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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.
Palestinian Terrorist Detonates 4-Ton Truck Bomb At Gaza Border Crossing
It looks like Jimmy Carter’s favorite “partners in peace” are up to their old tricks again! A Palestinian terrorist tried to cross into Israel from Gaza, but was stopped by alert Israeli soldiers.
Israeli soldiers fired on the vehicle as it approached the border crossing at which point the driver detonated the truck. The resulting blast could be heard 18 miles away, but thankfully only the would-be killer died.
Two other men allegedly involved in the attack were intercepted by Israeli helicopters and killed in an air strike as they fled in their getaway vehicle.
Had that truck bomb entered Israel and detonated in a public place, the result would have been devastating. A 4-ton truck bomb would have killed hundreds of people and leveled a city block. These are the killers and assassins that Jimmy Carter hugs and talks of peace with.
-Chris Jones
Israel’s UN Ambassador Calls Jimmy Carter A “Bigot”
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday called former President Jimmy Carter “a bigot” for meeting with the leader of the militant Hamas movement in Syria.
Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, “went to the region with soiled hands and came back with bloody hands after shaking the hand of Khaled Mashaal, the leader of Hamas,” Ambassador Dan Gillerman told a luncheon briefing for reporters.
The Ambassador should be applauded for speaking the truth about the former President. Carter proved once an for all that he is no friend of Israel. This most recent misadventure is merely the latest attempt by Carter to further his anti-Israel crusade.
Gillerman wasn’t through with Carter yet:
The ambassador called last weekend’s encounter “a very sad episode in American history.”
He said it was “a shame” to see Carter, who had done “good things” as a former president, “turn into what I believe to be a bigot.”
Carter has had a fetish for dictators and terrorists for years, but he finally went too far this time.
-Chris Jones
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
Blogger Arrested In Saudi Arabia
Fouad al-Farhan is one of the few bloggers in Saudi Arabia to actually use his real name. Not coincidentally, he’s also apparently the first blogger to be arrested in the Saudi Kingdom.
The Saudi English daily, Arab News, said al-Farhan had “violated non-security regulations.” The paper said the 32-year-old Jeddah resident was arrested at his office Dec. 10 and taken to his home where police conducted a search. There were no other details.
Following the arrest, al-Farhan’s friends who are now running his Web site, posted a letter allegedly from the blogger claiming he was told by an official there was an Interior Ministry order “to investigate me and they will pick me up anytime in the next two weeks.”
In it, he also said he believed Saudi authorities were after him because he “wrote about political prisoners in Saudi Arabia.”
Al-Farhan added that officials asked him to sign an apology but that he wasn’t ready to do that.
“An apology for what? Apologizing because I said the government is liar when it accused those people of supporting terrorism,” he said.
As for al-Farhan being certain as to who is or is not a terrorist I’m not so sure about, but obviously he should have the right to say it.
Blogging is actually a very popular activity in Saudi Arabia and the arrest of al-Farhan is widely perceived as a warning to other bloggers, which under the circumstances is probably a pretty accurate perception.
Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Monsour al-Turki said the blogger might be released on Wednesday but did not elaborate.
-Chris Jones
Bush Pledges Palestinian State By 2008
Aaron Klein over at WorldNetDaily is reporting that President Bush told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a private meeting today, that the U.S. will ensure the Palestinians will have a state on the ground before he leaves office in 2008.
“Bush and the U.S. administration gave us a commitment there will be a Palestinian state before he leaves office, and not just an outline of a state on paper but contiguous territory on the ground,” said the Palestinian negotiator, who spoke on condition his name be withheld because he was revealing the contents of a private meeting.
Bush met separately today with Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ahead of tomorrow’s U.S.-sponsored Annapolis summit which is expected to yield a framework for a separate Palestinian state.
Another interesting tidbit from this conference is that in exchange for Saudi Arabia attending the Annapolis conference, the Israeli government agreed to recognize the importance of a Saudi-sponsored “peace initiative” in which the Jewish state is called upon to evacuate the strategic Golan Heights, the entire West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
Allow me to translate the above tidbit for you:
In exchange for Saudi Arabia attending the Annapolis conference, the Israeli government agreed to recognize the importance of a Saudi-sponsored “peace initiative” in which the Jewish state is called upon to give the Golan Heights back to Syria, and turn the rest of Israel over to the Palestinians.
That sounds like the greatest deal in history, provided your not a Jew. I guess that pretty much throws the whole “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” thing right out the window.
The Jewish people would be expected to give up the Temple Mount which is the holiest site in Judaism. Nobody thinks twice about asking Jews to give up THE HOLIEST SITE IN ALL OF JUDAISM. Can you imagine the response by Muslims if there was talk about surrendering Mecca?
The entire Muslim world would unite into a big, fiery, ball of Islamic rage that would engulf all of mankind. The ACLU would practically breathe fire if such a thing were ever suggested.
Allahu Akbar, الله أكبر
-Chris Jones
White House Announces “Enduring Relationship” with Iraq
The White House today announced an agreement reached between President Bush and Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki regarding the U.S. presence in Iraq.
This is a gentle way for the President to let the American people know that we have a long-term commitment to Iraq. The President will bring the troops home eventually, but we will have a continuing presence there just like we do in Japan, South Korea, Europe, Kuwait, and elsewhere.Democrats are already acting shocked by this announcement, but I can’t imagine anyone really believing we would sacrifice all the blood and treasure that we have, and not at least get a few military bases out of the deal.
That’s the way it has always worked and the way it should work. We liberated Kuwait, and in return we have permanent bases there. Iraq is extremely important strategically, and it’s a major advantage for the U.S. to have fully functioning military bases there.
It should be funny watching “dingy” Harry Reid stomp his foot and cry about this agreement. I’m sure Code Pink will throw themselves into the middle of the street or impale themselves on the capital steps in response as well. Meanwhile, Republicans and Joe Lieberman will point and laugh at the silly hippies.
-Chris Jones
** Read the full text of the White House statement by clicking the link above
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.
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.
