| s-101
| The IIP had also been the main force urging Sunni Arabs to participate in the elections scheduled for January, and had been opposed in this stance by the Association of Muslim Scholars. |
| s-102
| That the Iraqi Islamic Party is now contemplating leaving the Allawi government raises the question of whether a mass Sunni Arab boycott of the elections is in the offing, thus fatally weakening the legitimacy of any new government. |
| s-103
| Az-Zaman : The Association of Muslim Scholars forbade Iraqis to participate in the attack on Fallujah with the Americans. |
| s-104
| In a communique, the AMS said that for Iraqis to take part with 'raiding forces' in the assault on a city, the population of which is Muslim (such as Fallujah) would be considered the most mortal of mortal sins. |
| s-105
| The Sunni AMS told Iraqis, 'You sinned when you participated with occupation forces in the assault on Najaf, and beware lest you repeat this same sin in Fallujah. |
| s-106
| Remember that the Occupation is emphemeral.' |
| s-107
| The radical Shiite Sadr movement issued a statement forbidding the participation of Iraqi troops in the attack on Fallujah, as well. |
| s-108
| The statement said, 'We direct an appeal at the men in the Iraqi forces, whether national guards or others, the majority of whom are Muslim, calling upon them to refrain for commiting this enormous sin under the banner of forces that do not respect our religion or any principles of basic humanity, and we ask them to view this war as illegal.' |
| s-109
| It called a 'ploy' the assertaion that the attack was merely on foreign fighters at Fallujah. |
| s-110
| The convergence of views among the more militant Sunni Muslim clerics of AMS and the radical Shiites of the Sadr movement has been seen before, last spring during the initial US assault on Fallujah and during the US attack on Mahdi Army militiamen in Najaf. |
| s-111
| Most Shiites, however, are still reluctant to take major risks to support the Sunnis of Fallujah, many of whom had supported Saddam and his anti-Shiite pogroms. |
| s-112
| President Bush pinched a few nerves yesterday with his choice of words: |
| s-113
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - |
| s-114
| U.S. Muslim groups criticized President Bush on Thursday for calling a foiled plot to blow up airplanes part of a 'war with Islamic fascists,' saying the term could inflame anti-Muslim tensions. |
| s-115
| U.S. officials have said the plot, thwarted by Britain, to blow up several aircraft over the Atlantic bore many of the hallmarks of al Qaeda. |
| s-116
| 'We believe this is an ill-advised term and we believe that it is counterproductive to associate Islam or Muslims with fascism,' said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations advocacy group. |
| s-117
| Which is why he didn't say we're at war with Islamic people. |
| s-118
| We're at war with Islamic fascists. |
| s-119
| By using the word 'Islamic' as an adjective Bush was purposely not associating Muslims with fascism, hence the qualifier. |
| s-120
| And if you haven't heard by now, the roster of suspected terrorists has not a Tom, Dick or Harry among them: |
| s-121
| Umir Hussain, 24, London E14 |
| s-122
| Muhammed Usman Saddique, 24, London E17 |
| s-123
| Waheed Zaman, 22, London E17 |
| s-124
| Assan Abdullah Khan, 22, London E17 |
| s-125
| Waseem Kayani, 28, High Wycombe |
| s-126
| Waheed Arafat Khan, 24, London E17 |
| s-127
| Cossor Ali, 24, London E17 |
| s-128
| Tayib Rauf, 21, Birmingham |
| s-129
| Ibrahim Savant, 26, London E17 |
| s-130
| Osman Adam Khatib, 20, London E17 |
| s-131
| Shamin Mohammed Uddin, 36, Stoke Newington |
| s-132
| Amin Asmin Tariq, 23, London E17 |
| s-133
| Shazad Khuram Ali, 27, High Wycombe |
| s-134
| Tanvir Hussain, 24, London E10 |
| s-135
| Umar Islam, 28, (born Brian Young) High Wycombe |
| s-136
| Assad Sarwar, 25, High Wycombe |
| s-137
| Abdullah Ali, 26, London E17 |
| s-138
| Abdul Muneem Patel, 17, London E5 |
| s-139
| Nabeel Hussain, 21, Waltham Forest Lest you be confused with the suspects from an earlier plot foiled in Canada a few months ago: Fahim Ahmad, 21, Toronto; |
| s-140
| Zakaria Amara, 20, Mississauga, Ont.; |
| s-141
| Asad Ansari, 21, Mississauga; |
| s-142
| Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, Mississauga; |
| s-143
| Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, Mississauga; |
| s-144
| Mohammed Dirie, 22, Kingston, Ont.; |
| s-145
| Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Kingston; |
| s-146
| Jahmaal James, 23, Toronto; |
| s-147
| Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, Toronto; |
| s-148
| Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, 25, Toronto; |
| s-149
| Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, Mississauga; |
| s-150
| Saad Khalid, 19, of Eclipse Avenue, Mississauga. |
| s-151
| We've got a Steven, the one word that didn't crash my spell-check, despite it being followed by a Vikash Chand Abdul Shakur. |
| s-152
| Folks, if it's Islamic, and fascist, it's an Islamic fascist. |
| s-153
| But because we don't want to sound hateful we must pretend everyone's a possible suspect and make airline travel more miserable than it's ever been. |
| s-154
| On the internet site of Monotheism and Holy War (al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad) , the group allegedly declared, 'We announce that the Tawhid and Jihad Group, its prince and soldiers, have pledged allegiance to the sheikh of the mujahideen Osama bin Laden.' |
| s-155
| This pledge is a new development. |
| s-156
| Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his group are said to have been bitter rivals of al-Qaeda during the Afghan resistance days. |
| s-157
| One witness at the Moutasaddiq trial in Germany alleged that Zarqawi had not allowed Monotheism and Holy War to share resources with al-Qaeda in the early zeroes of the 21st century. |
| s-158
| If the statement is true, it is a worrying sign that even the divided small radical guerrilla groups are being 'picked up' by al-Qaeda. |
| s-159
| This consolidation is obviously a result of Bush's aggressive invasion of Iraq and of the botching of the aftermath. |
| s-160
| It is a setback for the war on terror. |
| s-161
| Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was a group of only a few hundred 'Afghan Arabs' who pledged personal loyalty to Usamah Bin Laden. |
| s-162
| It could notionally be expanded to encompass the 5,000-strong '55th Brigade' of the Taliban regime, though this is not the technical definition. |
| s-163
| Because Usamah is Saudi, my guess is that they were especially influenced by an extremist form of the Wahhabi school of Islam that predominates among Saudia's some 15 million citizens. |
| s-164
| In 1998 they were joined by Egyptians from the al-Jihad al-Islami group of Ayman al-Zawahiri (many of these were from Upper Egypt, especially Asyut and environs). |
| s-165
| After that point, al-Qaeda was a joint enterprise between the Egyptian extremists and the polyglot Arabs around Bin Laden, only some of whom were Saudi. |
| s-166
| Zarqawi is a Jordanian, and his Monotheism and Holy War group in Afghanistan probably had a distinctive coloration as mainly Jordanian, Palestinian and Syrian. |
| s-167
| They also had a special connection to some extremists in Jordan and Germany. |
| s-168
| They are probably especially oriented toward the Salafi school of modern Islamic thought, which has a Protestant-like emphasis on going back to the original practice of the early companions of the Prophet Muhammad. |
| s-169
| (Most Salafis are not militant or violent, though they tend to be rather narrow-minded in my experience, on the order of Protestant Pietists). |
| s-170
| Monotheism and Holy War obviously does have a violent interpretation of Salafism, rather as the the leaders of the so-called German Peasant Rebellion among early Protestants did. |
| s-171
| Another worrisome sign is that local Iraqi Sunni fundamentalists opposed to the US presence in Iraq have begun joining Monotheism and Holy War, and wearing its distinctive orange and black insignia. |
| s-172
| These have been sighted among Iraqi crowds on Haifa Street in Baghdad and in Samarra. |
| s-173
| So now there are hundreds of al-Qaeda members in Iraq where there had been none before. |
| s-174
| The consolidation of smaller local radical fundamentalist groups with al-Qaeda can also be seen in the case of the Fizazi group in Tangiers that morphed into the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group , had members who met with September 11 ringleader Muhammad Atta, and ultimately was in part responsible for the Madrid train bombings. |
| s-175
| The September 11 Panel will issue its findings on Thursday. |
| s-176
| It notes 10 points at which the US made key mistakes that might have stopped Bin Laden's plot. |
| s-177
| Four of these were under Clinton and 6 under Bush. |
| s-178
| Bush came out today and said that if he had known what was coming, he would have expended every effort to stop it, and that so would have Clinton. |
| s-179
| This statement is, despite its facade of fair-mindedness, so many weasel words. |
| s-180
| Of course Bush would have tried to stop 9/11 if he had known it was coming. |
| s-181
| The question is, 'Should he have known it was coming?' |
| s-182
| The answer is, 'Yes!' |
| s-183
| We now know that Bush and his administration came into office obsessed with Iraq. |
| s-184
| Cheney was looking at maps of Iraq oil fields and muttering about opportunities for US companies there, already in January or February of 2001. |
| s-185
| Wolfowitz contradicted counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke when the latter spoke of the al-Qaeda threat, insisting that the preeminent threat of terrorism against the US came from Iraq, and indicating he accepted Laurie Mylroie's crackpot conspiracy theory that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Towers bombing. |
| s-186
| If you believe crackpot theories instead of focusing on the reality--that was an al-Qaeda operation mainly carried out by al-Gamaa al-Islamiyyah, an Egyptian terrorist component allied with Bin Laden-- then you will concentrate on the wrong threat. |
| s-187
| Even after the attacks on September 11, Bush was obsessing about Iraq. |
| s-188
| Wolfowitz lied to him and said that there was a 10 to 50% chance that Iraq was behind them. |
| s-189
| (On what evidence? |
| s-190
| The hijackers were obviously al-Qaeda, and no operational links between al-Qaeda and Iraq had ever been found). |
| s-191
| Rumsfeld initially rejected an attack on al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, saying there were 'no good targets' in Afghanistan. |
| s-192
| (What about 40 al-Qaeda bases that had trained the 9/11 hijackers and other terrorists gunning for the United States??) |
| s-193
| The Pentagon did not even have a plan for dealing with Afghanistan or al-Qaeda that it could pull off the shelf, according to Bob Woodward. |
| s-194
| Bush did not have his eye on the ball. |
| s-195
| Neither did Cheney, Rumsfeld, or Wolfowitz. |
| s-196
| They were playing Captain Ahab to Saddam's great white whale. |
| s-197
| Imperial Hubris makes the case that lots of people in the CIA and counter-terrorism divisions elsewhere in the US government knew all about Bin Laden and the threat he posed. |
| s-198
| They were from all accounts marginalized and not listened to. |
| s-199
| Bush demoted Dick Clarke, among the most vocal and focused of the al-Qaeda experts, from his cabinet. |
| s-200
| Dick could never thereafter get any real cooperation from the cabinet officers, who outranked him, and he could not convince them to go to battle stations in the summer of 2001 when George Tenet's hair was 'on fire' about the excited chatter the CIA was picking up from radical Islamist terrorists. |