This just crossing the AP wire:
A Europe-wide sweep disrupted an Islamic cell that was recruiting potential suicide bombers for attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, Italian police said Tuesday, announcing the arrests of 20 terror suspects.The rest of the story is here.
Police said the suspects, mostly Tunisians, were arrested across Europe as part of the sweep against a cell based in the northern Italian region of Lombardy.
Executing the arrest warrants, police said they found al-Qaida manuals for making explosives, detonation devices and poisons, and instructions on guerrilla techniques.
"The investigation has revealed recruitment, training and passage to aspiring terrorists to Iraq and Afghanistan," lead investigator Gen. Giampaolo Ganzer, of Italy's paramilitary Carabinieri police, told a news conference.
The suspects were wanted on charges ranging from association with the aim of committing international terrorism to falsifying documents to aid illegal immigrants.
"Once more, the central role of Milan and Lombardy in the panorama of Islamic militants has been confirmed," the Carabinieri said in a statement.
The group's members had been indoctrinated in militancy in mosques since at least 1998, according to police transcripts, and appeared to take serious precautions.
In one intercepted call, a suspected cell member said that "things are being done with extreme calm, haste does not bring the desired results."
Eleven were arrested in the northern Italian cities of Milan, Reggio Emilia, Imperia and Bergamo. Nine others were arrested on warrants issued in France, Britain and Portugal, Italian news agencies reported.
Authorities in Britain, France and Portugal confirmed arrests.
The Lombardy cell had ties with a group in neighboring Emilia Romagna whose aim is to establish an Islamic state extending from Morocco to China, Italian investigators said. Intercepted phone calls made clear the aim of sending jihadist fighters to Iraq via Syria, including specific instructions on shaving off beards before departure to give the impression of making a "peaceful trip."
Message to Democrats: What you’ve just read is all about what most of your party leaders call “George Bush’s war on terror.”
But those of you who read the AP’s report with an intelligent mind free of fervid partisanship will, I think, agree that what you read concerns the Muslim terrorists’ global war on civilization, with America the target the terrorists most want to destroy because it's the most powerful defender of civilization.
I hope you’ll also consider whether President Bush isn't in fact right when he says many of those fighting our troops in Iraq have been recruited by and are loyal to al-Qaeda.
Yes, I know most of your fellow Democrats in Congress and at party media organizations such as NPR, the New York Betray US and the McClatchy Company ridicule the President for claiming there’s al-Qaeda involvement in Iraq. Some of them even accuse the President of being an outright liar for saying al-Qaeda has sent and continues to send terrorists to Iraq.
But I think those Dems in Congress and the media are letting their partisanship trump the facts. The AP story is one more instance confirming the President and our military in Iraq are right when they say there’s an al-Qaeda presence there.
Message to voters: Today’s AP story is one more reminder of why the “’war on terror’ is a bumper sticker” and “waterboarding is torture” crowd is not to be trusted with America’s national security.
6 comments:
John,
By any chance, do you read Michael Yon's online magazine from Iraq? I have found him more believable than the "professional newspeople ".
Agree 100% with your Duke posts, and no question the muslim world should get a HUGE amount of criticism. But you become Nifongesque with some of your simplistic statements supporting neocon warmongers.
"America the target the terrorists most want to destroy because it's the most powerful defender of civilization. "
Come on now. First, the terrorists #1 preferred target is Israel (they are raging anti-semites). But a large chunk of the reason much of the world hates us, is because of our selfrighteous arrogance, our willingness to start wars against countries that posed no threat, our active support of tyrants (like Musharaff sic). We hate the people who waged war on our turf..for 2 hours. We've been wailing and gnashing teeth over those 2 hours for 6 years. Now turn the tables, imagine you live in a country where the US has been waging war for years. Would you dislike the US merely 'because we are defenders of civilization?'
'The bad guys hate us because they hate freedom' is a simplistic cop out. Has as much to do with reality as Hogan's Heroes did with real Nazi POW camps.
'many of those fighting our troops in Iraq have been recruited by and are loyal to al-Qaeda.'
Oh, sure that's true, but that's a strawman argument. The real beef of neocon warmonger critics is that al-Qaeda did NOT have a significant presence under Hussein. He was a horrible guy, but AQ and SH hated each other, for many reasons (religious vs secular a main one). AQ entered the vacuum we created. Self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anon -
"But you become Nifongesque with some of your simplistic statements supporting neocon warmongers."
Hmm, I have to tell you, I'd have to force myself to read past that, er, stuff. Like reading TalkLeft or listening to the Diane Reams show on PBS. It's sad to know the ending of a move during the credits.
But you did surprise me with this: "We hate the people who waged war on our turf..for 2 hours."
How long were the Japanese over Pearl Harbor, I can't quite recall.
-AC
AC:
Its generally hopeless to debate the anti-America crowd.
The irrationality of their statements is stupifying.
I have a staunch leftist relative living in Long Island. He is Ivy league educated. When I quizzed him once on his solution for America's involvement with foreign hostilities, he replied that the US should disband all their military and give that part of the budget to the world. He was dead serious. I suggested that a good place to verify that line of reasoning would be to disband the NYC police department and provide those funds to the poor.
They really are that far off the reservation.
Ken
Dallas
To the 3:28AM: Without getting into a detailed discussion, your statement that Al Qaida is "antisemitic" is rather interesting. Arabs are semites, too you know. The so-called "Islamofascists" are not anti-semitic but "Anti-Zionist." America's unquestioning support for Israel is what has caused the Arab world to hate us; it's not our culture or our freedoms, but the lock-step-with-Israel policies we have followed since 1948. When we are in bed with the Zionists, it's difficult to convince any Arab that we are a disinterested party only wishing to bring peace to the region. Our actions since 9-11 have certainly not endeared us to the so-called "Arab street." I say this not to criticize the Iraq war, which I support, but to add my nuance to the discussion. Now I'll stand by to repel boarders as the neo-cons and the fundies go into full rage mode.
Waterboarding was invented by the Spanish Inquisition, apparently, and it clearly is torture.
Even the Bush Justice Department has so held, in a legal memorandum stating that only in the narrowest and most strictly controlled circumstances, could it even conceivably be legal.
(Before release, Atty. General Gonzalez demanded that a footnote be added saying the conclusion did not contradict any previous legal opinions by the Bush Justice Department.)
The memo's author, like many other good lawyers, has since left DOJ.
It is a casual, invidious, and ad hominem smear - just like the Group of 88's smear of the Duke lax players - to imply that any citizen who doesn't support, lock-step, whatever policy the Bush administration puts out MUST, by definition, be anti-American and a radical leftist.
Sen. McCarthy used those tactics, too.
Read Harvard Law Prof. Jack Goldsmith's The Terror Presidency. (He's no liberal by the way.) It shows many of the respects in which this administration's conduct of it's war is deeply, deeply misguided, and ultimately harmful to our ability ever to win it. How ironic.
Is Sen. McCain, who actually was tortured, an anti-American and a sissy for taking a position that waterboarding is torture?
I think not.
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