I bring this article (1) to No Quarter’s attention because I have noticed the appearance of OBL messages around election time in the past (correct me if I wrong). I do not know if No Quarter bloggers agree but I have pointed out what appears to be a significant difference in the context of the messages from the ’90′s in which OBL demonstrated emphasis on the
protection of the Holy Sites. The current messages of Al Sahab seem more like geopolitical spin i.e. the attempt at tipping of US elections is not, IMO, anything new. What does it mean? Perhaps it is fear-mongering for
political gain from both the Republican Party and Al Qaeda.

(1)

McCain says al Qaeda might try to tip U.S. election
By Steve Holland 1 hour, 14 minutes ago

SPRINGFIELD, Pennsylvania (Reuters) – Republican
presidential candidate John McCain said on Friday he
fears that al Qaeda or another extremist group might
attempt spectacular attacks in Iraq to try to tilt the
U.S. election against him.

McCain, at a town hall meeting in this Philadelphia
suburb, was asked if he had concerns that
anti-American militants in Iraq might ratchet up their
activities in Iraq to try to increase casualties in
September or October and tip the November election
against him.

“Yes, I worry about it,” McCain said. “And I know they
pay attention because of the intercepts we have of
their communications … The hardest thing in warfare
is to counter someone or a group of individuals who
are willing to take their own lives in order to take
others.”

At his campaign event and subsequent news conference,
McCain also criticized U.S. Senate Republicans for not
joining him and 28 other senators in a one-year
moratorium on controversial spending projects, known
as earmarks that benefit specific cities or towns and
that McCain considers wasteful.

The Arizona senator said it showed that his fellow
Republicans were “not responding to the will of the
people.”

The Senate on Thursday night voted 71-29 against the
moratorium. McCain and Democratic presidential
candidates Barack Obama, an Illinois senator, and
Hillary Clinton, a New York senator, all voted for the
legislation.

McCain is a stalwart supporter of President George W.
Bush’s troop build-up in Iraq, while sharply critical
of the way the war was managed until the increase, and
his political fortunes have improved as casualties
have declined in Iraq in recent months.

He disagrees strongly with campaign pledges by Clinton
and Obama to withdraw U.S. troops speedily if either
of them are elected in November.

McCain, soon to depart on a Middle East and Europe
trip with two Senate colleagues, said recent deadly
attacks in Iraq show that al Qaeda in Iraq is not
defeated.

He said is concerned “they might be able to carry out
some spectacular suicide attacks but we do have them
on the run.”

“We have achieved enormous success but they are still
a very viable and tough enemy. There is no doubt in my
mind that the surge is succeeding. Thank God for Gen.
(David) Petraeus, one of the greatest generals in
American history.”

By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent
Thu Mar 13, 8:39 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Chinese sales of assault rifles and other small arms to its ally Sudan have grown rapidly during the Darfur conflict despite a U.N. arms embargo, a human rights group said on Thursday.

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Human Rights First, a U.S.-based nonprofit group, said a detailed study of Sudanese and U.N. trade data showed that China was virtually the sole supplier of small arms to Sudan, which pays for the weapons with its growing oil revenues.

“The people of Sudan’s Darfur region will endure more death, disease and dislocation, and this will be due in no small part to China’s callousness,” said the report, which called on Beijing to stop all arms sales to Sudan and urged the world to link that campaign to the Beijing Olympics.

China bristles at Western criticism that it has not used its influence to press for an end to the bloodshed in Darfur, which the United States has labeled as genocide. It angrily rejects efforts to link its policies to the showcase Beijing Games due to take place this summer.

China sold Sudan $55 million worth of small arms from 2003-2006 and provided 90 percent of Sudan’s small arms since 2004 when a U.N. arms embargo took effect, the report said.

Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles, grenade launchers and ammunition for rifles and heavy machine guns have all flowed into Darfur, said the report.

ACTION AND RHETORIC

Wang Baodong, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said “the conclusions of the report are misleading, and the allegations against the Chinese government are unwarranted.”

“It’s another typical example of a handful of people with political motives trying to vilify the Chinese government and the Beijing Olympic Games,” he said in a written statement.

International experts estimate some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been forced to flee their homes in Darfur since conflict erupted in 2003, when rebels took up arms against the central government. The government has mobilized mainly Arab militias to quell the revolt.

Sudan’s refusal to obey U.N. Security Council resolutions banning arms transfers to Darfur undercut China’s assertions it could not affect Sudan’s behavior there, the group said.

“China can exercise absolute control over its own actions and can stop shipping arms to the Sudanese government which has publicly stated that it will ignore the U.N. arms embargo,” said Betsy Apple, representing the group.

But Human Rights First was not advocating a boycott of the Beijing Olympics as some Darfur activists have called for.

“We believe that China is particularly vulnerable in the lead up to the Olympics, Apple told reporters. “We want to see China’s concrete action that matches its rhetoric.”

by D. Cupples| Our nation invaded Iraq in March 2003. Bush Administration officials gave multiple reasons for wanting to do so, including the claim that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda (and the 9/11 attacks). In September 2003, President Bush — himself — s…

Only 15% of the 600,000 docs were translated as of the start of the report. Were these the only used in this review?

One of the terrorist groups on Saddam’s regular support list (since 1993) was the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (aka Islamic Jihad Organization). If you don’t recognize the name, Zawahiri led EIJ from 1993 until he orchestrated their merger with AQ as we know it today in 1998.

If Saddam was dealing with EIJ in 1993, do we now assume he merely tossed Zawahiri aside after he changed the name of the group affiliation in 1998?

Consider also the documented meetings of Saddam’s regime and Mulla Omar’s Defense Minister, the Maulana Fazlur Rahman, in Nov 1999. The Maulana is now more well known as Pakistan’s JUI-F leader. Since AQ moved it’s hdqtrs from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996, Saddam’s aid to the Taliban in 1999 is an indirect benefit to al Qaeda… harbored by the Taliban. It’s that “direct” word that many miss. All bad guys don’t necessarily have an AQ membership card in their pocket. But they do share the ideology of implementing Shariah/Islamic law by using violence.

Then there’s the report’s documents of Saddam’s interest in Somalia, and training of Sudanese terrorists (among others) in Iraq training camps in 1993. Odd coincidence as AQ trained and equipped the Somalian locals that attacked our troops. Was it AQ Sudanese in the Iraq training camps?

Then there’s that pesky “conclusion” section, pasted here for your convenience:
_______________________

One question remains regarding Iraq’s terrorism capability: Is there anything in the captured archives to indicate that Saddam had the will to use his terrorist capabilities directly against United States? Judging from examples of Saddam’s statements (Extract 34) before the 1991 Gulf War with the United States, the answer is yes.

Extract 34.
[19 April 1990]
“IfAmerica interferes we will strike. You know us, we are not the talkative type who holds the microphone and says things only, we do what we say. Maybe we cannot reach Washington but we can send someone with an explosive belt to reach Washington.”
“We can send people to Washington… a person with explosive belt around him could throw himself on Bush’s car. 107

In the years between the two Gulf Wars, UN sanctions reduced Saddam’s ability to shape regional and world events, steadily draining his military, economic, and military powers. The rise of Islamist fundamentalism in the region gave Saddam the opportunity to make terrorism, one of the few tools remaining in Saddam’s “coercion” toolbox, not only cost effective but a formal instrument of state power. Saddam nurtured this capability with an infrastructure supporting (1) his own particular brand of state terrorism against internal and external threats, (2) the state sponsorship of suicide operations, and (3) organizational relationships and “outreach programs” for terrorist groups.

Evidence that was uncovered and analyzed attests to the existence of a terrorist capability and a willingness to use it until the day Saddam was forced to flee Baghdad by Coalition forces.

____________________

There is just no substitute for bypassing your friendly journalist, and going right for the substance of the report. I see no open and shut case on any issue but that reporters have an aversion to reading.

if you want a copy of the iraqi perspectives project report, you have to request a physical copy of it that they will snail-mail to you.

here’s their web contact/request form to leave your name and address at:
http://www.jwfc.jfcom.mil/webapps/forms/USJFCOM/feedback.jsp

Right?

Reading your post seemed similar to reading about the impending mortgage crisis, back in 2003.

A lot of people saw it coming, but the herd refused to see.

And here we are.

Citigroup is in the shadows of it’s own collateral?
A lot to digest, Mr.M,

Oh yeah, and how about Jordan? Still playing the phoney game. It just released a terrorist who claims he was in prison with Zarqawi, ha ha ha ha. Notice the British Jordanian King has never said one word publicly about his most famous subject. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Ya got THAT right — and especially the picture of the phoney terrorist that was included in Powell’s little slide show.

Then we let them boost the price of oil to pay for their buying our banks, bend over, and say “Thank you sir, may I have another?”

Others note that Cheney is on his way to Saudi Arabia at the same time.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney leaves on Sunday for the Middle East where he will try to push Israeli-Palestinian peace talks forward and raise U.S. concerns about record-high oil prices, the White House said.

Cheney will visit Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank, Turkey and Oman in a trip expected to last about a week or more, his office said on Monday.

http://today.reuters.fr/news/default.aspx
Ruth at cabdrollery adds:

Oil prices are a large factor in the increasing distress in U.S. finances, and are only going up. The worst administration in U.S. history has failed even to slow the price gouging by its buddies in the Middle East, even with all the handholding with Saudi princes. The recent visit by the cretin in chief himself produced lots of pictures with sabres, but the oil prices are increasingly punitive.
Further, the wealth in oil-rich nations’ hands is now more valuable than the banks’ assets.

http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/2008/03/cheney-seeks-piece-in-middle-east.html

Some foreign affairs money was slashed by the Senate as well. A shot across the bow, or a concession to go forward with the larger 200 billion bailout?

Gates gives his own shot across the bow on that item also.

“Now, I am well aware that having a sitting Secretary of Defense travel halfway across the country to make a pitch to increase the budget of other agencies might fit into the category of “man bites dog” – or for some back in the Pentagon, “blasphemy.” It is certainly not an easy sell politically. And don’t get me wrong, I’ll be asking for yet more money for Defense next year.

“Still, I hear all the time from the senior leadership of our Armed Forces about how important these civilian capabilities are. In fact, when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen was Chief of Naval Operations, he once said he’d hand a part of his budget to the State Department “in a heartbeat,” assuming it was spent in the right place.”

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2008/03/smart_power_vot/

This isn’t a case of wag the dog, but we’ve heard about “dog bites man” stories elsewhere in the news in big ways, have we turned the corner on “man bites dog” and still stayed the course, as determined by Cheney?

The price is even more than the 200 billion offset of Iraqi investment from oil proceeds to our banks and out similarly schedule of foreign aid packages, we’ve posted as another taxpayer IOU this week, and far more than the 2 billion sneeze in budget cutting done as a Dutch Boy effort to stop the flood of corruption at the wall of the levee. Ruth goes on to conclude how precarious a position USA banks are and the extent to which they’re compromised by the same war industry and foreign policy machinations by using another story excerpt:

Sovereign wealth fund assets may soon surpass total official foreign reserves held by central banks and become the main vehicle for capital investment, a Morgan Stanley economist said on Tuesday.

The investment funds — large pools of capital controlled by a government and invested in private markets abroad – altogether control more than $2.8 trillion, but could reach $12 trillion in total assets by 2015, Morgan Stanley managing director Stephen Jen said in a conference call.

“The rate of growth is impressive. We are talking here of about $1 trillion per year in their asset pool, generated mainly by a boom in oil prices and other commodities,” he said.

Wag the wag.

We’re propping the dollar and the subprime off the big shitpile with bank money from abroad buying ours out, and paying record fuel prices to do so so we buy back what they pay in and are left with twice the debt.

Keep in mind, Morgan Stanley and others in the loan industry tend to be optimistic beyond some realistic bounds, judging by recent market trends.

Finally, on oil pricing, this isn’t a classical supply demand curve we’re talking about. Both are entirely compromised by peak oil, and despite inflexible pricing the returns aren’t so on dollar value. So, pegging the dollar to oil(which gold itself pegs to, on market assumptions)does not return the same value as its parallel indicators past certain volumes.

This is additionally undermined by said budgetary flips on State and mercantile/reserve policies currently underway.

Black holes don’t exist just in theory. Someone point the telescopes Wall Street’s way, the State Dep’t could use some oversight also.

That’s not the sound of one hand clapping the market that you hear, it’s the tail being wagged for the sake of wagging. Exuberance makes the world go round on money and media matters. In think tanks this could be construed as being wonkish. We’ll save that term’s purity of essence for really serious people, not the mad liberals and uncivil bloggers.

I thought another aspect of Strobel’s report involved the definate dupery (yes, a Scrabble word) of Colin Powell: “Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell cited multiple linkages between Saddam and al Qaida in a watershed February 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council to build international support for the invasion. Almost every one of the examples Powell cited turned out to be based on bogus or misinterpreted intelligence.”