U.S. sniper ...using a Quran...for target

By KIM GAMEL

BAGHDAD (AP) — A U.S. Marine handed out coins promoting Christianity to Muslims in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, outraged Sunni officials said Friday. The U.S. military responded quickly, removing a trooper from duty pending an investigation.

Tens of thousands of Shiites, meanwhile, took to the streets in Baghdad and other cities to protest plans for a long-term security agreement with the United States.

The rallies after Friday prayer services were the first to follow a call by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for weekly protests against the deal, which could lead to a long-term American troop presence.

The outcry could sharply heighten tensions over the proposal. The deal is supposed to be finished by July and replace the current U.N. mandate overseeing U.S.-led troops in Iraq.

Demonstrators in Baghdad's Sadr City district chanted "No to America! No to the occupation!" A statement from al-Sadr's office has called the negotiations "a project of humiliation for the Iraqi people."

Smaller protests also were held in the Baghdad neighborhoods of Kazimiyah, Abu Dshir and the Shiite holy city of Kufa.

"We denounce the government's intentions to sign a long-term agreement with the occupying forces," Sadrist Sheik Asaad al-Nassiri said during a sermon in Kufa. "Our army will be under their control in this agreement and this will lead to them having permanent bases in Iraq."

U.S. officials have insisted they are not seeking permanent bases in Iraq, although they have declined to comment on specific proposals until the negotiations are complete.

The distribution of the coins was the second perceived insult to Islam by American service members this month. A U.S. sniper was sent out of the country after using a Quran, Islam's holy book, for target practice.

Photographs of the coins, which were inscribed with phrases in Arabic, were widely distributed via cell phones in Fallujah and were seen by an Associated Press employee.

One side asked: "Where will you spend eternity?"

The other contained a verse from the New Testament: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16."

Such actions by American service members threaten to alienate Sunni Arabs who have become key allies in the fight against insurgents, a movement that started in Anbar province, which includes Fallujah.

Distribution of the coins in Fallujah was particularly sensitive because the city, 40 miles west of Baghdad, is known for its large number of mosques. It was the center of the Sunni-led insurgency before a massive U.S. offensive in November 2004.

Sheik Abdul-Rahman al-Zubaie, an influential tribal leader in the city, spoke of his outrage over perceived proselytizing by American forces and warned patience was running thin.

"This event did not happen by chance, but it was planned and done intentionally," al-Zubaie said. "The Sunni population cannot accept and endure such a thing. I might not be able to control people's reactions if such incidents keep happening."

Sunni officials and residents said a Marine distributed about 10 coins at a checkpoint controlling access to the city, the scene of one of the fiercest battles of the war.

Al-Zubaie said a man brought one of the coins to a mosque on Wednesday to show it to him and other Sunni leaders.

He accused the Marines of trying to do missionary work in Fallujah and said Sunni leaders had met with U.S. military officials and demanded "the harshest punishment" for those responsible to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Mohammed Hassan Abdullah said he witnessed the coins being handed out on Tuesday as he was waiting at the Halabsa checkpoint, although he didn't receive one himself.

The U.S. military — still smarting from the Quran shooting — said a Marine was removed from duty Friday "amid concerns from Fallujah's citizens regarding reports of inappropriate conduct."

A statement said the reports about the coin's distribution were being investigated and promised "appropriate action" if the allegations are confirmed.

Lt. Col. Chris Hughes, a spokesman for U.S. forces in western Iraq, said it didn't appear to be a widespread problem, stressing that the military forbids "proselytizing any religion, faith or practices."

"Indications are this was an isolated incident — an individual Marine acting on his own accord passing out coins," Hughes said in an e-mailed statement.

Col. James L. Welsh, chief of staff for American forces in western Iraq, also said the matter has their "full attention."

Al-Zubaie said U.S. military officials met with tribal leaders on Thursday and expressed "astonishment about (the) behavior of this Marine, saying that they have already settled the matter of the violation of the Quran and suddenly a new problem has emerged."

Dr. Muhsin al-Jumaili, a professor of law and religious studies in Fallujah, said the act was especially provocative in Fallujah and risked alienating residents who recently have joined forces with the Americans against al-Qaida in Iraq.

"As Muslims, we cannot accept this," he told The Associated Press. "The Americans should concentrate on maintaining security and not doing missionary work."

"Such deeds will not make Muslims trust American troops any more and might create a feeling of hatred among Muslims and Christians" at a time when they're finally living in peace, he added.

The revelation that an American sniper had used a Quran for target practice earlier this month prompted similar outrage and drew apologies from President Bush and senior U.S. commanders.

The alliances between Sunni tribes and U.S. forces have been key to a steep decline in violence over the past year. But tensions have risen over a series of incidents, including the accidental killings of U.S.-allied fighters, that have raised concerns about the fragility of the support for the American forces.

U.S. troops also have struggled to overcome the perception that they are insensitive to Islamic traditions after several missteps in the early stages of the war in Iraq.

Associated Press staff in Fallujah contributed to this report.
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Hundreds of Muslim women may not be married

HUNDREDS of Muslim women in Bolton who have been married by the town's Imams may not be legally wed, it has been revealed.

Only one of the borough's mosques is registered to carry out services which are legally binding in the UK without the presence of a registrar.

Women therefore, who have been married elsewhere, but have not had a registrar present or a separate civil ceremony, may not in fact be married.

Nick Lewis, a marital law expert at Bolton-based KBL Solicitors, said he had been consulted "on a number of occasions" by Muslim women who were seeking a divorce.

He added: "They have been distressed to find that they have not been married at all."

Mr Lewis said that in many cases the ceremony was conducted by an Imam (holy man) either in a mosque or elsewhere, in a traditional ceremony. The couple then signed a register which would have been kept at the mosque.

He said: "Unfortunately, the simple fact is that, unless the venue is registered for the solemnisation of marriage and the person conducting the ceremony is authorised under Civil Law to do so, there is no legal marriage. There must be a separate civil ceremony.

"This means that, for many women who had thought they were wed, the upsetting truth is that they have been deprived of the protection given to them and their children by virtue of being married.

"In these circumstances, they are not entitled to maintenance for themselves, and the court cannot make orders -- save in exceptional circumstances - in respect of any property owned by them."

Mr Lewis said the problem had been "bubbling under for several years without any successful resolution."

A spokesman for Bolton Council told the Bolton News that non of the 18 mosques in Bolton are currently registered to solemnise marriages.

That means every marriage conducted by an Imam must be attended by a registrar, or followed by a separate civil ceremony.

A spokesman for the Registrar General's office said mosques can apply for Certification and Registration of Religious Buildings for Worship and Marriage.

If it is granted then 12 months later the mosque can nominate a person to be authorised to legally register the marriage.

If no one is appointed then the marriage ceremony needs to be attended by a registrar to complete the marriage formalities or a separate civil ceremony at the register office needs to be held.

Cassandra Balchin, spokesman for the national pressure group Women Living Under Muslim Laws, said the problem of Muslim marriages not being legal is a growing one in the UK.

She estimates one third of women approaching Sharia councils for a religious divorce find that their marriage is not recognised under British law.

Marriages abroad, if legal in the country they take place in, are recognised as legal in Britain, but Ms Balchin says the numbers of these taking place involving British Muslims is dropping with many choosing to marry in this country.

Ms Balchin says a small number of couples actively decide just to have a religious ceremony and not involve the State for political reasons. But she believes increasing numbers of young men are deliberately avoiding making their marriages legal to ensure that, if the marriage fails their wives have less of a claim on family assets.

"Younger men have a more exploitative attitude in how they want the relationship to work," said Ms Balchin.

She added that even educated women don't suspect arrangements for their weddings don't include the legal formalities. "A lot of women have absolutely no idea that their marriage is not valid. You would be surprised by how many have been duped."

Ms Balchin is among a group of leading Muslims who are working to try and raise awareness of the problem and pressing the Government to make it easier for mosques to qualify for registration.

11:18am Friday 30th May 2008

By Angela Kelly

McClellan Defends Controversial Account of White House Years

Scott McClellan reflects on his new memoir about his time as White House press chief, which has stoked controversy for its pointed criticism of the Bush administration. Then, analysts Mark Shields and David Brooks weigh in on McClellan's book.
Scott McClellan

RAY SUAREZ: Now to our conversation with former White House insider Scott McClellan. Jeffrey Brown talked with him a short time ago.

JEFFREY BROWN: Early in his new book, Scott McClellan writes that he will tell a, quote, "story in which I played a minor role, the story of how the presidency of George W. Bush veered terribly off-course."

McClellan served President Bush in several positions in Texas and Washington, including three years as White House press secretary before he left the administration in 2006.

The book is called "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." Scott McClellan joins us now from New York.

Scott, I'd like to start with a constant theme in the book, that the Bush administration was in what you call a "permanent campaign mode." What exactly do you mean by this? And how did it help get us into what you now call an unnecessary war in Iraq?

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, Former White House Press Secretary: Sure. I'm glad you asked that question. This is something that I cover in some detail in the book and provide examples of in the book.

I give a little bit of history. Over the course of time, particularly with the advent of polls and public -- you know, the expansion of cable news networks and so forth, the permanent campaign, it goes back years, but it has evolved into some potentially more destructive excesses these days, where the whole focus used to be on more just winning over public opinion to your side.

It has now become more about manipulating those various sources of public approval -- media outlets and so forth, the overall media narrative -- to one side's advantage. And both parties get caught up in this game.
It's more about power and influence than it is about, you know, honest deliberation and compromise and trying to solve things, solve problems for the American people.


Scott McClellan
Scott McClellan
Former White House Press Secretary
There are many good people that come to D.C. for the right reasons, to get things done for the American people [...] but they get caught up in this permanent campaign culture that exists [...] And that's what happened with this administration.

White House's 'permanent campaign'

RAY SUAREZ: But you're writing about it -- but you're writing about it specifically in the Bush administration, where you're suggesting that -- you say, he, the president and his advisers, "confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty that was needed."

SCOTT MCCLELLAN: That's right. Particularly in a time of war, when that permanent campaign mentality transfers over into the war-making decision process, or the war-making process, then it becomes particularly troubling, because the focus on manipulating sources of public approval to your advantage loses sight sometimes of the high level of openness and honesty that are really needed, openness and forthrightness, to bring the American people along, build bipartisan support for the war, and then maintain that bipartisan support.

And I think it was a chief reason why the president's approval rating has dropped so significantly, because he has lost a lot of credibility, because we didn't embrace that high openness and forthrightness that was needed to go along with it.

JEFFREY BROWN: But how far are you pushing this? Are you saying this happened with the president's acquiescence or approval or leadership? You use terms like "shading the truth." Is that a euphemism for lying or for purposely misleading?

SCOTT MCCLELLAN: Well, I think that this is the example that there are many good people that come to D.C. for the right reasons, to get things done for the American people and make a positive difference, but they get caught up in this permanent campaign culture that exists and they lose sight of some of the more important objectives of working across the aisle.

And that's what happened with this administration. We set up this massive political operation, and we didn't have the proper counterweights in place to make sure we minimized as much as possible some of the excesses of that permanent campaign, and focus on this bipartisan outreach and compromise and reaching out to the American people.

And that's where we ran into problems when this transferred -- now, you know, the Clinton administration was noted for political spin and manipulation and so forth. And most of it's incidental and harmless that happens in Washington, D.C.

But it can become particularly problematic, again, when it goes into the war-making decision -- or the war-making campaign, to get the American people's support.

And I can -- you know, from my standpoint, looking back and reflecting on this, the Iraq war was clearly not necessary. There are other ways we could have addressed the potential threat that was there. And the grave and gathering danger that we portrayed it at was overstated, at least.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, that leads to something...

SCOTT MCCLELLAN: So -- yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: Sorry. But that leads to something that a lot of people are wondering here about why you waited to say it until now. Why not speak up when there was a chance to, if not change things, at least let people know that there was some what you're now calling propaganda or misleading going on?

SCOTT MCCLELLAN: Right. Well, during the buildup to the war, I was the deputy press secretary at the time. And I, like a lot of Americans, was concerned about how quickly we were rushing into this.

But we were in this post-9/11 environment and mindset. And at the same time, the president's foreign policy team was viewed very favorably. It had won widespread accolades for what we had done in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

And so I gave the benefit of the doubt. I trusted the president. I trusted his national security team that this was the right decision, to go ahead with this.

But after leaving the White House and having time to step back out of that White House bubble that exists, you can go back and reflect on this a little bit.

And that's what I've done. I've set aside that partisan hat, reflected on this, looked back at, how did things get so badly off-course? What was the reason for that?

And I asked a lot of questions. And I challenged the assumptions and interpretations I had in the past and came to some very different conclusions. And I think they're conclusions that are as honest as I can be about my perspective on things. And that's what this is, the truth from my perspective.

JEFFREY BROWN: You use that term "bubble." That's something you use in the books and often in the interviews you've been doing. I want to ask you what you mean by that.

And you say that you want this to be a lesson for people in learning how to play or not play, I guess, what you call the "Washington game." For example, is it possible for an aide to the president, a press secretary, which you were, to be both loyal and serve the president and serve the public at the same time?

And what should happen when there is a conflict between those two? What have you learned? What would you suggest now?

SCOTT MCCLELLAN: Well, I think you have to serve both. Sometimes it can be awfully difficult. But your ultimate responsibility is to the American people when you're serving, and your ultimate loyalty is to the truth.

And that's what this book is about. It's an extension of my public career, in a lot of ways.

You know, I've had a career in public service. And this book is a way to continue to make a positive difference by exploring these often tough, hard realities.

I mean, it wasn't easy writing this book. Some of the -- like I said, the conclusions I drew as I wrote it weren't necessarily the thoughts I had at the beginning or my assumptions at the beginning of this book, but I constantly challenged myself.
It was a tough piece of work to go through this process, but I feel very comfortable about my conclusions that I've drawn. And I hope, I think that, in some small way, it will help us move beyond this destructive partisan warfare that has existed in Washington for 15 years and really slowed us down from solving some of the most pressing priorities that we need to get done together...


Scott McClellan
Scott McClellan
Former White House Press Secretary
I do think that, as a general matter, the media was complicit. The emphasis and focus was too much on the selling of the war or the march to war [...] instead of looking at the necessity of war as much as they should have.

Press as 'complicit enablers'

JEFFREY BROWN: Another issue that you raise is about the press corps. You refer to the White House press corps as, quote, "complicit enablers." You say, "Their primary focus would be on covering the campaign to sell the war rather than aggressively questioning the rationale for war or pursuing the truth behind it."

Now, I've seen several responses from journalists in the last couple of days. Some, Katie Couric, for example, agreed, that, "I do think we were remiss," she said, "in not asking some of the right questions."

Others, Ron Suskind, an author and journalist who was on our show last night, was saying, "How can you say this when you were in the midst of misleading the journalists in the White House press corps at that time?"

SCOTT MCCLELLAN: Well, there certainly is a -- it is a fair statement to say that the White House put up some walls and made it difficult for reporters to get some information or get some of the questions answered. That's very fair to make that point, too.

And there were exceptions to the overall rule that the media was -- and it's the national press corps I'm referring to. And there are a lot of national security correspondents and others that were focused on looking at some of these issues.

And some of it was focused too much on just reporting the intelligence that was being told to them from some of the analysts and some of the policymakers. And that's where it ran into problems.

And I do think that, as a general matter, the media was complicit. The emphasis and focus was too much on the selling of the war or the march to war, whether the president was making the case to the American people or whether he was not, instead of looking at the necessity of war as much as they should have.

And it was a post-9/11 environment. And Katie Couric did point out that, yes, there was this patriotic sentiment going through the news corporations and so forth.

I also believe that this is another example of how the media sometimes gets caught up in these issues of who's winning, and who's losing, and who's up, and who's down, instead of focusing on who's right and who's wrong, and focusing and putting the emphasis on understanding the larger underlying truth.


Scott McClellan
Scott McClellan
Former White House Press Secretary
I expected some of the response that came, but some of it is surprising, in terms of how personal it is.

High hopes, disillusionment

JEFFREY BROWN: You write a lot about your high hopes for the Bush presidency. You had worked with the president in Texas and Washington. And now you talk about being disillusioned.

How did that -- how do you conclude that it happened, that the administration, as you say, went off the tracks, when you talk about falling into the Washington game? These were, after all, very strong men and women who you worked with. How could that have happened?

SCOTT MCCLELLAN: Well, it happens to a lot of people in Washington, D.C., these days, unfortunately. And that's what I look at throughout the course of the book.

The Iraq decision, obviously -- or clearly to, I think, most people -- was one of the primary reasons the president went off-course. But I think there was a more fundamental mistake and that was, yes, we were caught up in this permanent campaign atmosphere and we didn't embrace that openness and candor that was so needed in the buildup to that war.

And what happened was, after things didn't turn out the way the expectations were set, we started running into more problems. And the president couldn't go back and say, you know, "We made mistakes."

Very understandable. That's part of human nature. These are good people, and there's not a deliberate or conscious effort to do this.

But when you get caught up in that Washington game, yes, you do lose sight of stepping back from it and being able to focus on bringing the American people along in a very open and forthright way.

JEFFREY BROWN: And let me ask you, briefly, a lot of these former colleagues have been very harsh since your book has started to come out. Are you surprised by the personal nature of much of the criticism?

SCOTT MCCLELLAN: Yes. I mean, I expected some of the response that came, but some of it is surprising, in terms of how personal it is.

I knew that the White House did not want me to go out there and openly look at my experience and honestly and forthrightly discuss what I learned from it.

This is not a White House that is used to reflecting, unfortunately, because reflection is important. That's how we learn, and that's how we avoid these mistakes in the future.

And that's one of the key objectives, is to make sure we don't repeat these mistakes, but also to get us beyond the permanent campaign culture or the excesses of permanent campaign culture.

It's very interesting that the two leading -- or the two nominees, almost-nominee, in terms of Senator Obama, have been talking about some of these very issues.

Senator McCain went out two weeks ago and said he was going to end the permanent campaign. Senator Barack Obama has talked about change the way Washington works. It's very similar to the message the president advocated or ran on in 2000 when he won the presidency.

Now, I don't think you can end the permanent campaign, but you've got to minimize those destructive excesses. And that's what I talk about in the book, and I offer some ideas for doing that, such as appointing a deputy chief of staff for governing inside the White House that is a statesman or stateswoman who is focused on making sure that they're a counterweight to all the political influence.

There's always going to be a strong -- in this day and age, a strong group of political advisers that are focused on politics.

But we need to make sure we're also focusing on, how are we going about deliberation and compromise with members of Congress and working in a spirit of bipartisanship, so that they restore the trust and not continue the suspicion and warfare that exists in Washington today.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Scott McClellan, thank you very much.
SCOTT MCCLELLAN: Jeff, thanks.


David Brooks
David Brooks
New York Times Columnist
The blandness and clichedness of this sort of book exemplifies a lot of the clones that were walking around the White House, who never could challenge the president [...] because, frankly, they didn't know anything about policy.

Reaction to the book

RAY SUAREZ: For some reaction, we're joined once again by Mark Shields and David Brooks.

Mark, does Scott McClellan's book help fill in the story of the last seven years of the Bush White House?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: I think there's a couple of good points in the book that have kind of been lost in much of the discussion about why he did it and why he did it now and all the rest.

The first, Ray, is that the decision to go to war, according to Scott McClellan, was basically made in the summer of 2002. There was no real consideration given to what the Congress or the allies or anybody else, the United Nations. That decision was made, signed, sealed and delivered long before the marketing plan was rolled out on or about Labor Day.

And the second was that the president was driven, the president for whom he worked, and came to Washington with, and admittedly professes still to be quite fond of, was driven by that desire not to experience what his father experienced and to lose after a first term, to win a second term.

And that had to have been further fueled and re-fueled, Ray, by the results of the 2000 election, where they thought they were going to win easily, ended up losing the popular vote, and only prevailing on a Supreme Court one-vote decision.

RAY SUAREZ: Did you learn anything from reading this?

DAVID BROOKS, Columnist, New York Times: Nothing.

RAY SUAREZ: Really?

DAVID BROOKS: I read most of the book. And I found it -- no original stories, no interesting observations, cliche-ridden, and bland.

And to me, it exemplified what the problem with the Bush administration was. There was spin, and God knows there was a lot of spin. But the real problem was there was no debate.

There were 20 percent of the people in that administration, in this administration, or especially in the first term, who were smart and were capable of having a debate. There were a lot of intellectual mediocrities who would never have a debate, did not have the intellectual chops to have a debate. And McClellan, frankly, is one of them.

And the blandness and clichedness of this sort of book exemplifies a lot of the clones that were walking around the White House, who never could challenge the president, never could challenge anybody, because, frankly, they didn't know anything about policy. They didn't have the intellectual smarts to make that kind of challenge.

And so what you had was a culture without debate. And to me, nothing was ever tested. And you had a few people making the decisions, nobody asking questions.

And McClellan -- he's not expected to. He was the press secretary. He's not expected to. But essentially, you had no culture of testing decisionmaking, and that was the problem.

And then the book exemplifies the mediocrity that pervaded parts of the administration.

RAY SUAREZ: That lack of culture of debate, was it only really a problem because of the times we were living in, the attack against the United States and the preparations for war and such?

DAVID BROOKS: 9/11 shut down the debate even more. There was also an element of worship of the president of people like McClellan. They worshipped him, and they couldn't challenge him.

I told this story recently. I went in for an interview with the president with a couple columnists. This was a couple of years ago. One of my colleagues was a guy named Max Boot, is a guy named Max, a military columnist then at the L.A. Times.

He challenged Bush hard on troop levels, on the conduct of the war, and they had a very tense exchange for 10 or 15 minutes, really going back at each other, Bush getting red and really going back.

But Bush kept saying in the middle of it -- it was a little scary, because Bush was really hot -- but he kept saying, "I want you to know I'm enjoying this. I'm enjoying this."

And it was like a guy who had never had a chance to actually have an argument. And he didn't mind it, but nobody ever came in. I think very few people came in and gave him that argument.

I think he would have welcomed it. I certainly know the presidency would have benefited from that kind of argument.

RAY SUAREZ: One area, Mark, where there seems to have been some revelations, some people who followed the original case closely say that McClellan's narrative about the Scooter Libby trial, the exposure of Valerie Plame, fills in some gaps in what we knew before and also brings us as close to the top as we've ever gotten from an insider.

MARK SHIELDS: Ray, he's been accused of disloyalty by all the loyalists in the Bush campaign and the Bush operation. And Scott McClellan actually -- it's esprit de corps about disloyalty. And he feels that he was disloyally treated and that he was lied to by both Karl Rove and Scooter Libby and quite possibly the vice president of the United States, who then robbed him of his integrity and his own self-respect by sending him out to lie.

They knew he was lying. He did not know, according to him, that he was lying. He also pointed out the president of the United States, upon being questioned by him, admitted that he had released a National Intelligence Estimate, declassified it, so that the vice president could leak it to friendly press people.

I think the story on the press by the press secretary is one that has to be told. The president, this administration took this country to war against a nation that had never attacked us, never threatened us, had no weapons of mass destruction, could not attack us, even if it wanted to, under the bogus B.S. of a mushroom cloud and all of this other fabrication.

And they did it only because they had a supine Congress that did not question, a Republican Party that abdicated its responsibility, a Democratic Party in Congress that cowered, for the most part, and a complicit...

RAY SUAREZ: And a compliant press corps, then?

MARK SHIELDS: And a complicit press corps.

DAVID BROOKS: No, I don't think so. Listen, if you've got the Clinton administration, the CIA, every defense agency, every intelligence agency in France, in Germany, and around the world all saying, "He has WMD," there's no way reporters are going to be able to challenge it. There was an absolute consensus about this.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, I don't think Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei were in the consensus. But let's move on. I've got to go. Have a great weekend, fellows.

MARK SHIELDS: OK. Thank you.
RAY SUAREZ: The Online NewsHour will have live coverage of the Democratic committee meeting throughout the day Saturday. Their reports can be found on our Vote 2008 site at PBS.org. So check in over the weekend for updated reports.

American public opinion on Islamist issues

May 16, 2008


Thomas Lifson


What do Americans think about demands for Sharia courts, or Muslim taxi drivers who refuse to carry dogs or passengers carrying alcohol? These and other questions relating to Islamist demands were the subject of a poll sponsored by Act for America and conducted by Moore Information. With permission, we publish the summary of those results from their website:


1. Seven out of ten respondents (69%) disagreed with FBI translator hiring practices favoring Muslims over qualified Christians, Jews and other qualified linguist/analysts.

2. Seven out ten respondents (71%) disagreed with employers giving Muslim workers time off for daily and weekly prayer.

3. Nine out of ten respondents (89%) disagreed that separate Sharia law courts should be permitted in legal systems in the West.

4. Eight out of ten respondents (79%) disagreed that Muslim cab drivers can reject fares whose actions may violate their Islamic beliefs.

5. Three out of four respondents (74%) disagreed that criticizing or mocking the Prophet Mohammed or Islam constitutes hate speech.

6. Nearly nine out of ten respondents (89%) disapproved of the practice of Banks engaging in Shariah Compliant Financing, which would require the banks to devote 2.5% or more of earnings to questionable Islamic charitable contributions with direct or indirect ties to terrorist organizations.

7. Over three-fifths of respondents (61%) disagreed that Muslim chaplains in our prison systems have the right to indoctrinate inmates in hate and violence under Freedom of Religion.

8. Two thirds of respondents (67%) indicated the increase in Islamic terrorism around the world was due to Militant Muslims because of their aggressive and violent actions toward non-Muslims.

9. Three out of four respondents (74%) approved of Congress conducting hearings to review materials distributed in some American mosques that advocate hatred for Jews and Christians, and encourage Muslims to take up the cause of holy war against all unbelievers, to see if they violate federal laws applying to tax-exempt organizations or laws relating to terrorism.

10. Eight out of ten respondents (81%) approved the designation as a terrorist organization of Jaamat ul-Fuqra (JF) that runs a network of secret compounds through North America and has engaged in terrorist attacks and crime to support their violent extremist doctrine.

We note that ACT for America has launched a national petition drive- click here- urging Congress to conduct investigations into Question 9- hate-filled materials in American Mosques, 3 out of 4 Mosques (100) evaluated by the Mapping Sharia project have been rated as ‘extremist'. Further to Q. 1- bias in hiring by the FBI in favor of Muslim translators over qualified Christian, Jews and Others, Rep. Sue Myrick, leader of the House Anti-Terror Caucus has made this an issue in her "Wake Up America" agenda released on April 18th. The Myrick proposal calls for a GAO audit to determine the extent of such hiring discrimination and possible remedies.

Man imprisons daughter; fathers 7 children by her

Austrian police find them in windowless cell
Associated Press




AMSTETTEN, Austria --Some of the children locked in the basement had never seen the light of day.

A retired electrician has confessed to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years and fathering seven children by her in a windowless cell sealed by an electronic keyless-entry system, police said Monday. One died in infancy and was tossed into the furnace.

The suspect, Josef Fritzl, 73, owned a greystone apartment building, lived there with his family, and rented the other units to relatives. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted on rape charges, the most grave of his alleged offenses under Austrian law.

His daughter, now 42, was 18 when she was imprisoned, said Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs. "He admitted that he locked his daughter ... in the cellar, that he repeatedly had sex with her, and that he is the father of her seven children," Polzer said.

Elisabeth said she gave birth to twins in 1996 but one died several days later, police said. The surviving children are three boys and three girls. The oldest is 19; the youngest, 5. Three lived with the grandparents, who said they'd found them outside their home. The others -- aged 19, 18 and 5 -- "never saw sunlight" until a few days ago, authorities said.

The case unfolded after the 19-year-old was found gravely ill on April 19 in the building and was taken to a hospital. Authorities publicly appealed for her mother to come forward.

After receiving a tip, police picked up Elisabeth and her father on Saturday near the hospital. Fritzl freed the three captive children that same day, Polzer said.

Police said Elisabeth agreed to talk only after police assured her she would no longer have to have contact with her father and that her children would be cared for. She told police her father began sexually abusing her when she was 11. He explained her 1984 disappearance by telling people she had joined a cult.

Authorities said the victims and Fritzl's wife, who was unaware of the other children, are under psychiatric care.

The Purpose of life

Islam:The Treasure uncovered

Warring as Lying Throughout American History

Warring as Lying Throughout American History

Tuesday, 06 May 2008
Freedom Daily

by James Bovard

Americans are taught to expect their elected leaders to be relatively honest. But it wasn’t always like that. In the mid 1800s, people joked about political candidates who claimed to have been born in a log cabin that they built with their own hands. This jibe was spurred by William Henry Harrison’s false claim of a log-cabin birth in the 1840 presidential campaign.

Americans were less naive about dishonest politicians in the first century after this nation’s founding. But that still did not deter presidents from conjuring up wars. Presidential deceits on foreign policy have filled cemeteries across the land. George W. Bush’s deceits on the road to war with Iraq fit a long pattern of brazen charades.

In 1846, James K. Polk took Americans to war after falsely proclaiming that the Mexican army had crossed the U.S. border and attacked a U.S. army outpost — “shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil.” Though Polk refused to provide any details of where the attack occurred, the accusation swayed enough members of Congress to declare war against Mexico. Congressman Abraham Lincoln vigorously attacked Polk for his deceits. But Lincoln may have studied Polk’s methods, since they helped him whip up war fever 15 years later.

In 1917, Woodrow Wilson took the nation to war in a speech to Congress that contained one howler after another. He proclaimed that “self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies” — despite the role of the British secret service and propaganda operations in the prior years to breed war fever in the United States. Wilson hailed Russia as a nation that had always been “democratic at heart” — less than a month after the fall of the tsar and not long before the Bolshevik Revolution. He proclaimed that the government would show its friendship and affection for German-Americans at home — but his administration was soon spearheading loyalty drives that spread terror in many communities across the land.

In 1940, in one of his final speeches of the presidential campaign, Franklin Roosevelt assured voters, “Your president says this country is not going to war.” At the time, he was violating the Neutrality Act by providing massive military assistance to Britain and was searching high and low for a way to take the United States into war against Hitler.

In his 1944 State of the Union address, Roosevelt denounced those Americans with “such suspicious souls — who feared that I have made ‘commitments’ for the future which might pledge this Nation to secret treaties” at the summit of Allied leaders in Tehran the previous month. In early 1945, Roosevelt told Congress that the Yalta Agreement “spells the end of the system of unilateral action and exclusive alliance and spheres of influence.” In reality, he signed off on Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and the crushing of any hopes for democracy in Poland.

In August 1945, Harry Truman announced to the world that “the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians.” Hiroshima was actually a major city with more than a third of a million people prior to its incineration. But Truman’s lie helped soften the initial impact on the American public of the first use of the atomic bomb. (The U.S. government also vigorously censored photographs of Hiroshima and its maimed survivors.)


Vietnam falsehoods

Presidential and other government lies on foreign policy are often discounted because they are presumed to be motivated by national security. But as Hannah Arendt noted in an essay on the Pentagon Papers, during the Vietnam War,

The policy of lying was hardly ever aimed at the enemy but chiefly if not exclusively destined for domestic consumption, for propaganda at home and especially for the purpose of deceiving Congress.
CIA analysts did excellent work in the early period of the Vietnam conflict. But “in the contest between public statements, always over-optimistic, and the truthful reports of the intelligence community, persistently bleak and ominous, the public statements were likely to win simply because they were public,” Arendt commented. The truth never had a chance when it did not serve Lyndon Johnson’s political calculations.

Vietnam destroyed the credibility of both Lyndon Johnson and the American military. Yet the memory of the pervasive lies of the military establishment did not curb the gullibility of many people for fresh government-created falsehoods a decade or so later. During the 1980s, the U.S. State Department ran a propaganda campaign that placed numerous articles in the U.S. media praising the Nicaraguan Contras and attacking the Sandinista regime. As the Christian Science Monitor noted in 2002, the State Department “fed the Miami Herald a make-believe story that the Soviet Union had given chemical weapons to the Sandinistas. Another tale, which happened to emerge the night of President Ronald Reagan’s reelection victory, held that Soviet MiG fighters were on their way to Nicaragua.” The General Accounting Office investigated and concluded that the State Department operation was illegal, consisting of “prohibited, covert propaganda activities.” There was no backlash against the government when the frauds were disclosed. Instead, it was on to the next scam.


Reagan, Bush, and Clinton

Reagan paved the way for subsequent presidents in immersing anti-terrorist policy in swamps of falsehoods. In October 1983, a month after he authorized U.S. Marine commanders to call in air strikes against Muslims to help the Christian forces in Lebanon’s civil war, a Muslim suicide bomber devastated a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 242 Americans. In a televised speech a few days later, Reagan portrayed the attack as unstoppable, falsely claiming that the truck “crashed through a series of barriers, including a chain-link fence and barbed-wire entanglements. The guards opened fire, but it was too late.” In reality, the guards did not fire because they were prohibited from having loaded weapons — one of many pathetic failures of defense that the Reagan administration sought to sweep under the carpet.

In 1984, after the second successful devastating attack in 18 months against a poorly defended U.S. embassy in Lebanon, Reagan blamed the debacle on his predecessor and falsely asserted that the Carter administration had “to a large extent” gotten “rid of our intelligence agents.” A few days later, while campaigning for reelection, Reagan announced that the second embassy bombing was no longer an issue: “We’ve had an investigation. There was no evidence of any carelessness or anyone not performing their duty.” However, the Reagan administration had not yet begun a formal investigation.

On May 4, 1986, Reagan bragged, “The United States gives terrorists no rewards and no guarantees. We make no concessions; we make no deals.” But the Iranian arms-for-hostage deal that leaked out later that year blew such claims to smithereens. On November 13, 1986, Reagan denied initial reports of the scandal, proclaiming that the “‘no concessions’ [to terrorists] policy remains in force, in spite of the wildly speculative and false stories about arms for hostages and alleged ransom payments. We did not — repeat — did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages nor will we.” But Americans later learned that the United States had sold 2,000 anti-tank weapons to the Iranian government “in return for promises to release the American hostages there. Money from the sale of those weapons went to support the Contras’ war in Nicaragua,” as Mother Jones magazine noted in 1998.

Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990 provided a challenge for the first Bush administration to get Americans mobilized. In September 1990, the Pentagon announced that up to a quarter million Iraqi troops were near the border of Saudi Arabia, threatening to give Saddam Hussein a stranglehold on one of the world’s most important oil sources. The Pentagon based its claim on satellite images that it refused to disclose. One American paper, the St. Petersburg Times, purchased two Soviet satellite “images taken of that same area at the same time that revealed that there were no Iraqi troops ‘near the Saudi border — just empty desert.’” Jean Heller, the journalist who broke the story, commented, “That [Iraqi buildup] was the whole justification for Bush sending troops in there, and it just didn’t exist.” Even a decade after the first Gulf war, the Pentagon refused to disclose the secret photos that justified sending half a million American troops into harm’s way.

Support for the war was also whipped up by the congressional testimony of a Kuwaiti teenager who claimed she had seen Iraqi soldiers removing hundreds of babies from incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals and leaving them on the floor to die. George H.W. Bush often invoked the incubator tale to justify the war, proclaiming that the “ghastly atrocities” were akin to “Hitler revisited.” After the United States commenced bombing Iraq, it transpired that the woman who testified was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador and that her story was a complete fabrication, concocted in part by a U.S. public relations firm. Dead babies were a more effective selling point than one of the initial justifications Bush announced for U.S. intervention — restoring Kuwait’s “rightful leaders to their place” — as if any Americans seriously cared about putting Arab oligarchs back on their throne. (A few months before Saddam’s invasion, Amnesty International condemned the Kuwaiti government for torturing detainees.)

Bill Clinton’s unprovoked war against Serbia was sold to Americans with preposterous tales of the Kosovo Liberation Army’s being freedom fighters, with absurd claims that a civil war in one corner of southeastern Europe threatened to engulf the entire continent in conflict, with wild and unsubstantiated claims of an ongoing genocide, and with a deluge of lies that the U.S. military was not targeting Serb civilians.

Lying and warring appear to be two sides of the same coin. Unfortunately, many Americans continue to be gullible when presidents claim a need to commence killing foreigners. It remains to be seen whether the citizenry is corrigible on this life-and-death issue.

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

This article originally appeared in the February 2008 edition of Freedom Daily. Subscribe to the print or email version of Freedom Daily.

Multinationals make billions in profit out of growing global food crisis

Tuesday, 06 May 2008
The Independent
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor


Speculators blamed for driving up price of basic foods as 100 million face severe hunger


Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.



The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor - who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food - into hunger and destitution.



The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn.



Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.



Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world's largest fertiliser companies, saw its income for the three months ending 29 February rise more than 12-fold, from $42.2m to $520.8m, on the back of a shortage of fertiliser. The prices of some kinds of fertiliser have more than tripled over the past year as demand has outstripped supply. As a result, plans to increase harvests in developing countries have been hit hard.



The Food and Agriculture Organisation reports that 37 developing countries are in urgent need of food. And food riots are breaking out across the globe from Bangladesh to Burkina Faso, from China to Cameroon, and from Uzbekistan to the United Arab Emirates.



Benedict Southworth, director of the World Development Movement, called the escalating earnings and profits "immoral" late last week. He said that the benefits of the food price increases were being kept by the big companies, and were not finding their way down to farmers in the developing world.



The soaring prices of food and fertilisers mainly come from increased demand. This has partly been caused by the boom in biofuels, which require vast amounts of grain, but even more by increasing appetites for meat, especially in India and China; producing 1lb of beef in a feedlot, for example, takes 7lbs of grain.



World food stocks at record lows, export bans and a drought in Australia have contributed to the crisis, but experts are also fingering food speculation. Professor Bob Watson - chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who led the giant International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development - last week identified it as a factor.



Index-fund investment in grain and meat has increased almost fivefold to over $47bn in the past year, concludes AgResource Co, a Chicago-based research firm. And the official US Commodity Futures Trading Commission held special hearings in Washington two weeks ago to examine how much speculators were helping to push up food prices.



Cargill says that its results "reflect the cumulative effect of having invested more than $18bn in fixed and working capital over the past seven years to expand our physical facilities, service capabilities, and knowledge around the world".



The revelations are bound to increase outrage over multinational companies following last week's disclosure that Shell and BP between them recorded profits of £14bn in the first three months of the year - or £3m an hour - on the back of rising oil prices. Shell promptly attracted even greater condemnation by announcing that it was pulling out of plans to build the world's biggest wind farm off the Kent coast.



World leaders are to meet next month at a special summit on the food crisis, and it will be high on the agenda of the G8 summit of the world's richest countries in Hokkaido, Japan, in July.