GADHAFI'S SON ADMITS TORTURE

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's son, who is touted as a reformer, has acknowledged that Bulgarian medical workers jailed for allegedly infecting children with HIV were tortured in captivity, an admission apparently aimed at showing a more open face to the West. Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, shown in a 2002 photo, has been touted as a reformer. The release last month of the five nurses and a doctor after nearly nine years in prison boosted Libya's ties with Europe, a key goal of the elder Gadhafi.

But since their release, Dr. Ashraf al-Hazouz, a Palestinian who was granted Bulgarian citizenship, and some of the nurses have spoken frequently in the European media of the torture they underwent to force them to confess to infecting the children with the AIDS virus. They have since retracted the confessions and denied infecting the children.

With the admission, the Libyan leader's son, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, may have been trying to put the torture issue aside and burnish his own credentials as a candid promoter of change in the long-isolated nation.

"Yes, they (the medics) were tortured by electricity and they were threatened that their family members would be targeted," he said in an interview with the pan-Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera, excerpts of which were aired Wednesday.

The younger Gadhafi made no apology for the torture in the excerpts and even cast doubt on al-Hazouz's specific allegations of mistreatment, saying "a lot of what the Palestinian doctor has claimed are merely lies."

Al-Hazouz accused Gadhafi's son of acting in his own self interest. "Seif al-Islam always tells only a part of the truth, manipulating the media," the doctor told The Associated Press. "I told the full truth ... All of us were tortured like animals."

Later Thursday, al-Hazouz repeated many of his allegations of torture to Al-Jazeera, saying the medics were subjected to "electricity, beatings, sleep and food deprivation."

"They threatened to rape me and they threatened to rape one of my sisters," he added. Snezhana Dimitrova, one of the nurses, said she was glad Gadhafi's son had told the truth. "The fact that a Libyan and the son of Gadhafi at that has told the truth is very gratifying and I thank him for it," she told the AP.

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PREMATURE TURKEY DAY IN AMERICA

Pelosi is pushing this resolution business for Armenian votes in her district, not out of some beckoning sense of right and wrong.

I'm sorry, but any other notion of fairness in motive is just too much of a stretch for the contemporary American politician. The Democrats tried to vote down the Iraq war and failed as soon as the rubber met the pavement. Yes, dear, life is more complicated than simply pulling one's thumb out of one's oriface of choice. So they now attempt to circumvent an action just beginning to succeed, even according to the Washington Post, by tanking its relationship with shaky ally Turkey, negligible hosts to the strategic geographical supply complex this unfortunate but now necessary war requires in a volatile region seething with intent to destroy not only its perceived non-Muslim enemies, but its own rival factions within Islam itself, thus threatening to ignite the powderkeg of the whole Middle East and beyond.

Of course, Turkey's official behavior on this issue of the Armenian genocide is ridiculous, but very predictable, given its longstanding official stance of denial. Pelosi, however, ignoring many other genocides much worse—has encouraged in thought and deed the effort to sabotage the current government. As one Democratic strategist has stated:

Any success in Iraq now is, of course, a threat to us.

The US can probably set up camp again with extra expense and reduced forces in Iraq to help resettle in nearby Bulgaria, a country that has fought back against its Turkish neighbors in the past, or simply move more fully into the north of Iraq. Neither of these options are without pitfalls. Bulgaria is northwest of Turkey, further still from Iraq, and north Iraq may prove problematic with the Kurds themselves, ungrateful as all Muslim peoples tend to be. And I haven't even hinted at what Turkey and Iran, not to mention huge swarths of Iraqis want to do to the Kurds.



But as much as I hate this war for a myriad of reasons, it is also as clear as the predictable Turk action on this congressional motion, that if US forces abruptly withdraw from Iraq, Iran will quickly act to conquer it, and there will be a million dead on the ground before the cock can crow. Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Syria, each with their own agendas, will then invade from all sides to fight iran.

Speculation on WWIII with cease in face of an obvious shuffling of the military deck chairs around the globe as oil supplies are disrupted, and then one can expect to see whoever in in the White House to begin bombing the hell out of something and everything.

Turkey, whose squalid past should certainly be open to censure, is one issue. But what really needs scrutiny is the driving force behind the Armenian genocide of 1915-18 (and the earlier one of 1894-96), which was not Turkish nationalism but Muslim supremacism, rooted in the scripture and traditions of Islam. As dhimmis striving to get out from under Muslim rule, the Armenian Christians committed the ultimate transgression in Muslim eyes—yet in covering this persnickety issue the media never mentions Islam at all. Nor has Congress, for all of its grandstanding, done so either.

Want to end a war, Nancy? Well, thanks for the Turkey shoot, but I don't think your aim is true.