Wednesday, March 02, 2005

DEBKAfile Reports: Allawi Will Soon Pull Down The Insurgency

Some bloggers have been skeptical of the highly sensitive intel that comes from Debka.com. Indeed, sometimes it is accurate and sometimes it is not. But television reports backing up this Debka report have me believing that indeed Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is about to crack the insurgency with a combination of Intel, confirmed reports of HUGE weapons seizures as well as the capture of most of the Al Qaida In Iraq leadership save Al-Zarkawi himself. According to the report he has also been in secret talks with the former Saddamites that make up part of the overall insurgency.

Here is the report in its entirety. Witness it and let us see if it's claims come to pass.

The Baghdad government’s burgeoning optimism over the prospects of very soon collaring Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda’s man in Iraq, is fed from interim prime minister Iyad Allawi office.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources reveal he is telling his inner circle that the special anti-terror units under his direct command are closing in on their quarry. This drive is not divorced from his campaign to keep the job and it has produced a string of successes in the last ten days.

Talib al-Dulaymi, the trusted aide aka as Abu Qutaybah, who set up Zarqawi’s appointments with fellow terrorist chiefs, arranged safe houses and transport, was captured on February 20 at Anah NW of Baghdad with Ahmad Ismail al-Rawi, identified as one of Zarqawi’s drivers. In custody too are Mohammed Najam Ibrahim, described as leader of an al Qaeda-affiliated cell in Baqouba and responsible for a series of beheadings, and another top Zarqawi aide, Haidar Abu Bawari.

Iraqi government security services claim to have infiltrated the terrorist network with embedded policemen.

Allawi’s certainty that the Jordanian terror mastermind is almost within his grasp rests on certain events:

First, in the last two weeks, Iraqi security forces have quietly unearthed Zarqawi’s principal ammunition and explosive caches, partly helped by information obtained in the interrogations of the captured terrorists. Allawi believes that many of the archterrorist’s followers will turn themselves in when they see the wherewithal for fighting on and carrying out attacks is running out.

Second, Zarqawi has been sighted several times making his way through the Sunni Triangle north of Baghdad in the direction of the Iranian frontier, indicating he is on the run.

Third, Allawi recently closed a three-way deal with the most influential Iraqi Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and the Tehran leadership for Iran to arrest him if he tries to cross the border and surrender him to Sistani in Najef. There, Zarqawi will stand trial for murdering 182 people and injuring 550 in the 2004 Ashoura massacres he orchestrated in Najef and Karbala. The Iraqi leader has not revealed how this agreement was negotiated with Tehran.

Allawi also informed his close aides he had derived encouragement from additional developments:

1. Al Qaeda’s network chiefs in Iraq have their backs to the wall but are not alone; in secret talks with Allawi, several heads of the Baathist underground guerrilla insurgency, have offered to lay down arms if Baghdad sets up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the lines of the South African forum devised by Nobel peace prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. They want the chance to confess their crimes before the commission, repent publicly, obtain a pardon and walk free. The interim prime minister is willing to consider this option quite seriously.

2. Allawi believes a good basis for a breakthrough in negotiations with Iraq’s Sunni leaders is already in place, embodied in understandings attained by former US ambassador John Negroponte before his abrupt departure from Baghdad to take up his new appointment as director of national intelligence in Washington. DEBKAfile’s Baghdad sources reveal the three points agreed: The Sunnis will gain full partnership in the post-election government with ministerial appointments; they will sit on the commission drafting the new constitution, despite having no seats in parliament; and they will participate unreservedly in the next general elections.

3. Sunni leaders and the Baath underground recognize that a major US-Iraqi offensive on the lines of the Falujjah operation is in the works - either against Ramadi, northwest of Baghdad, where the action has begun, or Latafiya south of the capital, hotbed of a mixed bag of insurgent groups, including al Qaeda operatives.

4. According to our intelligence and counter-terror sources, Allawi has also sent a message to Syrian president Bashar Assad with a long list of top Syrian officials, politicians and army officers who are on the take in a big way from Baathist fugitives activating the insurgency in Iraq from their safe base in the country. The name of every Syrian bribe-taker is tagged with the amount he received and the payer’s identity.

The message stated that the Iraqi ambassador, Hassan Allawi (no relation), would not return to Damascus until Baathist fugitives were extradited. He also made good on his threat to have television run tapes of confessions by captured Syrian agents who were sent by their government to fight the Americans in Iraq.

Our Iraqi sources note that Allawi expects his momentum for bringing an end to violence in Iraq to take him far along the road to the prime minister’s office in Baghdad. He also thinks he can count on substantial Shiite support in the new national assembly and that the Kurds and Turkomen are in his pocket. The high card he is playing is the bid to prove he is the only Iraqi politician capable of drawing the Sunni factions in sharing power in the central government.

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Jewish Leaders Call Sen. Byrd's Comments "Hideous and Outrageous"

I believe Sen. "KKK" Byrd is going to need to apologize for his outrageous exagerations about Republicans. His comments have taken the focus away from the actual issues and onto the rhetoric Democrats are so fond of throwing around. But Robert Byrd is poisonous even by Democratic standards and they are no longer able, thanks to the blogosphere, to hide the crazy old grandfather in the basement.

The Associated Press reports to Haaretz Israel Daily News:

Byrd, a member of the minority Democrats, was speaking in opposition to threats by the Republican majority leader to force through a rule banning use of the filibuster, a parliamentary ploy by which the minority can stall legislation, against President George W. Bush's nominations to federal court judgeships.

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said Wednesday that Byrd's remarks showed "a profound lack of understanding as to who Hitler was," and the senator should apologize to the American people.

"It is hideous, outrageous and offensive for Senator Byrd to suggest that the Republican Party's tactics could in any way resemble those of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party," Foxman said.

In his comments Tuesday, Byrd defended the right that senators have to use filibusters, procedural delays of unlimited debate that can kill an item unless 60 of the 100 senators vote to move ahead.

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Did You Know That Republicans Are Really Nazis?

If you were not aware of that then you are not getting enough of your daily news from internet blogs. Hugh Hewitt's boy, Generalissimo has been leading the reporting of Senator Robert "KKK" Byrd's abhorent comments. Here is the crux of Senator Byrd's comments from Generalissimo's blog (as seen on CNN!) RadioBlogger.com.

Hitler's originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions in modern conditions are carried out with, and not without, not against, the power of the State. The correct order of events was first to secure access to that power of the State, and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality. He never abandoned the cloak of legality. He recognized the enormous, psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made his illegality legal. And that is what the nuclear option seeks to do. To Rule 22 of the standing rules of the Senate. I said to someone this morning who was shoveling snow in my area. "What does nuclear option mean to you?" He answered, "Oh, you mean with Iran?" The people generally don't know what this is about. The nuclear option seeks to alter the rules by sidestepping the rules, thus making the impermissable the rule.

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Since Iraq Voted.....

Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard has been opining that January 30, 2005 (the day Iraq voted) will go down in history, along with November 9, 1989 (the fall of the Berlin Wall) as red letter days in Democracy. You won't want to miss this stirring article that gives 3 examples of how The Bush Doctrine is changing hearts and minds around the world.

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Southern California News: Jews Adding To Republican Ranks

I came across this excellent local piece and want to share it with you. It is best read in it's entirety so please visit Los Angeles Daily News Website to read it.

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From There To Here And Blog Again

Jonah Goldberg writes in today's Townhall.com that the entity known as the "blog" (short for web log) got it's start many years ago through the beginning of a conservative revolution. Mr. Goldberg writes:

In many ways, the real story of the bloggers' triumph is the story of a right-wing (though not always conservative) populist uprising that started half a century ago. The story begins with National Review's founding in 1955 and extends through five decades of steady, heavy and difficult work. In the 1970s it was Spiro Agnew's denunciation of liberal media bias that ultimately resulted in William Safire getting a job at the New York Times. In the Wall Street Journal, the late Robert Bartley's op-ed page opened a new front in the heart of elite daily journalism.

Don't let the word "conservative" fool you. Rebels on the right were pioneers in the political exploitation of new and alternative technologies long before anyone knew what blogs were. Led by Rush Limbaugh, conservatives even revived AM radio, making it a major source of a populist backlash against liberal-controlled institutions. Cable profoundly transformed politics. C-Span alone did more to demystify government than a generation of muckrakers - or bloggers - ever could. CNN pioneered the steady erosion of the Big Three Networks' stranglehold on information. Later, Fox News soon destroyed CNN's stranglehold on 24-hour news.

Jonah Goldberg also answers liberals that think they are part of this Blog Revolution:
Left-wing bloggers believe they are part of the same "revolution" as right-wing bloggers are. They're not. The conservative blogs are the shock troops of a decades-long battle to seize back the culture. Conservatives have always had to rely on "alternative media" - magazines, AM radio, blogs - because the Mainstream Media barred the door to conservatives. And even when they let a few token ones in, they had to be labeled "conservative" first and journalists a distant second. The lefty blogs are something else entirely. They represent - much like the still lame liberal talk radio and the new liberal think tanks - an attempt to copycat conservative successes. Their fight is not with the monolithic mainstream media (or academia) but with the usurpers. Politics is not a battle of technology. It is a battle of ideas, and therein lies all the difference.

UPDATE: Just because the left-blogs are not part of this particular revolution does not mean they are not purveyors of ideas. As The Weekly Standard's Dan Barnett points out, the left-blogs can go from wacko conspiracy theories to sophisticated political observervations in a single hour:
...in perhaps the clearest sign to date of the Kos community's growing strength, this past weekend Democratic Congressman Maurice Hinchey echoed Regeneration Man's suspicion, saying: "They set up Dan Rather. Now, I mean, I have my own beliefs about how that happened: it originated with Karl Rove, in my belief, in the White House."

NOT ALL of the commentary on Daily Kos is ridiculous conspiracy mongering. Many of the commenters are sophisticated political observers who offer keen insights. The discussion that followed a recent Moulitsas post disparaging the Democrats' professional "strategists" is instructive in this regard. Moulitsas's item was thought provoking and worthwhile--he posited that the Democratic party's strengths are in its grassroots (as personified by his website) and that the establishment strategists' efforts to move away from those grass roots have been disastrous. The conversation that followed the "strategists" post was similarly mature.

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