WSJ: Asean nations forge "watershed" convention against terrorism

The Wall Street Journal heralds what it describes as the "watershed" pact the The Association of Southeast Asian Nations forged over the weekend to counter terrorism at their conference in the Philippines.

As the WSJ points out, the Asean convention provides a "stark reality check" in affirming that "terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations, committed wherever, whenever, and by whomsoever, is a profound threat to international peace and security and a direct challenge to the attainment of peace, progress and prosperity for Asean."

Signatories are compelled to implement measures that will cut off the flow of terrorist funding, prosecute terrorism suspects as efficiently as possible, and establish a regional database to track their activities and movements.

As the WSJ points out, while some of the Asean nations were swift to strengthen their counterterrorism laws after 9/11, other members of the group - namely, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam - have done very little, and so this pact is a welcome measure that should finally force them to act.

"Why now?" the WSJ asks and then posits: "Perhaps the Asean nations finally understand that terrorism is a threat to every kind of government -- democratic, autocratic, Communist. Perhaps they feel pressured to show that Asean is a meaningful group in the face of other, overlapping regional alphabet-soup clubs, such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the East Asia Summit."

Barry Rubin: The Middle East has indeed changed

Barry Rubin, a prominent Israeli-based Middle East scholar, says in the Jerusalem Post says that the Middle East has just undergone its most significant shift in alignments since perhaps the 1950s. On one side he says are Hizbullah, Iran, Syria, Hamas; and on the other, are almost every other Arab state, Israel and the United States.

This shift has occurred, he says, because of Iran’s insistence on being able to pursue a nuclear program, widely believed to have as its end goal a nuclear bomb; Iran’s designs on Iraq; and of course its proxy, Syria’s designs on Lebanon.

Saudi Arabia is reported to be trying to resuscitate interest in its 2002 Middle East peace initiative, the terms on which Riyadh suggested the Arab states would be willing to normalize relations with Israel. In Lebanon, Saudi Arabia is said to be trying to prop up the more moderate Fatah party in opposition to Hamas, the U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization which is the ruling party of the Palestinian National Authority, which calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.

25,000 Jews left in Iran in spite of Ahmadinejad: Why?...

Clue: It's never so simple.

The American Jewish daily, the Forward is reporting that in spite of various campaigns, Iran’s 25,000 Jews are reluctant to leave the Islamic Republic of Iran, their native homeland, even though the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardliner, has threatened wipe Israel off the map and who hosted a conference this fall to, as the Forward says, “assess" the Holocaust.

Jews have lived in Iran for some 3,000 years when Cyrus the Great, credited with the first human rights code, gave them refuge. According to the Forward, 80 percent of the Iranian Jewish community has emigrated since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

The Forward reports that Iranian Jews are still able to practice their religion freely in Iran, since Judaism is a recognized religious faith. They are exempt from the Islamic Republic’s prohibition against alcohol.

“Iranian Jews have a comfortable Jewish life,” Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born Middle East analyst now living in Israel is quoted as saying. As long as they don’t criticize the Iranian regime and don’t publicly speak out in favor of Israel, he told the Forward the regime leaves them alone for the most part. Jews are also banned from holding government jobs and from becoming officers in the army.

According to what Amir Cyrus Razzaghi told the Forward, it is in the interest of the Islamic regime to make sure Iranian Jews are able to live relatively freely in Iran to, as Razzaghi says, "demonstrate to the world that the goverment is anti-Israel and not anti-Jewish."

Sam Kermanian, secretary general of the Iranian-American Jewish Federation in Los Angeles, had a different point of view. He told the Forward that Iranian Jews are mostly elderly and only speak Persian and because of these reasons are afraid of leaving Iran.

Australia "confronts" as opposed to co-opts radical Islamism

In the Times of London, Gerard Henderson, former chief of staff for Australian Prime Minister John Howard explains why Australia takes such a hard-nosed approach to Islamist extremism.

According to Henderson, this is because:

• Most radical Muslims in Australia are second or even third generation Lebanese- or North African-Australians

• Some are Anglo-Australians who converted to Islam

• Almost none are asylum seekers or illegal immigrants

In other words, almost all Muslim extremists in Australia are homegrown.

This means, says Henderson, that Australia cannot afford to be other than “direct, event blunt” when it comes to dealing with Islamic radicals down under.

Muslim leaders are advised, says Henderson, to keep their communities free of radicals as they are a threat to moderate Muslims as well.

Community leaders who adopt extremist viewpoints - deny the Holocaust or glorify those aspects of Islamic law that are inconsistent with Australian values- are advised to do themselves and Australia a favor by emigrating to a country that would be more supportive of theirs. The Australian government takes the position that any Australian citizen or resident ought to embrace Australian values and culture and hence, imams are advised to address their congregations in English.

And, as noted here earlier, Australia is no longer keen to allow more Saudi-funded mosques to be built.

Cheney: Iran is a growing threat

Vice President Dick Cheney explains why Iran "is of concern to everybody in the [Middle East]" on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace:

“The entire region is worried, partly because of the conduct of Mr. Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, who appears to be a radical, a man who believes in an apocalyptic vision of the future and who thinks it's imminent.

“At the same time, of course, they're pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons. They are in a position where they sit astride the Straits of Hormuz, where over 20 percent of the world's supply of oil transits every single day, over 18 million barrels a day.

“They use Hezbollahas a surrogate. And working through Syria with Hezbollah, they're trying to topple the democratically elected government in Iran. Working through Hamas and their support for Hamas in Gaza, they're interfering in the peace process."

Chavez loves Ahmedinejad and the feeling seems to be mutual

The New York Times reports that last night, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced that their countries would invest in each others economies and together in third countries. The two oil producers also claimed that they would collude to reduce petroleum supplies in order to push oil prices up from their 19-month low, according to the Times report. Iran and Venezuela are the world’s fourth and fifth largest oil producers, respectively.

In an address before the National Assembly, President Chavez referred to the Iranian leader as a “brother” and “revolutionary.” As the Times reminds the reader, the two leaders have already worked out separate agreements over the past several months to look for new oil fields, build an oil refinery and housing for poor people, and produce bicycles and tractors together.
Meanwhile, at home the Chavez administration said it would nationalize Venezuela’s electricity industry and its largest phone company. There are also plans to replace municipal governments with communal councils in Venezuela which critics say would effectively eliminate the regime’s domestic opposition.

The Times reported that Venezuela has long had close ties with fellow oil producers in the Middle East, namely the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

Alberto Garrido, author of “Chávez’s Wars,” a book about Venezuela’s ties to the Middle East, reportedly told the Times, “The Venezuelan left has for decades considered alliances with Muslim countries as one of the ways to create a new civilization through the toppling of American values.”

The reader may recall that the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal was a Venezuelan Marxist who admitted in a French television interview that he was responsible for some 1,500-2,000 deaths Israeli civilians on behalf of the Palestinian cause. In 2003, from his prison cell in France where he is serving a life sentence multiple murders, he published a book entitled Revolutionary Islam in which he suggested that his fellow revolutionaries though they may be Leftists and atheists should convert to radical Islam because it is the only force capable of destroying imperialism and capitalism.

Pentagon and CIA: Probing into personal records at home

The New York Times reports that the Pentagon, and even the CIA, have in addition to the FBI, looked into the banking and credit records of hundreds of terrorism and espionage suspects in the United States. These requests would be in addition to those made by the FBI, which it has been previously reported, has examined the records of thousands of persons since the 9/11 attacks.

The government requests these personal records using “national security letters,” a vehicle which has been available to the government for almost thirty years. According to the New York Times report, banks and other financial institutions usually voluntarily provide whatever is requested under this cover. According to a Pentagon spokesman, the leads provided by this information are “tremendous.”

A senior Army counterterrorism said that the information obtained through this process is never used to pursue individuals suspected of crimes other than spying or terrorism: “We may find out this person has unexplained wealth for reasons that have nothing to do with being a spy, in which case we’re out of it,” said Thomas A. Gandy, a senior Army counterintelligence official.
And, in most cases, such information actually eliminates suspects, the Times reports military officials as saying.

However, officials at the Pentagon reportedly told the Times that they plan to maintain the information they obtain through these letters in their intelligence database, called Portico. “You don’t want to destroy something only to find out that the same guy comes up in another report and you don’t know he was investigated before,” a military official was quoted as saying.

The same agency which maintains Portico also maintains another database called Talon, which was criticized for maintaining information on persons whose only reason for inclusion was that they had participated in anti-war protects. When this became known, Talon was reported purged of these types of records.

New provisions enacted in the Patriot Act last year provide for recipients of the national security letters to contact a lawyer and request a court review.

The Economist opines on Bush's Iraq surge plan: "We think he is right"

As Iraqslogger points out, "The Economist magazine surprises with an endorsement of the Bush Iraq 'surge' plan."

Or, as The Economist writes, "We don't admire Mr Bush, but on this we think he is right."

"After everything that has gone so wrong, it would be foolish to argue that Mr Bush's plan is certain of success. Even if it does succeed, this would not be 'victory' in any normal sense. Iraq is likely to be violent and unstable for years to come. Contrary to what Mr Bush said this week, the dream of turning it into a democratic model for other Arabs has died.

"And yet there is much that America can still try to do to mitigate the dimensions of the debacle. At one end of the spectrum of bad consequences is a failed state, fought over by neighbours, breeding terrorism in the oil-rich centre of the Middle East. Another possibility is partition, of the sort that resulted in massive death and displacement during the independence struggles of India and Israel. Yet another is an Iraq in thrall to a nuclear-arming Iran that is increasingly hostile to Western friends and interests in the Middle East...

"For the present, Iraq still has an elected government that claims to want what America wants: security for all of Iraq's people and a power-sharing agreement that prevents the place from spinning apart or falling under the control of any neighbour. The job of holding it together remains daunting, but the Americans in Iraq have many resources, from the power of the gun to the power of the purse. The one they are running shortest of is support back home. For all his flaws, the lonely Mr Bush is right to resume the charge."

Blair urges Britain to maintain his war policy

The New York Times says that "Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday urged his successors to maintain the warlike foreign policy that he promoted, sending troops into battle in Africa and the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.

"To retreat in the face of global terrorism, he said in a speech to military specialists abroad a transport ship, would be 'a catastrophe.'"

“There are two types of nations similar to ours today,” he said. “Those who do war fighting and peacekeeping and those who have, effectively, except in the most exceptional circumstances, retreated to peacekeeping alone. Britain does both. We should stay that way,” he said.

“The frontiers of our security no longer stop at the Channel,” he said. “What happens in the Middle East affects us. What happens in Pakistan, or Indonesia, or in the attenuated struggles for territory and supremacy in Africa for example, in Sudan or Somalia — the new frontiers for our security are global.

“Our armed forces will be deployed in the lands of other nations far from home, with no immediate threat to our territory, in environments and in ways unfamiliar to them,” he said. “They will usually fight alongside other nations, in alliance with them; notably, but probably not exclusively, with the U.S.A.”

“My choice,” Blair was reported as saying, “is for armed forces that are prepared to engage in this difficult, tough, challenging campaign, to be war fighters as well as peacekeepers; for a British foreign policy keeps our American alliance strong and is prepared to project hard as well as soft power; and for us as a nation to be as willing to fight terrorism and pay the cost of that fight wherever it may be.”

But, he said: “The covenant between armed forces, government and people has to be renewed. For our part, in government, it will mean increased expenditure on equipment, personnel and the conditions of our armed forces, not in the short run but for the long term.”

“It has taken a generation for the enemy to grow,” he said. “It will, in all probability, take a generation to defeat.”

NYT polls world leaders on Bush's new Iraq plan

Europe is most dismissive; the Middle East is worried

The New York Times surveyed world leaders to gauge their response to President Bush's new Iraq plan.

“It hasn’t changed anything,” Bernard Bot, the Dutch Foreign Minister, told the Times, which reminded the reader that the Netherlands withdrew its troops from the Iraq coalition in 2005.

The French newspaper Le Monde, which as the Times recalled for the reader, had declared “We are all Americans” after the 9/11 attacks, published a cartoon, as the Times writes, "depicting President Bush as a bulldozer driver shoveling American soldiers into a ditch in the shape of Iraq."

The Germany newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote, “Bush hopes to douse the Iraqi fire with the blood of Americans.”

“Europeans and Germans believe you have to talk to regimes you don’t like,” Eberhard Sandschneider, the director of the Research Institute of the German Council on Foreign Relations, told the Times, which then added, as a parenthetical statement, "(Pointedly, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, declined to discuss Iraq in an interview with correspondents on Thursday.)"

“Only political solutions can solve the crisis which affects stability in the region,” said Spain's foreign minister, according to the Times.

Middle Easterners preferred to be focused on what would happen were the United States to withdraw its forces before Iraq was stabilized.

“Iraq is going to descend into mass chaos — we can see the country splinter,” Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel and now a senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University said. “The region will be further radicalized. Iran would become the regional hegemon.”

Asharq Alawsat, the London-based Arabic daily described as being "close to the Saudi royal family" published an editorial stating: “The withdrawal would signify defeat, which would result in strengthening all the enemies’ desire for expansion, such as Iran’s persistence in developing its nuclear weapons, and Al Qaeda would double its activities in Iraq and the whole region.”

Mansoor al-Jamri, editor in chief of the Bahraini newspaper Al Wasat, told the Times he thought some Arab leaders privately supported the increase in U.S. troops, hoping this would effectively counter Iran, but they could never publicly admit to this way of thinking.

An Egypt-based Arab diplomat who wouldn't allow his name to be used, told the Times that "the immediate departure of American troops will leave such a vacuum in power, it will have two results — Iran will fill the vacuum where it can, and the whole country will explode.”

Not surprisingly, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, one of Bush's closest allies, expressed strong support: “If America, the most powerful country in the world, our strongest ally, is defeated in Iraq or retreats in circumstances of defeat in Iraq, that would be the greatest propaganda victory the terrorists could ever win.”

Russia urged dialogue - with the warring Iranian factions and its neighbors, including Syria and Iran.”

A Polish left-leaning politician, representing the Civic Platform party in the Polish legislature said, “President Bush’s arguments should be understood, because leaving Iraq by Americans would be a tragedy."

But Kazimiera Szczuka, a right-leaning literary critic, had a different view: “Americans should find a way to withdraw honorably from Iraq as soon as possible. Polish troops should not stay there any longer.”

Now why do jihadists kill schoolteachers in Thailand?

The (Bangkok) Nation reports that 64 teachers have been killed by Muslim insurgents in the past three years of an Islamist insurgency in the southern region of Thailand.

Australian government nixes plans for new Saudi-funded mosque fearing it would foment extremism

The Australian reported last week that the government vetoed plans for the Saudi government to invest in a mosque in suburban Adelaide, a city in Australia.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was reported as saying, "There has been concern internationally, not specifically to Australia, about some elements in Saudi Arabia which is the heartland of Wahibbism and Sufism ... trying to spread that particular extremist interpretation of Islam.

"Historically the Saudi Arabian Government has provided funding (to overseas mosques), I'm not saying there's anything illegitimate about that ... but we can obviously express a view to the Saudi Arabian Government."

White House says plan to go to war with Iran and Syria is an "urban legend"

The Washington Post reports:

"White House press secretary Tony Snow yesterday addressed what he called the 'urban legend' of pending U.S. action against Iran and Syria. He told reporters that there is no intent to go to war with either country, and that the administration is committed to diplomatic efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program."

Pentagon wants to use what happened in Somali as a blueprint for the war on terror

The New York Times says Pentagon strategists say the recent military operations in Somalia should serve as a blueprint for other counterterrorism missions around the globe. In this operation, American commandos, using the Ethiopian Army as a surrogate force, rooted out Al Qaeda operatives in the country.

This was the type of Special Operations strike that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tried to promote under his watch, military officials told the Times.

But as the Times reports, "Some critics of the Pentagon’s aggressive use of Special Operations troops, including some Democratic members of Congress, have argued that using American forces outside of declared combat zones gives the Pentagon too much authority in sovereign nations and blurs the lines between soldiers and spies."

According to the Times, "The State Department and Pentagon took control of Somalia policy in the summer, after a failed effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to use Somali warlords as proxies to hunt down the Qaeda suspects.

"The trail of the terrorism suspects in Somalia, blamed for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, had long gone cold. But American military and intelligence officials said that the Ethiopian offensive against the Islamist forces who ruled Mogadishu and much of Somalia until last month flushed the Qaeda suspects from their hide-outs and gave American intelligence operatives fresh information about their whereabouts."

Americans reportedly provided the Ethiopian troops with intelligence regarding the military positions of the Islamist fighters, according to the Times unnamed sources.

A Pentagon consultant, described as having knowledge about Special Operations, told the Times that the Ethiopian army was assisted by small teams of American advisers.

“You’re not talking lots of guys,” the Pentagon consultant who spoke only on condition of anonymity is quoted as saying, “You’re talking onesies and twosies.”

Negroponte nails Pakistan for providing a "secure hideout" to al Qaeda

The BBC reports that National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said that al Qaeda has found a safe haven in Pakistan and is strengthening its ties across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. According to the BBC, this is the first time the U.S. has so precisely specified where it believes the al Qaeda leadership is since U.S.-led forces destroyed the group's camps in Afghanistan in 2001.

Negroponte told a Senate committee in his annual threat assessment that al-Qaeda still "poses the greatest threat to US interests." He added in his written testimony: "They are cultivating stronger operational connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders' secure hideout in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

"We have captured or killed numerous senior al-Qaeda operatives, but al-Qaeda's core elements are resilient. They continue to plot attacks against our homeland and other targets with the objective of inflicting mass casualties," he went on to say.

"Pakistan is our partner in the war on terror and has captured several al-Qaeda leaders. However, it is also a major source of Islamic extremism," he added.

Pakistani officials denied that Pakistan is in any way complicit in the finding. "Pakistan does not provide a secure hideout to al-Qaeda or any terrorist group," a Pakistani foreign office spokeswoman said. "In fact the only country that has been instrumental in breaking the back of al-Qaeda is Pakistan."

Al Qaeda is widely believed to be hiding out in Pakistan's tribal areas on the Afghan border. These areas have never really been under the control of the central government.

Update: The Washington Post reports from Pakistan that "the bodies of two dozen Islamic insurgents killed in a clash with NATO and Afghan army forces near the border with Pakistan were sent back Friday to Pakistan, where Taliban leaders asked that they be given funerals as 'martyrs,' according to news reports here."

As the Post goes on to say, "The reports appeared to bolster Afghan and U.S. assertions, repeatedly denied by Pakistani officials, that Pakistan's tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan have provided a haven for Islamic militia groups seeking to destabilize the Western-backed government of Afghanistan."

"The jihad is now against the Shias, not the Americans"

The London Guardian's Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, described as "the only correspondent reporting regularly from behind the country's sectarian battle lines," reports on the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

"I used to attack the Americans when that was the jihad. Now there is no jihad. Go around and see in Adhamiya [the notorious Sunni insurgent area] - all the commanders are sitting sipping coffee; it's only the young kids that are fighting now, and they are not fighting Americans any more, they are just killing Shia. There are kids carrying two guns each and they roam the streets looking for their prey. They will kill for anything, for a gun, for a car and all can be dressed up as jihad," Rami, described as a "thick-necked former Republican Guard commando who now procures arms for his fellow Sunni insurgents"is reported as saying.

"Its not a good time to be a Sunni in Baghdad," another Sunni insurgent, Abu Omar, is said to have told the reporter. "We Sunni are to blame. In my area some ignorant al-Qaida guys have been kidnapping poor Shia farmers, killing them and throwing their bodies in the river. I told them: 'This is not jihad. You can't kill all the Shia! This is wrong! The Shia militias are like rabid dogs - why provoke them?'

"I am trying to talk to the Americans," he added. "I want to give them assurances that no one will attack them in our area if they stop the Shia militias from coming."

Later the Guardian reporter witnessed a conversation in which Abu Omar tried to convince his fellow insurgents to make peace with the Americans.

"Look, the Americans are trying to talk to us Sunnis and we need to show them that we can do politics. We need to use the Americans to fight the Shia," Abu Omar was reported as saying.

"Where is the jihad and the mujahideen?" he went on to say. "Baghdad has become a Shia town. Our brothers are being slaughtered every day! Where are these al-Qaida heroes? One neighbourhood after another will be lost if we don't work on a strategy."

Another Sunni insurgent described as a "taxi driver commander," reportedly added to the discussion: "If the Americans leave we will be slaughtered."

Abu Aisha, a man described as a "mid-level Sunni commander" told the Guardian, "There is a new jihad now. The jihad now is against the Shia, not the Americans.

"We have been deceived by the jihadi Arabs," he added, in reference to al Qaeda and other foreigner fighters. "They had an international agenda and we implemented it. But now all the leadership of the jihad in Iraq are Iraqis."

As to how the insurgents are actually organized, "Ameriya, Jihad, Ghazaliyah, all these areas are becoming part of the new Islamic state of Iraq, each with an emir in charge," Abu Aisha told the reporter. "Each group is in charge of a specific street. We have defence lines, trenches and booby traps. When the Americans arrive we let them go through, but if they show up with Iraqi troops, then it's a fight."

According to the Guardian's sources, funding for the insurgency comes from three sources, levies paid by each family in the neighborhood (usually around $8), donations from wealthy Saudi businessmen or other sponsors, and 'ghaniama' or loot.

"Every time they arrest a Shia, we take their car, we sell it and use the money to fund the fighters, and jihad," Abu Aisha told the Guardian.

The money is then distributed, either by a sympathetic imam or the local commander. "It has become a business, they give you money to kill Shia, we take their houses and sell their cars," an insurgent told the reporter. "The Shia are doing the same.

"Last week on the main highway in our area, they killed a Shia army officer. He had a brand new Toyota sedan. The idiots burned the car. I offered them $40,000 for it, they said no. Imagine how many jihads they could have done with 40k."

Al Qaeda leadership is getting pro bono counsel from some of America's most prestigious law firms

Robert Pollack of the WSJ points out that the list of lead counsel who have volunteered to defend the high-ranking members of Al Qaeda being held at Guantanamo "reads like a who's who of America's most prestigious law firms: Shearman and Sterling; Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr; Covington & Burling; Hunton & Williams; Sullivan & Cromwell; Debevoise & Plimpton; Cleary Gottlieb; and Blank Rome are among the marquee names."

He writes that a senior U.S. official wondered if, as Pollack writes, "this information might cause something of scandal, since so much of the pro bono work being done to tilt the playing field in favor of al Qaeda appears to be subsidized by legal fees from the Fortune 500."

"Corporate CEOs seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists" who deliberately target the U.S. economy, he quoted the official as saying.

The list of lawyers was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Update: The New York Times is reporting that Charles D. Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, made the following remarks in a radio interview on Thursday with Federal News Radio: “I think the news story that you’re really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA request through a major news organization, somebody asked, ‘Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there?’ and you know what, it’s shocking.

“I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.’s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.”

In an interview on Friday, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales reportedly weighed in on the controversy saying, “Good lawyers representing the detainees is the best way to ensure that justice is done in these cases.”

Bush administration prepares to try KSM and other high-ranking members of Al Qaeda

The Bush administration, the New York Times reports, has set up a secret war room in Virginia to assemble evidence in order to prosecute high-ranking members of Al Qaeda currently in U.S. detention, including the mastermind of the September 2001 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

As the Times reports, "The preparation of cases against the high-value operatives appears to rebut many who doubted that Qaeda suspects like Mr. Mohammed would ever be brought to trial. Critics in Congress and human rights groups had asserted that such trials would not be feasible because they would expose harsh interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency."

According to the Times, "In preparation for the trials, the Justice Department has been quietly recruiting lawyers from the ranks of experienced terrorism prosecutors, mainly in New York and Virginia.

"The new war crimes trials will operate according to rules modeled after the military justice system which were approved in legislation known at the Military Commission Act, which was signed into law last fall. The law has been criticized by some Democrats in Congress and human rights groups who say the procedures are flawed because they tilt in the government’s favor.

"Prosecutors could use hearsay evidence or second-hand testimony, but could not use information obtained under torture. Even so, that would mean virtually any information obtained by the C.I.A would appear to be admissible because, under Justice Department legal opinions, none of the harsh techniques amounted to torture.

"At their trials, the accused would have the right not to testify and would have the opportunity to present evidence and cross-examine witnesses against them. The trials would be open unless a military judge determined that they should be closed to protect classified information. Defendants would have the right to review the evidence to be used against them."

The C.I.A. has indicated that it would prefer that these high-value Al Qaeda detainees not be allowed to divulge details of their confinement because of national security concerns. As the Times reports, in an affadavit filed in an on-going case, C.I.A. lawyers argued that such disclosure would “permit terrorist organizations to adapt their training to counter the tactics that C.I.A. can employ in interrogations.” No ruling on the case has yet been made.

Some Somalis "close to al Qaeda" killed in American airstrike

A top American official in the Horn of Africa has told the New York Times that none of the suspected members of al Qaeda believed to be hiding in Somalia were killed in the American airstrike this week, but some Somalis that had close ties to the terrorist group were killed.

This contradicts an earlier report by Somali officials that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a main suspect in the bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, had been killed in the American attack.

American officials did say that Abu Taha al-Sudani, a top aide to Mr. Fazul, and Aden Hashi Ayrow, a Somali terrorism suspect, may have been among those killed.

An unnamed American official, based in Kenya, also told the Times that American special forces and Ethiopian troops were still in pursuit of Al Qaeda suspects in southern Somalia.

Terror bombings in the Philippines inspire Asean nations to hammer out counterterror accord

The New York Times is reporting that the ten countries that comprise the Southeast Asian Nations, or Asaen, responded to Wednesday's terror attacks in the Philippines by stepping up efforts to hammer out a regional antiterrorism agreement.

The agreement is supposed to facilitate the sharing of information and intelligence among the parties to it and encourage them to beef up their domest anti-terrorism laws as well.

Bombs went off in three southern Philippine cities in Mindanao on Wednesday, killing eight and wounding many times more. No group has claimed responsiblity yet, but Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah are the leading suspects.

As Wikipedia notes, Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 World Trade Center Bomber (and nephew of the 9/11 mastermind, KSM) is believed to have been associated with Abu Sayyaf. After he bombed Philippine Airlines Flight 434 in 1994, killing a Japanese passenger, an anonymous phone caller identifying himself as a member of Abu Sayyaf claimed responsibility for the bombing, stating, "We are [the] Abu Sayyaf Group. We explode[d] one plane from Cebu." The bombing is believed to have been a test run for Operation Bojinka, a plan to simultaneously explode a dozen jetliners over the Pacific that Yousef and KSM were trying to carry out before it was foiled by the Manila police in 1995.

Jemaah Islamiyah was the organization behind the Bali bombings in 2002 that killed some 200 people.