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Hypocrisy: Is The U.S. Helping The Saudis Go Nuclear?
Hot Air is reporting that Condoleezza Rice was in Saudi Arabia last month promising the Saudis that America would help them develop a nuclear infrastructure, build nuclear reactors, and train nuclear engineers. Basically, everything the Iranians are doing that we want them stop doing.
I really hope there is some kind of context that I’m missing here, because this is the kind of thing that really makes America lose credibility. We can’t expect to be taken seriously when we complain that Iran sits on a lake of oil, and therefore has no need to develop nuclear power. Then at the same time start helping the Saudis to develop nuclear technology when they sit on an even bigger lake of oil.
Arab Study: 55% Say Offensive Words Justify Violence
Via LGF:
The poll adds weight to the vote at a session of the Doha Debates held on March 3 in Doha, where the motion “This house believes that Muslims are failing to combat extremism”, was carried by more than 70% of the audience.
In the YouGov survey, nearly half of all Arabs in the Gulf, Levant and North Africa said they have met someone who holds extreme religious views.
Asked under what conditions violence is permissible, more than 60% cited Western interference in a Muslim country, while 55% said offensive words or behaviour was a trigger.
More than half the respondents also believed that poor religious leadership is to blame for today’s extremism – although seven out of 10 said the size of the problem had been exaggerated.
Eight out of 10 believed it provides an excuse for the West to interfere in Muslim countries.
In the poll, conducted between March 18 and 23, views of 940 people across the Arab world were surveyed.
At least they recognize their utter failure at combating extremism, unfortunately more than half believe words justify violence.
Everyone has punched someone in the face for saying something crappy at one time in their life, but the kind of violence radical Muslims resort to over offensive words is usually mass murder.
-Chris Jones
U.S. Embassy Personnel Targeted In Beirut Attack
An explosion targeted a U.S. Embassy vehicle Tuesday in northern Beirut, killing at least three Lebanese and injuring an American bystander and a local embassy employee.
The blast, which damaged the armored SUV and several other vehicles, took place just ahead of a farewell reception for the American ambassador at a hotel in central Beirut.
No Americans were in the car, which was carrying two Lebanese employees of the embassy.
The bombing, which came as President Bush and Rice toured the Mideast, was the first attack on U.S. diplomatic interests in Lebanon since the 1980s, when the country saw some of the deadliest terror attacks against Americans in U.S. history.
Bush Gives Speech From Abu Dhabi, Calls Iran Leading Sponsor Of Terrorism
President Bush gently reminded Arab allies Sunday of the need to satisfy frustrated desires for democracy in the Mideast, but saved his harshest criticism for Iran, branding it “the world’s leading state-sponsor of terror.”
Speaking in the Persian Gulf country, about 150 miles from the shores of Iran, Bush said Tehran threatens nations everywhere and that the United States was “rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late.”
The warning about Iran was much tougher than Bush’s admonition about spreading democracy in the Middle East, which had been billed as the central theme of his speech.
After the speech, President Bush did some site seeing at the desert encampment of Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Sheik Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The crown prince showed Bush his prize collection of Falcons, allowing the President to hold one.
-Chris Jones
Interview on The Scott Fuller Show
I gave an interview with Scott Fuller on The Scott Fuller Show this evening. The topic was the Israeli/Palestinian peace prospects.
-Chris Jones
Bush Gets Entire Arab League To Attend Mid-East Peace Conference
The Bush administration was able to declare victory when Syria, the last Arab world holdout, said Sunday it would attend this week’s high-stakes Mideast peace conference.
League members grudgingly agreed a few days ago to send their foreign ministers to the conference, meant to renew Israeli-Palestinian peace talks after a violent, seven-year lull in negotiations. Most members do not have ties with the Jewish state.
Syria had threatened to skip the three-day meetings in Annapolis, Md., and Washington, if they did not address the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed. But with that issue added to the agenda, the deputy foreign minister, Faysal Mekdad, will participate.
Arab states had been reluctant to attend the gathering, which starts Monday in Washington. They feared it would give Israel a public- relations boost while yielding little political benefit for the Palestinians.
But they decided to come to the first large-scale Arab-Israeli gathering since a 1996 meeting in Egypt. That is largely because they wanted to bolster moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and keep him from making damaging concessions to Israel in talks that are to follow the conference.
Abbas has been badly weakened by the Islamic Hamas group’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in June, which left him in control of just the West Bank.
Musharraf ‘to quit army by end of the week’
President Musharraf of Pakistan has decided to resign as Army chief by the end of the week.
Sources close to the Pakistani President indicated that he wanted to stand down almost immediately if a Supreme Court newly packed with his supporters decides, as expected, to reject the final legal challenge to his victory in last month’s election on Thursday.
Today, the court rejected the first five of six legal challenges to his continued rule. After sustained domestic and international pressure, General Musharraf has already said he will quit as Army chief once the court gives him the green light to serve a second term.
General Musharraf had cited growing Islamic militancy as the main reason for imposing the state of emergency on November 3. But analysts and human rights activists said that most of those targeted were political moderates, not extremists, who were concerned at the way the President had ridden rough-shod over the constitution.
Saudi King Heckled in Britain
Demonstrators harassed Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah on Tuesday over the kingdom’s human rights practices and his comments that Britain has failed to do enough to stop terrorism.
Before Abdullah arrived on Monday for the first state visit by a Saudi king in two decades, he accused Britain of failing to act on intelligence that might have prevented the 2005 London transit bombings, triggering debate about the kingdom’s response to terrorism.
About 100 human rights and anti-arms trade activists shouted “Shame on you” at the Muslim leader as he made his way to Buckingham Palace in a royal carriage procession.
I think it would be fair to say that King Abdullah could have acted on intelligence to stop fifteen Saudi citizens from hijacking airplanes and killing 3,000 Americans, as long as we’re giving constructive criticism.
Before giving others advice about how to fight terrorism, the King should consider doing a little house cleaning in that kingdom of his. Saudi Arabia is the epicenter of Sunni extremism and continues to be a breeding ground for terrorists.
-Samantha Giles
Benazir Bhutto Back in Pakistan
Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition leader and former prime minister, arrived in Pakistan this afternoon, ending her eight-year exile in a return that is expected to reconfigure the country’s already unsettled political landscape.
On the flight from Dubai, the emirate where she had lived for much of the last decade in self-imposed exile, Ms. Bhutto was accompanied by chanting supporters, and she moved through the plane talking to reporters and to admirers. When asked how she felt, she said, “Very excited, very happy, very proud, a tremendous sense of responsibility.”
She added: “I think the time has come for democracy. If we want to save Pakistan. we have to have democracy.”
Her return is expected to have a significant impact on Pakistan’s politics. Not least, it is certain to invigorate the opposition to Pakistan’s military leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who was re-elected president by national and provincial assemblies on Oct. 6, but still faces constitutional challenges to his eligibility.
Pentagon confirms accidental Patriot launch
A US Patriot missile was accidentally launched in Qatar and self-destructed over an unpopulated farm area, causing no injuries, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
Lieutenant General Carter Ham, director of operations of the Joint Staff, said a Patriot missile unit at Camp As-Saliyah in Qatar was conducting a training exercise when the missile accidentally went off.
-Chris Jones
Turkey Threatens Repercussions for U.S.
Turkey, which is a key supply route to U.S. troops in Iraq, recalled its ambassador to Washington on Thursday and warned of serious repercussions if Congress labels the killing of Armenians by Turks a century ago as genocide.
Ordered after a House committee endorsed the genocide measure, the summons of the ambassador for consultations was a further sign of the deteriorating relations between two longtime allies and the potential for new turmoil in an already troubled region.
As if we don’t have enough problems in that region of the world. After we spit in the eye of the turks, let’s thing of some way to insult Jordan as well. It’s despicable that Congress is literally creating a serious problem for us out of thin air instead of just dropping the issue.
Rare Iranian Protest Targets Ahmadinejad
An estimated 100 students staged a rare demonstration Monday against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling him a “dictator” and scuffling with hardline students at Tehran University.
Ahmadinejad, who was giving a speech to a select group at the university to mark the beginning of the academic year, ignored the chants of “death to the dictator” and continued with his speech on the merits of science and the pitfalls of Western-style democracy, witnesses said.
Students were once the main power base of Iran’s reform movement but have faced intense pressure in recent years from Ahmadinejad’s hardline government, making anti-government protests rare.
The president faced a similar outburst during a speech last December when students at Amir Kabir Technical University called Ahmadinejad a dictator and set fire to his picture.
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