2006 could be very interesting for the mullahs and President/Terrorist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As Debbie pointed out, German media has reported that there are rumors of “secret discussions [that] Washington was preparing the Allies” for an attack. Now, Pope Benedict has used his New Year message to attack Iran:

The Pope said: “Authorities who incite their citizens to hostility to other countries bear a heavy responsibility and make the future of humanity more uncertain and anonymous.” The message, issued by the Vatican yesterday, pointed to “signs of hope” and highlighted “a decrease in the number of armed conflicts” around the world.

However, the Pope condemned the growth in arms expenditure and, in another apparent swipe at Iran, mocked governments who relied on, or aspired to obtaining, a nuclear arsenal.

“In nuclear war there will be no victors, only victims,” he said. “The truth of peace requires that all — whether those governments which openly or secretly possess nuclear arms or those planning to acquire them — agree to change by clear and firm decisions and strive for a progressive and concerted nuclear disarmament.”

It’s interesting to note that Iran has “set aside funds in its next annual budget to prevent what it says are ‘American plots’ against the Islamic Republic and ‘foreign interference’ in the country’s internal affairs.” It could be a long year for the Iranian leadership and hopefully a regime change will occur.

Update (Chad):
The German article in question can be found here, and it’s quite interesting. Perhaps most interesting to me is the talks between CIA Director Porter Goss and Turkey. Turkey is hardly friendly with Iran, but they have a group known as the PKK who is housed in Northern Iraq and Iran which is more or less their Al Qaida. Could part of this discussion be that Turkey would coordinate air strikes if this plan comes into fruition? That is what Der Spiegel states.

Last week Al Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for taking six Sudanese embassy workers hostage. With the claim of responsibility, a demand was released stating Sudan should cut off all contact with the Iraqi government for release of the hostages. This demand is designed to try to delegitimize the Iraqi government, the same demand used by Al Qaida in Iraq for two years.

Surely Sudan wouldn’t cave into the demands of a terrorist group, right? Wrong.

“A statement was issued by the Sudanese government to close the embassy in Iraq to win the release of our kidnapped citizens,” the embassy’s charge d’affairs, Mohamed Ahmed Khalil, told The Associated Press. He added that the embassy’s 12 employees would leave on Monday.

Today was the deadline for the Sudanese withdrawal from contact with the Iraqi government. Supposedly Al Qaida in Iraq will release the hostages after Sudan has agreed to close their embassy in Iraq. I don’t see that happening because it makes far too much sense for Al Qaida in Iraq to keep at least one hostage to ensure Sudan will stay out of Iraq in the future. Since Sudan has already bowed to the demands of a terrorist group, why not ask for something elese?

Through the string of kidnappings in Iraq, there have been those who have stood firm against the demands of Al Qaida in Iraq, knowing all too well the terrorist group will do what they want with the hostages regardless what is done to appease them. Then there have been the Philipines and now Sudan, caving into the demands by paying ransoms or complying with the request ensuring more hostages will be taken hostage in the future. It is one thing for a company to pay a ransom or comply with the demands, but it is quite another for a government to do so. A government is supposed to think about the welfare of the whole, not the individual.

Update:
The BBC reports the hostages have been released, which is great news. I just don’t like how they went about getting them released.

Well, since everyone and their dog are putting up their list of predictions for 2006, here are mine:

1) Samuel Alito will be confirmed by the narrowest of margins in the Senate.
2) Ariel Sharon will win re-election and the Kadima party will grow in strength.
3) Donald Rumsfeld retires in the fall (due to events leading to Prediction #14 coming true) and Gordon England is appointed in his place.
4) Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri won’t be caught. Zarqawi will be tracked down near the Iranian border, but will kill himself to evade capture.
5) One high profile, “top 10″ blogger everyone loves or loves to hate will close up shop, citing fatigue. The blogosphere will morn for about a week then move…OH MY GOSH! BREAKING NEWS…SIREN ON DRUDGE!!
6) Hillary will win re-election in NY. Trump wins the Governor’s race.
7) Israel will attack Iran, as a last resort to protect their country after Iran declares they have nuclear weapons.
President Bush’s approval ratings remain in the 50% range throughout the year.
9) Ruth Bader Ginsburg hangs up her robe at the end of the session. Forced to nominate a woman to keep a woman on the court, Dubya taps Diane Sykes. Senators are grumpy they have to work in August to confirm her. She is confirmed.
10) The US will have it’s first cases of bird flu.
11) Bob Novak’s political career rebounds after he joins #1 rated FOXNEWS. Later breaks several big stories, including scooping everyone and correctly picking Sykes for SCOTUS. Also is given his own TV show (replacing John Gibson).
12) Conservatives are saddened when Howard Dean steps down as DNC Chair after the ‘06 elections. Tom Daschle takes his place. An upswing in donations to the DNC occurs in the months afterward.
13) Dems pick up 3 seats in the House, only 1 in the Senate.
14) Time’s “Person of the Year” in ‘06? Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad. I’ll give you one guess why.
15) ITB will continue to grow in readership.

Feel free to add your predictions. Happy New Year!

More bad news for the Syrian dictator. His circle of friends is getting smaller:

Former Syrian Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam, a one-time stalwart of the ruling Baath Party, on Friday accused Syria’s President Bashar Assad of being personally involved in the assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri.

Khaddam made the claim as he declared a formal break with President Bashar Assad in a television interview from Paris, citing corruption within the regime and its failure to reform. He quoted the Syrian president as telling Hariri, months before he was killed: “You want to bring a (new) president in Lebanon. … I will not allow that. I will crush whoever attempts to overturn our decision.”

“No Syrian security service can reach a decision independently, besides the president. Bashar told me that people in Syria were involved [in the assassination] and that means that he was involved,” Khaddam said in the interview with Al-Arabiya, the pan-Arab satellite broadcaster, his first since he left Syria several months ago.

Why is this guy still in power? One reason (among others) is that there doesn’t seem to be a reasonable alternative to Assad, as noted by Lee Smith in a recent column in the Weekly Standard:

Washington may hope there is some plausible alternative to the Assads, but none is in evidence–not a secular, democratic opposition, not a reform movement in exile, not moderate Islamists. (Not even Islamist extremists, whose organizational capacity the regime has invariably exaggerated for its own purposes.) Thus, the regime has effectively booby-trapped Syria, and if it falls it is quite likely Syrians will shed each other’s blood.

Regime change in ‘06?

Update (Mac): Debka also notes:

DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources note that Haddam insinuated in the interview that Assad had had pre-knowledge of the murder and could have prevented it. He clearly laid the crime at Ghazaleh’s door and made it clear that the general would not have acted without Assad’s authority. This veteran Syrian politician’s diatribe against Assad is unprecedented and shocked opinion in Damascus and the Arab world.

Update (Mac) 12/31: That didn’t take long. Syrian lawmakers are demanding that Khaddam be tried for treason.

The Justice Department has announced they have opened an investigation into the leak of classified material to the New York Times regarding surveillance of those within U.S. borders actively calling phone numbers found in Al Qaida databases and on captured Al Qaida hard drives. According to the Associated Press, the NSA asked the Justice Department to look into the leaks.

As I noted two weeks ago, there should be an investigation with recent precedent as cause for such an inquiry. This particular leak though is far more dangerous to our nation’s security than the leak of a supposed covert agent’s name. Based upon the hysteria, some of it rightfully so, during the entire two-year Plame investigation filled with articles implicating people as high up the food chain as the president himself that have now been found were nothing more than false information and slander, the media should turn their efforts on this far more serious crime with the same vigor though hopefully a bit more clarity and truthfullness. Precedent demands this, but I’m not holding my breath because this investigation will eat up one of their own.

To further draw comparisons between this investigation and into the investigation of Plame, the media as a whole saw blood in the water during the initial stages of the Plame case. Once the investigation started moving towards two of the media’s own, they cooled only to smell blood in the water once again when it looked like the investigation was almost over. Some journalists had dreams of seeing high-level White House officials walked out in handcuffs after being charged with leaking the name of a covert agent. Instead all they got was the indictment of a man who couldn’t keep his story straight named Scooter.

This case is different though on a number of issues, but I will focus on how the media will likely respond to this investigation. Investigate the leaker, not the NYT. We learned through the Plame investigation, only if an investigation can take down high-ranking members of a sitting government will front pages be riddled with opinion pieces found now to have been outright lies or fantasy spin. This investigation will start at the New York Times to find out who leaked the classified program to Risen. For this reason, and probably this reason only, this investigation will be very lightly covered even though it has a far greater impact on American lives.

Already we are seeing some groups opposed to anything not far-Left crying foul at this investigation saying the Bush Administration is trying to silence its critics. The leaker is a whistle blower some will say, and have said already. Nonsense. It is not the job of an NSA agent or a newspaper to plan our national security policy. Even though this story is two weeks old, not one single poorly handled wiretap on an innocent person has come forth. Not one. Do not be so dumb to believe several press agencies haven’t looked for one. There is nothing to blow a whistle over, but there’s plenty for the American people to be upset about. Yet again, a classified program aimed at protecting Americans’ lives was put at jeopardy by someone, or a group, who disagreed with the sitting government. If this exact issue had never occured without incident or leak before under a different leadership, it might be different. The problem is that this exact issue has occured for three decades and no one has felt the need to expose a covert program while this nation is a war before.

My hope is that through this investigation we will not only decide if this type of a program is important to our nation’s security but that future leaks will at least be stymied to a degree. The powers granted in FISA do allow this type of warrantless monitoring, but that doesn’t mean Americans wish to see this go on without at least further safeguards in place. It’s not political, though politicians have made it so. There have been far too many leaks as members of the intelligence community are seemingly trying to form and shape policy rather than doing their jobs of protecting the inhabitants to this nation.

Foreign students to wanting to study in madrassa in Pakistan must ‘register’. source and source Since the registration process would require personal information and sources of funding, this idea isn’t going over very well with with potential “jihadists” who desire training in these ’schools’.

Pakistan will not cancel the visas of foreign students at Islamic seminaries, but they must register and the government would like them to return to their countries as soon as possible, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said Friday.

The minister added 65 per cent of the roughly 1,800 foreign students have already left Pakistan.

Registration of foreign students at about 13,000 Islamic schools became an explosive issue after most of them - supported by the religion-political alliance the Muttahida Majlise Amal (MMA) - declined to submit to what they called “intrusive registration procedures”.

The registration process requires the seminaries to reveal their sources of financing, be ready for annual audits, and refrain from preaching hate materials.

Many moderate seminaries registered their foreign students after the government made some changes in the registration law, but most of the schools still have reservations about the law.

Ittehad-e-Tanzeemaul Madaris (ITM), an umbrella organization representing all Islamic seminaries has scheduled a meeting of all central members for January 1 to discuss the issue of foreign student expulsions.

The number of such seminaries mushroomed in the 1980s. Most of them trained Islamic militants to wage U.S.-backed “jihad” or holy war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Companion post at Right Truth

Farris Hassan, a 16 year-old high school student in Ft. Lauderdale Florida decided to visit Baghdad Iraq as research for a class paper. source He is taking a journalism class and wanted to see for himself how democracy was taking hold in Iraq.

Hassan’s family are of Iraqi heritage, but have lived in the United States for more than 30 years. Farris is a junior at the exclusive Pine Crest prep school. He “bought a $900 plane ticket, cut class, sneaked away from his parents and headed to Iraq on a flight from Lebanon, saying that he was pursuing his interest in news reporting as suggested by his high-school journalism teacher.” I don’t think his teacher expected this level of research for the class, ha.

Hassan arrived at the AP office in Baghdad ready to work, but they called the “U.S. Embassy – where officials took custody of him and contacted his parents.” His mother had received an email from him, telling her where he was, why and ‘not to worry’.

Farris is now scheduled to return home in the next few days – although his father is quite willing to allow his son to continue his adventure, within certain limits.

Redha Hassan told the Sun-Sentinel that he gave his son the choice of coming home or going to Beirut for a week to stay with family friends, and then head to Baghdad once the border opened and private security could be arranged.

“I felt it would leave a scar, disappointing him in his young life,” Redha Hassan said of shipping Farris home. “I learned long ago that if you say no, they stick to the point and insist on doing it. Nothing fazed him.”

Farris’ mother had other ideas, saying he would be grounded, access to his money would be stopped, his Passport would be taken away from him, and other punishments administered. Go mom!

Companion post at Right Truth

A disturbing (but not surprising) development regarding Hamas and their desire to institute a jizya tax on dhimmis in Bethlehem:

It is a fear that took shape after the electoral victory of Hamas, not only in Bethlehem’s municipal elections, but also in those of other cities of Cisjordan: Nablus, Jenin, Qalqilya. A new style can already be seen in the municipalities where Hamas is installed: Christian women employed there, who are accustomed to shaking everybody’s hand, are held at a distance by the newly elected, for whom physical contact violates Islamic principles.

The general plan of Hamas also includes the imposition of a special tax, called al-jeziya, upon all of the non-Muslim residents in the Palestinian territories. This tax revives the one applied through all of Islamic history to the dhimmi, the second-class Jewish and Christian citizens.

In an interview with Karby Legget, published in the December 23-26 edition of “The Wall Street Journal,” Masalmeh, the leader of the Hamas contingent at the municipal council of Bethlehem, confirmed: “We in Hamas intend to implement this tax someday. We say it openly – we welcome everyone to Palestine but only if they agree to live under our rules.”

Batarseh, the mayor, doesn’t agree. He doesn’t want the tax, and says it will never be introduced.

We can only hope that the mayor stands up for his beliefs and for the sake of Bethlehem.

Hat tip: LGF.

I wonder what CAIR would say to this:

BERLIN, Dec. 28 - Known Islamic militants should be electronically tagged so their movements could be tracked, a regional German interior minister proposed Wednesday.

“This would allow us to monitor the roughly 3,000 Islamists who are prone to violence, hate preachers and fighters trained in terrorist camps,” the Lower Saxony interior minister, Uwe Schünemann, said in an interview with the newspaper Die Welt.

Mr. Schünemann said electronic tagging was a viable alternative to holding the militants in protective custody, as suggested by the former German interior minister, Otto Schily. Mr. Schünemann was quoted as saying that his proposal would not be against Germany’s Constitution.

My guess is they would have a spasm.

The case of German archeologist and former hostage in Iraq Susanne Osthoff continues to grow more bizarre. Perhaps the oddities are in the profession, but she’s clearly gone off the deep end.

If former hostage Susanne Osthoff had been better advised, she probably would have opted against appearing on German television entirely covered in a black headscarf. The hijab, which left only a pair of slits for her eyes, made the freed hostage look like a disturbing cross between a Chechen Black Widow suicide bomber and a ninja.

On Wednesday night, 10 days after her release from captivity, a televised interview with Osthoff, who had been held in Iraq for three weeks, was broadcast on the German public television channel ZDF. In the interview’s introduction, the presenter explained that Osthoff’s choice of dress was suposedly intended to preserve her identity –a bizarre thought considering that Osthoff’s face has been all over the front-pages since November and most people in Germany must be quite aware of what she looks like. Besides, she didn’t wear a headdress in her interview with Arab broacaster Al-Jazeera earlier this week.

The second shock for viewers was the rambling, incoherent nature of Osthoff’s answers. Even the heavily edited version (ZDF spokesman: “We wanted to protect Osthoff from herself.”) of the original 15-minute interview was barely comprehensible. Questions were left unanswered and at times Osthoff rambled off into non-sequiturs about how badly she had been treated by her landlord back in Germany. When asked how the kidnapping had been carried out, she was evasive, simply responding: “I think these details are not interesting. That doesn’t interest anyone. Generally kidnappings are carried out quite violently. People watch a lot of television and realize perhaps that you don’t let yourself get abducted voluntarily.”

So . . . where to start. More appropriately, where do I draw the line to question the mentality of a former hostage when in all likelihood the experience has deeply affected her sanity?

Her choice is dress is beyond bizarre as is her wanting to hide her appearence on television. There are several pictures of her accross the Internet and last I checked a video editor could black out or distort the image of a guest if that was their wish. To wear a head covering such as the one Osthoff did after being held hostage by people she claims were aligned with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is erie.

People are interested in how she was abducted. I daresay even more so than whatever he landlord in Germany has or has not done to her humble abode. She’s already told the world how she was abducted and how she was treated, so why did she duck the question this time around?

I am very tempted to believe this entire kidnapping was nothing more than a hoax. There are two compelling reasons though explaining why this incident was probably not a hoax. First, Osthoff had been escorted to the Green Zone after intelligence found threats against her life by none other than Al Qaida in Iraq. She was released to her own accord. Second, Osthoff has yet to make much of a political statement or made any type of self-promoting stance. The only political statement she has made, if you wish to call it that, is when she told an Al Jazeera audience she was treated well and those who took her hostage released her because she was a woman and a Muslim.

The case is very strange, and something tells me it will continue to grow into a Michael Jackson-esque saga for the next month. Even though Osthoff wanted to hide her identity, she has made herself widely available to the press since she was freed. She’ll likely continue to do so.

Hat tip: LGF