Recently in War on Terror Category

It irks me everytime I hear Brazilians whining about how trigger-happy, corrupt and incompetent our police force is, in the continuing aftermath of the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting.

Perhaps this vocal section of Brazilian society is too young to remember the three convictions of police officers in Rio de Janeiro in 1996 for the shooting dead of 8 street children (although they were aiming at about 70) outside a church in the city. Unlike our armed police officers, who thought they were dealing with a suspected suicide bomber, these noble policemen thought that the gunning down of children was suitable retribution for having kids throw stones at a police car.

Furthermore, those engaged in premature speculation should await the report of the IPCC before making any further claims. The case is presently 'sub judice' and we should all wait for a verdict before deciding whether certain police officers should be arrested for murder, the police commissioner was trying to bury the investigation (hardly by writing an open letter to the home secretary and permanent secretary to the home office), or the survellance tapes were wiped.

Sadly I feel that rather than involving some kind of coverup, this shooting is simply another example of what Dennis Norden would succintly refer to as 'cockup before conspiracy'.

It's good to see that any situation can create an opportunity. Nofear HQ received a missive only this morning detailing a new style rucksack already being produced in large quantities by our diminutive friends in China.

As the blurb says 'Asian? Sikh of being treated like a terrorist? ... No more stares rucksack - Completely Transparent'

'Travel on the bus or train without stigma - no more furtive glances from aryan passengers.'

Many column inches have been devoted in both the UK and International media about how stoic the British are behaving in the face of terror. What a load of old bollocks.

How are we supposed to behave? Hide indoors and not venture outside? It is a matter of necessity for those trapped in the rat race of modern life to continue the daily grind of work to ward off the ever present threat of the baliff.

Besides, if we were really that stiff upper-lipped, why do you think the sale of bicycles in London has rocketed in the last couple of weeks.

In this spirit of cowardice, I am pleased to see that 'Transport for London' have unveiled their new logo:

By now most will have heard or read about the bombings on the London Underground and the bus explosion. The full details about the exact nature of the bombs have yet to be understood or revealed.

One thing seems to be apparent, and that is the anti-war lobby in this country will have suffered a blow as a result of these series of attacks. Even if the attacks were isolated or merely the start of a larger front of terrorism in this country, the general feeling will surely be to punish the people who carried out the attack. If history has taught us anything it is that a threatened nation, even when threatened by an almost invisible enemy will not worry about tact and diplomacy in trying to get revenge. The events in New York led to two middle-eastern countries being invaded. Londoners are used to terrorism, and to think that their resolve will be crushed by the bombings is a flawed hypothesis, I sense that it will actually bring people together there.

Unfortunately peace and environmental campaigners, whether they demonstrate by peaceful or other means will never gain the attention that terrorism and war generate. After all, force is the ultimate way of getting the point across, rightly or wrongly...

[ This seems to have been quoted only in tiny fragments, if at all, in the main news media, so here is the English Translation of the full text of Osama Bin Laden's statement released on the 29th October 2004. It is certainly an interesting insight into how he tries to justify his actions. ]

Praise be to Allah who created the creation for his worship and commanded them to be just and permitted the wronged one to retaliate against the oppressor in kind. To proceed:

Peace be upon he who follows the guidance: People of America this talk of mine is for you and concerns the ideal way to prevent another Manhattan, and deals with the war and its causes and results.

Before I begin, I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom.

If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike for example - Sweden? And we know that freedom-haters don't possess defiant spirits like those of the 19 - may Allah have mercy on them.

No, we fight because we are free men who don't sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our nation, just as you lay waste to our nation. So shall we lay waste to yours.

On Monday afternoon, BBC News Online broke the story about the Supreme Court ruling on the suspects at Guantanamo Bay. They had the following to say on the matter:

The US Supreme Court has ruled that terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba can use the US legal system to challenge their detention.

The six-to-three ruling is seen as a major blow to the Bush administration and could herald hundreds of appeals in US courts on behalf of the inmates


Source - BBC News Online

I then checked CNN to see what the american take on this very important bit of news was. The headline blared "Supreme Court substantially rules for Bush administration".

When I finally got round to writing up this little difference of opinion, it seems that CNN has had a change of heart, dropped the old headline, rewrote the story and now refers to the news as "A mixed verdict on the terror war." instead of "The Supreme Court delivered a partial victory to the Bush administration"

Google News is able to provide us with a glimpse of their hasty rewriting after they actually digested the contents of the story and stopped pandering to the administration:

along with

[ source - http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/28/scotus.enemy.combatants.ap/ ]

So, the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives has warned [spain] against "appeasement" after the recent bombings in Madrid.

Quite so old chap, but um, weren't the attacks on 9/11 directly related to the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.

from the independent:

Even Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has admitted that the U.S. military presence in the Saudi kingdom was putting Americans in the crosshairs of the terrorists.

That late coming revelation has been obvious to anyone who read the writings of Osama bin Laden since the early 1990’s. Bin Laden became enraged at the United States mostly by a U.S. military presence that he believed desecrated the holiest sites of Islam and supported a corrupt Saudi monarchy. (U.S. support for Israel and sanctions against Iraq were only secondary gripes added to gain wider support for his cause in the Arabic and Islamic worlds). In contrast to the allegations of President Bush, the September 11 attacks were not caused by the terrorists’ hate of American democracy (nor by hostility toward American culture or prosperity). Yet even with plenty of warning--bin Laden’s attacks on two American embassies and Africa and on the U.S.S. Cole--the U.S. government did not eliminate its unneeded military presence from Saudi Arabia.

[ sources http://www.independent.org/tii/news/030430Eland.html and orkut (again!) ]

I'm hoping Pavel (if he reads this) will not fault the logic on this one :-)

[ I appreciate that there are potentially tough moral questions this whole issue, so it was most convenient when I came across an article on the BBC News website which, as ever, talks about this far more eloquently than I ever could. The original BBC article specifically related to the 5 British men released from Guantanamo Bay this week, but I think you'll agree has far wider significance.]

What would it be reasonable to do, for example, if I were to give you a dozen eggs and told you it was highly likely that at least one was lethally poisoned, but I didn't know which? Prudence would demand that you throw them all away rather than risk death by omelette.

But what if the "bad eggs" are human beings? If I were to say of twelve people that it was highly likely that at least one was a terrorist, would you be justified in treating all twelve as though they were guilty? Justice would trump prudence, and we would have no choice but to allow the possibility that a terrorist would go free rather than incarcerate the innocent.

But although justice would weigh more heavily here than prudence, prudence does not count for nothing at all. Indeed, when the stakes are very high we might agree that prudence, not justice, ought to prevail. If we knew that one of a group of 12 people had the capacity to detonate a nuclear device in central London, then we should detain all twelve until we found out which one it was.

Those who disagree with the way in which America is treating suspects in its war on terror are taking issue not so much with a fundamental principle as with the assessment as to what the risks are in placing justice before prudence.

...

For the majority of us, the problem is not how we implement justice, but how we respond to those who have been through the system and emerged without charge. Do we have the moral fibre to act as justice demands and treat the freed as innocent, despite the reasonable suspicions we may have about them?

Would we allow ourselves to discriminate against many innocent people just because some time in the future might find that someone who was released was guilty after all?

We have to accept that justice is served better when we risk freeing the guilty than it is when we risk locking up the innocent. To behave as decent citizens we must sometimes put prudence, usually so reasonable a creature, to one side and respect the rights of those who have not been found guilty in a court of law.

[ read the complete article at the BBC ]

Ah now this is a hard one. Do we believe what a former detainee has to say, one that no doubt is pretty aggrieved at being detained for two years without any rights, or do we believe what the secretary of defense has to say.

Here's what Donald Rumsfeld had to say on the matter:

[ statement made 22-Jan-2002 - source cnn ] The US Defence Secretary says American forces are treating the prisoners detained at Camp X-Ray in Cuba humanely. Donald Rumsfeld claims they are being held in accordance with Geneva Conventions.

"The prisoners are being given treatment that's proper, it's humane, it's appropriate, and it is fully consistent with international conventions," Mr Rumsfeld said.

The United States has not yet decided if the detainees at Guantanamo Bay should be treated as prisoners of war, and for now calls them battlefield detainees.

"No detainee has been harmed. No detainee has been mistreated in any way," the defense secretary said.

and here is what Jamal al-Harith (a british citizen from manchester), who has just returned from his extended holiday in cuba has to say about his time there.

[ this is from his "exclusive" interview with the UK's mirror newspaper ]

Jamal al-Harith, 37, who arrived home three days ago after two years of confinement, is the first detainee to lift the lid on the US regime in Cuba's Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta.

The father-of-three, from Manchester, told how he was assaulted with fists, feet and batons after refusing a mystery injection.

He said detainees were shackled for up to 15 hours at a time in hand and leg cuffs with metal links which cut into the skin.

Their "cells" were wire cages with concrete floors and open to the elements - giving no privacy or protection from the rats, snakes and scorpions loose around the American base.

He claims punishment beatings were handed out by guards known as the Extreme Reaction Force. They waded into inmates in full riot-gear, raining blows on them.

Prisoners faced psychological torture and mind-games in attempts to make them confess to acts they had never committed. Even petty breaches of rules brought severe punishment.

Medical treatment was sparse and brutal and amputations of limbs were more drastic than required, claimed Jamal.

A diet of foul water and food up to 10 years out-of-date left inmates malnourished.

But Jamal's most shocking disclosure centred on the use of vice girls to torment the most religiously devout detainees.

Prisoners who had never seen an "unveiled" woman before would be forced to
watch as the hookers touched their own naked bodies.

The men would return distraught. One said an American girl had smeared menstrual blood across his face in an act of humiliation.

Jamal said: "I knew of this happening about 10 times. It always seemed to be
those who were very young or known to be particularly religious who would be
taken away.

"I would joke with the other British lads, 'Bring them to us - we'll have them'. It made us laugh. But the Americans obviously knew we wouldn't be
shocked by seeing Western women, so they didn't bother.

"It was a profoundly disturbing experience for these men. They would refuse
to speak about what had happened. It would take perhaps four weeks for them
to tell a friend - and we would shout it out around the whole block."

Jamal added: "The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not as nearly as bad as the psychological
torture - bruises heal after a week - but the other stuff stays with you."

[update 13/03/2003 - Someone pointed out to me that this was a sensational piece of journalism and (if i remember what he said) that plenty of evidence still points towards ETA planning this attrocity. No doubt said correspondent will comment if he thinks I've misunderstood him. On the other hand, another correspondent pointed out that this attack came exactly 911 days after 9/11. I'm no fan of conspiracy theories, so make of that what you will]

The Arabic newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi has said it had received a claim of responsibility for the Madrid train bombings issued by The Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri in the name of al Qaida.

The claim received by email at the paper's London offices said the brigade's "death squad" had penetrated "one of the pillars of the crusade alliance, Spain".

The claim said: "This is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America's ally in its war against Islam."

Referring to Spain's Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, the statement asked: "Aznar, where is America? Who will protect you, Britain, Japan, Italy and others from us?"