assimilate Shiites' hopes for a better world achieved through the return of the Hidden Imam, the Mahdi, to revolutionary agendas of mass struggle and historical progress. The return of the Mahdi, Ali Shariati proclaimed, will bring about "a classless society," a Marxist slogan. An unconventional Muslim at best, Ali Shariati was deeply interested in Sufi mysticism, including the poetry of Rumi, and he loved Balzac and other European writers. Like Sartre and later Michel Foucault, Ali Shariati had a passion for literature that seemed to go hand in hand with a passion for revolution. Political struggle becomes a beautifying myth of heroic valor and the triumph of the will, the delusion that "the people" can achieve through revolutionary violence the aesthetic wholeness and unity of a work of art.Returning to Iran in 1964, during the rule of Shah Reza Pahlavi, Ali Shariati began to organize for the coming revolution. While he repudiated Marxism-Leninism because of its atheism and materialistic interpretation of history, he expressed admiration for the revolutionary fervor of Iranian Marxists and occasionally supported their protests against the regime. His lectures at the Hosseiniyeh Ershad Institute, in Tehran, which set forth his fusion of Shiism and revolutionary struggle, were wildly popular. He had several run-ins with the shah's secret police, SAVAK, who monitored his classes. He also tried to forge links with the Iranian religious establishment. Many of its most reputable theologians continued to regard his attempt to blend Shiism with third world revolution as heretical. One important figure, however, refused to condemn Ali Shariati when called upon to do so in 1970 by his fellow clerics: the Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini and Ali Shariati were not direct allies. But Khomeini--who once said that "Islam is politics"--was no traditionalist either, and he wanted to harness the popular energy Ali Shariati had stimulated among Iranian students to help fuel his own political movement. Ali Shariati died of a heart attack in 1977, two years before the Iranian Revolution, but largely thanks to his influence, the ideology brought to power by Khomeini's rule is an Islam distorted by European left-wing existentialism and the romanticization of violence. Unlike mainstream Sunni Islam, Shiism has a strong messianic strain. Shiites rejected the institution of an earthly caliphate intertwining secular and religious authority, such as the Ottoman sultans, in favor of the rule of the descendants of the Prophet. The last of these, the Hidden Imam, left the world in 874, and devout Shiites faithfully await his return. When he does return, he will lead the righteous in a war against the wicked and establish a kingdom of perfect justice on earth. In the meantime, since the prospects for true justice reside with the Hidden Imam, in his absence the world is a sad and empty place, providing less of an institutionalized link between believers and God than is the case in Sunni Islam, with its more direct involvement in earthly government. Ali Shariati took the messianic strain that distinguishes Shiism from mainstream Islam and secularized it, making it the vehicle for Heideggerian existentialist commitment, resolve, and willpower on behalf of the oppressed people. Messianism became the impetus for collective political struggle. The eschatological Last Days, which traditional believers can only await in faith, hope, and pious devotion, could be brought about in the here and now by human action, creating a regime capable of achieving the purity of the collective, the return to the Year One. In traditional Shiism, the blessings of the return of the Hidden Imam cannot be hastened by this-worldly political action. Because of the vast gap between the imperfect world of now and the perfect realm to come when the Hidden Imam returns, there can be no earthly government of mere men claiming to rule directly on behalf of the faith. That is why the very notion of a ruling mulloc racy is a distortion of Shiism, which is even more skeptical about the idea of an earthly religious authority than is Sunni Islam with its tradition of the caliphate. The present Iranian theo c racy, with its ceaseless drive for the centralization of power and regimentation of every aspect of life, is a departure from traditional Islam but bears a strong resemblance to the totalitarian party of the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Nazis, and Khmer Rouge.Since Ali Shariati died before the revolution, we cannot know for certain what his reaction would have been to the Ayatollah Khomeini's reign of terror. Would he have been appalled, disillusioned, or willing to hang on and give the revolution a chance? Some argue that, with his third world socialist credo, Ali Shariati was not, strictly speaking, a Khomeinist or supporter of theocracy. But how much of a genuinely Islamic ruler was Khomeini himself? Before him, ayatollahs had never wielded the instruments of state power to execute thousands of ideologically defined enemies, force hundreds of thousands into exile, confiscate property, and launch wars. As Bernard Lewis has observed, "all this owes far more to the examples of Robespierre and Stalin than to those of Muhammad and Ali. These methods are deeply un-Islamic; they are, however, thoroughly revolutionary." Before Khomeini came to power, direct political authority had never been exercised by the men of religion. The Iranian mullahs did not restore an ancient order. Rather, following Ali Shariati and Fanon, they tried to create a "new man" and a "new history" through a dictatorship with no Islamic precedent. In his murderous fantasy of destroying Israel, Ahmadinejad has drawn together all the strands of Ali Shariati's jihadist ideology and added his own contribution, which makes it far more dangerous. Although a utopian in his belief that a politicized Shiism might bring about a regime in which the dignity of the people could be rescued from the corrupting influences of the West, Ali Shariati did not contemplate, as far as one can tell, actually bringing about the Last Days, the apocalyptic struggle between the righteous and the wicked, through a worldwide military cataclysm. Ahmadinejad apparently does. "Our revolution's mission," he declared last year, "is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam." A rumor denied by the government but widely believed in Iran holds that Ahmadinejad and his cabinet have signed a secret "contract" pledging themselves to work for the return of the Mahdi. Ahmadinejad believes that the apocalypse is imminent and that he can accelerate the divine timetable. He is not content, as a traditional believer would be, to wait for the Hidden Imam to return. He plans to make the Last Days come on his own schedule, by using nuclear weapons to destroy the wicked as soon as possible.And in this, the cost to Iranians themselves is of no consequence. When Iran's Islamic leadership--including supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani--hastened to support Ahmadinejad's call last October for Israel's annihilation, Rafsanjani, a former president of the Islamic Republic, added a mad detail: The Iranian leadership would be happy to see Iran devastated by an Israeli nuclear retaliatory strike if it meant they could wipe Israel off the map. "The application of an atomic bomb," Rafsanjani sanguinely remarked, "would not leave anything in Israel, but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world." This willingness to see Iran absorb the "damages" of an Israeli nuclear response (surely millions of casualties) is only a variation of Hitler's willingness to divert resources needed to win the Second World War and expose Germany to catastrophically destructive bombing and invasion in order to speed up the Holocaust. Hitler was willing, even thrilled, to see Germany go down in the flames of his own Götterdämmerung in exchange for the chance to kill millions of Jews. Something of the same demented mirth sparkles in Ahmadinejad's eyes as he makes his cryptic little jokes about coming "surprises." He does not represent all political forces in Iran, not even all radical forces. Doubtless, Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons is, for many Iranians, a question of traditional national pride or a bid for great power status. But as long as he is president, Ahmadinejad represents an important dimension of the Iranian revolution we cannot afford to ignore. As long as Iranian policy is dominated by Ahmadinejad and his allies among the senior clerics of the Islamic Republic, Iran cannot be negotiated with. Their commitment to the destruction of the Jews is a matter of principle, just as the implementation of the Holocaust was for the Nazis and the liquidation of the kulaks was for the Bolsheviks. Genocide through nuclear weapons is designed to bring about the happiness of the Year One for all of us. I believe that is why Ahmadinejad is almost always smiling. Waller R. Newell is a professor of political science at Carleton University in Ottawa. He is working on a book about political terror from Robespierre to al Qaeda.

North Korea explodes nuclear bomb..

We are in for very bad times. We could see Japan, South Korea, Taiwan all begin ramping up their nuclear programs. Say goodbye to non-proliferation efforts now. We need to stop Iran before it is too late and we are in this same situation. Is America Serious? Are Democrats? [John Hood, National Review Online] "The news of North Korea’s nuclear test has rather quickly fueled more political chatter about the 2006 elections. Will the issue chase Mark Foley off the front pages and several minutes into the newscasts? Will Republicans seize the opportunity to play up their perceived expertise on national security, perhaps prepping some new ads on the subject for their embattled candidates? Will Democrats blame President Bush again, this time arguing that he has failed to engage the North Koreans effectively due to other distractions? I’m not saying that there isn’t an inherent partisan skew to any discussion of major news events just before any election, but let’s get real here. America and its allies have new evidence today of a threat to civilization and to our very lives. The North Koreans already supply Islamic totalitarians with conventional arms. The risk of Korean nuclear devices or expertise being transferred to our deadly enemies is real. It is not a political invention. It is not a partisan talking point. Examining the constellation of forces on the peninsula and elsewhere, the madman of Pyongyang has little reason to fear retaliation or feel deterred. He knows that our military options are, at best, problematic. He likely doesn’t care about the prospect of new sanctions, as they will affect his subject slaves but not his own household or power. In exchange for resources he needs, he will trade with terror states who want at least the nuclear leverage to demand American withdrawal and quiescence in the Middle East and Central Asia, while they seek to recreate an Islamic paradise they imagine existed more than a millennia ago. And some want not just this ability to threat and blackmail, but the ability to kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of infidels in a single glorious act of submission to a vengeful God. Is America serious about confronting this threat? Are we willing to do what it takes to rally our allies and destroy our enemies? Will we take whatever action is necessary, including military action, to prevent Iran from following North Korea’s lead? Do we have the fortitude and the wisdom to confront the Taliban and al Qaeda without tipping Pakistan, another nuclear state, into a dangerous civil war? Will we leave Iraq precipitously and embolden our adversaries to take their war into Europe and closer to our shores?"

Iraqi PM calls for elimination of all Militias..

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 6, 2006 By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA Associated Press Writer -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Political parties must either get rid of their militias or get out of politics, Iraq's prime minister said Thursday, in his toughest warning yet to groups blamed for the country's wave of sectarian violence.Ahead of talks with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on how to stop the wave of Shiite-Sunni killings in Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told The Associated Press he was "optimistic" a political solution will be found to persuade militias to dissolve.But once an agreement is reached, "the political solution must be obligatory, one that all parties adhere to," he said. "The presence of parties with militias in the government is not acceptable." "The political parties must obey the decisions of the government or else get out of the political process. I don't believe there is any power that wants to leave the political process," he said, speaking during an "iftar" dinner, the meal that ends the daily Ramadan fast.About three dozen people attended the special iftar, held amid intense security in a dining room in the compound of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the largest party in the Shiite coalition that dominates the government. utside, hundreds of guards from al-Hakim's party _ Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq _ were deployed in the streets throughout the south Baghdad neighborhood, carrying automatic weapons. SCIRI is accused of running its own militia, the Badr Brigade, though the party says it has been dissolved. Among those present were al-Maliki's Cabinet, parliament members _ mainly from the Shiite coalition and a few Kurds and Sunnis _ and a few officials from the tribunal trying Saddam Hussein. They were served up with a feast of roast fish and meats with rice, followed by a wide spread of fruits and sweets and tea.Al-Maliki is under intensified pressure to find an end to the Shiite-Sunni violence that has killed thousands of people this year and has threatened to tear the country apart. The killings have continued despite the prime minister's repeated calls for them to dissolve.Several Shiite parties in al-Maliki's government have militias _ some of them blamed for grisly kidnapping-murders that nearly every day leave tortured and bound bodies of Sunnis dumped in neighborhoods of the capital.Shiites have argued that militias are needed to protect them against Sunni insurgents who have targeted their community with brutal attacks against mosques, markets and other public areas. Shiite leaders have accused Sunni parties in the government of links to the insurgency. U.S. and Iraqi commanders have also said that some militia fighters may no longer be under the control of the parties, carrying out killings on their own. Al-Maliki has frequently called for militias to be dissolved, insisting that weapons must only be in the hands of national security forces. But Sunni leaders have accused the government of balking at moving forcefully against Shiite militias because of their links to the government. This past week, the government has taken new steps to show it is serious in tackling sectarian violence.Iraqi authorities on Wednesday pulled a brigade of about 700 policemen out of service in its biggest move ever to uproot troops linked to death squads. The brigade is suspected of allowing gunmen to kidnap 24 workers from a frozen food factory in a district of Baghdad where the Shiite Mahdi Army militia is known to have considerable power. The bodies of seven workers were found in another Baghdad district hours later; the fate of the others is unknown.The suspended 8th Brigade has been ordered out of the field, and the U.S. military said they will undergo retraining while some members will be put under investigation.Al-Maliki underlined that only a political solution can bring a stop to the violence. "The dissolving of militias cannot just be a matter of force. It requires many means to reach the goal, persuading the militias to dissolve themselves. That is better," he said. "The dissolution of militias must be through the political powers." Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch said Thursday that an armed Shiite group has threatened to kill Palestinian refugees living in Baghdad if they do not leave Iraq within 72 hours.The New York-based group said it had obtained a leaflet from a group calling itself Al-Bayt Revenge Brigade Rapid Response Units that stated: "There is no place for Palestinians in the Iraq of Ali, Hassan, and Hussain." The names refer to three revered Shiite imams.here was no indication when the time period began. The leaflet, the rights group said, urged the Palestinian refugees to leave and "fight occupation in your own country."The rights groups said that over the past two years, Iraqi governments have done little to protect Palestinian refugees, and some officials have claimed that they are involved in terrorism and supporting the insurgency.