This is the kind of talk one hears around Madison. If the U.S. or Israel does something violent, you speak only in terms of your horror and righteous anger that we have killed people. If our enemies do something violent, you call attention to their understandable frustration and outrage and our role in making them feel that way.
Paratroopers have killed more than 700 Taliban fighters during fierce battles in southern Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence confirmed yesterday.
For 10 weeks troops have been in engaged in daily gunfights for control of towns and villages under the sway of insurgent commanders.
Although military chiefs estimated the Taliban strength to be around 1,000 when they arrived in May, they were yesterday reticent about claiming victory as battles are continuing and terrorist reinforcements arrived from Pakistan.
Despite the release of the figures, an MoD spokesman said the mission's purpose was providing security for reconstruction. However, he added: "Every time we meet the Taliban we are defeating them and they are taking extraordinary casualties."
I ask the question, not because I am interested in Sir Peter - he is not an important figure in the current debate, though he may differ on this point. I ask, rather, because his remark seems to me a symptom of a wider unreality about the Middle East, one that now dominates. It tinged the recent Commons speech by William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary. It permeates every report by the BBC.
A concerned Iraqi citizen's tip led Iraqi army soldiers to a shop south of Baghdad last night, where they found a munitions cache. Soldiers from 4th Battalion, 4th Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division, investigated the carpentry shop and seized 58 homemade bombs, three rocket-propelled-grenade boosters, and two improvised explosive devices attached to batteries. Iraqi soldiers also detained a suspected terrorist at the site and seven others suspected of plotting an upcoming attack on a traffic control point.
Elsewhere, Multinational Division Baghdad soldiers searched three houses last night and seized weapons and a large amount of money in central Baghdad after acting on a tip from an Iraqi citizen.
Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around those targets to destroy them, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths -- the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far -- on "terrorists" who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.
But this claim is almost always false. My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters -- as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers -- avoid civilians like the plague.
"When I was in Lebanon, in the Hezbollah heartland, I said Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending in among women and children,"...
"Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending ... among women and children," Egeland said. "I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men."
But for some of the Christians who had made it out in this convoy, it was not just privations they wanted to talk about, but their ordeal at the hands of Hezbollah — a contrast to the Shiites, who make up a vast majority of the population in southern Lebanon and broadly support the militia.
“Hezbollah came to Ain Ebel to shoot its rockets,” said Fayad Hanna Amar, a young Christian man, referring to his village. “They are shooting from between our houses.”
A United Nations peace keeping officer from Canada told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that Hizbullah used the same tactic to draw fire on the UNIFIL post which resulted in the death of four U.N. observers. "This is their favorite trick," he said. "They use the U.N. as shields."
In a small town in southern Lebanon, a group of maids have been trapped by the destruction of the local infrastructure and employers who they say refuse to let them leave.
Padma, 22, described her terror to the BBC News website. "We tried to go away, but the employers won't let us. We have been so very scared," she said.
"They won't give us our passports. They want me to continue working here and they won't pay me the rest of my salary if I go now. I have been working for one-and-a-half years but I have only got three months' pay."
Chief among those is Samir Qantar, serving five life sentences for murder after attacking a civilian apartment block in Nahariya in 1979. Danny Haran was killed in front of his four-year-old daughter; the girl's skull was then crushed with a rifle butt. Cowering inside, Smadar Haran accidentally smothered her two-year-old daughter to death as she hid in a cupboard trying to stay silent.
Chief among those is Samir Qantar, serving several life sentences for murder after attacking a civilian apartment block in Nahariya in 1979. A policeman, another man and his four-year-old daughter were killed. A baby girl was accidentally smothered by her mother as she hid in a cupboard.
In terms of the number of people executed by the state in 2004, Iran is estimated to be second only to China.[...]
In the year of Atefah's death, at least 159 people were executed in accordance with the Islamic law of the country, based on the Sharia code.
Since the revolution, Sharia law has been Iran's highest legal authority.
Alongside murder and drug smuggling, sex outside marriage is also a capital crime.
Being stopped or arrested by the moral police is a fact of life for many Iranian teenagers.
Previously arrested for attending a party and being alone in a car with a boy, Atefah received her first sentence for "crimes against chastity" when she was just 13.
Although the exact nature of the crime is unknown, she spent a short time in prison and received 100 lashes.
However, the age of sexual consent for girls under Sharia law is nine, and furthermore, rape is very hard to prove in an Iranian court.
"Men's word is accepted much more clearly and much more easily than women," according to Iranian lawyer and exile Mohammad Hoshi.
"They can say: 'You know she encouraged me' or 'She didn't wear proper dress'."
The first question that must be answered in divining IDF intentions in Lebanon is what the center of gravity of the Hezbollah is, because that is what the IDF must be aiming to destroy. The two obvious ones are Hezbollah's ability to influence the Lebanese government and the motor of that influence -- the military force that Hezbollah maintains in the south. A step down we can ask, what is the most important component of Hezbollah's power in the south? Again the answer is easy. It is the Hezbollah cadres themselves. Hezbollah's most precious possession isn't Katyushas, long-range rockets, night vision goggles or antitank missiles or electronic equipment. It is the trained core of its military force. Equipment can be replaced but Hezbollah's cadres represent an expensive, almost irreplaceable investment. In them resides the organizational knowledge of Nasrallah's organization. It embodies man-decades of operational experience against Israel. Rockets can be replaced. The stars of Hezbollah's operational force are less expendable.
From this observation I'm going to say that despite the received wisdom of the newspapers to the contrary, the fighting at Maroun al-Ras and Bint Jbeil have been and continue to be an unmitigated defeat for the Hezbollah. The Hezbollah are doing the single most stupid thing imaginable for a guerilla organization. They are fighting to keep territory. Oh, I know that this will be justified in terms of "inflicting casualties" on the Israelis. But the Hez are probably losing 10 for every Israeli lost. A bad bargain for Israel you say? No. A bad bargain for Hezbollah to trade their terrorist elite for highly trained but nevertheless conventional infantry. Guerillas should trade 1 for 10, not 10 for 1.
There is obviously a connection here: The less control the authorities have with Muslims, the more control they want to exercise over non-Muslims. As problems in Europe get worse, which they will, the EU will move in an increasingly repressive direction until it either becomes a true, totalitarian entity or falls apart. This strange mix of powerful censorship of public debate, yet little control over public law and order, has by some been labelled anarcho-tyranny.
While Islamic groups in Britain openly brag about how they are going to subdue the country by violent means or call for beheading those insulting Islam, Bryan Cork, 49, of Carlisle, Cumbria, in the Lake District, was sentenced to six months in jail for standing outside a mosque shouting, “Proud to be British,” and “Go back to where you came from.” One British court ruled that even use of the word “immigrant” as an insult could amount to proof of racial hostility.
Dozens of Hizbullah gunmen armed with antitank missiles and machine guns and geared up in night-vision goggles and bulletproof vests set a trap for a force of Golani infantrymen led by Lt.-Col. Yaniv Asor, commander of Battalion 51. At 5 a.m. Wednesday, Asor and his men asked the Golani command center for permission to enter an area of the outskirts of Bint Jbail. Col. Tamir Yidai, commander of the brigade, gave the green light for the operation.
Asor and his men moved quickly through approximately 15 one-story homes. But as the troops moved through the narrow alleyways, a strong Hizbullah force sent a wave of gunfire and missiles at the force, killing and wounding several soldiers in the first moments of the fight. As Asor and his men fought to regain control of the situation, other Hizbullah cells outflanked them and opened fire on the force as well as other IDF positions in the town.
The battle lasted for several hours during which Asor and his men sustained heavy casualties and killed at least 40 Hizbullah guerrillas, some in gunbattles at point-blank range. Then the evacuation of the wounded began, which lasted six hours due to incessant enemy fire. Four IAF helicopter pilots risked their lives by landing in enemy territory.
July 26, 2006 -- JERUSALEM - Israel claimed victory in Hezbollah's southern "capital" yesterday after a battle in Lebanon that uncovered Iranian-made weapons and electronic equipment and left 150 guerrillas dead.
Israeli forces found "war rooms" equipped with Iranian surveillance and eavesdropping gear in Bint Jbail, the main Hezbollah stronghold just inside the border.
Dean called President Bush "the most divisive president probably in our history."
"He's always talking about those people.
The Democratic National Committee chairman also called Republican Senate candidate Katherine Harris a "crook" and compared her to Stalin.
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BAGHDAD, Iraq – Coalition forces killed a senior local leader for al-Qaida in Iraq and captured three suspected terrorists during a raid in the vicinity of Bayji Tuesday morning.
The raid successfully targeted the newly-appointed al Qaida in Iraq leader of Bayji, who was reportedly a foreign terrorist. The targeted terrorist was suspected of being a member a local Mujahidin Shura Council for the Bayji area also.
"There was none of the usual talk of American troops standing down as Iraqi troops stand up. "
President Bush: "We still face challenges in Baghdad, yet we see progress elsewhere in Iraq. Iraqi security forces are growing in strength and capability, and recently, a key province in southern Iraq was transferred to full Iraqi civilian control. In the midst of all the violence in Baghdad, sometimes a -- success is obscured. And this transfer of a key province is a beginning of other provinces to be transferred to full Iraqi control. It's a sign of progress."
Bush: "The Prime Minister advised me that to support this plan, he and General Casey have agreed to deploy additional American troops and Iraqi security personnel in Baghdad in the coming weeks. These will come from other areas of the country. Our military commanders tell me that this deployment will better reflect the current conditions on the ground in Iraq."
PM Maliki: "I also expressed my appreciation to the role that's been played by the multinational forces and the exerted efforts to support us and to help us in building our security organizations, to allow our organizations to fully be in control of the security position and the security circumstances.
I agreed with the President to form a joint committee of experts and connections in order to achieve the self-sufficiency for the Iraqi forces. This will allow these forces to bear the responsibility of protecting security and confronting terrorism in our country. And in this field, we have achieved our first and initial success when our forces assumed the responsibility in the Muthanna governorate. This is a very important step, will be followed by similar steps in many other governorates in Iraq."
The Saudi foreign minister personally urged President Bush yesterday to intervene to stop the violence in Lebanon, the most direct sign of mounting frustration among key Arab states with what they see as a hands-off U.S. posture toward Israeli strikes against Hezbollah.
"We reject Rice's visit to the Middle East and we will expose its real goals," read the leaflets, signed by the National and Islamic Forces in Palestine.
NOBEL peace laureate Betty Williams displayed a flash of her feisty Irish spirit yesterday, lashing out at US President George W.Bush during a speech to hundreds of schoolchildren.
Campaigning on the rights of young people at the Earth Dialogues forum, being held in Brisbane, Ms Williams spoke passionately about the deaths of innocent children during wartime, particularly in the Middle East, and lambasted Mr Bush.
"I have a very hard time with this word 'non-violence', because I don't believe that I am non-violent," said Ms Williams, 64.
"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush." Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered.
"I don't know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize, because when I see children die the anger in me is just beyond belief. It's our duty as human beings, whatever age we are, to become the protectors of human life."
Outdated laws banning the flying of national flags are to be scrapped.
Currently it is illegal to fly a national flag without permission from a local council - unless it is flown from a vertical flagpole. [...]
"The regulations on flags are currently woefully out-of-date and far too bureaucratic," said Ms Cooper. "It is ridiculous that someone could be prosecuted for displaying their national flag."
Note how Sky does much of its work from Haifa and the BBC does it all from Beirut. Note how every piece done by the BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, questions whether or not Israel has carried out war crimes. The correspondents in Israel itself haven't done a bad job. Matthew Price and James Reynolds have acquitted themselves pretty well. But they've sent out Fergal Keane and Jeremy Bowen whose clear agenda is to expose the human tragedy in Lebanon and tell us Israel is a bastard state.
There is no intelligence here, no in-depth questioning of why this conflict has erupted. No discussion of Syria, Iran and Middle East geopolitics. It's a hammer with which to whack Israel.
A man accused of being part of a UK terror cell told police he helped make and blow up a fertiliser bomb on a training session, jury is told.
In a video-taped interview shown to the jury, Salahuddin Amin, 31, said he and co-accused Omar Khyam went on a two-day training course in Pakistan in 2003.
Mr Amin admitted getting "mixed up with terrorists", but told police he did not consider himself to be a terrorist.
He and six other men deny conspiring with a Canadian to cause explosions.
But how do the region's armies of under-30 video-lovers and haters square up? In early 2005 Allegra Stratton, a young BBC producer, set off on a tour of Beirut, Amman, Cairo, Dubai, Kuwait City and Damascus with the aim of finding out.
Her findings are less romantic than she had hoped - there are no flower children in Damascus, and Amman's only nude portraitist is, she disappointedly remarks, 'crap'. The verdict is characteristic of Muhajababes, which is written in a jaunty conversational tone that allows Stratton to feel 'rubbish' about 'shit' things, such as the invasion of Iraq or badly produced Arabic music.
Might the Prime Minister find solace in some of these sayings?
KABUL, July 22 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Afghanistan's major creditors have written off $10.4 billion in debt, a further major reduction in the country's debt in the Paris Club, finance ministry spokesman said on Saturday.
Aziz Shams told Pajhwok Afghan News Russia canceled its debt what it said was $10.5 billion. US had $108 million and Germany 40 million debt on Afghanistan. Paris club played a mediator role between in-debt and creditor countries. The U.S. State Department said on July 21 that the agreement means that 92 percent of Afghanistan's total debt to the three Paris Club creditors -- Germany, Russia and the United States has now been written off.
BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. military has dismissed all charges against a Pennsylvania National Guardsman accused of killing an unarmed Iraq civilian near Ramadi, finding that the soldier had reason to believe the man had a weapon.
Afghan forces killed 19 suspected Taliban rebels on Sunday as they traded rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire with insurgents in volatile southern Afghanistan.
The fighting in the southern province of Helmand took place 15 km (nine miles) south of Lashkar Gah, as police hunted Taliban militants, said Mullah Amir Mohammed Akhundza, the provincial deputy governor, who led the operation.
Nineteen bodies of militants were recovered, and 17 other suspected Taliban were caught, including two Pakistanis, he said. Hundreds of policemen were involved in the clashes that started early Sunday, said Ghulam Nabi Malakhail, Helmand police chief. Two policemen were wounded.
IRBIL, July 23 (KUNA) -- Multinational Forces (MNF) arrested more than 150 insurgents in cooperation with Iraqi security forces south west of Kirkuk northern Iraq, on Sunday.
In a joint military operation, more than 3000 Iraqi and US soldiers besieged Al-Riyadh city and Al-Huwijah, western Kirkuk, in search for Al-Qaeda activists, a statement by the multinational forces said today.
The forces arrested 154 suspected terrorists and seized more than 350 weapons including mortar shells, guns, missiles, and RPGs.
The military operation was in response to the calls of tribal leaders in the two cities who requested the intervention of military forces, especially after a series of terrorist attacks. The operation was also based on specific intelligence information that indicated the deployment of Al-Qaeda members in western Kirkuk.
As is vividly illustrated by the book's title,Mr. Ajami makes no bones as to where his sympathies lie. By deposing a bloodthirsty tyrant and enabling his brutalized subjects to put him on trial, he argues, the United States has established, for the first time in modern Arab history, "the precedent of holding a ruler responsible for the follies and crimes of his regime," without which there can be no civil society. This, together with the liberation of Iraq's long-oppressed Shiite and Kurdish communities to play their overdue roles in their country's future, has sown the seeds of Iraq's potential transition, if not that of the wider Middle East, to a freer and more and accountable political system.
Mr. Ajami is by no means oblivious to the immensity of the task undertaken by the United States, nor does he preclude the possibility of a colossal failure. On the contrary, as a longtime critic of pan-Arabism, he is keenly aware of the malignant hypocrisies that continue to mar Arab politics to the present day, not least the total indifference of the Arab regimes to the fate of ordinary Iraqis, their tacit endorsement of Islamist terrorism so long as it is not directed against themselves, and their readiness to espouse virulent anti-Americanism despite a heavy reliance on U.S. political, military, and financial support. He is particularly scathing of President Mubarak of Egypt, who "took America's coin but ran afoul of America's purposes," and Jordan's King Abdullah II, a quintessential product of the "elite American prep schools and the ways of modernity" who "opened the door to bigotry, lent it his authority." He is similarly contemptuous of the hypocrisy of Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a spiritual guide of the Muslim Brothers and one of today's most influential Islamic thinkers, who in the summer of 2004 stipulated that the killing of American civilians in Iraq was "obligatory on all Muslims," even as he was living "in the safety in Qatar - among Americans of every profession present in that principality." And when terror came to Qatar the following year - in the form of a car bomb attack on a British theater group performing in the emirate - Qaradawi minced no words in condemning "such criminal deeds."
WASHINGTON, July 23, 2006 — Better-trained and more confident Iraqi troops increasingly are taking the fight to the terrorists, and U.S. troops are securing better and more actionable intelligence, thanks to their daily, long-standing efforts on behalf of the Iraqi people, U.S. military officials reported this week.
Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 4th Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division, killed five terrorists, wounded 13, and detained 47 during a two-hour firefight in Mahmudiyah South on July 21.
The 6th IA soldiers received a report from an Iraqi citizen that 10 to 15 men were attacking a house in Hayy Al Shuhada. The IA soldiers tracked the gunmen to the Hayy Al Askery neighborhood, where a small-arms battle ensued in which five terrorists were killed and the remainder fled the scene in a white truck.
Osama bin Laden's standing has dropped significantly in some pivotal Muslim countries, while support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence has "declined dramatically," according to a new survey released yesterday.[...]
"Most Muslim publics are expressing less support for terrorism than in the past. Confidence in Osama bin Laden has declined markedly in some countries, and fewer believe suicide bombings that target civilians are justified in the defense of Islam," the poll concluded.
The results, which also reveal widespread support for democracy, show how profoundly opinions have changed in parts of the Muslim world since Pew took similar surveys in recent years. The poll attributed the difference in attitudes toward extremism to both the terrorist attacks in Muslim nations and the passage of time since the U.S. invasion of Iraq.[...]
The new poll also found that growing majorities or pluralities of Muslims now say that democracy can work in their countries and is not just a Western ideology. Support for democracy was in the 80 percent range in Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco. It was selected by 43 percent in Pakistan and 48 percent in Turkey -- the largest blocks of respondents in both countries because significant numbers were unsure.
"They are not just paying lip service. They are saying they specifically want a fair judiciary, freedom of expression and more than one party in elections. It wasn't just a vague concept," Kohut said. "U.S. and Western ideas about democracy have been globalized and are in the Muslim world."
In the midst of this cultural and moral struggle one element has been conspicuously missing - the feminists - the authors, academics and commentators who rose to prominence as advocates of women's rights. In Australia and Europe, their response to the growing levels of sexual intimidation, harassment or suppression of women by Muslim men has either been a deafening chorus of silence, or denial and blame-shifting.
Instead, the combat has been left to journalists, and the heaviest work has been done, at great risk to themselves, by dissident women inside Islamic culture. Women such as Hirsi Ali, who, before her life in Holland became intolerable and she retreated to the United States, wrote The Caged Virgin, a book in which she comments: "Islam dominated the lives of our family … I was taught that Islam sets us apart from the rest of the world, the world of non-Muslims. They, the others, the kafirs, the unbelievers, are antisocial, impure, barbaric, not circumcised, immoral, unscrupulous, and above all, obscene; they have no respect for women; their girls and women are whores …[...]
"Islam is strongly dominated by a sexual morality derived from tribal Arab values dating from the time of the Prophet … a culture in which women were the property of their fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, or guardians …
"[Yet] the adherents to the gospel of multiculturalism refuse to criticise people whom they see as victims … Criticism of the Islamic world, of Palestinians, and of Islamic minorities is regarded as Islamophobia and xenophobia … I cannot emphasise enough how wrongheaded this is. It is racism in its purest form."
The most recent and most scathing commentary has come from a British journalist, Melanie Phillips, whose new book, Londonistan, examines the culture which produced last year's terrorist bombings in London by British Muslims. She is outraged by the dangerous hypocrisy of self-styled "progressives": "It is remarkable that the left … with its obsessions with issues like gay rights, equality for women and sexual licence … should have forged an alliance with radical Islamists who preach death to gays, the subjugation of women and the stoning of adulterers. It is an eye-opener to see, on the streets of London, so-called 'progressives' marching shoulder to shoulder with radical Islamists under the metaphorical banner of human rights and the literal banners of Hamas."
A British Muslim activist has called on his supporters to help the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah overthrow the Israeli Government.
The remarks came as senior security sources told The Mail on Sunday Hezbollah could be preparing reprisal attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets in British cities.
Leading London-based Islamic rights activist Massoud Shadjareh said British Muslims could provide Hezbollah with 'financial, logistical and informational support' to attack Israeli installations.
But the US State Department lists Hezbollah as a terror group and its "External Security Organisation' - its terrorist wing - is banned by UK anti-terror laws. Mr Shadjareh said: "We are not supporting or opposing Hezbollah or anybody else."
However, The Mail on Sunday obtained a photograph of him wrapped in a Hezbollah flag at a rally in Trafalgar Square last year. He said: "The wearing of the Hezbollah flag is neither uncommon nor controversial among human rights activists."
Border guards seized a British lorry on its way to make a delivery to the Iranian military - after discovering it was packed with radioactive material that could be used to build a dirty bomb.
The lorry set off from Kent on its way to Tehran but was stopped by officials at a checkpoint on Bulgaria's northernborder with Romania after a scanner indicated radiation levels 200 times above normal.
The lorry was impounded and the Bulgarian Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NPA) was called out.
On board they found ten lead-lined boxes addressed to the Iranian Ministry of Defence. Inside each box was a soil-testing device, containing highly dangerous quantities of radioactive caesium 137 and americium-beryllium.
The soil testers had been sent to Iran by a British firm with the apparent export approval of the Department of Trade and Industry.
Still, Bakri Mohammed’s hilarious discomfort, hypocrisy and cowardice have at least provided a bright spot in the deepening gloom which is Lebanon. I have tuned in every hour, every day, to find out how bad things have become and sadly, on the BBC news programmes (Newsnight and Today excluded), learnt nothing more than the inane and repetitious views of British holidaymakers about to be conveyed from Beirut to Cyprus. I know their views — and also what they are having for dinner, who will be looking after them, how long the passage to Limassol might take and the names of each of their pets back in Blighty.
I cannot remember the BBC ever having so badly misjudged the weight of a story, of missing its import and underestimating the audience. It is the very essence of “dumbing down”. Right now the continuous news channels have got what they always wanted, what they were in fact designed for — the third world war. And they are missing it all in order to tell us that a woman from Wilmslow thinks Israel has behaved in a quite ghastly manner but she’s looking forward to flying home and seeing Pete and the kids.
I still have the original BBC article open on my computer even as the stealth edit has kicked in- radically. Luckily I quoted the intro [ edit: change of headline spins it very differently].
The most senior British military commander in Afghanistan yesterday described the situation in the country as "close to anarchy" with feuding foreign agencies and unethical private security companies compounding problems caused by local corruption.
The stark warning came from Lieutenant General David Richards, head of Nato's international security force in Afghanistan, who warned that western forces there were short of equipment and were "running out of time" if they were going to meet the expectations of the Afghan people.
The assumption within Nato countries had been that the environment in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban in 2002 would be benign, Gen Richards said. "That is clearly not the case," he said yesterday.
The picture Gen Richards painted yesterday contrasted markedly with optimistic comments by ministers...
British troops in Afghanistan 'winning' against Taliban: commander
LONDON (AFP) - British troops in southern Afghanistan are winning the fight against the Taliban but there is still work to do until the "tide turns", their commander, Brigadier Ed Butler, said.
Butler, back in Britain on a brief tour to update collegaues on the operation, said officers in Helmand province were now comfortable with the number of soldiers available to them.
Earlier this month, London announced it would send an extra 900 troops to southern Afghanistan to boost its contingent in the region to 4,400 after meeting a fiercer-than-expected resistance from Taliban militants.
The British deployment is due to take control of a NATO-led force in Helmand around the end of the month.
Talking about the mission, Butler said: "We are winning and the plan is sound but the boys are working very hard in some very extreme conditions."
His troops had taken part in some "very successful" operations in Helmand in recent days to tackle the threat from the Taliban.
"It is too early to say that the tide has turned, but we are overwhelmingly defeating the Taliban on every occasion that we have clashed with them," the commander of British forces in Afghanistan said.
"We knew it was going to be tough and we knew that the Taliban would test our resilience and possibly in some cases we have been a little surprised by the ferocity and persistence of the Taliban."
“I am quite impressed with the amount of building that has already happened,” De Hoop Scheffer said at Tirin Kot military base, home to Dutch and - by August - Australian soldiers, as wind flayed a group of reporters.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - NATO's top commander said Friday the alliance likely will expand its Afghan mission by year's end to include the entire country, including the lawless east where militants killed a coalition soldier in the latest fighting.
Cosmos may love this stuff. But what’s the “benefit” of having such unhappy, hostile journalists wandering through a theater of war—especially when they become weapons used against the coalition and the Iraqis themselves? The safest place for the World Service would be out of Iraq. It’s time to bring them home—but to the U.K., please, not to the U.S. We’ve already got enough of such “reporting” in our mainstream media.
Thousands of people across the UK are expected to join demonstrations against Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
Eleven rallies have been organised by groups such as Stop The War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain.
Organisers of the event, run under the slogan, "Yes to peace, no to terror", are planning for numbers of around 2,500 to 5,000, said a spokesman.
Police said organisers had estimated that between 5,000 and 15,000 people would attend.
Israel says its attacks on targets in Lebanon are aimed at securing the release of two Israeli soldiers, who were captured by Hezbollah militants on 12 July, and preventing further Hezbollah rocket attacks.
Reporter: The news for the last 48 hours from the Middle East, it is more and more apparent now that many in the Middle East, Lebanese and others, are accusing the U.S. and the Security Council of being the obstacle to a real ceasefire immediately because that’s what they need. Could you explain in a couple words what is really your position about this?
Ambassador Bolton: Well look, I think we could have a cessation of hostilities immediately if Hezbollah would stop terrorizing innocent civilians and give up the kidnapped Israeli soldiers. So that to the extent this crisis continues, the cause is Hezbollah. How you get a ceasefire between one entity, which is a government of a democratically elected state on the one hand, and another entity on the other which is a terrorist gang, no one has yet explained. The government of Israel, everybody says, has the right to exercise the right of self-defense, which even if there are criticisms of Israeli actions by some, they recognize the fundamental right to self-defense. That’s a legitimate right. Are there any activities that Hezbollah engages in, militarily that are legitimate? I don’t think so. All of its activities are terrorist and all of them are illegitimate, so I don’t see the balance or the parallelism between the two sides and therefore I think it’s a very fundamental question: how a terrorist group agrees to a ceasefire. You know in a democratically elected government, the theory is that the people ultimately can hold the government accountable when it does something and doesn’t live up to it. How do you hold a terrorist group accountable? Who runs the terrorist group? Who makes the commitment that a terrorist group will abide by a ceasefire? What does a terrorist group think a ceasefire is? These are - you can use the words “cessation of hostilities” or “truce” or "ceasefire.” Nobody has yet explained how a terrorist group and a democratic state come to a mutual ceasefire.
YELLOWCAKE UPDATE....Yesterday I wrote a post about a story in Capitol Hill Blue in which a "CIA advisor" named Terrance J. Wilkinson claimed that he was present at White House briefings where George Bush was told that the Niger uranium story was bogus.
"I'm not sure how seriously to take this," I wrote, and it turns out that the answer is, "Not at all." Writing in Capitol Hill Blue today, publisher Doug Thompson says, "I've been had big time." Wilkinson is a fake and the briefings never took place.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews is sponsoring a rally in solidarity with Israel on Sunday July 23 from 5 to 6 pm at JFS, The Mall, Kenton.
Radical preacher Omar Bakri Mohammad, who was banned from Britain last year, was among those who tried to board the ships, although he was turned back.
The self-styled radical cleric caused a media storm after the London bombings, declaring that the only people he blames for the London bombings are the government and British public.
Until the order allowing him indefinite leave to remain in the UK was revoked - thus excluding him from British soil - the government had also named him as one of three people it was investigating for having possibly committed treason.
Asked whether he condemned those inspired by Osama Bin Laden, he said: "Why [would] I condemn Osama Bin Laden for? I condemn Tony Blair. I condemn George Bush. I would never condemn Osama Bin Laden or any Muslims."
ROME (AP) - Hezbollah has created a ``state within a state'' in Lebanon and must be disarmed, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said in an interview published Thursday.
Saniora told Milan-based newspaper Corriere della Sera that the Shiite militia has been doing the bidding of Syria and Iran and that it can only be disarmed with the help of the international community and once a cease-fire has been achieved in the current Middle East fighting.
``It's not a mystery that Hezbollah answers to the political agendas of Tehran and Damascus,'' Saniora was quoted as saying by Corriere. ``The entire world must help us disarm Hezbollah. But first we need to reach a cease-fire.''
Saniora said Lebanon is still too weak to attack Hezbollah's stranglehold in the south of the country on its own.
``The important thing now is to restore full Lebanese sovereignty in the south, dismantling any armed militia parallel to the national army,'' he said. ``The Syrians are inside our home and we are still too weak to defend ourselves. The terrible memories of the civil war are still too alive and no one is ready to take up arms.''
"We are very pleased with the reforms that King Abdullah and his government have been making," said John Hanford, the U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom.
"There still are some repugnant references," and Muslims as well as non-Muslims are among the targets, he said.
First Grade: " Every religion other than Islam is false."
Fifth Grade: "It is forbidden for a Muslim to be a loyal friend to someone who does not believe in God and His Prophet, or someone who fights the religion of Islam."
Eigth Grade: "As cited in Ibn Abbas: The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus."
Tenth Grade: The 10th-grade text on jurisprudence teaches that life for non-Muslims (as well as women, and, by implication, slaves) is worth a fraction of that of a "free Muslim male."
"...the plan is to outnumber the extremists to persuade them to stay away.
"For the first few Fridays we will be organising for our members from across London to come and pray here so that we have a strong majority. We will not tolerate anyone who will seek to abuse the mosque," he said.
Mr. Harper repeated his defence of Israel's right to live peacefully, condemning the violence of Hezbollah terrorists and speaking out against the suffering of innocent people in Lebanon and Gaza -- responsibility for which he laid squarely at the feet of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas, the terrorist organization that forms the government of the Palestinian Authority.
"We all want to encourage not just a ceasefire, but a resolution. And a resolution will only be achieved when everyone gets to the table and everyone admits that recognition of each other," Mr. Harper said, in a pointed reference to the refusal of Hezbollah and Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist.
"But I have to say this. I read in some papers somewhere that someone involved in this said, 'Well, Hezbollah will protect, Hezbollah will take care of us,' " the Prime Minister said.
"Hezbollah's objective is violence. Hezbollah believes that through violence it can create, it can bring about the destruction of Israel. Violence will not bring about the destruction of Israel ... and inevitably the result of the violence will be the deaths primarily of innocent people."
BAGHDAD – Iraqi police and Multi-National Division – Baghdad’s 1st Battalion, 66th Armor, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division detained four terrorist cell members Sunday afternoon after receiving a call from a concerned citizen, who informed them of an attack planned against the Rashadia police station.
The telephone tip warned that attackers had surrounded the police station; Soldiers from 1st Bn., 66th Armor, 1st BCT responded to the area to provide assistance to Iraqi police.
After exchanging gunfire, the terrorists attempted to escape Iraqi police and MND-B Soldiers pursued them. Four local citizens stopped the fleeing suspects, and the Iraqi police took them into custody.
According to information gleaned from the individuals taken into custody, their plan was to attack the police station because they wanted to kill two terrorist leaders they believed were being held there.
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