First Libya, now Syria... http://theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9088802%5E601,00.html -- SYRIA has appealed to Australia to use its close ties with Washington to help the Arab nation shake off its reputation as a terrorist haven and repair its relations with the US. Secret talks between the two nations have been under way for months but have become more urgent as rogue nations reconsider their role in allowing terrorists to thrive, in light of the US determination to take pre-emptive military action.
Syria, like Libya, has been trying to repair its relations with the US for the past 3 years. There was an article about this in the New Yorker, apparently Syria offered the US a lot of info about bin Laden & other terrorists but Rummy et al wouldn't trust him.
Still... watching their neighbor get squashed right in front of them has to lend an urgency to the matter. I don't approve of the war, and don't think that it was part of the real war on terror- but if there's any positive outshoot from it that could help the war on terror, this is it.
geez, sam, if the bush admin. found a cure for cancer you'd find a way to claim clinton would have done it 5 years ago if only the republicans in congress had let him...
And if Clinton had found a cure for cancer, you would find a way to claim that he was STILL the worst president in memory because he lied about Monica.
No, it's just that F.O.G.'s (Friends of George) keep throwing these nuggets up like clay pigeons while the truth is used to shoot them out of the sky. PULL!
this is interesting...of course, it couldn't possibly be tru, since dick clarke has claimed Bush was too ditracted by iraq to deal effectively with al queda. -- Chicago, L.A. towers were next targets By Paul Martin THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published March 30, 2004 LONDON -- Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaeda's purported operations chief, has told U.S. interrogators that the group had been planning attacks on the Library Tower in Los Angeles and the Sears Tower in Chicago on the heels of the September 11, 2001, terror strikes. Those plans were aborted mainly because of the decisive U.S. response to the New York and Washington attacks, which disrupted the terrorist organization's plans so thoroughly that it could not proceed, according to transcripts of his conversations with interrogators. Mohammed told interrogators that he and Ramzi Yousuf, his nephew who was behind an earlier attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, had leafed through almanacs of American skyscrapers when planning the first operation. "We were looking for symbols of economic might," he told his captors. He specifically mentioned as potential targets the Library Tower in Los Angeles, which was "blown up" in the film "Independence Day," and the Sears Tower in Chicago. A British newspaper over the weekend published a detailed account that it said was taken from transcripts of the interrogation of Mohammed, who was captured last year in Pakistan. The transcripts are prefaced with a warning that Mohammed, the most senior al Qaeda member yet to be caught, "has been known to withhold information or deliberately mislead." According to the transcript, Mohammed has maintained that Zacarias Moussaoui, the French-Moroccan facing trial in the United States as the "20th hijacker," had been sent to a flight school in Minnesota to train for a West Coast attack. That would buttress Moussaoui's contention that he is improperly charged with participation in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, because he was preparing for a different al Qaeda operation. The new transcripts confirm an earlier report by the Associated Press that al Qaeda originally had planned to crash hijacked airliners into targets on both coasts. The London Sunday Times said the transcripts covered interrogations conducted during a period of four months after a bleary-eyed Mohammed was captured in a pre-dawn raid a little more than a year ago. The confessions reveal that planning for the September 11 attacks started much earlier and was more elaborate than previously thought. "The original plan was for a two-pronged attack with five targets on the East Coast of America and five on the West Coast," he told interrogators, according to the transcript. "We talked about hitting California as it was America's richest state, and [al Qaeda leader Osama] bin Laden had talked about economic targets." He is reported to have said that bin Laden, who like Mohammed had studied engineering, vetoed simultaneous coast-to-coast attacks, arguing that "it would be too difficult to synchronize." Mohammed then decided to conduct two waves of attacks, hitting the East Coast first and following up with a second series of attacks. "Osama had said the second wave should focus on the West Coast," he reportedly said. But the terrorists seem to have been surprised by the strength of the American reaction to the September 11 attacks. "Afterwards, we never got time to catch our breath, we were immediately on the run," Mohammed is quoted as saying. Al Qaeda's communications network was severely disrupted, he said. Operatives could no longer use satellite phones and had to rely on couriers, although they continued to use Internet chat rooms. "Before September 11, we could dispatch operatives with the expectation of follow-up contact, but after October 7 [when U.S. bombing started in Afghanistan], that changed 180 degrees. There was no longer a war room ... and operatives had more autonomy." Mohammed told interrogators that he remained in Pakistan for 10 days after September 11, 2001, then went to Afghanistan to find bin Laden. When he was captured in March last year in the home of a microbiologist in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the 37-year-old was unshaven and wearing a baggy vest. The interrogation reports also indicate that Mohammed had introduced bin Laden to Hambali, the Indonesian militant accused in the terror attack that killed more than 200 people in Bali, Indonesia, in October 2002. Mohammed was running a hostel filtering al Qaeda recruits in Peshawar, Pakistan, when he scouted Hambali, whose real name is Riduan Ismuddin and who ran the Islamist group Jemaah Islamiyah in Asia. Later, Mohammed moved to Karachi, Pakistan. There, posing as a businessman importing holy water from Mecca, Saudi Arabia, he acted as a fund-raiser and intermediary between militants and sponsors in the Gulf. His first planned anti-American attack was Operation Bojinka (Serbo-Croatian for "big bang") -- a plot to blow up 12 U.S. airliners over the Pacific. Yousuf and Hambali were involved in the scheme, which failed when the conspirators' Manila bomb factory caught fire. The men fled to Pakistan, where Yousuf was arrested.
hilarious correction of the original article, although i liked the original better: "A story headlined 'Syria seeks our help to woo US' in Saturday's Weekend Australian misquoted National Party senator Sandy Macdonald. The quote stated: "Syria is a country that has been a b*stard state for nearly 40 years" but should have read "Syria is a country that has been a Baathist state for nearly 40 years." The Australian regrets any embarrassment caused by the error."
That was after 9/11. I was even full heartedly supporting the Admin after 9/11 up until they started pulling special forces and equipment out of Afghanistan before Osama and Ayman Al-Zwahari had been captured. The Admin did a good job initially but we didn't even need Dick Clarke to tell us that Iraq sidelined finishing the job in Afghanistan. Maybe if they had caught Bin Ladin in the Spring of 2002 Madrid might've been adverted. In the nearly two years since who knows what sort of stuff Al Qaeda has been cooking up.
Yup...it's working all right..... Brazil Shielding Uranium Facility Sun Apr 4,10:47 AM ET Add Top Stories - washingtonpost.com to My Yahoo! By Peter Slevin, Washington Post Staff Writer The Brazilian government has refused to allow U.N. nuclear inspectors to examine a facility for enriching uranium under construction near Rio de Janeiro, according to Brazilian officials and diplomats in Vienna, home of the International Atomic Energy Agency. • Bomb Rocks Madrid Suburb • Framework of Clarke's Book Is Bolstered • Video Feature: 10 Years After Apartheid • Today in Photos -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Search news on washingtonpost.com The IAEA and Brazil are at an impasse over the inspections, the diplomats said. Brazil maintains that the facility will produce low-enriched uranium for use in power plants, not the highly enriched material used in nuclear weapons. Nonetheless, Brazil refuses to let IAEA inspectors see equipment in the plant, citing a need to protect proprietary information. The diplomatic standoff plays into fears that a new type of nuclear race is underway, marked not by the bold pursuit of atomic weapons but by the quiet and lawful development of sophisticated technology for nuclear energy production, which can be quickly converted into a weapons program. Brazil's project also poses a conundrum for President Bush (news - web sites), who has called for tighter restrictions on the enrichment of uranium, even for nuclear power, as part of a new strategy to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Nonproliferation specialists say that if the United States and the United Nations (news - web sites) do not act to curtail Brazil's program, or at least insist on inspections, the lack of action could undermine White House calls for Iran and North Korea (news - web sites) to halt their efforts to enrich uranium. "If we don't want these kinds of facilities in Iran or North Korea, we shouldn't want them in Brazil," said former U.S. nuclear negotiator James E. Goodby. "You have to apply the same rules to adversaries as you do to friends. I do not see that happening in Brazil." Brazil's shrouded technology at the plant in Resende belongs to a program considered legal under international treaties, but it remains subject to U.N. inspections, aimed at making sure it is not used for producing weapons-grade material for itself or customers. The IAEA has dispatched inspectors to Resende in recent months, only to find significant portions of the facility and its contents shielded from view, diplomats said. Walls have been built and coverings are draped over the equipment, according to reports from specialists who have visited the plant, which is in the early stages of construction. Brazilian officials maintain that the facility falls within rules allowing countries to develop the nuclear fuel cycle for peaceful uses. They say intrusive IAEA inspections are unnecessary because Brazil, which formally forswore nuclear weapons in the 1990s, is seeking a secure and inexpensive source of nuclear power, and has no lingering atomic weapons ambitions. "We feel deeply bothered, almost offended, when suspicions are raised about Brazil," a senior Brazilian diplomat said. The Brazilian official acknowledged that inspectors are not permitted to see all the equipment at the Resende plant, but he said the IAEA is free to conduct sensitive tests on the surroundings, as well as on uranium fed into the centrifuges and exiting the other end. The coverings are "necessary to protect our technological breakthroughs," said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He said the IAEA is "politically motivated to insist on visual access. We say that visual access is not indispensable. "This is a natural process of negotiation," the official added, "which ought not to be the object of any fuss." There has been no suggestion that the White House plans to prevent Brazil from perfecting its enrichment facility, although U.S. emissaries expect to push this month in Brasilia for better cooperation with the IAEA. "We hope that Brazil will be part of the solution. We're not trying to describe them as part of the problem," said a senior State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We understand they're going to establish an enrichment capability [for nuclear energy]. It will be safeguarded." A series of Brazilian statements about nuclear matters raised worries in Washington and Vienna about Brazil's intentions, however. During his winning campaign, leftist Workers' Party presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva criticized the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty as unfair. "If someone asks me to disarm and keep a slingshot while he comes at me with a cannon, what good does that do?" da Silva asked in a speech. He later said Brazil has no intention to develop nuclear arms. Suspicions rose anew after da Silva's science and technology minister, Roberto Amaral, said Brazil would not renounce its knowledge of nuclear fission, the principle behind the atomic bomb. Brazilian officials quickly said Amaral was out of line, and he later resigned. The da Silva government announced it will expand its uranium enrichment capability not only for its own power plants but also to sell low-enriched uranium for use in energy production in other countries. The program is to begin this year. Only a half-dozen countries now have such a capability. Enrichment technology is not new to Brazil. The government, working with West Germany, developed a rudimentary ability to enrich uranium in the 1970s as part of an ambitious strategy to supplement hydroelectric power and natural gas. Two nuclear reactors, Angra-1 and Angra-2, now operate in the country's industrial belt. Brazilian officials, who oversee one of the largest uranium deposits in the world, currently pay to ship the raw metal to Canada and on to Britain, where it is enriched for use in the power plants. If Brazil mastered the complete fuel cycle, it would save $10 million to $12 million per year, the government estimates, while laying the groundwork to sell to others. "It is a very rich market that runs into the billions each year," the Brazilian diplomat said. IAEA inspectors want to inspect for two reasons: to make sure Brazil is not making weapons-grade material; and as part of their investigation of global nuclear supply networks, including the one established by Pakistani scientist Adbul Qadeer Khan. Diplomats and nuclear experts said the IAEA wants to learn more about the origin of the program in Brazil and its sources of supply. "If you have an enrichment facility, you want to make sure that the material isn't being enriched to a level that would cause concern," a Vienna-based diplomat said. "There are just a lot of questions at this moment which are unresolved. There's an impasse." The IAEA is expected to report in June on Brazil's performance. Agency officials working on the Brazil project declined to comment for this story. A separate issue facing Bush is where to draw the line on Brazil and other countries seeking a uranium enrichment capability. Such projects are permitted under the Non-Proliferation Treaty when the purposes are peaceful, but Bush has proposed a change. Under his plan, announced in a Feb. 11 speech, countries that do not already produce uranium would not be allowed to do so. Rather, they would be provided nuclear fuel at a reasonable cost -- and only if they also agreed to rigorous IAEA inspections. For governments that already considered the treaty unfair, Bush's proposal seemed only to reaffirm the bias in favor of countries that already possessed atomic technology when the treaty was crafted in the 1960s. Three countries that later built nuclear weapons -- India, Pakistan and Israel -- did not sign. "We don't like treaties that are discriminatory in their intent," said the Brazilian official, who described Bush's nuclear fuel proposal as "unacceptable to Brazil, precisely because we see ourselves as so strictly committed to nonproliferation, to disarmament, to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy." Iran has made similar statements, as has North Korea, which U.S. intelligence experts believe has built one or two nuclear weapons. Iran and North Korea had secret enrichment programs, with Iran's hidden for 18 years. North Korea evicted U.N. inspectors and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In Brazil, by contrast, one U.S. official said, "we don't have any reason to think there are problems." A diplomat in Vienna said: "It's not Iran, it's just not." Yet permitting Brazil to proceed with the kind of enrichment program that Bush wants to limit, several analysts said, would threaten to weaken efforts to make common rules. Lawrence Scheinman of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies said: "Brazil going forward could give cause to countries like Iran to do the same." "It makes mincemeat of the president's speech," said Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a Washington think tank. He noted that Bush said countries must agree to rigorous IAEA inspection to get international help. "It sets a hell of a precedent if they go through with an enrichment facility."
I don't think any President can really top the perfect storm that was gasoline rationing, double digit inflation and double digit unemployment. Not to mention hostages in Iran who were to be released only after Carter was no longer in office. Nice try though.
Herbert Hoover..and that's just off the top of my head. But anyway, I didn't know that the president was responsible for the stage of the business cycle that was in effect while he was in office. I guess you will agree with me that Clinton is the best president ever then? http://www.americanpresidents.org/survey/historians/overall.asp Anyway, for what its worth, most historians agree that Carter doesn't come out that low as far as ranking presidents go. The consensus (and I would agree based on what little historical knowledgeof the period I retain) is that Buchanan, Pierce, and Andrew Johnson generally bring up the rear as far as presidnts go, with Carter in the middle of the pack. EDIT, nevermind
While I was at first willing to accept that Lybia's turnaround was about fear of the US or a desire for better relations, I've seen quite a bit of evidence and speculation from multiple sources (many of them foreign, and not seemingly aware of the way in which this issue has been digested for political value by Americans of all viewpoints), both American and European, that spell out that for Gaddafi it may be more about a fear of the Al Queada types. The arguement is as follows: Apparently, Gaddafi's particular brand of psudo-Islamic socialism (a.k.a Jamahiriya) is viewed as not "true Islam" by the hard-core religious zelots which has led to discontent with his rule. There is also mention that Gaddafi was approached by bin Laden after he left Sudan, but was rebuffed, though this is not 100%. Within the past 5-8 years, however, there have been several attempts on his life, not unlike the two which were attempted on Musharaf which were blamed on radical Islamic Militants. As he is an absolute dictator, he was able to keep these incidents quiet, but they were sufficent to worry him. Also, keep in mind that one of the first people to call "W" after September 11th was Gaddafi, who expressed his sympathy, and denounced the terrorism. It was widely reported, with the spin that he was trying to make sure he wasn't blamed. What wasn't reported, however, was Lybia's offer to share all of their info on al Queda. Add to this the fact that Lybia, one of the most vocal "pan-Arab power" voices in the 60's pulled out of the Arab League in October of this past year, and the recent Blair visit, and you perhaps have a picture of a man who is attempting to distance himself from Arab elements who might not like him, and instead seeking friendship (not just cordial relations) with strong protectors with whom he can claim common cause against Al Queda. In this respect, his WMD programs, which everyone has admited were fairly rudimentary, were more a "carrot" offered up for protection, than the sign of a man scared straight. ---- BTW, Warren G. Harding gambled away the White House China set in a poker game, was suprised when it was discovered that all of his cabnet members were involved in graft and corruption scandals, and often admited that "This is all beyond me!". The primary achievement of his term in office was the creation of "The Office of Management and Budget". Clearly the worst president of all time.
