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18. mars 2006
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The Pentagon has finally started releasing Iraqi documents it seized after the capture of Baghdad. Saddam Hussein's connections to international terrorism appear far more extensive than what it was thought.
SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group.
The fax comes from the vast collection of documents recovered in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Up to this point, those materials have been kept from the American public. Now the proverbial dam has broken. On March 16, the U.S. government posted on the web 9 documents captured in Iraq, as well as 28 al Qaeda documents that had been released in February. Earlier last week, Foreign Affairs magazine published a lengthy article based on a review of 700 Iraqi documents by analysts with the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Plans for the release of many more documents have been announced. And if the contents of the recently released materials and other documents obtained by The Weekly Standard are any indication, the discussion of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq is about to get more interesting.
Indeed.
Foreign Affairs provides an extensive preview of released Iraqi documents on the web. This is a long article, but well worth reading.
7:08:29 PM 
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The MSM, here represented by Time Magazine, is deeply disappointed about Operatrion Swarmer. No innocents were blown up by massive bomb blasts since, indeed, no bombs were dropped. "Greatest air assault since 2003" didn't mean shock and awe in military lingo, disappointingly, it meant massive airlifts of troops and equipment.
Iraqi and US forces encountered no opposition, no shots were fired, and journalists eager to provide more death porn for the people at home let their frustration out over an allegedly overhyped operation.
Whether the operation provided vital information about the intelligence gathering, cohesion and general quality of the significant Iraqi forces involved in the operation is simply not interesting for the media back home.
2:11:07 PM
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Two teen vandals in Austria has been caught after causing damage to the Linz High School, because they left behind, well, not exactly a mug shot.
Threats against teachers were scrawled across walls, holes drilled in floors, ketchup smeared on desks, gym equipment destroyed and windows smashed.
And as a final touch, they photocopied their bottoms on the school machine and left the pictures on display in the staff room.
But police were able to catch the pair after enlarging the pictures.
Police spokesman Helmut Palfi said: "By enlarging the pictures we were able to make out part of their faces in the background. Their headmaster immediately recognised them as two 15-year-old pupils at the school."
Good thing he didn't recognise them on the bums.
12:11:42 PM
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© Copyright 2006 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.04.2006; 13:22:27.
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