"	Post-Haste The first batch of captured documents from pre-war Iraq and Afghanistan are now available online. by Stephen F. Hayes

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has created a website ( http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm#iraq )  where it will post documents captured in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. The website is hosted by the Foreign Military Studies Office Joint Reserve Intelligence Center at Fort Leavenworth and will be updated continuously with new documents.

The first batch of materials, released late Wednesday, includes nine documents captured in connection with Operation Iraqi Freedom and 28 documents previously released on February 14, 2006, in conjunction with a study of those documents conducted by analysts at West Point. Sources on Capitol Hill and within the intelligence community tell The Weekly Standard that hundreds of new documents will be made available in the coming days, including 50-60 hours of audiotapes from the Iraqi regime.

ODNI officials will concentrate their early efforts on making available audiotapes and videotapes that have come from the former Iraqi regime. Twenty-five Arabic language translators will be hired to review these recordings for potentially sensitive information before they are posted. According to officials familiar with the DOCEX program, the U.S. government has in its possession more than 3,000 hours of recordings from the Iraqi regime. Among the collection: recordings of meetings between Saddam Hussein and other regime leaders; videotapes of speeches that Saddam thought would be important; audio and video of Saddam's meetings with foreign leaders; videotapes from conferences sponsored by the regime; and even videotapes of regime-sponsored brutality.

Materials made public in the first wave of the release will be those least likely to raise objections from the intelligence community and U.S. allies. Negroponte plans to include many of the documents labeled "NIV"--for No Intelligence Value--in this first group of materials.

But Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, insists that documents relevant to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 will be released in short order. "There may be many documents that relate to their WMD programs. Those should be released," says Hoekstra. "Same thing with links to terrorism."

Among that next batch may be the approximately 700 documents that served as the foundation for a fascinating study by the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Analysts from the Institute for Defense Analysis reviewed thousands of documents for that two-year study of the Iraq War from the perspective of Iraqis. Declassified excerpts of their final report were published in a highly illuminating article in the forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs. And the full report will be published as a book in the coming months.

It is hard to say what, exactly, to expect with the coming release of documents. There will be documents that lend support to those who opposed the war in Iraq and, to be sure, documents that bolster the case for those who supported the war.

Importantly, after years of questions about the threat from the Iraqi regime, we will now be able to get some answers. How close were the French and the Russians to the former Iraqi regime? What kind of information was being passed to the Iraqis on the eve of war in early 2003? What is the real story of Iraq's WMD programs? Why did Saddam's military leaders and scientists fabricate their reports on the progress of those programs? Which terrorist groups had an active presence in Baghdad? How many Palestinian Liberation Front jihadists did the Iraqi regime train each year? How effective was Saddam Hussein in deceiving UN inspectors throughout the 1990s? What did Saddam Hussein privately tell Yasser Arafat when the Palestinian leader came to Baghdad? And what were the Western targets of the "Blessed July" martyrdom operation that was being planned as U.S. troops crossed into Iraq in March 2003? " ................

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/011/975brvct.asp

Document Exploitation Documents

"Officials foil al Qaeda Green Zone plot

By Bassem Mroue
ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 15, 2006

BAGHDAD -- Security officials foiled a plot that would have put hundreds of al Qaeda terrorists at guard posts around Baghdad's Green Zone, home to the U.S. and other foreign embassies as well as the Iraqi government, the interior minister said yesterday.
    A senior Defense Ministry official confirmed the plot and said 421 al Qaeda men had been recruited to storm the U.S. and British embassies and take hostages. Several ranking Defense Ministry officials have been jailed in the plot, the official said on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
    The disclosure came amid a wave of apparent reprisal slayings, with officials saying police had found the bodies of at least 87 persons killed in execution style over the previous 24 hours.
    They included four men shot in the head and hanged from electricity pylons in Sadr City, a teeming Shi'ite slum in which 58 persons died and more than 200 were wounded in car bomb and mortar attacks on food markets over the weekend.
    Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said in an interview that the al Qaeda recruits were one bureaucrat's signature away from being accepted into an Iraqi army battalion whose job is to control the gates and main squares in the Green Zone. The plot was discovered three weeks ago.
    "You can imagine what could happen to a minister or an ambassador while passing through these gates when those terrorists are there," Mr. Jabr said in his office inside the 2-square-mile maze of concrete blast walls, concertina wire and checkpoints known as the Green Zone." ......... 
   
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20060314-103631-3649r.htm

If we could get the sun to sign the "Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change"    then we might be onto something to slow down global warming!!  Yeah anything that has to do with the United Nations   is really sensible and beneficial to all.  NOT!!!       

I doubt any irrefutable evidence that our sun burning warmer would ever sink in to any member of the UN.

"Sun's next 11-year cycle could be 50 pct stronger

This is so well written ..... it pulls together a large highly important picture into a capsule.

But Islamists need not consolidate a great-power imperial core to exert influence and expand their reach. Instead of focusing on uniting a modern Caliphate in areas outside of the West, the more effective strategy for Islamists may be to nurture the growth of the Caliphate within the West. Demography, as Mark Steyn recently observed in an essay for the New Criterion (reprinted here), makes this strategy workable. Birthrates in many European countries are too low to replace the existing populations, yet Europe needs bodies to sustain its economies and its welfare states. The Muslim lands near Europe, where high birthrates are the norm, are the closest source available to Europe for replenishing its population, making real the possibility that immigration could transform Europe into a Muslim-dominated region long before the feudal monarchies, police states, and Islamist governments (and now democracies) of the Middle East resolve their differences.

Given these trends, the continuing uproar in the wake of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons depicting the image of the Prophet Mohammed could become the rule, and not the exception, for the expansion of Islamist influence. Instead of imposing Islamic law through formal control of governments, Islamists might envision expanding the Caliphate by imposing one Islamic law at a time in places where large enough populations are willing to ignore local civil law and take enforcement of Islamic law into their own hands.

The success of such a program depends on non-Muslims not putting up much of a fight as the societies around them become increasingly restrictive. Steyn believes that Europeans, overwhelmed by demographic trends and lacking what he labels the "civilizational confidence" to defend their principles, might eventually submit.

Contrary to Steyn's assertion, however, the problem for Western liberals tends not to be a lack of confidence, but an overabundance of confidence in the wrong places. The progressive West doesn't lack confidence in its culture as much as it doesn't really believe that its culture -- or anyone's culture -- matters much. Western progressivism, secular and rationalist, has become defined by its belief that a perfect society here on earth can be brought about through the proper manipulation of material factors. Traditions and ideas that have played key roles in the success of the West -- such as freedom of expression -- are considered to be secondary factors.

Radical Islamists also seek to actively create a perfect society here on earth, though their definition of perfection obviously differs from the progressive definition. Radical Islamism has its roots in movements, like the Wahhabi movement founded in eighteenth-century Arabia and the Salafi movement founded in nineteenth-century Egypt, that seek to restore Islam to an idealized seventh-century form. What Western observers tend to overlook is that these movements do not only reject modernity in a Western sense, but also reject much of Islamic tradition. But since no one at the founding of Wahhabism or Salafism was around to see what Islam was really like in the seventh century, what they are trying to restore is based upon idealized images of what should be, not anything that ever was. In this sense, radical Islam is as utopian as Western progressivism.

Thus, when progressives confront radical Islamists, the result is two sides, each -- for different reasons -- disinterested in the traditions and culture and habits that have shaped the West, each confident that their version of an idealized utopia will prevail over whatever exists now.

The problem -- for progressives -- is that Islamists are willing to fight to impose their beliefs, while progressives don't believe that they need to fight for theirs. Modern progressive secular faith includes a belief that history follows an inevitable path driving people away from ideologies and cultures that don't promise earthly rewards and towards a state-centric philosophy that promises to deliver material comfort. Eventually, everyone's cultural and ideological differences will fall to the side, because everyone will desire to work together in a system that delivers generous welfare and cradle-to-grave healthcare.

But what Western progressives and multicultural liberals view as sensitivity -- like calls for "self-restraint" on free expression -- that is intended to ease the transition of those from outside of the West into Western provider states, Islamists view as a sign of weakness. They see a willingness to accept practices incompatible with the concept of freedom as a willingness to surrender cherished principles when the demand for surrender is made forcefully enough. Ultimately, if the West is led by those unwilling to defend Western ideals because they believe that impersonal material forces are, by themselves, enough to sustain the vibrancy of the West, then liberal Western governance may find itself replaced from within by a restored Caliphate that rose to power because the rejection of important principles like the freedom of expression went unchallenged. 

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=030206B

The press is so eager to report President Bush's errors that it is too lazy to research terms of

(1)  Overrun ..... flood waters so high that it runs over levees

(2)  Breach ....... a hole in the levee  ....  holes allow flood water to flow unimpeded, often becoming larger the more water flows through

Powerline caught AP's negligent error, Drudge nailed it this morning.

______________________

MSM =   

High up on my list of annoyances are references to the United States as a democracy and the suggestion that Iraq should become a democracy. The word "democracy" appears in neither of our founding documents – the Declaration of Independence nor the U.S. Constitution.

Our nation's founders had disdain for democracy and majority rule. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, said in a pure democracy, "there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual." During the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said that "in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy."

John Adams said, "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." Chief Justice John Marshall added, "Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos." The founders knew that a democracy would lead to the same kind of tyranny suffered under King George III. Their vision for us was a republic.

But let's cut to Iraq and President Bush's call for it to become a democracy. I can't think of a worse place to have a democracy – majority rule. Iraq needs a republic like that envisioned by our founders – decentralized and limited government power. In a republican form of government, there is rule of law. All citizens, including government officials, are accountable to the same laws. Government intervenes in civil society to protect its citizens against force and fraud, but does not intervene in the cases of peaceable, voluntary exchange.

Democracy, what the Bush administration calls for, is different. In a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. The law is whatever the government determines it to be. Laws aren't necessarily based upon reason but power. In other words, democracy is just another form of tyranny – tyranny of the majority.

In Iraq, Arabs are about 75 percent of the population, Kurds about 20 percent and Turkomen and Assyrian the balance. Religiously, Shia are about 60 percent of the population, Sunni 35 percent with Christian and other religions making up the balance. If a majority-rule democracy emerges, given the longstanding hate and distrust among ethnic/religious groups, it's a recipe for conflict. The reason is quite simple. Majority rule is a zero-sum game with winners and losers, with winners having the power to impose their wills on the minority. Conflict emerges when the minority resists.

The ideal political model for Iraq is Switzerland's cantonal system. Historically, Switzerland, unlike most European countries, was made up of several different major ethnic groups – Germans, French, Italians and Rhaeto-Romansch. Over the centuries, conflicts have arisen between these groups, who differ in language, religion (Catholic and Protestant) and culture. The resolution to the conflict was to allow the warring groups to govern themselves.

Switzerland has 26 cantons. The cantons are divided into about 3,000 communes. Switzerland's federal government controls only those interests common to all cantons – national defense, foreign policy, railways and the like. All other matters are controlled by the individual cantons and communes. The Swiss cantonal system enables people of different ethnicity, language, culture and religion to live at peace with one another. As such, Switzerland's political system is well suited to an ethnically and religiously divided country such as Iraq.

By the way, for President Bush and others who insist on calling our country a democracy, should we change our pledge of allegiance to say "to the democracy, for which it stands," and should we rename "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" to "The Battle Hymn of the Democracy"?

Now we know why it works. 

Ingredients in chicken soup have anti-inflammatory properties that inhibit the movement of neutrophils into airways. Neutrophils are white blood cells that contribute to the inflammation that causes cold symptoms. Combat your next cold with plenty of rest, lots of fluids, and a bowl of homemade chicken soup."

Just got an email showing one.  Did a search and came up with this link which gives a picture and article about them.

 http://www.iacsp.com/deadly-decoys.html

This is a letter quoted directly from Powerlineblog.com from the Mayor of Tall 'Afar, Iraq praising the work of our troops combating terrorism.  The praise for our efforts are too great to allow it to go unnoticed .... but per usual if it doesn't conform to progressive-socialist re-education propaganda machine's message ... it does NOT get aired.  Come to think of it our mainstream media is becoming more like Pravda and Xinhua every day.

Seems that although China is rising as an economic super power it is doing so with human rights abuses such as torture and murder which is typical of any communist government.  Currently land is being seized from landowners who are not properly compensated and when they object they are systematically tortured, killed and those deaths are covered up beyond any measure we in the US could imagine. 

I'm about halfway through this commentary about the communist takeover in China ["Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party] and how it was done, how many human beings were systematically exterminated over the years and methods used to bring about a complete takeover of a nation geographically about as big as the US.  A rather long read, very worthwhile and gives an excellent background as to why currently there are usually numerous civil protests across China that the government is having a hard time keeping the lid on with technology available today. 

"Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party

"More Mass Suppression in Shanwei

By Gao Ling Epoch Times China Staff

"Two and a half months have passed since the bloody massacre in Dongzhou village, Shanwei, Guangdong province. Many people are watching closely the current situation of the villagers. Since the bloody massacre, the government has set a tight blockade in the village, they are continuously searching, arresting and tapping telephone calls.

For more than seventy days, Dongzhou villagers were afraid to visit other villagers or answer telephone interviews. On January 24, all patients from the hospitals were forced to go home to their villages. After the Chinese New Year, the suppression by the CCP escalated, villagers were once again arrested, tortured and interrogated. Now they can no longer tolerate the maltreatment.

Orphans Beg on the Streets

On the morning of Feb 18, at 8 am, victims of the Shanwei incident and family members of those missing and arrested, escorted a dozen orphaned children who have no income to survive on, to Dongzhou Second Village and started begging on the street. Some relatives of the missing villagers cried openly asking for justice, sparking off a mass gathering of other villagers. Villagers expressed concern that the CCP's unscrupulous humiliation would spark off a rebellion.

Children of injured villagers, and orphans, begging on the streets. (The Epoch Times)

The ages of the children who were out begging, ranged from 3 to 12 years old. Some of them had lost their fathers who were beaten to death, leaving behind a widowed mother and child, with no means of supporting themselves. Some belonged to parents who were wanted for being "instigators" of the shooting incident and were forced to flee from home, and others had parents who were badly injured and unable to work.

Witnessing the tragic scene of children begging on their knees and cries from the victims finally ignited a resentment in the hearts of the Dongzhou villagers who for nearly eighty days had tolerated this incident. More and more villagers gathered together and many donated money to the orphans. An elderly man angrily reprimanded the government officials who had rushed to the scene, he said "I am 77 years old this year, arrest me and beat me if you wish. The Communist Party are used to lying! This is ridiculous!"

A crowd gathers to protest. (The Epoch Times)

People from other villagers were saying, it looks like our village representative has returned. According to the villagers, the three village representatives who were arrested were highly regarded.. When they were still around, the local village official and police were afraid of them and would not dare to interfere with the villagers. However since their arrest during the December 6 incident, under the insistence of the government, these local bullies wantonly arrested and beat the villagers, forcefully entering their houses and make house searches as they pleased. The villagers were too afraid to voice their anger. But today it seemed as if the village representative was around, everyone shouted and cried to their hearts content all the grievances that had been suppressed .

The crowds slowly dispersed around 3 pm in the afternoon after villagers urged the children to return home. However the residents surmised that these children who have lost the means to a livelihood, will soon be back to beg for a living as the government will not resolve this problem.

The child of severely injured Liu Muzong, has nobody in her family to care for her and she has no means to survive. (The Epoch Times)

Around Jan 24, eight injured hospitalised villagers including Chen Tianjin, Tang Dahan, and Liu Muzong were evacuated from the hospital by the authorities with the excuse of going home to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Some of them saw the real intention of the government and refused to leave the hospital. They were persuaded everyday to change their minds and finally they gave in and returned to their village. At present, there is no one who cares about their situation - there is no doctor, and a lack of medication to treat their injuries.

A few days ago, several injured villagers who had difficulty supporting themselves went to the government office to ask for subsistence. But as usual the officials ignored them and even reprimanded them severely. Several family members of those detained by the authorities requested to visit them to give them something for New Year, but were also rejected.

The whereabouts of the missing remains unknown. Many villagers speculate that these villagers were probably massacred and their bodies could have been cremated during the December 6 incident. The authorities tried to cover up the actual death toll and used "detention" as an excuse to deceive family members and avoid public scrutiny.

The Dongzhou villagers had a quiet Chinese New Year. The villagers on the run were afraid to return. And once the New Year festivities were over, the authorities started to arrest villagers and repeatedly tried to force them to reveal where explosives were hidden. The police beat and kicked them when the villagers told them they did not know.. All of them suffered varying degrees of torture.

Yet in the official media it was reported that everything was peaceful. According to the villagers' description, since the December 6 incident, the government has continuously broadcast propaganda on the Shanwei TV station news, that they had sent out many task forces into Dongzhou village to help resolve the situation of the poor and had taken out social insurance for the villagers, and that the situation in Dongzhou village has returned to normal.

But in reality, everything is in contrary to what is reported in the news. The villagers said, the government tells lies openly, villagers have no recourse to justice, their livelihood is destroyed and they live in fear and under pressure everyday. Sooner or later, the villagers will rebel. Related articles:

Massacre in China Draws Global Attention
Shanwei: Father Pleads Guilty For Son, Arrested Villagers Tortured
After Massacre Terror Continues in Chinese Village
Shanwei Shootings: Photos from Shanwei
Shanwei Shooting: Photo Gallery
Bloody Suppression of Farmers in Shanwei; 70 People Shot to Death by Police

http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-2-20/38422.html