U.S. Questioned About Arar Torture Case

U.S. Questioned About Arar Torture Case : "Days before the Bush administration put Canadian citizen Maher Arar on a plane for Syria, Canadian law enforcement officials advised their U.S. counterparts that evidence of terrorist links by Arar was not definitive.

Why the Bush administration still shipped Arar to Syria -- where he was tortured -- and whether he remains on the United States' terror watch list are still unknown. Administration officials refuse to talk about the case.

It has been a month since a Canadian commission cleared Syrian-born Arar of all suspicion of terrorist activity, yet Arar still can't get into the United States, one of his lawyers, Michael Ratner, said Thursday.

John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to clear Arar's name and let him come into the United States this week to receive a human rights award.

Gonzales did not reply, Cavanagh said. At the Justice Department, a spokesman said he was unaware of the letter and could not comment."

(Via Salon.)

GOP Calls for Withdrawal of Candidate

GOP Calls for Withdrawal of Candidate: "Orange County Republican leaders on Thursday called for the withdrawal of a GOP congressional candidate they believe sent a letter threatening Hispanic immigrant voters with arrest.

Tan D. Nguyen denied knowing anything about the letter in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press but said he fired a campaign staffer who may have been responsible for it.

County Republican Chairman Scott Baugh, however, said that after speaking with state investigators and the company that distributed the mailer, he believes Nguyen had direct knowledge of 'obnoxious and reprehensible' letter. He told the AP that the party's executive committee voted unanimously to urge Nguyen to drop out of the race against Democratic U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez."

(Via Salon.)

No Further Tests, North Korea Reportedly Tells China

No Further Tests, North Korea Reportedly Tells China: "Thousands of citizens and soldiers rallied Friday in the North Korean capital to cheer the country's recent nuclear test, North Korea's official news agency reported.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, meanwhile, was reported to have told a visiting Chinese delegation that the communist nation wasn't planning more nuclear tests."

(Via NY Times.)

North Korea plutonium test confirmed

ArmsControlWonk: North Korea plutonium test confirmed: "The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a very short statement confirming that the North Korean test was nuclear. Thom Shanker and David Sanger's article in the New York Times says that US intelligence has concluded that the test was a plutonium device, not uranium. Sig Hecker knows a thing or two about North Korea's plutonium (see p.5 of that link, paragraph starting with 'So they slid open the wooden box and inside were two glass jars &mdash two marmalade jars actually &mdash with screw on tops.')

...

The NYT article also has an interesting section on what this plutonium vs. uranium determination may mean politically. Uranium would mean Clinton messed up, plutonium suggests the error was on Bush's watch:

...

Unlike the Clinton administration in 1994, the current Bush administration chose not to threaten to destroy North Korea’s fuel and nuclear reprocessing facilities if they tried to make weapons.

Emphasis mine. In a particularly insightful comment on the same page:

"According to the unclassified November, 2002 CIA estimate here :

We assess that North Korea embarked on the effort to develop a centrifuge-based uranium enrichment program about two years ago.

Which would mean that the effort to develop a uranium enrichment program did not even start until the end of 2000. The estimate goes on to say that a uranium processing plant would not be fully operational until the middle of the decade, at the earliest."

(Via ArmsControlWonk.com.)

N. Korea Apparently Preparing Nuke Test

N. Korea Apparently Preparing Nuke Test: "SEOUL, South Korea Oct 17, 2006 (AP)— Satellite images indicate North Korea appears to be getting ready for a second nuclear test, officials said Tuesday, as the defiant communist regime held huge rallies and proclaimed that U.N. sanctions amount to a declaration of war.

China, the North's longtime ally and biggest trading partner, warned Pyongyang not to aggravate tensions. The U.N. has condemned the Oct. 9 atomic blast, and U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill told reporters in Seoul on Tuesday that another nuclear explosion would be "a very belligerent answer" to the world."

(Via Google News.)

A Week of Bombings in Mindanao: Making Sense of It All

A Week of Bombings in Mindanao: Making Sense of It All: "A spate of bombings rocked the southern Philippines over the past six days. The attacks have been clearly pinned on the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) operatives and should be seen as both an attempt to distract the attention of the security forces from their ongoing offensive in Jolo and as payback for the arrest of Dulmatin’s – the top JI operative in the Philippines – wife on 3 October.

1. The Attacks:
Ten people were killed and over 40 were wounded in a string of bombings across Mindanao and Jolo. In all, four bombs went off and three were defused. The first bomb went off in a crowded marketplace in Makilala, North Cotabato, and killed eight. The bomb was a cell phone-detonated 81-mm mortar round. A second bomb, hidden inside a black backpack, was defused in front of the Makilala municipal hall. That was followed by a bomb of a similar design in Tacurong, Sultan Kudarat. It was also placed in a market and killed two. A bomb twice as large was placed in front of the new shopping mall in Cotabato City, but failed to detonate, an apparent malfunction in its cell phone-detonator. On Sunday, three people were wounded when a bomb went off at a police camp in Jolo. That same day a bomb was defused in a crowded market in Padian, Zamboanga del Sur. That bomb was fairly sophisticated and one press report described it as made of “ammunition from a rocket-propelled grenade, 60-mm. mortar, and 40-mm. and M203 plastic pipe with TNT flakes, one kilo of mixed TNT flakes with ammonium nitrate, blasting caps, and an alarm clock in a backpack.” An M79 grenade went off in the marketplace, but there were no casualties as the police had cleared the area."

(Via The Counterterrorism Blog.)

Bush Keeps Revising War Justification

Bush Keeps Revising War Justification : "President Bush keeps revising his explanation for why the U.S. is in Iraq, moving from narrow military objectives at first to history-of-civilization stakes now.

Initially, the rationale was specific: to stop Saddam Hussein from using what Bush claimed were the Iraqi leader's weapons of mass destruction or from selling them to al-Qaida or other terrorist groups.

But 3 1/2 years later, with no weapons found, still no end in sight and the war a liability for nearly all Republicans on the ballot Nov. 7, the justification has become far broader and now includes the expansive 'struggle between good and evil.'

Republicans seized on North Korea's reported nuclear test last week as further evidence that the need for strong U.S. leadership extends beyond Iraq.

Bush's changing rhetoric reflects increasing administration efforts to tie the war, increasingly unpopular at home, with the global fight against terrorism, still the president's strongest suit politically."

(Via Salon.)