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There is no doubt that many Iraqis regard the date of 30 January as a day of renewed hope, one they have been awaiting all their lives, but at the same time, many others are already dreading it.
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The interim government has promised security measures that would reduce the violence on the day of elections, but I fail to see how they will be able to protect all 5,000 (or so) balloting centres.
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Many voting centres have already been successfully attacked or destroyed in many areas.
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Now that the picture is clear, the two main competing lists seem to be the United Iraqi Coalition list and Allawi's Al-Iraqiya list.
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One minister reportedly handed out 100 dollar'gifts' to journalists attending a press conference for Allawi, a practice that brings back bad memories to many Iraqis.
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Sheikh Naji Al-Abbudi, a spokesman for Sistani, affirmed the claims that the Grand Ayatollah is backing the United Iraqi Coalition list.
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Indeed, Sistani's agents all over the country have been quite active in educating Iraqi Shia on the merits of elections, which has led to the assassination of at least two of them.
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Al-Abbudi stated that "His Emminence" decided to openly support the list because "others" (obviously a reference to Allawi) have been abusing official state positions and media outlets in their campaigning.
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Again there is no official written statement from Sistani's office confirming this allegation, which I think is intentional.
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One remark made by Sha'lan on Al-Arabiya TV, that he couldn't say more about Chalabi because he would embarrass himself and the viewers almost made me roll on the floor.
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Even there, many Kurds look and act as if they are going to grab the chance to vote them out of power.
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I doubt that will be the outcome though.
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Many Iraqis, including conservative and religious Iraqis, are surprisingly rooting for the Iraqi Communist party, probably in an attempt to counter the influence of Islamists in the forthcoming National Assembly.
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The Communist party has the largest number of registered party members in the country and can be considered as the oldest popular political party in Iraq.
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I had an interesting conversation with a middle-aged taxi driver who used to live in Fallujah and is now at relatives in Amiriya, Baghdad.
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After asking me which tribe I belong to (thus assessing my sectarian background) he started hurling abuses at the Shia, calling them Persians, Majoos (fire worshippers), rabid dogs and a handful of other descriptions that I can't mention here.
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He described Allawi's face as that of a f*ed horse and he dismissed the whole government as a band of thieves and traitors.
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I didn't argue with him but I asked him what he believed would be a viable solution to this mess.
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He said that resistance was the only commonsense solution.
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Sunni Iraqis contend that elections are impossible to hold under occupation.
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Leaving aside the fact that this views conflicts with other historical examples in the region, Sunnis have never offered an alternative choice, which eventually leads one to guess that the opinion held by the Fallujan taxi driver above is precisely what they are planning to implement.
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I had another conversation some months ago with a retired Ba'athist old-timer who claimed that Ba'athists have the means to stage a third coup d'etat and return to power within 10 hours of an American withdrawal.
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On sensing my incredulity to his statement he asserted that Ba'athist cells exist in all parts of the country and that they do have a central command, even though many have formed seperate cells (often under Islamic labels) with their own leaderships.
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He said that they have the training and the funding as well as the support of neighbouring and regional governments.
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I concur that Ba'athists and former security forces are capable of immediately controlling at least 5 out of 18 governorates, along with the capital, if Americans are to be removed from the picture entirely.
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But I also see that as a fatal misconception, which is doing Sunnis harm, because I don't believe the US is going anywhere so soon.
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Any government that assumes power after the elections also realises this, so not even Sistani is going to call the US to withdraw its troops, despite what he is saying now, not until they are ensured the insurgency is out of the picture, or that they have an alternative foreign power (in this case Iran) to back them up.
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Very recently, US forces in Al-Anbar made a terrible blunder by accidentally killing Abdul-Razaq Inad Al-Gu'ud, Sheikh of the Al-Bu Nimr clan from the powerful Dulaym tribe.
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Al-Gu'ud had favoured elections and was in good terms with the government.
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The Gu'ud family even accepted to be offered the seat of Al-Anbar governor some months back.
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The Al-Bu Nimr in Ramadi and Al-Qaim rose in arms against Saddam in the mid-nineties following the execution of Thamir Madhlum Al-Dulaymi, an Air Force general belonging to their tribe.
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The revolt took two weeks to be suppressed by the Republican Guard.
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Al-Lihaibi was running in elections and is now said to have withdrawn following this incident.
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I believe national reconciliation to be the only path forward to a new Iraq.
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("At first I hid a lot.
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I thought the US government was looking for me.
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Now I hide a lot less.")
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Because of such talk, Posada has been taken into custody by Immigration officials.
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As recently as last week the official line stated they had no knowledge he had entered the country.
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But comfortable among the thugs, Posada overplayed his hand and embarrassed his old patron, the US government.
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They happened in the Philippines which, like Pakistan, is an important and vulnerable node for the business which intelligence agencies and terrorist organizations conduct with each other.
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The bombings implicated Muslims, and exacerbated regional tensions which the Bush regime and its friends wearing the brass in the Philippine military sought to exploit.
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I doubt he will be extradited to Venezuela, which is the only way that question could be answered with a Yes.
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I expect it will be determined that, under "Strong Man" Hugo Chavez, Posada could not be guaranteed a fair trial.
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His case threatens the consensus fiction of the "War on Terror."
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Terrell, a CIA asset originally recruited for the Contra effort, identifies the man attempting to recruit him into the Philippine scheme as Oliver North...
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I seem to recall the object was to smuggle explosives.
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I've read the book- it's a first person memoir with the ring of truth, especially since so much of the wider context has confirmed the allegations of Contra drug connections that led to Terrell becoming a target for discrediting by the TWIG counterintelligence group that ran interference for the Contra effort, staffed by covert ops types including Ollie North, Robert Owen, Vince Cannistaro and Buck Revell.
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Peter Dale Scott includes an account of how Terrell's whistleblowing was stifled by them in his book Cocaine Politics.
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Due to the Judge in the 1983 case ruling that a CIA agent could not testify using a pseudonym, therefore opening him to cross-examination by Wilson, the prosecution had a problem.
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They needed someone that could convince the jury they had been able to see all relevant documents in CIA files on Wilson.
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Wilson was claiming that he had been working for the CIA when he sold the C-4 to Quaddaffi.
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The prosecution was charging he was a rogue using his contacts from former service in both CIA and the'Office of Naval Intelligence'.
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Wilson had been able to show that he'd had more than 80 "non-social contacts" with the CIA since his retirement in 1971, leaving the prosecution's case in turmoil.
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Then Charles A. Briggs came to the rescue.
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Third ranking CIA officer, Briggs signed a declaration on February 3rd, 1983, that on November 8th, 1982, he had authorized a search of CIA records "for any material that in any way pertains to Edwin P. Wilson, or the various allegations concerning his activities after February 28th, 1971, when he retired from the CIA."
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The Briggs Declaration states that with one exception in 1972, Wilson did not work "directly or indirectly" for the CIA since retiring.
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Last week, Federal District Judge Lynn Hughes in Huston, Texas, threw out Wilson's two-decades old conviction.
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Judge Hughes wrote: `government knowingly used false evidence against him,' concluding `honesty comes hard to government.'
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Sheriff's deputies in Louisiana made a third arrest Wednesday in the ongoing investigation of a case involving allegations of sexual abuse of children and animals at a Ponchatoula, La., church.
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Police said Bernard confessed to detectives that he had sex with a young girl in November 2002 and admitted to knowing about sexual acts involving children and a dog that occurred at Hosanna Church.
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We have a similar case unravelling up here in the northwest with a murder of a family and missing children taken for some purpose.
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I don't know how others feel, but I'm definitely looking into immigration to Canada as an option.
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I like yuor blog.
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It pretty much covers dating stuff.
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Hey I just love your blog.
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I also have a dating advice blog/site.
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I was searching for dog food info and found this post.
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I agree totally!
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The Only Catch Is That You HAVE To Have An Income ABOVE $21,000...... And......You HAVE To Follow The Easy Instructions Provided To You.
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+ As the implications of the Andaman Islands situation sink in, Indian intelligence has inevitably come under scrutiny.
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In recent months, its fallibility has become evident.
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In early February, India charged 34 Arakan separatists from Myanmar with hiding in the Landfall Islands, part of the Andaman Islands group (see end note).
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These alleged members of the Arakan Army, the military wing of the National Unity Party in Myanmar, have been charged with illegal entry.
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Reports are circulating in the intelligence community that the Andaman Islands are not only thick with Myanmar rebels.
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It has also become an arms depot of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who operate almost freely in the Andaman Sea.
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Information pointing in this direction came to light after the December 26 tsunami, which took a heavy toll on the Andamans.
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Correspondents who flocked in to cover the tsunami found they also had another story - the miserable security situation surrounding the Indian navy's Far Eastern Naval Command, now being established along with India's "blue water navy".
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While the Indian army has become rock-solid in the western front, and has developed the capability of withstanding any Pakistani adventure in that sector, it has become highly vulnerable in its eastern sector, where its enemy is not a national army but a multitude of secessionist, terrorist and drug-running militants operating between Southeast Asia and northeastern India through Bangladesh.
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The drugs and arms travel in all directions.
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Since the "Sea Tigers" of the LTTE, better known as the Tamil Tigers, are the ones who rule the Andaman Sea: they carry the arms and drugs for their own use and also to deliver to rebels in Aceh and all along the east coast of Africa.
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A recent report by a journalist from Port Blair, in the Andamans, quoted an unnamed official saying that foreigners from Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have permanently settled in the islands, using fake Indian ration cards, while citizens of Thailand, China, Indonesia and Malaysia have migrated temporarily to plunder the natural resources and leave.
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"Port Blair, Havelock Islands, Diglipur, Middle Nicobar, Campbell's Bay, Neil Islands and Rangott are mostly overrun by foreigners," he said.
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An official estimate issued in 2003 suggests there are 50,000 "foreigners" in the Andaman Islands, but unofficial figures are much higher than this.
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As most of them have few technical skills, and the Andamans have little demand for them in any case, they turn to smuggling and other unlawful activities.
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The presence of the Sea Tigers in the area with guns, cash and drugs makes the situation extremely dangerous.
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Reports from Port Blair make it evident that New Delhi gets little on-the-ground intelligence, and the Indian Coast Guard is grossly unequipped to deal with the surge of illegal migrants to the islands.
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These islands sit aside the vital sea lanes of the Strait of Malacca, through which 300 tankers and merchant ships pass daily, bringing in oil for the Far East and Southeast Asia.
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As the implications of the Andaman Islands situation sink in, Indian intelligence has inevitably come under scrutiny.
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In recent months, its fallibility has become evident.
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This formidable enemy, which gave the Indian army a black eye in the mid-1980s, has been operating in northeastern India and in the Andaman Sea for a long time.
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In 2001, according to Indian army officials, security forces launched a wide-ranging operation in the 300-some inhabited islands neighboring Andaman and Nicobar, and found huge caches of arms.
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A shipment of weapons, ammunition and explosives, believed to have been purchased from Cambodia and worth several million dollars, left the port of Phuket in Thailand in early February 2001 aboard the freighter Comex-Joux 3.
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As is LTTE standard procedure, the vessel changed its name at sea to Horizon.
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In 1997, the Thai navy reported the interception of a 16-meter boat after a chase off the Thai port of Ranong, and the confiscation of two tons of weapons and ammunition.
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The boat was heading toward Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh.
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Until 1995 the LTTE maintained a base at Twante, an island off the coat of Myanmar, west of the Andaman islands.
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Subsequently, Phuket became the LTTE's main backup base.
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Over the past decade, Bangladesh has steadily moved into a state of lawlessness.
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As a result, north of the Andaman Islands, Bangladeshi coastal areas have become a nest of terrorists involved in the shipment of drugs and arms.
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