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ignant from fooby on 2001-09-18 00:17 [#00033292]



well thats why we have not seen any bombings as of yet so
less cats will die...
so good for Bush and his patients.. he is being smart about
this thats why nothing drastic has been done...


 

f.l.e.a from NZ on 2001-09-18 00:19 [#00033294]



If they wanted you to know they will leave a more explicit
message like a statement..they wouldn't want you to
interpret their very last deed through a series of clues and
foreshadowings..terrorists sometimes phone in their mission
statements a few minute before they strike...get with the
program..this is not an Agatha Christie TV special...yes
they were middle eastern..yes they were mad, crazy, evil but
what they did..and why they did it..is a huge mystery to
everyone, most of all to muslims..don't you see even the
least bit bent in this equation..


 

ignant from fooby on 2001-09-18 00:23 [#00033296]



read this it may shed some light:

well thepoint is, some arabs with screws loose took over
planes with knives and planted them into the TWC and the
pentagon, and Bin Laden is behind it peroid. Just the fact
that he feels the need to go deeper into hiding and have his
gov make rash statments like, any country that hlpe the Us
find out who was really behind this tragedy will be punished
by us.. derrr.. why you fretting if you didnt do it..
GUILTY...and why do they now agree to hand over bin laden, I
have heard rumors that he did all this to get rich off the
huge stock market crash, wich would upturn the exchange rate
and hopefull make him richer, this is what I heard. What a
hippo if he had his people die not for religiuos reason but
to make him rich, its like out of James Bond.


 

avalanches on 2001-09-18 00:24 [#00033297]



f.l.e.a. there's no need to repeat things we've all heard on
television and radio


 

f.l.e.a from NZ on 2001-09-18 00:27 [#00033298]



while we are going apeshit with plots out of movies..here's
another one
maybe the CIA did it..to increase their budgets..the defence
spending..getting the world warmed up to the idea of
Starwars..to ge the monsyllabic asshole Bush bigger
voteshare in a city where he has the least support...etc etc
etc


 

THISWUNSOPTIMISTIC. on 2001-09-18 00:29 [#00033301]



flea: Agreed. It seems a bit too *convenient* that aQuran
AND an Arabic flightmanual were found in that car. There's
so much wrong with that, I don't know where to start. I
mean, the guy wouldn't be driving around with that manual
(even for last-minute "cramming") when there was the threat
of national intelligence being onto him. There are other
reasons to doubt this, but I really can't be arsed to make a
list. Basically, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Unless
the alleged "Islamic fundamentalists" WANTED this stuff to
be found.


 

avalanches on 2001-09-18 00:30 [#00033302]



flea, that was tv again, can we have something original
please? :)


 

f.l.e.a from NZ on 2001-09-18 00:30 [#00033303]



to avalanches...nobody's get any problems with endless
repetions of WAR yeah!!!..lets nuke the middle east
etc..etc..why do you have problems with repititon of
dissenting views then?


 

avalanches on 2001-09-18 00:34 [#00033305]



flea, i'm not against it, it's just that i've already
watched tv.


 

f.l.e.a from NZ on 2001-09-18 00:36 [#00033306]



TOWUNOPTIMIST...yes it's fucking strange...everyone's busy
shouting down TALEBAN..and claiming they are refusing..I
actually haven't seen them change the stance from day
one..hand us concrete proof and we will hand Bin Laden
over..somehow that keep getting translated into Fuck you we
are not handing Bin Laden now wait while we turn around and
undo our trousars so you can come over with throbbing war
machines and fuck our whole population up the arse..why is
that? is anyone paying attention to this point?


 

avalanches on 2001-09-18 00:38 [#00033307]



not paying attention to you, that's for damn sure

 

f.l.e.a from NZ on 2001-09-18 00:39 [#00033308]



yes avalanches..you have seen a lot of TV and not much
else..did you realise that one of the supposed Hijackers
that actually supposedly died is sitting in Jeddah is Saudi
Arabia with his wife and four kids and a secure job with
Saudi airlines going..hello..I am here..I am alive..I
haven't left my country or my family for a few
years..hello..anyone listening?


 

ignant from fooby on 2001-09-18 00:40 [#00033309]



thats stupidty, we did it.. mmmm no...
19 wacked out arabians with ties to Bin Laden did it..
and if you recall there was about 100 calls made during this
tragedy of different groups the first I heard was some
middle east millitant group with ties to Bin Laden, (I can
not remember the name) they plan worked a little to well he
actually pulled it off, got scared and started denying
it....started getting heat from other arabian countries...
think back to the 93 attempted bombings which failed and
that the ones who treid to pull it off were caught and
sentecnec not to long after the new TWC happened, they did
threaten to retaliate if the ones convicted were not
returned.. so thats a good reason there isnt it, and also
why is Afganny maybe thinking about turning over Bin Laden??
what do they know and how would they go about doing that
being they have no ties to him.. hmmmmmm


 

avalanches on 2001-09-18 00:43 [#00033311]



flea, your reptition still hasn't got my attention.

 

Bill HIcks from Houston Texas on 2001-09-18 00:45 [#00033315]



bill hicks died "convieniently" in under 6 months of cancer,
this was after months of his bashing the "BUSH" whenever he
had a microphone. His deeper message was that the government
that is in control is not what we are able to see, the
government that is in control are people who want to
eliminate freedom of speech and other civil liberties
because it poses a threat to their lives.

That being said, G Bush Jr shouldn't have one this election,
i am not saying that Gore should have. Bush was hand picked
by a stronger force.

This stronger force is the one that allowed this to happen
to america, the end result it clear

AMERICANS/Socitey if you want your freedom and safety to be
ensured, you must allow us to enforce your way of living

and what does the average american at the airport say?

I dont mind being told what to do because its for my safety.


Thats the mentality that they want us to have,

keep us afraid, keep us stupid

Give us a scapegoat - Osama

kill him and we will be happy to do as you say because you
are the great saviors.

Anyone who believes that AFGANASTAN can do real damage is
just stupid. The people in charge are not americans but they
can easily destroy the enemies and keep the "super powers"
population subdued in hope of showing the world how to act
civilized.

Bin laden is no threat, afganastan is not a threat, the
people who allowed this to happen are the threat to our
society and our freedom

why does the CIA have so much classified information when it
is obvious that they really dont know anything?

Winning this war would be quick this way
---
Nuke attack afganastan and offer Bush up as a sacrifice to
the world as their retribution. Then there would be no loss
of innocent life. The RDJ could assume the position of
president.



 

f.l.e.a from NZ on 2001-09-18 00:46 [#00033317]



TALIBAN offered to hand him over hours after the
attack..they were just a bit better at putting 2 and 2
together and seeing the framing and coverup was heading..yes
Osama is a menace more so to Islam than to America...he's
got a big mouth and a big purse..a lot of the fanatics he
funds actually go around killing moderate muslims..something
deserves to happen to him in like the next 5 seconds..but
the problem is that..he is a fanatic...his followers are
fanatics..they will kill people with moral constitutions of
the highjackers at the drop of a hat..funding them is just a
wee bit strange..that's just my opinion..after being chased
around and shot at by fanatics..that's all...


 

f.l.e.a from NZ on 2001-09-18 00:51 [#00033320]



RIYADH, Sept 16: Saudi Arabian media has taken strong
exception to the reports that the men involved in the
hijacking of the ill-fated flights from Boston, the United
States, were from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
and that at least five of them had attended flight training
schools.

Reports carried here today have raised questions about the
names currently being circulated by the FBI and the US media
in connection with the catastrophe in New York and
Washington.

Reports here indicate that those alleged to be hijackers, in
US media reports quoting FBI and other agencies ongoing
investigations, were basically students on scholarships
enrolled in courses unrelated to aviation.

Referring to Abdulrahman S. Alomari, alleged by the US media
as part of the team involved in hijackings, reports here
identified him as a Saudi Arabian Airlines pilot and father
of four living in Jeddah. He was reported to be aware of his
name being mentioned in the list and appeared ready to
cooperate fully with the investigators.

A FBI bulletin also mentioned to be on lookout for a silver
coloured 1996 Chrysler Plymouth car and its possible driver,
Amer Kamfar, a flight engineer who lived in Vero Beach,
Florida. Kamfar had listed the post office box for Saudi
Arabian Airlines as his address on his commercial pilot's
license.

Kamfar reportedly returned to Makkah a month ago and sources
close to him have confirmed that he never owned a Chrysler
Plymouth while in the United States.

He is also ready to extend all his cooperation to the
investigators. Another Saudi national under spotlight as
witness in the US is Adnan Bukhari who as per the reports
here was a trainee pilot.

Meanwhile, the Philippines immigration detained Saudi
national Muhammad Bukhari. A Saudi Arabian Airlines pilot by
profession.

He was questioned, when he checked in at Manila airport to
fly a scheduled Saudia flight to Riyadh on Saturday
afternoon.

On Thursday night CNN apologized for reporting that Ameer
Bukhari, a Saudi pilot trainee who died in the crash of a
small plane, was involved in any way with the hijackings.
CNN's website has apparently not been updated to remove
Ameer Bukhari's photo and the false reports about him.

Saudi Arabian Airlines pilots have reacted furiously to the
portrayal they have received in CNN and the US media in
general.

Investigations here have also reported that Mohammad Atta
and Marwan Al-Shehhi, who have been accused of being pilots
involved in the hijackings, could not be described as devout
and practicing Muslims.

While the two UAE nationals are remembered from their days
in Germany as preferring to wear traditional Arab dress,
while they were in the USA they switched wearing western
attire, and were even noticed drinking in bars, reports
carried by the media here confirmed.

UNABLE TO BELIEVE: A Saudi father whose sons are on the
Pentagon list of suspected attackers of Tuesday's attacks in
the United States has said he can't believe this is true,
the Saudi newspaper Al-Iqtisadij reported on Sunday, adds
dpa.

"Maybe they were other people bearing the same name," quoted
Mohammed el-Shiri, whose sons Walid, 24, and Wael, 26, are
among the suspects. Their family, who live in Khamis Mashit
in the south of the kingdom, said they hadn't had any
contact with the two for months. His two sons had told him
that they wanted to travel to Medina to consult an Islamic
healer, the father said. Wael had suffered from a mental
illness. Both his sons were unmarried.

LEGAL AID FOR DETAINED: Several Saudi citizens have been
detained in the United States for questioning about
Tuesday's attacks on New York and Washington, a Saudi
newspaper reported on Sunday.

The paper Okaz quoted Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al
Faisal saying that authorities in the United States informed
Saudi Arabia about the detention of several Saudi suspects.


He did not gave the number of suspects detained but said
that Saudi Arabia has appointed lawyers for the detainees.
The minister said Saudi Arabia is checking the list of
people killed in the terrorist plane crashes to see if any
Saudi citizens were on the lists.

Saudi Arabia has condemned the attacks and has pledged
cooperation with Washington to fight terrorism.



 

ignant from fooby on 2001-09-18 00:52 [#00033321]



you sound like a fanatic pointing fingers at ourslef it
looks like maybe you had somthing to do with it, becuasse
you seem to know so much about this and that.. see where
that goes.. come on, evidence people, they have not agreed
to hand him over until today, it looks like some Taliban
clerks agree with the idea.. so they know what happened
also.. he is the one..dont be such a simple minded person
and beleive everything some extreme militia group tells you,
its our government please... The stuuf I know and see are
from the ones who where there, I.E. phone scalls made,
telling exaclty who was taking over the plane and why, I
bleive they have info form the terrosists overheard from
cell phone converstaions abut there reasons and what not..
just wait you will hear more.


 

ignant from fooby on 2001-09-18 00:58 [#00033324]



yes they had forged pilot liscenses hence the name mix
ups...
I thought they covered that.
All they above has already been explained..

 

f.l.e.a from NZ on 2001-09-18 01:02 [#00033326]



I know so much about this and that because I come from a
muslim country and was hounded the fanatics till I left that
country..I know so much about this and that because I don't
sit back and buy everything the TV tells me..none the
information I have got isn't anything you couldn't have
gotten if you decided to look at a few different websites on
the web..it's not classified information or anything..DUH..I
am looking around because I am trying hard to make sense of
this all..and am about to see my ancestoral home blown to
bits because a group of stupid evil bastards simultaneously
commited a most heinous crime for no discernable reason..but
perhaps..drug induced suicidal madness...it certainly wasnt
the religion!!
that's the only point I am trying to make and wondering why
I should try and make it to you?..I am just trying to work
it out for my self so I can't think about bombs landing
about 20 kms away from where my mother is living..


 

ignant from fooby on 2001-09-18 01:02 [#00033327]



what better way to infiltrate thant to look WESTERN? maybe
some were radical some where along for the $$$ like the ones
they pulled off the plane in St. Louis or train in Texas, it
will take awhile I mean come one, its has only been a
week...your ging to hear mistake after mistake being made,
thanks to the media, dont listen to them... go by your gut,
and filter out the nonsense.


 

f.l.e.a. from NZ on 2001-09-18 01:04 [#00033328]



IraqSaddam Husain

Background to the Gulf War and the Iraq-Kuwait frontier
question

?
Iraq's past is for me a subject of intimate personal
concern. We all share in a concern for its present.

It is a name that defines one of the earliest city states of
the 4th millennium BC, Uruk in its ancient form, birthplace
of the written word. It is a place that embraces Sumer and
Accad of the Bible, Babylon and Assyria, Gilgamesh the
divine king of legend, and the great Ark of the Deluge,
Ziusudra of long life, Abraham the father figure of Judaism,
Christianity and Islam. A subject that reflects in its clay
inscribed legends the formative stirrings of civilisation,
the conflicts and achievements of the world's most ancient
communities, born of mighty rivers, rich pastures, arid
deserts, primordial cities; a myriad towers of Babel sending
bellicose messages to angry, impenitent, and proud people.

And most importantly, it is a matter of professional pride,
since four of my biographical subjects were key figures in
the country's lurch to modern statehood. Present day
disputes owe as much to them as to Iraq's fiery and at times
homicidal politicians.

Gertrude Bell, Al Khatun, 'the great lady' of the Arab lands
before and during the First World War, was adviser to the
British policy makers of the time, Churchill, Curzon, Percy
Cox and AT Wilson. In the post World War I days of Lloyd
George's coalition government, she sat with Arab tribal
leaders to draw the frontiers between Iraq, Saudi Arabia,
Syria and Kuwait, trying to ensure that the interests of
both desert and the sown, as well as those of adjoining
lands, were adequately represented in their deliberations.
In December 1921 she wrote a letter home in which she said:
'I had a well spent morning at the office making out the
Southern desert frontier of the Iraq with the help of a
gentleman from Hail (capital of northern Nejd, now Saudi
Arabia) and Fahd Bey the paramount chief of the Anezeh
[tribe]'. A year later she wrote: 'Ibn Saud has captured
Hail...Sir Percy has invited him to come into
conference...and I've been laying out on the map what I
think should be our desert boundaries'.

Captain WHI Shakespear, one of the finest of British consuls
in the East, was sent to Kuwait at the instant of great
power competition for hegemony in the Persian Gulf, as the
bulwark of British authority. He became the close friend and
political guide of Ibn Saud, the founding king of Saudi
Arabia. He died fighting alongside his Saudi friend in 1915,
in battle with the Sauds' traditional enemy, Ibn Rashid.

Colonel Gerard Leachman was the man the troops chose to call
'OC Desert' in wartime days when the place was known to the
outside world as Mesopotamia, though it was officially a
collection of districts or vilayets of the Ottoman Empire.
He and Shakespear vied with each other to explore central
Arabia on behalf of the London and Indian branches
respectively of the General Staff. Leachman, bravest and
most cavalier of soldiers, was desert companion of Gertrude
Bell's friend Fahd Bey and fought with the mighty Muntafiq
tribal federation in war. He was the first military governor
of Kurdistan immediately after. And he was murdered in a
feud with another tribal leader at the moment of Iraq's
rebirth.

Sir Leonard Woolley, the distinguished British
archaeologist, worked with TE Lawrence at Carchemish before
the 1914 war, and after the war at Tal al-Amarna (Akhetaten)
in Egypt, birthplace of Tutankhamun. He served as a military
intelligence officer in both world wars. He uncovered Ur of
the Chaldees in southern Iraq, reputed birthplace of the
patriarch Abraham, just as the country regained its
independence under a British imposed monarch after the best
part of a thousand years of foreign occupation.

The modern history of Iraq is coloured by the remarkable
Britons who carried the flag, not always impartially or even
legally, at the heart of Islam in the last three decades of
the Ottoman power's six centuries of rule. It is coloured,
too, by military coups and political scams, by invasion, war
and politically inspired homicide on a truly Roman scale.
And from the Thatcher years on, it has lived with the
fundamental presumption that one man - President of the
Council of Ministers Saddam Husain al Takriti - is
responsible for the nation's obloquy. He alone, they insist,
is culpable, standing between peace and prosperity and an
isolated Iraq in a world that has exhausted its patience.

Dividing the Ottoman Turkey

In the bitter disputes that have accompanied the Gulf War
and its aftermath, the facts of geography and history have
led Iraq into an abyss of suffering, yet they have seldom
been touched on in the media or in political debate. Even
the academic world, with all the time, material and
expertise that it is able to call on, continues to avoid the
crucial questions and instead devotes its Middle East
'studies' almost exclusively to the sadly oversubscribed
pursuit of antiquated Foreign and Colonial Office myths,
setting its degree dissertations and post-graduate studies
solidly on a 'Lawrence of Arabia' footing.

The real story of Iraq, as of all the Arab nations that were
spawned by the dismemberment of the Ottoman power, is bound
up with the turmoil of war [and conflicting wartime
agreements that are dealt with in the following essay in
this series 'Syria'], the religious divide of Islam, the
advent of oil wealth, and the related question of the
frontiers that Gertrude Bell and her Arab friends drew up at
the insistence of Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill in
1921. That, one would think, would be substance enough for a
few doctoral theses.

On the surface at least, some of the bloodiest internal
battles of Iraq's last 80 years, giving rise to a succession
ofbitterly antagonistic regimes, have been fomented not by
the wealth created by enormous oil reserves but by obtuse
nationalistic arguments and esoteric power struggles within
close-knit family and military cliques.

Modern times

Iraq's modern history of military and civil disruption began
on 23 August 1921 when the Hashemite Faisal ibn Husain, son
of the Sharif of Mecca and prot?g? of Lawrence and Gertrude
Bell, was crowned king of the new Iraq, some three years
before the first elected assembly sat in Baghdad in March
1924.

The crowning of Faisal in recognition of the so-called
Sharifian wartime agreement of 1916-17 was not quite the
sign of the independence that most Iraqis had set their
hearts on. Britain as the mandatory power still had
authority in essential matters of defence and foreign
affairs, and to a large extent it held the purse strings. At
the time of the king's accession, Sir Percy Cox the High
Commissioner summoned Arab chiefs from every part of the
region to a conference at Ujair in the Saudi region of
al-Hasa to define their frontiers. A true Harrovian, he
addressed them as though they were errant schoolboys and
brushed aside most of their complaints. At that desert
meeting - tents were hurriedly erected to house the several
delegations - the frontiers of Nejd (Saudi Arabia), Iraq,
Syria, Transjordan and Kuwait were pronounced. The
Saudi/Iraq frontier was confirmed in the Treaty of
Mohammarah (Khoramshah) of May 1922. Ibn Saud complained
bitterly about the loss of grazing rights in the borderland
with Kuwait, however, and a codicil established a Neutral
Zone at the western extremity of Kuwait, in which no
permanent structures of any kind were to be built and in
which the Badu were to be allowed to roam freely. Asked what
was the real reason for this addition to the treaty, Cox
murmured to colleagues something about oil.

'Legitimate but insubstantial'

Kuwait, the richest territory in the world acre for acre,
once claimed by the Turks as part of the vilayet of Basra,
became an established British protectorate in 1913. A
Foreign Office pr?cis writer in a memo for the guidance of
Liberal Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey summarised the
position with wonderfully contrived ambivalence: 'Turkey's
claim to Kuwait', he wrote 'is legitimate but
insubstantial'. The claim, whatever its merits, was to prove
the crux of repeated conflicts between Iraq and its Gulf
neighbour, leading eventually to war with Britain, America
and the United Nations. When Saddam Husain al Takriti came
to power in 1979 at the head of a government composed of
family retainers, army officers and a few respected
academics, his first act was to announce that Kuwait,
snatched from its parent's arms in 1913 by Britain, must be
returned to the mother country. It was a somewhat unpolished
version of the actual event but it remains a central and
dangerous ingredient of Iraqi policy and deserves close
scrutiny.

Gunboat diplomacy and Kuwait

At the turn of the century the Royal Navy maintained control
of the Persian Gulf with three patrol ships, only one of
which - HMS Lapwing - was on permanent duty. Kuwait, whose
ruler Shaikh Mubarak as-Sabah was politically powerful and
devious, sought British protection in the face of increasing
pressure to make land concessions to Germany, Russia and
other powers.

In January 1902 the sole imperial power with a legitimate
presence in the region, Turkey, pressured by European,
particularly German interests intent on using Kuwait as the
terminus for the Berlin-Baghdad railway, sent an invasion
force from Basra to occupy the Kuwaiti territories of
Safwan, Um Qasr and Bubiyan island. A small RN contingent
was landed and the invaders fled. In September of the same
year an attempt to take Kuwait by coup de main was led by
two of Mubarak's disaffected nephews who were exiled in
Basra, Adhfi bin Muhammad and Hamud bin Jarrah. Invading
boums carrying 150 well armed tribesmen were intercepted by
HMS Lapwing whose captain, Commander Armstrong, returned
them uncomfortably to Basra and burnt their boats at sea.
But a British sailor was killed in the engagement.
Retribution was swift and punishment was visited by the navy
on all the Gulf towns and villages that were suspected of
complicity in the invasion.

In October 1902 French and Russian warships appeared in the
Gulf and stood off Kuwait. The then Foreign Secretary, Lord
Lansdowne, described the position as 'unsatisfactory'.
Mubarak took fright and Britain, concerned that he might
abdicate and leave a vacuum in a strategically vital spot,
guaranteed Kuwait's security on condition that he remained
in office. His sons and nephews, mostly living in Iraq, were
not to be trusted. Thus was established Britain's unofficial
protectorate of Kuwait at the time of 'Mubarak the Great',
at the start of Arthur Balfour's four-year tenancy of 10
Downing Street.

Kuwait's divided loyalty

Kuwait's divided loyalty remained in a state of near
equilibrium for the next decade, though the subject became
increasingly sensitive as Germany began to seek American,
French and Russian support for the Berlin-Baghdad rail
scheme. But there was another cause for concern. 1904 was
the year of the massive Persian oil strike by the D'arcy
consortium in neighbouring Abadan, the Royal Navy's lifeline
and the precursor of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (BP
today).

Campbell-Bannerman's Liberal ministry took office in 1906
and at the end of the previous year Curzon, Kitchener and
members of the Indian Council, anticipating the abdication
of the Conservatives, wrote to the Government to stress the
importance of Ibn Saud in any discussions affecting the
future of the Ottoman dominions. Ibn Saud of Riyadh and his
hereditary enemy Ibn Rashid of Hail began to seek the
backing of European powers in their struggle for ascendancy
in Nejd (Central Arabia). The latter made several attempts
to occupy Kuwait. Large quantities of contraband arms found
their way to the Gulf and central Arabia from Europe (20,000
rifles were smuggled into Muscat alone in 1904-5). In the
confusion of internal and great power conflict, Britain
decided that it had better put its own house in order in the
Gulf and the Arabian heartland.

In 1907 Britain signed a secret agreement with Shaikh
Mubarak, known as the Bandar Shuwaikh Lease. The Shaikh was
paid the desultory sum of £100 for rights in perpetuity
over the piece of land that the European powers wanted to
use as the Berlin-Baghdad terminus. And in 1909, the Indian
Government appointed the brightest and most formidable of
its younger political officers, Captain William Henry Irvine
Shakespear, to the Kuwait Political Agency. The man he
replaced, a quiet, efficient and pleasant lawyer officer,
Colonel SG Knox, had told the Resident in the Gulf, Major
Percy Cox, 'I am afraid the Shaikh is intriguing in all
directions'. Rather than sympathising with his subordinate,
Cox sent his deputy Shakespear to replace the worried Knox.
Within five years Shakespear made his Agency the most
respected of all the outposts of the Indian Government and
he was ready to make one of the great exploratory crossings
of Arabia Deserta, from Kuwait to Riyadh and thence
northward to Hail and on to Egypt, to learn from that other
imperious Resident, Kitchener, of Britain's war plans.

Decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire

As we have seen, 1913 marked the beginning of Britain's
premeditated plan to control access to Kuwait whatever the
rights or wrongs of Turkish claims to suzerainty. The need
for such a plan was underlined by events both distant and
immediate. Europe openly prepared for war. Turkey, faced
with the hostility of the major European powers, had lost
the Balkan War and thus the last of the European possessions
of the Ottoman Empire. But the Sultan of Turkey remained the
steward of the Islamic Caliphate and Kuwait joined other
Arab countries and the rest of the Moslem world in an appeal
for funds to aid the wounded. Loss of European dominions,
however, weakened the remnants of the old guard at
Constantinople. A coup brought the Young Turks to power,
though the old guard clung to a few vital offices. German
engineers directed by the master rail builder Meissner Pasha
had completed the hajj or pilgrim railroad from Damascus to
the Prophet's city of Madina. Now Meissner hurried to
complete the Berlin-Baghdad rail link.

Oil in Kuwait?

In October 1913 a deputation of oil experts, sent from
India, was met at Muhammerah by Rear-Admiral Sir Edmund
Slade, ex director of the Naval Staff College, a man widely
mistrusted in senior naval circles, aboard HMS Sphinx.
Delegates were taken to Kuwait where Captain Shakespear
showed its members the place of bitumen, Burgan. The
delegation's leader, HH Hayden, thought the chance of an oil
strike 'favourable'. Whitehallprepared to nationalise the
Anglo-Persian Oil Company. And at the end of the year
Captain Shakespear was given permission by the Foreign
Office to make his epic journey across the Arabia Peninsula
and to hold discussions with the 'Desert Prince' Ibn Saud on
the way. Before his departure there were a few minor matters
to be settled: the arrival of a Turkish mission and an
attempt to persuade the Shaikh to 'recognise Turkish
authority'. To further delay the traveller's itinerary a
second oil delegation turned up from India, and not for the
first time the Political Agent had to settle a dispute
between the two power brokers of the region, Shaikhs Mubarak
and Khazal.

Secret agreements

It was against this background, that discussions began in
Constantinople and London between the Foreign Office and the
Turkish prime minister elect, Hakki Pasha, in order to
formulate an Anglo-Turkish Convention.

It was a time of widespread exploratory discussions that
anticipated the First World War. As Shakespear made his way
across the desert to Riyadh and thence to Hail, the northern
Arabian capital of Ibn Rashid, the Sharif of Mecca's second
son Abdullah arrived in Cairo to talk with Kitchener. There
were other remarkably coincident events. Percy Cox was
called from the Gulf Residency to India to take over the
Simla Foreign Office from Sir Henry McMahon, while Britain's
most experienced and respected senior diplomat in the east,
JG Lorimer, took Cox's place at Bushire. Lorimer died
mysteriously in his office just after arriving in the Gulf,
allegedly from a self-inflicted gun wound. Gertrude Bell
left England after a private dinner with Prime Minister
Asquith, on her way to Hail, and Hakki Pasha visited London
for talks with Sir Edward Grey. Each event marked a piece of
the jigsaw that would decide who supported whom in a war now
seen as inevitable. Sir Edward Grey told Parliament that
Britain had 'nothing to fear from Turkey'. In March 1914 the
Anglo-Turkish Convention was signed in London, delivering
part of southern Arabia and Kuwait to Britain while
acknowledging Turkish authority over Ibn Saud's territory of
Najd. The three chief administrative districts of
Mesopotamia - Mosul, Baghdad and Basra - remained integral
parts of Turkey in Asia.

Desert politics

Colonel Grey, Shakespear's successor in Kuwait, was sent
into the desert to meet with Ibn Saud and tell him that in
the light of negotiations taking place in London he could
'expect no help from Britain' and that he must sign a
Turco-Saudi treaty that formed part of the Anglo-Turkish
pact. Observers recorded that the desert negotiators almost
came to blows.

Mubarak as-Sabah of Kuwait, described as the 'Richelieu of
Arabia', was aware of what was going on; he had already
signed an agreement with the TurkishWali of Basra while
protesting to Grey that he remained loyal to Britain.

The Anglo-Turkish Convention drove a wedge between Kuwait
and its Saudi neighbour and alienated Ibn Saud who,
according to Shakespear, sought alliance with Britain above
all else, but it achieved its main purpose of delivering the
strategically vital territory at the head of the Persian
Gulf to Britain and protected the Royal Navy's oil supply.
When Shakespear returned at the end of 1914 as Britain's
'Political Officer on Special Duty in Arabia' he discovered
that the British force which took Basra in November had
uncovered a copy of the treaty Britain had compelled Ibn
Saud to sign with Turkey. By then Britain had reversed its
policy and Shakespear was sent to seek the Saudis' goodwill.
He wrote of the FO's 'disastrous policy' but assured
Whitehall 'Bin Saud is with us'. A few days later, on 24
January, he was killed in a desert battle, fighting
alongside Ibn Saud, the man he believed would inherit
Arabia, against the pro-Turk Ibn Rashid.

Thus was unravelled the question of who ruled over whom in
the Arabian Peninsula. In truth, the position that Iraq
inherited from Ottoman Turkey, setting aside the matter of
victory or defeat in war, was this: in 1914, at the outbreak
of the First World War, Central Arabia, a region about the
size of India, was part of the vilayet of Basra as
recognised in the Anglo-Turkish Convention. Kuwait, about
the size of Yorkshire, was an independent Moslem state
protected by Britain.

Whichever way it is viewed, the Turks signed away their
'legitimate' right to Kuwait. And they joined the wrong side
in war. Such are not exactly persuasive arguments for Iraq's
persistent assertion that Kuwait belongs to her, by default
of Turkish ownership as it were. But some of the coastal
areas closest to Iraq such as Safwan and Um Qasr which they
invaded in 1902 and briefly occupied, were pencilled into
Gertrude's map as 'Iraqi territory' when the time came for
Britain to hand over.

Independent Iraq

As for the sequel, Iraq was admitted as an independent state
to the League of Nations in 1932, two years after a treaty
of alliance had been signed with Britain. The old vilayet of
Mosul, though claimed by a resurgent Turkey, had become part
of the new Iraq as the result of a League edict of 1925.
Nevertheless, the northern city of Mosul at the heart of the
Kurdish region had never willingly been associated with
Iraq. Even as far back as the second millennium BC its
precursor Nineveh was one of the chief cities of Assyria,
always at loggerheads with Babylon in the south. And in the
long centuries of Ottoman rule it was an integral vilayet of
Turkey, though as the political centre of Kurdistan, with
which the Turks were seldom on the best of terms, it was
effectively the capital city of an outcast region. The
Turkey of Ataturk protested loudly when it was made part of
Iraq, and if now Saddam Husain seeks the status quo ante in
the old vilayet of Basra (though he doesn't it seems lay
claim to Saudi Arabia which Britain insisted was part of the
Basra vilayet), he should accept in reason and logic that,
by the same token, the Mosul region must be returned to
Turkey.

So too, in the aftermath of Britain's mandate, Sunni and
Shi'a Moslems were at loggerheads with each other and with
Christian minorities. A massacre of Assyrians (Christians)
was committed by Iraqi troops in 1933. Tribal revolts
followed in 1935/6, in which year General Bakr Sidqi
achieved power by coup d'etat. The usurper was himself
murdered in the following year. Two pipelines, laid down in
the 1930s for taking oil to Tripoli and Haifa from recently
discovered deposits at Kirkuk and Basra, created the ideal
conditions for international interference and internal
dissent. But it was British policy in Palestine, regarded
throughout the Arab world as transparently pro-Zionist, that
caused momentous shifts in Iraq's external relations. The
arrangements made by Britain in the aftermath of war were
increasingly held up to scrutiny. The power of the Hashemite
royal family diminished and politically the country came
ever closer to Germany.

At the start of World War 2 Iraq decided to renounce its
German connections but another military coup in 1941 led to
the accession of a government headed by Rashid Ali
al-Gaylani whose pro-German sympathies were well known. A
few months later British troops occupied Baghdad and Basra
for the second time in less than 30 years.

The pro-British regime declared war on Germany and its
allies in 1943. At the end of the war the country signed the
United Nations Charter. In 1948 a new treaty was agreed with
Britain, known as the 'Portsmouth' treaty, taking the place
of the 1930 accord.

Israel, oil wealth and strife

The Arab-Israeli war of the same year, 1948, marked a
watershed which still permeates life and thought throughout
the Arab world. Iraq had always been home to a sizeable and
influential Jewish population, some serving in government,
and a good number occupying positions of financial and
economic strength. From then on began a wholesale Jewish
exodus to Israel. Riots and general disaffection seemed to
go hand in hand with economic well being after oil came on
stream from Mosul and new pipelines were laid. However there
were constructive uses. Flood barriers were built on the
Tigris and Euphrates to the economic benefit of the country.
The Baghdad Pact of 1955, soon extended to include Pakistan
and Iran, was seen as a defensive barrier against Soviet
incursion, and American approval was unqualified. Britain
and America sent delegates to the Council meetings. Suez,
however, proved to be another breaking point in a stop-go
story. Iraq told its Arab neighbours that it would take no
further part in Council meetings while British delegates
were present.

The United Arab Republic of Egypt and Syria soon came face
to face with the Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan, formed
in 1958. A federal constitution of the latter states was
agreed, though the Hashemite kings, Faisal II of Iraq and
Hussain of Jordan, would retain their thrones independently.
The overthrow of the monarchy so lovingly installed by
Britain in 1921, followed. Faisal II was murdered along with
the Crown Prince and Nuri as-Sa'id, the man who had led the
Arab revolt and won immortality in the pages of 'Seven
Pillars of Wisdom'. The bodies of princes and war hero were
dragged through the streets of Baghdad to the cheers of the
populace. Iraq became a republic.

The Baath Party and dictatorship

Events that followed are well recorded and bloody. In
succession came Abdal Kassem and the Abadan oil crisis of
1957, the memory etched on the public mind of a single
tanker trying in vain to discharge its cargo at one port
after another in defiance of the United Nations. Then came
the first attack on Kuwait in 1961 and the Kurdish rebellion
in the same year, the overthrow and murder of Kassem in
1963, the rise of a new dictatorship formed of the Iraq arm
of the Baath Party (founded in Syria in 1941) and army
officers led by Colonel Aref (the new President) and Ahmad
Bakr who became First Minister. In 1964 Iraq became a
one-party state known by decree as The Arab Socialist Union.
Banks and large commercial conglomerates were nationalised.
And in the next two years a new prime minister with a
military provenance, Brigadier Aref Abdal Razzaq vied with
President Aref for ultimate power. Against a backcloth of
Kurdish rebellion and a bitter oil dispute with neighbour
Syria, there was yet another coup in 1968 with ex-prime
minister General Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr taking over the
Presidency from Aref who, unusually, was allowed to choose
exile rather than death. For the first time Kurds were
brought into a reformed, anti-corruption government.

In fact, hope of political stability was short lived.
Exactly thirteen days after the new government was sworn in
it was dismissed by the President who promptly took on the
roles of prime minister and commander-in-chief of the armed
forces. Another army general, Hardan Takriti, became
al-Bakr's chief lieutenant. Within weeks, western residents
were expelled from the country, a former Foreign Minister,
Nasser al-Hani was murdered, and other ex-ministers were
imprisoned. In January 1969, 14 men were sentenced to death
for spying for Israel, mostly Jews but some Moslems among
them.

The Baathist al-Bakr government survived until 1979, when
the President announced his retirement. It had adopted a
provisional constitution in 1968 that read:

The Iraq Republic is a popular democratic state. Islam is
the state religion and the basis of its laws and
constitution. The political economy of the state is founded
in socialism...

President Saddam

Following al-Bakr's resignation the reins of power were
seized by his 42 year-old deputy Saddam Husein al-Takriti,
most enduring and ruthless of modern dictators. The
consequences for Iraq itself and for the Kurdish people in
particular have been harsh. But it cannot be argued that
Saddam's intransigence and suspicion of the people around
him are altogether without cause. He has won respect among
Arab leaders for one cause if no other, his unwillingness to
bow down before Israeli and American presumption. And the
tempest of that one-sided alliance has been visited on Iraq
in consequence. It is hard to say what effect a more
equitable and far-seeing approach by the West might have had
on the psychology of Iraq's leadership and on the country's
external relationships.

For the present Al-Iraq remains a pariah state, its people
paying endlessly a debt that accrued from the time of the
Moghul invasion of the 13th century onward, from the
indiscriminate destruction of all the glorious achievements
of the Abbassid caliphs to the Gulf war and seemingly
beyond. For the future, there is only conjecture. Internal
and external injustices live on, the basic ingredients of
suspicion, internal dissent, murder and power mania remain,
tragically, as prevalent as ever.

Background to a dictatorship

History has a habit of repeating itself in the Middle East.
A century ago, the Roman concept of Greater Syria was
revived by bright-eyed Arab nationalists, a concept that
brought together all the disparate races and ideologies of
an area that stretched from Alexandretta to Sinai, from the
Mediterranean to the central deserts of the peninsula. The
modern world must hope that old ambitions are not revived in
the present.

The crux of political power in present-day Syria, as in
Iraq, is the Baath Party.

With the death of President Hafez Asad, claims to the
earlier glories of the Arab caliphate begin to surface once
more. They may not be spelled out aloud by contestants for
his seat in Damascus, but they are never far from the
surface of debate..

A brief summary of the modern historical background may not
be out of place:

Syria, like its British-created neighbour Iraq, emerged from
WW1 as a province of the defeated Ottoman Empire, the former
tied by historical links and secret wartime agreements to
France, the latter to Britain.

Before that war started both had sharpened their clandestine
skills through Committees set up in Damascus and Baghdad
with the aim of throwing off the Turkish yoke. As the Young
Turks met in Paris to plot the overthrow of the Sultan Abdul
Hamid, young Arab officers and intellectuals, members of Al
Ahad and Al Fattah, military and civil wings of the islamic
Covenant, met in the Arab capitals and even set up offices
in Paris and London, with the object of creating a
revolutionary movement that would be led by Arab officers
serving in the Turkish army.

When the war ended and the Turkish empire was carved up by
the victorious powers, it transpired that Britain and France
had entered into three separate and conflicting agreements
with the peoples of those lands.

1 In 1915-16 Britain and France entered into the secret
Sykes-Picot agreement. Britain was recognised as the
dominant power in the regions (vilayets) of Basra and
Baghdad (ancient Iraq), Mosul (Kurdistan), a proposed buffer
state called Transjordan, and Palestine. France was to
control the old vilayets of Damascus and Haleb (Aleppo). The
agreement was signed also by the other Entente power,
imperial Russia, which was given Constantinople (Istanbul).
The Russian revolution intervened, however, Lenin divulging
the details before the war ended.

2 In 1916, Britain and France concluded discussions with the
Sherif of Mecca, with whose family Lord Kitchener had begun
discussions early in 1914, aimed at bringing the steward of
Islam's holy cities of Mecca and Madina over to Britain's
side should Turkey, the keeper of the Caliphate, take
Germany's side in a war against Britain. Those discussions
led to the so-called Sharifian agreement by which all the
territories in and around the Arabian peninsula were to be
governed by the Sharif and his sons with the exception of
'the districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and portions of
Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Hama,
Homs and Aleppo'. Thus, the Lebanon and the coastal strip of
Palestine were specifically excluded. Those districts could
not be said to be 'purely Arab'.

3 The Balfour Declaration of 1917 promising Palestine to the
Jews as a national home (a territory defined by Lloyd George
as the biblical region from Dan to Beersheba), a measure
that was intended initially to gain the support of Russian
and American Jewry in brining the USA into the war.

In 1919 Britain invited Abdullah, the Sharif's second son,
to become king in Baghdad while Faisal, the third son, would
occupy the throne of Syria. In the event, Faisal enjoyed
only a brief reign in Damascus where Arab nationalist
proclaimed an independent kingdom of Greater Syria. But the
San Remo Conference confirmed a French mandate (1920) and
Lebanon was included in the area of French control. The Amir
Faisal was ousted and French troops occupied Damascus. In
1921, Winston Churchill became Colonial Secretary in the
dying months of the Lloyd George coalition, established a
Middle East Department and set out to achieve some kind of
resolution of the contradictory wartime promises his
department inherited. At the Cairo Conference which he
convened in January 1921, the frontiers and rulers of the
Arab states were determined. France, whose administration
was essentially colonial, would have nothing to do with
Sharifian sovereignty. Britain, largely at the instigation
of Gertrude Bell, made Faisal king of the newly created
state of Iraq (March 1921). Abdullah was offered the
Amirship of the new state of Transjordan.

It is against that background of imposed order that the
modern politics of Syria and its neighbours evolved.

Divide and rule was the basis of French policy and there was
plenty of scope for Machiavellian schemes in a country that
was not only divided into Christian and Moslem faiths, but
into innumerable factions within those faiths. Differences
in attitude between the mandatory powers in Syria and the
Lebanon on the one hand and Iraq and Palestine on the other
were best exemplified by language. The French acted as
colonisers first and foremost, making little effort to
understand local custom or language, until parts of the
intelligensia in those countries often spoke French more
readily than Arabic, and in some cases neglected their own
language. The British on the other hand made prodigious
efforts to learn Arabic and sometimes tried to adopt the
customs of their hosts to the point of absurdity, of being
more Arab than the Arabs; not a few apostasised to Islam, an
act that the ruler of central Arabia, Ibn Saud, regarded as
culturally inappropriate, if not suspect.

French mandated Syria was divided into four main districts.
The Syrian Republic, Latakia, Jabal Druse, and Lebanon
which, in Turkish times, had been composed of the vilayet of
Beirut and the Sanjak of Lebanon. (The old Sanjak of
Alexandretta was included in the mandated territory in 1921
on the condition that it was governed separately from the
rest of Syria). These territories were combined and enlarged
to include Tripoli, giving the country a virtually equal
split between Moslem and Christian populations, with the
former divided into Sunni and Shi'a factions, the latter
into an uneasy alliance of Maronites, and followers of
Orthodox and Catholic schisms. From the outset, the French
rulers were indifferent to Moslem culture and tradition and
favoured the Christians of the north. Equally, Arab
nationalists despised the mandatory power and there was open
revolt in 1925. At that time and in the following year
Damascus was bombarded by the French.

In 1928 there were elections for a Constituent Assembly but
the French were not willing to accept some of its aims, the
most important of which was the concept of an indivisible
unity of the old Turkish vilayets, thus making Syria,
Lebanon, the Druse region and Latakia one. The embattled
French tried to conclude a treaty with the leaders of the
Moslem Arab population. The Assembly was dissolved in 1930
and a new Constitution imposed by France.

There were new elections in 1932 but attempts to negotiate a
new treaty with the nationalists failed again. The Chamber
of Deputies was suspended sine die in 1934. Disorders in the
next two years by which time a left wing government, the
Popular Front had succeeded in France. In 1936 a
Franco-Syrian treaty was signed recognising Syria's right to
independence but introducing a three-year period of status
quo in which the apparatus of independent government would
be created. Complications set in immediately. The Sanjak of
Alexandretta was granted autonomy by the League of Nations
(1937) except for foreign policy and budget which would come
under Syrian control. But France with a change of government
now refused to ratify the Franco-Syrian treaty. In 1939,
with the German threat to France looming large, Alexandretta
was returned to its old imperial ruler Turkey, an act seen
by Arab nationalists as a betrayal of all the agreements
that had gone before. The war was regarded by nationalists
as a favourable opportunity to resist the rule of Vichy
France, however, and in 1941 Syrian self rule was formally
acknowledged by France, though the European administration
clung to the vestigial power and British armed forces
entered the country. Elections were held in August 1943 and
a Syrian President of a Syrian Republic was elected - Shuqri
Kuwatly. In 1945 there were more nationalist disturbances,
this time put down by French troops. But shortly afterwards
British and French forces withdrew. That act marked the end
of imperial domination of Syria after the best part of a
thousand years; since, in fact, the glories of the Umayyad
caliphate and the brief dominion of Saladin during the
Crusades.

The early days of independence were devoted to opposing the
Hashemite (or Sharifian) rulers of Iraq and Jordan and to
new attempts to dominate Lebanon economically and
politically. The country was still financially dependent on
France. Alliances were forged with Saudi Arabia and Egypt
against Iraq, Jordan and Israel.

The 1948 war with Israel, soon after the foundation of that
state, following the ending of the British mandate, left the
Arab League bitterly divided and all the old regimes
established by the imperial powers began to disintegrate.
Several military coups occurred in quick succession in
Syria:

March 1949 - led by Col. Husni Za'im

August 1949 - Col. Sami Hinnawi

December 1949 - Col. Shishaqli

Civil opposition to the military dictatorship of Shishaqli
gave rise to the dissolution of the Chamber in 1951.

In 1952 all political parties were banned. New elections
were held but the Nationalist opposition refused to accept
the verdict. Demonstrations led to Shishaqli seeking refuge
in France. Fresh elections in 1954 brought a new and broader
Chamber into being and in the following year Shuqri
al-Kuwatli was returned to power as President. In
consequence, Syria and Egypt formed a joint military
command. The Baghdad Pact increased the dependence of the
region on Russia while American and Western loyalties
generally rested with Israel and the wealthiest oil states,
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The influence of the Cold War
became paramount. In 1956, Syria and Egypt began to accept
arms from the Soviet Union.

1956 marked a watershed in the modern history of the region.
The Israeli campaign in Sinai was followed by the ill-fated
intervention of Britain and France at Suez. A famous Syrian
act, the blowing up of the oil pipeline from the Iraqi
fields to the Mediterranean earned Syria a severe rap on the
knuckles by Saudi Arabia and Iraq. But its refusal to allow
repairs to the pipe until Israel withdrew its troops from
key areas succeeded in its aim. To a large extent, that
episode exposed America's obsession with the security of oil
supplies as the chief reason for its alliance with Israel
and its subsequently turning a blind eye to Israeli
development of a nuclear capability. In 1957 came the short
lived union with Nasser's Egypt. In 1961 a new coup in
Damascus brought the union to an end. New elections and a
new Assembly came about in December 1961 under the
Presidency of Dr Nazim Kudski.

During the 1950s a new political force in the Arab world
came into prominence. Known as Baathism, it was the creation
of a number of Syrian religious minorities and of members of
the armed forces who opposed the earlier reactionary
policies of old-guard officer. Socialist in broad principle
it had some distinct similarities to English Fabianism and
European social democracy, but it shared with some of the
revolutionary bodies of Ottoman days such as Al Ahad and al
Fattah a Pan-Arab agenda. Its founder was a Syrian
Christian, Michel Aflaq, and several of its founder members
were from the Shi'a sect known as Alawi. It was opposed by
the Ulema, the learned men of Islam, and by the Islamic
Brotherhood. All the same, the Baath Party gained force in
both Syria and Iraq during the 1960s. At the international
Baath Conference of 1963, the principle of workers control
of industry and agriculture became an official plank of
policy. Class warfare of a kind unseen in the Islamic world
developed and there were severe outbreaks of rioting,
especially in Aleppo, Homs and Hama, resulting in a massacre
of dissidents by government forces at the latter town in
1964. Overriding everything in 1963 was the setting up of a
revolutionary military council which seized control of
Damascus and promptly engaged in an internal dispute that
gave rise to the suppression of the pro-Egypt element of the
Baath Party. A National Guard was formed. The pro-Egypt
faction staged a counter attack but was put down with
considerable loss of life.

Those events were followed by an attempt to bring the two
great administrative arms of Baath-ism in Baghdad and
Damascus together, an alliance between brothers, Iraq and
Syria. There were discussions aimed at a union of the two
countries and a Supreme Defence Council was set up under
General Ammash. An Iraqi coup at the end of 1963 which
resulted in the bombing of the presidential palace by
dissident elements of the Iraq air force, ended any hope of
unity of the two countries.

Nevertheless, a new constitution was adopted defining Syria
as a 'democratic socialist republic'. General Hafiz was
nominated President. Oil and large parts of the nation's
industry were nationalised. A military court was established
and Syria became effectively a one-party state with the
Baathists in control.

In 1966 the almost inevitable military coup occurred led by
radical army elements and the leadership of al-Baath was
arrested. Aflaq the founder of the party, the President
General Hafiz and the PM, Saleh al-Din Bitar, were all
dismissed. A deal with Russia soon after and a loan for
building a dam on the Euphrates suggested that Moscow may
have played a somewhat equivocal part in the government's
downfall.

At the end of 1966 another Egypto-Syrian agreement was
entered into, each country guaranteeing the other support in
the event of an attack.In October, Israel complained to the
Security Council about constant frontier incursions. In June
1967 war broke out between Israel and the combined Arab
forces of Syria, Egypt and Jordan. Famously the conflict
lasted for 6 days. Most importantly, Syria lost the
strategically vital Golan Heights to Israel. A UN
peacekeeping force at Quneitra kept the two armies apart.The
Baath Party enjoyed a revival of support in the aftermath of
defeat. One of its leading lights was Hafez Asad, a graduate
of the military academy in Damascus and of the Soviet
Military Academy where he had trained as a pilot. He was
born in 1930 at Latakia, the centre of the small but
politically powerful Alawi sect and thus he was closely
connected to the Baathist movement from its inception in his
student days. Asad had been Air Force Commander and in 1966
was appointed Minister of Defence. In 1969 he ordered the
arrest of Communist leaders and the leader of the party was
exiled to Moscow.

While the struggle for power in Syria was tempered by the
experiences of war, Iraq was experiencing its own internal
disputes. By 1970, following the assassination of virtually
the entire family of the Hashemite king Faisal and the
country's ministers over some three generations, the
Baathist General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr had become President.


He was succeeded by Saddam Husain al Takriti. The latter and
Asad were to lead their nations across the next thirty years
as Baathist dictatorships, pursuing nationalist and
vehemently opposed agendas under the guise of socialism, at
times seeking help and guidance from Soviet Russia but
always fending off the accusation of the mullahs and the
ulema that they were embracing 'Godless Communism', united
only in their determination to contain Israel and to win
back lost territory.
uke Fe)+

 

ignant from fooby on 2001-09-18 01:05 [#00033330]



I mainly listen to radio and read off the web, not tv.. most
media is biased BS as far as I am concerned.. and the reason
there arent bombs landing there now is because Bush is
getting the facts and not giong to make a rash decision.
dont fret.


 

Quoth from Berlin on 2001-09-18 01:06 [#00033332]



f.l.e.a.: thank you very much for all of the extra info. and
thank you for correcting me about the proper spelling of
"Afghanistan". mad props


 

f.l.e.a from NZ on 2001-09-18 01:06 [#00033333]



why did they have forged pilots licenses when they actually
got their training in Florida for about a year between FEB
2000 and NOV 2000...dint they get licences given to them so
they could get their 6 hours on the simulaters of the 727??
why use forged licenses then?


 

f.l.e.a from NZ on 2001-09-18 01:09 [#00033336]



to quoth..by the way I was just cloned by someone posting
the entire history of the Middle East..that wasn't me..I
kinda like you Quoth..have read most of your insightful
music related posts with a lot of interest..that's why I was
a bit surprised and shocked by your misinfo is all...same
goes for Syd :(


 

ignant from fooby on 2001-09-18 01:11 [#00033339]



they got training to fly small commercial not the 757 or
767, plus with a forged pilots license you can pretty much
walk all around the airport and do what ever you want. I.E
sneak knives on board the plane get stuff onto plane without
being searched. stuff like that.


 

f.l.e.a from NZ on 2001-09-18 01:13 [#00033343]



to phobiazero...please I am not trying to be a nuisance..I
didn't post that master's thesis on IRAQ to the board.


 

Quoth from Berlin on 2001-09-18 01:13 [#00033344]



Isn't it kinda weird that America didn't see any sort of
threat until it was way too late? You're not supposed to
predict the future, but shouldn't one nation at least
prepare for it?


 

ignant from fooby on 2001-09-18 01:16 [#00033346]



americans want freedom and unfortuanelty this is a
misfortune of it.
we complain when it takes to long to get on a plane and
complain when we get on one to fast and it smashes into the
TWC.. so what can they do? we need to look at EL-Al they
have the best security not one hi-jacking or terrosts
action.


 

f.l.e.a from NZ on 2001-09-18 01:18 [#00033351]



iqnant..sorry but those knive were regulation size and
having caught domestic flights in the US anyone could take
anything onboard...I made a huge arse of myself carrying a
massive bass guitar in a case onboard a flight which
wouldn't even fit in the compartments so I had it proped on
my knee through the entire flight...it had all my leads and
cords and the lot..nobody asked me to open it....


 

ignant from fooby on 2001-09-18 01:21 [#00033355]



ok then maybe they used it like this
Terrorits: Hey I fly planes in Saudia Arabia, can I come up
ans watch you fly big american plane.
Pilot: oh really
Terrorist: Yes see here is proper identy.
Pilot: well shucks alrighty.
Narrarator: slowly the terroist Gains the confidence of the
captin and enters cabian, all hell breaks loose.



 

f.l.e.a from NZ on 2001-09-18 01:22 [#00033358]



Quoth..you have seen a lot more of the violence in Berlin I
presume...yes I was in the States for four years and loved
the freedom and the openness of the place..made a ton of
friends..had so much fun that basically forgot to finish the
degree I went to get :)...I luuuv the American people..I
don't trust any Govts though..I guess I just get that being
wgere I am from is all


 

ignant from fooby on 2001-09-18 01:24 [#00033360]



Hey Flea:
I really enjoy your opinions also and am glad to banter with
you or debate, thanks.. you are ok guy in my book!!
no matter what you beleive!

 

f.l.e.a from NZ on 2001-09-18 01:27 [#00033363]



that's the problem Iqnant...there's very little I do believe
in..I am shall we say belief free..gets me in a lot of
trouble..but that's me..I dug the exchange as well..may do
so again at a later date..cheers


 

ignant from fooby on 2001-09-18 01:29 [#00033367]



I still like this though its classic!!

ok then maybe they used it like this
Terrorits: Hey I fly planes in Saudia Arabia, can I come up
ans watch you fly big american plane.
Pilot: oh really
Terrorist: Yes see here is proper identy.
Pilot: well shucks alrighty.
Narrarator: slowly the terroist Gains the confidence of the
captian and enters cabin, all hell breaks loose.


 

Adobe from who gives a hoot? on 2001-09-18 01:30 [#00033368]



"It's going to be a fun few months while we destroy them."

Huh? I mean, ....huh?.....FUN!!!! What the fuck are you on
about fun?!! This isn't Rambo 4 you fucking
numbsack,...it's going to be terribly painful for alot of
people on a global scale...and unlike alot of people here it
isnt going to be wrapped up nicely for the sunday late
edition of CNN or whoever...the juvenilty of this board is
fucking astounding...you should get a badge or have your
points of views taken for future generations to look back
and think and learn from where everything started to go
wrong...
I feel sick... yeah, kick some ass, go crazy, kick your own
ass...fuck Afghanistan right? I mean just fuck em right?
the whole "darn" country? fucking show some sense....fuck
everyone and everything...I give up :((


 

sloppy from ferngygerngy on 2001-09-18 01:48 [#00033385]



Sarcasm:
hey I am going to go walk into a movie theatre and blow
myslef up and take out about 20-100 people, who cares where
but I am doing it becase I think we are being to hard on the
little animals in the forest.

Later
An explosion today rocked downtown so and so, they found the
suspected terrosits home PETA pamphlets and pro-animal
propaganda and was known to spout off about getting even
with people for there mistratment of animals and the night
before was spouting off drunk about just wait till tomorrow
and see Hah hah hah!
but we think the government is behind it and those crazy
anti animal freaks trying to make him look bad set up by the
government blah blah blah sound familiar?


 

thanksomuch from over thar on 2001-09-18 04:57 [#00033495]



gonzola: just trying to shed some light 'tis all....

 

mommentum from Skopje on 2001-09-18 18:59 [#00033839]



Remember how Belgrade's buildings burned?

What goes around, comes around.

work buy consume die .. include a little blowing up of the
rest of the world inbetween.


 

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