Powered by Max Banner Ads
US shows evidence of alleged Syria-N. Korea nuke collaboration
Via the AP:
The Syrian nuclear reactor allegedly built with North Korean design help and destroyed last year by Israeli jets was within weeks or months of being functional, a top U.S. official said Thursday.
The facility was mostly completed but still needed significant testing before it could be declared operational, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
However, no uranium—needed to fuel a reactor—was evident at the site, a remote area of eastern Syria along the Euphrates River.
The Syrian reactor was similar in design to a North Korean reactor at Yongbyon that has in the past produced small amounts of plutonium, U.S. officials said. Plutonium is highly radioactive and can be used to make powerful nuclear weapons or radiological bombs.
Top members of the House intelligence committee said Thursday after being briefed on the facility by intelligence and administration officials that the reactor posed a serious threat of spreading dangerous nuclear materials.
“This is a serious proliferation issue, both for the Middle East and the countries that may be involved in Asia,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich.
Palestinians: Carter-Hamas Visit Achieved Nothing
Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki said today that Jimmy Carter’s much publicized meeting with Hamas achieved nothing.
“President Carter came to the region thinking he could achieve something. Unfortunately president Carter left without anything concrete,” he told a conference in the Spanish capital.
“The only thing he achieved was permission on the part of Khaled Meshaal of Hamas to deliver a letter from a detained Israeli soldier to his family. Nothing else,” he said.
“Hamas offered nothing to president Carter. They reiterated the same positions. There was no change on the part of Hamas,” Malki added.
Actually Al-Malki is wrong to say that Carter’s trip achieved nothing. One achievement was giving legitimacy on the world stage to one of the most notorious terrorist organizations on earth.
Carter gave legitimacy to a group which thinks sending young men into Israel wearing vests packed with explosives and nails in to blow themselves up is the fastest way to heaven. A group that raises their children to believe that killing Jews is their duty as Palestinians and God will reward them for it.
Hamas is a group of cold-blooded killers pure and simple. For Jimmy Carter to have met with the group’s leadership in Syria (right in the belly of the beast) was a disgrace.
He continues to be shockingly naive in his belief that “talking” with dictators and terrorists is the solution for everything, and as usual he was proven wrong.
Jimmy Carter To Meet With Hamas Leader In Syria
Former President Jimmy Carter is once again cozying up to an enemy of the U.S. and Israel and once again proving just how bad his judgment is.
Carter is reportedly preparing an unprecedented meeting with the leader of Hamas who’s responsible for ordering the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers recently that sparked the war with Lebanon.
The Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat reported Tuesday that Carter was planning a trip to Syria for mid-April, during which he would meet with Khaled Meshal, the exiled head of the Palestinian terror group.
Meshal, who lives in Syria to avoid being arrested by the Israeli government, leads Hamas from his seat in Damascus, where he is a guest of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Carter is a long-time Palestinian sympathizer who mistakenly believes Israel is the “bad guy” in the mid-east. He loves to meet with America’s enemies and criticize President Bush in the foreign press.
A former President meeting with the leader of one of the worst terrorist organizations is a slap in the face to our allies and contrary to the foreign policy set by President Bush.
I’m sure Jimmy Carter would meet Osama Bin Laden in a cave on the Afghan border if given the opportunity.
-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
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.
Former Muslim Chaplain at Gitmo, James Yee, Lies on Syrian Television
I don’t know how many people remember the James Yee case from 2003, but unfortunately this Muslim scumbag has popped up again, this time literally in cahoots with the enemy.
James Yee is the former Muslim Chaplain who was stationed at Guantánamo Bay. He was the religious counselor for all the terror suspects detained there.
Throughout his deployment many of his fellow soldiers became deeply suspicious of Yee, and felt that he was a sympathizer who was working against them as best he could.
When returning from duty at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, he was arrested on September 10, 2003, in Jacksonville, Florida, when a U.S. Customs agent found a list of Guantanamo detainees and interrogators among his belongings.
He was charged with five offenses: sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage, and failure to obey a general order. These charges were later reduced to mishandling classified information in addition to some minor charges.
He was then transferred to a United States Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina. The government did not name the country or entity for whom it suspected Yee was spying.
All court-martial charges against Yee were dropped on March 19, 2004, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller “citing national security concerns that would arise from the release of the evidence,” and he was released to resume his duties.
In April the noncriminal charges of adultery and storing pornography on government computers were dropped. He retired from the US military with an honorable discharge in January, but he is also seeking an apology.
Yee went on to write a crappy book detailing all the abuses the poor terrorists were subjected to. Since then most people had forgotten about the traitor, but now he has popped up on Syrian television. He tells the Arab world about all the abuse the Muslims detainees suffered.
Of course, he admits in the interview that he never actually witnessed any of the abuse, but the terrorists told him about it.
James Yee is a disgraceful individual who should be rotting in Gitmo with all his terrorist buddies.
Following are excerpts from an interview with former Guantanamo army chaplain James Yee, which aired on Syrian TV on October 19, 2007.
Interviewer: How was religion being used against those prisoners [in Guantanamo Bay]?
Yee: Great question. One, we’ve all heard how the Koran has been desecrated down in Guantanamo and as Koran, the holy Koran – the words which Muslims all over the world consider the literal words of God – was being desecrated in Guantanamo in many different ways.
Interviewer: It was thrown into toilets and whatever, that’s what we read.
Yee: The initial report that was printed by Newsweek indicated that perhaps the Koran was thrown into a toilet by an interrogator. It was unfortunate, that Newsweek had to retract that story, but I talked firsthand with prisoners who were held in Camp X-Ray, which was the first prison camp of Guantanamo, very early on in 2002, and prisoners told me directly that the Korans that they had brought with them were tossed into buckets – buckets which were used as toilets in that makeshift camp. I myself…
Interviewer: So… Buckets basically of urine and feces, is that correct?
Yee: Right, right, exactly. This was before I got there and this was in Camp X-Ray, where, again, it was a quick makeshift prison, set up for the first prisoners who arrived there. When I got there, Camp Delta, which was a little more sturdy and each cell had its own toilet, was already built by the time I got to Guantanamo in late 2002. The Korans were thrown on the floor by guards when they conducted cell searches. It has been reported and I have learned now that interrogators also were throwing the Korans on the floor or stomping on it. This was happening when I was there, and this was an issue.
Interviewer: You actually saw this happening?
Yee: I didn’t see it because I wasn’t a part of the intelligence operation, but I was aware directly from the prisoners, when they came to me with the complaints and concerns. It became such an issue that prisoners carried out massive protests. Some of them even attempted suicide in response to how awful the Koran was being abused. So this is something that was occurring, was addressed officially…
Interviewer: And did it stop?
Yee: …by myself and many others down in Guantanamo. It did come to a stop at a certain point. And one of the reasons is when one of the prisoners attempted suicide, the intelligence officers got a little bit smart, because they realized at that point that if a prisoner ended up killing himself, then they could no longer interrogate that prisoner. So they said we don’t want prisoners killing themselves…
Interviewer: Because we can’t put them to use anymore.
Yee: Exactly, but it was them who were driving them towards these suicide attempts by desecrating the Koran.
[...]
Yee: I learned from the prisoners that female interrogators were a big part of the intelligence gathering operation, and I recall even the commander of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Major General Jeffery Miller, often saying in media interviews that female interrogators were very creative in their approach to gathering intelligence and conducting interrogations.
Interviewer: What did he mean by “creative?”
Yee: What was actually going on in these interrogation rooms with these female interrogators was that they were very ready to conduct their interrogation by stripping off their clothes, being nude in front of Muslim prisoners, thinking that Muslims who come from a conservative Muslim society might break or be shattered by this type of behavior. But they went farther than that, and they would inappropriately rub their bodies against these prisoners. It has even been reported, and suggested in FBI memos that have been subsequently released, that female interrogators even went so far as grabbing the genitals of Muslim male prisoners in the course of interrogating them. For me, as a Muslim, and for many of the other Muslim Americans who were down there, when we learned of this, we thought this was not only degrading towards the prisoner, we thought this was degrading towards…
Interviewer: The women themselves.
Yee: …The women themselves who are engaging in this type of behavior. But we can take that even a step further, and say this was degrading to all women. Because what was essentially happening, these women were presenting themselves as simply sex objects and this is not how we should view women in any society.
[...]
Yee: And in my view, it happened to me – all of this – because of three reasons: One reason is because I am a Muslim, and in this post 9/11 era, in the West, in America, we find this tremendous anti-Muslim hostility and Islamophobia, in which, all Muslims are see as potential terrorists. And I’m a Muslim, an American Muslim, and I believe that played a large role in why I was targeted. The second is because of my ethnicity – I’m a Chinese American. I learned that when I was…
Interviewer: So you are not blond and blue eyed and whatever.
Yee: Yes. I learned that when I was under investigation someone had said of me: “Who the hell does this Chinese Taliban think he is, telling us how to treat our prisoners?” So the fact that I was called a Chinese Taliban is an indication that my ethnicity also played a role. That third reason was because I was objecting to the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners down in Guantanamo. I believe this threatened many of those who were engaged in that possibly unlawful conduct, and I believe people might have been afraid that I was going to go public, because I was someone who actually interviewed with the media on a weekly basis, as the Muslim chaplain down in Guantanamo.
-Chris Jones
Satellite Imagery shows cleansing of suspect Syrian site
New satellite photos show that a Syrian site believed to have been attacked by Israel last month no longer bears any obvious traces of what some analysts said appeared to have been a partly built nuclear reactor.
Two photos, taken Wednesday from space by rival companies, show the site near the Euphrates River to have been wiped clean since August, when imagery showed a tall square building there measuring about 150 feet on a side.
Israel Struck a Nuclear Project in Syria, Analysts Say
Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.
Israeli Air Strike on Syria Kindles Debate in the U.S.
There is an interesting article in the New York Times this morning that discusses an internal debate within the Bush Administration about how to deal with North Korea.
As of right now our agreement with the North to provide various kinds of economic aide in return for dismantlement of their nuclear program still stands.
However, Israel is arguing that in light of the recent discovery of a possible clandestine nuclear program in Syria thanks to the help provided by North Korea, we should reconsider that deal.
Israel recently launched air strikes against a facility in Syria that is alleged to be home to some type of clandestine nuclear program. The Israelis allegedly sent special forces soldiers in to Syria prior to the bombings to retrieve some type of proof that the facility was indeed a nuclear facility.
They showed the proof to President Bush and he gave the go ahead for the air strikes. Now some in his Administration are advising him that the North cannot be trusted in light of these recent events.
According to the article Bush, Rice, and Defense Secretary Gates remain committed to the deal with the North at least for the time being.
By Chris Jones
The Hot Joints
Posts
