This article has appeared in Canadian news but not, so far, on our networks here in US.
Do you remember how, before the Nov. election, FauxNews was posting the terror alert levels on a daily basis? After the election, they ceased to talk about it.
Do you remember how Bush claimed that if we fought the "terrorists" over in Iraq, that would save us from attacks at home? Ha!
How long will we let our news organizations get away with filtering out important stuff like this for political reasons?
How long before our nation realizes just how vulnerable we are inside the US to retaliatory attacks from un-identifiable sources? When some of our cities are destroyed, what good are armies, planes and bombs if you don't even know who did it, out of the long list of nations and groups that have been turned into our enemies by American aggression, economic imperialism, and political meddling in other people's governments? In today's world, even relatively small groups can build or buy devestatingly destructive weapons. We really can not afford to go around the world acting like bullies and pissing everybody off. The oceans no longer protect us from counter-attacks, as 9/11 demonstrated.
The consequences of the neo/cons' fascist policies will haunt us for many years to come and will almost certainly include massive destruction and death inside America. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."

http://www.canada.com/national/natio...1-1dca5e5c821a

Iraqi insurgents threaten attack inside United States
'Big surprise' planned: 'We will give Americans a taste of what civilians in our country go through'

Ned Parker
Agence France-Presse, with files from The Daily Telegraph

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

BAGHDAD - The Islamic Army in Iraq, one of the main armed groups fighting U.S. forces in the war-torn country, has threatened to carry out attacks inside the United States, according to a statement posted on a Web site yesterday.

This year "will bring woes on America. The mujahedeen [holy warriors] have prepared big surprises for your sons outside America and a big surprise for you inside America," said the statement, the authenticity of which could not be confirmed.

The statement appeared to mark a disturbing shift in strategy by the shadowy Sunni Muslim group that has claimed a number of attacks and killings of hostages in Iraq, including an Italian journalist and two Pakistanis.

The mujahedeen "will take the battle from inside our country [Iraq] to yours," the statement said.

"We address you after you finished celebrating the new year, hoping that you are no longer drunk.... We will give American civilians a taste of what civilians in our country go through," said the statement, presented as a "message to the American people."

The statement, which described Americans as "uncivilized" and "ignorant," claimed that "the whole world" hates the United States.

"Are you aware that the number of those who support striking America on its own turf has greatly increased?" it said.

"Last year was a picnic for your soldiers [in Iraq]. The year 2005 will witness a quantitative and qualitative change in the operations against your army, which will go down in history," the statement said.

The Islamic Army was one of three militant groups, along with the al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sunna and the previously unknown Army of the Mujahedeen, that warned in an Internet statement last week that they would strike at anyone taking part in Iraqi elections this month.

"Those who participate in this dirty farce will not be sheltered from the blows of the mujahedeen," the statement said.

Militant groups have mounted an increasingly effective insurgency against U.S.-led troops inside Iraq, particularly on their home turf in Sunni Arab areas north and west of the capital.

A suicide bomber from Ansar al-Sunna managed to infiltrate a U.S. base in the northern city of Mosul last month and blow himself up inside the mess tent, killing 22 people in the deadliest single strike against the U.S. military since the March, 2003, invasion.

The Iraqi government's intelligence chief said yesterday he believes the insurgents wreaking havoc across the country outnumber the U.S. forces stationed there.

General Mohammad Shahwani said there are an estimated 200,000 partisans in Iraq, although he believed their hard-core fighters number about 40,000.

Asked whether the insurgents were winning, Gen. Shahwani said: "They are not losing."

But none of the insurgent groups has claimed an attack outside Iraq, and their ability to operate outside their home territory remains unproven.

The Islamic Army nevertheless boasts a grisly record of kidnapping and murder inside Iraq.

Since its first statements in March, it has rarely failed to deliver on its ultimatums and did not hesitate to execute Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, correspondent for the weekly Diario della Settimana, and two Pakistanis it was holding.

It was also one of two groups that claimed the March murders of four U.S. contractors, and the gruesome mutilation of two of them, in Falluja. Their deaths sparked a month-long U.S. military onslaught on the town, west of Baghdad.

But the Islamic Army has shown a willingness to bend when it has felt its political ends are being met. It chose to spare French journalists Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot in December after holding them captive for four months.

It said the pair were being freed "because they were proven not to spy for U.S. forces, in response to appeals and demands from Islamic institutions and bodies, and in appreciation of the French government's stand on the Iraq issue and the two journalists' stand on the Palestinian cause."

After the newsmen's capture in August, the group demanded Paris scrap a controversial ban on conspicuous religious insignia, including the Islamic head scarf, in state schools, a ban that has not been overturned.

© National Post 2005

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

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"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it. " --Noam Chomsky