Shots Across the Bow

We know, and now he knows we know. The question is, what is he going to do about it?

Three giant cargo ships are being tracked by US and British intelligence on suspicion that they might be carrying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Each with a deadweight of 35,000 to 40,000 tonnes, the ships have been sailing around the world's oceans for the past three months while maintaining radio silence in clear violation of international maritime law, say authoritative shipping industry sources.

The vessels left port in late November, just a few days after UN weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix began their search for the alleged Iraqi arsenal on their return to the country.

Sailing in circles for three months, never pulling in to port, heavily laden with cargo that's never off loaded, maintaining radio silence in violation of law.

Nope, nothing to see here folks.

The question is, "Why has this been leaked now?" Is it to let SoDamn Insane know that we know where his toys are, and that he will not get the chance to use them? Is it to ratchet up the pressure on him another notch, eliminating one more option? Is it to show him that we're two steps ahead of him all the time, and his only recourse is capitulation?

Could be!

Iraq is beginning to crumble under the pressure. From Debka:

Adib Shaaban, the right hand of Saddam Hussein’s powerful son Uday, has defected.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports exclusively that this key member of Saddam Hussein’s administration, who was charged with his son’s most sensitive missions, traveled to Jeddah at the beginning of this week, saying he needed to put through some gold transactions ahead of the war.

From Jeddah, he flew to Beirut and… disappeared.

US intelligence sources report that Shaaban never really went to Beirut. He made his way under cover to Damascus Monday and was picked up by an unmarked plane for an unknown destination.

As Uday’s closest aide, he also managed a chain of official publications, including the authoritative Babel, and was in on the Saddam regime’s deepest secrets.

Uday commands the secret army known as Saddam’s Fedayeen, the backbone of Baghdad’s defenses and custodian of the weapons of mass destruction that were not smuggled out to Lebanon.

Uday is also the chief of the ruling Baath Party’s covert service.

Shaaban must therefore be a veritable treasury of Saddam Hussein’s secrets. In American hands, Uday’s chef de bureau would be even more valuable than the proverbial smoking gun.

This comes after yesterday's news that Saddam's defense minister has been placed under house arrest to foil an attempted coup.

The story goes on:

News of the arrest comes amid indications of a growing sense of apprehension that the Iraqi army, including members of the elite Republican Guard, might desert in the event of a U.S.-led attack on the nation.

Defections, coup attempts at high levels, army desertions...it looks like time is not Hussein's ally like he thought. I guess it's a race to see who crumbles first, Europe or Iraq.

Excerpts from his presentation:

• Iraq's behavior demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort — no effort — to disarm as required by the international community. Indeed, the facts and Iraq's behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.
  
• from the first audio:"We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left."
  
  Note what he says: "We evacuated everything."
  
  We didn't destroy it. We didn't line it up for inspection. We didn't turn it into the inspectors. We evacuated it to make sure it was not around when the inspectors showed up.
  
• Here, you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers.
  
  How do I know that? How can I say that? Let me give you a closer look. Look at the image on the left. On the left is a close- up of one of the four chemical bunkers. The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions. The arrow at the top that says security points to a facility that is the signature item for this kind of bunker. Inside that facility are special guards and special equipment to monitor any leakage that might come out of the bunker.
  
  The truck you also see is a signature item. It's a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong.
  
• At this ballistic missile facility, again, two days before inspections began, five large cargo trucks appeared along with the truck-mounted crane to move missiles. We saw this kind of house cleaning at close to 30 sites.
  
  Days after this activity, the vehicles and the equipment that I've just highlighted disappear and the site returns to patterns of normalcy. We don't know precisely what Iraq was moving, but the inspectors already knew about these sites, so Iraq knew that they would be coming.
  
• Saddam Hussein also said that scientists should be told not to agree to leave Iraq; anyone who agreed to be interviewed outside Iraq would be treated as a spy. This violates 1441.
  
• Iraq has now placed itself in danger of the serious consequences called for in U.N. Resolution 1441. And this body places itself in danger of irrelevance if it allows Iraq to continue to defy its will without responding effectively and immediately.
  
• The Iraqis have never accounted for all of the biological weapons they admitted they had and we know they had. They have never accounted for all the organic material used to make them. And they have not accounted for many of the weapons filled with these agents such as there are 400 bombs. This is evidence, not conjecture. This is true. This is all well-documented.
  
• Iraq's record on chemical weapons is replete with lies. It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons.
  
  The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamal, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law. UNSCOM also gained forensic evidence that Iraq had produced VX and put it into weapons for delivery.
  
  Yet, to this day, Iraq denies it had ever weaponized VX. And on January 27, UNMOVIC told this council that it has information that conflicts with the Iraqi account of its VX program.
  
• In May 2002, our satellites photographed the unusual activity in this picture. Here we see cargo vehicles are again at this transshipment point, and we can see that they are accompanied by a decontamination vehicle associated with biological or chemical weapons activity.
  
  What makes this picture significant is that we have a human source who has corroborated that movement of chemical weapons occurred at this site at that time. So it's not just the photo, and it's not an individual seeing the photo. It's the photo and then the knowledge of an individual being brought together to make the case.
  

The case has been made. Iraq has not disarmed, has not cooperated fully with UN resolution 1441, and has no intentions of doing so. Hussein has WMD and will use them as soon as he considers it advantageous

But what about the war on terror? Did Powell make the connection between al Qaida and Iraq?

• Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associated in collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.
  
  Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialities and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqaqi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.
  
  You see a picture of this camp.
  
• Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of north east Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.
  
• Going back to the early and mid-1990s, when bin Laden was based in Sudan, an Al Qaeda source tells us that Saddam and bin Laden reached an understanding that Al Qaeda would no longer support activities against Baghdad. Early Al Qaeda ties were forged by secret, high-level intelligence service contacts with Al Qaeda, secret Iraqi intelligence high-level contacts with Al Qaeda.
  
• His information comes first-hand from his personal involvement at senior levels of Al Qaeda. He says bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased Al Qaeda leader Muhammad Atif (ph), did not believe that Al Qaeda labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help. Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq.

Again there's more, but do we really need it?

The case has been made. Now the UN needs to act or fade into oblivion like the League of Nations before it.

Why isn't this bigger news?

White specks were first found last week in bags of donated blood in the region covering Georgia and northern Florida. The problem appeared limited to about 4,000 bags manufactured by Baxter.

More particles were discovered Sunday in the Tennessee Valley Region. The Red Cross ordered the region, which covers middle Tennessee and parts of Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri, to quarantine 70 percent of its blood supply after the specks were found in 10 bags manufactured by Baxter.

I checked out the News Sentinel on line and they had the story, but it was pretty low on the page. Granted, the Columbia story is big news, but down playing a contaminated blood supply is probably not in the public interest.

According to the article, the contaminant is limited to a certain model of bags from Baxter, who claims that it is a natural blood product. The problem is that if this were a normal occurance, the Red Cross wouldn't quarantine the blood supply.

I just found out the Virginia Heinlein died on Saturday, Jan 18.

For those of you who don't know who she was, she was the wife of Robert Heinlein, one of the great American writers of all time. Calpundit has a quick rundown of who she was, and if you need to know who Robert was, go here, or here, or here.

As for me, I have to say that much of my personal and political philosophy is rooted in Heinlein's work. Since Ginny was an integral part of that work, inspiring several of his female characters, I owe as much to her as to him.

Now, after 24 years of being apart, they are together again.

you weren't paying attention. The gov't wants to monitor every single purchase made by every single American.

Aldridge said the database, which he called another "tool" in the war on terror, would look for telltale signs of suspicious consumer behavior.

Examples he cited were: sudden and large cash withdrawals, one-way air or rail travel, rental car transactions and purchases of firearms, chemicals or agents that could be used to produce biological or chemical weapons.

It would also combine consumer information with visa records, passports, arrest records or reports of suspicious activity given to law enforcement or intelligence services.

Now, in order to combine the two information sets, there must be a wat to correlate them. In other words, your name will be associated with every transaction. Think about that for a second. Every purchase will have to have your name on it, and will be stored in a data base somewhere.

Scared yet?

Then think about this. How are they going to get your name on cash transactions? We're getting to the point where you will have to show ID to buy a pack of gum, unless you use a credit card. Can a national ID card be too far behind?

How is it that the right to privacy allows a woman to abort her unborn child, but doesn't allow me to spend my money without reporting to the feds?

This cannot be allowed.

I can't wait to see what SKB has to say. We disagree in a lot of areas, but I'm betting we're together on this one....

UPDATE: I just sent the following to Senators Frist, Thompson, and Senator elect Alexander, as well as to the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Sir:

The Pentagon wants to monitor every single purchase made by every single American. They say that they need this information to combat terrorists. I fail to see how tracking my purchases at WalMart is the key to defeating Al Qaida.

The report goes on to say that consumer information will be added to passport, arrest, visa, and other information. Now, in order to combine the two information sets, there must be a way to correlate them. In other words, my name will be associated with every transaction I make, and that information will be stored in a giant database somewhere, accessible to God only knows whom. That information will be analyzed, looking for “suspicious activity” like large cash withdrawals, car rentals, etc. So, if I decide to take a trip to Washington DC, and rent a car to carry my family, and pay with cash because I don’t have a credit card, I might be a terrorist?

I don’t think so, yet a software algorithm just might reach that conclusion, and my life would be open to increased scrutiny, and a complete violation of my rights against unreasonable searches. How is it that the right to privacy allows a woman to abort her unborn child, but doesn't allow me to buy a pack of gum without reporting to the feds?

I haven’t even begun to talk about the abuses possible through the expansion of this system. As an example, it was expressly forbidden to use the Social Security number as an ID number, but last time I checked, it was required to get a driver’s license; to join the military, where it became your serial number; it is used to identify your credit worthiness; many companies use it as your employee number. In short, it has become a de facto national ID. Now imagine the parallel for this new system. The IRS will instantly be interested in this system to investigate tax fraud; tracking and analyzing cash transactions would be an excellent weapon for them. Imagine the uses local law enforcement would have for this system, tracking stolen merchandise and so on.

There are many possible noble uses for this information, I’m not arguing that, but it goes against the grain of everything we stand for as Americans. It is a massive intrusion on our rights as enumerated by the US Constitution.

It cannot be allowed.

I urge you to act now to stop this rape of our fundamental rights, before we lose the very thing we are fighting to protect.

Our freedom.

and they want to keep us there too. States are working together to develop plans to allow taxation of items sold over the internet, and traditional retailers couldn't be happier.

In a meeting in Chicago, lawmakers and tax officials from 30 states -- including Virginia and the District of Columbia - endorsed a proposal to simplify their tax laws and enter into a voluntary pact to collect online sales taxes. Maryland officials present at the meeting abstained from today's vote.

"This is a 21st century system that will dramatically improve the morass that currently exists," said Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt (R), a key leader in the states' effort. "I'm confident that this agreement....will mark the beginning of a new phase of this process."

Here's what one trade group rep had to say:

Today's vote is a welcome development for the nation's largest main street retailers, who have argued for years that the current system gives online vendors an edge over so-called "bricks-and-mortar" stores.

"Our ultimate goal is that everybody will have to play by the same rules," said Maureen Riehl, state and industry relations counsel for the National Retail Federation, a trade group that represents nearly 1.4 million stores.

Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. At least, until retailers of the traditional mousetrap lobby your advantage away.

From the latest "Trial of the Century!"

<"At one point she was explaining that she was getting in character for a role as a kleptomaniac," Parker testified. "She wanted to see what it was like to shoplift."

According to Rainey's testimony on Wednesday, the upcoming movie was, alternately, Shopgirl, based on the Steve Martin (news) novel, or White Jazz, based on the James Elroy novel. Both movies are indeed being produced. Neither happens to star Ryder.

New definition: Pulling a Ryder, v. attempting to use your occupation to cover up extremely stupid actions. see doing a Clinton.
ex. "Excuse me miss, but I have a role in an upcoming movie playing Hugh Hefner, and you'd be wonderful way for me to research my character."

This just came over on the FoxNews site
They don't think it was a bomb because the blast wasn't big enough.

We'll see.
UPDATE: The driver fell asleep and ran over a light pole, igniting the gas tank.

Ha'aretz has a very interesting article on the recent find of an inscription on an ossuary which contains a reference to Jesus.

The discovery of an ossuary (burial box) bearing the inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," which was reported last week by the Biblical Archaeological Review, is firing the imagination of scholars and Christian believers. If the James (Ya'akov) in question is indeed the brother of the Jesus (Yeshua) of the New Testament - though this point will probably remain unresolved - this will be the first physical evidence of the existence of the person whose teachings led to the emergence of one of the world's most widespread religions.

The article goes on to examine the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus. Worth reading.

I just found this little gem on Debka.

NATO, Greek and Israeli navies are scouring three seas - the eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Aegean - for a cargo ship, the 1,600-ton Tonga-flagged Cristi, which is believed to be carrying a band of al Qaeda terrorists to a fresh target.

Why haven't we heard about this here? Isn't this news?
Debka goes on to report:

DEBKAfile’s maritime and counter-terror sources report that the Cristi , like the Sara, which was detained in Italy carrying suspected Pakistani terrorists, and another suspect vessel, Twillinger, is owned by the Greek ship-owner, Dimitris Kokkos, and a Pakistani-American, Rifat Muhammed.

Kokkos, who also owned the Palestinian arms-smuggling ship Karine-A captured last January by the Israel Navy, is said to live in Romania. He is wanted by the Greek authorities for smuggling.

Our investigation reveals that the pair head Nova Spirit Inc., a company registered in Delaware, US, which runs al Qaeda’s shipping operations from the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanza and Nador on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast.

I typed "Cristi" and "Twillinger" into a search engine, and got this:

"The USS Monterey conducted a compliant boarding of the merchant vessel Tara" at around 4 am (0200 GMT) on Wednesday, Commander Bob Ross, spokesman for the US Sixth Fleet in Gaeta, Italy, told AFP.

"The Monterey was directed to conduct an interception after the merchant vessel displayed suspicious behaviour," Ross said, declining to outline what that behaviour was. The Tongan-registered Tara was found to be in order and allowed to proceed following the search which was "likely to have lasted several hours", said Ross.

On Monday Italian anti-terrorist police working closely with the US naval intelligence service said the Tara, formerly known as the Cristi, was associated with two other ships stopped by Italian authorities earlier this year.

A full day before Debka posted their story, the ship in question was found, boarded, searched, and released. So much for breaking a story.

According to this Reuters report, the Russians may have used a nerve gas to icapacitate the terrorists at the Moscow theater.

London-based security expert, Michael Yardley, said he believed the gas used was BZ, a colorless, odorless incapacitant with hallucinogenic properties, first used by the United States in Vietnam.


He said the symptoms displayed by the hostages in Moscow -- inability to walk, memory loss, fainting, heartbeat irregularities, sickness -- all pointed to BZ. According to the U.S. army the side effects last 60 hours, Yardley said.


"The Russians wouldn't want a big shout about it because it (BZ) is just the sort of stuff they are not supposed to have," he said. "It's not specifically banned, but...it is in a sort of gray area."

115 hostages died from exposure to the gas, along with about 50 terrorists.

I'm having a hard time with this. On the one hand, the Russians had to use something fast acting, to prevent the terrorists from blowing up the theater, slaughtering all of the hostages. On the other hand, the actions of the Russian government directly killed more hostages than the terrorists. This isn't like getting caught in a cross-fire between rescuers and kidnappers; assuming the Russians knew what they were doing, they deliberately chose to kill some hostages to save the lives of others. I'm a little leery of playing numbers games when the numbers represent lives. At the same time, the terrorists' tactics leave little choice.

The sniper is talking to the police, although they won't tell us what he is saying.

"[I] just want to ask the indulgence of the media that the message that needed to be delivered is that we are going to respond to a message that we have received," Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose said. "We'll respond later. We are preparing our response at this time."

Interesting quote. The police are trying to keep things quiet for two reasons. The first, and most important, is that by keeping the details quiet, they reduce the amount of noise generated by wanna bees, and can focus on the sniper. Since nobody knows what the message said, impersonators can be weeded out, reducing increasing the signal to noise ratio. The second reason is related to the first. By not tipping their hand, they give the sniper less to go on. We are already seeing signs that he is adapting is tactics to law enforcment action.

• They started military reconnaisance flights; he moved further down range.
  
• They noted a pattern in his timing, i.e. no weekend shootings; he waited for a weekend for his next attack.

By not letting the sniper know whow much they know, they reduce his ability to countermove.

The police have valid reasons for maintining a high level of secrecy, reasons which have nothing to do with avoiding public hysteria over a possible Middle Eastern terrorist link.

Did he really say that?
According to this story in the Independent, Philip Roth doesn't like how America has reacted to 9-11. Here are some of his reactions:

• To me, New York had become interesting again, because it had once again become a city in crisis, particularly in the weeks that followed, with everybody waiting for the next explosion.
  
• It was a strange time and the first time that New York interested me again since I left the city to go and live in Connecticut in 1993. And I thought, well, this is great, I'll stay, and I did.
  
• It's almost embarrassing, the kitschification of 3,000 people's deaths. Other cities have experienced far worse catastrophes.
  
• One wouldn't dream of slighting these people, it is awful, but we need to keep a sense of proportion about these things. What we've been witnessing since September 11 is an orgy of national narcissism and a gratuitous sense of victimisation that is repellent.
  

Enough already. Philip Roth finds New York boring, unless it is a city in crisis? It takes the wholesale slaughter of 300 people, and financial losses in the billions to make New York interesting? Talk about your ivory tower! Mr. Roth, I hope east Tennessee never becomes "interesting" to you. You know what's really sad? The fact that a man renowned for his abilities with the English language, famous for his insight into the American character, could be blind enough to say these things. Stick to writing, Philip, cause off the cuff, you're just embarrassing...

'Axis of evil' validated!
President Bush took a lot of heat for identifying three nations as comprising an "axis of evil," hearkening back to WWII. His critics said he was overstating his case, that there was no call to lump Iran and North Korea in with Iraq. Indeed, some said that even Iraq did not deserve the designation.

Today, those critics just took a sucker punch to the gut, as North Korea admitted to carrying out a nuclear weapons research program in direct violation of the 1994 agreement.

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a startling revelation, North Korea (news - web sites) has told the United States it has a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of an 1994 agreement with the United States, the White House said Wednesday night.
Spokesman Sean McCormack called the North Korean disclosure a serious infringement of the agreement, under which Pyongyang promised not to develop nuclear weapons.
U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said North Korea told U.S. officials that it was no longer bound by the anti-nuclear agreement.

Chalk one up for the President. Now, what are we going to do about it?

Talk.

McCormack said the United States is consulting with it allies, South Korea (news - web sites) and Japan, and with members of Congress on next steps.

"We seek a peaceful resolution of this situation," McCormack said. "Everyone in the region has a stake in this issue and no peaceful nation wants to see a nuclear-armed North Korea."

"The United States and our allies call on North Korea to comply with its commitments under the nonproliferation treaty and to eliminate its nuclear weapons program in a verifiable manner."

That'll teach 'em!

Here's the scary part:

Until now, the United States' main concern with North Korea has been its sale of ballistic missiles to Syria, Iran and other countries. Now North Korea's nuclear program is added to the mix.

The United States has been suspicious about North Korea's nuclear intentions for some time despite the agreement.

A CIA report in January said that during the second half of last year, North Korea "continued its attempts to procure technology worldwide that could have applications in its nuclear program.F

"We assess that North Korea has produced enough plutonium for at least one, and possibly two, nuclear weapons."

Ballistic missiles and enough Pu for 1 or 2 bombs. If you have the Pu, and you have the delivery vehicle, what's left ain't rocket science folks. N Korea will have a nuclear missile within the year, if they don't already. Something to consider: Why would they admit to a research program, unless they had alredy completed the research?