All Things News

Straight from Reuters, the bastion of truth: “PARIS (Reuters) – Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Thursday U.S. troops should remain in Iraq for up to three more years to help bring peace to the country, envisaging a slower withdrawal programme than that suggested by Washington.At the start of a week-long visit to France, Talabani rejected suggestions Iraq had descended into civil war and accused the media of focusing exclusively on negative stories.

However, he said “international terrorists” were still concentrating all their efforts in Iraq which meant the country needed outside help to defeat them.

“We need time. Not 20 years, but time. I personally can say that two to three years will be enough to build up our forces and say to our American friends ‘Bye bye with thanks’,” Talabani told a conference organized by the IFRI think-tank.

That appeared to be at odds with the view of Gen. George Casey, who commands the 140,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq and who forecast last week that Iraqis would be able to handle most tasks within 12 to 18 months.”

Straight from the Debka File: “November 2, 2006, 8:39 PM (GMT+02:00) – Israeli forces are encircling two mosques in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun Thursday night, Nov. 2, demanding the surrender of 50 armed Palestinian terrorists, most of them members of Hamas’ special intervention force and its allied Popular Resistance Committees. The armed terrorists refuse to surrender and are threatening retaliation by firing Grad rockets into Ashkelon and resuming suicide attacks in Israel.”

Straight from the Debka File: “Exclusive to DEBKAfile’s military sources: While the IDF continues “Operation Autumn Clouds” in Beit Hanun, and Qassam rockets continue to fall on Sderot and the Western Negev, Hamas has begun to fire rockets from the West Bank at Israeli targets.

The IDF on Wednesday, Nov. 1, refuted an announcement by the Salah a-Din Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, that on Wednesday morning it had fired a short-range Nasser 1 rocket at the settlement of Migdalim, east of Ariel in Samaria. However, senior officers in Central Command told DEBKAfile’s military sources that the Palestinians, for the first time, fired an antitank missile at an Israeli settlement, adding that it had been smuggled into the West Bank from the Gaza Strip or the Sinai Peninsula.

According to the officers, Hamas has devoted tremendous resources to opening a second front by firing short-range missiles at Israeli targets from the West Bank, and has already succeeded in stockpiling a “not insignificant” number of such missiles. “The first instance of the firing of such a missile took place early Wednesday morning at 4 a.m., and now it will escalate,” one officer said.

Another officer said: “What we said was that we didn’t find the missile fragments in the field. However, just because we didn’t find them doesn’t mean we don’t know what the Palestinians are up to. The missile was definitely fired, and without any doubt this heralds the opening of a new period of warfare in the West Bank and within the Green Line.”

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that senior IDF officers are saying that while the political echelon and military brass are still deliberating how to halt or lessen the influx of weapons through Palestinian-made smuggling tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor and the Egypt-Gaza border, Hamas is concentrating most of its efforts to bringing its assorted weaponry from Gaza to the West Bank. Hamas sees this as a priority, even more than bringing advanced weaponry into Gaza.

Over the past few weeks, the IDF says, Hamas has succeeded in opening another smuggling route from the Sinai Peninsula to the Arava near Eilat. From there the missiles cross the Jordan River into Jordan, then are snuck into the West Bank through the Dead Sea area by Beduin smuggling networks.

Hamas wants to establish in the West Bank and adjoining areas on the other side of the Green Line a zone of live fire similar to what exists along the Gaza Strip security fence. [See DEBKAfile’s article from Nov. 1 “The Russian-made antitank missile Metis-M9 is returning to the battle field – this time to the Gaza Strip”]

A senior officer in Central Command said: “Now, after the first firing [of a missile] at Migdalim, the firing of antitank missiles at settlements and Israeli vehicles will escalate in Judea and Samaria. It is only a question of a short time before areas inside the Green Line become targets.”

Straight from the Debka File: “According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, the low Israeli air passes, about which the Lebanese government complained, recorded Hizballah’s reestablishment in Beirut’s Shiite Dahya district, two months after its military centers were flattened in the Lebanon war. It is now a closed military zone whose entry is closely guarded by Hizballah operatives.

Israeli warplanes also recorded Hizballah’s revived bunker system, foundations for new rocket launchers and rebuilt intelligence and surveillance positions rising day by day along the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Similarly, the tempo of Iranian-Syrian weapons consignments to Hizballah units has been stepped up. They include ground-to-ground missiles, anti-air, anti-tank and shore-to-sea missiles. DEBKAfile’s military sources confirm that Hizballah has fully re-stocked the arsenal of rockets of the type which blasted northern Israel for 33 days in July and August.

A senior Israeli military source pointed out to DEBKAfile that intelligence-gathering on Hizballah’s recovery, rearming and regrouping for battle is of little use when it is not followed up by action. He disclosed that each time the disturbing data is put before the chief of staff and his superiors in Jerusalem, no one there decides on a response. Syria and Hizballah are exploiting this inertia to openly refortify and rearm their former positions on the border and southern Beirut, while their arms convoys ply Lebanon’s highways in broad daylight.

Neither the Lebanese army nor UNIFIL’s European contingents deployed in S. Lebanon and at sea make any move to stall the illegal influx of war materiel.

An Israeli intelligence source commented that the arms embargo contained in UN resolution 1701 is a one-way exercise. It keeps the Lebanese army and anti-Syrian militias from procuring weapons but does nothing to halt supplies to Hizballah and other pro-Syrian groups, which Israeli intelligence officers see as having two goals:

1. The takeover of Beirut’s government centers in Beirut by Iran-backed Hizballah and pro-Syrian factions – if possible without bloodshed. The weapons will be used to quell possible political or armed resistance. None of these groups, joined by Gen. Michel Aoun’s pro-Syrian Maronie Christians will have no qualms about sparking a civil war or murdering prime minister Fouad Siniora and other ministers in order to achieve their aims. This information has been in American, French, German and Israeli intelligence since the start of October, prompting US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to say Monday, Oct. 30: “We too have heard that there are people who would like to destabilize the government of Prime Minister Siniora. We’ve heard that there are people who would like to intimidate or assassinate again, they’ve done it before in Lebanon.”

2. In the case of an armed clash, however limited in scope, between the US and Iranian forces massed in the Persian Gulf or in Iraq – which Israel’s high command believes unavoidable – informed Israeli sources have no doubt Hizballah will hit back on Tehran’s behalf with a fresh rocket offensive against Israeli cities. Intelligence-gathering is important, say those sources, but action to head off a fresh war offensive against Israel is vital. Buzzing Beirut will solve nothing.”

Straight from the Debka File: “October 31, 2006, 5:52 PM (GMT+02:00) – This warning came from the IDF OC southern command Maj.-Gen Yoav Galant in a briefing to Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee Tuesday, Oct. 31. He described Hamas commando and anti-tank units under training and an organized Hamas weapons industry topped up by massive arms smuggling. The IDF has prepared effective plans to forestall Hamas’ dangerous military enhancement in Gaza, said Gen. Galant. But, he added, the military needs the policy-makers’ signal to go ahead before it is too late.

Current military activity in the Gaza Strip goes no further than routine defensive measures, but falls far short of the comprehensive operation the IDF is capable of for eroding Hamas strength. Monday, prime minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would expand its operations in the Gaza Strip but the military is clearly not satisfied with this general assertion.”

Looks like White House press secretary Tony Snow and Sen. John Kerry are facing off in a verbal fencing match ever since “Kerry, who was speaking to a group of students, warned them that those who don’t study hard or do well in school could “get stuck in Iraq.” At today’s White House press briefing, Snow said Kerry should apologize to US troops and their families for insinuating that those who serve in the military are not smart. “What Senator Kerry ought to do first is apologize to the troops,” Snow said. “This is an absolute insult. And I’m a little astonished that he didn’t figure it out already.”

Kerry, following Snow’s advice and not one to miss a chance at taking a shot at the current administration said the following in his apology: “I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform and I personally apologize to any service member, family member or American who was offended…

…I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq . It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.”

Bareknucklepolitics: John Kerry Under Fire For ‘Stuck In Iraq’

Bareknucklepolitics: Kerry Makes Direct Apology To Troops

Straight from Bareknucklepolitics: “TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards fired missiles carrying cluster warheads to shouts of “God is the Greatest” at the start of 10 days of military maneuvers on Thursday, state television reported.Tehran had said the maneuvers, which will include drills in the Gulf and Sea of Oman, were to show off “defensive strength.” Days earlier, navies led by the United States practiced blocking the transport of weapons of mass destruction in the Gulf.”

Below is just the intro to this Ars Technica story. Do yourself a favor, section off some time, and dive into the entire article.

Straight from Ars Technica: “As we move toward the November mid-terms, we’re beginning to a more detailed and depressing picture of exactly what we’re up against as a nation in less than a week: two major new reports from independent research groups detail the myriad security breaches, and procedural and technical problems in the 2006 Ohio primaries; stories from early voting in Texas indicate that the paperless DREs in at least two counties may have a partisan bias; another major new report from the University of Connecticut details a whole raft of security vulnerabilities in Diebold’s optical scan voting machines; finally, BlackBoxVoting.org has released “push this, pull here” instructions for multiple voting on a Sequoia DRE, no hacking skills necessary.

None of this news bodes well for the November mid-terms, which are less than a week away. In fact, what the reports described below indicate is that voters will flock to the polls to vote on fragile, untested alpha systems that, when they break, cannot be fixed by the on-site poll workers; the votes that are recorded cannot be adequately verified by a post-election audit, even if a voter-verified paper “receipt” is printed by each machine and saved by the county; and individual counties may or may not have the technical capacity to actually carry out the task of tabulating all of the electronic results (forget about the paper receipts!) from all of the machines in a coherent and reliable manner.

In sum, people will show up on November 7th at many precincts across America, they will select items on a touch-screen, a lucky few of them will see a paper record of their choices (correctly marked or not) scroll by under a glass, and they will return home having participated in a bit of high-tech political theater that may or may not amount to a bona fide election.”