A conservative view on history as we make it

Saturday, May 27, 2006




In Bantul, villagers mourned on Saturday and prepared mass graves for victims of a powerful early morning earthquake that leveled buildings.

Earthquake Leaves Thousands Dead in Indonesia

YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- A powerful earthquake flattened homes and hotels in central Indonesia early Saturday as people slept, killing at least 2,900 and injuring thousands more in the nation's worst disaster since the 2004 tsunami.

The magnitude-6.2 quake struck at 5:54 a.m. near the ancient city of Yogyakarta, 250 miles east of the capital, Jakarta. It was centered about six miles below the surface, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Monday, May 22, 2006

President visits Chicago Monday

May 22, 2006 - President Bush is expected to discuss Iraq's new national unity government during a Monday visit to Chicago.

Bush will talk about how the new government represents an opportunity for Iraq to move forward because it has a four-year mandate, not just a temporary hold on power. He'll make his remarks at a gathering of the National Restaurant Association.
Iraq's 275-member parliament approved the new government today. U-S officials hope the new government will help clear the way for the withdrawal of American troops.

The new Shiite Muslim, Sunni Arab and Kurdish cabinet ministers took their oaths of office during a nationally televised session in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

Afterward, Bush pledged continued support for Iraq as it -- quote -- "takes its place among the world's democracies and as an ally in the war on terror."

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Monday, May 15, 2006

U.S. Restores Diplomatic Ties to Libya

The United States has decided to restore full diplomatic relations with Libya and remove it from the list of countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced this morning.

Ms. Rice called the moves "tangible results that flow from the historic decisions taken by Libya's leadership in 2003 to renounce terrorism and to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programs."

She also used the occasion to hold out hope for improvement in the current standoffs between the Bush administration and Iran and North Korea, which have been accused of seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

"Just as 2003 marked a turning point for the Libyan people so too could 2006 mark turning points for the peoples of Iran and North Korea," Ms. Rice said in a statement. "Libya is an important model as nations around the world press for changes in behavior by the Iranian and North Korean regimes."

Libya came forward in December 2003, disclosing its secret nuclear and missile programs and promising to cooperate fully with international investigations. American officials say the information gleaned from Libyan records was crucial in tracking the reach of the illegal proliferation network run by A.Q. Khan, Pakistan's top nuclear scientist.

The United States reopened a two-person interest section in the Belgian embassy in Tripoli in 2004, but has not had an ambassador there since 1972, three years after Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi seized power in a coup. The ambassador was withdrawn to protest his support for "international terrorism and subversion against moderate Arab and African governments," according to the State Department's Country Note on Libya. The entire embassy was withdrawn in 1979 after a mob set fire to it.

What followed was several decades of steady clashes, including the designation of Libya as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1979, the expulsion of the Libyan embassy from Washington in 1981, an incident in the same year in which two United States jets shot down two Libyan jets that had fired on them during a naval exercise; the bombing of targets in Tripoli in 1986 in retaliation for Libyan involvement in a bombing in Berlin that killed two American servicemen.

In addition to numerous sanctions imposed by the United States during these conflicts, Libya was placed under United Nations sanctions after investigators determined that it was responsible for the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1988.

Libya's isolation has been easing since 1994, when it allowed two of intelligence officers to be tried for the Lockerbie bombing in the Hague. When the men were transferred to the Netherlands in 1999, the United Nations suspended its sanctions. In 2001, one of the men was found guilty and one not guilty. In 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing and made an offer to relatives who had filed suit against it. While it has made payments under the settlement, Libya has said that the final installments will not be released until it was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrrorism, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.

Since the Sept. 11th attacks, which were denounced by Mr. Qaddafi, American officials have praised Libya's cooperation in the pursuit of terrorists.

Ms. Rice said today that Libya will be omitted the from the annual certification of countries not cooperating fully with the United States' anti-terrorism efforts.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

This Guy Is A Joke

In his letter to President Bush, Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared that Western-style democracy had failed and that the use of secret prisons in Europe and aspects of the war in Iraq could not be reconciled with Mr. Bush's Christian values. But the letter did not address directly the central issue that divides the two countries: Iran's nuclear ambitions.

 
Google
 
Web The Charging Elephant