WASHINGTON – Speaking with one voice, President Bush (news – web sites)’s top intelligence and military officials said Wednesday that terrorists are regrouping for possible new strikes against the United States.

They said the best defense was for Congress to approve the president’s military and anti-terror budget. But some in Congress, including prominent Republicans, were questioning some of that spending.

Offering few specifics on terror threats, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a House hearing that the government could reasonably predict attacks would come from terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and other means.

Meanwhile, new CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee the Iraq war was giving terrorists experience and contacts for future attacks, and Director Robert Mueller expressed worry that a sleeper operative in the U.S. may have been in place for years, awaiting orders for an attack.

“I remain very concerned about what we are not seeing,” Mueller said in remarks he submitted to the senators.
Full Article: news.yahoo.com

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran and Syria, who both are facing pressure from the United States, said Wednesday they will form a “united front” to confront possible threats against them, state-run television reported.

“In view of the special conditions faced by Syria, Iran will transfer its experience, especially concerning sanctions, to Syria,” Mohammad Reza Aref, Iran’s first vice president, was quoted as saying after meeting Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Otari.

“At this sensitive point, the two countries require a united front due to numerous challenges.”

Otari concurred, saying, “The challenges we face in Syria and Iran require us to be in one front to confront all the challenges imposed (on us) by others.”
Full Article: news.yahoo.com

“This is the work of an intelligence service, not a small group,” said Rime Allaf, Middle East analyst at London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs.

Sam Hamod, Ph.D.

02/14/05 “Information Clearing House” – – We must do as they do in other criminal cases, look at who had the most to gain from the assassination of Prime Minister Harriri. The Lebanese had a lot to lose, as did the Syrians (he was close to Bashir Al Assad, the leader of Syria), as did the other Arab countries in the region who saw him as a strong leader and a stabilizing force in Lebanese politics. On the other hand, Israel has wanted chaos in Lebanon, as has America, and both countries have been agitating to get Hezbollah outlawed and both America and Israel have wanted the Lebanese to oust Syria. In both cases, the Lebanese government has said, “NO,” that Hezbollah is a respected part of Lebanese life and that Syria is there to protect Lebanon from Israeli aggression.

No matter where else you look, no one else had anything to gain except Israel and the U.S. because this death could cause some possible upset in Lebanese politics and life.

Most Middle East experts in the Arab and Muslim worlds believe Israeli hands were at work in the killing of former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafik Harriri.
FullArticle:infoclearinghouse.info

KIRKUK, Iraq (Reuters) – U.S. troops were braced for violence in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk Monday after a strong showing by Kurds in provincial elections threatened to upset the city’s delicate ethnic balance.

“I think there’ll be some ethnic violence here, I really do,” said U.S. Captain Mitch Smith, a company commander in the heart of Kirkuk, the most ethnically diverse city in Iraq.

“Before the elections there were concerted attacks on coalition forces and Iraqi security forces but I think the focus may have shifted now,” he told Reuters.

“Rather than targeting us, I expect we might see the various groups in the city fighting among themselves.”

Kirkuk’s 850,000-strong population is split roughly three ways between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, with Assyrian Christians forming a minority of around three percent.

The Kurds regard the city as theirs, and many want it to become the capital of a federal Kurdish state within Iraq, or even an independent Kurdistan.

The Turkmen, who have close cultural and linguistic ties with Turkey, trace their arrival in Kirkuk from eastern Asia to the 11th century, and have no intention of leaving.
Full Article:nytimes.com/reuters

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 13 – The razor-thin margin apparently captured by the Shiite alliance here in election results announced Sunday seems almost certain to enshrine a weak government that will be unable to push through sweeping changes, like granting Islam a central role in the new Iraqi state.

The verdict handed down by Iraqi voters in the Jan. 30 election appeared to be a divided one, with the Shiite political alliance, backed by the clerical leadership in Najaf, opposed in nearly equal measure by an array of mostly secular minority parties.
Full Article: nytimes.com

My, how convenient.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 13 – A broad Shiite alliance led by two Iran-backed religious parties won a slim majority of seats in the national assembly, final election results showed Sunday.

The alliance’s victory – in the first fully elected parliament in Iraq’s 85-year history as a separate state – was narrower than the alliance had projected and set the stage for protracted maneuvering.

The 8.5 million people who voted, a turnout of 58 percent, appeared to have spread their choices widely enough to assure that power in the new government, and in the drafting of a new constitution, will have to be broadly shared among the assembly’s 275 members, lessening the possibility that a religious Shiite theocracy could emerge from the elections.
Full Article: nytimes.com

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush on Monday urged Congress to approve quickly his request for $82 billion to cover the costs of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and a myriad of other internationally related expenses, such as training Iraqi security forces, aiding tsunami victims and helping military forces in other nations.

“The majority of this request will ensure that our troops continue to get what they need to protect themselves and complete their mission,'” Bush said in a statement released before the White House officially sent the supplemental budget request to Capitol Hill.
Full Article: apnews.myway.com

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Rafik Hariri, a self-made billionaire construction tycoon who amassed his fortune in Saudi Arabia, led the rebuilding of a shattered Lebanon as its prime minister in the years following the tiny country’s protracted civil war.

Hariri died Monday when his motorcade was bombed in Beirut. He was 60.

Hariri’s vast fortune — estimated at $4 billion — allowed him to maintain political independence without defying his country’s main power-broker, Syria, which keeps about 15,000 troops in Lebanon and influences virtually all key political decisions.

He oversaw the country’s revival after the 1975-90 civil war, serving as prime minister for 10 of 14 years before stepping down in October 2004 amid an intense power struggle. For years, he’d been engaged in a fierce rivalry with Lebanon’s pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud.

A charismatic man with international connections — including a close friendship with French President Jacques Chirac — Hariri was for years regarded by many Lebanese as the country’s hope for economic revival and political stability.

Though he had publicly tried to avoid offending Damascus, his pro-Syrian opponents accused him of being the driving force behind the U.S.-backed U.N. Security Council resolution in September that demanded Syria withdraw its army from Lebanon.
Full Article: yahoo.com/news

GAZA (Reuters) – Thousands of Palestinians, some wearing mock suicide-bomber belts, lined Gaza roads Monday to welcome home the remains of 15 gunmen handed over by Israel in a gesture to help President Mahmoud Abbas shore up a cease-fire.

The move gave a modest boost to Abbas as he tries to nudge militants, now observing an informal pause in fighting Israel, into a formal cease-fire in keeping with a declaration he made at a Feb. 8 summit with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Full Article: nytimes.com

15 corpses. Just what the Palestinians need. Strange ‘gesture.’

Police investigators arrested three suspects last week – including a member of the Likud’s Central Committee – on suspicion of planning to use forged documents to sell land belonging to absentee Palestinian owners to an American millionaire.

The three allegedly planned to sell land amounting to 92 dunams (about 23 acres) between Jerusalem and the West Bank town of Beit Sahur for $10 million, according to Superintendent Aharon Gilor, head of the police fraud squad’s northern division.

At the start of last week, police arrested Issa Safouri, a 34-year-old Nazareth resident and a member of the Likud Central Committee who is thought to have made of use of forged documents and located the American buyer.
Full Article:haaretzdaily.com