Saudi columnist Saleh Al-Rashed argued that the Gulf states should urge the West to attack Iran before it acquires nuclear weapons.
Following are excerpts from the column:(1) A Nuclear Iran is Like a Nuclear Bin Laden
"'There's no avoiding what there's no avoiding' – this adage came to mind when I read the pronouncement by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Mohammad 'Ali Ja'fari, who said: 'My country is easily capable of closing the Straits of Hormuz, the main passageway for oil freighters, if the country is attacked due to its nuclear program.'
"In my estimation, confronting this country, which is trying to gain the time necessary to acquire nuclear weapons, is unavoidable. The possession of nuclear weapons by a state like Iran, which is ideological to the core, is more or less like Osama bin Laden having a nuclear bomb. They are two of a kind. Despite the difference in their turbans and in their religious beliefs, the end result is the same.
"Perhaps it is our bad luck that we [i.e. Saudi Arabia] and the Gulf states would be the first to suffer from a military confrontation with Iran and from its response, and the problem would become even more grave if Iran succeeded in closing the Straits of Hormuz, as the IRGC commander threatened. But our situation with Iran is like that of the sick man who refuses to have his illness treated with cauterization. Yes, the pain of the burning is horrible, but this malady can only be treated through this military confrontation –cauterization.
"History has taught us that ideological countries only pay heed to victory over their ideology… They never accept any halfway situation, even when they find themselves on the brink of disaster."
"Confrontation Is The Solution"; "The Absolute Priority Must Be Our Strategic Security in the Gulf"
"Confrontation is the solution, and there is no solution but confrontation. The game of the carrot and the stick played by the U.S. and E.U. will be to no avail.
"At present, we are suffering from two things: Iran's attempts [to gain] regional hegemony, and its attempts to impose its influence via its sectarian allies – the fifth column of Arab Shi'ite fundamentalists. Imagine what Iran's influence, hegemony, and fifth column would be like if Iran had a nuclear bomb.
"Perhaps it is a strange coincidence that, this time around, our strategic interests coincide with those of Israel. The regime of the mullahs in Iran is our enemy, and at the same time it is an enemy not just of Israel, but of world peace and security.
"I know that the Arab demagogues stand together indiscriminately with anyone who is against Israel and America. But we need to not be swept away by these demagogues as we were in the past. This time, the absolute priority must be our strategic security in the Gulf, which is threatened by Iran – even if this comes at the expense of the Palestinian cause.
"In politics, nothing prevents you from allying with the devil for the sake of your interests. This is what confronting the Iranian danger – which is close – demands of us. This issue, in my estimation, cannot suffer delay or hesitation. Every passing day benefits Iran.
"Thus, we need to push the world powers, and especially the U.S. and the E.U., towards military confrontation to neutralize the Iranian enemy, whatever the cost, before the nuclear bomb makes it too late – even if it is against the will of the Arabs of the north."
The Air Force is about to suspend its controversial effort to reorganize its forces to "dominate" cyberspace. The provisional, 8,000-man Cyber Command has been ordered to stop all activities, just weeks before it was supposed to be declared operational.
The suspension is yet another body blow to a service already reeling from a series of hits in recent months. Nuclear weapons have been mishandled; major contracts -- including one for a fleet of new tanker planes -- have been botched; the Air Force's civilian and military leaders have been ousted by the Secretary of Defense; a top general apparently committed suicide.
"I am surprised, but not that surprised, given the turmoil in the Air Force," cybersecurity specialist (and former Air Force Captain) Richard Bejtlich tells Danger Room. "It makes sense for new leadership to want to pause and evaluate major projects like Cyber Command before moving forward. The Air Force is facing severe challenges right now, so leadership may want to consolidate its resources before expanding the AF cybermission."
Heavy-breathing television ads, hyping the nascent command's abilities and scope, only added to the confusion. And within the military, the command was blasted for being duplicative -- and maybe even a cheap internal power grab. As Brewin notes, "The hard sell may have been the undoing of the Cyber Command, which seemed to be a grab by the Air Force to take the lead role in cyberspace."
By Gerald: Internet Anthropologist Think Tank. Aug 14, 08
And somebody is messing with the only Military Force willing to identify the WWW as a domain and express the need to dominate it like they do the AIR. On demand.
In the mean while the WWW stands as a target, with minimal defenses. USA Air Force has the means, power, and the forces to develop a paradigm for defense and offense. And someone kills the effort in the middle of a Cyber War in Georgia and Russia.
The public should be informed of the name of the person derailing this much needed force. ...According to an Air Force source, Admiral Mike Mullen ( also opposes Iranian attack, not sure how he feels about Nuclear Iran. G)--chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--wants the Navy to be involved. ( Admiral !, seems Air Force caught the Navy napping, so the 8,000 man Air Force Cyber command will be dropped. )
The Navy has the best OSINT and most computers, but not the vision or WWW paradigm concepts the Air Force has and they are ready to deploy NOW.
Even in a crash program Navy is six months to a year away from deploying.
USA Government ( NAVY ) is ignoring a threat superior to WMD at the peril of its citizens, and its culture, and economic system. And don't expect much Government help, we saw Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and they were at their best... Plan to take care of your self. Web down, = Shortwave & CBs, cash...self help The Government has not even trained for the WWW going down for an extended period.
Cyber war, Cyber attacks, Russia. By Gerald Internet Anthropologist Think Tank Aug 13, 08
Georgia has been under heavy cyber attack even before the out break of military activities.
Some of the web sites have been moved to Atlanta, Georgia - Tulip Systems, Inc. They are better suited to handling the traffic volume, our sources there say last night was the heaviest so far. And Russian servers are being cut off from the WWW. They will be releasing a list of attacking servers and PC's.
90% of the attacks are coming from Russia and the other 10% from the rest of the world.
Other sources indicate while there has been a cease fire, the Internet attacks have not let up.
The paradigm fitting Russia's actions indicates Russia is not done, and will leave behind a "Peace keeping force. And call for the current Georgian President to resign.
The rest of the paradigm suggest other Russian military operations in other break-away nations. Latvia is at risk. Russia has been handing out "passports" for there, thereby giving them an excuse to intervene to protect "their people, Russians".
Another paradigm this suggest is one we have pointed out before, how an WWW attack is a level above WMD.
There are economic sanctions, and ECONOMIC SANCTIONS. Cutting a country off from the Internet would be a economic crippling blow. And we have seen the pieces activated piece meal which point to the possibility of shutting down the WWW, for months.
Cutting Iran off from the Internet could bring their banking centers to its knees. And would cause problems even selling their oil. Their infrastructure would crumble slowly over time but it would cripple them.
It could also be crippling if it happened to the world, if the WWW went down, Bring it back up would also re-activate the bots that would be causing the attack. Causing it to go back down again.
It would take considerable time to work out some work around for the bot attacks problem. As no one has done any contingency planning for the WWW to go down. Thru bots and physical attacks.
Our Cyber war capabilities paradigm. Russia's Cyber war capablities are the most sophisticated in the World ( assuming they inherited the RBN, Russian Business net ) but pale in compares to China's volume of bots. USA leads in penetration/physical attacks, but their bots are virtually non-existent. I think we, the think tank, have more bots than the US government, and we have BSU's available.
Internet Anthropologist Cyber Battalion is pleased to announce another victory in the ongoing cyber war. I am extremely proud of our troops valiant and exemplary performance exhibited throughout this exercise. Our PUBLIC company.
East Turkestan Islamic Movement webmaster/strategist is run from the USA
And I commend their efforts and continued tenacious dedication toward our mission; The pursuit of online terrorist targets.
Today our Cyber troops have once again executed a successful strike on target.
Remember al-jinan.org threat for a cyber attack on the USA ? We were there. We commenced exposing them on Infovald's forum. At TOI (time of incident) Bill directed and supervised the critical operation. Exhaustively, conducting a successful penetration of the target via, a broad based multi phased cy-ops initiative. This incorporated the development and dissemination of key Intel against Islam's chief hacker, while tracking and tracing him across the vastness of the Internet with precision.
Our ethnographic studies were extremely effective in helping to develop the paradigm for taking down the web-site, and disabling and dismantling the group. We continue our cyber surveillance of certain group members in ongoing operations to date. In this instance we took the site down 3 days prior to their announced attack, and rendered their program usless and, as well, burned the chief hacker publicly.
We have to date disclosed approximately 5% of our over-all special ops and the remaining are held classified.
We have hundreds of active contacts within key IC agencies; FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, Army, Air Force, Navy, Pentagon, Special Forces, State Department and our entrenched Civilian Corps. So Keep the tips coming.
Today our new Bot Surveillance Units ( BSU's ) have yet claimed another enemy target. The web-master and tactician for His proxies and extensive security measures were for naught and have been strategically breeched and foiled.
Note: This group may be connected with two videos threatening attacks on the Olympic Games in China. Two Americans were recently killed in China in an unprovoked act of violence. Breaking...more shortly standby: for IP and location:
Islamic Party of Turkistan Location Houston, Texas, United States IP 70.84.48.66:4145 IPS homestar.typein.net PC language: PC: zh-cn (Chinese/China)
August 07, 2008
Second Threat Against Olympics from Islamic Party of Turkistan Released on Youtube
A group calling itself the Islamic Party of Turkistan has issued a second threat against the Olympic Games in Beijing. Laura Mansfield is working on a translation of the statement.
In a video accusing China's Communist Government of "mistreating Muslims" a Jihadi group threatened to attack the Summer Games in Beijin. A spokesman of the Turkistan Islamic Party accuses China of "forcing Muslims into atheism and destroying Islamic schools. The "Turkistan Islamic Party" is most likely based across the border in Pakistan, where sources affirm it received training from Al Qaeda.
Weeks ago the organization claimed responsibility for a bombings across the country. The latest video shows graphics of a burning Olympics logo and explosions. This week, attackers killed 16 police and wounded more than a dozen in the Xinjiang city of Kashgar using homemade bombs.
New spasm of violence in western China as 7 die in wave of bombings By Jim Yardley Published: August 11, 2008
BEIJING: The violence in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang rose sharply Sunday morning with the deaths of a security guard and at least six suspects after a daring series of bombings that began with a predawn assault on a police station, the state news media reported.
The attacks, coinciding with the first weekend of the Beijing Olympics, occurred less than a week after what the Chinese authorities had previously described as China's worst terrorist assault in recent memory, in the Xinjiang city of Kashgar. Last Monday, two Uighur Muslims rammed a truck into a group of paramilitary officers who were doing their morning exercises, then attacked with explosives and knives. Sixteen officers were killed and several more were wounded.
The violence came as the Chinese authorities have accused the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or ETIM, of plotting terror attacks against the Olympics. The Chinese government and the United States State Department list the group as a terrorist organization, though some specialists on Xinjiang question its scope and potency. Some human rights groups have accused China of exaggerating the threat to justify its crackdown against Uighurs
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