Posted on 06/26/2004 10:22:08 AM PDT by kcvl
Claiming they will BEHEAD them.
Anti-terror cooperation between Russia and Turkey is a difficult thing to accomplish, simply because of the remnants of cold war terror support which currently translates to over 100 PKK related organizations of various types (political, logistical, financial, etc) being "tolerated" in Russia.
I read about the 100+ figure in an article covering leaks about a dossier passed on to the Russian leadership by their Turkish counterparts about a year ago.
This is the very frightening part about it all. I attended a local fair several years ago and stopped at an Islam Information booth. The men standing there told me a lot of very delusional stuff, like it was the Jews who had flown the planes into the WTC and we all believed it was radical muslims only because the Jews controlled the media in this country and had lied about it.
These men were not in prison and had not been labeled as terrorists. Probably had not killed anyone. In fact they were probably average muslims living near me somewhere. How scary is it that they would believe this kind of thing?
You can see, perhaps, how difficult it is for us as non-muslims, in these kinds of situations, to trust the average muslim-guy-in-your-neighborhood.
>> You can see, perhaps, how difficult it is for us as non-muslims, in these kinds of situations, to trust the average muslim-guy-in-your-neighborhood.
Sure I understand. Just as easy as me trusting the average Serb or Croat with my kids..
It's not easy. Satan is seductive, and in this case most reasonable sounding..
Croat? I thought the Bosnian muslims and Croats worked together quite well.
July 5 issue - For Pentagon and intelligence officials, the failure to find Osama bin Laden in the rocky wastes of Afghanistan has been frustrating enough. But they are equally dispirited by their inability to locate Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the mysterious Jordanian terrorist who is just as ruthless and currently more active.
Operating out of Iraq—a country that is home to 138,000 American soldiers and an untold number of U.S. spies—he takes gruesome pleasure in trumpeting his role in every possible atrocity. He seems to preside over a large underground network, capable of recruiting and training suicide bombers, mounting coordinated attacks and disseminating audio and video recordings to the media. Yet American forces seem baffled by his operation.
Last week Zarqawi claimed credit for a series of attacks in five Iraqi cities that killed more than 100 people, mostly civilians, and wounded 330 more. Earlier in the week Zarqawi's group, the Unity and Holy War Movement, posted an Internet video depicting the beheading of a captured South Korean businessman.
That followed a video in May that showed Zarqawi himself beheading American Nick Berg. In an audio message last week, Zarqawi brazenly vowed to assassinate Iraqi's new prime minister, Ayad Allawi. Then he taunted American forces, daring them to try to find him. "I am like a tourist in Iraq," he said. "I move along the country staying with my family and brothers."
The Pentagon responded to last week's violence by launching three targeted airstrikes in the city of Fallujah, destroying alleged safe houses for Zarqawi's fighters. But Zarqawi either wasn't there or he got away. U.S. officials say there was credible intelligence that placed Zarqawi somewhere in Iraq last week—but not necessarily in Fallujah. Why can't they find him? One Defense official, echoing Zarqawi's own admissions, acknowledged that he is believed to have hideouts and supporters all over Iraq.
He apparently communicates by messenger and in face-to-face meetings, avoiding cell phones that are vulnerable to electronic eavesdroppers. Even less is known about his followers. Some are believed to be Kurdish militants, others foreign fighters who came across the border from neighboring Jordan, Syria or Saudi Arabia. U.S. officials say he sometimes may be secretly working with Saddam loyalists. (
pfff..
OK now explain to me, in my ignorance, what pff means. LOL.
That's a sound I make with my mouth to mean something like "ok, whatever."
Does that mean you don't wanna talk about Cypress with me?
LOL.
We simply have to take a chance and treat each individual as an individual. I know it could be a terrible chance to take, but no other choice will work..
And the reason they didn't snap up Iran was...? Southern expansion was a tertiary priority at best. Simple truth of the matter, beyond speculation, is that the Turks were willing to be a MAD missile target at a time when we were not.
Turkey waited until the war was nearly over, January 1945, then they declared war on Germany.
You've just contradicted yourself. The reason for Turkey's odd positioning in WWII is similar to that of Finland -- they were stuck between Nazi Germany and the USSR, so they cut a pact with the lesser of two evils. When they had something better than Hobson's choice, they took it.
Absolute nonsense. The Soviets had no southern port to the Mediteranean,which made turkey a prime target. Don't take my word for it, allow a quote from Harry Truman; "There is no doubt in my mind thatRussia intends an invasion of Turkey to sieze the Black Sea Straits to the Mediteranean." I doubt you know more about the situation circa 1947-1952 than Truman did.
"The reason for Turkey's odd positioning in WWII is similar to that of Finland -- they were stuck between Nazi Germany and the USSR, so they cut a pact with the lesser of two evils."
Your assertion might bear some truth but for the fact that three months prior to signing a mutual non aggression pact with Hitler the turks signed one with Stalin. The turks however did not fuel the Soviet war machine. It was the Nazis who got the benefits of turkish raw materiel, and turkey who benefited from all that Nazi money as their number one trading partner. Until that is turkey felt the wind shift and declared war on Germany to get favored status with the nascient UN. Oddly, they did not declare war on Russia.
But please, don't let easily verified history cloud your agenda.
I've studied the history for a project on the life of Ataturk. There are many interpretations but one set of facts, and the fact of it is that turkey was Hitler's number one trading partner in spite of petitions by the Allies. The further fact is that turkey reversed its position when the writing was clearly on the wall in order to get a shot at charter status in the UN. Those are the facts and facts are, by definition, immutable.
Another fact, courtesy of declassified OSS files, is that the OSS and the British identified 1500 Abwehr (German) agents to the Turkish government, who controlled, imprisoned, or otherwise neutralized 800 of them.
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The US and Russia were already fighting on German soil, the war was 60 daysa away from ending. The turks had no troops to send. Why exactly, after being Hitler's #1 trading partner did they declare war? What's the turk word for opportunism?
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So the turks played both sides of the street, how principled. How many Allied agents did they control, imprison or neutralize?
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