Khalaf bro. The following piece (2005) was an attempt, but did little justice for this monumental personality: An Ambassador From A Sovreign . Open your heart to receive him . Imagine, someone knocking on your door late one night, you crawl out of your warm and cozy bed and peek out the door, its a cold night , weather is very bad, windy and dangerous. You are not sure if you want to open, you dont know what to expect. Who could it be you wonder, walking this late hour of the night? what could be his motive and what does he want from me? He knocks on your door at a time when you lost trust of all people, including your close family ( Raxim) and decided to cut relations with them, and for that purpose you bought a Caller ID phone, while removing your name from the white pages for a fee if you have donated to your poor relatives, it would have bought them food for a week. He knocks on your door at a time when injustice and oppression is everywhere, in some places, injustice has its own Ministry, its called the Ministry of "Justice', and in the name of justice, a lot of injustice is committed. This brand of Justice is for sale, and those who have money can buy it, and use the Justice they just bought as a means to make more money so they can buy more Justice for their interests. He knocks on your door at a time when socially, no morals are left to be safeguarded, Steeling other peoples properties is known as National interest, killing an enrire village is a Policy, hypocricy is known as politics, the art of having permanent interest, not permananent friends as the smart principle. The law, you come to find out the hard way, does not protect fools, the disadvantaged, the poor, so in every deal, you need a troop of lawyers to arbitrate a troop of liars whose hands are in each others pockets while using the remaining hand to form a coalition of the willing to jointly steal others wealth. He knocks on your door at a time when morality of the sexes is being redefined, men are no longer all men, and women are no longer all women, two new sexes are an accepted reality, and no one knows what is coming next. He knocks on your door when Somalis are a collection of suspicious tribesmen, each one bent on dispising, suspecting and hating the other tribe, while each one of them is in bed a worse enemy with a catastrophic interest in their division and anarchy. He knocks on your door just when you wanted to be delivered to safety. He is an Ambassador from a Sovereign. Unlike world sovereigns whose sovereignty is questioned by B-52 Stealth bombers hovering over their heads (are there any sovereigns anymore?). This Sovereign, sees the perception behind this birds stealth and might. A sovereign who has absolute power over all things and full undisputed ownership of all you see or dont see, hear,touch and smell. A Sovereign who wil always have it His way, no one can change His plans, nor influence His decisions. His Ambassador, is not Chauffeur driven in a late Model Mercedes Benz, nor on a Stretch Limo with a bar and a Giacuzzi, He is not interetsted meeting the rich and the influential, He prefers, the poor and the downtrodden for friends ( Axibbu al masaakiina wa jaalisuuhum). He came alone, to your life to show you His Sovereigns kind message for your happiness, to demonstrate to you the message practically in person as a Husband, father, leader, teacher, warrior, peace maker, Judge, businessman and a friend. He tells it as it is, no official lies, no split personality, He is a model of all that is good, He was honest in character, brave when dealing with his enemies, fair when negotiating with his adversaries, forgiving when he had the upper hand and prudent when he fulfilled his obligations, he was a model parent, raising His children with love, not violence, caring about his neigbors, playful with his spouses, and above all, a very likeable person, like the powerful blackhole in space , no one who've ever met him could help but admire Him. He, came to your life in the form of collection of his life's story and collected sayings, ( Jawaamic al Kalim) He is Muhammad Salla Allah Caleyhi Wa Sallim Please open your door, and let him in your life, Enjoy eating with his Sunna way, emulate him in all of your endeavors The way you dress Theway you deal with people The way you earn a living The way you treat friends, family, neighbors and spouses " Laqad kaana Lakum Fi Rasuulillahi uswatun Xasanah, liman kaan yarjullaha wal yowmal aakhir" Truly, There was a good model (to emulate) for you in the person ( and life) of the Messnegr of Allah, for those who aspire for meeting Allah and (are ready) for the day of judgemement. Nomad bro and sis. How much of His Character do you (emulate )apply? Nur 2005 i-Nuri Softwaano Series Somaliaonline Syndicates

Norhern bro. That is right, and the best of planners is Allah. here is a descriptive piece of poem in Arabic. " Su-ila alxaqu yawman: Ayna kunta fi sawlatil baatil? fa ajaaba: Kuntu Ajtathu Juduurah" Xaqa ayaa maalin la warsaday : Halkeed ku maqneyd markuu baadilku reyreynayay? wuxuu ku jawaabay: Waxaan ku mashquulsanaa inaan googooyo xidaddadiisa. Nur

Islam spread in asia after the Mongolians invaders took control of Bagdad and killed thousannds just like the Americans, but Allah SWT used them as his emissaries once they went back to Asia all the way to China and beyound. The Americans are looking for cheap oil, but many will find peace and justice in Islam, including those troubled with hate toward Muslims. Nur

Rudy bro. Jazakallahu Kheiran, a good read indeed! Nur

WOL America may re-invent itself, the following video makes one very proud of the American Peace Movement , enjoy the Video.

Khalaf bro. You ask "What would you say to this question, what about those people who never heard of Islam, Quran, or the Prophet Muhammad scw, don’t know how to read or anything and were just born, lived, and then died." That was the same question Pharoah of Egypt had when baffled by Moses mission to the oppressed children of Isreal. "Fa maa baalul quruunin uulaa?" What about nations of old ( Infidels)? We start with several facts: 1. Allahs absolute Justice. ( Laa Yukallifullahu nafsan illaa wuscaahaa) 2. His Kindness that dwarfs His anger ( Wa raxmatii wasicat kulla shey). 3. His Wisdom (Wa maa kunnaa mucadibiinaa xataa nabcatha rasuulaa). Allah has forbidden INJUSTICE even upon HIMSELF, and therefore He made INJUSTICE Forbidden between mankind. Allah is mercyful, so in the day of Judgement, George Bush and His GITMO Kangaroo Court Officials will not judge people. Only Allah will judge all. Allah is All Wise and All Knowing, which means that no one will be forgotten. These points assure that every human will meet His maker, and have a fair trial by an impartial and Just King. There will be two main categories of people at the trials that day: 1. Those who received a Book of Devine Message: (Jews, Christians and Muslims). 2. Those who may have received another form of a Devine message.: (Rest of mankind) Of the latter group Allah says: "Wa in min qaryatin illaa khalaa fiihaa natheer" There is no village (on earth) that did not ( recieve a warning) by a warner." Humans are also born with original Devine covenant implanted in their conscious known as FITRA or INSTINCT or MORALS. The Fitra is based on the initial settings, no human beings rolls out of Allah's factory without the Fitra code deeply encoded in his soul, a code that was invoked by Allah when he created all the souls who were summoned on a single ground to take an initiation alligiance oath to make Allah alone their master and Lord over all their spiritual and lively affairs. Allah then re-enforced that Fitra Code with Prophetic messaging, Prophets were sent to re-enforce the initial tawheed fitra code. Those who accepted the Devine message were saved and those who rejected were doomed. Its like signing a compliance contract with the police and then, ignoring an offical sign by the police and defying orders. So as time goes by, people forget the message, and then Allah sends another messenger to strengthen the message with a living example like Moses, Jesus or Muhammad SAWS. As for those people who may have not received prophets, they will be only judged by the initial Fitra Code commitment they have agreed to, and their local warner( who is just an enlightened person who found the truth. ) who does not have to be a prophet will be the witness over them. Nur

Geel Jire bro. May be Biixi has a different vision of an Islamic State, he may not like the Ethiopians too, just may be, he finds faults with how they went about establishing an Islamic State in Somalia, so give him the benefit of the doubt as a Muslim who knows that everyone will be reaised in the day of Judgement with his allies and protectors. Nur

Why do we hate them? By Gilad Atzmon 07/04/07 "ICH" -- --- When I came over to Britain some thirteen years ago, I found a very tolerant place. I was amazed to see so many people of so many colours, not just living together in peace, but living in full harmony. At Essex University, the institute where I was doing my postgraduate studies, everyone was enthusiastic about post-colonialism. The Brits, so it seemed to me at the time, were repenting over their embarrassing colonial past. I was mildly impressed but not totally overwhelmed. At the end of the day, it isn’t that difficult to denounce your grandfather’s crimes. I was amazed to see Turks and Cypriots running grocery shops side by side in Green Lane. My first roommate was a Palestinian M.A. student from Beit Sahour, it all felt natural. It didn’t take long before I fell in love with the town and decided to make it into my permanent home. At the time, Britain was very different from the place I came from. In my homeland the human landscape was officially reduced into two types. In a manner of crude binary opposition there was always a clear division between the ‘Good’ and the ‘Bad’, the ‘us’ and the ‘them’, the ‘West’ and the ‘East’ or just the ‘Jews’ and the ‘Arabs’. In the place I came from, peace couldn’t even be seen on the horizon. But in the London of the 1990s, there was no such dichotomy. Painfully enough, this has changed. On a daily basis our media outlets repeat the idiotic question: “Why do they hate us so much?” By now it is rather clear, the binary opposition between ‘us’ and ‘them’ has made it into an integral part of the British discourse as well. When I moved over in the early 1990s, British politics was very boring. John Major was in power. But then, not before long, a young, dynamic, visionary politician removed him from office. This politician is a man who has managed in just ten years to demolish one of the most harmonious societies in the West. Tony Blair, the great new Labour promise, had been running the country for a decade; he managed to drag this country into every possible conflict, and to escalate minor conflict to crisis levels. He has managed to lie repeatedly to his people, his parliament and his cabinet, he has launched an illegal war that cost over 700,000 innocent civilian lives. He obviously failed to see the impact those wars may have on his multi-ethnic society at home. Blair has just left the PM office, thank God for that, however, this country is now on the brink of moral collapse. Its civil rights system is under severe threat. Politicians of all parties are calling for tougher detention laws. The possibility of mass deportation of new immigrants doesn’t look like a remote nightmare. Yet, most worrying is the role of the ‘free’ media in this country. The leading papers and TV are succumbing quite willingly to the official Government line of thinking. It’s something that reminds me too much of the recruited media in my doomed homeland, the place I left thirteen years ago. I find myself wondering, how dare the media ask ‘why do they hate us?’ Don’t they know the answer? Don’t we know the answer? Weren’t we the ones who demolished Iraq? Wasn’t it our PM, Tony Blair, who gave a green light to the Israelis to flatten Lebanon? Wasn’t it Tony Blair’s government who dismissed the democratically elected Hamas in Palestine? Wasn’t it Blair who allowed the Israelis to starve Gaza? For those who still fail to realise, to kill is rather simple, to turn towns into piles of rubble isn’t that complicated either. Yet, to raise a child may take a few years, to build a city takes hundreds of years and to establish harmony between human beings takes thousand of years. We should stop lying to others and to ourselves. We know perfectly well why they hate us, they have some good reasons, as things stand momentarily, we are the ones who are killing them en mass. It is us who demolish their towns and kill their kids. Thus, rather than raising the pathetic question, ‘why do they hate us?’ we’d better evade our self-righteous mode, and ask ourselves, ‘why do we hate them so much?’ or even, ‘why do we hate so much?’ in general. To bring peace to London, Glasgow, Britain and the West is to look in the mirror, to look into our severe and devastating wrongdoings, to repair the damage made by Blair, Bush and company, to revise the dream of ecumenical Western society. It is possible. It is within our capacity. We have been just there not that long ago. I remember it very well, it was only thirteen years ago, I felt it when I landed in Britain. Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel in 1963 and had his musical training at the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem (Composition and Jazz) A multi-instrumentalist he plays Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Baritone Saxes, Clarinet, Sol, Zurna and Flutes. Also a prolific and often controversial writer, Atzmon's essays are widely published his novel 'Guide to the perplexed' and 'My One And Only Love' have been translated into 24 languages all together. Visit his website <a href="http://www.gilad.co.uk/'>http://"http://www.gilad.co.uk/"">http://www.gilad.co.uk/[/i]

Biixi bro. Could you please tell us where they have violated Islamic Principles? and then tell us your vision of an Islamic State that you will support? Nur

Khalaf bro. On Qader, below is a response to a Nomad, not perfect, but clarifies some points; Warsan sis Calaf is Somali analogue for Qadar in Arabic, it is one of the six pillars of iman, it comes in two flavors, Good and Bad. If you take an internet Class with Proffessor Nur on Somalionline Open University, and pose this question to the Prof. He will explain as follows: Miss Warsan, I have taught this class for five years, and explained many concepts to the best of my abilities, I have simplified complex concepts to make it a child play, but still a handful of my online students fail this class, not because i made them fail, but i can tell you who among my students is more likely to fail this course, and because its only five years, my prediction may not be that accurate, but its good enough for government work. Now let us stretch this logic a lil further, say, you come back to this site as a grandmother some thrity years, and Prof Nur is still on Somaliaonline Islam boards, with residual experience of 35 years on likelyhood of Nomads passing the grade at the SOL Open Uni. If you ask me again the same question, the Profs chances of accuracy increase. Now, Allah SWT creates his creatures with a constant mix of intellectual, physiscal, spiritual capabilities, and against these capabilities he expects them to perform and deliver duties that are within their sphere of influence. ( Laa yukallifu Allahu nafsan illa wuscahaa) ( Allah does not demand from any soul to deliver more than its capacity) Like the students analogy, Allah knows beforehand our choices and paths that we will take, and thus he records it in the Book of Qader, as the Book of Qadar is in a different domain of time-space than ours, the present, past and future in that book are contiuum with no breaks. ( The Quraan is a good example of a text treating the future as if happening now) So Qadar in other words is Allahs knowledge of our choices. Allah also interferes at times, we call them Miracles. Allah does not on one hand make you responsible for your actions, and on the force you to do something, it beats the purpose of creation which is to test people of their response level for Allahs unrivalled surrender. From Allah point of view, the FUTURE has already happened, its analogous to a movie that you have already seen, you pretty much know what is going to happen next, but that does mean that you have forced the events and actors. A similar topic was posted on these threads a while back, a question by an athiest , I have also responded to that question, an excerpt below follows: The analogy here is about a human teacher who does not know what the future holds for his students, but from data of past twenty years he formed a knowledge base on which ha can base a prediction that holds water. The key to the answer is therefore CHOICE, Allah gave us intellect to either obey or disobey, and he gave us the freedom of choice, and its utter justice that those who abide by rules are rewarded with goodness and those who commit crimes to be punished. However Allah's prior knowledge of our choices should not be reason for Allah to take away our valued freedom to choose to make our own decisions. What the Atheist is suggesting is contradictory to his own desire for personal CHOICE of not following Allah's way, if Allah took that right away from him, he will be like a rock pepple on the beach, but we know that man has a purpose on earth and mission, which the Athiest fails to understand and hence his confusion. If we followed his warped logic, We would have all been Muslims, however many verses in Quraan clarify this fact. The Polytheists during Prophet Muhammad SAWS have used the same argument " Wa law shaa'a Allahu ma cabadnaahum" ( If Allah so willed, we would not have worshipped them (idols) ), here mankind is trying to transfer blame to Allah and insist on doing evil on earth as HIS CHOICE, then complain why Allah did not take that freedom away from him in the first place. This is mockery of reason, as he asking in other words, why did Allah gave me a mind? and a Choice? I would have been better off without them. Now, that is the exact wish of evil doers who end up in hell, the Quraan reccounts the unbeliever's future wish when they end up in hell, they say: " Leytanii kuntu turaabaa" meaning, " I wish I was sand" The question that bounces back at the Athiest is this: Do you want to be a human gifted and honored with intellect hence accountable to her/his actions? or do you want to be an animal or a rock pepple unaccountable for its action? Nur

The Dirty Word THERE NEVER was a darker Middle East summit meeting. The darkest there can be. By Uri Avnery 07/02/07 "ICH" -- -- -The four leaders at Sharm al-Sheik did not sit together at an intimate round table. Each one sat alone behind a huge table of his own. That ensured a striking separation between them. The four long tables hardly touched. Each one of the leaders, with his assistants behind him, sat like a solitary island in a vast sea. All four - Hosni Mubarak, King Abdallah of Jordan, Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas - bore a severe countenance. Throughout the official part of the conference, not a single smile could be seen. One after the other, the four delivered their monologues. An exercise in shallow hypocrisy, in empty deceit. Not one of the four raised himself above the murky puddle of sanctimonious phrases. A short monologue from Mubarak. A short monologue from Abdallah. A medium-length monologue from Abbas. An interminably long monologue from Olmert - a typical Israeli speech, overbearing, educating the whole world, sermonizing and dripping with morality. Held, of course, in Hebrew, with the obvious aim of appealing to the home public. The speech included all the required phrases - Our soul longs for peace, The vision of two states, We do not want to rule over another people, For the good of coming generations, bla-bla-bla. All in standard colonial style: Olmert even talked about "Judea and Samaria", using the official terminology of the occupation. But in order to "strengthen" Abbas, Olmert addressed him as "President" and not as "Chairman", which has been the de rigueur title used by all Israeli representatives since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. (The wise men of Oslo circumvented this difficulty by referring -in all three languages - to the head of the Authority by the Arab title of Ra'is, which can mean both president and chairman. And the word that did not appear throughout this long monologue? "Occupation". OCCUPATION? What occupation? Where occupation? Anybody seen any occupation? The occupation was not on the agenda of this dark summit. Even in their wildest dreams, the Arab participants could not imagine anything more wonderful than "easing the restrictions". Making life a little bit less difficult for the suffering population. Giving back the Palestinian tax revenues. (That is to say, Israel may give back some of the money it has pocketed.) Moving some of the roadblocks that prevent people from going from one village to the next. (That has already been promised many times and will not happen this time either, because the army and the Shin Bet object. Olmert has already announced that it is impossible for "security reasons".) With the air of a Sultan throwing coins to the paupers in the street, Olmert announced his intention of releasing some Fatah prisoners. 250 coins, 250 prisoners. That was the "generous gift" that was to make the Palestinians jump for joy, "strengthen" Abbas and awaken to new life the dry bones of his organization. If Olmert had not been sitting so far away from Abbas, he could just as well have spat in his face. First at all, the number is ridiculous. There are now about 10,000 (ten thousand) Palestinian "security" prisoners in Israeli prisons. Every night, about a dozen more are being taken from their homes. Since there is no more room in the prison facilities, the wardens will be pleased to get rid of some inmates. In previous gestures of this nature, the Israeli government has set free prisoners whose term was nearing the end anyhow, and car thieves. Second, fraternization between Fatah and Hamas is well established in prison. The violent struggle in Gaza has not been projected into the prisons. The famous "prisoners' document", which laid the foundation for the (now defunct) Unity Government, was worked out jointly by Fatah and Hamas prisoners. Olmert's announcement of his readiness to release Fatah - and only Fatah - prisoners is designed to sabotage this unity. It could stigmatize the Fatah people as collaborators, and Abbas as a leader who is concerned only with the members of his own organization, not giving a damn for the others. SO WHAT did come out of this summit conference? Some say: zero plus, some say: zero minus. No wonder that the Arab participants looked so somber. What was it good for? Abbas was in need of strengthening after losing the Gaza Strip. Olmert promised the Americans to strengthen him. But after the conference, Olmert could have used the phrase customarily uttered by Israeli leaders visiting bereaved families: "I came to strengthen, but it is I who have been strengthened." The sole winner was Olmert. The conference has proved that Mubarak's and Abdallah's influence on Israel is nil, and that Abbas' position is even worse. To eliminate any doubt about this, Olmert sent the army at once into the kasbah of Nablus, the heart of Abbas' virtual kingdom, in order to "arrest" the leaders of the military arm of Fatah. They put up determined resistance, wounding several soldiers. A lieutenant lost a hand and a leg. In another incursion, this time into Gaza, 13 Palestinians were killed, including a boy of 9. According to the official version, the aim was to throw the militants off balance so that they would feel hunted. If this is not occupation, what is it? But God forbid that anyone mention this word in diplomatic discourse - the ten letters that have turned into an obscenity. A ten-letter word that has become taboo in polite society. THE DISAPPEARANCE of the occupation as a subject for discussion is the real message of the conference. All the arrangements and ceremonies were designed to create the false impression that Olmert and Abbas were the heads of two states conducting negotiations on the basis of equality - rather than the leader of an occupying power and a representative of the occupied population. That is true for all the discourse about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at this stage: the world has become so used to the occupation that its very existence has ceased to be a subject for discussion. That is also evident in the daily reporting on the conflict in the Israeli and foreign media. They report on what's happening - the Gaza take-over by Hamas, the actions of the Israeli army, the problems of Abbas, the decisions of the Israeli government - without the context of the occupation. As if the occupation, with all its killing, destroying, depriving and dispossessing, were a natural phenomenon like the light of the sun during the day or the twinkling of the stars at night. There are many subjects that are being discussed, such as: whether to ease the situation of the Palestinians or to increase their misery, whether to allow Abbas' policemen to move freely with their weapons in the West Bank towns to try and eliminate the militias that fight against Israel, whether to enlarge the settlements or not. But all these discussions are based on the unquestioned assumption that the occupation is there forever. All the talk about "strengthening" is conducted in this context: Abbas and his people are supposed to function as an administration under occupation. According to Olmert's and Bush's perception, their job is to fulfill the orders of the occupation, in return for their own money and perhaps some small arms. Incidentally, that is very similar to the "autonomy" promised by Menachem Begin to the "Arab inhabitants of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District". Olmert is quite ready to talk about the "Two-State Solution" - much talk, with a lot of bloated words and pathos - while doing everything possible in practice to prevent this "vision" from being realized before the coming of the Messiah. INTO THIS reality Tony Blair is now stepping. He is being sent by the Quartet - something that does not really exist, a diplomatic fiction of four that are one. Europe does not exist as far as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is concerned, except as a financial instrument of the White House. When the President of the USA wants it, Europe sends alms to the Palestinians (and arms to Israel). When the President of the USA wants to starve the Palestinians, Europe imposes a blockade on them. The UN has long ago become an instrument of the US Department of State, especially in the Middle East. When the American drill sergeant shouts, the UN jumps to attention or stands at ease. Russia dreams of regaining the status of a Great Power. As in the days of the Czars and Stalin, it thinks in terms of "spheres of influence". The Middle East is an American sphere of influence. Therefore, Russia will not interfere, except by mouthing high-sounding phrases. The Quartet is simply an American front organization. And Tony Blair is sent to Palestine as a special envoy of President Bush. The master sends his poodle. What for? If Bush really wanted to realize his "Vision" of two states, he wouldn't need Blair. He could do it all alone in a matter of weeks. Even poor Condoleezza could do it, instead of babbling about preparing final-status plans and pigeon holing them, if only she were backed by the determined will of the President. So what is Blair's appointment for? Is it only to give some status to a redundant international star? To give a consolation prize to somebody who loyally lied and cheated for Bush before and during the Iraq war? Yes, of course. But his main task is to draw out developments and gain time, to postpone everything, to foster make-belief activity, to provide the Palestinians and the world media with an illusion of progress. Blair will come, meet, make declarations, ooze charm from every pore, generate headlines, fly, come back, make more announcements, meet again with kings, presidents and prime ministers. A long tail of news-thirsty journalists will follow him everywhere, generate media noise, write, tape and take pictures, as if he were a male Paris Hilton. Meanwhile Palestinians and Israelis will keep dying, the wall will be finished, more land will be expropriated, settlements will be enlarged, targeted "terrorists" will be killed, the blockade on Gaza will be tightened, and all the hundred and one daily activities of the occupation will go on, the occupation that dares not speak its name. The declared task of Blair, too, is to "strengthen Abbas". Woe to the task. Woe to Blair. Woe in particular to Abbas. Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal

Kheir bro writes: " I was thinking about Literary theory and the thought of school cirriculms came to me. In islamic schools of late, a western approach to Education has been adopted i.e. Testing, report cards etc. But if in Islam, the aim is to be SLAVE OF GOD, then shouldn't ISLAMIC EDUCATION be measured upon that, upon CULTIVATING TAQWA. Why the need to QUANTIFY things, when you are trying to do something QUALITIVELY-an Islamic Personality (a good muslim boy/girl)? I'm not advocating for being impractical, or becoming too idealistic, but rather for using a different SET OF MEASUREMENTS when scoring how an ISLAMIC EDUCATION succeeds and I don't think report cards, tests etc. do that. Does anyone catch my drift?" I do bro! The purpose of education in Islam is to raise a Muslim person with a Muslim personality, Character and behaviour. However, after a long sleep, we wake up to our schools over taken by UNESCO, a secular organization that is mandated to shape a unified mind of secularists. Students are prepared for the work force without ethical content in the curriculum ( Ethics are left for the family TV). So, what do we get after 12 years? Mercenaries! humans devoid of connection with their maker, manipulated by money and glory. So you are right on the money for noting that present education system is producing split personalities that is difficult to separate aka ( Nifaaq). Nur

Nomads Its summer time, many of you may be away from work or school, places like Kurtunwaarrey, or jalalqsi, sipping on fresh camel milk, but other may be at corner coffe shops in western countries arguing with wadaad-turned - agnostics, which can confuse you, further, so who are you gonna turn to in these circumstances? eNuri Opticians is the right place to call! Please bring all your confusions to this thread and page, will be glad to help, with Allah's inspiration. Nur

Baashi walaal Below is a Somali language piece I wrote few years ago answering your question. Macaanka iimaanka Walaal Haddaad mar hore dhadhamisay macaanka iimaanka, laakin aad waayahan dareemi la'dayhay, ogow inaad ka tagtay wax wanaagsan ood sameyn jirtay, oo ku dhadhansiiyey macaanka iimaankaas. Qoraalkan waxaan ugu tala galay sidii marlabaad aad usoo ceshan leheyd macaanka imaanka eed soo dhadhamisay. Maanta waxaan halkan is xasuusineynaa sidii aan ku hanan laheyn macaanka iimaanka haddaan marlabaad ku guuleysanno inaan dhadhamino, iyo sidaan ku xaqiijin laheyn macaankaas. Dadka bartay cabbidda khamriga, ama daroogada oo dhadhansada , wexey ku dadaalaan sidey mar walba dareenkaas u heli lahaayeen, wexeyna u huraan wax walba si ay dareenkaas u gaadhaan ayagoo og inuu u jar ka tuurayo, ama inuu halaagayo. Waxaa kaloo la soo wariyey in Bilaal Ibnu Rabaax, Mu'addinka Rasuulka SAWS la wareystay sababta uu ugu adkeystay oo uu ugu sabray iimaankiisa cadaabta lagu caddibay bacaadka Makka ee kulul, wuxuu ku jawaabay: " Waxaan isku daray xanuunka cadaabta iyo macaanka iimaanka, waxaa soo dul martay macaanka iimaanka" taasoo macnaheedu yahay, in macaanka iimaanka haduu qofku dhab ahaan u dhadhamiyo, inuu wax walba siisanayo, maxaa yeelay Allah ayaa ka iibsaday muminiinta naftooda iyo maalkooda oo ka iibiyay Janno. Hadaba, qofkii ay u dhabowdo macaanka iimaank, wuxuu helay jannadii adduunka sidii uu yidhii Sheikh Ibnu Taymia markii lagu xidhay xabbiskii Qalcada " Haddii la i xidho, waan khalweyn, xasuusta Allah iyo cibaadadiisa ayaan waqti u heli, haddiii la dhoofiyo, waan jihaadi, haddii la i dilo, waa shahhidnimo, Jannadeydu wexey iigu taallaa laabteyda, cadowgeygu maxey igu fali?" Mar uu Rasuulku SAWS wareystay nin saxaabi ah " Maxaad ku barisay?" ninkii saxaabiga ahaa wuxuu ku jawaabay " waxaan ku ku bariistay muumin-nimo", markaasuu Rasuulku SAWS yidhi, maxaa muujinaya iimaankaaga?" ninkii saxaabiga ahaa wuxuu yidhi " waxaa ii muuqda reer jannaadkii oo isa soo salaamaya, waxaa ii muuqda ahlu naarkii oo is eedaya" rasuulkii Allah SAWS wuxuu markaa ku yidhi ninkii, " Waad haleeshayee, ee ku mitid" rasuulku wuxuu kaloo tilmaamay iimaanka " wax qalbiga ku jira oo uu dhabeeyo waxa la sameeyo" Hadaba waxaad is warsaneysaa, sidee baan iimaan ku helnaa, dabadeedna u hanannaa? Jawaabtu wexey ku xidhan tahay hadba qiimaha uu kula leeyahay iimaanka, taasoo keensaneysa howshaad ku gaadhi leheyd iimaankaas. Waxaa lagu hantaa iimaanka: 1. Sabirka : Allah SWT wuxuu yidhi " Kuwa sabraa, waxaa la siiyaa ajarkooga xisaab la'aan" 2. Ixtisaab: oo macnehhedu yahay in waxaad sameysneyso OO DHAN aad ku raadineyso wajiga Allah oo qudha 3, Ducada: Taasoo ah qallbiga cibaadada 4. Soonka Sunnada ah; ( Khamis, iyo isniin, iyo maalmaha caddaha ah, lixda shawaal, carafa, caashuuraa) 5. Quraankoo la khatimo bil walba hal jeer ( salaad walaboo la akhriyo afar bog) 6. Salaadaha oo loo dhakso loogu dhaksado ( Tabkiir bacdal aadaan oo kaa saaraya munaafiqiinta) 7. Ilaalinta sunnooyinka Rawaatibta ah. ( guri janno ayaa laguugu dhisaa) 8. Ku dadaalidda labada rakcdood ee Salaadda barqaha ( duxaa, taasoo xubnahaaga ka bixineysa sadaqada) 9. Ku dadaal maalinkii oo dhan inaad ku sugnaatid weysoqab, ( caajiska iyo sheitaanka ayey kaa fogeysaa) 10. Ku dadaaal labada rakcadood oo sunnada ah aadaanka dabadiis 11. Ku dadaalidda adkaarta subaxa iyo kuwa fiidka ( Faaiido cajiib badan ayaan ka dhaxlay) 12. Labo rakcadood oo intaadan seexanin aad tukato ayadood u niyeyesato Qiyaamulleil 13. Akhrinta Quraanka iyo ku cibro qaadashada sheekooyinkiisa 14. Sunnada habeenkii ee Shafciga iyo watriga 15. Habeenkii intaadan seexan ood is xisaabisid ( maxaan maanta korosaday, maxaan khasaaray, maxaa iga dhiman?) 16. Dambi dhaaf ood Allah ka bariso si joogto ah. 17. Ku fakaridda uunka Allah iyo yaabkiisa ( abuurka cirka iyo cajaaibta dhulka) 18. Qalbiga oo laga meydho ( dhaqo) cudurrada ( xasadka, dakanaha iwm) 19. Dadkood ugu yeedho waxaad aaminsantahay ( Taasoo iimaanka si weyn u kordhisa) 20. Macsida Allah oo laga tago ( macsidu wexey nusqaamisaa iimaanka) 21. Waalidka oo baarri loo noqdo. 22. Qaraabada soke ( rixinka) oo la xidhiidhiyo ( loo kaalmeeyo, lagana warhayo) Nur

Putin’s War-whoop: The impending clash with Russia By Mike Whitney 06/21/07 "ICH" -- --- “What is a ‘unipolar’ world? It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign--- one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within. It has nothing in common with democracy, which is the power of the majority in respect to the interests and opinions of the minority. In Russia , we are constantly being lectured about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address to the Munich Conference on Security Policy 2-10-07 The deployment of the US Missile Defense System in Eastern Europe is a de-facto declaration of war on the Russian Federation . As Russian President Putin said in a recent press conference, “If this missile system is put in place, it will work automatically with the entire nuclear capability of the United States . It will be an integral part of the US nuclear capability.” This will disrupt the current configuration of international security and force Russia to begin work on a new regime of tactical nuclear weapons. This is a very serious development. Russia will now have to rethink its current policy vis a vis the United States and develop a long-range strategy for fending off further hostile encroachments into former-Soviet states by NATO. Welcome to the new Cold War. Putin cannot ignore the gravity of the proposed system or the threat it poses to Russia ’s national security. Bush’s Missile Defense is not defensive at all, but offensive. It thrusts US military bases--with nuclear infrastructure and radar--up to Russia ’s doorstep giving the US a clear advantage in “first-strike” capability. That means that Washington will be able to intimidate Russia on issues that are of critical international importance. Putin cannot allow this. He must force Bush to remove this dagger held to Moscow ’s throat. Bush’s Pyrrhic Victory at the G-8 The central issues on the docket at the G-8 meetings were downplayed in the media. The press primarily focused its attention on the “anticipated” conflict between Bush and Putin. But, the brouhaha never materialized; both were respectful and gracious. President Bush, however, was adamant that his plan for missile defense in Czechoslovakia and Poland would go ahead according to schedule. Putin, for the most part remained politely silent. His objections were censored in the media. But less than 10 hours after the closing ceremonies of the G-8, Putin fired off the first salvo in what will certainly be remembered as “the war that brought down the Empire”. Putin addressed 200 corporate leaders at the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg and his comments left little doubt that he had already settled on a plan for countering Bush’s missile shield in the Czech Republic . Putin’s speech articulated his vision of a “Moscow-centered” new world order which would create a ``new balance of power''--less dependent on Washington . He said, ``The new architecture of economic relations requires a completely new approach. Russia intends to become an alternative global financial center and to make the ruble a reserve currency for central banks.” “The world is changing before our eyes.'' Countries that yesterday seemed hopelessly behind are today the fastest growing economies of the world. Institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the IMF are ``archaic, undemocratic and inflexible''. They don’t `` reflect the new balance of power.'' Putin's speech is defiant rejection of the present system. We can be sure that it has not passed unnoticed by anxious mandarins in the US political establishment. Russia is announcing the beginning of an asymmetrical war; designed to cripple the United States economically, weaken the institutions which have traditionally enhanced its wealth, and precipitate a shift of global power away from Washington . Putin’s challenge to the US dollar is particularly worrisome. He emphasizes the inherent unfairness of the current system, which relies almost entirely on the dollar and which has an extremely negative effect on many smaller countries’ economies and financial reserves. "There can be only one answer to this challenge,” he said. “The creation of several world currencies and several financial centers.” Putin’s remarks are a direct attack on the dollar and its position as the de facto international currency. He imagines a world where goods and resources are traded in rubles or “baskets of currencies”--not just greenbacks. This would create greater parity between the countries and, hence, a more even distribution of power. Putin's vision is a clear threat to America ’s ongoing economic dominance. Already, in the last few months, Norway , Iran , Syria , UAE, Kuwait , and Venezuela have announced that they are either cutting back on their USD reserves or converting from the greenback to the euro or a “basket of currencies”. Dollar hegemony is at the very center of American power, and yet, the downturn is visible everywhere. If the dollar loses its place as the world’s “reserve currency”; the US will have to pay-down its monstrous current account deficit and live within its means. America will lose the ability to simply print fiat money and use it in exchange for valuable resources and manufactured goods. Putin is now openly challenging the monetary-system that provides the flow of oxygen to the American superpower. Can he carry it off? What kind of damage can Russia really inflict on the dollar or on the many lofty-sounding organizations (WTO, World Bank, IMF, NATO and Federal Reserve) which prop up the US Empire? Russia ’s power is mushrooming. Its GDP is leaping ahead at 8% per annum and by 2020 Russia will be among the five biggest economies in the world. It now has the third largest Forex reserves in the world and it is gradually moving away from the anemic dollar to euros and rubles. Nearly 10% of its wealth is currently in gold. Russia has also overtaken Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading supplier of petroleum. It produces 13% of the world’s daily output and has the world’s largest reserves of natural gas. In fact, Putin has worked energetically to create the world’s first Natural Gas cartel—an alliance between Russia , Qatar , Iran and Algeria . The group could potentially control 40% of the world’s remaining natural gas and set prices as it sees fit. Putin’s ambitions are not limited to the energy sector either---although he has strengthened the country by turning away foreign investment and “re-nationalization” vital resources. As Pavel Korduban says in his recent article “Putin Harvests Political Dividends from Russian Economic Dynamism”; Putin intends to expand beyond energy and focus on technological modernization: “The shift in official discourse to “innovations” reflects an attempt to reorient economic policy from the goal of consolidating the status of “energy superpower” to the emphasis on industrial modernization and catching up with the technological revolution. The key role in formulating this new policy is given to Sergei Ivanov, who promised that by the year 2020 Russia would gain leadership (measured as 10% of the world market) in such high-technology sectors as nuclear energy, shipbuilding, aircraft, satellites and delivery systems, and computer software.” Putin has also strengthened ties with his Central Asian neighbors and engaged in “cooperative” military maneuvers with China . “Last month it signed deals with Turkmenistan , Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to revive the Soviet-era united system of gas pipelines, which will help Russia strengthen its role of the monopoly supplier from the region”. (Reuters) He has transformed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) into a formidable economic-military alliance capable of resisting foreign intervention in Central Asia by the United States and NATO. The CIS is bound to play a major role in regional issues as the real motives behind the “war on terror” are exposed and America's geopolitical objectives in Central Asia become clearer. So far, Washington has established its military bases and outposts throughout the region with impunity. But the mood is darkening in Moscow and Beijing and there may be changes in the future. We should also remember that Putin is surrounded by ex-KGB agents and Soviet-era hardliners. They’ve never trusted America's motives and now they can point to the new US bases, the “colored-coded” revolutions, the broken treaties and the projected missile defense system--to prove that Uncle Sam is “up to no good”. Putin sees himself as leading a global insurgency against the US Empire. He represents the emerging-market economies of China , India and Brazil . These 4 nations will progressively overtake the “old order”. Last year 60% of the world's output was produced outside the G-7 countries. According to Goldman Sachs, by 2050 Brazil , Russia , India and China will be the world's leading economies. The transition from “superpower rule” is already underway. The centers of geopolitical power are shifting like giant tectonic plates. The trend is irreversible. The deployment of Bush’s missile defense system will only hasten the decline of the “unipolar-model” by triggering an asymmetrical war, where Forex reserves, vital resources and political maneuvering will be used as the weapons-of-choice. War with Russia is pointless and preventable. There are better choices than confrontation.

Kheir bro. This thread was to discuss issues from an intellectual point of view, not to judge, personally I have my own judgements on every issue being discussed, but like a panel of Medical Doctors discussing the origin of deseases, we should be momentarily be removed from the issues, otherwise it will not be objective discussion, a problem is not solved at the level it was created. Now, in my past Aqeedah posts, I have discussed the connection of Niyah, and actions and Nifaaq, in the old thread titled " Am I Munafiq" The issue in this thread is about the application of the hadeeth of the Prophet SAWS when two Muslims, with mutual intention to kill each other. We must not complicate it with other aqeedah issues such as Walaa dn baraa at this stage, because it will change the entire discussion about the hadeeth. We are only talking about a simple issue of two muslims trying to kill each other. Now if you want to add another dimension of one of them being a soldier for the Satan, then, clearly that is not what the hadeeth is talking about. What we need to structure are four things; 1.Driver of an action (Niyah ) 2. Rights ( Al Xuquuq) 3. Venues to settlement ( Taxaakum) 4. Knowledge of the impact of an action ( ie Crime) ( Al Cudr Bil Jahl) The question is how can those above factors affect the ligitimacy of the two Muslims figting each other? Nur

Jazakallahu Kheiran Xiin bro. Indeed, like you have concluded, there is a point of return at every step of the haram highway, the last point of no return is when the soul is claimed back by its maker. The Ailment and the Medicine masterpiece of Ibnul Qayim, like all of his soul quenching books is a great read in any language for healing the ailments of the soul. Lilly sis. InshAllah I will dedicate another thread to the sisters plight in the summer scorching heat, the sequel to this topic targeted at our sisters will be titled " Fire Resistant Clothing, The Taqwa Fashion Line" coming soon to a monitor near you! Nur

Northern brother The rights of a person or a people exists withe their existence, its given by Allah the sovreign who gave them life and faith. There is no such thing such as a NON Existent right. Now, in the case when two " Muslims" fight each other, and each one thinks he has the right, then the case will be settled in the day of judgement by Allah's court. Allah knows the NIYAH, so like Qabil and Habil ( Cain and Abel), he will judge accordingly. Nur

Northerner bro. Its not that simple, not a black and white. Here are possibilities. 1. A person who has a right, but going about it the right way. 2. Person who has a right, going about it the wrong way. 3. Person who has NO right going about it the right way. 4. Person who has NO right, going about it the wrong way Rights in Islam are covered in the Fiqh and Aqeedah. Methods to get ones right back are also governed by the islamic Fiqh based on Usuulul Fiqh and Aqeedah. There is another dimension to the equations above. Knowledge and Ignorance, adding this dimension to the matrix above will become nine possibilities. Now, can ignorance of the aqeedah priciples that guide a person for taking the right or wrong actions, become an excuse? Well, the Scholars agree that ignorance of aqeedah principles are not an excuse, specially if the knowledge is available and in circulation. The only excuse of ignorance of aqeedah issues that guide actions is when the person has no access for that knowledge, but is in agreement of the basic tawheed tenets that Sovreignty is for Allah alone with full understanding of its meaning and confirming his acceptance of its terms. Now, based on the above, you tell us what is their judgement! Nur

Exposed : Abu Ghraib - Sodomy And Humiliation Seymour Hersh Reveals Rumsfeld Misled Congress over Abu Ghraib. How Gen. Taguba says the military has unpublished photographs and videos that show the abuse and torture was even worse than previously disclosed. That includes video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee, and information of the sexual humiliation of a father and his son TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: New details have emerged in the Abu Ghraib scandal and with them new questions that reach right to the top. In his first interview since leading the Pentagon's investigation into Abu Ghraib, Major General Antonio Taguba has revealed he disclosed key findings and photographs of the abuses as early as January 2004. That’s months before Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush say they first learned of what went on at the Iraqi prison. Taguba also says he was forced to retire because his report was too critical of the US military. He says the military has unpublished photographs and videos that show the abuse and torture was even worse than previously disclosed. That includes video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female prisoner and information of the sexual humiliation of a father and his son. Taguba says he was blocked from investigating who ordered the torture at Abu Ghraib. In May 2004, he indicated where that may have led him, when he was questioned by Senator John Warner of Virginia and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan. SEN. JOHN WARNER: Within simple words, your own soldier’s language, how did this happen? MAJ. GEN. ANTONIO TAGUBA: Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down; lack of discipline; no training whatsoever; and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant. Those are my comments. AMY GOODMAN: That was General Taguba being questioned by Senators Warner and Levin in May of 2004. The new details of General Taguba’s story were revealed by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in this week’s issue of the New Yorker magazine. Hersh first exposed the Abu Ghraib scandal three years ago. His latest article is called "The General's Report: How Antonio Taguba, Who Investigated the Abu Ghraib Scandal, Became One of its Casualties." Seymour Hersh joins us now from Washington, D.C. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Sy. SEYMOUR HERSH: Hello. AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. First of all, how did you end up speaking to General Taguba? Hasn’t spoken, since he left, publicly. SEYMOUR HERSH: Oh, just the way that reporters do things. I had been making a lot of speeches across the country in which I was very praiseful of his report. Amy, you should understand there’s been, what, about officially a dozen reports made about Abu Ghraib. And his report, the first one, which perhaps was never meant to be public, as the others were, was spectacular. I’ve read a lot of reports in my life, and all of a sudden I’m reading a report by a general who’s actually criticizing his peers, his fellow two-star generals -- he was a major general, Taguba -- and in which he’s talking about systematic abuse, in which he’s clearly indicating that this was way beyond just a few MPs. He’s not saying it, per se, but the language of his -- the tone of his report -- and, of course, part of my thought was that he had been born in the Philippines, and getting from being a second lieutenant out of ROTC in Idaho, where he came from -- he and his family moved to Idaho, became a citizen, I think, when he was about twelve or thirteen -- making it from there to two-star is -- this is a remarkable guy. And at some speech, I ran into somebody who went to school with him, who apparently forwarded some of my comments. And I think Taguba was always interested in how I got his report. If you remember, in the New Yorker we published his report before it was made available and before it was declassified -- and Rumsfeld, by the way, has said to Congress, even before he got to see it, or he chose to see it. And so, at some point, we just started talking, more than a year ago. And he’s not interested in publicity. He’s getting inundated with calls, and, as far as I know, he hasn’t agreed to talk to anybody, and he’s not going to write a book, and he’s not looking to be famous. He’s just a tough guy. And I thought the most revelatory line about him was -- he was five-foot-six when he joined the Army and weighed 120 pounds. And he said to me one morning -- I would see him sometimes just for coffee, sometimes for lunch, sometimes just to talk -- well, months ago, years ago, a year ago, he said to me one day, without any bitterness, he said, “Let me tell you about discrimination. I was told as a young officer I had to repeat everything twice, because I couldn’t speak English well enough. I got three master’s degrees, and I paid for them myself, because the Army thought I was too dumb to finance me.” And he said, “It was rough, but I worked hard and I made it. And that’s what I always thought you had to do.” And so, when he got the assignment by sheer circumstance -- it was just he happened to be in a headquarters in the war zone in Kuwait when they needed a two-star general -- there were only two -- and as the Army goes, somebody saw him first and said, “You’ve got it.” There was nothing more than that. It was absolutely by chance. He just thought, “I’m going to do the job the way I’ve done everything.” And it turned out that cost him his career. AMY GOODMAN: You begin your piece by talking about that meeting on May 6, 2004, that General Taguba has when he’s summoned before Donald Rumsfeld, then the Secretary of Defense. Describe it. SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, actually, he had never been in Rummy’s office -- Rumsfeld’s office before. He had been in the outer office, but never has seen the Secretary of Defense. And he’s suddenly called, because on the next day -- this is about ten days after the stories that I did, and CBS, if you remember, also published, printed, aired photographs, some of the photographs, so there was a whirlwind of attention. This was a huge international issue and not very good for the United States. So Rumsfeld was supposed to testify on the 7th before two committees, the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed Services Committee, so they summoned in Taguba. And as he gets there, Rumsfeld's military aide, a general named Craddock, who, like everybody around Rumsfeld, everybody who participated in this, has been promoted, where those on the other side have not been -- in any case, Craddock -- his daughter had babysat for Taguba when they served together in an Army station in Georgia years earlier -- certainly very friendly -- and this time when Antonio, Tony, walked into the meeting, Craddock was very cold. “Wait here,” he said. Then they finally ushered him into the big room. And there’s the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld; there’s Wolfowitz, Paul Wolfowitz, then his deputy; there’s the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Myers; General Pace, then the deputy chairman; there’s a bunch of other senior generals. The whole major league cast was there. And as Taguba walks in, Rumsfeld, who’s never met him, says in a word very ripe with mockery, he said -- his phrasing was, that is -- he said, “Here comes General Taguba” -- no, the “famous general” -- “Here comes the famous General Taguba.” And, look, Taguba’s not a violent man, but it’s good for Rumsfeld he wasn’t. He was really hot about that -- I mean, mocking him for doing his job. And then, what they did is everybody played dumb. “My God! We didn’t know.” And Rumsfeld -- it was Wolfowitz at one point said, “Well, is this really torture what happened?” As you know, the government has made a big -- this government has made a big distinction between abuse and torture, with one legal definition of “torture” being when you actually break a bone, that could be construed as torture, but anything short of that, that kind of physical pain, is not. And they asked if it was just -- “Was this abuse?” And Tony, Antonio, recalled replying, “Well, you’ve got a naked guy in a wet cell and you’re shoving things up his rectum, and he’s not dressed -- I mean, he’s not been fed, and he’s not been treated -- you know, I don’t know what else you’d call that but torture.” And he said there was silence. And, in general, the game was, as Rumsfeld testified the next day, the game was simply: “Oh, my god,” said the Secretary of Defense, “if I had only known. I had no idea about this. I didn’t look at the pictures until the day” -- he’s given various stories, but “until the day or night before I came to the Congress, and nobody ever gave me any information about this.” That was his testimony. That’s basically the President's position today. AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He has gotten this first interview with General Taguba, revealing why he retired and what he knew about Donald Rumsfeld and -- well, we’ll look up the chain of command after this break. [break] AMY GOODMAN: Donald Rumsfeld’s defense is that he first learned of the extent of the abuse after the photographs were made public. This is what he told Congress after the scandal broke in May of 2004. DONALD RUMSFELD: It breaks our hearts that, in fact, someone didn’t say, “Wait! Look! This is terrible!” We need to do something to manage the -- the legal part of it was proceeding along fine. What wasn’t proceeding along fine is the fact that the President didn’t know and you didn’t know and I didn’t know. And as a result, somebody just sent a secret report to the press. And there they are. AMY GOODMAN: That was Donald Rumsfeld, May 7, 2004. Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New Yorker magazine, what did Rumsfeld know? When did he know it? What does General Taguba say? SEYMOUR HERSH: I’m always amazed hearing that bit that one of his big complaints is that the report that Taguba wrote was leaked. But, anyway, look, actually what you said in the introduction was slightly wrong about -- just in terms of who was responsible for what. Taguba did not begin his job as investigator until the end of January. On January the 13th, I think, or perhaps a day or so -- give me a break on that, I’m not sure -- January the 13th, one of the guys in the military police unit at Abu Ghraib prison, one of the guys whose partners, whose pals, were in the photographs, the infamous photographs -- you know, the pyramids, etc. -- and everybody in the unit was circulating CDs and photographs -- all soldiers have these cell phones with cameras in them -- and he just had it, and he walked in with a CD to the Army Criminal Investigation Division, the Army cops. There was a unit there at Abu Ghraib at the prison. And within two days after that, the back channel, which is, as you know, not surprisingly, generals talk to each other. They talk to each other in ways that they don’t want anybody to see. Sometimes it’s Monday and, I’m sure, about golf games, but a lot of times, it’s very important. These aren’t classified, per se, because they’re very private. You rarely get a chance to see the back channel. What happened in Taguba’s case is, by the time he got on the job in late January and was given the assignment, the back channel had -- there had been five, six, seven messages already, very explicit messages. He was given copies of those messages. By the 15th, the military assistant to Rumsfeld, the three-star general, the military assistant to Wolfowitz, the director of the joint staff or the joint chiefs of staff, probably the most important position in the joint chiefs, various sorted other generals with direct ties to the leadership, -- and, of course, when you’re talking to Rumsfeld’s military assistant, a general then named Craddock -- I mentioned him earlier -- you’re talking to Rumsfeld; that’s how you communicate with him in this system -- they were given explicit memoranda and details, particularly very vivid, graphic descriptions of what the photographs show. As Taguba said, you didn’t need to “see” the photographs -- that is, quote/unquote “see” -- to know what was on them. So Rumsfeld’s defense that he didn’t see them ’til right before, therefore he didn’t realize how serious this was, is sort of shredded by these back-channel messages. There were exchange after exchange. I quote some of them to some degree. It was in one of these messages there was something rather explicit about the actions against women, more than has been made public, that you mentioned earlier, too. So what you have is a body of evidence that shows that the senior leadership was extremely aware of how serious this was. By the 20th -- one of the memos on the 20th was simply saying -- one of the memos said, “Is this as real as it seems? YES” -- Y-E-S, in capital letters, you know -- “Are there photographs? YES. Is it pretty devastating? YES” And there was a lot of -- actually, I should say, honorable and direct chit-chat in the back channel about “Let’s deal with this correctly. This is huge. We’ve got to make sure we don’t mess this one up. Maybe we should make it public ourselves.” All of this was being done. General Myers, actually, in one of his appearances before Congress mentioned the back channel, but not quite by saying it. He said, “Well, we received a series of messages very earlier on with a lot of details, including accounts of the photographs.” He did say that at one point. So even he is contradicting Rumsfeld. But it’s a position that I think if you’re Rumsfeld -- well, I’ll just tell you what happened to Taguba. Taguba finishes his report in late February, early March. Nobody wants to read it. He can’t get people to read his report. He’s trying to get the upper echelon. That’s part of his job, is to go to the command structure and inform them of what he’s found. His investigation is not criminal. At the same time, the Army investigators and the cops are doing a criminal investigation into the kids in the photographs. His investigation is really more about the politics of the event and the overall level of responsibility, not about, you know, what you’re going to do to each kid in the photographs. One three-star general refused to see the photographs and explicitly said to him, “Look, if I look at these, then I have knowledge of them, then I have to act. I don’t want knowledge.” Basically, that was the position. Only one general, the head of the Army, Pete Schoomaker, actually read it and later sent Taguba a very kind note and a gracious note about how competent it was. But the rest of them simply didn’t want to know. And again, by March, you’ve got a chain of command, you’ve got a lot of generals working for a very tough guy, Rumsfeld. They know this incident went down. They know everybody knows a lot about it. Rumsfeld has testified differently about when he talked to the President on various occasions, either late January, early February, but certainly he and Myers both testified they spent time with Bush on this. And I have two things to say about that. One, of course, is, if nobody knew anything and we had no idea how serious it is and, as Rumsfeld has said repeatedly in testimony, 18,000 court-martials a year, why are they talking to the President about it? What do they have to tell the President for about it if it’s not -- if nothing anybody had any idea how serious it was? And given the fact that they did talk to the President -- and what the President did is really the crux of what I see. That’s how I ended my story writing about this. Bush, at some point, whether it was in January, February or March, was made aware of the details, maybe not all the salient details, but many of them. And what did he do? Did he say, “Rummy, I want some generals heads”? Did he say, “I want an investigation”? Did he say, “We’ve got to stop this practice”? What he did was, Amy, was nada. So inside the chain, this very sensitive, you know, hummahumma instrument of the military, everybody knew by the spring of ’04 investigating detainee abuse is not a way to get a third star if you’re two-star and not a way to get ahead. And certainly Taguba, by then, knew it. Among the things he told me was, from the moment he got the assignment, he isolated -- there were twenty-three people on his staff, including many career officers, colonels, etc. -- he isolated everybody. He was going to be the point man on this so nobody’s career could get hurt except his. He was the front guy, and he was aware, very aware, of the dangers. And there’s an amazing, I think, and astonishing moment in the article -- and to give you some idea of his integrity, the New Yorker has this very complicated and detailed fact-checking process, in which no matter how many times they sing and dance, somebody from the New Yorker fact-checking staff sits down with Taguba for a day and goes over everything very carefully. And this is his chance to opt out, say “I don’t remember it that way. That’s not right.” There’s a scene where in April General Abizaid, John Abizaid, not a bad guy, the commander who retired early this year, allegedly because he wanted to retire, but actually I think he was fired. But that’s another story. Abizaid is in Kuwait. He’s in the back seat. He’s driving with Tony Taguba. The report’s not published yet, but it’s done. It’s sitting there. And he says to Tony, as Taguba remembers it -- and we certainly gave Abizaid and everybody a chance with email messages and telephone calls and long summaries of what we’re doing, including to Rumsfeld; everybody got a chance to comment on this weeks before the story was published -- we are not trying to sandbag anybody -- Abizaid said to Taguba, “You know, Tony,” -- and the message was -- “the only victim of this, the only person that’s going to get hurt in this, is you, if you don’t watch it.” And Taguba said he remembered thinking then -- he said to me that “I had been in the Army then for thirty-two years, and it was the first time I thought I was in the Mafia.” AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who has just written a piece on his interview with General Taguba in the New Yorker magazine. Tell us who Colonel Jordan is. SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, what happened is -- now you’re getting to the part of the story that really is the most fascinating for me, that’s very -- the press hasn’t looked at this yet, and I hope they do. What happened to Taguba is -- very quickly, first of all, the first thing that happened is he right away instinctively knew that what these kids were doing, the major thing they were doing, the major abuse was this: the MP’s defense was, under the Army regulations, military policemen who run a prison -- and this was a reserve unit from West Virginia. These kids basically were trained to be traffic cops. They were given just a little bit of training about running a prison. The way it works is -- the regulations are very clear. The people running the prison run the prison. They feed them, house them, take care of them. They don’t do anything else. They don’t get involved in interrogations, because otherwise you break up the trust, which you can only -- you know, you have to have a prison run -- it has to run orderly. The people have to assume that the MPs are not there to do anything but take care of them. In this case, what happened is, the MPs were under instructions from the fall of ’03, when the games began, to soften up the prisoners for the military intelligence people, for the interrogators, because the insurgency was on -- it became very heavily the previous late summer -- and there was a lot of panic in the White House about not knowing much about the insurgency, hence the decision to increase the pressure and get more intelligence from the prison population, particularly the young males who were assumed to be, many of them, knowledgeable of the insurgency. So the MP’s job was to do whatever they could -- keep them awake at night, the prisoners. They kept them unclothed. They kept them unfed. They mistreated them. All designed to soften them up for the intelligence process. Taguba understood that had to be a high order, but he was boxed in. The order which he was given was to investigate the MP brigade or battalion -- it’s a brigade -- and nothing more. He couldn’t go beyond that. But inevitably, he ran into a Lieutenant Colonel Jordan, and he saw signs of very sophisticated intelligence activity inside the prison, certainly among some of the more valuable -- they call high-value targets. Jordan was listed as the executive officer of the military intelligence unit that was at Abu Ghraib, the interrogation unit, but he denied being that. They couldn’t find him for weeks. When they did find him, he showed up in civilian clothes, wanted to know if he had to shave off his beard. He apparently had grown a beard. He had to. And in general, his story was so riddled with untruths and mistruths. In any case, Taguba had his rights read to him. Jordan’s now the only officer facing charges out of this affair. Seven enlisted men had been charged and sentenced and convicted, but no officer. He’s the first officer facing charges. And so, Taguba began to realize there was something going on outside there. He also knew, as he did his investigation and was given more access, and particularly as his investigation came to an end, he began to understand that there was a huge secret codicil going on, and about which I probably -- one of the things that interested him the most about me was I had written back in 2004, did three articles for the New Yorker, and the third one talked about the secret world, the world of JSOC, Joint Special Operation Command operations, military task force, high-level units that had no -- that reported to nobody but God, basically to the Secretary of Defense through a back channel. And so, what he stumbled into, what he was really dealing with, was, as I wrote in the article, is the decision of the Secretary of Defense -- and I’m told with the concurrence of Cheney, one never knows where the President is on this, but I assume he had to be aware of what was going on, Cheney certainly was -- they decided in the fall of ’03 we were doing what they call “strategic interrogation” -- I’m not quite sure what that means -- strategic interrogation of prisoners at Guantanamo. And it was decided to send a commander of Guantanamo, a major general named Geoff Miller, to Iraq to train the kids there, instruct them and set up rules and procedures for doing strategic interrogation. And so, you were bringing in some of the Special Forces, and some of the more high-level intelligence activity techniques into Abu Ghraib. And it’s my belief -- so I’ve been told by my sources, not Taguba; the story is partly about Taguba and partly about this -- that what happened was, the White House, and basically Rumsfeld, was in a real problem when Abu Ghraib broke. If you have a full investigation into Abu Ghraib, you’re going to stumble into the very, very highly classified -- in fact, the most classified there -- most of the missions, the task forces, were put into what they called the SAP, the Special Access Program, the highest level of secrecy in the government -- the U-2 spy plane was built in a SAP, for example -- mostly used for technical stuff. But under Rumsfeld, after 9/11, it began being used for field operations. These guys -- we now probably in as many as thirteen countries, the President of the United States has delegated a hundred killer teams, they call them, from the Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC -- they have been given pre-delegation. When they find a high-value target, they can act against them, capture, or in most cases, kill. So you’re given a group of guys that are given the authority to kill in North Africa, the Middle East, obviously, also in other parts of Africa. They have been given the authority to kill or make contact on site. They go into a country without clearing it with the ambassador or the CIA station chief. This is going on now. And this technique -- some of their techniques were brought into Abu Ghraib. And so, if you do a full investigation into Abu Ghraib, you could unravel a lot of stuff nobody wanted to unravel then. And the other aspect was -- sort of amazing -- was that there was another side to the photographs. As bad as they were, they did not show lethality. In other words, the MPs weren’t killing people. The killing was being done in task forces and other places, but you had a situation where you’ve got a bunch of kids, and so let them go face charges. It’s OK. Nobody could have assumed at that point that the photographs or the Taguba report would get out. Let them go face charges, because let some lower level kids be hung out to dry, which they were -- I mean, not that they didn’t do what they did. They were in the photographs. I’m talking about those -- Lynndie English or England, whatever her name was -- you remember the thumbs-up and thumbs-down lady. Certainly they deserve some time, but not the ten years they got. In any case, this is all also going down as Taguba is sort of running around trying to figure out what’s going on. There’s real machinations at work. And right now, we’re still very much in the hunter-killer business. It’s basically -- my friends on the inside know these units. This is not disrespecting the men who serve in them, mostly men, because they’re competent soldiers, Delta Force, Navy Seals, CIA paramilitary. They’re very competent. If they had different orders, they would probably behave differently. But they’re there now. They’re on the border with Iran right now. We have units right now that are dying for permission to go across the border and start whacking away at the Iranians. And that is the situation today. And that has not changed. A lot of hunter-killer teams are at work fighting the alleged al-Qaeda in Iraq, many of whom, as I’m sure you’re aware, many in your audience are aware, are really Sunni insurgents -- they’re not really al-Qaeda. The foreign element in Iraq is very minor. But nonetheless, it’s good publicity. AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, what about General Miller, Geoffrey Miller, who was sent from Guantanamo to, well, as they say, “Gitmoize” Abu Ghraib in September of 2003? SEYMOUR HERSH: You know, the Senate, in its interrogation -- I read the hearings quite a bit again, I hadn’t read them in years -- the Senate Armed Services, Carl Levin of Michigan, who’s now the chairman of the committee, this full Senate Armed Services Committee -- Democrats are in control -- he asked that question: was he there to Gitmoize. He smelled the issue. And, of course, everybody denies everything. What they have to do -- Miller was just an artillery officer who -- competent, smart, smart enough, and willing to do what they wanted -- went to Guantanamo. They treated the prisoners the way they wanted. There was a huge back channel. He was always on the phone. So the subsequent testimony developed, either with Rumsfeld, on occasion, and certainly with Steve Cambone, Rumsfeld’s Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Steve Cambone was Rummy’s gofer, in the sense that somebody once described Cambone, in terms of his relationship with Rummy, he’s like the little three-year-old kid in the backseat who has got a steering wheel, and when daddy turns the car, he thinks he’s actually doing it. You know, he thinks he’s driving it, but really it’s the control was at a higher level. But he’s the action officer for Rumsfeld and for others. And what happened is Miller was sent, did what they wanted to in Guantanamo, went up to Iraq, did what they wanted there. When everything hit the fan in the next spring, they tried to protect him. They could not. He retired early, definitely was very bitter about it, is not going to talk. I tried again this time. He feels he was totally left out to hang by Rumsfeld and Cambone for doing their bidding, sort of like Taguba, but in the other way. He did their bidding and got -- he feels sort of screwed. Taguba didn’t do their bidding. And I don’t think there’s any question that -- you know, what happened was there was an investigation by the Army, a useless investigation. What happened was that after Abu Ghraib, all of their various reports that had been made by groups like the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, as you know, have done fantastic jobs and really have been with great -- I have great admiration for what they’ve done. Human Rights Watch has been all over this stuff, in particular. And after the Abu Ghraib, the government began to respond, and the Army had a bunch of investigations into some of the various allegations of abuses, including very serious allegations by FBI agents in Guantanamo, who had been complaining since ’02 about what was going on there. And at some point they began an investigation, and because they needed a high-ranking general -- as I mentioned, Taguba was a two-star -- you needed a high-ranking general. They needed a three-star to investigate Miller, because he was a two-star. And they didn’t have many. And they ran into an Air Force fighter jockey named Mark Schmidt out of -- he now lives in Boise, Idaho, or near Boise, Idaho. And Mark Schmidt is just one of these pilots who flies for a living, and, you know, that’s a building, it’s a building -- you know, no playing around. And he looked at what happened, and he wrote a report in which he accused General Miller of not doing his job right. There were a lot of malfeasance, certainly. And his recommendation was overruled by the four-star general in charge of the Southern Command at that time that was responsible for Guantanamo. The Southern Command then was headed by General Craddock, who had been Rummy’s military aide, went to the Southern Command. He’s now commander at NATO. All these people seem to have great career tracks. Craddock overruled it. That had never happened before, that a recommendation that somebody be looked at, you know, for possible prosecution gets overruled by the convening authority. And so, there was an investigation into why they overruled this, which of course absolved Craddock. And Schmidt, in his investigation, in his testimony, said the most amazing thing. He repeated it to me when I talked to him by phone a couple months ago. He said -- basically what he said, “You know, if you really think about Guantanamo, but for a camera,” he said, “it was Abu Ghraib.” There were times then with some of the prisoners, with the dogs, and the women sexually abusing them in certain ways, you know, flaunting themselves, menstrual blood being poured on them, these Muslim men, nakedness, twenty hours of music a day. As he said, “but for a camera, it would be Abu Graib.” So, look, the Senate right now has got a group of guys, Carl Levin, looking into this, and let’s just wish them well. AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, a quick question before our satellite window closes, and that’s about this secret prison in Mauritania. The coup takes place in 2005, leading to a government that is friendlier to the United States. The Washington Post has revealed that there are these secret CIA prisons around Europe. Tell us about Mauritania. SEYMOUR HERSH: What happened was there was a junta. We helped them, certainly. Our CIA and our military were deeply involved in this junta. Whether we were totally responsible or if we’re not is another story. Once the new government was put in place, Mauritania became the prison. What the President was forced to do -- Dana Priest, who’s got a very good series going right now in the Washington Post on healthcare for veterans, Dana Priest had written a terrific story in the fall of ’05 for the Washington Post about the secret prison system. So Bush, as you know, eventually shut it down. But the fact is they then made Mauritania into another prison, where I would guess -- I think Human Rights Watch or other groups have identified thirty-seven or thirty-nine people who they’ve lost -- we can’t find them anywhere -- where in the American prison system we can’t find them. Some of the tougher high-value targets are there. I’m sure what we call renditions -- that is, night flights by people -- are still going on. I don’t have specific -- that’s just a rational assumption by me. I don’t know that specifically. And Mauritania is a place where there is a secret holding pen, because it’s a place where you can fly in and out. There’s a very friendly government. Our soldiers don’t need visas. There was an election just the other week there. But for two years, a military junta that we helped put into power, certainly, was there. Yes, it’s -- I’ve been wanting to -- I’ve known that for quite a while. I’m glad I got finally a chance to write it. That there is a prison there, no question. All the details, I really don’t know. It’s very hard to get information about such places. But that became the prison of choice after they had to shut down the other operations in Europe and elsewhere. AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His latest piece appears in the New Yorker magazine, based on his interview with General Taguba, called "The General's Report: How Antonio Taguba, Who Investigated the Abu Ghraib Scandal, Became one of its Casualties." To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, call 1 (888) 999-3877.

eNuri Paradise is Possible Summer Campaign Presents! How To Beat The Heat. For those male Nomads who live in Allah's land of North America and Europe, the global warming is causing hotter and hotter temperatures each summer, which in addition to exposing the ice caps of the Rockies, Alps and the Himalayas, is also exposing feminine bodies that is difficult for Nomads not to look, and at times with lust, which is haraam in Islam. Some of my Nomad readers may wonder " So what is wrong with sitting on my porch on a nice Sunday afternoon sipping on my cooler beer and enjoying the site of these girls?" Well, I am sure that you gotta point there saaxib, but let us explore a better way to beat the heat this summer and every summer. You see, the brain of a male (specially the young ones, and perverted old ones, dirty old men ) has two main parts: 1. Production 2. Re-Production. The first part is connected to turn on the Productive hormones such as intelligence, reasoning, caring , kindness, thoughts, structured logic, and so on. The second part is connected to turn on Re-production mechanisms but not before it turns off the "Productive mechanism". It begins with a sight of an attractive female, triggering a multimedia imaginative journey that may inspire many creative ideas. That first look, if not tethered with a Taqwa rope, can loosen up the iman connections at the Productive part of the brain, "an innocent smile" may follow, and from that point, a zombie like effect leads the young Nomad toward uncontrolled activities. Now, as he sips his cooler, the beer relaxes the mind, taking away the effects of shyness, which is an embedded trait in humans and a remnant of the Iman (The default instinct of belief in God), shyness is also a speed bump that gives you the last warning before a crash, or a crush, in this case. so, from this point, the happy Nomad crosses all moral boundaries until the party is over and he has to pick up the pieces the day after. No prayers, no contact with family or loved ones, no school work, or useful activity, the Nomad now switching back on his productive part of his brain, realizes how far he has drifted from the Siraat ul Mustaqeem, however, lust has its side effects, it leads to mental logical corruption, beginning with a feeling of low self esteem, denial, and stubbornness to accept failure, then to doubt Islamic principles he believed and finally succumbs to kufr, acaadanaa Allahu minhaa. So a better way to beat the heat this summer is one of the following: 1. Take a trip to visit family back home if you can afford, this may have a better cooling effect on your "head" than coolers of heat in Mississippi. 2. Join a summer Islamic study program in your nearby Masjid community. 3. Try fasting to reduce the pressure, read more Quraan, and get involved with sports to redirect the energies to a positive productive and healthy uses. So, while you are in control of your thoughts, its wise to also have a control of your desires, otherwise your desires will take control of your thoughts and only Allah knows what they might be. If it feels that your momentary desires are on fire of the summer sights, don't let it lead you to a lasting fire. 2007 eNuri Softwaano Series When you don't know what you are doing, Just Don't Do It! Nur

This Hadeeth is Genuine, I cant recall the sanad now. But the moral of the hadeeth is about the NIYAH domain. When two Muslims fight each one ( mutually ) having a premeditated intention to kill the other due to a dispute for a worldly gain, pride ( each one thinking he is better than the other). In This Hadeeth, the victim bears as much sin as the killer because of a premeditated niyah intention to kill the other. In a fight We have several scenarios: 1. They were both mutually intending to kill the other. 2. One of them was intending to kill the other, the other was only defending himself or trying to disable the attacker. 3. They were both trying to hurt each other but not to kill each other. The Hadeeth holds applicable in the first case only due to mutual premeditated intention to commit a capital crime. Walllaahu Aclam. Nur

WOL sis I posted this topic after the famous case of defamation of Prophet Mohammad SAWS in Europe. However, tolerance and a cool head remain to be the only option if we are seeking the best results for the Islamic cause in a time Satan is unleashing all of his Soldiers on foot, horses, tanks, planes , ships, music and media, to protect his sizable stake and share in their wealth and lives. Our Job is to win people back, regardless of their culture and races for Allah, in that regard, its advisable that we rise above the taunting temporal material driven conflict between Islam and those bent on denying their maker which created the current harsh agression on Muslims all over the world. Let the darkness of the evil around us NOT make us blind to where must go at the end, Heaven, our main priorities are to save our souls and those of our adversaries from Hell fire, not neccessarily to take revenge. Nur

Dhubad The word "authentic" can mean different things to different people. This dispute has been used as a wrong argument by some. My advice is before you burn your eyes with reading materials in detail, a fundemental look at Islamic history may be in order, ( http://www.iu.edu.sa/edu/mutawasit/tarikh3_Index.htm ) ( Islamic University Of Madina), (the materials are in Arabic), only then can all things fall in their proper places. eNuri Librarians can help you find useful infromation, but not before knowing the context of your search in order to provide the right sources to quench your thirst for knowledge. Nur

The Measure of a Life, in Dollars and Cents By Walter Pincus 06/18/07 "Washington Post" -- -- What's an Iraqi life worth? How about an Iraqi car? For the U.S. military in Iraq, it may be roughly the same. A report released late last month by the Government Accountability Office examines the practices and rules guiding condolence payments that the U.S. military can distribute to families of Iraqi civilians killed "as a result of U.S. and coalition forces' actions during combat." These voluntary payments -- known as "solatia" payments -- can also cover injuries and loss or damage to property. They constitute "expressions of sympathy or remorse based on local culture and customs, but not an admission of legal liability or fault," according to the report. The Pentagon has set $2,500 as the highest individual sum that can be paid. Most death payments remain at that level, with a rough sliding scale of $1,000 for serious injury and $500 for property damage. Beginning in April of last year, payments of up to $10,000 were possible for "extraordinary cases" but only with a division commander's authorization. Despite Iraqi civilian deaths reaching tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, throughout the war, we are not talking big condolence payouts thus far. In 2005, the sums distributed in Iraq reached $21.5 million and -- with violence on the upswing -- dropped to $7.3 million last year, the GAO reported. Commanders were first authorized to make such payments in September 2003, and payments were initially financed with money seized from Saddam Hussein and his family and colleagues. Now the payments come from the Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP), a U.S. fund designed to build goodwill among Iraqis through good works such as small-scale water and sewage projects. The report, titled "The Department of Defense's Use of Solatia and Condolence Payments in Iraq and Afghanistan," offers a particularly coldblooded example of how payments are estimated, drawn from CERP's operating procedures: "Two members of the same family are killed in a car hit by U.S. forces. The family could receive a maximum of $7,500 in CERP condolence payments ($2,500 for each death and up to $2,500 for vehicle damage)." In April 2006, "martyr payments" became permissible, covering the death of Iraqi army members, police officers or government civilians as a result of U.S. or coalition military actions. "Each sector in Iraq contains unique challenges that influence the actual execution of the payment," said Col. Steven A. Boylan, spokesman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq, in response to questions from The Washington Post. He listed locations, terrorist activities, local politics and risk to recipients as factors. The GAO found that wide discretion is given to commanders. A military unit provides a claim card to a victim or family member after an incident. That card is given to an Army judge advocate or a purchasing officer who determines if the incident occurred and whether it resulted from combat actions. But if a noncombat accident takes place, such as a U.S. Army vehicle hitting and killing an Iraqi civilian as he crosses the street in Baghdad, the next of kin can file under the Foreign Claims Act. Payments awarded by the Foreign Claims Commission generally reach up to $100,000, according to the GAO. A former Army judge advocate who served in Iraq from May 2003 to July 2004 has written that every Iraqi he spoke with on the issue expressed shock about this situation. Under the Foreign Claims Act, he wrote, "the full market value may be paid for a Toyota run over by a tank in the course of a non-combat related accident, but only $2,500 may be paid for the death of a child shot in the crossfire." National security and intelligence reporter Walter Pincus pores over the speeches, reports, transcripts and other documents that flood Washington, and every week uncovers the fine print that rarely makes headlines -- but should. If you have any items that fit the bill, please send them to fineprint@washpost.com.