Truer Words - A Journal

StratFor On the Significance of Those Cartoons

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:39:45 GMT

Strategic Forecasting sent out their latest, free intelligence report today. This one provides a pretty thorough analysis of the background and results of Those Cartoons.

I've attached the whole article (with permission), but here's my favorite quote:

European states cannot control what private publications publish. That means that, like it or not, they are hostage to Islamic perceptions. The threat, therefore, is not under their control. And thus, even if the actions or policies of the United States did precipitate 9/11, the Europeans are no more immune to the threat than the Americans are.

If you're at all interested in the apparent "collision of civilizations," read this article.

Bush, Iraq, al Qaeda, WMD, Terrorism, etc., etc., etc.

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 09:21:41 GMT

Stratfor sent one of their frequent updates last night. This issue covered the mess Bush finds himself in as a direct result of not telling the public the real reasons for the invasion of Iraq. (He's bounced around from the imminent threat of WMD's to elimination of an evil despot to planting the seeds of democracy.)

They've previously laid out what they firmly believe to be the main line of reasoning behind the invasion. It's not a conspiracy theory, and is in fact a much more plausible and "acceptable" reason (relatively speaking) than spreading democracy... but Bush and his team can't bring themselves to spell it out.

It bugs me that nobody seems to be discussing this view (not the media, not the other sites I read, nobody).

Anyway, their mailing said it was ok to share it, so I'm attaching a copy of the article to this post.

Yes, it's lengthy, but it's worth the time to read it.

Arar's Story Makes Me Ask: "Where Am I?"

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 16:18:09 GMT

If this story of Maher Arar is for real, if he really was treated this way, then I don't know where I am. I thought I was living in the U.S.A., but... I can't be. Or maybe I'm in the US but fell through a crack into an alternate dimension.

Or maybe the US has really, really lost its way. Or its mind.

I don't even care if he is a terrorist. The people in the US who treated him that way, especially choosing to send him to Syria, are no better. They've become what they are so afraid of.

Thanks, Jim, for posting those links.

Why Iraq?

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 18:46:24 GMT

A thread over on Joggle's forums (of all places) seems to have set me off, a little.

They were talking about the fact that the US is still searching for WMD's in Iraq, so far without any luck. Someone suggested that this is like trying to find cigarettes in your kid's room, after warning him for six months that you were going to search his room for them.

I'll probably regret posting this here, as someone is bound to sTroll in and take a shot at me, but here's my response. (This is not meant to be pro or anti US, it's just an explanation of how I see the situation.)

Quoting usausa:

Should you refrain from disciplining your child because of what he might do if you do discipline him?

Since when is the USA the parent?

There's no evidence that he had weapons of mass destruction during the last few years before the war. None. Remember, the inspectors were there off and on for years before the war, and never found anything.

People keep saying that it takes a long time to find these weapons in such a big country, but it'll take a lot longer to prove they're not there: how do you prove something isn't there, without literally searching every square foot/meter/yard of the entire country?

Hussein was a bad guy, there's no doubt about that. Probably the worst in the region. The US had very good reasons for going into Iraq and deposing Hussein, but there's no evidence the WMDs were one of those reasons.

One good reason to go into Iraq is that the entire middle east is a hot-bed for state-sponsored terrorism. Again, there's no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, nor even that they had any significant connections with Al Qaeda, but Iraq is right in the middle of everything.

Strategically, there's no better country the US could have invaded. Now that they're in place, the military can start putting real pressure on the other nations to stop supporting terrorism or risk paying a price they know they can't afford.

The US needed a base of operations in the Middle East to "project power" into the region. Where else could they have gone? Kuwait's the only country that would have allowed them to increase their presence without an invasion, but it's not strategic enough for the rest of the region, and is way too small.

Consider everything the US government does, especially militarily, through the lense of counter-terrorism. The current "war" in Iraq isn't a war at all, it's just one front in the global war (at least, as the US seems to see it).

Anyway, I'm not making all this stuff up myself. There are lots of intelligence-analysis services (NOT news services) that publish freely-available reports on a regular basis. My favorite is Stratfor.

Linkable Transcript of Colin Powell's Presentation

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 07 Feb 2003 20:36:05 GMT

Steve Ivy said he thought it would be a good idea for someone to post a transcript of Colin Powell's Presentation on Iraq to the Security Council with links for every paragraph so that it could be discussed and debated online. Everyone would have the same source. Without the paragraph-level anchors, the debates would be full of references like, "scroll down to the 53rd paragraph...".

I suggested he do it himself... so he did! Very cool! Now there's a fully linkable, indexed transcription of Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Security Council on the U.S. case against Iraq. I hope people use it. They don't have to do the debating *on* Steve's site, of course, but it'll be a handy resource!

(If nothing else, at least Steve can use it for his own comments on the presentation.)

It Sneaks Up On You

seth@macrobyte.net — Mon, 30 Dec 2002 09:54:46 GMT

This makes my blood boil.

I agree with his conclusion, too.

Mullah Zaeef, Former Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan, Is Not Dead

seth@macrobyte.net — Mon, 07 Oct 2002 08:56:04 GMT

On September 11, 2001, just a few hours after the towers fell, I wrote up a little post about Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan. He'd made an incredibly stupid statement about wanting "to tell the American children that Afghanistan feels your pain and we hope that the courts find justice." The news stories quoted him, but that's about it.

Later, I saw that lots of people were reading my blurb about this guy, so I expanded it with more information about who he was and links to where else you could read about him.

The embassy was eventually shut down (since the government was being removed, and the embassy is part of the government), and Mullah Zaeef was arrested and sent to Guantanamo with many other Taliban prisoners. He was a high ranking official in the government, it's no surprise that the U.S. Military wanted him.

This summer, the Balochistan ran a story that the Mullah had been tortured to death in the prison camp. The story was picked up by Arabic and Muslim newspapers all over the world. A few days later, the Balochistan retracted the story of his death, but -- no surprises here -- the other newspapers did not pick this one up. (Zaeef actually sent a letter to his family from the prison through the Red Cross.)

This morning, someone sent in a list of four links related to the former ambassador which supposedly told the "whole story", from his speaking out against the bombing (duh) to being tortured to death in prison. This guy was obviously fooled, and what's scary is that most everyone who reads those newspapers were also fooled.

While the U.S. has made a lot of big mistakes in its dealings with Muslim nations, the death of Mullah Zaeef isn't one of them, since he's not dead.

WTC Photo

seth@macrobyte.net — Mon, 11 Feb 2002 18:57:37 GMT

Wow, looking at this picture of New York is enough to make you dizzy.

And a little sick.

That picture is dated October 18, 2001.

Racial Profiling

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 03 Jan 2002 17:17:05 GMT

I'm listening to an NPR story about the Secret Service agent -- of Arab descent -- who was removed from an American Airlines flight when the pilot didn't believe that he was an agent.

Remember back when "racial profiling" used to refer primarily to police giving more tickets to "black" drivers than to "white" drivers?

Sheesh.

At least the agent can take comfort in his boss's words. If the problem turns out to actually be one of racial profiling, he's promised to be "mad as heck".

Stories of daisy-cutters being dropped on American Airlines headquarters are, so far, uncomfirmed.

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef - Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan

seth@macrobyte.net — Tue, 11 Sep 2001 13:58:58 GMT

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef is the Taliban (Afghanistan's ruling Islamic party) ambassador to Pakistan. He made a comment today that I just can't make sense of!

we want to tell the American children that Afghanistan feels your pain and we hope that the courts find justice.

What's that supposed to mean? Why is he talking to the children? What courts is he talking about?

What a bizarre thing to say. Could he possibly have meant this to be some sort of condemnation of the terror?

I'll even go so far as to wonder aloud if he's apologizing for the pain this afflicted on "the American children" (as if to to say, "We're sorry we had to hurt the children when we killed the parents.").

Update: If you don't know who Abdul Salam Zaeef is, here's a quick synopsis. As mentioned above, he's the ambassador from Afghanistan to Pakistan. Pakistan is Afghanistan's most important neighbor, and is the only country that recognizes the Taliban as the official Afghani government.

The result is that Zaeef is an extremely powerful individual with heavy influence in the region. He's the most widely-quoted man in the Taliban government (some joke that he's the only literate man in the Taliban, too), and seems to be involved in almost every "news item" regarding Afghanistan.

Links to other pages regarding Abdul Salam Zaeef

He Is Not Dead!
Pakistan 'Asks' Zaeef to Stop Violating Third-Nation Rule (November 7, 2001)
Zaeef Claims 1500 Civilians Dead from U.S. Air Strikes (October 30, 2001) - This is the sort of thing that prompted Pakistan to ask him to stop violating the third nation rule (above).
Interview with UN's IRIN-CA - General Afghani-related Interview
Afghanistan and Uzbekistan meet in Pakistan to discuss Central-Asian militancy (February, 2000)