(By Adel eltonamly - Egyptian Engineer)
-Computer experts said that it was very possible to implement the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the WTC by reprogramming the computers of the airplanes . They added that this operation needs clever computer professionals who have the right or ABILITY to access to the planes.
-Flying experts said that it is IMPOSIBLE for a flying TRAINEE to ride a heavy huge plane and implement the attacks with this sophisticated way.
-Not a single defense auto rocket of the pentagon was fired against the attacking plane, that means according to experts, that some one reprogrammed the concerned computer.
The prementioned items are some of the DOUBTS raised from people all over the world. DID THE CIA OR FBI CHECK ANY OF IT ?
Although they know the possibility of these doubts, when they ordered every flying plane to land and every landed one not to fly , they did not tell the world about the results. They found that it was enough to tell us that they found the BURNT BODY of the pilot with a ROPE ON HIS FEET !! and that there was Arabs on the attacking planes! and the criminal Arabs used forks and table knifes to hijack the planes!!!!!
I think that the world needs many answers from the American Administration
because it seems to us that the USA has a SECRET AGENDA to implement regardless of the truth.
Some talked about OIL in the former Soviet republics in central Asia ,
Others talked about a wedge between Arab kings and their people, means that they need America to protect them not only from Iraq and Iran but from the underground fundamental organizations in their countries and thus they must stop criticizing ISRAEL for its crimes against Palestinians and must stop any attempt to normalize their relationship with Iraq.
Others recommend that the American Administration want to satisfy the far right wing in the American society and strike all Moslem states and get rid of all the self motivated regimes.
Now, DO WE HAVE TO FORGET OUR MORALS AND GO AFTER THE USA TO IMPLEMENT ITS OWN AGENDA?
What will be the difference between us and terrorists who attack innocent people to achieve political targets?
I hope every American who believes in justice to block the way for the immoral coming war. I hope every American to tell his government that we need justice, we do not want to kill a whole people to get rid of a few criminal.
The Rumor
A surprising number of Muslims are asking whether Israel was behind the attacks
By Deborah Caldwell
Within hours of the terrorist attacks last month, the word was out: Israel was responsible for crashing airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The reason? Its intelligence agency, Mossad, wanted to discredit Arab Muslims. The "evidence": 4,000 Israeli employees in the World Trade Center were said to be absent the day of the attacks because they had been tipped off.
This notion at first seemed to be the province of a small number of bin Laden allies. For instance, Muhammad Atta's father blamed the Israelis for the attacks during a press conference last month and called the United States the "root of terrorism." But in the month since the attacks, the rumor has spread, starting in Pakistan and the Mideast, moving throughout the World Wide Web and ending up in educated Muslim communities in the United States. Last week it was revealed that Salam Al-Marayati, a respected American Muslim leader prominent in national efforts to promote interfaith dialogue, said in an interview on a Los Angeles radio talk show that Israel should be on the "suspect list" of those who carried out the attacks. A few days later, another scandal emerged: Imam Mohammed Gemeaha of New York's prominent Islamic Cultural Center had fled to Cairo, where he gave an interview in Arabic stating that "Jews planned those terrorist attacks."
These comments by reputable religious leaders were milder versions of what is appearing by the thousands on web message boards. Thousands of message board posts have appeared on all sorts of sites, from the most moderate to the most strictly Muslim. Some writers seem angry, but most explain their views in calm terms, as if they are simply stating a fact that others have somehow, unfortunately, missed.
On Iviews, an American Islamic news site, a member named AB writes: "I now strongly believe that the Jews knew about the attack and its plans, and most probably helped a great deal in the 'penetration' of the US intelligence, and caused for the suicide attack to occur successfully."
A post on the Islamic Circle of North America's website is also typical: "Zionists want to see that Muslims and Arabs are attacked and their properties burned down so that the environment of the Spanish Inquisition days are recreated in the 21st century United States, so that Muslims either leave Islam for their own security or are murdered or exiled."
Beliefnet member Jihaad wrote something similar, though he toned down the rhetoric: "I believe that... Israel is indirectly connected to our recent tragic events. Sure, Jews will attack me for this, but I believe that Israel's Mossad possibly had evidence that this attack would happen."
It can be dangerous to extrapolate from Web message board posts to broad generalizations. But experts believe a significant number of American Muslims do harbor anti-Israel views because of the Middle East conflict and that those views sometimes slip into anti-Semitic feeling.
Michael Sells, an expert on Islam at Haverford College, says anti-Jewish rhetoric in the "classic European sense with the myth of Jews as Christ-killers" was imported into the Middle East and is now moving into American Muslim circles. "People in the Middle East know that the Israeli lobby in the U.S. is one of the most powerful," Sells says. "So it's not hard to understand why they would slip into the conspiracy view that Jews control the world. But it's unacceptable in a religious leader, or anyone who's educated, and certainly anyone in the United States."
On the Islamic Circle of North America website, a vigorous discussion about the subject is going on under the heading Israel is the devil. At another place on the site, a user named Mujahid Suleiman Solano writes: "If the USA can keep the Zionists down, I am sure we 'peaceful Muslims' will be able to keep the dogs back."
Where did this rumor come from? Apparently, shortly after the attacks, a prominent Taliban cleric named Israr Ahmed started flooding mosques and Islamic centers in the United States with faxes that read: "The secret Israeli service Musad [sic] orchestrated these terrorist attacks ... [which] are a vital link in the chain of events that the Jews are undertaking to fulfill their dream of world domination." The rumor then spread to Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass, who blamed the attacks on the Mossad. It became commonly accepted in Pakistan and ,the Middle East, and from there the rumor spread to the United States, often with the help of email and the Web.
Some American Jews have reacted angrily, including Abraham Foxman, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League. "It's a big lie, set out there maliciously to deflect what many in the Arab world saw and realized would be an anger directed at the Arab world," he said Monday. "It has taken on a life of its own. People talk about it as if it is a fact, and that’s very, very dangerous."
But not all Jewish leaders think there's much to worry about.
Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a Jewish think-tank, says what's going on in the Islamic community is simply the same demon that Christians and Jews have also wrestled with. "Every community has its dark side," he said. "It happens to be that this is a particularly bad strain going on in the Islamic community and we're caught in the middle."
But Kula contends that the rhetoric isn't necessarily anti-Semitic. He thinks it's mostly anti-Israel--which is not the same thing. "This isn't about being Jewish," he said. "If Israel were a democratic Christian country, it would still be the outpost of the infidel. And a large number of the power centers of American Jewish life do not want to make a credible offer for peace. Therefore, the vested interest right now is in ensuring the anti-Semitism, the worst parts of Islam, are out there."
What's more, he said, "there are a lot of Jews around America who say a lot of weird things that just don't get made public."
Ironically, some Muslim leaders argue a mirror-image of Kula's position: that Muslims need to behave better.
"Whenever you talk about Israel, it's not a neutral issue for Jews or Muslims," says Amir Hussain, a scholar of American Islam who teaches at California State University at Northridge. "Muslim Americans have to be very careful when they criticize the policies of the United States with regard to Israel that they know what they're talking about, and they do it in an appropriate manner.
"They may say things in an emotional way that may not hold up on an intellectual level."
That is what appears to have happened to Salam Al-Marayati. In the hours after the attacks on Sept. 11, Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles, was asked who he thought was responsible. According to a transcript provided by Jewish groups, this is what he said: "If we're going to look at suspects, we should look at the groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list because I think this diverts attention from what's happening in the Palestinian territories so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies."
He quickly apologized, saying the remark "gave regrettable and unintended offense to Jewish Americans."
On Monday, Al-Marayati said the comment erupted in a heated moment during an angry debate. "It was an unfortunate use of language," he said. At this point, "I prefer to just let go of it."
Al-Maraytati is worried the controversy will spin out of control, particularly because "the American public does not have the patience for a Muslim-Jewish shouting match. I think the complications have arisen since the beginning of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The distinction needs to be made between the notion of anti-Israeli sentiment versus anti-Jewish sentiment. Obviously, there are going to be a handful of extremists among Muslims who will not make that distinction, and that's wrong."
The scenario was different for Imam Gemeaha, a normally mild-mannered speaker who delivered a sermon in English in mid-September calling for peace among people of all religions--and then in early October proceeded to blame Jews for the terrorist attacks on an Arabic-language website.
"Jews dominate the political decision-making and they own the economic and media institutions," Gemeaha reportedly said in the later statement.
Sells said both remarks set off warning bells--Gemeaha's more blatantly so, although because he isn't an American it may ultimately be easier to overlook. Al-Marayati's statement, however, is troublesome, Sells says, because it occupies a "middle ground"--not quite anti-Semitic, but still unacceptable.
"Once people start making that leap from being anti-Israel to assuming that anything that distracts from the Palestinian cause is some kind of Israeli plot--and he's getting pretty close there--I think he's in the middle ground," Sells says. "He's moving toward the conspiratorial view."
Sells chalked up Al-Marayati's comments to a "bad habit of thinking" that he will be able to overcome. But Sells says the controversy lays bare a larger problem among American Islam: its leadership. "For a long time, a certain kind of Muslim leadership has been made the only voice, and this kind of leader is sometimes fallible. The current Muslim American leadership represents "only a very thin strand of what Islam is," Sells says.
Sells sees some good coming from the stew of anger, confusion, and prejudice welling up in American Muslims, however.
"A lot of Muslim leaders are saying, 'Wait, this is inaccurate and it's radicalizing elements of the community and hurting everyone,'" Sells says. "There's a really strong rise against this in the last week."
And that, he says, means a more diverse, more intellectual--and more tolerant--American Islam may finally be born.
When Broken Promises Abound
By Hwaa Irfan
08/11/2001
Lately, we have been deluged by words from leaders purporting to be fighting the war on terrorism. Perhaps it is high time we realize that the promises these words imply are going to be broken. We will have to dig deep to figure out just why it is so.
Every time I hear the words in "our best interests", I see President George W. Bush's facial expression, which somehow belies his words. Even the supposed video-recorded words of bin Laden are questionable and seem rather like a man who wished he had engineered and instigated September 11 and is now trying to seize the moment. The disappointing words of certain Arab leaders reflect how much they cannot see beyond their own self-interest. Perhaps all these words being thrown around in some attempt to distract us from the true intentions of those who speak them.
Perhaps the reflective words from columnist George Monbiot of the British mainstream daily the Guardian can better illustrate. "I can't help suspecting that intelligence agents have assembled the theory first, then sought the facts required to fit it--I think we have some cause to regard the new evidence against bin Laden with measures of skepticism--" (Ratnesar, p.64).
Maybe Monbiot is referring to Uzbekistan, which agreed to allow the U.S. to deploy 1000 troops to be based at Khanaland under the pretense of "American support of Uzbek groups in Afghanistan's Northern Alliance"; or to Oman, which lent its airbases in return for U.S. military hardware; or to Pakistan, lent its air bases in return for lifted economic sanctions and a $50 million aid package (Duffy, p.37, 38) and assistance against India (Duffy, p.37, 38); or to Jordan, which lent assistance in return for help in a modernization program (Ramo, p.38 -42). The Saudis won't say what they agreed to, but they have made it known that they want Saudi dissidents to be extradited back to Saudi Arabia.
Ignoring the voices of their respective populations, what message do these governments send out to Muslims? Is this honor among men to be at the beck and call of an element that plays us like a game of chess? Unlike the political game of chess, traditional chess does have internationally recognized rules and hurts no one.
A U.S. administration official described the efforts to get support as follows: "Wednesday we were still making sure we could move the money around and get something big-- The public impact had to be large, so we went from numbers in the area of $100 million to $125 million, to bam! - $320 million. Let's do it right," (Duffy p.39).
The U.S. is giving $25 million in aid to the Afghans and the rest will come after the bombing as the killing with one hand and "feeding" with the other continues. If this is approach is acceptable to those Arab leaders it is no wonder that their countrymen, women and children continue to flee to Western shores. At least there are no illusions about what they will find in the West.
Maybe these Arab states should be concerned now because of some other recently uttered words. The new U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Negroponte, delivered a letter to the world body stating that "We may find that our self-defense requires further actions with respect to other organizations and other states" (Borger, p.1) The end doesn't always justify the means and I doubt at this point in time we can rightly say what the end will be. Without a doubt, the whole of the Muslim world has been compromised psychologically, emotionally and economically, and we are to blame for putting up with broken promises.
Suddenly, after all these years, the U.S. Administration agrees to settle $1.67 billion of its $600 billion U.N. debt by December whilst "informing" the U.N. that its key role in fighting terrorism is to build the future Afghanistan government. It was on September 10 that Bush was warned that U.S. allies would view the U.S. as "an arrogant solo player who doesn't care about the rest of the world" if it didn't approve the new ambassador and pay its debt to the U.N. (Lederer, p.1, 2). In perhaps the greatest about-turn, the U.S. approved the appointment and agreed to the debt repayment.
Promises of building an anti-terrorism coalition have even extended to building other far-reaching coalitions. "What most people don't know is that there is a parallel economic coalition being assembled that mirrors the political loyalties and ambiguities of the war" (Barlow, p.1). The South's response to globalization contributed to the failed World Trade Organization economic program which before September 11 had almost died due to related social and economic problems. In addition, there is the U.S.'s economic downward spiral. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick stated, "This president and this administration will fight for open markets. We will not be intimidated by those who have taken to the streets to blame trade - and America - for the world's ills. The global trading system has demonstrated from Seoul to Santiago, that it is a pathway out of poverty and despair" (Crutsinger p.1, 2).
The former Chief Economist of the World Bank states appropriately that, "there never was economic evidence in favor of capital market liberalization. There still isn't. It increased risk and doesn't increase growth. You'd think [defenders of liberalization] would say to me by now 'You haven't read these 10 studies,' but they haven't, because there's not even one. There isn't the intellectual basis that you would have thought required for a major change in international rules. It was all based on ideology" (Globalexchange, p.2).
On September 11, 35,000 children died of starvation (Barlow, p.3) as the world starves of common sense, respect and love. As Muslims we had better fasten our seat belts in the midst of this tornado, for only whoever struck America on that day knows what's really going on and we have been warned in the words of Ali (radiallahu anhu):
"By Allah, He will disperse you throughout the earth 'till only a few of you remain, like kohl in the eye, You will continue like this 'till the Arabs return to their senses. You should therefore stick to established ways, clear signs and the early period, which has the lasting virtues of the Prophethood. You should know that Satan makes his way easy, so that you may follow him on his heel--" ('Ali ibn Talib, Sermon 137). (IslamOnline)
If Indeed This is a New Kind of War, Let the Innocents Live
By Altaf Husain
05/11/2001
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, we have heard the constant refrain that in responding to the attackers, the U.S. and the coalition members would be embarking on a "new kind of war". The death toll keeps rising, having passed 5,000 and in some really depressing way, we can be sure that we may never know how many people really perished that bright Tuesday morning. We have heard of some exact figures from companies like Cantor Fitzgerald who say they cannot account for 700 of their employees. Other companies and major firms have also submitted their lists of employees. But what no one will ever talk about are the numbers of blue collar workers - like the janitorial staff, among whom (for sure) were newly arrived immigrants, some without the requisite paperwork to live and work legally in the United States. So nearly eight weeks after the attacks, we are sure that many innocent lives were lost, some we know about--others we may never know about.
On October 7, 2001, we ushered in the inevitable U.S. response to the attacks, namely an undeclared war on Afghanistan. Now almost a month later, we have witnessed the decimation of much of the already devastated infrastructure of Afghanistan. In the weeks preceding the bombings of Afghanistan, the U.S. mobilized troops, tanks and war-time technologies claiming to be preparing for a new kind of war. According to the White House, as of October 1, 2001, Operation Enduring Freedom amassed a build-up of 29,000 military personnel, 349 military aircraft, 1 Amphibious Ready Group, and 2 Carrier Battle Groups currently deployed in the war theater. We are supposed to be going after "the evil ones" President Bush repeatedly assured us and the attacks would be targeted so as to "smoke out" the "evil ones" from their caves.
But if this is indeed a new kind of war, then we have to rethink the strategies that our government is using to formulate its response. Without exaggeration, it is becoming increasingly clear from eyewitness accounts of Afghan civilians, international aid workers, and United Nations personnel that the new kind of war is not actually all that new. The U.S.-led coalition has done nothing more than to resort to using conventional wartime strategies.
We can be sure that innocent Afghans will lose - and have already lost - their lives on many fronts. First, there are the victims of the "collateral damage". Afghan men, women, and children, with no connection to the war have been killed, maimed or injured by the not-so smart "smart bombs", which were meant to root out "the evil ones." A widespread report last week documented the death of an entire Afghan family of six - father and five children - in the blink of an eye when a 500lb bomb fell on their mud hut. In our entrenched blindness to loss of life and our even more entrenched arrogance, much of the Western media have reported this incident adding the clause that "it cannot be independently verified."
Second, there are the victims of valor - volunteer aid workers from Afghanistan and around the world who have been killed or injured in the process of distributing food, clothing and medicine to the fleeing refugees. A Red Cross building was hit twice. Most of the food and medicine that is being stored in such buildings is not being accessed because the workers fear for their lives or bombs have already destroyed the stored supplies.
Third, there are the victims of starvation, and disease. Even before the October 7 attacks on Afghanistan, the world was witnessing a humanitarian crisis of untold proportions in this war-torn country. After almost 22 years of war and strife, millions of Afghans have been living as refugees in bordering nations such as Iran and Pakistan. Those who remained in Afghanistan suffered no better fate as continuing drought and an almost non-existent economy dealt a severe blow to the people's ability to provide for their own well-being. In our less than altruistic attempt to help the Afghans, the U.S. dropped food packets which by perhaps the most ill-conceived "coincidence" were the same color as the cluster bombs. With hundreds of un-detonated bombs on the ground, notwithstanding the already existing thousands of active landmines, the people of Afghanistan are all certain that they will die even if they simply walk around in search of food or medicine.
So the question we are left to ask ourselves is whether this really is a new kind of war? If so, what is so new about it? The attacks on September 11 killed, maimed, and injured over 5,000 innocent people. The U.S.-led response will result in more than 5,000 lives being lost in Afghanistan from any of the three categories of casualties outlined above.
As the bombings drag on, women, children and the elderly in Afghanistan will be the real victims through death, starvation and disease. We will have to implore our government to re-think this new kind of war. No one will disagree that the war on terrorism must continue and with a sense of urgency. Yet, none of us can justify the mounting death toll of innocent civilians in Afghanistan. Now in it's fifth week, the attack on Afghanistan has yielded no reported progress either in terms of capturing or destroying the main target…the "evil doer". On the other hand, innocent Afghans continue to pay the price for attacks on the U.S., which they were neither aware of nor condoned - let alone helped to plan.
Suggestions from various well-meaning factions that the U.S. stop the bombing during Ramadan have been flatly rejected by the Bush administration. In reality, it makes little difference to the innocent Afghani people if the U.S. stops bombing during Ramadan if the implication is that after the day of 'eid ul Fitr the bombings will resume. The real goal for all of us should be to call for the new kind of war to be fought with new strategies that are reflective of the current milieu. Individuals, not even of Afghan origin, have attacked the U.S. and now the entire nation of Afghanistan pays the price. There are international instruments of law that can and should be availed in our pursuit of the individuals who attacked us. The real, lasting relief to the innocents of Afghanistan will be to hear that the world community has decided to invest time, energy, and finances to help rebuild their war-torn country. What an 'eid present that would be!
A thank-you note from Osama and the boys in the cave to President Bush
It's a pleasure waging war with you
(By Michael Moran- MSNBC.com)
Nov. 6-- Dear Mr. President: I'm not much of a letter writer -- I prefer satellite telephones and videotapes -- but in this case, I felt a more formal thank-you note was in order. The boys and I here in the cave were all surprised at the way America reacted in the first hours after our glorious attacks on your cities. My intelligence men said you were a lightweight, that you might lash out stupidly and kill millions. We really expected New York City and your economy to buckle, too, but none of those things happened. In those first hours, I have to admit, I was a bit worried my plan might have backfired.
MERCIFULLY, THIS spirit faded. For all the talk of justice, of the world having changed, of new "crusades," - bad choice of words, by the way - what's going on now looks an awful lot like what Mohammed Atta sketched out to my operatives in Hamburg. Panic at home, a government that is failing to inspire confidence, and a war so cautious with American lives that every civilian death erases the world's memory of one more victim of Sept. 11.
And so, Mr. President, I wanted to thank you personally through the U.S. mail, that most useful of federal agencies, for a long list of actions, missteps, statements, slights and opportunities missed in the past five weeks.
1. The conduct of the war
I think it would be fair to say that on Sept. 12, when I saw the actual video of the attack for the first time, about half of us here at al-Qaida central thought the day of reckoning was at hand. No nuclear-tipped missiles had been fired overnight, to your credit. Oh, how we prayed that you would unleash a volley that would forever stain America's reputation with the blood of innocents! But you were smarter than that - at first.
In fact, nothing seemed to happen for three weeks. For awhile, our worst fears seemed to be coming true. Not even a Clintonesque fit of Tomahawk missiles! Thumbing through my Sept. 8 issue of TIME, I saw the magazine had declared Colin Powell politically dead, along with that Donald Rumsfeld character. And yet there they both were, stitching together a coalition, talking of a long, measured conflict like the cold war and ruling out the kind of war Americans fought in the the Gulf or Kosovo.
Suddenly, it was as if Vietnam had never happened -- as if you had seen with your own eyes our plan to use your military's fear of casualties against you. You spoke publicly of ground troops, of a real war.
Thank heavens -- and you, too, of course -- that none of this actually transpired. In fact, the current war in Afghanistan looks very much like the Gulf or Kosovo conflicts, only less effective militarily and far more fraught for you. With each Red Cross warehouse you destroy from a safe distance and with each village wiped out by "erroneous coordinates," you tell the world that you value the lives of your volunteer soldiers above those of innocent women and children unfortunate enough to be born in Afghanistan.
Are you winning this war? I think you would say "yes" publicly. I wonder what you really think. But from my perspective, I can only thank you for failing to fight the kind of war you pledged that you would fight on Sept. 12. Better recruitment fodder money can't buy.
2. John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge
We understand you cannot control California Gov. Gray Davis and his bridge-closing authorities. He is a Democrat, after all. But what could possibly explain -- outside divine intervention itself -- the chilling, disconcerting and tremendously effective campaign of domestic terror being waged on television by Ashcroft and Ridge?
From the early days of what you have dubbed the "war on terror," it seems to us here in Central Asia that terror is precisely what your homeland security team has sown.
Look, the anthrax letters are a bust -- a gimmick. Thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, might have died. But they didn't. As with the Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, you got lucky. The mayhem has been contained. At least until Ashcroft and Ridge began regularly scheduled broadcasts. Now, what we have failed to do, the American government itself is doing for us. Day by day, with little evidence and absolutely no advice to the American people about what to do to safeguard themselves, your government has succeeded in jangling the nerves of your citizens, changing their habits, challenging the confounding faith Americans seem to have in their ability to overcome anything.
Even you seem to have fallen prey to panic. I understand from my contacts in Pakistan that you publicly warned Americans that nuclear weapons might be used against them. Of course, I'm not going to comment on whether that is true. But by saying so, Mr. President, you humble me. From bloodthirsty fanatic to superpower in five easy weeks. Thank you for that.
3. Your attacks on al-Jazeera
While we're at it, Mr. President, let me just hand it to you for driving home my point about the hypocrisy of American foreign policy all these years. Oh, I know: people are tired of hearing it. In one ear, out the other. But we Arabs, being so poorly ruled ourselves, have a musician's ear for hypocrisy. How many Voice of America broadcasts, presidential inaugural addresses, Hollywood plot lines have featured America's reverence for the "free press." And still you tried to strong-arm the Emir of Qatar --no friend of mine, but a brother Arab nonetheless -- into shutting down al-Jazeera. And their crime? Reporting what I said.
I may live with a bunch of Afghan nomads, but I'm no camel-herder. I know al-Jazeera is the only independent media voice in the Arab world. And, yes, like all media companies, they are easily snookered because of their inflated regard for "exclusive" stories. So I manipulate them. Can you tell me your aides don't leak things to the Washington Times or the American Spectator? Ha! But you don't try to shut down the New Republic or the New Yorker when you don't like what you read there, do you? Imagine the image it would present. Even if what they wrote were untrue, turning the messenger into the villain makes people think: maybe they're on to something.
Thank you for that, too.
4. Your Israeli friends
Now, before I go further, I'd like you to know that I sent a separate note of thanks to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon several weeks ago for his assistance in furthering our vision of a world in which virtually any atrocity is justifiable (in the minds of the ignorant). He's quite a character, huh George? How about that Czechoslovakia crack! Whatever small thanks I owe to you for stirring the rage of the Islamic world pales next to my debt to Mr. Sharon.
That said, I wanted to thank you for the rather lukewarm efforts you have made in restraining Israel in this uncertain time. When those tanks rolled into the West Bank, the temperature in this miserable cave literally rose from joy. What timing! Even Arafat is playing his role to perfection, prevaricating just enough to provoke the Israelis and keep his own people from hanging him on a meat hook, but not enough to actually put a crimp in the work of the martyr factories of Jenin, Gaza and Nablus.
Now I hear we're in for another round of hopeless peace talks. As long as they last for years and lead to nothing, as they usually do, it's all manna in the desert to me.
5. What you can do for me
One teeny, tiny complaint I would like to add, Mr. President. I really do wish you would ratchet up the anti-Arab rhetoric a bit more. This is supposed to be a Holy War, after all, and all this touchy-feely stuff with American Muslims is putting a crimp in my effort to jazz up the jihad. It's a sad day in American when ethnic differences no longer inspire hatred.
On a related note, I was actually quite disappointed to find, early on, that you hadn't merely written Sharon a blank check to clear out the West Bank and Gaza-- you know, the same check you handed Russian President Vladimir Putin for Chechnya. (By the way, I notice you changed the State Department Web site so that those troublesome "Human Rights" reports no longer appear on the home page. See -- something else we agree on!)
Otherwise, my complete and utter thanks to you, Mr. President. It is a real pleasure waging war with you.
(Michael Moran is senior producer for special projects at MSNBC.com)
The Torture
Washington - Meanwhile, the CIA prepares for a next phase in its war on terrorism on the ground, and the issue of torture comes to the fore as a legal and political hot potato in Washington.
Behind the scenes, reports from Washington say that the agency is now short of agents who know how to torture or to extract information. The CIA was amply staffed with people who developed torture expertise during the 'dirty wars' in Central and South America, but these agents have gone into retirement.
Now the agency is trying to redevelop and retrain agents in rough interrogation techniques. Among them are the use of high-decibel music, and recordings of dying people and animals.
One intelligence source told The Observer that former agents are being drafted back to advise the CIA on how to conduct 'interrogations involving an element of physical pressure'.