Today Syrian state television showed human bodies and detached limbs floating down the Orontes River.

They are the remains of dead soldiers torn apart by protestors in Hama. Or so the state claims.

A more objective report identifies them differently:

They are the victims of Syrian tank fire and ZU-23 automatic anti-aircraft artillery trained on residential buildings and streets in the last 48 hours as the dead pile up …

Citizens cowering in their homes are throwing the dead out of windows and off roofs into the river. …

The dead are believed to be in the hundreds and rising all the time because the thousands of injured cannot be reached for medical care.

But the numbers of the dead and injured are not known, because the Syrian authorities have “cut off all the city’s ground and cell telephone and Internet links”, and “the satellite phones in the hands of some of the dissident leaders provide the only source of information on the situation in the embattled city.”

Assad has no reason to fear that any power or combination of powers will try to stop him slaughtering his own people by the thousands.

Turkish units had been waiting on the border to enter Syria, and possibly establish a refugee camp on Syrian territory to stop the flow of refugees into Turkey itself. But a few days ago all the chiefs of the Turkish army resigned, and the threat to Assad receded.

The UN will not actively intervene in Syria. Those passionate protectors of “human rights” are not easily distracted from their supreme task of censuring Israel.

The US Congress had exhausted its energies raising the US debt ceiling:

After the Senate … had approved the bill raising the national debt ceiling, the lawmakers were scheduled to turn to the crisis in Syria. However, US Ambassador Robert Ford, on hand to brief the senators, saw them hurrying to leave Capitol Hill.

Only one senator [Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA)] remained for the briefing.

Michael Ledeen writes:

There is no reason to believe that this administration grasps the dimensions of the world war in which we are engaged, like it or not. To look at Syria alone is a failure of strategic vision, because the battle of Syria is part of the larger conflict, involving our current major enemy Iran. Indeed, the Syrian slaughterhouse is a repeat performance of the earlier (and still ongoing) massacre in Iran, and is assisted (perhaps even instructed) from Tehran.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have a special force for operations outside Iran called the Al-Quds Force. (Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem.) It is assisting Assad in his attempts to crush the popular uprising. Iran has also lent him technicians to help identify and track down activists through their use of the Internet.

The Iranian tyrants tremble at the thought of a free Syria, since, as in Iran itself, the odds favor a successor regime that would devote its energies and depleted resources to the care and feeding of its own people [hmmm- JB] rather than to the support of terrorist proxies like Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and al-Qaeda. Moreover, the spectacle of the overthrow of Iran’s closest regional ally might well inspire the Iranian people to take to the streets once again against Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.

The Heritage Foundation comments:

The [Obama] Administration has a long way to go to correct its ill-advised efforts to seek better relations with a gangster regime that has murdered more than 1,400 of its own citizens in the last four months; thrown more than 12,000 in jail; served as Iran’s chief ally in the Middle East; supported a wide array of terrorists against the U.S. and its allies; and conspired with North Korea (and probably Iran) to illegally build a nuclear reactor designed to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon.

The collapse of the Obama Administration’s Syria policy is yet another example of how the Obama Doctrine has undermined U.S. national interests in a naïve effort to engage a despotic regime. Now that the Administration’s timid and weak policy toward Syria has emboldened the Assad regime to attack the U.S. embassy [on July 11], it is time for President Obama … to replace his myopic engagement strategy with meaningful efforts to help the Syrian people oust the predatory Assad regime.

But does he want to? Perhaps Senator Bob Casey could tell us.

July 11 was International Day Against Stoning.

Will it persuade Iran to give up the practise?

Skeptics that we are, we doubt it.

Iran follows sharia law which prescribes that persons found guilty of committing adultery must be stoned to death.

Executioners carry it out religiously.

Instructions for how it must be done are precise.

Notice that a man is planted in the earth up to his hips, a woman up to her chest.

From Creeping Sharia:

In the video, Michelle Bachmann deplores the Iranian regime – good – and then praises an organization that opposes it – not good, because the organization is a terrorist group. She should be better informed.

She is not the only one in Congress who is misinformed about the Mujahedin al-Khalq Organization. Even the admirable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has swallowed their propaganda.

Everyone in the world who is not in favor of submitting to Islamic rule should know they must beware, in all contexts and circumstances, of any group that calls itself or in any way involves “Mujahedin”.

“Mujahedin” are jihadis, irregular warriors for Islam, whose method is terrorism. In short, “Mujahedin” are terrorists.

Michael Rubin traces the MKO’s history here.

He writes, in part:

Few terrorists groups garner the bipartisan endorsement and support that Iran’s Mujahedin al-Khalq Organization [MKO] has. On October 20, 2005, several congressmen and many aides attended a briefing in Congress. Maryam Rajavi, co-leader of the group and self-styled president-elect of Iran, addressed the gathering by video from France. She received a warm reception. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) thanked “Sister Maryam.” A bipartisan group of U.S. Congressmen have signed petitions calling for the U.S. Department of State to lift its 1997 classification of the group as a terrorist organization. In an April 8, 2003 interview, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the House International Relations Committee’s Central Asia and Middle East Subcommittee said, “This group loves the United States. They’re assisting us in the war on terrorism; they’re pro-U.S. This group has not been fighting against the U.S. It’s simply not true.” Ros-Lehtinen is wrong. Unfortunately, hers is a mistake common to some on the left and the right who care deeply about Iranian freedom but fail to understand the nature of a group which, in public, says the right things about freedom and democracy but, in reality is dedicated to the opposite. Maryam Rajavi and her husband Masud are adept at public relations and adroit at reinvention, but the organization over which they preside eschews democracy and embraces terrorism, autocracy, and Marxism… and Islamism.

They argued that not only did God create the world, but he also set forth a historical evolution in which a classless society would supplant capitalist inequity. …

In order to prepare itself for armed struggle, the MKO reached out to the Palestinian Liberation Organization. In 1970, several leading MKO, including [Masud] Rajavi received terrorist training in PLO camps in Jordan and Lebanon. The group subsequently cemented links to the Libyan regime of Mu‘ammar Qadhafi and to the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, the Soviet Union’s Arabian Peninsula satellite. …

In May 30 and 31, 1972, shortly before President Richard Nixon’s state visit to Iran, the MKO launched a wave of bomb attacks which targeted the Iran-American Society, the U.S. Information Office, the Hotel International, Pepsi Cola, General Motors, and the Marine Oil Company. They failed to assassinate General Harold Price, head of the U.S. Military Mission in Iran. Less than three months later, they bombed the Jordanian embassy to revenge King Hussein’s September 1970 crackdown on their PLO patrons. In 1973, the MKO bombed the Pan-American Airlines building, Shell Oil, and Radio City Cinema in Tehran, and assassinated Colonel Lewis Hawkins, the deputy chief of the U.S. military mission. They did not only target foreigners. In a wave of bombings that continued into 1975, the MKO group attacked clubs, stores, police facilities, minority-owned businesses, factories it accused of having “Israeli connections,” and symbols of state and capitalism.

Not all was well within the MKO leadership. In 1975, the group divided into a Marxist faction that eschewed Islam, and a Muslim faction which did not. … Both groups continued their attacks on government and Western targets, all the while striking at each other. While the Marxist MKO was unsuccessful in an attempt to assassinate a senior U.S. diplomat, it killed three American employees of Rockwell International.

While both MKO factions participated in the Islamic Revolution, the Muslim MKO found shelter under the banner of Taleqani and rode the Revolution to prominence. They claimed some credit for the seizure of the U.S. embassy and subsequent hostage taking, and later demonstrated against their release. …

In the wake of the Islamic Revolution, [Masud] Rajavi consolidated his control over the organization. Rajavi divided the leadership into a Politburo and a Central Committee, and created a number of organizations to recruit and train new members. This proliferation of front organization, all serving an ideological and disciplined leadership, remains characteristic of the group today.

It was not long before Rajavi and the MKO came into conflict with the clerical circles surrounding Khomeini. …  [who] considered the MKO’s blending of Islam with Marxism, as well as the group’s denial of past jurisprudence, to be anathema. …

Khomeini … closed the group’s offices, banned its papers, and forced the MKO underground. …

The MKO called for national protests on June 20, 1980, and demonstrators heeded their call. Perhaps a half million poured into the streets in Tehran; many more turned out in cities across Iran. But Khomeini and his supporters in the Islamic Republic Party were ready. They labeled anyone marching in support of the MKO to be enemies of God, subject to summary execution. They kept their word. Khomeini’s followers killed hundreds. The warden of Evin Prison, Tehran’s main political prison, bragged of his execution of teenage girls.

Khomeini’s opponents responded. Terrorists—their affiliation unclear—blew up the Islamic Republic Party headquarters, killing hardline Ayatollah Mohammed Hosseini Beheshti, founder of the Islamic Republic’s judiciary, and 72 party members. Khomeini used the attack as reason to accelerate his purge. A reign of terror began. Thousands perished before Islamic Republic firing squads and upon its gallows. As Khomeini consolidated control, Iranians’ willingness to support the MKO evaporated.

The MKO did not surrender, though. It drove its terrorist campaign to a fever pitch, assassinating several hundred regime officials and Revolutionary Guards, and bombing the homes and offices of clerics. The group also targeted judges who passed sentence against their members. The MKO used suicide bombers with deadly effect, killing in separate incidents the Friday prayer leaders of Tehran and Shiraz. At its peak in July 1982, the group assassinated, on average, three regime officials per day; publicly, the MKO has claimed responsibility for the murders of over 10,000 people in Iran since 1981. But while the terrorist campaign shook the Islamic Republic to its core, it also claimed many innocent victims.

Rajavi… fled to Paris during Khomeini’s crackdown. …  Still more MKO supporters fled to Iraq, where they accepted the protection of President Saddam Hussein. What little support the group had once enjoyed in Iran evaporated, as Iranians saw the MKO rally in support of a dictator who launched a war that, by its conclusion in 1988, killed several hundred thousand Iranians. Ordinary Iranians are quite vocal in their hatred of the Islamic Republic and ridicule its current Supreme Leader ‘Ali Khamene‘i. …  But, without exception, all spew venom toward the MKO. The group violence and its betrayal of Iranian nationalism lost it all popular support in Iran. …

While the MKO lost both its revolutionary power struggle and the battle for Iranian hearts and minds, Rajavi has worked tirelessly to reinvent the MKO’s image. Again, he sought power in and sympathy from so many members’ martyrdom. At first, the group reached out to its old leftist and Arab nationalist patrons in Algeria, Lebanon, and among the PLO. It also sent delegations to the Italian and Greek Communist Parties, the Indian Socialist Party, and the British Labour Party. It found a sympathetic audience among left-leaning human rights organization and academics. The group targeted European parliamentarians. More than 3,000 parliamentarians signed a 1986 petition of support.

Paliamentarians have research staff. Why don’t they ever seem to find out the facts about Islamic terrorists, or even about Islam itself?

Seems that in America, members of Congress have been easily seduced by “pretty young women” to believe that the MKO is a paragon of noble goodness:

The admission of Ayatollah Hossein ‘Ali Montazeri, long-time Khomeini deputy, that Khomeini ordered the executions of 3,000 incarcerated MKO allowed the organization to further play the martyr card. The National Council of Resistance’s website describes an international organization with “official contacts with most European countries… [and] amicable relations with Middle Eastern nations.” The group has continued its petition drives. Congressional aides describe how the group sends pretty young women into the halls of Congress and various parliaments with innocuous petitions. Most lawmakers have little idea of the baggage the group carries. The MKO devotees get results. The group brags, “In 1992, in a joint global initiative, 1,500 parliamentarians declared their support for the NCR as the democratic alternative to the Khomeini regime. This included a majority in the US House of Representatives.” …

The organization sends baskets of goodies to ingenuous “lawmakers and commentators” who can’t be bothered to instruct their staff to find out the truth about it.

Within the United States, MKO members tell Congressmen, their staffs, and other policymakers what they want to hear: That the MKO is the only opposition movement capable of ousting the unpopular and repressive Islamic Republic. They are slick. Friendly lawmakers and commentators get Christmas baskets full of nuts and sweets. Well-dressed and well-spoken representatives of MKO front organizations approach American writers, politicians, and pundits who are critical of the regime. …

It would not be difficult for anyone investigating the MKO to learn that these mujahedin ” have little in their record to suggest democracy to be a goal. While they opposed the Islamic Republic only after Khomeini purged them from power, the group sought to replace Khomeini’s dictatorship with its own.”

They use methods of indoctrination or “brain-washing” that are common to many cults:

Today, Masud Rajavi — and his second wife Maryam — work to impose totalitarian control over its membership. Portraits of Masud and Maryam loom large in MKO demonstrations and facilities. In the West, the group forbids its members from reading anything but MKO newspapers and publications. Many MKO live in communal households and participate in mandatory study groups. In Camp Ashraf, Iraq, where many members sit in limbo following Saddam’s fall, MKO minders enforce celibacy, employ cult methods to break down individual will, and shield members from unsupervised exposure to outsiders.

The group hopes that the US has forgotten its terrorist strikes against Americans. And it seems that the US government is willing to forget:

Prior to Iraq’s liberation, there was rare interagency agreement about the MKO within the U.S. government. From Foggy Bottom to the Pentagon to the Old Executive Office Building, there was rare unanimity. As a terrorist organization closely allied with Saddam’s regime, the MKO should be considered combatants if they raised arms, and prisoners if they did not. …

During Iraq’s liberation, U.S. troops surrounded Camp Ashraf, the main MKO base in Iraq. … The U.S. military confined 3,800 MKO “security detainees” in the Camp. The Iranian government demanded forced repatriation and, through intermediaries, offered to trade al-Qaeda members sheltering in Iran for MKO members captured in Iraq. This offer was refused …

What brought about a change of view? –

How did the Left subsequently bolster Rajavi and empower the MKO? … General Ray Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, [said] …”Any organization that has given up their equipment to the coalition clearly is cooperating with us, and I believe that should lead to a review of whether they are still a terrorist organization or not.” Odierno’s statement was unwise. He had no authorization to make such a comment nor did it reflect anything but his own opinion. The MKO are masters of propaganda; he was unaware of the group’s history. Complacency in the face of an opponent’s overwhelming firepower makes an adversary smart, not democratic.

The gaffe made, the Pentagon fumbled its response. … Left-wing pundits and academic conspiracy theorists went into overdrive. …   enabling the group to project a false image of support where none existed. Partisan bloggers … and Washington Post correspondents, and New York Times’ columnists, repeated the story, substituting hypothesis for fact, citing each other and justifying their beliefs with anonymous sources. None can produce an iota of evidence. While the MKO has the support of a handful of congressmen and a small number pundits, Rajavi has no support in the power centers of Washington. Nevertheless, he bolsters his supporters’ morale and basks in the claim of support, however false.

Even in the era of resurgent realism, some issues should remain absolute. Terrorism, the deliberate targeting of civilians for political gain, should never be acceptable. Mitigating factors do not exist. True, in August 2003 the MKO exposed Iran’s covert nuclear enrichment program. It continues to penetrate Iran’s defenses and assassinate its opponents. This, though, is more a result of corruption and the Islamic Republic’s crumbling control over its periphery. The MKO — and any other group — can bribe officials and penetrate defenses. This should not give reason, on the hundredth anniversary of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution, to advance or reward Rajavi’s life-long megalomaniacal quest for power and his backward blend of Marxism and Islamism. Many “monsters of the left” use the rhetoric of democracy to realize their ambition. Masud and Maryam Rajavi, and the organization over which they exert dictatorial control, are no exception.

So Michele Bachmann has got it very wrong about whom to support in Iran against the grim ayatollahs and Ahmadinejad.  She is not alone in making this mistake, but unless she corrects her view in the light of the known facts about MKO, she does not deserve to be the GOP candidate for the presidency.

*

But wait, there’s more (as the TV salesmen say when they are about to “double the offer”).

Michelle Bachmann also wants “intelligent design” taught in the schools along with evolution. She thinks that both are science.

“I support intelligent design,” Bachmann told reporters in New Orleans following her speech to the Republican Leadership Conference. “What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide. I don’t think it’s a good idea for government to come down on one side of a scientific issue or another, when there is reasonable doubt on both sides.”

“Intelligent design” is a euphemism for “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”.  That is not science.

As far as we know all the Republicans who are standing for the presidency are religious – as any who has yet to declare will be. There cannot (yet) be a presidential candidate who would not be religious. Or admit that he/she is not religious.

But we note Bachmann’s unintelligent design to have “intelligent design”  taught to children as if it were science, and mark it against her.

Iran, the foremost state sponsor of terrorism, recently held an international “anti-terrorism” conference – under the flag of the United Nations.

Caroline Glick writes at Townhall:

Speaking at the conference, Iran’s supreme dictator Ali Khamenei called Israel and the US the greatest terrorists in the world. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the US was behind the September 11 attacks and the Holocaust and has used both to force the Palestinians to submit to invading Jews.

The UN has never been able to agree on a definition of terrorism. It seems to be all one to the Secretary General of that demonic institution whether it is exemplified by “measures taken by the US and Israel to defend themselves” or “Muslims flying planes into New York buildings”.

Aside from the fact that the leaders from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – who owe their power and freedom to the sacrifices of the US military – participated in the conference, the most notable aspect of the event is that it took place under the UN flag. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sent greetings to the conferees through his special envoy. According to Iran’s Fars news agency, “In a written message… read by UN Envoy to Teheran Mohammad Rafi Al-Din Shah, [Ban] Kimoon [commended] the Islamic Republic of Iran for holding this very important conference.”

According to Fars, Ban added that the UN had “approved a large number of resolutions against terrorism in recent years, and holding conferences like the Teheran conference can be considerably helpful in implementing these resolutions.”

When journalists inquired about the veracity of the Iranian news report, the UN Secretary-General’s Office defended its position. Ban’s spokesman Farhan Haq sniffed, “If we’re reaching out and trying to make sure that people fight terrorism, we need to go as far as possible to make sure that everyone does it.”

So as far as the UN’s highest official is concerned, when it comes to terrorism there is no qualitative difference between Iran on the one hand and the US and Israel on the other. Here it is worth noting that among the other invitees, Iran’s “counterterror” conference prominently featured Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

That’s the Butcher of Dafur to most of us.

Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on genocide charges for the genocide he has perpetrated in Darfur.

Iran, it should be noted, now occupies the vice-presidency of the UN General Assembly.

And North Korea, whose tyrant spends the meager resources of his impoverished country on making nuclear weapons while the people starve, heads the UN’s Conference on Disarmament.

The new General Assembly vice president is not merely the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. It is also a nuclear proliferator. This no doubt is why Iran’s UN representative expressed glee when earlier this month his nation’s fellow nuclear proliferator North Korea was appointed the head of the UN’s Conference on Disarmament.

This would be the same North Korea that has conducted two illicit nuclear tests; constructed an illicit nuclear reactor in Syria; openly cooperated with Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program; attacked and sank a South Korean naval ship last year, and threatened nuclear war any time anyone criticizes its aggressive behavior.

What these representative examples of what passes for business as usual at the UN show is that the international institution considered the repository of the will of the “international community” is wholly and completely corrupt. It is morally bankrupt. It is controlled by the most repressive regimes in the world and it uses its US- and Western-funded institutions to attack Israel, the US, the West and forces of liberty and liberalism throughout the world.

Given the utter depravity of the UN and the international system it oversees, what can explain the international Left’s kneejerk obeisance to it?

Caroline Glick does not answer her own question.

The answer is that the Left is wholly and completely corrupt and morally bankrupt.

And it forms the present government of the United States of America. Which accounts for the economic and political ruin engulfing the world.

The ideals enshrined in the Constitution – liberty above all – are considered obsolete by the Left.

This clowning at the UN; this calling of  things by the names of their opposites; this political and diplomatic sarcasm practiced in concert by dozens of vicious little powers; this mockery of civilized values by the international Left, is nihilism – and it is winning.

P.S. The UN must be destroyed.

An attempt to assassinate the Iranian president Ahmadinejad today unfortunately failed.

A large explosion set fire to an oil refinery unit in Abadan, Iran’s biggest oil city, during a visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Tuesday, May 24. He came to inaugurate a unit for expanding production capacity by 4.2 million liters a day. Two people were killed and 12 injured. … The explosion was triggered by his pushing the button to activate that same unit, which must have been tested and run in before the inauguration ceremony to avoid any technical hitches.

A news conference was quickly staged live on state TV showing him answering questions about the Abadan refinery – apparently to put a stop to spreading rumors that he had been assassinated. He did not refer to the explosion.

No one knows who was behind the plot. Whoever it was deserves congratulations for trying and encouragement to try again.

A foreign clandestine agency may be responsible, possibly the same unnamed hand which for two years has bedeviled Iran’s nuclear program by liquidating its leading scientists and planting the Stuxnet virus in its computer control systems.

Real Muslims of Iraq.

Did Iran order a massacre in Iraq, and did America let it happen?

Earlier this month, on April 8, Iraqi forces raided an Iranian refugee camp. Thirty-four Iranians were killed and some 325 were wounded.

It was done under orders from Prime Minister Maliki.

Prime Minister Maliki was acting under orders from the Iranian regime.

And it looks as if the US government was complicit in the atrocity.

But surely not! Let’s recall what Obama said at a joint press conference with Maliki in the Rose Garden on July 22, 2009:

Prime Minister Maliki and I have no doubt that there will be some tough days ahead. There will be attacks on Iraqi security forces and the American troops supporting them. There are still those in Iraq who would murder innocent men, women and children…. But make no mistake: Those efforts will fail. …

American troops have the capability, the support and flexibility they need to stand with our Iraqi partners on behalf of a sovereign, secure, and self-reliant Iraq. Because we believe that the future does not belong to those who would destroy — it belongs to those who would build.

What happened at Camp Ashraf?

The April 8 raid targeted the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, which seeks to overthrow Iran’s clerical leaders. The group won refuge at Camp Ashraf years ago during the regime of Saddam Hussein, who saw them as a convenient ally against Iran. But since then, the exiles have become an irritant to Iraq’s new Shiite-led government, which is trying to bolster ties with Iran. …

A team of U.N. observers saw 28 bodies still at the camp during a Wednesday visit to the compound in eastern Diyala province. Most of the bodies appeared to have been shot and some were women, he said. Three of the bodies appeared to have been crushed to death, a Western diplomat in Baghdad said — likely from being run over by a car. …

After Saddam fell, U.S. troops took control of Camp Ashraf, disarmed its fighters and confined the resident to their 30-square-mile camp. In return, the military signed an agreement with the camp’s 3,400 residents giving them protected status under the Geneva Conventions. …

Where was the US military while the massacre was being perpetrated?

The U.S. military says Ashraf residents’ protected status expired in late 2008 when Baghdad and Washington signed a security agreement that limited U.S. authority in Iraq.

The Ashraf residents and their lawyers in Washington dispute that, and demand that the American military continue to protect them and intervene on their behalf with the Iraqi government.

What about other protections for refugees under the Geneva Conventions? Has the Red Cross anything to say about the massacre?

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, which oversees whether nations are complying with the Geneva treaties, has declined to make a public pronouncement on the issue.

Melanie Phillips writes at the Spectator:

According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Iraqi Army used 2,500 troops equipped with armoured vehicles to attack Ashraf in tandem with the feared al Qods force of Iran.  … The terrorist Qods Force … was involved at its highest level in the planning and the execution of this assault. In particular, Brigadier General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Qods Force, personally supervised the planning of this attack on Ashraf…. Some of the officers of the Qods Force were present at the scene of the attack in Ashraf and took part in the killing of Ashraf residents. …

There are strong fears that the Iraqis are preparing to inflict further violence on the residents of Ashraf — and no less disturbing, claims that both the Iraqis and the Americans have been either actively preventing or doing nothing to provide medical aid for those injured in the attack. …

The actions of Nouri Al-Maliki, who has long made clear his allegiances to Iran’s theocratic leadership, should have surprised few. What is so shocking is the relative silence of the US government. It is hard to believe that they did not know what was about to happen at Ashraf. They did nothing to try to stop it happening. Worst of all, their silence and inaction has made it almost certain that it will happen again. It can be no coincidence that US forces stationed within the Camp withdrew just hours before the Iraqi onslaught began.

Furthermore, top US government official Robert Gates was in Baghdad and met Al-Maliki hours before the attack began, just as he was in Iraq in July 2009 when the other major offensive was conducted against Ashraf by the Iraqi forces. Mr Gates should be brought to account, and tell us what his knowledge was of the recent outrage, and how he proposes to deal with what occurred.

In addition, he should give a truthful account of why US medical aid, which was readily available, was not in Ashraf within minutes of the Iraqi attack, despite requests.

Simply put, the US forces if they so wished and were so ordered to do from their command in Washington and Baghdad could at the flick of a switch airlift all the wounded to the US military hospital situated in the vicinity of the Camp. This now is the minimum that the US authorities must do. However, such assistance will not suffice in circumstances where the Iraqi authorities have made clear their intention to destroy the Camp and if necessary kill all the residents. …

There has been no official condemnation of the raid from either the British or American Governments. Melanie Phillips asks:

Could this be because the last thing the British and Americans want to acknowledge is that the Iraqi government of Nuri al Maliki – the country in which so much British and American blood and treasure has been so painfully spent in the cause of making it safe for the West — has merely become a puppet of the Iranians, the West’s most lethal foe?

We were for the war on Iraq, though we never thought that Iraq or any Arab state could be transformed into a true democracy.

But who could have foretold such an outcome of the intervention as an Iraq subservient to the evil Iranian regime?

If that is how it is, it means that Americans fought and died only to extend the power of their worst enemy.

Cheerful news from “Reza Kahlili” at PajamasMedia:

Contrary to the claim made by the Iranian Center for Non-Military Preemptive Defense, the Stuxnet virus has disabled Iran’s nuclear centers.

Contrary to the claims made by Gholam-Reza Jalali — director of the Iranian Center for Non-Military Preemptive Defense — regarding the nature of the virus and Iran’s capabilities in dealing with the fallout, Stuxnet has wreaked serious and perhaps fatal havoc on the foundations of energy structure and the operating systems of the Bushehr nuclear installation. According to the Green Liaison news group, over the past year and a half the Bushehr plant has incurred serious damage and has lost major capabilities.

An individual involved in Iran’s nuclear activities reports that this virus was placed in the system by one of the foreign experts contracted to Iran. The virus has automatic updating capabilities in order to track and pirate information, and can also destroy the system hardware step-by-step. The internal directives programmed into the structure of the virus can actually bring the generators and electrical power grids of the country to a sudden halt, or create a “heart attack” type of work stoppage. …

The Iranian Center for Non-Military Preemptive Defense has set up two computer task forces titled GOWHAR and MAAHER. The two organizations are said to have spent the last year and a half investigating the extent of the damage, however due to the complexity of the virus they have not been successful with a fix. …

The Iranian Center for Non-Military Preemptive Defense is attempting to produce software and an operating system which will provide immunity and security against cyber attacks, and which can withstand all damages incurred by viruses. However, all claims as to the actual production of these active national systems by the security authorities are said to be a bluff — nothing more than a pretense to mask the complexity of the virus and ultimately Tehran’s lack of engineering expertise in this area.

And Allah is not helping his faithful destroy the Stuxnet worm, for all the mullahs’ and Ahmadinejad’s and the Revolutionary Guards’ prayers?  Wow!

This past weekend there has been, and there continues to be, a blood-bath in Syria, as its Alawite dictator, Bashar Assad, slaughters the people his family has been oppressing for decades.

There is little about it in the news media in America.

This is what’s happening there:

Bashar Assad has launched all-out war on his people. Tanks firing artillery, APCs [Armored Personnel Carriers], infantry units, commandoes and snipers were deployed for the first time at daybreak Monday, April 25 in cities across Syria for the most brutal assault on any Arab anti-government protest in the four-month uprising.

In the first few hours, hundreds are estimated to have been massacred (over and above the 350 shot dead in the last three days) and thousands injured. Denied medical attention, they are left in the streets to die. …

Cities with populations of 2-3 million have been stormed by Syrian troops backed by tanks firing automatic 120-mm guns at random, commandoes dropped by helicopter and snipers.

The military offensive to break the back of the uprising is led by [dictator Bashar Assad’s] younger brother Maher Assad at the head of the Republican Guard and the 4th Division which is made up mostly of the Assad’s Alawite clan. Its first target Sunday night was the southern town of Deraa where the protest movement began and the Mediterranean coastal town of Jableh.

Monday, Syria shut its land borders to Jordan to conceal the scale of the carnage inflicted on the border town of Deraa from outside eyes. Foreign correspondents have been banned from the country since the uprising began.

Monday, indiscriminate fire was also reported in Duma, a dissident suburb of the capital Damascus. By Monday afternoon, thousands of soldiers had spread out across the North, South and Center of the country, apparently preparing to storm the large cities and protest centers of Hama, Homs, Latakiya and the Kurdish north. …

April 23 saw the constantly mounting uprising against the Assad regime finally reaching the Syrian capital Damascus where  300,000 – 15 percent of the city’s dwellers – took the streets shouting: “Bashar Assad you are a traitor!” That day too the Syrian ruler unleashed his security forces for the harshest crackdown yet in order to break the back of the five-week civil uprising. The result: 350 dead, tripling the number of Friday’s bloodbath and thousands of injured.

Early Sunday, secret service thugs hauled thousands of protesters out of their homes. They broke down doors in the Harasta and Ghouta districts of Damascus, dragged their victims out and dumped them on covered trucks which drove off to unknown destinations. ….

The growing number of injured are condemned to being treated privately or not at all. The authorities have commandeered ambulances to prevent them reaching hospital and hospital wards are raided by security agents who either kill the wounded or arrest them.

PajamasMedia has videos of the protests and the killing. SEE THEM HERE.

Roger L. Simon comments:

In more proof, if any were needed, that liberals are the reactionaries of our time, it was only weeks ago that Hillary Clinton was calling Bashar al-Assad a “reformer” and Vogue magazine was proclaiming his wife a “rose in the desert.”

As we know, and the horrific videos from Syria on PJM show conclusively …  the ophthalmologist is as much a reformer as Josef Mengele and Asma as much a rose as Eva Braun.

Since his father Hafez brutally imposed his will over Syria in the Hama massacre, the Assads have been a family of secular fascist torturers and murderers in league with religious fascist torturers and murderers in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Gaza (Hamas), and Iran (the mullahs) … They assassinate democratically elected foreign leaders (Hariri), encourage and facilitate global terrorism, and shoot as many of their own people as necessary to maintain power while exploiting the best of their country’s resources for personal gain. In other words, pure evil.

Nothing new there — yet, for some reason, our liberal leadership and their media allies were never able to acknowledge fully something so obvious. Always — as Obama did with Ahmadinejad while the Iranian democracy demonstrators were being shot in their streets and tortured in prison cells — they sought to reason with despotism. Or, more likely, pretended to do so because it was all game for the aggrandizement of the self, for image. The policy itself never made sense.

When the Middle East street started to rebel, our government had no plan. They didn’t know what to do about Egypt and then went into Libya willy-nilly when things started to look bad. So now we are left with the odd situation where Gaddafi — clearly also a murderous sociopathic dictator — is despot number one, with NATO intervening and the U.S. providing Predators, while Assad, demonstrably a much more active and dangerous enemy of the U.S. and its allies, is merely verbally chastised by our president and secretary of State. …

Because of the moral confusion at the heart of our administration, the USA and by extension the West have their priorities screwed up. The downfall of Assad would mean big trouble for the mullahs, Hezbollah, and Hamas — good things for the region and the world. The downfall of Gaddafi would mean what exactly? Nobody knows. An al-Qaeda regime? The Muslim Brotherhood? Some oil contracts for the French? …

But during all this, there is no question that the foreign policy of the United States is simply ad hoc. It doesn’t exist. The secretary of State was in cloud-cuckoo-land when she called Assad a reformer, the same totalitarian-loving cloud she inhabited when she bussed Suha Arafat.

The president himself has no real values, only vague notions received from lamebrain post-modernist professors …

We don’t think that America should intervene in Syria. We also don’t think that America should have diplomatic relations with tyrannies like Assad’s, and we’d like to see the ambassador whom Obama foolishly sent there withdrawn. We don’t think America should interfere in an Arab country whether to give it money, or “protect” its civilians, or unseat its tyrants. We’d rather America was drilling for its own oil than buying it from Arab countries. We’re not dismayed by rebellion, civil war, or revolution in the Arab or wider Islamic world – whichever side wins in any Islamic state, the victory will go to Islam. But we observe the inconsistencies and sheer incoherence of Obama’s foreign policy with trepidation. How long will it take for America to recover its leadership role in the world after Obama is gone? American hegemony, which Obama has deliberately sabotaged, is essential. The world needs a power that stands for liberty and has the military might to support it. By forcing America to abdicate its responsibility as the world’s only superpower, Obama – far from causing rising seas to subside, as he claimed he could and would – has stirred up tumult in the oceans of human discontent. The result is a manmade disaster as the heat of war and blood spreads over the earth.

We present a short real life action-packed “whodunnit” mystery involving several states’ governments, secret services, terrorist organizations, insurrectionists, arms smugglers, ghostly intelligence gatherers, and shadowy assassins who descend and strike and rise again and disappear.

Atbara is a town in north eastern Sudan, where the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet each other. For the last 20 or 30 years it has been the center of Sudan’s biggest arms smuggling network.

One of the regular buyers is al-Qaeda. Leading operatives of the network joined Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1996. (One of them, Ibrahim al Qosi, was captured and is at present enjoying luxurious confinement at Guantanamo Bay.)

Iran was a chief source of the arms, and over time Iranians acquired a foothold in the network. One of their chief customers was the terrorist organization that has engaged the hearts of European governments, the United Nations secretariat and General Assembly, the US State Department, all Islam, and lefties everywhere: Hamas. In time, they too acquired a foothold in the network.

Al-Qaeda, Iran, Hamas, all working together to provide arms for insurrection, terrorism, and war. Quantities found their way into Gaza through the tunnels that run between Egyptian Sinai and the strip.

Recently, Iran withdrew its personnel, or most of them, from direct involvement, but continued using the network to keep up the flow of arms to Hamas and Iran’s own terrorist army, Hizbullah.

A short time ago, through Atbara, the Iranians bought WMD, namely mustard gas and nerve gas, from rebels in the Libyan town of Benghazi, and ordered the consignment to be delivered to Gaza and Lebanon. It was driven in convoys from Libya to Sudan, under Hamas and Hizbullah guard.

The final lap of the transport had then to be organized.

On April 5, two men set out in a Hyundai car from Atbara for Port Sudan. They were driving through the Kalaneeb region and approaching their destination when something hit and blew up their car. The bodies of the men, one found inside the wreck of the Hyundai and one outside, were too burnt to be identified. The incident warranted investigation by the Sudanese intelligence service and the military. The Foreign Minister of Sudan made a public announcement that the car had been hit by a missile from an aerial drone – or maybe fired from a foreign ship on the Red Sea.

The government of Sudan asked the sort-of-interim-government of Egypt  to send counter-terrorist and missile experts to help the investigation. After forensic examination they declared that a remnant of paper identified one of the dead men as Iranian. And the blackened remains of the other gave them, or some among them, the impression that he was a Palestinian. They were sure, anyway, that they were not Sudanese.

But they didn’t agree with the Foreign Minister that the car had been hit from the air or the sea. They concluded that a person or persons unknown had blown it up from somewhere near by on the ground; they must have been foreigners; and they must have arrived and departed by helicopter. Having done the deed, they took off again to a waiting ship that had brought them to the coast.

Who were the dead men? What was their business? And who had assassinated them?

The report from which we have the information ends with this:

The method of attack and clean getaway pointed to a sophisticated military organization capable of unconventional operations across great distances spanning thousands of kilometers. It would have required competent military intelligence support in places as far apart as Atbara, Kalaneeb, Port Sudan and the Red Sea.

Who could it have been? CIA? Unlikely. MI6? Extremely unlikely. Who else is there who could have done it? And why?

It remains a baffling mystery, probably never to be solved.