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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (40584)	3/27/2004 4:24:37 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

The Spanish government is continuing to gain my admiration. In contrast to the American government's reaction to 9-11, and as a rebuttal to all of the RW hoopla about appeasement, they have efficiently addressed their problem. Police Find Prints of Madrid Bomb Suspects-Reports Spanish police probing the deadly Madrid train bombings found the fingerprints on Saturday of two leading suspects at a rural house where traces of suspicious explosives were found, local media reported. The house in Morata de Tajuna, a rural area southeast of Madrid, had been under surveillance for several days and police moved in on Friday. Television and radio stations reported that police said they had found traces of explosives and detonators like those used in the attack and then discovered the fingerprints on Saturday. The prints reportedly matched those of Jamal Zougam and Abderrahim Zbakh. Interior Ministry officials were not available to confirm the findings. Zougam allegedly has close ties to Islamist militant groups and is seen as the most important of the 18 suspects in custody. Zbakh is accused of building the bombs by connecting the detonators to mobile phones. Ten bombs hidden inside backpacks tore apart four commuter trains almost simultaneously on March 11, killing 190 people and wounding around 1,900. But four other bombs failed to explode and one of those gave police a key clue in the case. The SIM card of the mobile phone it was connected to was traced to a small telephone center run by Zougam in Madrid. That in turn led police to the other suspects, most of whom are Moroccans and believed to be tied to Muslim radicals. The Madrid bombing investigation spread beyond Spain on Friday as German police searched the apartment of a Moroccan man who is one of those under arrest in Spain and said they were probing his possible links to militant groups. reuters.com lurqer

To: lurqer who wrote (40584)	3/27/2004 7:30:32 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Some comments on Clarke by tekboy -- an SI member who worked with him during the Clinton years... Message 19958439 <<..."Having worked with Clarke on the NSC staff back in the day, my impressions of him are the following. He's a hard-driving, obnoxious, self-important a$$hole, somebody who jealously guarded his own bureaucratic turf while at the same time trying to horn in on whatever action was going on elsewhere. That said, he's also a serious professional who made himself indispensable for a succession of important bosses over the years by virtue of his brains, energy, and (mostly) his ability to get things done. Regarding al Qaeda, he was obsessed with the group from way back, and by the end of the 90s onward was regarded as almost something of a crank about the threat it posed and the need to take more aggressive measures to deal with it. At the time, I and others were a little skeptical; in retrospect, he and his shop (which included Rand Beers, Steve Simon, and Dan Benjamin among others) were right and we were wrong. Bottom line, he knows and cares more about this stuff than just about anybody else in the country, and I'd listen carefully to what he has to say (even if I don't like him much personally)."...>>