Iraqi Gen Georges Sada was interviewed on Monday by KXLY CH 4, Spokane, WA. Here's the video:

http://www.spokanetogo.com/index.php?id=2848

Gen Sada will appear with Dr. Terry Law in Spokane on November 9th, 2006.

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Is there hope for Iraq?
November 9, 2006
7:00 pm, doors open at 6:00 p.m.
Spokane INB Performing Arts Center
Tickets are $10 per person
To purchase tickets, call 1.800.325.SEAT or visit www.ticketswest.com

Join Dr.Terry Law, President and founder of World Compassion Terry Law Ministries, as he hosts Iraqi General Georges Sada, former Air-Vice Marshal and advisor to Saddam Hussein. General Georges Sada will share his life?changing testimony as a follower of Jesus Christ, surviving one of the most sinister regimes in history. He will also reveal the secrets of Saddam?s regime including the time he dissuaded the dictator from bombing Israel with chemical weapons. Dr. Terry Law and General Sada will share an update on what is really happening in Iraq and how together they are reaching the Iraqi people. Come hear why there is STILL HOPE for Iraq.

HT Donald Sensing - Winds of Change

The Reverend Donald Sensing has this most insightful analysis of the GWOT as we approach the November election.

Please remember to vote. Remember that you have the freedom to do so.

RBT

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Al Qaeda's war and US politics

My long-term readers may recall that I wrote a little over three years ago that al Qaeda does not have a strategic plan. Strategic goals, yes, an actual plan to get there, no. It was unintentionally proleptic ( I dare not say prophetic) of me to wrote so long before next month's election,

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Bin Laden thought that terrorist violence by itself would cause America to continue to retreat, to withdraw from Saudi Arabi and the rest of the Persian Gulf countries, enabling the Muslim ummah to realize their long-suppressed dream of a true Islamic society (bin Laden having a delusion that ordinary Muslim men and women truly thirsted for a Talibanic society for their own countries). Hurt the Americans enough, he said - more than once, on the record, - and they will flee.

Al Qaeda's political objectives were, and remain, well defined: reestablish the Islamic caliphate of yore. Then extend the caliphate into the middle of Africa, South Asia and parts of Europe and Southeast Asia. After that - these are very long-rage objectives - extend the rule of Islam across the entire globe. It matters not at the moment whether these are realistic goals. Islamists think they are.

Today, for both Islamists and the US, Iraq is the main battlefield. Whomsever prevails there will gain the intiative for many years to come, perhaps so strongly that the other side will not be able to take it away.

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Today's sectarian violence in Iraq is no surprise. Even without al Qaeda there, millions of Shiites would have felt they had scores to settle. But in the same captured document, Zarqawi explained that sectarian violence would have to be fomented so that democratic sovereignty cannot take root.

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The current American panic, by contrast, is precisely what the insurgents intend with their surge of October violence. The Baathists and Sadrists can read the U.S. political calendar, and they'd like nothing better than to feed the perception that the violence is intractable. They want our election to be perceived as a referendum on Iraq that will speed the pace of American withdrawal.

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It may be, though, that al Qaeda's religious ideology of armed jihad means that it cannot lay low even if it might be advantageous. It cannot merely engineer the US withdrawal, it must be known to have done so. So it keeps bombing and shooting.

Except now it may have actually developed a strategy to fight America. This strategy is very simple and has excellent potential that is already being realized.

1. Target American news media, not for attack but for propaganda.

2. Through the media, buttress the idea in the minds of American politicians that Iraq is lost and there is no reasonable recourse but to begin withdrawing as soon as possible. [RBT emphasis]

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What has this to do with November's elections? Mark Steyn conducted a little mind experiment not long ago.

But suppose the "Anyone But Bush" bumper-sticker set got their way; suppose he and Cheney and Rummy and all the minor supporting warmongers down to yours truly were suddenly vaporized in 20 seconds' time. What then? Nothing, that's what. The jihad's still there. Kim Jong Il's still there. The Iranian nukes are still there. The slyer Islamist subversion from south-east Asia to the Balkans to northern England goes on, day after day after day.

Would al Qaeda set down its AK-47s and TNT and take up watercolor? Or would they simply see the disappearance as a sign of Allah's favor and so redouble their efforts to bring us death and misery?

You know the answer.

There are legitimate criticisms of the way the Bush administration has waged the war in Iraq. I've made some myself. But Bush and Cheney are Rumsfeld are not the problem America faces. Al Qaeda is. The administration's critics claim, and some portions of the National Intelligence Estimate say, that the fighting in Iraq has increased al Qaeda recruiting. Probably so - even evildoers "rally 'round the flag."

If you think al Qaeda's recruitment and capability for violence is profiting from America's continued presence in Iraq, just wait until we prematurely withdraw. As Steyn continued, "And one morning we'll switch on the TV and the smoke and flames will be on this side of the Atlantic... ."

Read it All!

HT The Fourth Rail

A Closer Look at the Chingai Airstrike in Bajaur, Pakistan

Questions over target of strike in Bajaur, who conducted it, and why. Zawahiri may have been a target.

Tribesmen gather near the bodies of those killed during a Pakistan army air strike in Chenagai in the Bajaur tribal region bordering Afghanistan, October 30, 2006.

As we reported just this morning, there were going to be questions about the air strikes in Chingai that targeted a local madrassa serving as an al-Qaeda and Taliban training camp. Just hours after the strike, questions are arising about who actually conducted the strike, who was the target of the strike, how it was carried out, and why it occurred. Reports are emerging that the U.S. conducted the strike (as we predicted) and Ayman al-Zawahiri was the target.

Who was the target?

Alexis Debat reports Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second in command, was indeed the target of the nighttime raid. He was not killed, but 2-5 senior al-Qaeda were killed, “including the mastermind of the airliners plot in the U.K.” We presume this is Matiur Rehman.

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Read More

HT Austin Bay Blog

RBT has been on this kick for several years.

RBT

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A must-read from Tom Sowell

The left used to deride Tom Sowell most bitterly. The personal attacks seem to have faded a bit, but a t typical attack from the Left on Sowell was the nickname “Tom Soweto”(Soweto is a suburb of Johannesberg, South Africa, and under apartheid was a “township” for Africans.)

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This morning Sowell has a must-read essay in the Wall St. Journal, and it’s available on line.

Sowell’s lede:

Iraq is not the first war with ugly surprises and bloody setbacks. Even World War II, idealized in retrospect as it never was at the time–the war of “the greatest generation”–had a long series of disasters for Americans before victory was finally achieved.

The war began for Americans with the disaster at Pearl Harbor, followed by the tragic horror of the Bataan death march, the debacle at the Kasserine Pass and, even on the eve of victory, being caught completely by surprise by a devastating German counterattack that almost succeeded at the Battle of the Bulge.

Read More

HT Jim-Rose.com

Al-Qaida Launches 'Media War' Against U.S.
Friday, Oct. 27, 2006 10:59 p.m. EDT

As U.S. military losses mount steadily in Iraq, a document issued by a group linked to al Qaeda spells out new goals for America's most determined enemies and calls for a media war against the United States.

The document, which began circulating on the Internet this month, illustrates the techniques Washington's enemy is using in what President George W. Bush has called the "war of ideas."

"The people of jihad need to carry out a media war parallel to the military war . . . because we can observe the effect that the media have on nations," said the document, signed by Najd al-Rawi of the Global Islamic Media Front, a group associated with al Qaeda.

It lists targets for a public relations campaign ranging from the obvious - Internet chat rooms - to the surprising - "famous U.S. authors with e-mail addresses" and mentions New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and the academics Noam Chomsky, Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington.

The author suggests that video of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq could be a weapon in the media war and sway U.S. public opinion. Judging from a controversy that flared after CNN aired a video on October 18 showing insurgent snipers cutting down U.S. soldiers, such footage is considered a serious threat by some U.S. lawmakers.

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