We Live in Interesting Times

Foreigners are voicing opinions about our congressional elections as related to the global war against Islamic terrorists.

TEHRAN: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the US congressional elections a victory for Iran. “With the scandalous defeat of America's policies in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan, America's threats are empty threats on an international scale,” the Supreme Leader said.

BAGHDAD: Al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri claimed in a new audio tape Friday to be winning the war faster than expected in Iraq. “The al-Qaida army has 12,000 fighters in Iraq, and they have vowed to die for God's sake,” Abu said. “We haven't had enough of your blood yet,” he told the US, and “we will not rest from our Jihad until we have blown up the filthiest house _ which is called the White House.”

Iraqi Minister Ali al-Shemari repeated the government's demands for a speedier US transfer of authority to Iraqi forces and the withdrawal of US troops to their bases, away from Iraq's cities and towns. “The army of America didn't do its job. ... They tie the hands of my government,” al-Shemari said. He apparently approves of the Zakaria-Lama plan.

LONDON: British authorities are tracking 30 terrorist plots involving 1,600 people in 200 terror cells. MI5 head, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller warned that young British Muslims are at risk of being radicalized by extremists and predicted the fight against terrorism would last a generation.

Manningham-Buller warned future threats would come from “chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology.” Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the threat from international terrorism “is serious, is growing, and will, I believe, be with us for a generation.”

BERLIN: Legal documents to be filed next week in Germany will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior US officials, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The plaintiffs in the case include Mohammad al-Qahtani who is identified as the “20th hijacker” and a would-be participant in the 9/11 attacks. Time magazine reported that Qahtani underwent a “special interrogation plan” at Gitmo that included sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, prolonged stress positions, sleep deprivation and watching The View every morning. (Oh, no, not more Rosie, he was heard to say.)

Also in Germany, investigations are under way in parliament concerning cooperation between the CIA and German intelligence. The leftist Center for Constitutional Rights, a US organization, is helping to bring the legal action in Germany. The US has rejected submission to the International Criminal Court on grounds that it could be used to unjustly prosecute US citizens for political reasons. I’d say it is time to bring our troops home from Germany.

Now that the Democrats have taken control of both houses of congress, they will have a leading role in dealing with these and other serious issues. The voters have to wonder how they will do.

Will the Dems follow the lead of Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, who said his committee will investigate the Bush administration's running of the government and that there are so many areas of possible wrong doing, his biggest problem will be deciding which ones to pursue. Among the issues that should have been investigated, Waxman contended, was the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. Attention Berlin!

Or will the Dems follow the lead of Sen. Evan Bayh, D-IN, who said: “It's up to us to prove that we're something better than just a mirror image of the people they voted against. And if we serve up a highly partisan, ideologically extreme, Democratic version of what they just voted against, we're not going to do very well. And the country won't do very well.”

Yes, we live in interesting times.