If I were the Israelis, my “full cooperation“—assuming that it was my agents in the first place—would be:
- Yup, we got him.
- You’re welcome.
Tag-Archive for » terrorism «
Canadian air travel roundup
04
Jan
2010
2010
Terminal 3 Pearson Airport, originally uploaded by Allan P1.
A somewhat random collection of bullet-points from the world of Canadian air travel.
- Air France caves in to the class action suit brought by passengers of AF358, and settles for CDN $11.65 million. The seriously injured (mentally or physically) will receive a maximum $175,000 payout, while the uninjured will receive the minimum payment somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000. I remind readers that the AF358 incident was a runway overrun in which there was no loss of life amongst its 297 passengers and 12 crew, and in which the biggest financial loss was borne by the airline itself, which had to write off the aircraft completely. Suits still pending: Air France, suing GTAA and Nav Canada for the loss of an aircraft; GTAA, suing Air France for the cost of post-accident environmental remediation; and one passenger (who opted out of the class-action lawsuit) who is suing all parties.
- Airline and airport staff are not entirely clear on the specifics of the nonsensical and hastily composed new carry-on baggage regulations, and kind of making it up as they go along. Big surprise there. Your correspondent has a suggestion, based upon years of experience watching his wife haul around purses of various sizes (the largest of which could have discharged a tank platoon on Juno Beach in 1944). A “small” purse is one that can accommodate your wife’s wallet and phone. A “large” purse is one that has any excess payload capacity beyond that. As far as laptop bags go, they are all “large”, even if made to cart around a 13″ netbook. There are no small ones. Ever.
- Farouk of the Flaming Underpants had fantasies of being a holy warrior, says the Toronto Star. Well yeah—that’s what Islamists do. If he didn’t want to wage jihad against the Great Satan, he probably wouldn’t have bothered to fabricate explosive Y-fronts.
See also:
Category: Current Affairs
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Selling the drama
02
Jan
2010
2010
I have some respect for the passengers of Northwest Flight 253, especially Dutch filmmaker Mr. Jasper Schuringa, who reacted quickly and appropriately to a dangerous situation. But please, pundits professional and amateur, put aside the euphoric army-of-Davids, pack-not-a-herd rhetoric.
NWA253 wasn’t saved because of alert passengers. It was saved because the would-be bomber was incompetent in both design and fabrication of his explosive device. The passengers did nothing to pre-empt impending tragedy; they merely restrained the bomber after his unsuccessful detonation. It is not even on the same level as the passengers and cabin crew of American Airlines 63, who halted the attempted ignition of Richard Reid’s shoes. The fuse leading into Reid’s shoe hadn’t been lit; let alone lit and providing an obvious warning in the form of firecracker-like noises and smells.
The moral of the Flight 253 story is not that ultra-vigilant passengers will save the day (although this is not a bad thing and sometimes, they might). Remember that had the explosive device been properly designed and fabricated, there would have been precious little for those passengers to do except fall to their deaths.
There are instead three better lessons from NWA253. The first is that you cannot always rely upon airport screeners (whether foreign or domestic) to have and use the best possible equipment. They might not have the equipment, or when they do, they might use it selectively—by prioritizing it for something other than routine screening (like say, narcotics smuggling). This might require certain nations (or air carriers themselves) to have their own screening personnel and equipment at the originating airport.
The second lesson is that intelligence and law enforcement services need greater cooperation and coordination in order to effectively act upon leads given to them. Having received a timely warning from Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father, the bomber should have been set aside for more intensive scrutiny prior to boarding, which—presumably—would have led to denial of boarding.
The third lesson is that the approach to security screening that we have today—a widely-cast net, inefficiently searching one and all for a limited range of explosives and weapons—is inadequate; it is not focused, accurate or granular enough to detect the threat.
There are other, more manpower-intensive approaches—just one example would be the behavioral profiling used by Israeli carrier El Al. El Al interviews every passenger before boarding, relying on the experience and intution of its screeners to weed out the nervous and suspicious. Our own airport security screeners do not tend to focus on human intelligence and psychological factors; they rely on technical means (x-ray scanners and chemical detectors) instead. And technology, of course, is not as infallible as many would like to think.
Perhaps the best defence is a fusion of these methods; human intelligence buttressed with technical intelligence. Surely that is several times better than your seat-mates reacting to a bomb after it’s failed.
See also:
Category: Current Affairs, What Really Grinds My Gears
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Intelligence Review, c1946
31
Dec
2009
2009
The Kings of Saudi Arabia and Egypt flanked by the Crown Prince of Iraq, the Presidents of Lebanon, Syria, and the heir of the King of Yemen. Cairo, c1946.
The Islamic world, in the judgment of the Military Intelligence Division of the U.S. War Department, circa 1946. Simultaneously fascinating and depressing that the estimate of intelligence professionals sixty-four years ago is just as relevant today.
ISLAM: A THREAT TO WORLD STABILITY
With few exceptions, the states in it [the Muslim world] are marked by poverty, ignorance, and stagnation. It is full of discontent and frustration, yet alive with consciousness of its inferiority and with determination to achieve some kind of betterment.
Two basic urges meet head-on in this area, and conflict is inherent in this collision of interests. These urges reveal themselves in the daily news accounts of killings and terrorism, of pressure groups in opposition, and of raw nationalism and naked expansionism masquerading as diplomatic maneuvers.
The first of these urges originates within the Moslems’ own sphere. The Moslems remember the power with which once they not only ruled their own domains but also overpowered half of Europe, yet they are painfully aware of their present economic, cultural and military impoverishment. Thus a terrific internal pressure is building up in their collective thinking. The Moslems intend, by any means possible, to regain political independence and to reap the profits of their own resources. The Moslems intend, by any means possible, to regain political independence and to reap the profits of their own resources, which in recent times and up to the present have been surrendered to the exploitation of foreigners who could provide capital investment. The area, in short, has an inferiority complex, and its activities are thus as unpredictable as those of any individual so motivated.
The other fundamental urge originates externally. The world’s great and near-great Powers cover the economic riches of the Moslem area and are also mindful of the strategic locations of some of the domains. Their actions are also difficult to predict, because each of these powers sees itself in the position of the customer who wants to do his shopping in a hurry because he happens to know the store is going to be robbed.
In an atmosphere so sated with the inflammable gases of distrust and ambition, the slightest spark could lead to an explosion which might implicate every country committed to the maintenance of world peace…
The Present Estimate
If the Moslem states were strong and stable, their behavior would be more predictable. They are, however, weak and torn by internal stresses; furthermore, their peoples are insufficiently educated to appraise propaganda or to understand the motives of those who promise a new Heaven and a new Earth.
Because of the strategic position of the Moslem world and the relentlessness of its peoples, the Moslem states constitute a potential threat to world peace. There cannot be permanent world stability, when one-seventh of the earth’s population exists under the economic and political conditions that are imposed upon the Moslems.
– United States. Department of War. “Islam: A threat to world stability.” Intelligence Review No. 1, 14 February 1946. [Emphasis mine]
There are ten pages of analysis in all, you can download and read the entire document from the Federation of American Scientists, or download an excerpt of only the ten page Islam report from The Company.
See also:
Category: Historica
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The battle will go on for the rest of our lives
31
Dec
2009
2009
Christopher Hitchens engages in a rambling and somewhat self-indulgent rant about “security theatre”, but manages to get the lead out in the closing paragraph.
What nobody in authority thinks us grown-up enough to be told is this: We had better get used to being the civilians who are under a relentless and planned assault from the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims. Our civil aviation is only the most psychologically frightening symbol of a plethora of potential targets. The future murderers will generally not be from refugee camps or slums (though they are being indoctrinated every day in our prisons); they will frequently be from educated backgrounds, and they will often not be from overseas at all. They are already in our suburbs and even in our military. We can expect to take casualties. The battle will go on for the rest of our lives. Those who plan our destruction know what they want, and they are prepared to kill and die for it. Those who don’t get the point prefer to whine about “endless war,” accidentally speaking the truth about something of which the attempted Christmas bombing over Michigan was only a foretaste. While we fumble with bureaucracy and euphemism, they are flying high.
– Hitchens, Christopher. “The truth about airplane security measures.” Slate, 28 December 2009. [Emphasis is mine.]
See also:
Category: Current Affairs, Pro Victoria
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Canadian Pacific Airlines Flight 108
09
Sep
2009
2009
Canadian Pacific Airlines Douglas DC-3A-360/C-47 (CF-CUA c/n 4518) photographed at Bagotville, Quebec by Guy Allard; August 1947. (Jacques Trempe collection | 1000aircraftphotos.com)
This aircraft, along with its 19 passengers and 4 crew, was destroyed sixty years ago today by an explosive device placed in the No. 1 forward baggage hold. The explosive was crude but effective; several sticks of dynamite with an alarm clock as timer. It had been set to detonate while the aircraft was over the St. Lawrence River—rendering accident investigation difficult given the methods of the time—but a 5-minute delay leaving Québec City left the aircraft over dry land when it exploded. It was the world’s third—and deadliest—act of airline terrorism.
The perpetrator was 32-year-old Joseph-Albert Guay, a watch and jewellry salesman with a faltering business and faltering marriage. His relationship with his wife, 28-year-old Rita Morel, was stormy at best; eventually she and their 5-year-old daughter moved back to her mother’s home. Divorce was rare in 1940s Québec, or so we are told. Guay, meanwhile, dated 17-year-old waitress Marie-Ange Robitaille; but she dumped him when she found out he was already married. Guay then resolved to kill his wife, initially by poison, but then settled on an air tragedy instead; he took out a $10,000 travel insurance policy on Morel.
Lacking the skills to contruct the weapon himself, Guay asked clockmaker Généreux Ruest to build a timed explosive with dynamite, batteries and an alarm clock. Ruest got his sister, Marguerite Pitre, to buy the dynamite from a hardware store; she was also the one to deliver the disguised bomb (as air freight) to the aircraft on that fateful day. Guay enticed his wife to make the trip by asking her to fly to Baie Comeau to pick up a box of jewellery on his behalf.
Flight 108 had originated in Montréal and made a brief stopover in Québec City, where Mrs. Morel boarded. Mrs. Pitre arrived at the airfield via taxi, insisting that her suspiciously overweight package go aboard. As the plane was already starting up, the clerk relented and rushed it aboard. The aircraft left at 10:25 local time, and went down 20 minutes later near Sault-au-Cochon, 70 kilometres north of Québec City.
Investigation initially focused on the unidentified mystery shipper, who was later identified as Pitre. When police began questioning her, Guay encouraged Pitre to take her own life, implying that she would be prime suspect and suffer the greatest punishment. Pitre did make a botched attempt at suicide, and while recovering in hospital, confessed the details of the plot to police.
All three conspirators were found guilty and eventually executed for their crime. Joseph-Albert Guay was hanged on Jan. 19, 1951 in the Bordeaux Jail, outside Montreal. Généreux Ruest, who was crippled by tuberculosis and used a wheelchair, was hanged in July of 1952. Pitre maintained her innocence and appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, but was ultimately unsuccessful. She was the thirteenth and last woman executed in Canada, on January 9th, 1953.
See also:
Category: Aeronautics, Culpae Poenae Par Esto, Historica
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What do you call an Arizonan with a lobotomy?
27
Apr
2009
2009
Just days after Janet Napolitano, the U.S. homeland security secretary, sparked a diplomatic kerfuffle by suggesting the terrorists took a Canadian route to the U.S. eight years ago, McCain defended her by saying that, in fact, the former Arizona governor was correct.
"Well, some of the 9-11 hijackers did come through Canada, as you know," McCain, last year's Republican presidential candidate, said on Fox News on Friday.
– "John McCain says 9-11 terrorists came from Canada", Canadian Press (via CTV News), April 24th, 2009.
Okay, I give. Which ones, exactly?
One would think the Secretary of Homeland Security and her fellow Arizonan, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, might have some spare staffers to go hunt down this information.
And CTV, in its role as ersatz defender of Canadian honour, might also have paid for a reporter to determine the salient facts of where the 9/11 hijackers originated from. But no, we've just got to take it on faith, because actual research would be far too painful.
So let's run down the list ourselves, ordered by flight.
___
AMERICAN AIRLINES 11
North Tower of the World Trade Center
Mohamed Atta al Sayed: Egyptian, resided in Germany. Applied for a five-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa via US embassy in Berlin, which was granted on May 17th, 2000. Arrived in the United States on June 3rd, 2000; port of entry Newark/Liberty Intl. Airport, NJ, from Prague, Czech Republic.
Waleed al-Shehri: Saudi Arabian. Applied for and received B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa via US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on October 24th, 2000. Arrived in the United States on April 23rd, 2001; port of entry Orlando Intl. Airport, FL, from Dubai, UAE (via London, UK).
Wail al-Shehri: Saudi Arabian. Applied for and received B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa via US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on October 24th, 2000. Arrived in the United States on June 8th, 2001; port of entry Miami Intl. Airport, FL, from Dubai, UAE (via London, UK).
Abdulaziz al-Omari: Saudi Arabian. Applied for and received a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa
via US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on June 18th, 2001.
Arrived in the United States on June 29th, 2001; port of entry John F. Kennedy Intl. Airport, NY, from Dubai, UAE (via Zurich, Switerzland).
Satam al-Suqami: Saudi Arabian. Applied for and received a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa
via US embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on November 21st, 2000. Arrived in the United States on April 23rd, 2001; port of entry Orlando Intl. Airport, FL, from Dubai, UAE (via London, UK).
AMERICAN AIRLINES 77
Pentagon
Hani Hanjour: Saudi Arabian. Applied for and received F-1 student visa
via US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on September 25th, 2000. Arrived in the United States on December 8th, 2000; port of entry Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Intl. Airport, KY, from Dubai, UAE (via Paris, France). Made several previous trips (1991-2000, with associated visas) to the United States to visit family in Tucson, AZ (and later Miramar, CA). Hanjour was the only 9/11 hijacker ever to have visited Canada, in March 1999, according to this 2002 statement by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.
Khalid al-Mihdhar: Saudi Arabian, resided in Yemen. Applied for and received a one-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa via US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on June 13th, 2001. Arrived in the United States on July 4th, 2001; port of entry John F. Kennedy Intl. Airport, NY, from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Majed Moqed: Saudi Arabian. Applied for and received a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa
via US embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on November 20th, 2000. Arrived in the United States on May 2nd, 2001; port of entry Washington/Dulles Intl. Airport, DC, from Dubai, UAE (via London, UK).
Nawaf al-Hazmi: Saudi Arabian. Applied for and received a one-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business)
multiple-entry visa
via US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on April 3rd, 1999. Subsequent visa extension approved through January 2001. Arrived in the United States on January 15th, 2000; port of entry
Los Angeles Intl. Airport, CA, from Bangkok, Thailand.
Salem al-Hazmi: Saudi Arabian. Applied for and received a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business)
multiple-entry visa
via US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on June 20th, 2001. Arrived in the United States on June 29th, 2001; port of entry John F.
Kennedy Intl. Airport, NY, from Dubai, UAE (via Zurich, Switerzland).
UNITED AIRLINES 93
Pennsylvania
Ziad Jarrah: Lebanese, resided in Germany. Applied for and received a five-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa via US embassy in Berlin on May 25h, 2000. Arrived in the United States on June 27th, 2000; port of entry Newark/Liberty Intl. Airport, NJ, from Düsseldorf, Germany.
Ahmad al-Haznawi: Saudi Arabian. Applied for and received a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa
via US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on November 12th, 2001. Arrived in the United
States on June 8th, 2001; port of entry Miami Intl. Airport, FL, from Dubai, UAE (via London, UK).
Ahmed al-Nami: Saudi Arabian. Applied for and received a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa
via US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on October 28th, 2000 (and again on April 23rd, 2001). Arrived in the United States on May 28th, 2001; port of entry Miami Intl. Airport, FL, from Dubai, UAE (via London, UK).
Saeed al-Ghamdi: Saudi Arabian. Applied for and received a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa
via US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on September 4th, 2000 (and again on June 12th, 2001). Arrived in the United States on June 27th, 2001; port of entry Orlando Intl. Airport, FL, from Dubai, UAE (via London, UK).
UNITED AIRLINES 175
South Tower of the World Trade Center
Marwan al-Shehhi: Emirati. Applied for and received a ten-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa
via US consulate in Dubai, UAE, on January 18th, 2000. Arrived in the United States on May 29th, 2000; port of entry Newark/Liberty Intl. Airport, NJ, from Brussels, Belgium.
Fayez Banihammad: Emirati. Applied for and received a B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa
via US embassy in Abu Dhabi, UAE, on June 18th, 2001. Arrived in the United States on June 27th, 2001; port of entry Orlando Intl. Airport, FL, from Dubai, UAE (via London, UK).
Mohand al-Shehri: Saudi Arabian. Applied for and received a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa
via US embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on October 23rd, 2000. Arrived in the United States on May 28th, 2001; port of entry Miami Intl. Airport, FL, from Dubai, UAE (via London, UK).
Hamza al-Ghamdi: Saudi Arabian. Applied for and received a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa
via US embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on October 17th, 2000. Arrived in the United States on May 28th, 2001; port of entry Miami Intl. Airport, FL, from Dubai, UAE (via London, UK).
Ahmed al-Ghamdi: Saudi Arabian. Applied for and received a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa
via US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on September 3rd, 2000. Arrived in the United States on May 2nd, 2001; port of entry
Washington/Dulles Intl. Airport, DC, from Dubai, UAE (via London, UK).
___
So that's the who's who of September 11th hijackers. None of whom were Canadian citizens, applied for US visas from Canada, or first entered the United States on flights originating from Canada. One of them did visit Canada once, in March of 1999.
You can do your own research, if you wish, by examining the 9/11 Commission's Monograph on 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, and also the notes and citations to their final report.
I have great respect for Senator McCain's prior uniformed service, and his harrowing, horrible time in North Vietnam's POW system, but past laurels in no way excuse current stupidity.
RELATED: Mark Steyn gets the spirit right, but the facts slightly wrong. If we are to believe FBI Director Mueller's 2002 remarks, Hani Hanjour did visit Canada, after he had been granted a US visa (on November 2nd, 1997 at the US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) and entered the United States for the third time (on November 16th, 1997).
FUN FACT: In case you missed it in all that verbiage above, Hani Hanjour's first recorded visit to the United States was in 1991, when his brother Abulrahman arranged for him to take English courses in … Tucson, Arizona!
* None of the above should be interpreted as derogatory to the people of the fine state of Arizona. Unless you are a politician of same; then I am 100% sure you're retarded.
See also:
Category: Foreign Affairs, Media
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CUPE flight attendants: not as helpless and unmotivated as their office-bound brethren
22
Apr
2009
2009
Notwithstanding the fact that the attendants calm and level-headed response is largely the result of company training and simple human compassion, this is still a good and commendable deed:
CUPE's national officers commended five CUPE flight attendants at CanJet for their work during the hostage-taking in Montego Bay, Jamaica, on April 19 and 20, 2009.Five flight attendants were among the eight crew members and 159 passengers held captive by a lone gunman at Sangster International Airport.
Passengers on the flight heaped praise on the flight crew for calming the gunman down and convincing him to let the passengers off the plane.
– CUPE statement, "CUPE flight attendants helped end hijacking", Aviation.ca, April 22nd, 2009.
I am now making a mental note to momentarily refrain from rhetorically kicking CUPE in the nads the next time they capriciously inconvenience the Canadian public.
See also:
Category: Aeronautics, Culpae Poenae Par Esto, Current Affairs
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The Scorpion and the Frog
20
Mar
2009
2009
Useful idiot Khadija Abdul Qahaar (alias Bev Kennedy, alias Paul Morris-Read, née Beverly Giesbrecht) runs a website, Jihad Unspun, dedicated to promoting the exploits of jihadis, and exposing the alleged dastardly doings of our men and women in Afghanistan.
Last September, a Vancouver woman named Beverly Giesbrecht published her personal reflections on the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Giesbrecht, 52, used the opportunity to celebrate militant Islam. She talked about the “good news” that the Taliban in Afghanistan were killing NATO soldiers and she praised the “Iraqi Resistance” for killing Americans. The real enemy, she said, was “Zionist-controlled America,” and she called upon the Muslim Ummah — the worldwide Islamic community — to form a united front.
Canadian security officials undoubtedly read Giesbrecht’s manifesto, because they would have been monitoring her Internet site, one of the few openly pro-Islamist sites operating out of Canada. Giesbrecht has exactly the biography that would draw the attention of intelligence authorities.
– Leonard Stern. “Radical conversions“, Ottawa Citizen, March 2nd, 2009.
Last year she put on the proverbial rose-coloured glasses and wandered off to Pakistan as a documentarist, supposedly on behalf of Al-Jazeera. She soon found out the true nature of her scorpion.
A Canadian woman being held hostage in northern Pakistan says her captors are planning to behead her at the end of the month if a $2-million ransom is not paid.
In a video provided to the Globe and Mail and posted on the newspaper’s website, a pale and haggard-looking Khadija Abdul Qahaar, 52, begins to cry as she says her “time is very short and my life is going to end.
“I’m going to be killed, as you can see,” Qahaar says on the video, pointing at a long knife hanging behind her.
“I’m going to be beheaded just like the Polish engineer, probably by the end of the month. The deadline is by the end of March.”
Polish geologist Piotr Stanczak was beheaded by a Pakistani Taliban group on Feb. 7, 2009.
In a shaky voice, Qahaar said she’s being held by the Taliban “someplace near the Afghan border in either Pakistan or Afghanistan. I’m not quite sure where I am.”
“A previous video has been made and distributed to my embassy, the Pakistan government, to various different NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and groups in order to try to get the demands that they’re making met.
“Unfortunately nothing has happened.”
– “Kidnapped Canadian says she’ll be beheaded by month’s end“, CanWest News Service, March 20th, 2009.
Nothing has happened because the Canadian government does not pay ransoms; an eminently sensible position.
Nor does it maintain a childlike faith in the willingness of unpredictable thugs living a superstitious, violent and pre-modern way of life to accept a naïve Westerner as a peer. That sort of wishes-were-horses make-believe lives only in the minds of people like Ms. Giesbrecht, Jack Layton and Olivia Chow. Although the fact that the Laytons are not presently being held for ransom in Pakistan gives a vital clue that perhaps they don’t really believe it, either.
It is tempting to write it all off as karmic payback, and to flippantly suggest (like the Council of Ex-Muslims bulletin board) that we should offer money to the Taliban to keep her, or conversely to demand a dowry payment for her; but that is not how things are done in Canada. No Canadian deserves to have their head sawed off by Islamic zealots, not even the profoundly dense who were foolish enough to publicly support the Taliban’s cause.
If Ms. Giesbrecht is to receive poetic justice it should be in this country, under the rule of law she had so little affinity for. She should be liberated from her captors, if possible, and then stand trial in this country for treason. The idea that a Canadian should be able to waltz off to Taliban-dominated areas of Pakistan, and perform consequence-free PR work for them is ridiculous. We may not saw her head off, but there is certainly a penalty for assisting an enemy at war with this nation. There is also the possibility that this is merely a ruse to generate cash for the Taliban, and if so, that would certainly be evidence worthy of a high treason conviction.
Either way, she ought to stand trial.
See also:
Negotiating with the Taliban
12
Mar
2009
2009
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan’s Taliban on Tuesday turned down as illogical U.S. President Barack Obama’s bid to reach out to moderate elements of the insurgents, saying the exit of foreign troops was the only solution for ending the war.
Obama, in an interview with the New York Times, expressed an openness to adapting tactics in Afghanistan that had been used in Iraq to reach out to moderate elements there.
“This does not require any response or reaction for this is illogical,” Qari Mohammad Yousuf, a purported spokesman for the insurgent group, told Reuters when asked if its top leader Mullah Mohammad Omar would make any comment about Obama’s proposal.
“The Taliban are united, have one leader, one aim, one policy…I do not know why they are talking about moderate Taliban and what it means?”
– “Taliban say Obama’s call on moderates “illogical”“, Reuters, March 10th, 2009.
Somebody please tell Jack Layton.
See also:
Category: Aut disce aut discede, Foreign Affairs, Pro Victoria
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Chris flies a desk for a living but is an aeronautics enthusiast who delights in the Golden Age of Aviation. He admires all the pioneering men and women who travelled the world equipped with only a map, compass, sextant, and the conviction that there was no place they could not reach.
