News 
Market Data 
Discover
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
The history of the Assasins is well known to military leaders.
The Motto of The U.S. Navy Seals Stealth Assasins (SSA)
PAIN IS ONLY TEMPORARY, PRIDE IS FOREVER
Hassan Ben Sabbah conditioned and organized a band of fearless political killers such as had never been seen before.26 His method of indoctrination was unique.vii He constructed a secret garden and furnished it with all the delights promised in the Koran…to the faithful when they reached paradise. The chosen were drugged, one or two at a time, and taken to this garden by night. When they woke up in the morningviii they were surrounded by beautiful and scantily clad houris [in Muslim belief, women who live with the blessed in paradise27] who would minister to their every need and desire. After being allowed to savor this false — but pleasant and sensual — paradise for a day or so, they were again drugged before being taken back to awaken in their own squalid hovel or cave dwelling. To them, it was as if it had been a vivid dream. Ben Sabbah then sent for them, told them Allah had given them a preview of paradise, and surprised them by telling them exactly what each had been up to while in the secret garden. So successful was he in this method of conditioning and indoctrination that it was said he once astounded a visiting emir whom he wanted to impress with his power by sending for one of his men and ordering him to kill himself — which he immediately did.28 When an Assassin was sent out by ibn-al-Sabbah to carry out some violent death, the Assassin was just as dedicated. So convinced were the Assassins that they would be rewarded in paradise that they never hesitated to fulfill their missions of murder, even though this often meant their victims’ bodyguards would kill them immediately afterward.
http://www.geocities.com/skews_me/assassin.html
Regarding Bush and Cheney?
If you could throw them out of office how would you do it? it would be easier to pull them down than to throw them out. There are at least a million people in this country who now believe that Bush and Cheney and their entire cabinet should be impeached. Why has the process not started? Who is getting paid to keep them in power? Who keeps the military industrial financial media complex in place?
Death for Money - Money for Death
"Actually, if you count up all the wars since the beginning of time, you begin to see why we have not yet reached the stars.
As long as man values his pocket book more than he does a human life there will be more death and destruction....it will never end.
As long as humans value the taking of life for money humanity will be hindered in their evolution. Maybe another ten thousand years of wars will teach man a lesson.
Some of us "Hungarians who came from Mars" remember what happened there. There was a nuclear holacaust that wiped out the whole planet millions of years ago. Mankind has not learned these lessons for hundreds of millions of years. Why would anything be any different in the coming century.
There are less than 20 million Hungarians left in the world after 1,000 years of wars. There are less than 2 million Latvians left in the world after 500 years of wars.
Perhaps there will be less than a million people left in the world after another thousand years of wars on this planet, we may not get the chance to live another million years. Humanity is a failed experiment of the gods.
The more things seem to change the more they stay the same.
So many arguments, so much fighting, so much pain and destruction...I think it is high time for me to leave this world."
G! Alex Gabor
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2764849
A former intelligence professional sheds new light on the obscure intersection of the military and the paranormal--the military-occult complex--and reveals the incredible story of psychic abilities turned into a weapon of war by the world's soldiers and spies.
In the annals of military and espionage history, many strange tales have been told, but none can match the saga of psychic espionage-the history of the military-occult complex. With the flavor of fiction, yet with its foundation in fact, The Psychic Battlefield is the complete history of the use of man's extrasensory powers in search of the information needed to win wars--hot and cold.
The Psychic Battlefield spans the five-thousand-year history of ESPionage, from the attempted overthrow of the Pharaoh Rameses by magic to the CIA's use of military-trained psychics during the Cold War. It is a story as true as it is incredible.
The cast of characters includes such noteworthy names as sorcerer-poet Aleister Crowley, author Ian Fleming, spoon-bending General Stubblebine, and psychic warrior David Morehouse. In addition, the book features an exclusive interview with top psychic spy Joseph McMoneagle.
Most remarkable of all is Mandelbaum's fascinating expose of the paranormal research and remote-viewing experiments conducted by the CIA, as well as the real effectiveness of the government's Stargate program.
Attorney, psychic, former intelligence professional, and dark-side investigative reporter, W. Adam Mandelbaum clearly demonstrates that the final frontier of future wars and spies is the mind. Stay tuned.
Please have this board shut down at once before it gets popular. I am already wasting far too much time on SI trying to keep up with the FADG thread over there. 
French to veto any move by US at UN Security Council to invade Iraq.
Interesting. The French aren't paying attention. Bush said he'd go it alone if necessary and has moved in enough troops to do the job. Secondly, he says he has incontrovertible proof that will make the inspections worthless. How will the French look when he discloses this proof the night before the Security Council vote?
C2@don'tmesswithTexas.com
From The New Republic:
http://www.tnr.com/iraq.mhtml
Guide to the Iraq Debate
by Reihan Salam
While Saddam hasn't outlasted as many American presidents as Fidel, he's managed to survive into 2003. If he plays his cards right, he just might make it through to 2004--unlikely, but not impossible. Always keep in mind the following exchange between Saddam and Egyptian journalist Sayyid Nassar that took place back in November:
Nassar: Mr. President, do you think that time is working in your favor, or against you?
Saddam: No doubt, time is working for us. We have to buy some more time, and the American-British coalition will disintegrate because of internal reasons and because of the pressure of public opinion in the American and British street. Nations know the truth and are more capable of understanding than the leaders who are preoccupied with the Zionist conspiracies that are hatched by the media, conspiracies that blind those leaders.
And indeed, Saddam has managed to capitalize on recent developments. Despite some early diplomatic successes, including the unanimous passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 that authorized the current round of inspections, the situation grows less tractable by the day. It is as though "Who Let the Dogs Out," the Baha Men's ubiquitous hit single, was less a reflection on the wily ways of man's best friend than a dark premonition concerning today's international landscape, with "dogs" standing in for various rogue states. Shockingly enough, Pyongyang is leading the pack. The crisis in Korea has moved from sinister simmering to a slow boil, and the Bush administration's ham-fisted mishandling of relations with South Korea has only made matters worse.
Not surprisingly, Saddam's minions have seized on the administration's blithe indifference to the (arguably greater) threat posed by Kim Jong Il to argue that Iraq is being unfairly targeted. According to Reuters, Al Thawra, the house organ of Saddam's Baath Party, had the following to say on December 30:
"Look how Washington deals with the two situations, how it threatens to invade Iraq, which has no weapons of mass destruction," the newspaper said.
"At the same time, the U.S. administration is saying it wants a peaceful end to the crisis with North Korea," it said.
The paper said Baghdad was cooperating fully with the United Nations. "So why do America and Britain continue to threaten it?" the paper wrote. "Is it because Iraq is an Arab country? Or because Iraq is an oil country? Or because the Zionist lobby inside the U.S. administration wants to settle old scores?"
The Washington Times reports that Saddam's infamous elder son, and possible successor, went even further:
"We Arabs need to revise our behavior towards the United States, as North Korea has done, to be respected," said the daily Babel, owned by President Saddam Hussein's elder son, Uday. The paper was referring to Pyongyang's relaunching of its nuclear program in the face of stiff U.S. criticism.
"Arabs need to learn the lesson from the Korean example to mobilize in order to stop an attack on Iraq and prevent a U.S.-Zionist crusade in the Arab world," Babel said.
Thus far, Saddam has also managed to prevent any serious defections of weapons scientists through a combination of intimidation and more aggressive measures. After refusing to cooperate for weeks, Iraqi officials finally released a list of 500 scientists. As of yet, only a handful of interviews have taken place, and there are rumors that Iraq is hiding others.
Back to the American street.
In a December 31 New York Times' op-ed titled "Iraq Belongs on the Back Burner," Warren Christopher, Carter administration veteran and Clinton's first secretary of state, offered the following observation:
North Korea's reopening of its plutonium reprocessing plant at Yongbyon puts it within six months of being able to produce sufficient weapons-grade material to generate several nuclear bombs. Contrast this with Iraq. Not only is North Korea much further along than Iraq in building nuclear weapons but, by virtue of its longer-range missiles, it has a greater delivery capability.
In closing, Christopher argued that President Bush "should take a new, broad look at the question of whether such a war [against Iraq], at this moment, is the right priority for America." Of course, Christopher would have felt the same way irrespective of events in Korea. Aside from the opening paragraphs, his op-ed reads like much Al Gore's antiwar speech at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club. This is hardly "a new, broad look."
By contrast, consider an op-ed that appeared in The Washington Post by former Clinton National Security Advisor Samuel Berger and Robert Galluci, former chief negotiator of the now defunct Agreed Framework between North Korea and the civilized galaxy. Its title alone, "Two Crises, No Back Burner," is Zen-like in its profundity, only hinting at the wisdom within: We should make nice with South Korea; most of all, we must "understand that none of the options is without risk." Deep thoughts. And yet Berger and Galluci also argue persuasively that we have to keep the pressure on Saddam:
Iraqi nuclear weapons in the near term cannot be ruled out, but they are not likely. Nevertheless, putting Iraq on hold to deal with North Korea would have serious consequences. It would send a chilling message that the United States can be knocked off course in one arena by troublemaking in another. It would drive any expectation of the constancy of our purpose into a tailspin. The president has invested American credibility in disarming Iraq. The prospect of a nuclear Iraq, which would profoundly change the political landscape of a critical region, is strategically unacceptable to us. In the absence of voluntary disarmament, sidestepping Iraq now would be an emboldening victory for Saddam Hussein, making it even more difficult to deal with him later.
With this, Berger and Galluci capture an essential truth about Saddam.
Last Monday, Michael Dobbs captured an essential truth about the American relationship with Saddam in an article that appeared in The Washington Post--specifically, that the U.S. government turned a blind eye to many of Saddam's most egregious abuses during its war with Iran and, worse yet, indirectly aided his efforts to build weapons of mass destruction. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was, according to Dobbs, "instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad." As a private citizen, Rumsfeld served as a special envoy to Baghdad during the Reagan administration; in this capacity, he paved the way for an extensive intelligence relationship and transfers of dual-use technologies. While this was by no means entirely unknown, the Dobbs piece does shed light on an uncomfortable past. It's difficult to believe that this won't have an effect on the Iraq debate. But what exactly does it tell us? That the American government once behaved in a manner that proved short-sighted? Some will argue that the U.S. relationship with Iraq in the 1980s should serve as a cautionary example, and they'd be right to do so. But they'd be wrong to argue that this bolsters the case against regime change. If anything, the fact of American assistance does precisely the opposite: Once you realize you've created a monster, the thing to do is slay it, not pretend it doesn't exist.
Otherwise, news reports have focused on the buildup of American troops in the Gulf region as it approaches the 100,000 mark, a landmark that should be reached in February--just in time for Hans Blix's January 27 report to the Security Council on Iraq's weapons program, the much-anticipated trigger that is expected to unleash the ultimate "bad cop." Naturally, thoughts have turned to post-war arrangements.
On Monday, David Sanger and James Dao of The New York Times described in rough outline the Bush administration's plans for a transitional administration in Iraq. It looks as though those elements in the administration that wanted a quick-and-dirty, cut-and-run strategy--the very same elements that have always been skeptical of nation-building efforts, led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld--have lost out, at least for now. In order to prevent inter-ethnic violence that could lead to the Balkanization of Iraq, and also to dissuade neighboring states from developing spheres of influence, the preliminary plans call for a substantial occupation force that will remain in place for at least a year and a half.
There's also a plan to separate security functions--to be handled by the American military--and civilian functions--to be handled by a separate administrator who may well be appointed by the United Nations and serve under its auspices, as in transitional authorities in East Timor, Cambodia, and elsewhere. (The obvious move would be to place a Muslim in charge, but one can imagine right-leaning lobbyists derailing that enterprise.) Only leading members of Saddam's regime would be subjected to war crimes trials, as would those military personnel who willingly obeyed Saddam's orders to deploy weapons of mass destruction. Otherwise, most bureaucrats would remain in place--de-Baathification efforts, it seems, will only go so far.
To address an ugly history of human rights violations, there is talk of having Iraq follow the South African model of a truth and reconciliation commission that would provide amnesty to all those who fully acknowledged their crimes. Whether or not Iraq can sustain the kind of civil society that, despite deep inequalities, makes South Africa's approach work reasonably well is an open question.
The key questions surround Iraq's oil wealth--How will it be used? And will an occupied Iraq remain a member in good standing of OPEC? There is an unambiguous commitment to using Iraq's oil wealth to finance Iraq's reconstruction, but the OPEC question has been left in the air. That any American administration would countenance any effort to maintain OPEC's stranglehold on oil supplies strikes me as bizarre, but there are diplomatic sensitivities to consider. More immediately, there's the obvious concern that Saddam will attempt to destroy his country's oil infrastructure on his way out. In the end, military planners can only hope to mitigate Saddam's capacity for wanton destructiveness.
Whatever the case, the fact that these questions are being debated so explicitly within the administration suggests Saddam may have overlooked an important detail amid his now-familiar delay-tactics: The United States is no longer operating according to a U.N. timetable, like the bad old days of the mid-1990s. It is operating according to its own timetable. No amount of bluster about North Korea is likely to change that.
Interesting piece by Ajami, who is squarely against allowing Saddam to leave for a comfy exile. His points are compelling:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/sun/opinion/news_1ed19ajami.html
There should be no illusions about the sort of Arab landscape that America is destined to find if, or when, it embarks on a war against the Iraqi regime. There would be no hearts and minds to be won in the Arab world, no public diplomacy that would convince the overwhelming majority of Arabs that this war would be a just war.
An American expedition in the wake of thwarted United Nations inspections would be seen by the vast majority of Arabs as an imperial reach into their world, a favor to Israel or a way for the United States to secure control over Iraq's oil. No hearing would be given to the great foreign power.
America ought to be able to live with this distrust and discount a good deal of this anti-Americanism as the "road rage" of a thwarted Arab world – the congenital condition of a culture yet to take full responsibility for its self-inflicted wounds.
There is no need to pay excessive deference to the political pieties and givens of the region. Indeed, this is one of those settings where a reforming foreign power's simpler guidelines offer a better way than the region's age-old prohibitions and defects.
Above and beyond toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein and dismantling its deadly weapons, the driving motivation of a new American endeavor in Iraq and in neighboring Arab lands should be modernizing the Arab world. The great indulgence granted to the ways and phobias of Arabs has reaped a terrible harvest – for the Arabs themselves, and for an America implicated in their affairs. It is cruel and unfair but true: the fight between Arab rulers and insurgents is for now an American concern.
A successful war in Iraq would embolden those who wish for the Arab world deliverance from retrogression and political decay.
America's open backers will be Kuwait and Qatar – the first because of the trauma and violation it endured in 1990-91 at the hands of Iraq, the second because it has taken a generally assertive and novel approach in diplomacy as well as a willingness to associate openly with American power. In the main, however, the ruling order in the Arab world will duck for cover and hope to be spared.
Rather than Desert Storm, the Arab rulers will want the perfect storm: a swift war, few casualties, as little exposure by themselves as possible, and the opportunity to be rid of Saddam without riding in broad daylight with the Americans or being brought to account by their people.
Given the belligerence and self-pity in Arab life, its retreat from modernist culture, and its embrace of conspiracy theories, there are justifiable grounds for believing there are no native liberal or secular traditions to embrace the United States and use its victory to build an alternative to despotic rule. Few Arabs would believe this effort to be a Wilsonian campaign to spread the reign of liberty in the Arab world.
They are to be forgiven their doubts, for American power, either by design or by default, has been built on relationships with military rulers and monarchs without popular mandates. America has not known or trusted the middle classes and the professionals in these lands. Rather, it has settled for relationships of convenience with the autocracies in the saddle, tolerating the cultural and political malignancies of the Arab world. A new American role in the region will have to break with this history.
The solitude of the United States is more acute than it was during the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91. In that expedition, the three powers of consequence – Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia – were arrayed against Saddam Hussein.
But for the vast majority of Arabs, Operation Desert Storm was an Anglo-American campaign of hegemony. A predator had risen in the region and a great foreign power, the inheritor of Pax Britannica in the Persian Gulf, had checked his bid for hegemony.
Saddam had sacked a country, but there was an odd popular identification with him, and crowds saw him as the bearer of a lofty Arab endeavor. The gullible saw him as a Robin Hood, an avenging Saladin fighting "the Franks" and their local collaborators, erasing the colonial boundaries imposed after World War I.
It may be heretical to suggest it, but the Iraqi ruler would have won a free election among Arabs in 1990-91. The dynasties he was warring against were unloved in their world. From Amman to Nablus to Casablanca, the crowds gave their approval to the night of terror that he unleashed on the region. He was a revisionist at odds with the order around him, and in a thwarted world the bandit acts out the yearnings of subdued but resentful crowds.
No great Arab hopes are pinned on the Iraqi ruler this time around. This is the other side of the ledger, for the fickle crowd makes and breaks these kinds of attachments with brigands and false redeemers with great frequency. Saddam had lost his bid; he had treated a world steeped in defeats to yet another calamity. The crowd may shout itself hoarse against the Americans, but its bonds with the Iraqi ruler have been weakened.
For American power, there are two ways in the Arab world. One is restraint, pessimistic about the possibility of changing that stubborn world, reticent about the uses of American power. In this vision of things, the United States would either spare the Iraqi dictator or wage a war with limited political goals for Iraq and for the region as a whole.
The other choice, more ambitious, would envisage a more profound American role in Arab political life: the spearheading of a reformist project that seeks to modernize and transform the Arab landscape. Iraq would be the starting point, and beyond Iraq lies an Arab political and economic tradition and a culture whose agonies and failures have been on cruel display.
The case for war must rest in part on the kind of vision the United States has for Iraq. The dread of "nation-building" must be cast aside. It is too late in the annals of nations for outright foreign rule. But there will have to be a sustained American presence if the new order is to hold and take root.
Iraq is a society with substantial social capital and the region's second-largest reserves of oil. It has traditions of literacy, learning and technical competence. It can draw on the skills of a vast diaspora of means and sophistication, waves of people who fled the country's turbulent politics and the heavy hand of its rulers.
If Iraq's pain has been great in the modern era, so too, has been its betrayed promise. There were skills and hope that the polity could be made right, that the abundance of oil and water and the relative freedom from an overbearing religious tradition would pave the way toward modernity and development.
Iraq should not be burdened, however, with the weight of great expectations. This is the Arab world, after all, and Americans do not know it with such intimacy. Iraq could disappoint its American liberators. There has been heartbreak in Iraq, and vengeance and retribution could sour Americans on this latest sphere of influence in the Muslim world.
If and when it comes, that task of repairing – or detoxifying – Iraq will be a major undertaking. The remarkable rehabilitation of Japan between its surrender in 1945 and the restoration of its sovereignty in 1952 offers a historical precedent. In the space of a decade, imperial Japan gave way to a more egalitarian, modern society. A country poisoned by militarism emerged with a pacifist view of the world. It was the victors' justice that drove the new monumental undertaking and powered the twin goals of demilitarization and democratization. The victors tinkered with the media, the educational system and the textbooks.
Those are some of the things that will have to be done if a military campaign in Iraq is to redeem itself in the process. The theatrics and megalomania of Douglas MacArthur may belong to a bygone age, but Iraq could do worse than having the interim stewardship of a modern-day high commissioner who would help usher it toward a normal world.
A new American primacy in Iraq would play out under watchful eyes. There will be Arabs convinced that their world is being recolonized. There will be pan-Arabists sure that Iraq has been taken out of "Arab hands," given over to the minorities within, and made more vulnerable to Turkey and Iran, the two non-Arab powers nearby. There will be Europeans looking for cracks in the conduct of the distant great power.
The Arab world could whittle down, even devour, an American victory. This is a difficult, perhaps impossible, political landscape. It may reject the message of reform by dwelling on the sins of the American messenger. There are endless escapes available to that Arab world.
It can call up the fury of the Israeli-Palestinian violence and use it as an alibi for yet more self-pity and rage. It can shout down its own would-be reformers, write them off as accomplices of a foreign assault. It can throw up its defenses and wait for the United States to weary of its expedition. It is with sobering caution, then, that a war will have to be waged.
But it should be recognized that the Rubicon has been crossed. Any fallout of war is certain to be dwarfed by the terrible consequences of America's walking right up to the edge of war and then stepping back, letting the Iraqi dictator work out the terms of another reprieve.
It is the fate of great powers that provide order to do so against the background of a world that takes the protection while it bemoans the heavy hand of the protector. This new expedition to Mesopotamia would be no exception to that rule.
Ajami is Majid Khadduri Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. This opinion piece is adapted from the January/February 2003 issue of Foreign Affairs.
