A Tomahawk Missile cost $569,000 in FY99, so if my calculations are correct, they cost a little over $736,000 today assuming they are the same make and model. The United States fired 110 missiles yesterday, which adds up to a cost of around $81 million. That’s… about 33 times the amount of money National Public Radio receives in grants each year from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which the House of Representatives… wants to de-fund.
The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
Megrahi welcomed home in August by Muamar Gadaffi’s son and designated successor, Saif al-Islam
The Telegraph reports that unidentified “senior official” source has revealed that predictions of the Lockerbie bomber’s imminent demise have proven inaccurate.
So much for the “within three months” legal basis for his compassionate release. Of course, we already knew that compassion had nothing to do with this. It was simply a sordid sale of justice by Labour in return for an oil deal.
The health of the Lockerbie bomber has “not deteriorated” since his release from prison three months ago – despite doctors’ assessments that he would have died by now, a senior source has told The Sunday Telegraph.
Megrahi, who is suffering terminal prostate cancer, was sent home to Libya to die after medical experts concluded in a report on July 30 he had just three months left to live. The time span was crucial because only prisoners with three months or less to survive are eligible for release on compassionate grounds.
The disclosure will reignite the row over the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds despite his conviction for the murder of 270 people when Pan Am flight 103 exploded in mid-air over Lockerbie in 1988.
Within three weeks of the medical examination by Professor Karol Sikora, one of Britain’s leading cancer specialists, Megrahi was put on a plane and sent home to Tripoli to die.
But three months on from Prof Sikora’s diagnosis, Megrahi is well enough to “walk and talk” and shows no sign of deterioration, according to a senior source involved in his release.
The source told The Sunday Telegraph: “His condition has not deteriorated in three months. He is pretty much in the same way as he was when this all started. He is just as he was. There is nothing that leads anyone to believe he is in any different condition to when he left Scotland.”
Jules Crittenden comments on the not-wholly-unexpected confirmation via a leak to the Times of London that, yes, Virginia, the Labour Government really did trade the Lockerbie bomber for a BP oil deal.
Remember when the United States and Britain used to make murderous, terrorism-supporting dictators tremble? They even made Moammar Ghadafi cry uncle and the Iranians bring their nuke program to a temporary halt back in 2003, when they took out Saddam. It was another time, when people used to say it was all about blood for oil. We didn’t actually get any oil for that blood. But in a new, gentler time, apparently it’s possible to swap mass murderers for oil. Think of the possibilities.
15 of 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and a recent West Point study, reported by Reuters, demonstrates that spoiled Saudi young men, free to live a life of idleness funded by the Kingdom’s oil exactions on the civilized world’s economy, make up the leading portion of Al Qaeda’s membership.
Most al Qaeda fighters in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia and Libya and many are university-aged students, said a study released on Wednesday by researchers at the U.S. Army’s West Point military academy.
The study was based on 606 personnel records collected by al Qaeda in Iraq and captured by coalition troops in October. It includes data on fighters who entered Iraq, largely through Syria, between August 2006 and August 2007.
The researchers at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center found that 41 percent of the fighters were Saudi nationals.
Libyan nationals accounted for the second largest group entering Iraq in that time period with about 19 percent of the total, followed by Syrians and Yemenis each at 8 percent, Algerians with 7 percent and Moroccans at 6 percent. …
According to the study, the average age of the 606 fighters who entered over that one-year period was 24-25. One was 15 years old.
The authors called that finding “worrisome.”
“The incitement of a new generation of jihadis to join the fight in Iraq, or plan operations elsewhere, is one of the most worrisome aspects of the ongoing fight in Iraq,” they wrote.
“The United States should not confuse gains against al-Qa’ida’s Iraqi franchises as fundamental blows against the organization outside of Iraq. So long as al-Qa’ida is able to attract hundreds of young men to join its ranks, it will remain a serious threat to global security.”
The researchers found that of the 157 fighters who listed an occupation, 43 percent said they were students.
“Universities have become a critical recruiting field for al Qaeda,” the study said.
Saudi Arabia and Libya, both considered allies by the United States in its fight against terrorism, were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to serve as suicide bombers or to facilitate other attacks, according to senior American military officials.
The data come largely from a trove of documents and computers discovered in September, when American forces raided a tent camp in the desert near Sinjar, close to the Syrian border. The raid’s target was an insurgent cell believed to be responsible for smuggling the vast majority of foreign fighters into Iraq.
The most significant discovery was a collection of biographical sketches that listed hometowns and other details for more than 700 fighters brought into Iraq since August 2006. …
Saudis accounted for the largest number of fighters listed on the records by far — 305, or 41 percent — American intelligence officers found as they combed through documents and computers in the weeks after the raid. The data show that despite increased efforts by Saudi Arabia to clamp down on would-be terrorists since Sept. 11, 2001, when 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, some Saudi fighters are still getting through.
Libyans accounted for 137 foreign fighters, or 18 percent of the total, the senior American military officials said. They discussed the raid with the stipulation that they not be named because of the delicate nature of the issue.
When an open boat bearing illegal immigrants to Europe from Libya lost power, Boudafel, a Maltese tug towing a tuna-breeding plant to Spain threw those on board a line and proceeded to give them a tow.
The boat then foundered and sank, and the Maltese tug, obeying orders from owners ashore, refused to stop to provide further assistance.
Survivors were left to cling to the buoys holding up the tuna farm’s system of nets. In the end, 27 young men were rescued by the Italian Navy.
For three days and three nights, these African migrants clung desperately to life. Their means of survival is a tuna net, being towed across the Mediterranean by a Maltese tug that refused to take them on board after their frail boat sank.
Malta and Libya, where they had embarked on their perilous journey, washed their hands of them. Eventually, they were rescued by the Italian navy.
The astonishing picture shows them hanging on to the buoys that support the narrow runway that runs around the top of the net. They had had practically nothing to eat or drink.
Last night, on the island of Lampedusa, the 27 young men – from Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sudan and other countries – told of their ordeal. As their flimsy boat from Libya floundered adrift for six days, two fishing boats failed to rescue them. On Wednesday, the Maltese boat, the Budafel allowed them to mount the walkway but refused to have them on board.
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Last Monday, another open boat containing 53 illegal immigrant African men, women, and children also lost its engine, and was sighted in distress from the air 90 miles south of Malta. Contact with the vessel was lost, and at first the 27 survivors rescued clinging to the tuna nets were believed to have come from this vessel.
In the end, it was established to have been a second boat, and bodies of its passengers were found Friday.
A French navy ship found around 20 bodies floating off the south coast of the Mediterranean island of Malta on Friday, a maritime official said.
The frigate Motte-Picquet was on a routine surveillance mission when it spotted the bodies.
“We are in the process of picking up some dead bodies,” said Emmanuel Dinh, spokesman for France’s Mediterranean maritime authority.
He said he could not give a precise number but said: “There will certainly be around 20.”
Dinh said there was no sign of a boat and the navy could not yet identify where the bodies came from.
“They are in a state of decomposition so they have been in the sea for several days,” he added.
Last week 27 shipwrecked Africans spent three days clinging to tuna nets in the Mediterranean while Malta and Libya argued over who should rescue them. They were eventually picked up by the Italian navy.
Malta refused to allow a Spanish tugboat to land another 26 would-be migrants. Spain decided to take them in.
The migrants’ plight sparked calls from European Union officials for EU countries to adopt common rules to clarify who is responsible for saving them at sea.
