George

Impact of Iraqi defeat on Islam

By Hal Lindsey

Analysis by Khaled Abu Toameh: Bye-bye, Yasser

"This is a silent coup," a top Palestinian Authority official in Ramallah said shortly after an agreement was reached between PA Chairman Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister-designate Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) over the composition of a new cabinet.

Efforts to replace Arafat or sideline him started shortly after Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield last spring. Abbas and a handful of PA officials seized the opportunity provided by Arafat's being under siege in his Ramallah compound and held a series of closed-door meetings to discuss the new situation resulting from the IDF's reoccupation of the West Bank.

Arafat aides described the gathering as a coup d' tat. One of the alleged conspirators, former cabinet minister Nabil Amr, was the target of a shooting attack on his home. Abbas, who understood the message, hastily left the West Bank.

Almost a year later, Abbas has made a comeback that in effect turns him into the new leader of the Palestinian people.

The consensus in Ramallah Wednesday was that the biggest loser in the cabinet crisis was Arafat, who was forced to relinquish his grip over the dozen or so security forces that he helped establish since the Olso process began.

Last year Arafat, also under immense pressure from the US and EU, reluctantly agreed to cede control exclusive control over the PA's finances by naming Salaam Fayad as finance minister.

Fayad has since gone a long way in reorganizing the PA's finances. He has even set aside a modest budget for the president's office, depriving Arafat of control over the millions of dollars donated by the US and EU.

Last month, international pressure forced Arafat to end his 40-year autocratic rule and to accept the idea of sharing power with a prime minister.

In an attempt to retain his dictatorial regime, Arafat tried to appoint a loyalist, but was forced to backtrack by his own Fatah movement, whose leaders told him that unless he appointed one of their own, they would not support the new cabinet when it is presented to the Palestinian Legislative Council for approval.

Once again, Arafat succumbed. This time he was even forced to accept Fatah's nominee Abbas.

The power struggle over the last few days could be Arafat's last battle. Once the new cabinet is sworn in and Abbas and Muhammad Dahlan Abbas's choice for security chief who was opposed by Arafat enter their new offices, he will be eased upstairs, if not out the door.

Source - Bye-bye Yasser

Is this the end of Yasser Arafat?

Your brother in Christ with much agape love,

George

Distortion by omission

    In six trips to Baghdad in the early 1990s as a reporter for ABC News and then CNN, I learned a lot about how Saddam Hussein's regime dealt with international media

False media prophets

Cal Thomas (back to web version)

April 15, 2003

When the Berlin Wall fell and Eastern Europe escaped from the shackles of communism, I wrote that we must not forget the enablers, apologists and other "fellow travelers" who helped sustain communism's grip on a sizable portion of humanity for much of the 20th century. I suggested that a "cultural war crimes tribunal" be convened, at which people from academia, the media, government and the clergy who were wrong in their assessment of communism would be forced to confront their mistakes. While not wishing to deprive anyone of his or her right to be wrong, it wouldn't hurt for these people to be held accountable.

That advice was not taken - but today we are presented with another opportunity in the form of scores of false media prophets who predicted disaster should the U.S. military confront and seek to oust the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein. The purpose of a cultural war crimes tribunal would be to remind the public of journalism's many mistakes, as well as the errors of certain politicians and retired generals, and allow it to properly judge their words the next time they feel the urge to prophesy.

National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com) and the Media Research Center (www.mediaresearch.org) have accumulated some of the predictions. In light of developments, they make for hilarious reading - better than a Chinese fortune cookie or the horoscopes.

In no particular order of hilarity or error factor, there was R.W. Apple of the New York Times - who mostly writes about food these days - opining on March 30, just days after the war had begun: "With every passing day, it is more evident that the allies made two gross military misjudgments in concluding that coalition forces could safely bypass Basra and Nasiriya and that Shiite Muslims in Southern Iraq would rise up against Saddam Hussein."

On the same day, Peter Arnett (former contributor to NBC but ousted after his anti-American homily on Iraqi state television) flatly stated, "The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance."

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who sees no good, hears no good and speaks no good concerning this administration, also wrote on March 30: "In cranking up their war plan with expurgated intelligence, the hawks left the ground troops exposed and insufficiently briefed on the fedayeen. Ideology should not shape facts when lives are at stake." Someone please create a plaque with that last statement and send it to every journalist in the country, beginning with Maureen Dowd.

My personal favorite is the comment by columnist and TV host Chris Matthews, who wrote last Aug. 25 in the San Francisco Chronicle: "This invasion of Iraq, if it goes off, will join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Desert One and Somalia in the history of military catastrophe."

Barry McCaffrey, a retired U.S. Army general who commanded the 24th Infantry Division 12 years ago during Desert Storm, told the BBC's "Newsnight" program on March 24: "(We) could take, bluntly, a couple to 3,000 casualties." Thankfully, the casualty numbers have been incredibly small.

There were numerous observations from journalists and commentators about the supposed "insufficiency" of troops. There were predictions that the "Arab street" would stage an uprising. There were forecasts that Israel would be drawn into the war when Saddam attacked with Scud missiles.

All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their credibility will be lacking.

If these false media prophets won't "fess up," then let the tribunal begin at an academic institution or in a major television studio. I'll bet it would claim high ratings for the Fox News Channel, which is clobbering its competition precisely because the public recognizes false prophets when it sees them.

Source: False Media Prophets by Cal Thomas

Your thoughts on the media?

Your brother in Christ with much agape love,

George

Toward a revised Koran

William F. Buckley, Jr.

The horror of U.S. Inc., when an enterprising soldier draped an American flag over the bronze head of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, is an early warning signal of the efforts being made to hoist only a nonimperialist flag in Iraq. The challenge ahead is formidable, but not for that reason unappealing. It would be fine if we secured the active cooperation of Saudi Arabia, because in Jedda is the political key to the problem.

In 1969 a summit conference was called, which met in Rabat, Morocco, to form the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) with a permanent secretariat in Jedda. The challenge is to wrest from Jedda de facto sanction for an Iraqi government that will be Muslim but that will observe a separation of church and state. The end is that secular concerns and the liberty of conscience should fuse to create an incipient democracy.

The OIC has 57 member states, not all of them exclusively Muslim, but all with a substantial Muslim population. There are democratic states among them, including Turkey, whose Islamic majority prevailed in the last election and, ironically, refused to facilitate the American expedition.

The scholar Bernard Lewis identifies three schools of Islamic thought in the matter of dissenters, or infidels, to use theological language. There are those who believe that a sacred mission of Islam is to conquer the world by the use of the sword if necessary. A second accepts cohabitation of the planet but with stern monolithic concern for Islamic pre-eminence. The third accepts a division in religions abroad, and the realities and benefits of coexistence.

Tomorrow, the civil administration in Iraq will proceed under an American viceroy. The day after tomorrow will come in a year or two, when a credible Iraqi assembly evolves. The missionary work of the U.S. Department of State is to elicit a commitment to freedom of conscience from Muslim authorities. And there is no shortage of those who would step forward and declare that the Koran does not enjoin such activity as was engaged in by Saddam Hussein.

Professor Lewis tells us that medieval jurists and theologians discussed at some length the rules of warfare, including such questions as which weapons are permitted, which not. "There is even some discussion in medieval texts of the lawfulness of missile and chemical warfare, the one relating to mangonels and catapults, the other to poison-tipped arrows and the poisoning of enemy water supplies."

There is internal dissent. "Some justices permit, some restrict, some disapprove of the use of these weapons. The stated reason for concern is the indiscriminate casualties that they inflict."

Mr. Lewis, in his new book The Crisis of Islam, concludes the paragraph with charming self-effacement. "At no point do the basic texts of Islam enjoin terrorism and murder. At no point -- as far as I am aware -- do they even consider the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders."

Well, doc, if you are unaware, after a lifetime's scholarship, of any sovereign Islamic mandate that permits random slaughter such as was practiced by Saddam Hussein, we should proceed on the assumption that no member of a civil government in Baghdad will come up with a Koranic injunction to resume the random slaughter and oppression sometimes used to enforce one-man rule.

The looming omnipresence will be Jedda, where the secretariat sits representing the worldwide Muslim community. We have working for us the indelible picture of an elated people greeting their liberators. Bearing the scars of life under one Muslim ruler, Iraqi dissidents and converts are powerful missionaries to Jedda, and indeed to Egypt and Iran and Syria. The need is great to move toward a constitution in which Islam is acknowledged as a state religion, but only in the sense that the Church of England is a state religion.

In the best of all possible worlds, the sheer dazzle of the coalition's liberation should serve to illuminate the privations of life without freedom. But it won't be enough. If the inherent allure of freedom were sufficient to convert those who suffer from life without it, autocratic rule would disappear. More will be needed, in effective statesmanship, including persuasion and some tough love for those sheiks of Araby who continue life as though nothing at all had happened in Iraq. A great deal happened, including, for however brief a moment, the Stars and Stripes over the face of the tyrant.

Source: Toward a revised Koran

Your thoughts on this article?

Your brother in Christ with much agape love,

George

Liberation tastes like crow to anti-war crowd

What was that whimpering sound? Oh that. It's just the "Yes, but" crowd formerly known as the "anti-war pundits." Ignore them.

Saddam's statue had barely hit the ground in central Baghdad before America's armchair doomsayers began harrumphing a new caveat in which to couch this unseemly turn of events. One might almost think they didn't want Saddam to fall.

You couldn't help noticing the careful balance the antis tried to strike between reluctant admission and preachy admonition. The formula goes something like this: "Yes, we defeated Iraq, BUT . let's not get too carried away, it ain't over yet."

No one exercised this template better - or more oddly - than New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Here are a couple of snippets from her column the day Baghdad collapsed:

"Victory in Iraq will be a truly historic event, BUT (my emphasis) it will be exceedingly weird and dangerous if this administration turns America into Sparta."

And this: "There remains the unfinished business of Osama bin Laden. BUT (my emphasis) the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom should not mark the beginning of Operation Eternal War."

Hardly anything to argue with there. But, Sparta?

Reading the myriad yes-butters, I keep free-associating to the final scene of "Sleeping With the Enemy," after actress Julia Roberts has shot her loathsome, raping, tyrannical husband. The audience titters in dread, hoping he's truly dead but suspecting a final terrifying lurch from near-death to unleash a fatal blow.

Here's the connection: While those who supported the coalition assault on Iraq really do hope Saddam is dead and cautiously celebrate the demise of his regime, the anti-war gang, we suspect, is tittering hopefully that he will yet spring again from near-death and make us wrong after all.

Nah, no one really wants Saddam to return to power. He was, to mimic Dowd's vernacular, such a meanie-weanie. Still, the Bush-bashers have plenty of reason to wish for something less spectacular than a free and happy Iraq festooned with flowers and sloppy with kisses for trench-scented soldiers. It's hard to admit you were flat wrong.

It's also hard to be humble when you're right, but guess who is both? Guess who first cautioned against glibness, hubris, immodesty and arrogance? Those mean men Dowd can never bring herself to address as adults: her Bushy, Rummy and Wolfie. The lead players in this epochal drama have spoken with the restraint and authority of grown-ups undistracted by childish antics, either from the pacifist nursery or from exuberant Iraqis tasting freedom, in some cases for the first time. "Let them rant" or "Let them loot," as the case may be, is an attitude of tolerance born of higher sights.

The media are having a little more fun. The conservative Media Research Center, which monitors liberal slant in the media, quickly posted a special "Gloat and Quote" edition, showcasing the predictions and news analyses proved ridiculous by recent events. Various bloggers and Web sites, including National Review Online and Andrew Sullivan, did the same, providing amusing anecdotes for dull parties.

Meanwhile, it's a good idea to stay focused, as Bush has urged without the prompting of pundits. There's hard work ahead, though Operation Eternal War isn't likely part of the plan. As in all wars, there are no guarantees, no certainties, even though Dowd now asserts: "We were always going to win the war with Iraq."

Who says girls can't keep secrets? Here's what we really do know: Coalition forces have gotten this far in "the game," as Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Aldouri, churlishly put it, through gritty determination and the unflinching conviction that we were doing the right thing.

Those who supported the war policy had no special sixth sense, no claim to revelation or prescience. Rather they possessed an unambiguous moral clarity. As journalist Christopher Hitchens put it during a television interview - and I paraphrase wildly from memory - "There's just no way that allowing Saddam to continue butchering innocents and potentially threatening the rest of the world can be viewed as a morally superior position."

No doubt the antis and naysayers, who seem to favor any old status quo to the frightening prospect of upheaval, will lurch again from whimpering near-death to unleash new protestations. Little matter. They have proven themselves irrelevant to today's reality, which includes a freed Iraqi people for whom the operative conjunctive phrase isn't "Yes, but" but "Yes, and."

Source: Liberation tastes like crow to anti-war crowd

What are your thoughts on the Anti-War protest?

Your brother in Christ with much agape love,

George

U.N. -- The un-coalition

Debra Saunders

Two weeks into the Iraq war, naysayers complained that the invasion was going too slow. War planning was flawed. There weren't enough troops. Where were the cheering Iraqis? Why wasn't there more "shock and awe" in "shock and awe?"

Then the regime imploded, Saddam Hussein's statues tumbled. As warfront successes mounted, the Carp-at-Bush Patrol needed to find some deficiency, real or perceived, to keep the news from being too good. Before victory was declared, the constant critics had started lamenting how the Bush administration is botching reconstruction.

The do-gooders' big fears are: 1) that the Defense Department, which has prosecuted the war in Iraq so successfully, will be too involved in Iraq's reconstruction, and 2) the United Nations won't have a big enough role.

Yes, I know, the United Nations does good deeds for sick children in Third World countries. But the United Nations doesn't exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to Iraq and post-conflict reconstruction.

The U.N. Security Council allowed Hussein essentially to chase weapons inspectors out of Iraq in 1998.

The United Nations oversaw the Oil for Food program that allowed Hussein to siphon off funds meant to feed his people. Despite more than 250 U.N. workers overseeing the program at various times, Hussein still managed to funnel Food for Oil money into his propaganda and palaces.

In Israel, posters of suicide bombers have popped up in U.N. Relief and Works Agency schools for Palestinian refugees.

Recently, a spokesperson for the U.N. Mission in Kosovo announced that four-hours-with and two-hours-without electricity will be the standard situation for an undetermined time -- this is after the United Nation has spent four years rebuilding Kosovo, well, in its own fashion.

I'll add that eating is what you might call a time-sensitive activity. I question whether a group that equates "final opportunity" with months and months of extensions should be entrusted with delivering food to people who are hungry right now. "Pronto" is not the United Nations' motto.

Why are people on the left pushing for the United Nations to get involved?

Mayhaps there's a conceit at play here: Methinks the U.N. lovers are more interested in the romantic notion of having people like them (intellectuals, not buzz cuts) delivering aid than they are in watching people who follow orders and carry rifles actually deliver huge quantities of food to the bodies in need of it. If my children were hungry, I'd rather rely on the U.S. military.

Yes, they're champing at the bit to get the United Nations in charge. But you have to wonder: Is their big fear the Iraqi people going without, or military types basking in any humanitarian glory?

Source: U.N. -- The un-coalition

What are your thoughts on the United Nations?

Your brother in Christ with much agape love,

George

Russia -- leading the way

    It's never fun to admit failure. But Russia's 13 percent flat tax forces me to confess a certain degree of incompetence. For 10 years, I have been working in Washington to replace our convoluted tax code with a simple and fair flat tax. But as every taxpayer can attest, my efforts have not borne fruit.

    Yet in Russia, President Vladimir Putin

The dysfunctional United Nations

    "The task of restoring the political, economic and social system of Iraq is enormous," French President Jacques Chirac rightly observed at a news conference following a rather bizarre weekend meeting in St. Petersburg involving the leaders of Russia, Germany and France. Then, confirming how truly bizarre the confab had been, the French president incomprehensibly insisted, "Only the [u.N.] has the legitimacy to do that."

    In fact, if any organization has forfeited whatever legitimacy it once might have held on political and economic matters in post-Saddam Iraq, it has to be the United Nations, and in particular, the Security Council. The notion that the United Nations can assume the leadership role in restoring Iraq's political system seems implausible in the aftermath of its 12-year role of appeasement and accommodation following the first Persian Gulf War. After its November passage of Resolution 1441, the U.N. Security Council repeatedly failed in its responsibility to enforce the resolution's "serious consequences" in the face of Saddam Hussein's unrelenting failure to comply.

    In its role as promoter of international security and safety, the United Nations has demonstrated itself to be a dysfunctional, counterproductive organization that must be radically reformed. One indisputable conclusion is that the United States cannot rely upon the Security Council for the protection of its national-security interests. Today, the world is too dangerous a place to turn over such important matters as the political reconstruction of Iraq to so dysfunctional an organization.

    It comes as no surprise that the United Nations, M. Chirac and his antiwar allies in Berlin and Moscow now expect to reap economic dividends from Iraq's oil endowment as a reward for their obstructionism in the Security Council. Just as they attempted to exercise their Security Council veto power to prevent the application of "serious consequences," France and Russia now demand that the United Nations continue to control Iraq's oil revenues indefinitely beyond the expiration in mid-May of the U.N. oil-for-food program, which was recently extended for 45 days.

    In this way, they would continue to exercise their much-abused veto power. Having obtained lucrative oil contracts from the Iraqi dictatorship as de facto payoffs for emasculating the Security Council, France and Russia seek to ensure that the Saddam-guaranteed profits continue to flow their way even after the dictator has been placed in the dustbin of history. But that game is now up. The United Nations, France and Russia need to learn quite soon that President Bush meant his repeated assurances that Iraq's oil belongs to its people

CNN's disinformation campaign

One major difference between the AntiChrist and the other world leaders.  The false ressurrection -- also the establishment of a false idol that becomes "alive" which is just the beginning of the deceptions poured out onto the world.

Your brother in Christ with much agape love,

George

Oh what I have missed the past week not being on the boards -- and I thought this was a serious problem when I first started reading the caption!  LOL!

Glad to see things are running smoothly!

Your brother in Christ with much agape love,

George

As long as we are talking about media bias.  The BBC today actually ran the story of the earthquake in India the entire time the statue of Saddam was being taken down in Baghdad.  Sounds like some media bias considering the event was much like the taking down of the Berlin Wall.  It was an historic moment.  Now may the door for the gospel be completely open in Iraq!  

Your brother in Christ with much agape love,

George

Hello Nebula,

Welcome to the boards!  Take care and God bless,

Your brother in Christ with much agape love,

George

As I continued to manage a Christian chat room called Christchat, there came an extraordinary amount of satanists entering the chat room.  It was a strange phenomenon and a new development in my life.  As I was spending time trying to help these satanists, I realized that I needed to know I was equipped for the spiritual warfare I was beginning to enter into.  I had re-read the book, The Person and the Work of the Holy Spirit by R.A. Torrey.  This book radically changed my life.  I realized that I needed to know I was equipped for the battles that were to come.

I separated myself from the outside world for a few days in prayer and fasting seeking the

In July of 1999, I had arrived in Louisiana.  The first stop on this tour across the United States was visiting one of the leaders of Healing Heart Ministries.  When I arrived, I was shocked to see the satanist whom I had moved to a safe house just over a month earlier.

To make an incredibly long story very short

Hello brothers and sisters in the Lord,

I'm going to lock this thread until I am finished with the entire testimony so please be patient before responding.

I was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland.  As a boy I went to a "christian" private school for a short time where my height being the smallest kid in the entire school and my distinct hair (I have had a white streak in my hair my entire life) led to years of riducule.  3rd grade picture Because of these years of riducule I came to despise Christianity and conservative beliefs.  In High School I attended Mt. St. Joseph in Baltimore, Md. a Jesuit run catholic high school.  In these years I began drinking, smoking and drugs.  At this same time is when the Grateful Dead rebounded back onto the scene with it's major hit -- Touch of Gray which I just happened to have -- this touch of Gray.  When I graduated high school in 1989 I started to tour with the Grateful Dead and all the sudden my freakish hair was totally awesome.

I will not spend a whole lot of time dealing with my past of which I am totally ashamed of, but I say this so you can understand the situation I was delivered from.

Fast forward -- January 20, 1996.  I was driving home from work and a drunk 72 year old man came out of street and drove my van into a telephone pole.   Though I was not seriously injured (how that happened is beyond me since the road I was driving has a 50 mph speed limit and I wasn't wearing a seat belt) it totally changed my view of how short life can be.  That night as I was lying in bed with my fiancee at the time I woke up in a cold sweat and thought to myself -- "What would have happened if I had died tonight?"

The next day the Lord had placed a Bible into my hands and I started reading Matthew.  I had gotten to Matthew 16:26 where it says -- "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?  What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"  That one verse plagued me for the next 3 months.  Everytime I drank, smoked, got high, or had sex this nagging voice would say -- "Is this worth your soul?"

On March 20, 1996 I told my fiancee that she had to move home and that I was quitting my past lifestyle.  The hardest part of becoming a believer was knowing that I had to put away my fiancee. Picture of my ex at a waterfall holding huge iceles  Truly it was the hardest thing I believe I had ever done.  I had reached a point in my life where I had choose between the world and Christ -- but even more drastic was chosing between Christ and my fiancee.  On March 20, 1996 I told her she had to move home and I was on my knees crying out to God for mercy, confessing and repenting for 3 hours.  I didn't know about a "sinners prayer", I just knew that I needed to come to my Father.

The first month I believe was the hardest of my life.  Though I was able to quit smoking, drinking and drugs on the first day and I destroyed all my rock music cd's it was hard because I had no fellowship with any Christians at the time.  I honestly didn't even know a Christian, but that time of repentence before the Lord I knew that I was on the right path but at the same time I was tempted from every angle imagineable.  After surviving the first month came the vicious attacks -- I can't even begin to describe the verbal abuse but through it all I maintained the course.

Continue reading the saga...