I hope and pray this year will bring peace and prosperity to all and not terrorism in the name of the "Religion of Peace." We must all do our part to stop CAIR and it's bullshit organizations that promote and support terrorism from inside the U.S..
Here's Stuck Mojo's"Open Season"
CAIR remix by Stop CAIR Now, to get your year started.
An Iraqi presidential spokesman said this morning that two Iranians invited by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani have been detained by U.S. forces in Iraq.
It's been no secret that the Iranian government has been trying to expand it's role in Iraq to counter any U.S. influence in the region.
Talabani's media adviser, Hiwa Osman said "The president is unhappy about it."
The American military is holding at least four Iranians in Iraq, including men the Bush administration called senior military officials, who were seized in a pair of raids late last week aimed at people suspected of conducting attacks on Iraqi security forces, according to senior Iraqi and American officials in Baghdad and Washington.
The Bush administration made no public announcement of the politically delicate seizure of the Iranians, though in response to specific questions the White House confirmed Sunday that the Iranians were in custody.
Gordon D. Johndroe, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said two Iranian diplomats were among those initially detained in the raids. The two had papers showing that they were accredited to work in Iraq, and he said they were turned over to the Iraqi authorities and released. He confirmed that a group of other Iranians, including the military officials, remained in custody while an investigation continued, and he said, “We continue to work with the government of Iraq on the status of the detainees.”
It was unclear what kind of evidence American officials possessed that the Iranians were planning attacks, and the officials would not identify those being held. One official said that “a lot of material” was seized in the raid, but would not say if it included arms or documents that pointed to planning for attacks. Much of the material was still being examined, the official said.
Nonetheless, the two raids, in central Baghdad, have deeply upset Iraqi government officials, who have been making strenuous efforts to engage Iran on matters of security. At least two of the Iranians were in this country on an invitation extended by Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, during a visit to Tehran earlier this month. It was particularly awkward for the Iraqis that one of the raids took place in the Baghdad compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, who traveled to Washington three weeks ago to meet President Bush.
Over the past four days, the Iraqis and Iranians have engaged in intense behind-the-scenes efforts to secure the release of the remaining detainees. One Iraqi government official said, “The Iranian ambassador has been running around from office to office.”
Iraqi leaders appealed to the American military, including to Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American ground commander in Iraq, to release the Iranians, according to an Iraqi politician familiar with the efforts. The debate about what to do next has also engaged officials in the White House and the State Department. The national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, has been fully briefed, officials said, though they would not say what Mr. Bush has been told about the seizure or the identity of the detainees.
A senior Western official in Baghdad said the raids were conducted after American officials received information that the people detained had been involved in attacks on official security forces in Iraq. “We conduct operations against those who threaten Iraqi and coalition forces,” the official said. “This was based on information.”
A spokesman for Mr. Hakim, who heads a Shiite political party called Sciri, which began as an exile group in Iran that opposed Saddam Hussein, declined to comment. In Tehran, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, had no comment about the case on Sunday other than to say it was under examination.
The action comes at a moment of extraordinary tension in the three-way relationship between the United States, Iran and Iraq. On Saturday, even as American officials were trying to determine the identity of some of the Iranians, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution imposing mild sanctions against Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has rejected pressure to open talks with Iran about its actions in Iraq.
In a mocking tone, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the UN Security Council that it would begin immediately, the installation of 3,000 centrifuges at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant starting Sunday.
Centrifuges spin uranium gas into enriched material that can then be used to produce nuclear fuel.
Iran officials say they will NOT suspend their uranium enrichment process and intend on expanding Iran's enrichment program to 54,000 centrifuges which will produce enough enriched uranium to fuel the 1,000-megawatt reactor built by Russia at the Bushehr plant, in southern Iran.
Ali Larijani, Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator, told the Kayhan newspaper: "We will start our installation activities at the Natanz facility."
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, also mocked the UN sanctions imposed on Saturday over the country's nuclear programme.
"It is a piece of torn paper ... by which they aim to scare Iranians... It is in the Westerners' interest to live with a nuclear Iran," Ahmadinejad said in a speech at the former American embassy in Tehran on Friday.
Ahmadinejad also told countries that backed the UN resolution to abandon attempts to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear programme.
"Give up this muppet game. You cannot send secret friendly messages to us and at the same time show your teeth and claws. End this dual game," Ahmadinejad said, according to Iran's IRNA news agency.
Iran insists its nuclear program is intended to produce energy, uranium enrichment is it's "inalienable right," and it will continue the process it.
Ahmadinejad says“issuers” of UN sanctions resolution against Iran “will soon regret their useless act”
While taking full credit for the election of Democrats to U.S. Congress this past November, al-Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri, in a video broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV, told the United States Democrats that they should be negotiating with them about the U.S. situation in Iraq if the U.S. wants to be successful.
Al Qaeda has sent a message to leaders of the Democratic party that credit for the defeat of congressional Republicans belongs to the terrorists.
In a portion of the tape from al Qaeda No. 2 man, Ayman al Zawahri, made available only today, Zawahri says he has two messages for American Democrats.
"The first is that you aren't the ones who won the midterm elections, nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen -- the Muslim Ummah's vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq -- are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost," Zawahri said, according to a full transcript obtained by ABC News.
Zawahri calls on the Democrats to negotiate with him and Osama bin Laden, not others in the Islamic world who Zawahri says cannot help.
"And if you don't refrain from the foolish American policy of backing Israel, occupying the lands of Islam and stealing the treasures of the Muslims, then await the same fate," he said.
The fact that al-Qaeda is watching and working the U.S. political system should not come as a surprise to anyone in the U.S.. They know they are in a much better situation with the Democrats in power and will, in my opinion try to strike us at home again.
It's all about timing. I can see them waiting till we withdraw our forces from the middle east, knowing the Democrats would never attempt to re-deploy troops to strike them back anywhere in the world.
It's a good plan if you ask me. Hell, we got hit six times during the last administration, and all we did to retaliate was to blow up an aspirin factory in the desert and kill a camel with a 10 million dollar missile.
From:
Mohammad Sadik (PhD),
President, Salahaddin University, Erbil, Kurdistan-Iraq To:
The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States of America
The White House
Washington, D.C., USA
My name is Mohammad Sadik; I am the president of Salahaddin University, the oldest and the largest university in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, with a student population of 23,000. I am an academic and not a politician but I am a friend of you and all the Americans, as is 99% of the population of our Region. I want to emphasize the word FRIEND as I want it to be the centre of my address to your Excellency.
The Kurds who fought with America in 2003 are very grateful to you and the men and women of the US Military for liberating Iraq from the tyrant Saddam. After the liberation of Iraq in April 2003, many American people, both civilian and military, have visited our Region and discovered for themselves that the peoples of the Kurdistan Region are their true friends.
May I take a moment to explain that we are many peoples. While predominantly Kurd, we are also Turkmen, non-Kurd Christian, Arab, Armenian, and others. The regrettable threat of violence in other parts of our country has provoked thousands of families to flee to our Region where Arab Shia and Arab Sunni and Christians live side-by-side in peace and security. All are safe under the security of our Kurdistan Regional Government.
In 2005, I heard Chat Blakeman, the American Consul in Kirkuk, speaking to his daughter on the phone from Erbil and describing our Region to her: “My daughter, I am in a part of Iraq with wonderful people, the Kurds. Its like if I ever have a flat tire they would all come to my rescue and change the tire for me because they love Americans. Do not worry about me; I am now in a safe place”.
In January 2005, American planes attacked one of our student dormitories in Erbil City in the middle of the night. I came out immediately and made the statement that it is a mistake made by our friends and I am sure no harm was intended. It turned out to be a mistake; apologies were made at the time and accepted. I felt as the president of the university I had the duty to preserve this love and friendship between the Americans and the peoples of the Kurdistan Region.
Mr. President, I have read the Baker-Hamilton report and fully appreciate the volatile situation in Iraq and the Middle East region. However, I want you to consider one thing and that is that Americans have been greeted nowhere else in the world with flowers from an entire nation, except in the Kurdistan Region. Having said this, the Baker-Hamilton Commission paid no visit to our Region to discover the value and meaning of our friendship. They formed their conclusions from a severely limited, isolated view inside the Baghdad Green Zone.
The solution to the Iraq problem will only be achieved with the help of your friends in the Middle East region who are very few. The peoples of the Kurdistan Region look forward to your policy statement on Iraq and not to the Baker-Hamilton report. The people of our Region have grown beyond the bitter experiences of betrayals and neglect, most notably those of 1975 and 1991. Please do not allow the memories to rekindle fears that it will happen again. Please do stick with your friends here.
I believe you, as the President of the United States, have the responsibility of keeping the good relationship between Americans and the peoples of the Kurdistan Region intact. Our Region is the only place in Iraq where you can have a safe base among friends.
I look forward to hearing your policy statement on Iraq.
Yours sincerely,
Mohammad Sadik (PhD),
President, Salahaddin University, Erbil, Kurdistan-Iraq
What can I add to this? It says it all in a nut shell.
With their uncanny grasp of the obvious and their spending four whole DAYS in Iraq, this so called "Iraq Study Group", made up of a bunch of old, out of touch has-beens, came out with a 142 page report of nothing but bad ideas that have all been talked about, hashed over and over, than dismissed on their merits accordingly in the past two years by everyone in Washington and the world.
Their scathing report told the world and the American people that we failed miserably in Iraq and continue to due so without any chance of winning. It did not come up with any ideas on victory in Iraq, or winning for the people of Iraq, not to mention the U.S..
I think my personal favorite is the "kiss and make up with Iran and Syria" approach. This has got to be the most proof that all of these morons have had their heads far up their asses for a long time now... they still don't get it.
Maybe we should bring in Dhimmy Carter to talk with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about giving us a hand in Iraq.
PRESIDENT Kennedy once hosted a dinner for Nobel Prize winners. At the dinner he reportedly said, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
After reviewing the report of the Iraq Study Group, released Wednesday, New York Post editorial page editor John Podhoretz declared: “The nation’s capital hasn’t seen such concentrated wisdom in one place since Paris Hilton dined alone at the Hooters on Connecticut Avenue.”
Stratfor, a private intelligence service, said the ISG report was “underwhelming.” Retired Army intelligence officer Ralph Peters called it a “muddle of truisms and bad ideas.” The conservative National Review called it “an analytic embarrassment.” Fred Kaplan, military writer for the liberal Webzine Slate, said its recommendations were “a useless grab bag.” T. F. Boggs, an Army sergeant recently returned from his second tour in Iraq, said the recommendations were a “joke” that “could only have come from a group of old people who have been stuck in Washington for too long.”
The foremost recommendation of the ISG for a regional peace conference with Iran and Syria is surreal.
The ISG report notes (on page 46) that: “Iran has provided arms, financial support, and training for Shiite militias in Iraq. There are also reports that Iran has supplied improvised explosive devices to groups including Sunni Arab insurgents that attack U.S. forces.
“Syria also is playing a counterproductive role,” the report said. “Syrians look the other way as arms and foreign fighters flow across the border into Iraq, and former Baathist leaders find a safe haven within Syria.”
Despite these facts, the commissioners declare that Iran and Syria have an interest “in avoiding chaos in Iraq,” and that “Iran’s interest would not be served by a failure of U.S. policy in Iraq.” Iran’s leaders obviously think otherwise.
The truth, which the ISG’s aging luminaries lack more the guts than the brains to grasp, is that Iran and Syria are now our principal enemies, both in Iraq and in the broader war on terror. Without their interference, sectarian violence in Iraq would swiftly and sharply decline.
Iran is obviously listening closely because they have made an offer I'm sure the "Iraq Study Group" and many others on the left, would jump on in a minute if they could.
Iran will only hold direct talks with the United States on Iraq if Washington announces plans to pull its troops out, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Saturday.
Mottaki was responding to the U.S. Iraq Study Group report, which recommended Washington should directly engage with Iran and Syria over Iraq, where violence is threatening to turn into civil war.
On the question of direct talks between Iran and the United States, "the first and most essential step ... is the United States announce they have decided to withdraw from Iraq", Mottaki told reporters at a security conference in Bahrain. He said that if the United States did announce a withdrawal "Iran is ready to help the administration to withdraw its troops from Iraq".
But Iran did not "see such political will yet in the United States".
Washington blames Iran and Syria for stirring up conflict in Iraq nearly four years after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has suggested Tehran would demand some payback in return for any help on Iraq, probably over its nuclear programme, which the West fears could include nuclear weapons. Iran denies the nuclear weapons accusation.
Asked if Iran would ask for concessions if it helped with Iraq, Mottaki said: "Let the United States withdraw from Iraq first and then we could talk about the details."
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi president said Sunday the bipartisan U.S. report calling for a new approach to the war offered dangerous recommendations that would undermine his country's sovereignty and were "an insult to the people of
Iraq."
President Jalal Talabani was the most senior government official to take a stand against the Iraq Study Group report, which has come under criticism from leaders of the governing Shiite and Kurdish parties.
He said the report "is not fair, is not just, and it contains some very dangerous articles which undermine the sovereignty of Iraq and the constitution."
He singled out the report's call for the approval of a de-Baathification law that could allow thousands of officials from
Saddam Hussein's ousted Baath party to return to their jobs.
The Kurdish leader also criticized the call for increasing the number of U.S. troops embedded to train Iraqis from 3,000 to 4,000 currently to 10,000 to 20,000.
"It is not respecting the desire of the Iraqi people to control its army and to be able to rearm and train Iraqi forces under the leadership of the Iraqi government," he said.
He said the Iraqi government planned to send a letter to
President Bush "expressing our views about the main issues" in the report, although he would not elaborate.
Millions and millions of dollars are being sent daily to Sunni insurgents in Iraq by private citizens of Saudi Arabia to fight the Iraqi government and American interest in the region. As usual the Saudi government pretends it's not happening however the facts are what they are.
The Saudi government wants the world to believe they are a key U.S. ally in the Middle East however their people hate Americans and will do whatever it takes to destroy American interest in the region.
CAIRO, Egypt - Private Saudi citizens are giving millions of dollars to Sunni insurgents in Iraq and much of the money is used to buy weapons, including shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, according to key Iraqi officials and others familiar with the flow of cash.
Saudi government officials deny that any money from their country is being sent to Iraqis fighting the government and the U.S.-led coalition.
But the U.S. Iraq Study Group report said Saudis are a source of funding for Sunni Arab insurgents. Several truck drivers interviewed by The Associated Press described carrying boxes of cash from Saudi Arabia into Iraq, money they said was headed for insurgents.
Two high-ranking Iraqi officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, told the AP most of the Saudi money comes from private donations, called zaqat, collected for Islamic causes and charities.
Some Saudis appear to know the money is headed to Iraq's insurgents, but others merely give it to clerics who channel it to anti-coalition forces, the officials said.
In one recent case, an Iraqi official said $25 million in Saudi money went to a top Iraqi Sunni cleric and was used to buy weapons, including Strela, a Russian shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile. The missiles were purchased from someone in Romania, apparently through the black market, he said.
Overall, the Iraqi officials said, money has been pouring into Iraq from oil-rich Saudi Arabia, a Sunni bastion, since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq toppled the Sunni-controlled regime of
Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Saudi officials vehemently deny their country is a major source of financial support for the insurgents.
"There isn't any organized terror finance, and we will not permit any such unorganized acts," said Brig. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, a spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry. About a year ago the Saudi government set up a unit to track any "suspicious financial operations," he said.
But the Iraq Study Group said "funding for the Sunni insurgency comes from private individuals within Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states."
This should not come to surprise anyone in the U.S. however most Americans still believe the Saudis are our friends.
We need to get our heads out of the sand and wake up!
Is Cuba ready to sit down and talk to the U.S. about putting our differences aside?
With Fidel Castro silenced by his ailments and on the sidelines, his brother Raul, at a Cuban military parade on Saturday, told his troops of his willingness to talk to the U.S. in an effort to end the almost half century old economic embargo put in place by the U.S. government.
During this speech he attacked American foreign policy and their involvement in the Iraq war, yet offered to end decades of hostility between the two countries.
CUBA'S communist interim leader Raul Castro, in a shift from the tack of his ailing brother Fidel Castro, has overnight pushed for negotiations with the United States to end decades of tense ties.
"Let me take this opportunity to express our willingness to settle the long US-Cuba disagreement at the negotiating table," Raul Castro told troops at Cuba's first military parade in a decade.
"Of course, that is, as long as they accept that we are a country that does not tolerate any reduction of its independence, and based on the principles of equality, reciprocity, non interference and mutual respect," Raul Castro added, speaking before Communist Party and military leaders.
"Until that happens, after almost half a century, we are prepared to wait patiently for the moment when common sense takes root in the halls of power in Washington," Raul Castro said.
Mr Castro has been filling in for his brother Fidel, 80, since Fidel Castro - Cuba's leader since 1959 - underwent intestinal surgery in July.
The policy of willingness to talk with the United States if respected as an equal is standing Cuban policy.
But Fidel Castro has not reached out to the United States, much less publicly, on a regular basis.
And Raul Castro's timing and mentioning the negotiating table - as Cuba is consolidating its changing of the communist guard - suggests some growing autonomy on his part.
The fact that the 80-year-old Castro did not make an expected public appearance during his week long birthday celebration is an indication to many that he remains gravely ill and is very likely to never return as the leader of the Cuban people.
An Iraqi presidential spokesman said this morning that two Iranians invited by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani have been detained by U.S. forces in Iraq.
In a mocking tone, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the UN Security Council that it would begin immediately, the installation of 3,000 centrifuges at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant starting Sunday.
While taking full credit for the election of Democrats to U.S. Congress this past November, al-Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri, in a video broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV, told the United States Democrats that they should be negotiating with them about the U.S. situation in Iraq if the U.S. wants to be successful.
From:
With their uncanny grasp of the obvious and their spending four whole DAYS in Iraq, this so called "Iraq Study Group", made up of a bunch of old, out of touch has-beens, came out with a 142 page report of nothing but bad ideas that have all been talked about, hashed over and over, than dismissed on their merits accordingly in the past two years by everyone in Washington and the world. 
Millions and millions of dollars are being sent daily to Sunni insurgents in Iraq by private citizens of Saudi Arabia to fight the Iraqi government and American interest in the region. As usual the Saudi government pretends it's not happening however the facts are what they are.
Is Cuba ready to sit down and talk to the U.S. about putting our differences aside?
