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Phoenix
01-23-2005, 11:53 AM
al-Zarqawi tape: War Against Democracy


Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claims you can not choose your religion. Looks like he is the one to decide how Iraqis should live...not Iraqis.

(CNN) -- An Internet recording claiming to be from wanted terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi condemned democracy as "the big American lie" on Sunday and said participants in Iraq's January 30 election are enemies of Islam.

The authenticity of the message could not immediately be confirmed by CNN.

"We have declared a bitter war against democracy and all those who seek to enact it," said the speaker in the 35-minute message.

"Democracy is also based on the right to choose your religion," he said, and that is "against the rule of God."

The message was posted on two Islamist Web sites that have carried previous messages thought to be from al-Zarqawi. Al-Zarqawi heads an insurgent group believed responsible for numerous car bombings and beheadings throughout Iraq.

Al-Zarqawi recently renamed his group from Unification and Jihad to al Qaeda in Iraq. The United States has placed $25 million bounties on al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden, whose recent taped messages have endorsed al-Zarqawi's acts of terrorism. (Full story)

The speaker attacked the Iraqi interim government as a tool used by the "Americans to promote this lie that is called democracy ... You have to be careful of the enemy's plots that involve applying democracy in your country and confront these plots, because they only want to do so to ... give the rejectionists the rule of Iraq. And after fighting the Baathists ... and the Sunnis, they will spread their insidious beliefs, and Baghdad and all the Sunni areas will become Shiite. Even now, the signs of infidelity and polytheism are on the rise."

The speaker said that 4 million Iranians had entered Iraq to vote in the coming elections.

"Oh, people of Iraq, where is your honor?" he asked. "Have you accepted oppression of the crusader harlots ... and the rejectionist pigs?"

"For all these issues, we declared war against, and whoever helps promote this and all those candidates, as well as the voters, are also part of this, and are considered enemies of God," the tape said.

On Friday, a video posted on an Islamist Web site showed two Iraqis apparently being beheaded on a city sidewalk. In the past, the Web site has shown video verified as having been produced by a group led by al-Zarqawi. CNN could not confirm the authenticity of the video.

In the 10-minute video, the two men tell their kidnappers that they drove truckloads of food and supplies to a U.S. base in the central Iraqi town of Ramadi.

Election details released
Extraordinary security measures, including a ban on weapons, restrictions on who may drive and a curfew, will be in place before and during elections on January 30, a top Iraqi official said Saturday.

"The government's goal is to provide a secure Iraq," Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib said. "We have taken all necessary procedures to secure this purpose. All our security forces have been put on alert ... all citizens should abide by these rules and measures."

Also, Baghdad's airport will be closed on January 29 and 30, al-Naqib said.

January 29, 30 and 31 have been declared holidays in Iraq, the minister said. Many areas will have a curfew from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m. on those days and anyone in violation will be arrested, he said.

Anyone carrying a weapon will be arrested and the weapon confiscated, he said.

Iraq's borders will be closed except to Iraqis returning from the annual hajj pilgrimage, the minister said. No transfer between provinces will be permitted.

RedFanAlways1966
01-24-2005, 08:07 AM
I wonder when the UN plans on doing something about this guy and/or his organization?

I noticed that his group kidnapped and then murdered 18 Iraqi militia this weekend. The reason for killing them was b/c they cooperated with the US. I wonder when the UN plans on doing something about these grave violations of the Geneva Convention?

This guy and his organization are running around killing and maiming people... yet some people are most concerned with the US having an exit strategy?

Not allowing elections. No freedom for the people of Iraq. I will kill you if you dare violate these rules that I have made. Sounds like the Iraq that Saddam ran for 39 years (only this group does not control the country or come anywhere near controlling anything). Sounds like a good reason to hang around and eliminate people with these rules. It reminds me of why the Baath Party needed to be stopped.

This guy and his group are the enemies of the free world. If not Iraq, they'd be somewhere else murdering. These, once again, are the enemy. The enemy is not Pres. Bush or Sec. Rumsfeld... despite what certain people in this country and some European countries would have you believe. This is the enemy. Should we leave Iraq ASAP and allow these people to run shop? A simple question... what do you do?

Red Heeler
01-24-2005, 11:15 AM
I wonder when the UN plans on doing something about this guy and/or his organization?

I noticed that his group kidnapped and then murdered 18 Iraqi militia this weekend. The reason for killing them was b/c they cooperated with the US. I wonder when the UN plans on doing something about these grave violations of the Geneva Convention?

This guy and his organization are running around killing and maiming people... yet some people are most concerned with the US having an exit strategy?

Not allowing elections. No freedom for the people of Iraq. I will kill you if you dare violate these rules that I have made. Sounds like the Iraq that Saddam ran for 39 years (only this group does not control the country or come anywhere near controlling anything). Sounds like a good reason to hang around and eliminate people with these rules. It reminds me of why the Baath Party needed to be stopped.

This guy and his group are the enemies of the free world. If not Iraq, they'd be somewhere else murdering. These, once again, are the enemy. The enemy is not Pres. Bush or Sec. Rumsfeld... despite what certain people in this country and some European countries would have you believe. This is the enemy. Should we leave Iraq ASAP and allow these people to run shop? A simple question... what do you do?

I agree with you in principle. The problem is (and I said this before we went into Iraq) that when you kill off Zarqawi, somebody else is likely to spring up in his place. The longer we stay and the more the country gets torn up, more and more people will be willing to fight against us. It is a tough spot that we are in right now.

Certainly, we cannot bail right now. On the other hand, if we wait until all of the resistance is gone, we will never get out because there is always going to be resistance. The best hope we have is that the elections go through, and we can leave the new government with a strong enough army to stand a fighting chance against the resistance forces. Whether or not anyone chooses to believe it, we are truly in a Vietnam situation.

REDREAD
01-24-2005, 12:08 PM
I wonder when the UN plans on doing something about this guy and/or his organization?



IMO, for all practial purposes, the US is the UN (Or at least the UN's police force). I'm sure they are looking for the guy. I really don't think the UN can do much more. I'm sure passing some resolution really isn't going to be effective.

It's a tough situation we are in now. IMO, we need to train a bunch of Iraqi troops quickly and then get out. Sadly, after we leave, the violence is likely to continue and will probably lead to the collapse of the fragile democracy.. Eventually, it's likely that another strong man will take control and in the process of restoring peace, grab all the power.

Red Heeler
01-24-2005, 03:01 PM
Good news from MSN Link (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6847225/)


BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi security forces have arrested the “most lethal” top lieutenant of al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq — a man allegedly behind most of the car bombings in Baghdad since the U.S.-led invasion, including the 2003 assault on U.N. headquarters that killed 22 people, the prime minister’s office said Monday.

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Sami Mohammed Ali Said al-Jaaf, also known as Abu Omar al-Kurdi, was arrested during a raid in Baghdad on Jan. 15, a government statement said Monday. Two other militants linked to Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror group have also been arrested, authorities said.

Al-Jaaf was “the most lethal of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s lieutenants,” the statement said.

Al-Zarqawi heads al-Qaida in Iraq, the terror network’s local affiliate. The group is behind many of the car bombings, beheadings, assassinations and other attacks driving the insurgency in Iraq.

Al-Jaaf was responsible for 32 car bombing attacks that killed hundreds of Iraqis, the statement said. Thaer al-Naqib, spokesman for interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, said the suspect "confessed to building approximately 75 percent of the car bombs used in attacks in Baghdad since March 2003."

Linked to U.N. attack
He also was linked to the August 2003 bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, which killed the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 others. The U.N. attack was “planned and directed by two others affiliated with Abu Omar,” the statement said.

The United States has offered a $25 million reward for al-Zarqawi’s capture or death — the same amount as for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Related coverage
Live Vote: Do you think most Iraqis will be able to vote on Jan. 30?
Analysis: Will Sunnis tolerate a Shiite leadership?




Also Monday, authorities announced that Iraqi security forces had also arrested a man described as the chief of al-Zarqawi's propaganda operations.

And in the northern city of Mosul, Iraqi forces seized one of al-Zarqawi's weapons suppliers.

Word of the arrests came hours after a suicide driver detonated a car bomb at a guard post outside the Iraqi prime minister’s party headquarters in Baghdad, injuring at least 10 people, and a day after al-Zarqawi promised an all-out war on democracy.

The bomber set off the blast at a police checkpoint on the road to Allawi’s Iraqi National Accord party offices in central Baghdad, shaking the city center with a thunderous explosion. Wounded were eight policemen and two civilians, said Dr. Mudhar Abdul-Hussein of Yarmouk Hospital.

Also on Monday, mortar rounds slammed into an Iraqi National Guard camp near Baghdad International Airport. There was no report of casualties, but the fighting prompted air traffic controllers to deny two Royal Jordanian flights permission to land.

Police officer shot to death
Elsewhere in the capital, gunmen firing from a speeding car shot dead an Iraqi police lieutenant as he was returning home Sunday night, an Interior Ministry official said. North of Baghdad, the deputy governor of Iraq’s Diyala province, Ghassan al-Khadran, escaped an assassination attempt Monday morning as a roadside bomb struck his car.

Three U.S. soldiers also were wounded Sunday in a mortar attack in Samarra north of Baghdad, the U.S. command said. One of the soldiers was being evacuated to a U.S. military hospital in Germany with serious injuries.

The attacks occurred six days before Iraq’s crucial national elections, the first since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Insurgents have condemned the elections and vowed to disrupt them.

FREE VIDEO


• Iraq vote warning
Jan. 23: NBC's Richard Engel reports that a new warning from Al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi today is a clear attempt to keep Iraqis from going to the polls in seven days.
Nightly News


In an audiotape posted Sunday on the Web, a speaker claiming to be al-Zarqawi declared “fierce war” on democracy and said anyone who takes part in next weekend’s Iraqi elections would be considered “an infidel.”

“We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology,” the speaker said. “Anyone who tries to help set up this system is part of it.”

The speaker warned Iraqis to be careful of “the enemy’s plan to implement so-called democracy in your country.” He said the Americans have engineered the election to install Shiite Muslims in power. Al-Zarqawi, who is a Sunni Arab like most of the insurgents here, has in the past branded Shiites as heretics.

The authenticity of the tape could not immediately be verified.

Politicians running on a Shiite clerical-endorsed ticket, the United Iraqi Alliance, appeared to respond to the tape on Monday, playing down fears of an Iranian-style Shiite state.

Hanin Mohammed Qaddou, a Sunni Muslim on the ticket, said the issue of religious government was “not part of the program and it will not be in the near future.”

Pledge not to launch revenge attacks
Alliance leaders also vowed not to seek revenge for attacks by Sunni extremists.

“We believe that we have no justifications, whether religious or political, to escalate the situation and enter into the civil war quagmire because it means the Balkanization of Iraq or the Lebanonization of Iraq,” said Khudayer al-Khuzai of the Islamic Dawa Party-Iraq.

FREE VIDEO

• Iraqi civil war?
Jan. 23: U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, responds to a recent CIA report that suggests increased violence in Iraq after the Jan. 30 elections.
Meet the Press


In a series of weekend appearances on American television, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq acknowledged there were serious security problems ahead of this weekend’s landmark ballot, in which Iraqis will choose a national legislature that will run the country and draft a permanent constitution. Legislatures in 18 provinces and a regional parliament in the Kurdish-run areas of the north will also be elected.

U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte acknowledged an increase in rebel intimidation of Iraqi officials and security forces and said serious security problems remain in the Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad.

“But security measures are being taken, by both the multinational forces here in Iraq as well as the Iraqi armed forces and police,” Negroponte told “Fox News Sunday.”

“There will be some problematic areas. ... But even there, great efforts are being made to enable every Iraqi eligible to do so to be able to vote,” he said.

Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice was more upbeat in comments to reporters Sunday at the White House.

“The Iraqis will be — will be just fine,” Rice said. “They’re starting a process and this is an important step, a first step for them in this democratic process.”

GAC
01-24-2005, 09:17 PM
The only democracy in the entire Middle East is Israel.

I've personally expressed doubt from the very beginning, due to the nature of this radical type of fundamental Islam that first reared it's ugly head in Iran back in '79, that it is going to be very tough (but not impossible) to establish democracy in this region (not just Iraq).

When have these nations/culture ever known freedom/democracy? Alot of the problems we see today began with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent dividing up into nations/borders at the beginning of the 20th century.

How can one have any concept of freedom and what democracy is when you have never experienced it, and when you have radicals telling their citizenry that it is in opposition to the tenants of Islam, and that democracy is of satan?

The philosophy/ideology that began with the Ayatollah in Iran, and has been perpetuated by such organizations as Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Bin Laden, and others, is, IMO, far more dangerous (philosophically speaking) then communism or fascism. It deals strictly in fear, intimidation, and terrorism, in order to control it's people.

It's funny...the people in Iran overwhelming welcomed the overthrow of the Iranian government and the implementation of the Ayatollah back in '79. Now, when one talks with the average citizen of Iran, and after 25 years under this theocratic-dictatorship, they find out that the people are generally displeased and want democratic reforms.

I think that once the peoples of this region "taste" and come to understand what democracy is, and that those who teach them otherwise are wrong, then reform will come. It all comes down alot ot education.

Because lets face it...there was a time in human history when democracy was a foreign (and unknown) concept to most of humanity.

So if it can take root and grow elsewhere in the world, then it also can in the Middle East too.

Falls City Beer
01-24-2005, 10:25 PM
"The philosophy/ideology that began with the Ayatollah in Iran, and has been perpetuated by such organizations as Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Bin Laden, and others, is, IMO, far more dangerous (philosophically speaking) then communism or fascism."

You know Stalin (communist) killed, like, 16 million of his people, right?

And Hitler (fascist), 6 million Jews, Catholics, homosexuals?

Bin Laden's a well-connected pirate compared to the above-mentioned men.

What do you mean: "philosophically speaking?" Al Qaeda, the Taliban, et al are borrowing directly from the playbooks of despots like Stalin--fear, censorship, intimidation, degradation, humiliation, scape-goating. I fail to see the distinction.

RosieRed
01-24-2005, 10:50 PM
"The philosophy/ideology that began with the Ayatollah in Iran, and has been perpetuated by such organizations as Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Bin Laden, and others, is, IMO, far more dangerous (philosophically speaking) then communism or fascism."

You know Stalin (communist) killed, like, 16 million of his people, right?

And Hitler (fascist), 6 million Jews, Catholics, homosexuals?

Bin Laden's a well-connected pirate compared to the above-mentioned men.

What do you mean: "philosophically speaking?" Al Qaeda, the Taliban, et al are borrowing directly from the playbooks of despots like Stalin--fear, censorship, intimidation, degradation, humiliation, scape-goating. I fail to see the distinction.

I thought GAC was talking about the general definitions of communism and fascism, not the specific leaders they spawned.

As in: communism (a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed) in and of itself is not as bad as fundamentalism (a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles).

dman
01-24-2005, 11:01 PM
I agree with you in principle. The problem is (and I said this before we went into Iraq) that when you kill off Zarqawi, somebody else is likely to spring up in his place. The longer we stay and the more the country gets torn up, more and more people will be willing to fight against us. It is a tough spot that we are in right now.

Certainly, we cannot bail right now. On the other hand, if we wait until all of the resistance is gone, we will never get out because there is always going to be resistance. The best hope we have is that the elections go through, and we can leave the new government with a strong enough army to stand a fighting chance against the resistance forces. Whether or not anyone chooses to believe it, we are truly in a Vietnam situation.
This is so true. At some point we are going to have to leave this country. It won't necessarily be a loss of the war, but rather us telling the Iraqi people that if you want a democracy that will survive, then you have to stand on your own two feet and fight for what you want.

Falls City Beer
01-24-2005, 11:18 PM
I thought GAC was talking about the general definitions of communism and fascism, not the specific leaders they spawned.

As in: communism (a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed) in and of itself is not as bad as fundamentalism (a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles).

I agree religious fundamentalism is dangerous--but so is any ideological fundamentalism--fascism is a theory only understood by its practices--censorship, strong nationalism, extreme governmental control over economy, work force, often martial law. Communism is remarkably similar, just on the far left as opposed to the far right (fascism). It's really hard to extricate the "philosophy" from the practice by which we come to actually understand these governments.