Monday Winds of War: August 14/05

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Top Topics

• The Gaza withdrawal begins. (JK: Large demonstrations also begin near the Wailing Wall, with estimates ranging from 100,000-500,000. Pictures here).

• SOCOM (Special Operations Command), elevated by Rumsfeld to peer status with the other war-fighting commands like CENTCOM, has drafted its terrorist-fighting warplan and is shopping it to combatant commands before presenting it to the defense secretary.

• Pakistan has test-fired a nuclear-capable cruise missile, its first.

• FBI: Al Qaeda wants to drive hijacked fuel trucks into high value targets in London and US cities sometime in the next few weeks. The US cities threatened are New York, LA, and Chicago. DEBKA also thinks something is up.

Other Topics Today Include:
Billion dollar fraud in Iraq; Hamas will not disarm; Feds recruiting hackers; Feebs drop the ball on computers again; no more taking your shoes off in the airport; South Africa cagey on arms sales; Al Qaeda presence in the Horn of Africa;UK-India nuke restrictions lifting; micro-reactors set to allow anyone to covertly build a chemical weapons stockpile and more...

THE MIDDLE EAST & IRAN

• Iraq barely has a military, but a billion dollars has already disappeared to fraud.

• Iraq's leaders are demanding no special scrutiny of the sovereign country for WMD programs now that Saddam is gone.

• Hamas is refusing to disarm and turn over its weapons to the PA following the Gaza disengagement.

• A Syrian Al Qaeda terrorist was brought to court in Turkey for a plot to bomb Israeli cruise ships. He's a big shouter; he shouted that his friends were still going to bomb the Israelis even if he went to jail, and he also shouted that he did not intend to kill any Turkish civilians, only Jews. How reassuring of him. Turkey has detained ten in the plot.

• The IAEA unanimously called on Iran to stop enriching uranium, which astonished former President Rafsanjani (who made very belligerent noises in his Friday sermon).

• France gets tough with Iran.

• Israel is thinking of hitting Iran. So is Bush.

• Newsweek's Robert Baer looks at what comes next now the Abdullah is the Saudi king.

• The Daily Star's Michael Young: is Syria the next Cambodia?

AMERICAN DOMESTIC SECURITY & THE AMERICAS

• While the US and Venezuela exchange ever-harsher rhetoric, the Bush administration is giving permits to US companies to sell repression technology to Venezuela.

• They keep finding acid bombs in Savannah, Georgia.

• FBI abandons another computer system, starts over. Check back next year, they'll do it again.

• The Feds are trying to recruit hackers at DEFCON, a security research convention.

• Security cameras are sprouting up all over the place, especially Manhattan.

• There've been so many dangerous incidents at BP oil facilities that the feds are investigating a terror connection.

• Two clerics in the Lodi case were planning on setting up a terror madrassa in the US, according to the lead FBI agent on the case.

• The Santa Monica pier is getting beefed-up security measures after a cconcerned citizen photographed Middle-Eastern looking males who appeared to be taking video footage in a suspicious manner.

• The TSA wants more cash for its Secure Flight program (formerly CAPPS I, née CAPPS II, etc). Meanwhile, Congress wants to cut hundreds of millions out of TSA's budget request.

• DHS plans a new web site to help transportation asset owners and operators assess their security measures.

• The TSA might stop making you take your shoes off to go through the metal detector.

• US Homeland Security officials want to make foreign travelers carry around RFID-tagged documents as part of the standard registration process for entering the country.

• America's infotech infrastructure is highly vulnerable.

• Flyers over US airspace have no Constitutional rights other than not being subjected to gross physical abuse, according to the DOJ.

AFRICA

• South Africa is trying to hide the identity of the countries to which it sold weapons. Which means, probably, Iran and Venezuela are on the list.

• Once jailed, now freed after a military coup, Mauritanian Islamist leaders are now saying they were never terrorists.

• Al Qaeda propaganda videos added to the evidence that it has a presence in the Horn of Africa.

ASIA

• First America, and now Britain is lifting its restrictions on nuclear technology to India.

• After bombings wounded 28, the southern Phillippines is on alert for foreign suicide bombers.

• India has new, stringent policies for dealing with airline hijackings by terrorists in light of the threat of Jaish e Muhammad's threat to hijack an airliner.

• Australian authorities don't have the legal tools to ban Hizb ut Tahrir, but would like to.

• Aussie boffins are developing a shifty behavior detection system.

• Singapore is high on JI's target list.

• Sydney's subway tunnels would be a death trap due to lack of access for emergency personnel in case of terrorism.

EUROPE

• 9 are to be deported from Scotland for terrorist supporting activities. The nine had previously been undeportable due to a peculiar British interpretation of a European law, now discarded.

• Al Muhajiroun are still trying to recruit youngsters for terrorism in the UK, contrary to their claim to have disbanded.

• Bakri was banned from returning to the UK, meaning that he's now stuck in Lebanon. Aww.

• The prison holding a wannabe Al Qaeda shoebomber experienced a small explosion. The bomb was made with ingredients available in the prison.

THE GLOBAL WAR

• New micro-reactors could render international chemical weapons control treaties moot.

• A Jordanian journalist has published a book containing his view-based on intimate knowledge of some Al Qaeda leaders-of Al Qaeda's long-range plan.

• A wanted Al Qaeda man thought to be a European leader of the organization can blend into Western society at will due to his looks.

• Osama bin Laden's man in America, thought missing, has turned up working for the new Iraqi government in its Ankara embassy (!)

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