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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Richnorth who wrote (13022)	2/22/2006 11:30:16 PM
From: Scoobah	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

Now this, is serious: A bloodless attack shattering the gold dome of one of the four holiest Shiite shrines brings Iraq to the brink of civil war. US president George Bush appeals for calm February 22, 2006, 12:08 AM (GMT+02:00) More than 97 Sunni mosques were attacked and a dozen or more Sunnis killed by vengeful Shiites across the country, as word spread of the destruction of the famous dome that capped the 1,200 Askariya shrine in Samarra, where the last of the Shiite imams, Mohammed al-Mahdi, known as the “hidden imam” and his son are buried. The shrine draws millions of pilgrims from around the Shiite world. Wednesday, Feb. 22, millions of outraged protesters marched and fought in all of Iraq’s Shiite centers. Some 500 soldiers were sent to Baghdad’s Sunni neighborhoods in an unsuccessful effort to prevent Shiite-Sunni clashes. In Basra, Shiite protesters traded rifle and rocket-propelled grenade fire with Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party guards, then set fire to a Sunni shrine. Police found 11 bodies of Sunni Muslims shot dead in the southern city. Senior Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, earlier ordered 7 days of mourning. But the appeal to his flock to refrain from retribution against Sunnis went unheeded. DEBKAfile’s sources: The bombing was carried out by a small squad trained by Abu Musab al Zarqawi especially for the operation. Four-to-six men entered the Askariya mosque Tuesday night and placed explosive charges around the interior of the gold dome so as to bring it crashing down on the sacred tombs below. Samarra police have made 10 arrests, among them foreigners, as would be typical of al Qaeda. Iraqi leaders and US officials realize that, unless the furious Shiite-Sunni clashes which erupted Wednesday are quelled, Iraq will quickly descend into sectarian warfare with US forces stranded between the warring camps. This eruption will sunder the country into three warring entities – Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish. The current effort by their politicians to form a national unity government will be relegated to the past. Such a conflict will resonate across the region. Shortly after the disaster in Samarra, Iran’s spiritual leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, in contrast to the US president’s effort to calm the flames, accused “US forces and Israeli intelligence” of responsibility. The Islamic republic is quite willing to exploit the destruction of a Shiite shrine to fuel the fire of sectarian conflict, in the hope of expediting the US forces’ exit from Iraq. The thousands of Iranian agents operating clandestinely in Iraq can be expected to aggravate civil strife in Iraq by agitation and leading attacks on Sunnis. Iranian leaders are proving once again how willing they are to sacrifice fellow-Shiites to terror for the sake of the strategic interests which they share with al Qaeda. Some Shiite leaders blamed the United States for not protecting their shrine and are demanding a bigger security role for religious militias. But voices were also raised in an attempt to pull the country back from the brink: US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad warned the bombings were a deliberate provocation to foment sectarian tension and civil war. Key Sunni groups condemned the destruction of the Shiite mosque’s dome. The Sunni clerical association of Muslim Scholars called the bombing a criminal act.

To: Richnorth who wrote (13022)	2/22/2006 11:45:32 PM
From: Scoobah	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 32591

This is why France will ultimately degrade whats left of itself: Any civilized country that turns on its Jews, is erased from history; which raises the qiestion, "did the muslims create the holocaust to conquer europe?" Brutal Anti-Semitic Torture-and-Murder Enrages French Jewry 17:51 Feb 21, '06 / 23 Shevat 5766 By Hillel Fendel French Jewry is infuriated at a cruel, anti-Semitic murder that followed 24 days of torture. Well over 1,000 people, mostly Jews, marched in Paris on Sunday to protest the killing and the perception that the police and government are not moving diligently to uncover the facts. Speakers at the rally accused politicians of minimizing the crime to avoid exacerbating Muslim tensions - especially after the Muslim riots in Paris two months ago. The murder victim, Ilan Halimi, 23, was kidnapped and tortured for over three weeks. Seven suspects have been arrested, apparently given over to the authorities by a young woman who was involved in entrapping Halimi. She said she never expected the incident to develop into a murder. The ring-leader of the group, however - Yousouf Fofana, a Moslem from the Ivory Coast who calls himself "the Brain of the Barbarians" - has not yet been caught. The kidnappers beat, burned and mutilated Halimi during the 24 days they kept him in captivity in an out-of-the-way cellar. The gang contacted Halimi's family with ransom demands, taunting them with anti-Semitic curses and reciting Koranic verses via the phone and e-mail. The kidnappers even sent photos of the bound and blindfolded victim with a gun to his head, in the style of Moslem-taken hostages in Iraq and other areas. Halimi was finally found on February 13 lying in agony, unclothed and bound, near a railway line outside Paris, with stab wounds and burns over 80% of his body. He died on the way to hospital. The seven suspects have been charged with "murder linked to the victim's religion," as well as with kidnapping, illegal imprisonment and criminal association. The Los Angeles Times quoted local Jewish leader and former police chief Sammy Ghozlan as saying, "When the family said they didn't have money, they told them to go to a synagogue to get the money. This gang massacred this young man. They cut off ears and fingers. It was like they had a trophy, a Jewish kid, and everybody abused him." Arutz-7's French-language editor David Geller said that the Jewish community in Paris is "in shock. Their feeling of security has been rocked in light of the authorities' handling of the case. Many of them are asking themselves if they have any future in France." "If Ilan hadn't been Jewish, he wouldn't have been murdered," his mother Ruth told the Israeli Haaretz newspaper. Police insisted that they had worked on the case throughout the period of his abduction. Police forbade the family to publicize their son's disappearance, fearing that the kidnappers would then kill him. Jewish communal leaders said that publicizing the case could have led to the capture of the kidnappers and the possible prevention of the torture Halimi underwent. French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin told Jewish community leaders at their annual dinner on Monday night that the judge handling the case was investigating leads pointing to an anti-Semitic attack. De Villepin said he had ordered his interior and justice ministers to shed all possible light on the affair. Justice Minister Pascal Clement told the same dinner that one suspect had indicated Halimi was selected "because he was Jewish and because a Jew was rich. That is an aggravating circumstance."

To: Richnorth who wrote (13022)	2/23/2006 8:30:49 AM
From: Scoobah	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

more very serious developments, but not unexpected: Israel’s Dep. C-of-S Gen Kaplinsky: Mubarak regime shows early signs of instability February 23, 2006, 10:43 AM (GMT+02:00) Wednesday, Feb. 22, the day General Yair Naveh caused a diplomatic row by his comment on the Hashemite throne in Jordan, deputy chief of staff Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky referred to Egypt at a lecture in Haifa. The Mubarak regime, he said, showed early signs of instability because of the rising strength of the radical Muslim Brotherhood in democratic elections which US president George Bush is pushing forward in the Middle East. DEBKAfile adds: In reality, this general, like his colleague and other security experts, was firing a broadside at his own government, rather than Israel‘s two Arab peace partners, Egypt and Jordan, for permitting a branch of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the Hamas, to seize Palestinian government. They regard Hamas as a strategic threat to Israel and destabilizing element for its neighbors. The generals hope their warnings do not continue to fall on deaf ears in Jerusalem