Mahmoud a-Zahar of Hamas, former Palestinian foreign minister, says even if Israel withdraws from 90% of “occupied territory”, there will be no settlement
March 31, 2007, 12:57 PM (GMT+02:00)
Islam provides the only solution to the conflict and until it is achieved, armed resistance will continue. Engagement with Israel is a means not an end. There can be no compromise on the refugee question. The PLO, the Hamas leader declared, has no authority to represent the Palestinian people

DEBKAfile Exclusive: US financial sources in Bahrain report American investors in Bahrain advised to pack up business operations and leave

March 30, 2007, 10:53 PM (GMT+02:00)


USS Nimitz nuclear carrier

The advice came from officers with US Central Command 5th Fleet HQ at Manama, who spoke of security tension, a hint at an approaching war with Iran. Arab sources report the positioning of a Patriot anti-missile battery in Bahrain this week; they say occupancy at emirate hotels has soared past 90% due mostly to the influx of US military personnel. They also report Western media crews normally employed in military coverage are arriving in packs.
Thursday, March 29, Gen. Khaled al-‘Absi, Bahrain’s chief of air defense operations disclosed that new alarm networks had been installed and air defense systems upgraded to handle chemical, biological and radioactive attacks.
The USS Nimitz and its support ships will be departing San Diego Monday, April 2, to join the John C. Stennis Strike Group in the Persian Gulf. The nuclear carrier is due to relieve the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower , but military sources in the Gulf believe all three US carriers will stay put if tensions continue to climb or if fighting breaks out involving American, British and Iranian forces.
The mighty American armada is further supported by the USS Bataan and USS Boxer strike groups.
War tensions have been triggered most recently by the crisis over the seized British sailors and large-scale US sea, air and amphibious exercises in the Gulf.
1. DEBKAfile’s Tehran sources report that in the contest within the Iranian leadership over how to handle the affair of the captured British seamen, the wildest radical element has gained the upper hand, reducing the prospects of their imminent release. Heading the tough Tehran faction are hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Gen. Rahim Safavi, commander of the Revolutionary Guards whose naval wing performed the seizure.
They gained strength from the British premier Tony Blair’s initial passive, semi-conciliatory response. Tehran quickly grasped it had acquired not just a propaganda tool but a military asset, which the UK cannot match as long as the Americans desist from throwing their military might into the fray. Washington has refused to risk of a full-scale war confrontation with the Revolutionary Guards for the sake of the British sailors.
Iranian strategists also registered that, although the Blair government has begun moving mountains to gain the freedom of the marine crew held in Tehran, London appeared fairly laid back about the kidnap of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston in broad daylight by gunmen in Palestinian Gaza, although three weeks had gone by.
Revolutionary Guards serving with Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza no doubt filed a full report on the Johnston case to Tehran, which drew its own conclusions.
2. Taking part in the big demonstration of American naval, air and marine force launched March 27 are the two nuclear carrier strike forces Stennis and Eisenhower , thousands of marines and 100 warplanes. Maneuvers on this scale in the tight, overcrowded waters of the Persian Gulf carry risks of a collision between American and Iranian craft.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the Nimitz group is composed of the Princeton guided-missile cruiser, four guided missile destroyers – the Higgins , Chafee , John Paul Jones and Pinckney . The strike force is armed with two helicopter squadrons and a special unit for dismantling sea mines and other explosive devices.
Earlier, DEBKAfile quoted intelligence sources in Moscow as predicting that a US strike against Iranian nuclear installations codenamed Operation Bite has been scheduled for April 6 at 0040 hours. Missiles and air raids will conduct strikes designed to be devastating enough to set Tehran’s nuclear program several years back.

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http://www.rationalrevolution.net/war/collection_of_letters_by_ho_chi_.htm

Collection of Letters by Ho Chi Minh

Letter to Secretary of State Robert Lansing in Paris, June 18, 1919
We take the liberty of setting fourth the claims of the Annamite people on the occasion of the Allied victory. We count on your great kindness to honor our appeal by your support... Since the victory of the Allies, all subject peoples are frantic with hope at the prospect of an era of right and justice which should begin for them... in the struggle of civilization against barbarism.

In France, December 26, 1920
You all have known that French imperialism entered Indochina half a century ago. In its selfish interests, it conquered our country with bayonets. Since then we have not only been oppressed and exploited shamelessly, but also tortured and poisoned pitilessly. Plainly speaking, we have been poisoned with opium, alcohol, etc. I cannot, in some minutes, reveal all the atrocities inflicted on Indochina. Prisons outnumber schools and are always overcrowded with detainees. Natives are arrested and sometimes murdered without trial. Vietnamese are discriminated against. We have neither freedom of press nor freedom of speech. Even freedom of assembly and freedom of association do not exist. We have no right to live in other countries or to go abroad as tourists. We are forced to live in utter ignorance and obscurity because we have no right to study. In Indochina the colonialists find all ways and means to force us to smoke opium and drink alcohol to poison and beset us. Thousands of Vietnamese have been led to a slow death or massacred to protect other people's interests. Such is the treatment inflicted upon more that 20 million Vietnamese, that is more then half the population of France. And they are said to be under French protection!

Letter to President Harry Truman, February 16, 1945. The letter was never answered and was not declassified until 1972
DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

Our VIETNAM people, as early as 1941, stood by the Allies' side and fought against the Japanese and their associates, the French colonialists.

From 1941 to 1945 we fought bitterly, sustained by the patriotism, of our fellow-countrymen and by the promises made by the Allies at YALTA, SAN FRANCISCO and POTSDAM.

When the Japanese were defeated in August 1945, the whole Vietnam territory was united under a Provisional Republican Government, which immediately set out to work. In five months, peace and order were restored, a democratic republic was established on legal bases, and adequate help was given to the Allies in the carrying out of their disarmament mission.

But the French Colonialists, who betrayed in wartime both the Allies and the Vietnamese, have come back, and are waging on us a murderous and pitiless war in order reestablish their domination. Their invasion has extended to South Vietnam and is menacing us in North Vietnam. It would take volumes to give even an abbreviated report of the crisis and assassinations they are committing everyday in this fighting area.

This aggression is contrary to all principles of international law and the pledge made by the Allies during World War II. It is a challenge to the noble attitude shown before, during, and after the war by the United States Government and People. It violently contrasts with the firm stand you have taken in your twelve point declaration, and with the idealistic loftiness and generosity expressed by your delegates to the United Nations Assembly, MM. BYRNES, STETTINIUS, AND J.F. DULLES.

The French aggression on a peace-loving people is a direct menace to world security. It implies the complicity, or at least the connivance of the Great Democracies. The United Nations ought to keep their words. They ought to interfere to stop this unjust war, and to show that they mean to carry out in peacetime the principles for which they fought in wartime.

Our Vietnamese people, after so many years of spoliation and devastation, is just beginning its building-up work. It needs security and freedom, first to achieve internal prosperity and welfare, and later to bring its small contribution to world-reconstruction.

These security and freedom can only be guaranteed by our independence from any colonial power, and our free cooperation with all other powers. It is with this firm conviction that we request of the United Sates as guardians and champions of World Justice to take a decisive step in support of our independence.

What we ask has been graciously granted to the Philippines. Like the Philippines our goal is full independence and full cooperation with the UNITED STATES. We will do our best to make this independence and cooperation profitable to the whole world.

I am Dear Mr. PRESIDENT,

Respectfully Yours,

(Signed) Ho Chi Minh

Letter to Secretary of State James Byrnes, November 1, 1945
[Could I Send] to the United States of America a delegation of about 50 Vietnam youths with a view to establish friendly cultural relations with American youth on the one hand, and carrying on further studies in Engineering, Agriculture, as well as other lines of specialization on the other. They have been all these years keenly interested in things American and earnestly desirous to get in touch with American people whose fine stand for the noble ideals of international Justice and Humanity, and whose modern technical achievements have so strongly appealed to them.

Vietnamese Declaration of Independance, September 2, 1945
"All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.

The Declaration of The French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: "All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights."

Those are undeniable truths.

Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow citizens. The have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice.

In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty.

They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct political regimes in the North, the Center, and the South of Viet-Nam in order to wreck our national unity and prevent our people from being united.

They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots; they have drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood.

They have fettered public opinion; they have practiced obscurantism against our people.

To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol.

In the field of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people and devastated our land.

They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, our raw materials. They have monopolized the issuing of bank notes and the export trade.

They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced people, especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty.

They have hampered the prospering of our national bourgeoisie, they have mercilessly exploited our workers.

In the autumn of 1940, when the Japanese fascists violated Indochina's territory to establish new bases in their fight against the Allies, the French imperialists went down on their bended knees and handed over our country to them.

Thus, from that date, our people were subjected to the double yoke of the French and the Japanese. Their sufferings and miseries increased. The result was that, from the end of last year to the beginning of this year, from Quang Tri Province to the North of Viet-Nam, more than two million of our fellow citizens died from starvation. 9 March 1945, the French troops were disarmed by the Japanese. The French colonialists either fled or surrendered, showing that not only were they incapable of "protecting" us, but that, in the span five years, they had twice sold our country to the Japanese.

On several occasions before 9 March, the Viet Minh League urged the French to ally themselves with it against the Japanese. Instead of agreeing to this proposal, the French colonialists so intensified their terrorist activities against the Viet Minh members that before fleeing they massacred a great number of our political prisoners detained at Yen Bay and Cao Bang.

Notwithstanding all this, our fellow citizens have always manifested toward the French a tolerant and humane attitude. Even after the Japanese Putsch of March, 1945, the Viet Minh League helped many Frenchmen to cross the frontier, rescued some of them from Japanese jails, and protected French lives and property.

From the autumn of 1940, our country had in fact ceased to be a French colony and had become a Japanese possession.

After the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our whole people rose to regain our national sovereignty and to found the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam.

The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and not from the French.

The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated. Our people have broken the chains which for nearly a century have fettered them and have won independence for the Fatherland. Our people at the same time have overthrown the monarchic regime that has reigned supreme for dozens of centuries. In its place has been established the present Democratic Republic.

For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government, representing the whole Vietnamese people, declare that from now on we break off all relations of a colonial character with France; we repeal all the international obligation that France has so far subscribed to on behalf of Viet-Nam, and we abolish all the special rights the French have unlawfully acquired in our Fatherland.

The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer their country.

We are convinced that the Allied nations, which at Teheran and San Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Viet-Nam.

A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the fascists during these last years, such a people must be free and independent.

For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, solemnly declare to the world that Viet-Nam has the right to be a free and independent country and in fact it is so already. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty

Ho Chi Minh quoted by Rene J. Defourneaux, August 9, 1966
I have always been impressed with your country's treatment of the Philippines. You kicked the Spanish out and let the Filipinos develop their own country. You were not looking for real estate, and I admire you for that. I have a government that is organized and ready to go. Your statesmen make eloquent speeches about helping those with self-determination. We are self-determined. Why not help us? Am I any different from Nehru, Quezon- even your own George Washington? I, too, want to set my people free.



Return to Chapter

Another example where economic connectivity is the real key towards democracy and a tool against terror.

Would ‘democracy’ have been a better coming out of the French control? Probably. Had Ho Chi Minh’s interaction with the Truman administration been developed, the ‘Declaration of Independence’-American style which Minh presented would have been easily adopted.

Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist before he was a communist.

So just watch and see how the power of the ‘discretionary dollar’ or whatever there currency is, empower the people who will rise up to create a pluralistic society.

They have seen Japan, Korea, Singapore, and even Russian go in a direction of free markets and some form of pluralism which is inevitable.

It challenges me to think if somehow we could have done the same with Iraq. I don’t think so.
Saddam Hussein was to much of an incumbrance to anything but state or Saddam controlled economy. HE HAD TO GO, in order for the process of economic liberization to happen.

It will take time, but Kurdistan in the north is leading the way. The Sunni Baathist are screwed and the Shia will wallow in theocratic inefficiencies which will keep their women out of the work place and other forms of liberalization keep their economy more narrow.

It will go the way of Iran’s failing economy which used to have a vibrant tech sector under the
Shah which has virtually dried up. Some 350,000 young people graduating from college are leaving the country for opportunities abroad. Dubai is only a 45 minute flight away.

A large number of its women are choosing not to have children as they intuitively know there is not bright future in this regime.

The institution of ‘short term’ or convenience marraiges amount to little more than a taxation on prostitution and some religious justification for behavior in this male dominate society.

The Kurds, who are Iraqi, and Sunni, have managed to create increasing economic connectivity with Turkey and are experiencing a boom in there development. The vibrant economy and optimism is an example of hope which not many decades ago had two of its leading tribes, Barzani and Talabani warring in the streets. Now there have the capitalism gene and co-exist with Talabani one of the top office holders in the central government while Barzani is “Trump de jour” of private industry there.

ECONOMIC CONNECTIVITY could have bribed the tribal leaders into the political process. Unfortunately, the Bush administration decided that ‘tribal sheiks’ would have no place in the new Iraq! Go figure! Nowl with some fine work of the US Marines the sheik are beginning to reject the Sunni Al Queada influences and are fighting against them in Fallujah and Al Anbar Province.

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Vietnam

Plenty to smile about
Mar 29th 2007 | BANGKOK AND HO CHI MINH CITY
From The Economist print edition

But despite its successes, Vietnam's ruling Communist Party remains terrified of any challenge to its monopoly on power

Corbis

A SUSTAINED boom, with annual economic growth consistently around 7-8% since 2000, has transformed Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), its largest conurbation, is bustling, confident and expanding fast. Its fancy restaurants and designer shops are not just for the increasing numbers of foreign tourists and businessmen. The middle class seems broader, and the gap between rich and poor narrower, than in many other South-East Asian cities.

It is over 20 years since Vietnam's ruling communists abandoned collectivism and embarked on their doi moi market-based reforms, not unlike those China adopted a few years earlier. The country has come far since then. In Hanoi, the capital, food was rationed in the gloomy pre-reform era, and even senior officials wore threadbare clothes. “Boat people” were washing up on foreign shores.

Vietnam does not have the billion-plus populations of China and India. But with 84m people, it is no minnow. It is a serious contender in the world economy, especially since joining the World Trade Organisation this year. It has become Brazil's main rival in coffee exporting and Thailand's in rice. Vietnam is one of Asia's most open economies: two-way trade is around 160% of GDP, more than twice the ratio for China and over four times India's.

The country has put the wars of the 1960s and 1970s behind it. Americans are welcome these days, especially if they bring dollars to invest. Likewise, an ancient animosity with China—a frequent invader down the centuries—has been put aside in the interests of prosperity.

Reform has come in fits and starts since doi moi began but, at present, Vietnam's palpable success encourages boldness. The National Assembly this week urged the government to press on with building a market economy. The government in turn is pressing state firms for faster privatisation plans. Vietnam had only begun opening when Asia's 1997 economic storm hit, so, unlike some of its neighbours (see article), it was largely unscathed, and growth has accelerated since.

Where did it all go right? Observers detect a strengthening will to win among the Vietnamese but struggle to explain it. One factor is the self-confidence that comes from having, as they see it, beaten off three world powers (America, China and France) in the past half-century. There is also Confucianism: Vietnam has kept some useful bits, such as the belief in education and self-betterment, without the feudalistic overtones. And success has bred success—liberalisation is producing prosperity, encouraging further reform.

Vietnam has a corruption problem but is taking serious steps to tackle it. A former deputy trade minister was jailed last week for 14 years for bribery—the latest among dozens of top officials given stiff penalties for dishonesty. The armed forces, such a baleful influence in some countries, are fairly clean. Many Asian economies are sucked dry by entrenched, predatory elites. In Vietnam, although collectivist economics have gone, the government remains collective and consensual. Leadership is shared between the party boss, president and prime minister. No personality cults are allowed, other than the one idolising Ho Chi Minh, the revolutionary leader, who died in 1969.

The Vietnamese are enjoying new-found wealth and personal choice, including being allowed to educate their children abroad. Party bosses, conscious of what happened to their former backers in the deceased Soviet Union, realise that they must keep the people happy to stay in power. So far it is working. “Right now people don't think about politics,” says Nguyen Kim Dinh, a former city-government worker who now plays Vietnam's stockmarket full-time. “They just think about earning money.”

Even so, the National Assembly, once a rubber stamp, has become a forum for real debate and scrutiny. Serious criticisms of the government are aired and reported in the press. A record number of self-nominated candidates are standing in the Assembly elections due in May.

However, the party remains terrified of the slightest challenge to its monopoly on power. The press is to remain party-run and independent candidates for the election must still be party-approved. The government claims no one is arrested for his political views, but in reality it treats pro-democracy activists as common criminals, jailing them for supposed spying or sabotage. In February charges were laid against Nguyen Van Ly, a dissident priest who founded Block 8406, a new and apparently widely supported group which last year issued a manifesto for democracy.

“The dissidents are getting bolder,” says Nguyen Manh Hung, an America-based Vietnamese academic. But Carl Thayer, a veteran Vietnam-watcher from the Australian Defence Force Academy, reckons that stronger pressure is coming from reformers inside the party, whose demands are remarkably similar to the dissidents'. Either way, as the Vietnamese enjoy more economic freedom and as more exiled Vietnamese return, bringing foreign ideas of pluralism and free speech, expectations of political liberty will grow.

If so, the ruling party has several regional models from which it can choose. In prosperous Singapore, the People's Action Party allows opposition parties to operate within strict constraints. In prosperous Taiwan, the Kuomintang has abandoned absolute rule for genuine alternation of power. But despite Vietnam's economic success there is little sign to date that the ruling party feels sure enough of its popularity to permit genuine political competition. Fear can be a habit for the ruler, as well as the ruled.

Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Detainee Admits to Receiving Funds from 9/11 Hijackers
By Carmen L. Gleason
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, March 29, 2007 – A detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has admitted to being one of the financial facilitators for the mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

The Defense Department today released the transcript of the March 21 combat status review tribunal hearing held at the detention facility for Mustafa al-Hawsawi. The tribunal was an administrative hearing to determine only if Hawsawi could be designated an enemy combatant.
Hawsawi is one of 14 high-value detainees who were transferred Sept. 6, 2006, to Guantanamo Bay from CIA custody. The CSRT hearings for these detainees are not open to media because of national security concerns, DoD officials said.
The detainee heard evidence against him charging that while in the United Arab Emirates he received nearly $20,000 from the Sept. 11 hijackers Mohamed Atta, Waleed al-Shehri and Marwan al-Shehhi from locations in Maryland and Massachusetts.
Although he did receive the funds, Hawsawi said, speaking through an interpreter, he didn't do anything with the transfers after placing them in his bank account.
The detainee also admitted to having repeated communications with Osama bin Laden and Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, but said he neither worked for them nor claimed allegiance to jihadist or al Qaeda causes.
Hawsawi also said he communicated with four of the hijackers prior to the attacks, but he had no specific knowledge of the operation until afterward.
Both Muhammad and al-Shibh talked to Hawsawi on Sept. 10, 2001, but he said he had no prior knowledge of the attacks.
"(Shibh) told me that (the) next night there would be an operation, and therefore I should go back to Pakistan," Hawsawi said. The detainee said that he returned to Pakistan on Sept. 12, 2001, and from there entered Afghanistan, where he helped to train jihadists to rebel and attack if needed.
Hawsawi also heard evidence charging him with the possession of a laptop computer hard drive containing al Qaeda expense reports and allowance information from 2002 to 2003. Officials also charged him with the possession of detailed operational status and family information of known al Qaeda operatives.
Although the detainee did not deny possessing the computer, through a personal representative he said he didn't have any knowledge of the content. Hawsawi said the information on the laptop was copied from several different personal computer hard drives located in a safe house. The information was copied to several laptops to make it easier to transport, he said.
A 19-page handwritten telephone and address book containing the contact information for numerous al Qaeda operatives was found in a laptop computer case associated with Hawsawi. The document was discovered where a senior al Qaeda operative was captured.
Prior to the hearing, a reproduction of the phone book was made available to the detainee for his review when he said it could not be something he owned since he "didn't know enough people to fill a 19-page phone (book)."
The hearing came to a close when the CSRT president said an assessment would be made as to whether the detainee continued to pose a threat to the United States or coalition partners in the ongoing conflict against terrorist organizations.
The U.S. government established the CSRT process at Guantanamo Bay as a result of a June 2004 Supreme Court decision in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden who challenged his detention at Guantanamo Bay. Between July 2004 and March 2005, DoD conducted 558 CSRTs at Guantanamo Bay. At the time, 38 detainees were determined to no longer meet the definition of enemy combatant, and 520 detainees were found to be enemy combatants.
Hawsawi's tribunal followed the March 10 proceedings for Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, who admitted to masterminding the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks as well as the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
Proceedings also were held March 9 for Abu Faraj al-Libi, an alleged senior al Qaeda member, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who is said to have helped Muhammad plan the Sept. 11 attacks. Neither of the two elected to be present for their tribunals.

Related Sites:
Combatant Status Review Tribunals/Administrative Review Boards

Related Articles:
Detainee Admits to Helping Orchestrate Embassy, USS Cole Attacks
Al Qaeda Operative Admits to Masterminding 9/11 Attacks