Si: plus longtemps ce con (Bush) restera au pouvoir, plus les européens auront envie de couper les ponts avec les USA et de se regrouper...

Dans le domaine de l'influence positive de M. Bush&Co, on notera le rabibochage express du couple franco-allemand en froid depuis quelques années...

VOTEZ BUSH!!

je m'en suis jammas caché.

je pense que personne ne pourais redresser la situation actuelle, et meme si Kerry a affirmé a plusieur reprises qu'il ne laiserait pas tomber l'irak, je préfére que ce soit le type qui a cassé le pot qui le paye.

de plus pour se menager l'electorat traditionel, Kerry soutiendrat Sharon au moins autant que Bush, et probablement le projet de "grand moyen orient".

donc je prefererais Bush pour 4 ans de plus que Kerry maintenant, si c'est pour voir un républicain revenir renforcer par l'incapacité des démocrates a réparer les conneries Bushiennes.

Ah, bien, je pensais être assez isolé sur ce coup-là.

Au passage, on dit Kerry encore plus pro-Israelien que Bush, mais je ne me suis pas encore penché sur la question....


Vazkor

C'est un pari : s'il reste au pouvoir, Bush va aussi continuer à saloper l'environnement, à creuser les déficits, à financer une armée surdimensionnée et à s'en servir, à énerver les Chinois, à soutenir le si sympathique Ariell Sharon, à laisser les Africains crever parce qu'il refuse les programmes antisida qui font appel aux préservatifs, à tailler dans les programmes sociaux...

Je suis d'accord avec toi : un Bush mesquin et antipathique ne serait pas mauvais pour l'Europe, surtout s'il est élu de manière douteuse (une vraie belle magouille qui se voit serait un sacré réveil pour les consciences, surtout en Europe de l'est). En revanche, pour la planète, faut voir...

Il ne faut pas non plus exclure que toutes ces politiques pètent à la figure du titulaire du poste à un moment quelconque de ces quatre prochaines années. Tant qu'à faire, il vaudrait mieux que ce soit à Bush de payer l'addition de ses conneries, plutôt qu'aux Démocrates.

Bref, p'têt ben qu'oui, p'têt ben qu'non, y a du pour, y a du contre. Mais c'est juste parce qu'on n'est pas Iraniens, Syriens, sud-américain en général et Vénézuélien en particulier...

T.

Ca va bien aussi en Ouzbékistan. Le cercle des pays où tout va bien ne cesse de s'élargir, c'est un vrai bonheur.

T.

C'est sûr... je nage dans la félicité, là...

Des précisions sur l'attentat de Tachkent, qui ne manqueront de mettre le comble à ta félicité.

Quelqu'un aurait-il une planète de rechange sous la main ? J'ai peur que celle-ci ne nous fasse plus beaucoup d'usage.

T.

donc si je compte bien, quatres attentats simultanés?

Non, trois : ambassade US, ambassade israélienne, siège du parquet de la capitale.

T.

Je me répète, mais penser à (re)lire le "Printemps Russe" de Norman Spinrad ...

je fait mon chieur mais... tu pourait donner l'éditeur?

juste que ca m'épargnerais trois minutes de Google fu, hein

c'est plus la peine, j'ai sucombé a la tentation : Folio SF

Nouvelle du dimanche :







Plus généralement, la dispute sur cette hypothétique force musulmane semble se concentrer sur son rôle et son commandement. Les Etats-Unis le voudraient intégrés à la coalition et sous commandement américain, bien que chargée de la protection de l'Onu. Les différents gouvernements concernés pourraient envisager une force indépendante... A mon avis, il va encore s'écouler un bon bout de temps avant qu'elle ne se mette en place. Si elle se met en place.

T.

Tiens, j'y pense, demain, c'est le 14e anniversaire de l'invasion du Koweit par Saddam Hussein.

Question légèrement angoissée : est-ce que les Irakiens vont essayer de le fêter en tuant des GI, à votre avis ?

T.

Les saoudiens viennent d'inventer une façon à la fois nouvelle et élégante de dire "jamais" :



T.

Un spécial "Solsys" ???

http://www.sundayherald.com/43461

***

Regime change in Iran now in Bush’s sights


By Jenifer Johnston


PRESIDENT George Bush has promised that if re-elected in November he will make regime change in Iran his new target.

Bush named Iran as part of the Axis of Evil along with North Korea and Iraq almost three years ago. A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that military action would not be overt in changing Iran, but rather that the US would work to stir revolts in the country and hope to topple the current conservative religious leadership.

The official said: “If George Bush is re-elected there will be much more intervention in the internal affairs of Iran.”

The Iranian government announced this weekend that it had successfully eradicated all al-Qaeda cells operating in the country, but the statement comes as leaked reports from the US September 11 Commission show definite links between Iran and the September 11 terrorists.

The final report from the cross-party inquiry, which is examining the origins of the September 11 attacks, is believed to contain concrete evidence of contacts between al-Qaeda and Iran.

Time magazine reports that at least eight of the hijackers, who lived in the US for months before the attacks, passed through Iran between October 2000 and February 2001 apparently with help from the Iranian authorities.

Known al-Qaeda members also seem to have been allowed to cross in and out of Iran freely across the Afghan border, with Iranian border guards being told not to stamp the passports of al-Qaeda operatives, harass them or hinder their ability to travel freely.

The report is thought to hint that Iranian officials were ordered to assist al-Qaeda operatives with any travel needs.

The September 11 Commission report will, however, stop short of stating that Iran was aware of the plans for the September 11 attacks.

Tehran has always officially denied helping members of al-Qaeda escape from Afghan istan in 2001 when the Taliban regime fell.

State television in Iran yesterday showed the country’s intelligence minister announcing the capture of a number of al-Qaeda supporters.

Ali Yunesi said: “Iran’s intelligence apparatus has identified and arrested small Iranian deviate branches of the al-Qaeda group.” There was no clarification on how many people had been arrested or charged.

Yunesi warned that Iran would take a tough line against militants using Iran as a base. “Those who seek to misuse the safe situation in Iran will face serious consequences,” he said.

The Iranian government says it has arrested and repatriated hundreds of al-Qaeda suspects in the past two years in a display of willingness to bring terrorism in the Middle East under control.

A suspected Saudi al-Qaeda militant, Khaled al-Harbi, who appeared in a videotape with Osama bin Laden, gave himself up in Iran last week, and was flown back to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

On Friday US officials said the next stage of the September 11 Commission’s report would be available this week.

There was embarrassment for the Bush administration last week when it emerged a tight deadline was being pushed for the capture of Osama bin Laden to generate headlines during the Democratic Convention when presidential rival John Kerry will be grabbing the limelight.

Pakistani security forces have apparently been given deadlines to capture bin Laden that are before the US general election in November, according to US sources.

18 July 2004

Ils ont bien du se marrer à Tripoli quand ils ont rédigé la réponse officielle de la Libye !


Sinon pour l'Iran, ils doivent probablement déjà bucher sur un plan de protection de leurs installations nucléaires, histoire d'éviter un "Ossirak 2 le retour", parce qu'il parait clair que Israel ou les US vont y venir un jour ou l'autre !

Alors, aujourd'hui, nous avons :

Sur le Monde :

Un marine américain tué dans la province d'Anbar (ouest)
AFP | 03.08.04 | 06h04

Un marine américain a été mortellement blessé au combat mardi dans la province d'Al-Anbar, à l'ouest de l'Irak, a indiqué l'armée américaine."Un marine, assigné à la 1ère Force expéditionnaire de Marine, a été mortellement blessé au combat aujourd'hui dans la province Al-Anbar alors qu'il menait des opérations de sécurité et de stabilisation", a indiqué un communiqué de l'armée sans fournir d'autres renseignements.Anbar abrite les cités rebelles sunnites de Falloujah et Ramadi.Les positions des Marines à Falloujah, située à 50 km à l'ouest de Bagdad, sont fréquemment attaquées par les rebelles avec de petites armes à feu, des obus de mortier et des grenades propulsées par des rockets.Ce dernier décès porte à 680 le nombre des soldats américains tués en Irak depuis l'invasion de l'Irak à l'initiative des Américains en mars 2003, selon le compte établi par le Pentagone.



Le Labour a perdu la moitié de ses adhérents depuis l'élection de Blair
AFP | 03.08.04 | 02h04

Le parti travailliste au pouvoir en Grande-Bretagne a perdu la moitié de ses adhérents depuis que Tony Blair est devenu premier ministre, renforçant la crainte d'un plongeon du parti provoqué par la guerre en Irak, indique mardi le quotidien londonien Guardian.La direction du Labour a été informée en juillet que le nombre de ses adhérents du parti avaient chuté de 214.952 à la fin de l'an 2003 à 208.000.Le vrai chiffre, excluant ceux qui ont omis de payer leur cotisation pendant six mois, est de 190.000 membres, le plus faible depuis 1930, selon le Guardian.Quand M. Blair a été élu premier ministre en 1997, le parti comptait plus de 400.000 membres.Le Guardian désigne la guerre en Irak comme la cause première de la chute des adhésions au Labour et au leadership de Tony Blair.La presse avait déjà évoqué le mois dernier l'éventualité d'un départ de M. Blair du pouvoir, juste avant la publication d'un rapport officiel sur le informations fournies par les services secrets britanniques concernant les armes de destruction massive en Irak.Le Premier ministre avait apporté son soutien à la guerre menée par les Etats-Unis en Irak presque entièrement sur la base que les armes irakiennes menaçaient l'Occident, et sa crédibilité avait été fortement entamée lorsqu'il a été clair qu'on n'en trouverait pas dans ce pays.Cependant, selon un sondage de l'institut MORI publié mardi par le quotidien économique Financial Times, 32% des électeurs britanniques croient que Tony Blair serait encore le premier ministre le plus compétent.Son concurrent le plus proche, si une élection générale était organisée cette année, serait le chef des Conservateurs Michael Howard avec seulement 21% des suffrages.MORI a interrogé 1.003 personnes pendant le week-end.


Des rations militaires "kaki dehors, pipi dedans"
LE MONDE | 02.08.04 | 14h04
A 9 heures par e-mail, recevez les titres du journal à paraître l'après-
midi. Abonnez-vous au Monde.fr, 5€ par mois

Lors la première guerre du Golfe, en 1991, les soldats de la force internationale échangeaient à l'occasion leur frichti. Dans cette Bourse culinaire, une ration française se troquait contre deux, voire trois rations américaines. L'enchère pourrait encore grimper dans les conflits à venir. Les chercheurs de l'armée américaine viennent en effet de mettre au point une nourriture lyophilisée qui peut être réhydratée par l'urine du banqueteur ou du cuistot.

Le New Scientist a révélé, fin juillet, cette avancée gastronomique. Une poche contient ce qui est supposé être du riz et du poulet. Elle est munie d'un filtre révolutionnaire qui ne laisse passer que les molécules d'eau, retenant 99,9 % des bactéries et autres éléments indésirables.

Bien sûr, cette tambouille peut être réhydratée par autre chose que l'urine : par exemple l'eau croupie d'un marais, un fond de gourde ou, les jours d'agapes, la pluie. Bref, par tout ce qui répond de près ou de loin à la formule H2O, avec cette indication des concepteurs du centre militaire de Natick, Massachusetts : un usage prolongé de la recette peut entraîner des problèmes rénaux.

L'intérêt de cette nouvelle cuisine n'échappera ni au stratège ni au bidasse. Trois repas normaux, soit le ravitaillement d'une journée, pèsent 3,5 kilos sur les bretelles. Avec cette trouvaille, le poids est ramené à 400 grammes. Finie l'encombrante roulante. De toute façon, pour qui pense comme Coluche que la nourriture militaire c'est "kaki dehors, caca dedans", le nouvel ingrédient est un mieux gustatif.

Les chercheurs américains avaient déjà sur leur carte le "sandwich indestructible". Il pouvait rester frais trois ans par 26o C et six mois par 38oC. De quoi faciliter les appétits de conquête... Pour sa part, l'armée française sait bien, comme l'écrivait déjà le stratège chinois Sun Tzu, que l'intendance est essentielle au moral des troupes. Notre état-major continue donc de bichonner ses pioupious, à raison de 7,04 euros par repas.

Sans vouloir cracher dans la soupe, on laisserait bien volontiers ces bonnes recettes d'Oncle Sam à leurs inventeurs. Mais il faut avoir en mémoire que le cahier des charges hygiéniste édicté par la NASA pour ses astronautes, baptisé "HACCP", est aujourd'hui devenu la règle internationale qui régit jusqu'à nos petits marchés de pays. Alors...

Benoît Hopquin


Un otage turc a été exécuté en Irak
LEMONDE.FR | 02.08.04 | 12h24 • MIS A JOUR LE 02.08.04 | 13h21
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midi. Abonnez-vous au Monde.fr, 5€ par mois
Une vidéo et des photos de l'exécution ont été diffusées sur Internet lundi 2 août. La Turquie et l'employeur de la victime ont confirmé. Murat Yuce travaillait en Irak pour une société de services hôteliers et de restrauration rapide.

Plusieurs sites Internet islamistes ont mis en ligne lundi 2 août un enregistrement vidéo de ce qu'ils présentent comme l'exécution d'un otage turc en Irak par un groupe lié à l'activiste jordanien Abou Moussab Zarkaoui. L'exécution a été confirmée par un employé de l'ambassade de Turquie à Bagdad.

L'individu exécuté s'appellerait Murat Yuce.

La vidéo montre un homme masqué abattant un otage assis sur une chaise. Quand ce dernier s'écroule par terre, le tireur fait de nouveau feu à deux reprises en criant "Allah est grand".

Auparavant, l'otage, vêtu d'une chemise et d'un pantalon, s'était exprimé en turc tandis que trois hommes armés et cagoulés se tenaient derrière lui, devant une banderole ressemblant à celle du groupe Taouhid et Djihad de Zarkaoui.

CONTRE LE "SOUTIEN TURC" À "L'OCCUPATION AMÉRICAINE" EN IRAK

"La Turquie persiste à vouloir soutenir l'occupation des infidèles américains (...). Nous allons appliquer la loi de Dieu à l'égard de cet apostat et demandons aux musulmans de Turquie de soutenir leurs frères musulmans, et non les occupants", a déclaré en arabe l'un des hommes cagoulés, lisant un texte.

Sur certains des sites figurent des photos montrant l'exécution de l'otage.

L'employeur de la victime, la société Bilintur, filiale de la holding Tepe, spécialisé dans les services hôteliers et la restauration rapide, a également confirmé la mort d'un employé travaillant en Irak.

"Murat Yuce a bien été tué", a indiqué une porte-parole de la société, indiquant qu'un communiqué sur les circonstances de sa mort sera rendu public dans les prochaines heures.

Plusieurs Turcs ont été pris en otage en Irak et deux d'entre eux au moins auraient été tués.

Samedi 31 juillet, la chaîne de télévision arabe Al-Jazira avait diffusé un enregistrement vidéo du groupe de Zarkaoui menaçant "d'appliquer la loi islamique" et de décapiter deux chauffeurs turcs à moins que leur employeur ne cesse ses activités, en tant que fournisseur de l'armée américaine en Irak, et ne quitte le pays.

Avec Reuters et AFP

Le guardian
Seeking a better way

Leader
Tuesday August 3, 2004
The Guardian

The grim succession of news from Iraq makes the belief that security would improve, however slowly, after the handover to an interim administration, seem more than ever misplaced. Casualties inflicted on US-led foreign forces have fallen from the very high levels of recent months, but the shadowy forces of insurgency are able to shift their targets at will.

Sunday's attacks on Christian churches appear carefully coordinated, picking on a minority which had so far been untouched, and again underline the terrorists' freedom of manoeuvre.

Progress or its reverse is better judged from the seat of a truck driver's cab on the way into Baghdad than from No 10 Downing Street.

Foreign truck drivers, lured by relatively large cash payments, are now travelling only by day even when they are given armed escorts.

Yesterday the Turkish truckers' association, hoping to secure the release of two kidnapped members, announced that it would no longer transport goods bound for US forces in Iraq.

Drivers have been kidnapped bringing in supplies from Kuwait and Jordan regardless of the destination of their loads.

Some 200 Jordanian drivers have been killed since the war last year either by US fire or armed Iraqis and last week the truck owners' association in Amman complained that such assaults are still taking place regularly.

As the latest travel warning from the US Department of State puts it, since the transfer of authority on June 28 all vehicular travel in Iraq remains "extremely dangerous.

Attacks occur throughout the day, but travel at night is exceptionally dangerous."

Many incidents of violence are barely reported now, but only partly because of communication difficulties.

While British ministers go on vacation and the US press focuses on the election, news from Iraq has receded subtly from the headlines, including the unannounced visit of US secretary of state Colin Powell to Baghdad last week, where he warned of "challenges in the weeks ahead", and the postponement of the planned national conference to select an interim assembly.

The existence of an Iraqi government, however defective, in control of a "sovereign state", also provides - as it was intended to - some insulation.

Yet it is vital to ask: what sort of government and what sort of state? Afghanistan today, where the Kabul government also cannot provide security outside the capital, is indicative.

The invasion and overthrow of a "rogue state" only leads to a fractured state: for those doomed to live in it there has to be a better way.


Pendant ce temps, Bush se concentre sur le terrorisme... a sa facon :
Space invaders

The US is pushing ahead with its missile defence programme, which looks set to provoke a new arms race - and Britain is closely involved

Richard Norton-Taylor
Tuesday August 3, 2004
The Guardian

Scarcely noticed, the US last month deployed its first ground-based missile interceptor at Fort Greely in Alaska. It was a significant step in the Bush administration's ambitious and hugely expensive missile defence system - a project the Blair administration says it supports but one that, in the view of its many critics, will provoke a new arms race leading to the weaponisation of space, a true "son of star wars" with profound implications for the rest of the world.

Deployment of the interceptor "marks the end of an era where we have not been able to defend our country against long-range ballistic missile attacks", said Major General John Holly, programme director for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defence system.

This has nothing to do with terrorists, repeatedly described by Bush and Blair as the greatest threat to the west. The al-Qaida network of terrorists may want to get their hands on biological or chemical weapons, or a dirty bomb, but they are unlikely to be able to launch a long-range intercontinental ballistic against the US, or anywhere else.

"This extraordinary emphasis on missile defence represents misplaced priorities," says the US Union of Concerned Scientists. "The administration's top priority should instead be combating the threat of nuclear terrorism."

Up to five more interceptors are due to be deployed at Fort Greely by the end of this year. By the end of 2005, the US plan is to deploy 10 ship-based intermediate-range interceptors, a sea-based tracking radar and an upgraded radar at Fylingdales in Yorkshire.

Bush wants to spend $10bn on missile defence in 2005, an increase of nearly $1bn over this year's expenditure on the system. His request has yet to be agreed by Congress, where there is a growing belief that the whole project is ideologically driven, a belief fuelled by widespread scepticism among Pentagon officials about whether it will work. That scepticism is not shared by their boss, Donald Rumsfeld, an enthusiastic supporter.

Rumsfeld is also a driving force behind US plans for weapons in space, the next step in America's still-limited missile defence programme. He has talked about a threat from a "space Pearl Harbor". As little-noticed as the missile deployment at Fort Greely, his Missile Defence Agency has now earmarked nearly $70m for Nfire - the acronym for the near field infrared experiment.

This project, due to have been launched this year but delayed because of rumblings in Congress, involves a series of test satellites in low-Earth orbit carrying infrared sensors. Initially, the idea is to enable the US military to distinguish between the rocket plume, or exhaust, of a missile fired by a potential enemy and the missile itself. But the system is also designed to carry a "kinetic kill-vehicle" that will intercept a missile after it has been tracked.

Nfire will in effect be the first space weapon. That is the warning in Fighting for Space, a paper written by the Yorkshire Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to be published later this month. While Nfire is "being marketed as a defensive system playing a part in the missile defence infrastructure, it could also be effectively deployed as an anti-satellite weapon able to destroy the space assets of other countries", it says. It quotes a recent interview with an anonymous senior US government official who stated: "We're crossing the Rubicon into space weaponisation". Or as the US Space Command noted last year: "We cannot fully exploit space until we control it".

CND comments that, "given the widespread concerns that missile defence won't work effectively, the statements by the US administration and military about controlling space and the asat [anti-satellite] capabilities of the missile defence system, it is no wonder that many states and individuals believe the system is being developed primarily for offence rather than defence".

Russia has already developed a basic asat system. The Pentagon has expressed concern that China will be capable of launching asat weapons in two to six years. There are international agreements governing space, notably the 1967 outer space treaty. But these ban only "weapons of mass destruction" - nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. They would not prohibit the kind of satellite wars now in prospect.

Washington, meanwhile, is determined to push ahead with its missile defence project, with the help of its allies, old and new.

The British American Security Information Council notes that last month during a visit to the UN, Australian defence minister Robert Hill said that Australia planned to help the US develop a missile defence system, although it "faces no current threat from ballistic missiles".

The US was last month reported to be negotiating with Poland and the Czech Republic over its missile defence programme and the location of the largest missile defence site outside America. The US also says it wants Japan to jointly develop equipment for missile defence systems.

In Britain, there is little or no debate, although the expanding US satellite ground station at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire will play a key part, along with Fylingdales. Earlier this year, Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, told Lindis Percy, the veteran campaigner against US bases in Britain: "We are keen to see how the US system evolves ... The agreement to the upgrade at Fylingdales and the close links between UK and US industry will give us close access to, and involvement in, the US missile defence programme."

It is for MPs to pick up the cudgel. Mr Hoon's senior military advisers are deeply concerned about the US's missile defence project and what it could lead to. The issues are far too important for decisions to be allowed to go by default.

· Richard Norton-Taylor is the Guardian's security affairs editor

Il y a aussi ca sur le Guardian :

Turkish truck firms quit Iraq

Michael Howard in Baghdad
Tuesday August 3, 2004
The Guardian

An important supply chain for the US forces in Iraq was disrupted yesterday when Turkish lorry owners announced that they were suspending deliveries across the border in an attempt to secure the release of two drivers being held hostage.

The decision to stop the 200 to 300 daily journeys was announced after the release of a videotape on an Islamist website that showed the murder of a Turkish worker in Iraq.

The Turkish supply route is one of three relied upon by the US military and is regarded as more secure for the convoys than the routes through Jordan and Kuwait.

Of the 2,000 lorries that cross daily from the north, about a tenth carry vital supplies such as petrol and jet fuel to American forces.

But in the past few months several Turkish drivers have been attacked, killed or taken hostage.

Men claiming to be from a militant group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said on Saturday that they had captured two Turkish lorry drivers, and demanded that the men's employers leave Iraq.

In a tape shown on the Arab satellite channel al-Jazeera, masked men threatened to behead the two drivers unless their Turkish employers complied with the kidnappers' demands.

Militants loyal to al-Zarqawi have also claimed responsibility for a number of bloody attacks and beheadings of foreign hostages, including the US businessman Nicholas Berg, a South Korean, Kim Sun-il, and a Bulgarian truck driver, Georgi Lazov.

A statement by the International Transporters' Association in Instanbul said: "Within the framework of current developments, [we] decided to stop the transport of cargo which belong to the American troops in Iraq as of Monday."
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The association said trucks carrying supplies that were not destined to the US forces would not be affected.

In the video broadcast yesterday, Murat Yuce was shot in the head by one of three masked men after a statement was read in Turkish.

It said: "I have a word of advice for any Turk who wants to come to Iraq to work. You don't have to hold a gun to be aiding the occupying United States ... Turkish companies should withdraw from Iraq."

In Ankara, the Bilintur company, which provides a laundry service for a Jordanian company in Iraq, said Mr Yuce was one of two employees missing in Iraq for three or four days. Another Turkish driver, Birdal Sancar, was killed last week near the border with Syria, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday.

Pendant ce temps, sur The Independent :

US forces clash with militia at Sadr's home
By Andrew Clennell

03 August 2004

A gun battle erupted last night in the holy Iraqi city of Najaf after US and Iraqi troops approached the house of militant Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr, witnesses said.

Sheikh Mahmoud al-Sudani, a spokesman for Sadr in Baghdad, said that US soldiers had surrounded Sadr's house and that fighting raged for hours before the troops withdrew. He said six members of Sadr's militia and four Iraqi bystanders were wounded but Sadr was not at the house during the fighting.

The US military said American Marines were fired on with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars while conducting "a peaceful security patrol". A military statement said: "Marines returned well-aimed fire, taking caution to avoid all non-combatants." It said marines estimated two Iraqi fighters were killed.

Sadr launched an uprising against US-led forces in April, and hundreds were killed in weeks of fighting before truces were agreed in Shia areas of Iraq. The US military says an Iraqi arrest warrant has been issued for Sadr in relation to the killing of a rival cleric in Najaf last year. But during truce negotiations earlier this year, Iraqi officials said Sadr would not face arrest.

Ainsi qu'une petite disgression :

A nation in danger. Or a president in peril?
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

03 August 2004

America was bracing itself last night after intelligence agencies warned al-Qa'ida could be planning to attack financial institutions on the East Coast and that its operatives had already carried out surveillance missions on the targets.

Police sealed off streets in New York, ordered international finance employees in Washington to go through extra security checks and added barricades and a heavy armed presence in Newark, New Jersey, after intelligence gathered in Pakistan identified that institutions in these cities were being targeted.

"We are a nation in danger," said President George Bush, after the nation's state of alert was raised to "orange" (high) on Sunday evening. "We are doing everything in our power to confront the danger. [This alert is ] a solemn reminder of the threat we continue to face"

Officials said the warning was based on information gathered following the unannounced arrest in Pakistan on 13 July of a computer engineer, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, 25, who allegedly operated an al-Qa'ida communications system. Warnings based on "documentary evidence" were passed to Washington last Friday, which, combined with other intelligence, reportedly led officials to raise the alert.

The US has issued numerous terror alerts since the attacks of September 2001, and some people were sceptical yesterday as to the nature of the administration's latest warning. The former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean highlighted the concerns of many without access to the information. "It's hard to know what to make [of it]. None of us outside the administration have access to the intelligence which led to this determination," he said.

"I am concerned that every time something happens that's not good for President Bush, he plays this trump card, which is terrorism," he told CNN. "His whole campaign is based on the notion that 'I can keep you safe, therefore, at times of difficulty for America, stick with me' and then out comes Tom Ridge. It's just impossible to know how much of this is real and how much of this is politics, and I suspect there's some of both in it."

But Mr Ridge, head of the Department of Homeland Security, and other officials insisted the information was "alarmingly" more specific than the usual intelligence chatter. Information recovered after Mr Khan's arrest was a "potential treasure trove", they said.

Officials said that institutions being targeted by al-Qa'ida included the New York Stock Exchange and the Citigroup buildings in Manhattan, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington and Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.

Reports yesterday said that al-Qa'ida operatives had carried out surveillance of those institutions and The New York Times reported investigators in New Jersey said suspects had been found with blueprints of the Newark building and a "test-run" to launch a car-bomb or similar attack had been carried out in recent days.

In New York and New Jersey, police placed the target buildings under heavy security, closing some streets and banning trucks from bridges and tunnels leading to Wall Street. Michael Bloomberg, the New York mayor, and the Governor, George Pataki, rang the opening bell at the stock exchange in an effort to show confidence in the city's precautions. Despite such bravado, oil prices rose to near-record highs in trading as jittery markets reacted to the alert.

Given that America is in the middle of a closely fought election campaign, there was, perhaps, little surprise that some would accuse the Bush administration of playing politics. With an eye to possible criticism from Republicans, the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, felt the need to distance himself yesterday from Mr Dean's comments.

At the same time, there have been numerous terror alerts since the 11 September attacks that appear to have been based on little more than chatter. Some - such as the arrest of Jose Padilla, the alleged "dirty-bomber" - have been announced in a way designed to have maximum political impact. Other warnings have been based on information later shown to be incorrect.

In regard to the latest alert, Mr Ridge admitted the intelligence did not give crucial details about when, where or how terrorists might strike. Officials said, however, the information showed al-Qa'ida operatives had been scouting the targets, seeing how to make contact with employees, as well as traffic patterns and locations of hospitals and police posts.

Enfin :
Baghdad's Christians bear brunt of association with the West
By Donald Macintyre in Baghdad

03 August 2004

They were still standing there yesterday, a macabre tableau of 19 wrecked and burned-out vehicles in the car park of the St Peter and St Paul Chaldean Catholic church.

They were just where they had been when the bomber struck at around 7pm at the end of the Sunday evening service. In one of them, a father and son had been preparing to drive out through the freshly opened steel gates; in another a young man, his fiancée in the passenger seat, had been waiting for his parents to leave the church and climb into the back.

It was then that those already in their cars must have seen the van drive into the car park, slew to a halt just inside the gates, and then watched its driver run back into the street and a second, waiting car. Seconds later, the van was detonated, sparking a conflagration as batteries and fuel tanks across the car park exploded in an unstoppable heat reaction, killing outright, in the account of Father Faris Toma, the parish priest, 10 worshippers and wounding another 15.

This church in the southern Baghdad district of Doura was by far the worst hit of the four in the capital and the one in Mosul which were targeted on Sunday evening in a carefully co-ordinated attack on members of Iraq's 700,000-strong Christian minority.

Standing amid the broken glass of the seminary building, its windows blown out by the blast, a grim-faced Father Faris struggled to contemplate the impact on his congregation. Yes, he believed, some of his parishioners would now be deterred from coming to church despite the 24-hour guard the young men of the parish would mount on every entrance.

Why did he think the Christian community had been targeted? "This is the question which we are all asking." Then echoing the reaction of many Christians across Iraq, he added of the perpetrators: "It seems that having failed to divide Sunnis and Shia Muslims, they now want to cause problems between Christians and Muslims. I do not believe this will happen."

Certainly, every witness you could find to the attacks, which were condemned yesterday by the Pope and - as "hideous crimes"- by the most senior Shia Muslim cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, attested to the good local relations between Muslims and Christians.

But Christians had been fearing for their safety. The head of the smaller Latin-rite Catholic community, the Archbishop of Baghdad, Jean Benjamin Sleiman, spoke in July of "general insecurity" among Christians because of fundamentalist fanaticism "and the belief of some Islamic leaders that Iraqi Christians are being assimilated into the coalition forces, who are perceived as Christians or even crusaders."

This latter point was dismissed yesterday as a "fake explanation" by the distraught Father Faris; moreover there were precious few clues as to who had committed the atrocities - which in general have taken a vastly higher number of Muslim civilian lives since the beginning of the insurgency.

That gruesome toll continued yesterday when an Islamic web-site carried a graphic video showing a Turkish hostage, who identified himself as Murat Yuce, being shot in the head at point-blank range by three insurgents with a pistol.

Outside the damaged churches of Baghdad yesterday, Christians almost universally blamed foreigners rather than Iraqis for the crimes. At the Syriac Catholic church of Our Lady of Salvation in Karrada, the area outside the upper gallery was carpeted with thousands of coloured fragments of glass from the stained glass windows, all blown out by the blast of the bomb driven in a Chevrolet along the street outside.

Ihssam Shanour, 40, was taking the sacrament during Sunday evening's mass at the very moment he heard the explosion. "This is God's house," he said, "and of course I will go back to church next Sunday."

Repeating that this was the work of foreigners rather than Iraqis, he added: "They should close the borders." But it was Ali Kassem, a young Muslim who lives across the street from the church who said simply: "All the people were praying inside. This is terrorism."

C'est vraiment surprenant comme Kerry a peur de la critique faite par les Republicains (cf A nation in danger or a presidency in peril ?)... Je trouve ca vraiment surprenant, il cherche d un cote a se demarquer (multilateralisme) mais d'un autre on dirait qu il voudrait avoir les faveurs meme des Republicains. Autant Bush n'ecoute que tres peu la critique, autant Kerry la considere a l'exces !