Introduction of Real Islam Brings Real Honor Killings, Real Mass-Murder to Russia

from Winds of Jihad

Russia Jihad:

Chechen leader imposes “strict brand of Islam”

Chechnya will be Russia’s “safest place”, Ramzan claims
The Associated Press

Saturday, February 28, 2009 Sharia

GROZNY, Russia: The bullnecked president of Chechnya emerged from afternoon prayers at the mosque and with chilling composure explained why seven young women who had been shot in the head deserved to die. Ramzan Kadyrov said the women, whose bodies were found dumped by the roadside, had “loose morals” and were rightfully shot by male relatives in honor killings.

“If a woman runs around and if a man runs around with her, both of them are killed,” Kadyrov told journalists in the capital of this Russian republic.

The brutal biography of Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov

Ramzan Kadyrov, 31, in front of his presidential residence in Gudermes, has been Chechnya’s leader for a year. During that time, he has managed to silence dissent, pacify the Russian republic and embark on a massive reconstruction campaign.

The young president has silenced dissent, pacified the Russian republic and embarked on a massive reconstruction campaign. His critics are hard to find, because they have a habit of disappearing.

* Chechen president to inaugurate ‘largest mosque in Europe’

* Muslim women ‘face crisis over violence’

The 32-year-old former militia leader is carrying out a campaign to impose Islamic values and strengthen the traditional customs of predominantly Muslim Chechnya, in an effort to blunt the appeal of hardline Islamic separatists and shore up his power. In doing so, critics say, he is setting up a dictatorship where Russian laws do not apply.

Some in Russia say Kadyrov’s attempt to create an Islamic society violates the Russian constitution, which guarantees equal rights for women and a separation of church and state. But the Kremlin has given him its staunch backing, seeing him as the key to keeping the separatists in check, and that has allowed him to impose his will.

“Kadyrov willfully tries to increase the influence of local customs over the life of the republic because this makes him the absolute ruler of the republic,” said Yulia Latynina, a political analyst in Moscow.

Kadyrov’s bluster shows how confident he is of his position. “No one can tell us not to be Muslims,” he said outside the mosque. “If anyone says I cannot be a Muslim, he is my enemy.”

Few dare to challenge Kadyrov’s rule in this southern Russian region of more than a million people, which is only now emerging from the devastation of two wars in the past 15 years. The fighting between Islamic separatists and Russian troops, compounded by atrocities on both sides, claimed tens of thousands of lives and terrorized civilians.

Kadyrov describes women as the property of their husbands and says their main role is to bear children. He encourages men to take more than one wife, even though polygamy is illegal in Russia. Women and girls are now required to wear headscarves in all schools, universities and government offices.

Some Chechen women say they support or at least accept Kadyrov’s strict new guidelines.

“Headscarves make a woman beautiful,” said Zulikhan Nakayeva, a medical student whose long dark hair flowed out from under her head covering, her big brown eyes accentuated by mascara.

But many chafe under the restrictions.

“How do women live in Chechnya? They live as the men say,” said Taisiya, 20, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of retribution. She was not wearing a headscarf while shopping in central Grozny, which she said was her way of protesting.

Dead Terrorist Remembered: Bin Laden’s man in Chechnya

* Politician, warlord, terrorist … the death of Shamil Basayev did not bring peace to his Caucasian homeland.

Most women now wear headscarves in public, though the scarves rarely fully cover their hair and in some cases are little more than colorful silk headbands. Women who go out without a headscarf tend to tuck one into their bag for use where headscarves are required.

Many people suspect Kadyrov is branding the seven late November slayings honor killings to advance his political agenda. He said the women were planning to go abroad to work as prostitutes, but their relatives found out about it and killed them.

Few Chechens believe that.

“If women are killed according to tradition then it is done very secretly to prevent too many people from finding out that someone in the family behaved incorrectly,” said Natalya Estemirova, a prominent human rights activist in Grozny.

Estemirova said two of the women were married, with two children each. Their husbands held large funerals and buried them in the family plot, which would not have happened if the women had disgraced their families, she said.

Kadyrov’s version also has been contradicted by federal prosecutors in Moscow, who have concluded relatives were not involved. No arrests have been made and the investigation is continuing. Kadyrov’s office refused to comment on the investigators’ conclusion.

The Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that some of the women worked in brothels frequented by Kadyrov’s men. Many Chechens say they suspect the women were killed in a police operation. The truth of the killings may never be known, given how much Kadyrov is feared.

Rights activists fear that Kadyrov’s approval of honor killings may encourage men to carry them out. Honor killings are considered part of Chechen tradition. No records are kept, but human rights activists estimate dozens of women are killed every year.

* Mufti wants to boycott Holland over movie, but isn’t sure which one…

however, when an Interfax correspondent asked the author to specify what film he opposes, he was at a loss and repeated it was about the Prophet’s wives.

“What the president says is law,” said Gistam Sakaeva, a Chechen activist who works to defend women’s rights. “Because the president said this, many will try to gain his favor by killing someone, even if there is no reason.”

Sakaeva also said she worried that Chechen authorities would now be less willing to prosecute men suspected of killing women.

Kadyrov inherited his position from his father, Akhmad Kadyrov, a Muslim cleric and former rebel commander who fought the Russians during Chechnya’s war of independence in 1994-1996. Shortly after war broke out again in 1999, the elder Kadyrov switched sides and brought Chechnya back into Moscow’s fold.

Ramzan Kadyrov worked as the head of his father’s security force, which was accused of kidnapping, sadistic torture and murder. After Akhmad Kadyrov was killed by a terrorist bomb in 2004, power passed to his son.

Vladimir Putin, then president and now prime minister, embraced the younger Kadyrov, who has succeeded in ending a wave of terror attacks that haunted the early years of Putin’s presidency. But as Kadyrov has consolidated his power, many of his critics and political rivals have been killed. Some have been gunned down on the streets of Moscow, including journalist Anna Politkovskaya, whose death in 2006 shocked the world.

In one of the most recent killings, a Chechen who had accused Kadyrov of personally torturing him was shot last month as he walked out of a grocery store in Vienna, Austria.

Kadyrov has denied any involvement in the killings.

The Kremlin appears willing to continue allowing Kadyrov to rule as he wishes, as long as he prevents another outbreak of violence. And Kadyrov has won the grudging respect of many Chechens for bringing a measure of peace and stability.

“People want to believe that things are getting better,” said Sakaeva. “They are tired of war.”

****

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Pamela has more:

UN’s Yakin Erturk: “In these countries, those who speak on behalf of Islam still justify things like stoning or killing a woman for this or that reason as being part of their religion. I have heard this at the most official of levels”. (more here)

You know these Muslims ….. they took a whole school hostage near Chechnya turned and massacred hundreds of children and adults.

Paul Harvey 1918 -- 2009

(Compiler's note: A national treasure has gone the way of all the earth. I'm still stunned in learning of Mr. Harvey's death. Like others in this great nation, I grew up glued to the radio when his radio show came on. Although I never met Paul Harvey, I count him as a friend and I will miss him greatly. "Paul Harvey was one of the most gifted and beloved broadcasters in our nation's history," so says ABC Radio Networks President Jim Robinson -- and I agree. I also know that Paul Harvey is happy to once again be in the company of his wife Angel who preceded him in death. "Good day" and goodbye.)

this article is from the blog "In From the Cold"

Paul Harvey has died.

And radio will never be the same.

The legendary broadcaster, whose delivered radio newscasts in a style that was uniquely his own for more than 50 years, died Saturday in a Phoenix hosptial. He was 90.

ABC Radio, which carried Mr. Harvey's broadcasts for almost 60 years announced his passing last night. Network President Jim Robinson described the radio icon as "one of the most gifted and beloved broadcasters" in our nation's history, a voice that "became a trusted friend in American households."

Former President George W. Bush praised Harvey for his commentary that "entertained, enlightened and informed." Paul Harvey received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Mr. Bush in 2005. Mr. Harvey is one of only two radio journalists to win the nation's highest civilian award; the other was Lowell Thomas.

But such accolades don't begin to capture the man--or his legacy. Harvey was fond of saying that he "grew up in radio newsrooms," beginning in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Originally hired as a station janitor at KVOO, he was eventually allowed to read commercials and handle other on-air assignments.

By 1940, he had moved to St. Louis, working as roving reporter for KXOK. One day, a young school teacher named Lynne Cooper came to the station for a news program. Harvey met her and was instantly smitten. Inviting her to dinner, he proposed after only a few minutes of conversation. She finally said "yes" a year later.

The relationship between Mr. Harvey and his "Angel" was more than a marriage. It was a full partnership that had an enormous impact on both his career and the future of American broadcasting. Bruce DeMont, director of Chicago's Musem of Broadcasting, notes that Lynne Harvey played a major role in her husband's succeess. She was his producer for many years and developed ideas that became trademark radio shows, including the highly succesful "Rest of the Story."

In 1944, it was Mrs. Harvey who suggested a move to Chicago, after her husband's discharge from the Army Air Corps. It was a bold (and risky) move. In those days, Chicago was home to scores of radio programs and the networks maintained extensive broadcast facilities in the city. Chicago represented the big time for an aspiring broadcaster, success was anything but assured.

Mr. Harvey later remembered the city had "hundreds" of unemployed announcers when he arrived. As an outsider--competing against more established talent--he faced long odds.
But he soon found employment, hosting a jobs show for returning military personnel on Chicago's WENR (now WLS).

Hoping to capitalize on his growing popularity, the station soon offered him a newscast. Despite intense competition from other stations, Harvey's wife urged him to take the 10 p.m. slot. It proved to be a fortuitous decision; within months, his program was the number one newscast in Chicago, and Mr. Harvey was on his way.

During those late-night broadcasts, Harvey perfected a unique, personal delivery style that was vastly different from other radio news programs. During that era, news broadcasts were often delivered by staff announcers, reading wire service copy in a "voice of doom" baritone.

Mr. Harvey preferred to write his own scripts, in a folksy conversational tone that captured--no, commanded--the audience's attention. Decades before there was "appointment TV," Paul Harvey's broadcasts became "appointment radio." Three times a day, kitchens, garages, offices, dorm rooms and workshops across America fell silent, as listeners tuned in for his morning or noon newscast, or "The Rest of the Story," which typically aired in the late afternoon.

What they heard was a masterful blend of radio performance and the written word. His broadcast opening (Hello Americans, this is Paul Harvey...stand by for news!) and closing (Paul Harvey...Good Day) became part of the cultural landscape and he's credited with adding such terms as "Reganomics" and "skyjacker" to the lexicon.

More amazingly, Mr. Harvey remained at the top of a fickle business for more than 60 years. ABC began carrying his broadcasts nationally in 1951 and Harvey remained the network's biggest--and most profitable--star until his death. He signed his last contract with the network at age 80, for a reported $10 million a year. Paul Harvey earned millions more from books, speaking fees and a syndicated TV commentary that aired for years on stations around the country.

Yet he remained a modest, unassuming man, by most accounts. As a celebrity, he was practically invisible. Aside from an occasions awards dinner or industry function, Mr. Harvey was rarely seen on the social circuit. Away from the microphone, he spent most of his time with his wife and son (Paul Jr.), best known as the writer for The Rest of the Story, and the announcer heard at the beginning and end of his father's newscasts.

Harvey was not without his critics. Decades before Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity hit the airwaves, Paul Harvey was assailed for his unabashed conservatism. Others claimed that he wasn't really a journalist because he read commercials for his sponsors.

In response, Mr. Harvey said that he was "fiercely loyal to those who put their money where my mouth is," and noted the clear divide between the news and advertising on his programs. "And now, page two," was the trademark segue to the first commercial break. Always taking the high road with critics, Harvey never complained that other newscasters--most notably Charles Osgood of CBS--were never faulted for reading their commercials.

Paul Harvey's life was also remarkably free of scandal, despite his years in the public spotlight. He reportedly received a less-than-honorable discharge from the Air Corps (reportedly for taking a plane for a joyride), but that incident was quickly forgotten. In the early 1950s, he was arrested after climbing over the fence of a Chicago nuclear plant, checking out a tip about a security breach at the facility. After that, Harvey's name rarely appered in the headlines, save announcements of his latest ratings triumph, or some sort of industry award.

Toward the end of his life, that remarkable voice began to lose some of its resonance and health issues forced him to miss more days of work. But there was still magic in that staccato style, impecably turned phrases and those perfect pauses that drew listeners even closer to the radio --and the man behind the microphone.

In a medium often defined by imitation, Paul Harvey was an original. We will never see his likes again. He is already missed.

Islamic hate-preacher gets OK to march in London calling for the implementation of sharia

Out to "emulate the Prophet"

"The startling move comes just days after processions celebrating St George were banned for being racist" and "despite a previous demonstration in which some of his supporters chanted: 'Bomb the UK.'" All in the name of "diversity."

"Hate preacher get OK to run sharia law demo," by Tom Savage and Ross Kaniuk for the Daily Star, February 28:

HATE preacher Anjem Choudary will march in London today calling for Britain to adopt Islamic Sharia law.

The startling move comes just days after processions celebrating St George were banned for being racist.

Choudary was given the green light yesterday despite a previous demonstration in which some of his supporters chanted: “Bomb the UK”.

Publicity for the march, in the East End, carries 41-year-old Choudary’s personal mobile number and says the aim of the campaign is to “emulate the Prophet and his companions, by calling for Islam and speaking out against the oppression of man-made law”.

Bet Choudary can't wait till his band of muhajirun's becomes strong enough, so he can begin emulating Muhammad's Medinan phase, that is, full blown jihad -- complete with British plunder and concubines. Too bad for him, though: he probably has to wait a few more years for that to be possible.

It says that Britain is full of “disbelievers” who are involved in prostitution, gambling, alcoholism and worshipping other gods.

The publicity says women are welcome to join the march but they must walk at the back of the procession as “strict segregation will be enforced”.

The demo comes 18 months after three of Choudary’s supporters were jailed for soliciting murder in a London protest against cartoons of the prophet Mohammed published in Denmark.

That was when some demonstrators chanted “Bomb the UK” and “Europe, you will pay with your blood”. Organiser Choudary was fined.

Today’s march won permission after a council withdrew funding for a St George’s Day parade in the Midlands – on the grounds that it was “racist”.

Parade founder Mark Cowles, 40, of West Bromwich, said yesterday: “I can’t believe Choudary’s event can go ahead.

“The British establishment is trying to take away the British voice but other cultures choose to force their way of life on us.”

A Strategy for Afghanistan

By Henry A. Kissinger

The Obama administration faces dilemmas familiar to several of its predecessors. America cannot withdraw from Afghanistan now, but neither can it sustain the strategy that brought us to this point.

The stakes are high. Victory for the Taliban in Afghanistan would give a tremendous shot in the arm to jihadism globally -- threatening Pakistan with jihadist takeover and possibly intensifying terrorism in India, which has the world's third-largest Muslim population. Russia, China and Indonesia, which have all been targets of jihadist Islam, could also be at risk.

Heretofore, America has pursued traditional anti-insurgency tactics: to create a central government, help it extend its authority over the entire country and, in the process, bring about a modern bureaucratic and democratic society.

That strategy cannot succeed in Afghanistan -- especially not as an essentially solitary effort. The country is too large, the territory too forbidding, the ethnic composition too varied, the population too heavily armed. No foreign conqueror has ever succeeded in occupying Afghanistan. Even attempts to establish centralized Afghan control have rarely succeeded and then not for long. Afghans seem to define their country in terms of a common dedication to independence but not to unitary or centralized self-government.

The truism that the war is, in effect, a battle for the hearts and minds of the Afghan population is valid enough in concept. The low standard of living of much of the population has been exacerbated by 30 years of civil war. The economy is on the verge of sustaining itself through the sale of narcotics. There is no significant democratic tradition. Reform is a moral necessity. But the time scale for reform is out of sync with the requirements of anti-guerrilla warfare. Reform will require decades; it should occur as a result of, and even side by side with, the attainment of security -- but it cannot be the precondition for it.

The military effort will inevitably unfold at a pace different from the country's political evolution. Immediately, however, we are able to make sure that our aid efforts, now diffuse and inefficient, are coherent and relevant to popular needs. And much greater emphasis should be given to local and regional entities.

Military strategy should concentrate on preventing the emergence of a coherent, contiguous state within the state controlled by jihadists. In practice, this would mean control of Kabul and the Pashtun area. A jihadist base area on both sides of the mountainous Afghan-Pakistani border would become a permanent threat to hopes for a moderate evolution and to all of Afghanistan's neighbors. Gen. David Petraeus has argued that, reinforced by the number of American forces he has recommended, he should be able to control the 10 percent of Afghan territory where, in his words, 80 percent of the military threat originates. This is the region where the "clear, hold and build" strategy that had success in Iraq is particularly applicable.

In the rest of the country, our military strategy should be more fluid, aimed at forestalling the emergence of terrorist strong points. It should be based on close cooperation with local chiefs and coordination with their militias to be trained by U.S. forces -- the kind of strategy that proved so successful in Anbar province, the Sunni stronghold in Iraq. This is a plausible approach, though it seems improbable that the 17,000 reinforcements President Obama recently committed are enough. In the end, the fundamental issue is not so much how the war will be conducted but how it will be ended. Afghanistan is almost the archetypal international problem requiring a multilateral solution for a political framework to emerge. In the 19th century, formal neutrality was sometimes negotiated to impose a standstill on interventions in and from strategically located countries. This provided a framework for defusing day-to-day international relations. (Belgian neutrality, for example, was not challenged for nearly 100 years.) Is it possible to devise a modern equivalent?

In Afghanistan, such an outcome is achievable only if its principal neighbors agree on a policy of restraint and opposition to terrorism. Their recent conduct argues against such prospects. Yet history should teach them that unilateral efforts at dominance are likely to fail in the face of countervailing intervention by other outside actors. To explore such a vision, the United States should propose a working group of Afghanistan's neighbors, India and the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Such a group should be charged with assisting in the reconstruction and reform of Afghanistan and establishing principles for the country's international status and obligations to oppose terrorist activities. Over time, America's unilateral military efforts can merge with the diplomatic efforts of this group. As the strategy envisaged by Petraeus succeeds, the prospects for a political solution along these lines would grow correspondingly.

The precondition for such a policy is cooperation with Russia and Pakistan. With respect to Russia, it requires a clear definition of priorities, especially a choice between partnership or adversarial conduct insofar as it depends on us.

The conduct of Pakistan will be crucial. Pakistan's leaders must face the fact that continued toleration of the sanctuaries -- or continued impotence with respect to them -- will draw their country ever deeper into an international maelstrom. If the jihadists were to prevail in Afghanistan, Pakistan would surely be the next target -- as is observable by activity already taking place along the existing borders and in the Swat Valley close to Islamabad. If that were to happen, the affected countries would need to consult each other about the implications of the nuclear arsenal of a Pakistan being engulfed or even threatened by jihadists. Like every country engaged in Afghanistan, Pakistan has to make decisions that will affect its international position for decades.

Other countries, especially our NATO allies, face comparable choices. Symbolically, the participation of NATO partners is significant. But save for some notable exceptions, public support for military operations is negligible in almost all NATO countries. It is possible, of course, that Obama's popularity in Europe can modify these attitudes -- but probably to only a limited extent. The president would have to decide how far he will carry the inevitable differences and face the reality that disagreements concern fundamental questions of NATO's future and reach. Improved consultation would ease this process. It is likely to turn out, however, that the differences are not procedural. We may then conclude that an enhanced NATO contribution to Afghanistan's reconstruction is more useful than a marginal military effort constrained by caveats. But if NATO turns into an alliance a la carte in this manner, a precedent that can cut both ways would be set. Those who tempt a U.S. withdrawal by their indifference or irresolution evade the prospect that it would be the prelude to a long series of accelerating and escalating crises.

President Obama said Tuesday night that he "will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens halfway around the world." Whatever strategy his team selects needs to be pursued with determination. It is not possible to hedge against failure by half-hearted execution.

Carlos the Jackal to Obama: Help me find terrorist pal

(Compiler's note: Here we have a small window into the mind of a terrorist)

By Jay Baggett

Letter: 'As your grandfather would have said, Mr. President, Allahu akbar – God is great!'

Carlos the Jackal

Emboldened by President Barack Obama's announcement he will close the Guantanamo facility housing suspected terrorists, one of the most notorious leftist terrorists of the 1970s and 1980s has written the president, asking him for help in finding a "former comrade-in-arms" missing for 14 years, and closing his letter with "Allahu akbar! ... yours in revolution."

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez – aka Carlos the Jackal – penned his letter to Obama from the Paris prison where he is serving a life sentence for the murder of two French agents and an informer, and for a series of deadly bomb attacks in Paris and on French trains, the Glasgow Sunday Herald reported today.

"Mister President, Your decision to close secret CIA jails, honors you," Carlos began before raising the issue of Bruno Breguet, a Swiss national who served as his right-hand man.

The letter continued:

Our comrade Bruno Breguet, a Swiss citizen, was abducted on 11th November 1995 from a ferry-boat between Italy and Greece, in a special operation with NATO naval support.

We pray you to have Bruno released.

We were informed, unofficially, that Bruno died accidentally during interrogation at a U.S. base in the south of Hungary.

Breguet, born in 1950, served 7 years of a 15-year sentence in the 1970s for bringing explosives into Israel to blow up a high rise in Tel Aviv on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. While Israel refused to release him in response to PFLP demands during the hijacking of several airliners to Jordan in September 1970, the Jewish state pardoned him in 1977 following a "humanitarian campaign" led by numerous intellectuals, including Jean-Paul Sarte, Simone de Beauvoir and Noam Chomsky.

In 1982, Breguet was arrested by Paris police, along with Carlos' wife, for transporting explosives and attempting to shoot a police officer. The gun misfired. The arrests and subsequent prosecution were met with a reign of terror orchestrated by the Venezuela-born Carlos, who was supported by the Soviet KGB and other Eastern European communist secret services.

In the months that followed, eight deadly attacks were launched on French targets after France refused to release his wife and Breguet. Twenty people were killed and many more injured.

Bruno Breguet

Breguet, who was convicted, received early release in 1985 and returned to Switzerland where, by all accounts, he lived a quiet life. Carlos was sentenced to life in absentia in 1992 by France for his terror attacks and captured in Sudan in 1994. He was returned to Paris and has been in prison since.

Breguet disappeared in November 1995 after traveling from Greece to Italy by ferry. Italian authorities refused him entry and returned him on the same boat. He was not seen again.

Rumors of Breguet's fate abound: He was taken by NATO naval commandos from the ferry and moved to Hungary where he died during interrogation. Hungary denies any rendition occured on its soil. He was arrested by Greek authorities, a claim denied by Greece's interior minister three months after the disappearance. A Hungarian paper reported rumors that Breguet was killed by Carlos' associates after he expressed his intention to break all ties to his former comrades. A body found partially encased in concrete in a Greek village near Albania and Italy in 2001 raised false hopes among authorities they had solved the mystery.

Carlos the Jackal ... captured

Carlos' 2003 book, "Revolutionary Islam" called on "all revolutionaries, including those of the left, even atheists," to accept the leadership of Islamists such as Osama bin Laden in order to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into "graveyards of American imperialism."

"Only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy the United States," the communist revolutionary and convert to Islam wrote in his book.

His Islamic worldview was reflected in the letter to Obama, where he referred to Breguet as a "martyr":

If Bruno truly is dead, we need his body back, so his relatives, friends and comrades, may mourn in neutral Switzerland, this hero of the Palestinian cause, and his eternal soul join our martyrs in heaven.

Carlos concluded by reminding the president of his own Muslim grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, who converted to Islam in the 1950s after having been imprisoned and tortured in Kenya by the British during the Mau Mau rebellion.

I pray God Almighty that one day the peoples of our continent, free at last, may shout with one voice: "God bless our America! And as your Luo grandfather would say: ALLAHU AKBAR!

I remain, Mister President, yours in revolution, "Carlos".

Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, join more than 300,000 others and sign up now!

Fitzgerald: Building That Bridge Over The River Kwai, Or, Why Are We In Afghanistan?

(Compiler's note: Hugh understands and had thus written this must read article)

from Hugh @ Jihad Watch

The very idea that because Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, Afghanistan has a special, irreplaceable importance in the "war against terrorism," is false.

In the first place, the fact that Al Qaeda found Afghanistan under the Taliban (a Taliban nurtured by an American-supported Pakistan, and recognized by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) useful does not mean that Al Qaeda can only regroup in Afghanistan. The terrorist attacks in London were not hatched by those trained in Afghanistan, but by people living in, raised in, Great Britain. Those who bombed the Atocha station in Madrid were not from Afghanistan. Those who killed Pim Fortuyn (a weak-minded Dutchman put up to it by Muslims) and Theo van Gogh were not trained in Afghanistan. The Chechens who seized the theatre in Moscow, or the school in Beslan, were not trained in Afghanistan. Anywhere there are Muslims, ready to participate in Jihad through violence, they will be able to find sufficient weaponry and bombs. Afghanistan is being endowed with a significance it does not possess.

In the second place, the very idea that Americans and other NATO troops must be sent in large numbers to pacify Afghanistan, a vast country, remote from Western bases, difficult to get in and out of (just look at the sums demanded by Kyrgyzstan for the continued use of an airbase), and that requires the collaboration of another meretricious Muslim state that is actually far more hideous and dangerous than Afghanistan itself, Pakistan, is nonsense. Afghanistan, or rather the various ethnic groups within it, can be controlled, or at least the threat coming from them can be managed from afar. The very idea that the only choice is ever-increasing numbers of American troops, and ever more billions poured into Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries on earth, on the theory that Muslim hearts, if they are not with the Taliban, are therefore accessible and winnable, is absurd.

Here and there, just as in Iraq, some locals will prefer to use the Americans, and to temporarily curry favor with them out of self-interest -- that is, out of a desire for American weaponry, supplies, and money. In Afghanistan, local groups and even individual warlords, and Karzai himself, have proven adept at leading the Americans by the nose for quite a while, just as the Pakistani military has managed to do for decades, and as the Al-Saud have done in presenting themselves as not the most dangerous enemies of Infidels, but as "America's staunch ally."

The United States has squandered at least two trillion dollars in Iraq. What is the result? Possibly, a state, and an army, that consists mainly of Muslim Arabs (the Kurds are slowly being squeezed out, and Maliki's "outreach to the Sunni Arabs" will be, predictably, at the expense of the non-Arab Kurds), one that possibly will not be quite as ostentatiously aggressive as was the state run by that obviously hideous despot Saddam Hussein. But so what? How does this improve the Infidel position in the world? What has been accomplished, or could possibly be accomplished, to weaken the hold of Islam on the minds of men in Afghanistan? Nothing at all.

We, the Infidel Americans, have managed or may have managed to hold Iraq together a bit longer by doing everything we could to prevent the fissures, sectarian and ethnic, from leading to open and large-scale hostilities. And we, those American Infidels, were further kindly allowed by the local Arabs and Muslims to spend nearly two trillion dollars on this effort at a time when it is now recognized that economic warfare, and economic damage, is a key weapon in the jihadist arsenal. This remains true whether that damage is inflicted from without or self-inflicted by the assumption of responsibilities that make no geopolitical sense. And every dollar spent on Iraq, on Egypt, on Pakistan, on Afghanistan, on Jordan, on the "Palestinians," represents a transfer of wealth from Infidels to Muslims, one that goes beyond the trillions in unmerited oil revenues the Arabs and Muslims have received.

We have spent that money, and have received, and will receive, no gratitude in return. When Iraq dissolves inevitably into the warring tribes and groups, who will be blamed? America. Americans. And so much of what we spend there, by the way, is on goods (such as oil shipments from Kuwait) and services (contractors, from ditto), that enrich Kuwaitis and Qataris and Bahrainis (when our ships are in), so that we are propping up all of these statelets and peoples who are not and cannot ever be our friends, but who in the end will use and abuse us every which way. And they will do this while we spend time trying to figure out what makes them tick, when what makes them tick are the texts, the tenets, the attitudes, the atmospherics, of Islam.

Tarbaby Iraq is about to be followed by Tarbaby Afghanistan. The military men involved focus on the immediate task at hand. They do not have time to study, or so they think, the texts, the ideology, of Islam. They do not have time, or do not have the inclination, to think beyond the immediate theatres of war -- war understood only in the military sense, or at least in the sense of either making war or "winning hearts and minds" of combatants -- in Iraq and now Afghanistan. Do you think General Petraeus, General Odierno, General McKiernan, has stopped to consider what is happening in Western Europe? Do you think they understand that there many ways to conduct Jihad, and that deployment of the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest (already showing its effects on the fear displayed by many in the political and media elites of Western Europe, determined to appease Muslims and meet their demands on so many levels), is a much greater threat to the United States and to the civilization of the West than any conceivable outcome in remote and impoverished Afghanistan, or in Iraq?

Local entanglements of course inevitably engender human sympathies -- sympathies, say, by the American officers for this or that local gunga-dinnish figure, who seems -- and in a certain sense may be -- appealing. But policy should not be based on that kind of sentimentality, and on a handful of local exceptions. We need to weaken the Camp of Islam and Jihad. And we need to do this without unduly squandering men, money, materiel, and morale. Propping up Afghanistan has to come to an end. Instead, officials should be soberly, coldly, even ruthlessly, deciding to manage the situation from afar, through help given to now this, and now to that, local group whose interests temporarily coincide with ours. They should be stopping all this wasteful "construction" that earns no gratitude, and merely rescues Muslims from the obvious consequences of inshallah-fatalism.

The logic of events will in the end require this realization. But how long will it take? Another few years? It ought to have been understood long ago, and would have been, if those making policy had understood, had allowed themselves to study, the meaning, and the menace, of Islam.

In the end, if Obama wishes to staunch the flow of American lives and money, he will have to pull out of Afghanistan and adopt what is suggested here. But he can protect himself from criticism on the right only by adopting, as well, the rationale offered here: pull out of Afghanistan not because Islam, and Muslims, are no threat, but precisely because they are. And resolve never to help them out of their problems, but to allow their political, economic, social, intellectual and moral failures to be on obvious display, not least to themselves. If Infidels, or a sufficient number of them, grasp the connection between the nature of Islam and the failures of Muslim states and societies, then Muslims themselves will have to begin at least to attempt to answer the argument that insists upon that connection. And in so doing, the most advanced Muslims will have to admit, to themselves if not to Infidels, that in fact Islam does explain those failures.

It explains the natural tendency toward despotism of Muslim lands, for the political theory of Islam is not one that pays attention to the will expressed by the people, but rather to the will expressed by Allah. Islam does explain, through its inshallah-fatalism, the economic paralysis, does explain the mistreatment of women and of all non-Muslims, does explain Islam as a vehicle for Arab cultural and linguistic imperialism, does explain the stunting of mental growth among those who are taught to regard themselves as merely "slaves of Allah" in a collectivist Total Belief-System, and discouraged from the kind of free and skeptical inquiry without which no progress in anything can be achieved. Infidels cannot undo all this by rescuing Iraqis, or Afghanis, from the consequences of Islam itself.

They may do so, just possibly, by removing themselves from Muslim countries, keeping Muslims from acquiring the kind of weaponry that can inflict great damage, and halting Muslim immigration to non-Muslim lands while working to reverse as much as possible the aggressive Muslim presence already achieved in those lands, through a fit of criminal negligence by our ignorant-of-Islam elites. This is the way, the only way, to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam. Winning hearts and minds cannot be done, and those who think they can do so with armies, expensively maintained in the wilds of Afghanistan, are committing folly upon folly.

In their inattention to the real context, and their monomaniacal attention to the immediate task at hand -- the wrong task, undertaken for the wrong reasons -- they all remind one of Alec Guinness, as Colonel Bogey, building that bridge, urging his men to do more and more and more, and forgetting, in his mad attention to that bridge, that he is actually building it for the Japanese, helping them in their war effort. And that is exactly what some, both in the military and in the civilian part of our government, appear to be doing: overlooking the larger picture, the only picture that counts.

Intel chiefs face renewed torture claims

The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin

LONDON – Top leaders in the United Kingdom are demanding answers to claims that agents from both of Britain's intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, at least knew of the torture of 10 Britons under a CIA program assembled following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

"There is a case that should be answered," Lord Carlisle said after Binyam Mohamed was processed by authorities at the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facility and flown to Britain for release.

"We need to know whether there was any presence, condoning or collusion by UK security officials," Carlisle said.

Officials for MI5 and MI6 are being caught in the crosshairs of the questions, following allegations they colluded with authorities in Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco and possibly Uzbekistan in the torture of the 10 Britons.

Previously, only MI5 was accused of complicity in the torture of Mohamed under the program. Coalition forces have rejected claims that the detention and confinement program constituted torture.

Documents presented in London's High Court recently, however, contain the allegations that the 10 Britons were subjected to torture, which may actually have been carried out by Egyptians or Moroccans.

Now secret files have emerged that name not only MI5 agents but also officers of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, who allegedly "colluded with foreign torturers,"

The allegations have intensified the assertion that the British government is trying to cover up evidence of both intelligence services being engaged in "collusion with security services in foreign countries where torture is rampant."

Physicians: Obama plan will 'shut down hospitals'

By Bob Unruh

Doctors

are forecasting the closure of hospitals and clinics across America and a mass migration of physicians and their assistances to other careers should the Obama administration succeed in its attempt to overrule their rights of conscience.

"Thousands of conscientious and compassionate physicians, nurses, hospitals and clinics currently serve poor women and those who live in medically underserved areas," said David Stevens, CEO of the Christian Medical Association today.

"Many of these professionals and institutions are motivated and guided by longstanding Hippocratic ethics and biblical principles that preclude participation in abortion and other controversial procedures. Infringing on their right to practice medicine according to these life-affirming ethical standards will force them to leave the profession and to shut down the hospitals and clinics," he warned

Stevens was reacting to reports in several newspapers that the Obama administration is moving quickly to rescind a U.S. Department of Health

and Human Services rule that currently protects civil rights and the exercise of conscience in healthcare.

The rule had been adopted under the Bush administration.

"The move to rescind the healthcare provider conscience regulation imperils women's healthcare access, threatens healthcare professionals' freedom to practice medicine according to ethical standards, and exposes the myth of moderation in Obama's abortion policy," he said.

"The Obama administration claims, without offering a shred of statistical evidence, that the regulation has 'created confusion' and will somehow hinder access to healthcare. What can be clearer than not using federal funds to force healthcare professionals to violate longstanding principles of medical ethics like the Hippocratic Oath, which guided medicine for over two millennia?

"The real threat to healthcare access is driving out every healthcare professional who conscientiously practices medicine according to life-affirming ethical standards," Stevens said.

He said that four in 10 of the organization's members "report being pressured to violate ethical standards. Physicians report losing positions and promotions because of their life-affirming views. Residents report losing training privileges because they refuse to do abortions. Medical students report changing career tracks away from obstetrics for fear of pressure to do abortions."

"We hear a lot of rhetoric from abortion advocates about the government not interfering with the physician-patient relationship. Why is this argument no longer employed when the physician and the patient disagree with abortion on demand? It would appear that for all the abortion 'choice' rhetoric, 'choice' is really a one-way street. When it comes to pro-life individuals, abortion choice quickly turns into abortion mandate," Stevens said.

Stevens said Obama's attack on doctors reveals "the myth of their moderation on abortion."

"They have no tolerance for moderate abortion policies like informing parents when their children seek an abortion, banning the essentially infanticidal partial-birth abortions, or protecting the civil rights of healthcare professionals who follow the Hippocratic Oath," Stevens said.

The rule-change plan comes on the heels of Obama's decision to lift the Mexico City policy, which forces taxpayers to support international groups facilitating abortions. Obama also plans to give tax money to the United Nations population program that the U.S. State Department found to have been aiding China's mandatory abortion policy.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Obama's move to demand doctors participate in the abortion industry came earlier today. The report said the move was being made "quietly" even as most of Washington was focusing on the president's budget plan.

WND recently reported on legal challenges to the Bush rule.

Experts for the Alliance Defense Fund and Christian Legal Society then reported they were gearing up to defend three laws that allow medical professionals to follow their conscience and not participate in abortions.

"Medical professionals should not be forced to perform abortions against their conscience," Casey Mattox, litigation counsel with the CLS's Center for Law & Religious Freedom, said at the time.

"Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and their pro-abortion allies are seeking to punish pro-life medical professionals for their beliefs," Mattox said. "Far from arguing for 'choice,' these lawsuits seek to compel health care workers to perform abortions or face dire consequences."

The public-interest legal groups have filed motions to intervene in three separate lawsuits that seek to invalidate a federal law protecting medical professionals from discrimination because they refuse to participate in abortions.

"For over three decades, federal law has prohibited recipients of federal grants from forcing medical professionals to participate in abortions," said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. "The arguments in the lawsuits themselves demonstrate lack of compliance with these laws and the necessity of the regulation they are challenging."

Obama, while a state lawmaker in Illinois, objected to requiring doctors to provide medical care for infants who survive abortions and advocated virtually unlimited abortion on demand.

During his presidential campaign he said he would not want one of his daughters "punished" with a baby.

House Republican Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said the Obama plan "will hurt faith-based health providers and hospitals throughout our nation who are committed to caring for Americans at this critical time. It will also inevitably result in more abortions being performed nationwide."

"It is beginning to look like the administration is intent on enacting [Freedom of Choice Act] incrementally ... through low-key legislative maneuvers and executive orders," Boehner said.

FOCA would overturn all abortion regulations nationwide.

Radio chip coming soon to your driver's license?

By Bob Unruh

Privacy advocates are issuing warnings about a new radio chip plan that ultimately could provide electronic identification for every adult in the U.S. and allow agents to compile attendance lists at anti-government rallies simply by walking through the assembly.

The proposal, which has earned the support of Janet Napolitano, the newly chosen chief of the Department of Homeland Security, would embed radio chips in driver's licenses, or "enhanced driver's licenses."

"Enhanced driver's licenses give confidence that the person holding the card is the person who is supposed to be holding the card, and it's less elaborate than REAL ID," Napolitano said in a Washington Times report.

REAL ID is a plan for a federal identification system standardized across the nation that so alarmed governors many states have adopted formal plans to oppose it. However, a privacy advocate today told WND that the EDLs are many times worse.

Radio talk show host and identity chip expert Katherine Albrecht said REAL ID earned the opposition of Christians because of its resemblance to the biblical "mark of the beast," civil libertarians opposed it for its "big brother" connotations and others worried about identity theft issues with the proposed databases.

"We got rid of the REAL ID program, but [this one] is way more insidious," she said.

Enhanced driver's licenses have built-in radio chips providing an identifying number or information that can be accessed by a remote reading unit while the license is inside a wallet or purse.

The technology already had been implemented in Washington state, where it is promoted as an alternative to a passport for traveling to Canada. So far, the program is optional.

But there are other agreements already approved with Michigan, Vermont, New York and Arizona, and plans are under way in other states, including Texas, she said.

Napolitano, as Arizona's governor, was against the REAL ID, Albrecht said. Now, as chief of Homeland Security, she is suggesting the more aggressive electronic ID of Americans.

"She's coming out and saying, 'OK, OK, OK, you win. We won't do REAL ID. But what we probably ought to do is nationwide enhanced driver's licenses,'" Albrecht told WND.

"They're actually talking about issuing every person a spychip driver's license," she said. "That is the potential problem."

Imagine, she said, going to a First Amendment-protected event, a church or a mosque, or even a gun show or a peace rally.

Katherine Albrecht

"What happens to all those people when a government operator carrying a reading device makes a circuit of the event?" she asked. "They could download all those unique ID numbers and link them."

Participants could find themselves on "watch" lists or their attendance at protests or rallies added to their government "dossier."

She said even if such license programs are run by states, there's virtually no way that the databases would not be linked and accessible to the federal government.

Albrecht said a hint of what is on the agenda was provided recently by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The state's legislature approved a plan banning the government from using any radio chips in any ID documentation.

Schwarzenegger's veto noted he did not want to interfere with any coming or future federal programs for identifying people.

Albrecht's recent guest on her radio program was Michigan State Rep. Paul Opsommer, who said the government appears to be using a national anti-terrorism plan requiring people to document their identities as they enter the United States to promote the technology.

"The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was … just about proving you were a citizen, not that you had to do it by any specific kind of technology," Opsommer said.

But he said, "We are close to the point now that if you don't want RFID in any of your documents that you can't leave the country or get back into it."

Opsommer said his own state sought an exception to the growing federal move toward driver's licenses with an electronic ID chip, and he was told that was "unlikely."

He was told, "They were trying to harmonize these standards with Canada and Mexico [so] it had to apply to everybody. I was absolutely dumbfounded."

WND previously has reported on such chips when hospitals used them to identify newborns, a company desired to embed immigrants with the electronic devices, a government health event showcased them and when Wal-Mart used microchips to track customers.

Albrecht, who has worked on issues involving radio chip implants, REAL-ID, "Spychips" and other devices, provided a platform for Opsommer to talk about drivers licenses that include radio transmitters that provide identity information about the carrier. She is active with the AntiChips.com and SpyChips.com websites.

Opsommer said he's been trying for several years to gain permission for his state to develop its own secure license without a radio chip.

"They have flat out refused, and their reasoning is all about the need for what they call 'facilitative technology,' which they then determined was RFID," he said during the recent interview.

According to the U.S. State Department, which regulates international travel requirements, U.S. citizens now "must show proof of identity and proof of U.S. citizenship when entering the United States from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the countries of the Caribbean by land or seas."

Documentation could be a U.S. passport or other paperwork such as birth certificates or drivers' licenses. But as of this summer, one of the options for returning residents will be an "Enhanced Driver's License."

The rules are being promulgated under the outline of the WHTI, a result of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which requires travelers to present a passport or other identity documents on entry into the U.S.

While the government has expressed confidence that no personal or critical information will be revealed through the system, it also says drivers will need special information on how to use, carry and protect the radio-embedded licenses as well as "a shielded container that will prevent anyone from reading your license."

But Albrecht, the author or co-author of six books and videos, including the award-winning "Spychips: How major corporations and government plan to track your every move with RFID," warns it goes much further.

"This must be nipped in the bud. Enhanced DL's make REAL ID look like a walk in the park," Albrecht said.

"Look, I am all in favor of only giving drivers licenses to U.S. citizens or people that are otherwise here in this country legally," Opsommer said, "But we are already doing that in Michigan. We accomplished that without an EDL, as has virtually every other state via their own state laws.

"But just because we choose to only issue our license to U.S. citizens does not mean that our licenses should somehow then fall under federal control. It's still a state document, we are just controlling who we issue them to. But under the EDL program, the Department of Homeland Security is saying that making sure illegals don't get these is not enough. Now you need the chip to prove your citizenship," he continued.

Opsommer further warned the electronic chips embedded in licenses to confirm identity are just the first step.

"Canadians are also more connected to what is going on in Britain with the expansion of the national ID program there, and have seen the mission creep that occurs with things like gun control first hand … Whatever the reason, as an example, just last week the Canadian government repatriated a database from the U.S. that contained the driver's license data of their citizens," he said.

"Someone finally woke up and realized it would not be a good idea for that to be on American soil … I think it is only logical that we as state legislators really understand how the governments of Mexico and Canada will have access to our own citizen's data. Right now it is very ambiguous and even difficult for me to get answers on as a state representative."

But Opsommer said Big Brother concerns certainly have some foundation.

"So if EDLs are the new direction for secure licenses in all states, it just reinforces what many have been telling me that DHS wants to expand this program and turn it into a wireless national ID with a different name," he said. "We'll wake up one day and without a vote in Congress DHS will just pass a rule and say something like 'starting next month you will need an EDL to fly on a plane, or to buy a gun, or whatever.'"

North Korean Rocket Assembly Under Way

from Global Security Newswire

Assembly of a rocket is reportedly under way at a North Korean launch site, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, Feb. 26).

Pyongyang says it is preparing to launch a satellite into space from the Musudan-ri facility, while the United States and other concerned nations suspect that the Stalinist state actually plans another test of its long-range Taepodong 2 missile.

"It appears that (the North) has begun assembling the rocket on the ground," a South Korean government official told the Yonhap News Agency (Agence France-Presse I/Spacewar.com, Feb. 27).

A newspaper report also indicated that radar and related technology was being tested at the launch site, AFP reported.

"It seems that the North has begun preparations in earnest for a launch," a government source in Seoul told the Chosun Ilbo newspaper (Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, Feb. 27).

North Korea might reach launch readiness within the next two weeks but could delay action until late March or early April "considering the North's political schedule and the situation on the Korean Peninsula," Yonhap quoted its source as saying.

Seoul and Washington have scheduled a large-scale military exercise for March 9 to 20, followed by a summit early the following month, according to Yonhap. ....

U.S. Pledges to Halt "Illicit" Iranian Nuclear Activity

U.S. President Barack Obama intends to pursue polices aimed at halting Iran's pursuit of an "illicit nuclear capacity," Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 26).

The United States and other Western powers have expressed concern that Iranian atomic activities could support nuclear-weapon development, but Tehran has insisted its nuclear intentions are strictly peaceful.

.... The Obama administration is sending "a mixed signal" about its possible intention to seek dialogue with Tehran on its nuclear program, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Reza Salari said yesterday.

"Somehow in that domain we are witnessing more rationality in the present U.S. administration. They are not talking with the same tone that existed before," he said. "But still, the signal that is reaching Iran from the United States is not a very clear and proper one."

.... Dennis Ross, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recently appointed Southwest Asia adviser, "strongly backs stepping up sanctions against Iran (and) supports profound U.S.-Israeli cooperation to confront Iran's nuclear activities," Iranian state radio said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 24; Edith Lederer, Associated Press/Google News, Feb. 26).

It remained unclear how Ross would affect Washington's Iran policy, the Washington Times reported yesterday. He is expected to help draft a national security directive on the administration's strategies for talking with Iran and for pursuing new economic penalties should the state fail to alter its nuclear policy, one U.S. official said.

The Obama administration is likely to seek negotiations with Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rather than wait for the outcome of the June presidential race, said Patrick Clawson, deputy research head at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Ross' former workplace.

.... The Obama administration is likely to seek negotiations with Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rather than wait for the outcome of the June presidential race, said Patrick Clawson, deputy research head at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Ross' former workplace.

Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who is seeking the office again, "has a record of not being able to accomplish very much," Clawson said. "The key decision-maker is Khamenei and not the Iranian president. Therefore, U.S. policy should concentrate on how to engage with the supreme leader."

"There is no way you are going to prevent them from having [nuclear] capability," added Lawrence Korb, a Reagan-era defense official who is now a fellow at the Center for American Progress. "What you can do is prevent them from making nuclear weapons."

The relatively low-profile announcement of Ross' appointment raised questions about how important a role he would play in shaping U.S. policy on Iran, according to the Times. The official has adopted a behind-the-scenes style in the past, former co-workers said (Eli Lake, Washington Times, Feb. 26).

Meanwhile, the 35-nation IAEA governing board is expected to address Iran on Monday at its first meeting since Obama took office last month, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported.

The board is unlikely to issue resolutions or take other action on Iran's nuclear program, though, because the Obama administration is still reviewing its Iran policy, several Vienna-based diplomats said.

Even if Tehran does not pursue a nuclear weapon, its growing uranium stockpile could still give it a nuclear deterrent, one of the envoys said.

"That's probably what they always wanted," said the official (Albert Otti, Deutsche Presse-Agentur/Monsters and Critics, Feb. 27).

New Security Lapse at Los Alamos Triggers Angry Response From Energy Department

By Greg Webb

WASHINGTON -- Plutonium handling practices are so poor at a major U.S. nuclear-weapon laboratory that they threaten the facility's ability to function at all, Energy Department officials warned in a letter this week (see GSN, Feb. 12)

In January, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico reported to Energy Department officials that an "inventory difference" had "exceeded alarm limits," according to a letter back to the laboratory from two National Nuclear Security Administration officials. The Feb. 23 letter was acquired by the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog organization that has persistently raised alarms over lax security practices at Los Alamos and other nuclear laboratories.

The inventory difference involves improper accounting of materials at Technical Area 55, the facility's plutonium research and processing facility, according to a Los Alamos release issued yesterday. The area is responsible in part for producing the plutonium cores for refurbished U.S. nuclear warheads (see GSN, Dec. 17, 2008).

"It’s fairly clear that the inventory list indicates that the material is in a certain spot, in a particular vault, and when they go to check, it’s not there," POGO's Senior Investigator Peter Stockton told Global Security Newswire today, citing conversations with Los Alamos workers. "They have a discrepancy of something around a kilogram of plutonium."

The lapse, however, never constituted a security or safety threat outside the laboratory, according to the Los Alamos release.

"There is 100 percent certainty that no sensitive materials left the facility," the release says, citing extensive physical security measures the laboratory uses to screen personnel entering and leaving the site.

Stockton disparaged those assurances, arguing that repeated security tests at nuclear laboratories have failed, including a dramatic incident last year at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California in which a mock thief used a lacrosse stick to toss two plutonium containers over a perimeter fence (see GSN, May 13, 2008).

"We’ve had fairly significant tests of the facilities from time to time and it’s been shown that insiders can do you great damage in getting material out of there," he said.

The NNSA letter adopts a threatening tone and expresses exasperation that previous recommendations for improving the laboratory's material control and accounting program have not been adopted.

The latest incident "raises questions about the ability of the Los Alamos National Laboratory MC&A program to accomplish its primary objective, namely to deter and detect theft and diversion of special nuclear material," the letter says.

If not for the physical security measures, "these identified weaknesses in the MC&A program would impact the ability of the facility to continue operations," it adds.

Two officials in charge of the laboratory's material security measures were dismissed within the past month, Stockton said. He praised the NNSA effort to improve the situation.

"We’ve got to give NNSA credit. They really have done a good job on this. They’ve had about five or six teams in the last year out there trying to get this system fixed," he told GSN, but called for a stronger reaction still.

"A sharply worded letter is a good step, but without financial penalties, improvement is much less likely," he said in a POGO release yesterday.

The laboratory has vowed "to review and improve internal bookkeeping, inventory procedures and processes," says its release.

Top U.S. General Spurns Obama Pledge to Reduce Nuclear Alert Posture

By Elaine M. Grossman

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The nation's most senior nuclear combat commander yesterday took issue with U.S. President Barack Obama's characterization of U.S. atomic weapons as being on "hair-trigger alert" and warned against reducing the arsenal's launch readiness (see GSN, Feb. 17).

"The alert postures that we are in today are appropriate, given our strategy and guidance and policy," Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, who heads U.S. Strategic Command, said at a press conference here.

The White House says Obama intends to make good on a campaign promise to "work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair-trigger alert."

There are growing international calls to do just that. Six nations, including China, New Zealand and Switzerland, recently pressed the U.N. General Assembly to pass a resolution demanding that the world's nuclear weapons be removed from a status that would allow them to be launched in minutes (see GSN, Oct. 24, 2008).

The United States keeps roughly 1,000 nuclear warheads on alert atop ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, according to Hans Kristensen, who directs the Federation of American Scientists' Nuclear Information Project in Washington. The land-based missiles can be fired three to four minutes after a presidential order, while the submarine weapons require roughly 12 minutes' notice prior to launch, he said.

U.S. President George H.W. Bush unilaterally took the nation's bomber aircraft off of alert in 1991.

Russia, which has long opposed de-alerting measures for its own force, retains approximately 1,200 warheads at top readiness, nearly all of them on ICBMs, Kristensen said. The British and French together account for roughly 112 nuclear warheads on alert, though he said their weapons might require days' notice to launch.

Chilton said it is misleading to use the term "hair-trigger" when describing the U.S. arsenal, which he said remains safe from accidental or unauthorized launch.

"It conjures a drawn weapon in the hands of somebody," said the general, speaking at a two-day conference on air warfare. "And their finger's on the trigger. And you're worried they might sneeze, because it is so sensitive."

However, the "reality of our alert posture today," he said, is that "the weapon is in the holster."

Continuing the analogy, Chilton said the holster for nuclear weapons "has two combination locks on it," it "takes two people to open those locks," and "they can't do it without authenticated orders from the president of the United States."

At a separate press conference a few minutes earlier, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz also sought to "push back a little" on the notion that "these things are very close to launching."

"That's anything but the case," Schwartz said. "There is a rigorous discipline [and] process involved, should that ever be required, and it is anything but hair trigger."

The Air Force is responsible for managing the ICBM and strategic bomber legs of the U.S. nuclear triad, while the Navy handles submarine-based missiles.

Schwartz became his service's chief of staff last August after Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired Gen. Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne, citing dissatisfaction with their management of nuclear weapons.

The Air Force discovered last year that mislabeled ICBM fuses had been mistakenly shipped to Taiwan in 2006 (see GSN, March 25, 2008). In 2007, a bomber aircraft crew transported six cruise missiles across several U.S. states, unaware that the weapons were armed with nuclear warheads (see GSN, Sept. 5, 2007).

Schwartz yesterday appeared to suggest that the U.S. military has not yet been asked to review the issue or to determine how Obama's de-alerting pledge might be implemented. He said a description of the policy posted on the White House Web site falls short of "formal direction to study something or do something."

"This matter has been evaluated over the years on numerous occasions," said the Air Force chief. "I have no doubt that we've thought about it. We certainly can and will look at it again, if that's what the new defense team wishes. ... But we'll wait for an appropriate assignment from the White House or from the Office of the Secretary [of Defense] to do that."

For his part, Chilton described a process of "de-alerting" as a fairly radical step.

Returning to the analogy of a holstered weapon, Chilton said a lower level of readiness for the nuclear stockpile would be like "taking the gun apart and mailing pieces of it to various parts of the country. And then when you're in crisis, deciding to reassemble it.

"And we have to ask ourselves: Can we afford that time period for the delivery of the pieces to put it back together?" he continued. "Is that the posture we want to be in as we [review] policy, strategy, force structure and posturing of forces?"

That broad analysis is to take place during the Nuclear Posture Review, a congressionally mandated Defense Department study that is set to begin this year. It is expected to take a fresh look at the nation's deterrence posture and potentially recommend changes in the nuclear weapons approach, given current and anticipated threats.

Kristensen said Chilton appeared to depict only the most extreme scenario for de-alerting the nuclear force, while Obama might opt instead for more incremental measures.

"There is a wide range of measures you could take, from taking the entire force off of alert, to biting off the edges of the alert force in terms of gradually reducing the alert force or ... [adding] delays in the launch sequence," he told Global Security Newswire today.

One underlying objective of building more time into the nuclear-weapons launch process could be to offer a longer window for a president to weigh and potentially reverse a momentous strike order, Kristensen said. He added that Bush's decision to reduce bomber aircraft readiness has not weakened the U.S. deterrence posture.

"We have already taken the bombers off of alert ... and no one has attacked us in almost two decades," Kristensen said. "[Obama] is the one to make the decision ... because if you leave it to the warfighters and the strategists, then it's always going to be impossible to do anything that will change the status quo."

On a related issue, Schwartz raised the prospect that a new nuclear and conventional long-range bomber might not be fielded by 2018 to replace B-2 and B-52 aircraft, as his predecessor had assured (See GSN, Oct. 25, 2007).

"One of the things in a period of austerity is having acquisition programs that deliver on time and on cost," Schwartz told reporters. "And so whether it's 2018 or not, I think, is less important to me than having a viable, manageable program which will actually deliver at endgame."

Air Force Secretary Michael Donley -- a Bush administration appointee the White House announced yesterday it would retain -- said the bomber's prospects are under closed-door discussion as the Pentagon debates the 2010 defense spending plan and embarks on longer-term reviews.

"We don't have any determined outcomes yet on systems of that nature," said Donley, sitting alongside Schwartz at the afternoon press conference. Both noted their view that a new bomber continues to be needed in the coming years.