Monday Winds of War: Mar 14/05

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. In addition, we also have our in-depth Iraq Report today.

Today's Winds of War briefing is brought to you by Bill Roggio of the fourth rail and evariste of Discarded Lies.

Top Topics

• A member of the Israeli parliament that works closely on defense issues states that Israel will only attack Iran "as a last resort". Israel has plans for a combined attack on the Natanz nuclear facility, including raids by the storied Kingfisher commando unit and bunker-busters dropped from F-15s. Ariel Sharon and his inner cabinet gave preliminary approval for a plan to strike last month in a meeting at his ranch.

• Secret FBI report (if it's so secret why do we know what's in it?): Al Qaeda can't hit us spectacularly any more. Condi: don't be so quick to write them off. Interpol: Al Qaeda still formidable. FBI chief Mueller is concerned about Al Qaeda members crossing the border with fake IDs. And what hope is there, really, to block fake IDs when authorities admit that college students are always one step ahead of them?

• Zarqawi's thoughts on attacking the US mainland are disturbing, as he ponders hitting "soft" targets like schools and restaurants.

• This Daily Star editorial looks at Hezbollah's poor strategizing in siding with Syria over the Lebanese it claims to represent.

• America's still putting the heat on Syria as the first Syrian troops returned home from Lebanon. And not only America...even Russia.

Other Topics Today Include:

• Iranian nuclear games: Roulette; Fun in Palestine; Nour free at last; Legitimizing Hezbollah?; The Homeland update; Aryans hearts Islamists; The Blind Sheikh still can speak to his flock; GPSC thinks big; The Nigerian Time-bomb; JI heart MILF; China hearts hates Taiwan; Khan!!!!!!; The dangers of outsourcing, to the Indians; New sheriff in Chechnya; A variety of European failures on the policing front; Kofi hearts Hezbollah; UN Peacekeepers heart Rape; Terrorist marketing strategies; and much, much more…

IRAN REPORTS

• Regime Change Iran provides a comprehensive briefing on Iran, including the continuation of uranium enrichment despite negotiations, the refusal to give up the enrichment program, the EU-3 threat to take the case to the UN Security Council, and much more.

• Iran has laid the foundations for a new research reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for one bomb a year at Arak, according to satellite photos. The heavy-water production plant adjacent to it is said to be nearly complete.

• National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said that Iran shouldn't take much comfort in the US's new stand on its negotiations with the European 3. Meanwhile, Iran blustered that the US is "hallucinating" if we think they'll scrap enrichment activities in exchange for trade concessions.

• Pakistan will turn over centrifuge components to the IAEA in order to solve a mystery about Iran's nuclear program.

• Iran displays the British patrol boats captured last spring, to the dismay of the British Foreign Office. Perhaps the British ought to send a couple of these as a coming out present.

THE MIDDLE EAST

• Baghdad's main trading center is boycotting Syrian goods in response to Syria's sheltering and funding terrorists.

• The Saudis kill one al Qaeda member and arrest three during a raid.

• Kuwait and Albania are cracking down on Saudi Wahhabis, and even expelling them.

• Hamas will participate in Palestinian elections, while the Palestinians show their commitment to freedom by supporting Hezbollah and Syria. Meanwhile, Fatah crashes a rally held by Hamas. This is what happens when terrorist groups are held up as legitimate entities.

• Egypt frees democracy advocate Ayman Nour.

• NRO has information that the recent NYT attempts to set the stage for the US legitimizing Hezbollah are completely unfounded, even absurd, in Administration thinking and policy direction.

• Americans in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia had to be moved after a nonspecific terror threat targeted them.

AMERICAN DOMESTIC SECURITY

• Against the will of some US lawmakers, IBM's PC division was cleared for sale to China's Lenovo. Their objections were on national security grounds; they especially suggested that China would use employees in the US as industrial spies.

• The House is considering a bill to allow the DHS to sidestep environmentalists seeking to block the construction of a fence in San Diego to block the last remaining unfenced area that thousands of illegal migrants are smuggled through.

• David Ignatius says Negroponte's mandate as the new intelligence chief is unclear and that intelligence will remain balkanized if President Bush doesn't send some clear signals.

• The FBI declared yet another multi-hundred-million dollar project to upgrade its computer systems a failure and killed it off.

• A Yemeni sheikh and his assistant were convicted of fundraising for al Qaeda and Hamas.

• Hackers are targeting the US power grid.

• National security agencies such as the CIA and FBI are concerned al Qaeda is attempting to infiltrate.

• Strange bedfellows: the Ayran Nation gives a letter of support to the jihadis.

• The blind terrorist sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman is still communicating with his supporters from his maximum-security prison cell. How?

• A nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack could do grave damage to the US, and we're defenseless against it.

• How threatened should the US be by black converts to Islam...and radicalism?

AFRICA

• The GPSC in Algeria issued a fatwa that all foreigners in the country may be killed.

• The Wall Street Journal paints an alarming picture of a "ticking time-bomb" Nigeria that's collapsing in slow motion.

ASIA & AUSTRALIA

• Strong links between JI and MILF could lead to the Philippine rebels being placed on the US's foreign terror organizations list.

• They did it-China's rubberstamp legislative body rubberstamped an anti-Taiwanese secession law that obligates China to go to war if Taiwan tries to formalize its independence. The day before the vote, Hu Jintao was appointed China's military chief, and told the People's Liberation Army to be ready for war. China will have 800 missiles targeting Taiwan in 2006.

• This analysis says that we haven't really learned many lessons-nor applied the ones we have learned-from the AQ Khan saga; neither have we even completely broken up AQ Khan's network.

• Illustrating growing savvy, it's emerged that Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists plotted to attack India's software industry, a source of economic strength to both India and the United States.

• Registan.net rounds up the latest in the run-off election in Kyrgyzstan.

• Same as the old boss... Abu Hafs al-Urduni is now the the top al-Qaeda leader in Chechnya.

EUROPE

• Ahmed Ressam's recruiter (he plotted to bomb LAX) and the mastermind of French subway bombings Fateh Kamel was released from prison in France for "good behavior" and returned to Canada.

• According to SecurityWatch, an interim report by the British Ministry of Defence says that the Hercules downed in Iraq likely was not downed by sabotage, accident, or a bomb on board, but a missile remained a possibility.

• Prosecutors in Germany, getting tough, asked a court for a whopping six year sentence for a Tunisian terrorist who wanted to attack American and Jewish targets.

• Blair got his anti-terror bill.

• NATO is developing strategic sealift capabilities for the NATO Reaction Force, says Jane's.

• According to Spiegel Online, the EU's anti-terror policy remains feckless, Europol remains headless and disorganized, there have been plots in every EU country, the danger from homegrown terrorists is growing, and cooperation between countries remains weak.

THE GLOBAL WAR

• Belmont Club looks at the change in the strategic thinking of the United States and how this shapes the design of the military.

• Kofi Annan goes soft on Hezbollah, despite the clear and present danger this group represents.

• Jihadis are posting bomb-making tips on the internet, and it seems that this one in particular is an American.

• A former CBS employee highlights the media's poor showing in reporting on terrorism.

• Evidence of sexual abuse by United Nations peacekeepers continues to mount (pardon the pun).

• Terrorists are developing new marketing strategies, with some success-recruitment is down but volunteerism is up.

We try to close on a lighter note if possible.

• Japan’s oldest man really wasn’t that old, he was DEAD! For ten years, mind you. http://betsyspage.blogspot.com/2005/03/i-think-this-takes-revering-elderly.html

• Charles Johnson has some interesting photographs of the graduation of Iranian female ninjas police cadets.

Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know.

For ongoing tips, email "MondayWindsOfWar", over here @windsofchange.net.