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Today In History Part 2 – November 21
This poster was posted in classrooms and believed throughout my high school years. However, the words written under the supposed humanoids were totally missing. – Ray
On November 21, 1954, Newspaper headlines around the world announced that the scientific community had exposed the Piltdown Man as a hoax, to the immense satisfaction of those Christians who had already rejected the theory of evolution.
Litany of the Immaculate Conception
A historic announcement from the Catholic Church was made on this day in 1964 during the third session of Vatican II. John Paul the 2nd approved a “Decree on Ecumenism,” that declares both Catholics and Protestants to blame for past divisions and calls for dialogue, not derision, in the future.
On November 21, 1986, National Security Council staff member Oliver North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, begin shredding documents that would have exposed their participation in a range of illegal activities regarding the sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of the proceeds to a rebel Nicaraguan group. On November 25, North was fired but Hall continued to sneak documents to him by stuffing them in her skirt and boots. The Iran-Contra scandal, as it came to be known, became an embarrassment and a sticky legal problem for the Reagan administration.
Only six years earlier, Iran had become an enemy of the United States after taking hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. At the time, Ronald Reagan had repeatedly insisted that the United States would never deal with terrorists. When the revelation surfaced that his top officials at the National Security Council had begun selling arms to Iran, it was a public relations disaster.
During the televised Iran-Contra hearings, the public learned that the money received for the arms was sent to support the Contras in Nicaragua, despite Congress’ Boland Amendment, which expressly prohibited U.S. assistance to the Contras. Though the communist Sandinistas had been legitimately elected in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration sought to oust them by supporting the Contras, an anti-Communist group.
During the Iran-Contra hearings, North claimed that the entire Reagan administration had known about the illegal plan. After admitting that he had lied to Congress, he was convicted of shredding documents, obstruction of justice, and illegally receiving a security fence for his own residence. He received a light sentence of a fine, probation, and community service.
A year later in July 1990, an appellate court voted 2-1 to overturn his conviction based on the possibility that some of the evidence may have come from testimony that Congress had immunized in their own hearings on the matter. President Reagan and Vice President George Bush maintained that they had no knowledge of the scheme.
Chemical warfare in Syria
And the headline story at this hour….November 21, 2015……
BAGHDAD – According to Iraqi and U.S. intelligence officials Isis is aggressively pursuing development of chemical weapons, setting up a branch dedicated to research and experiments with the help of scientists from Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the region.
Their quest raises an alarming scenario for the West, given the determination to strike major cities that the group showed with its bloody attack last week in Paris. Still, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Thursday warned that Islamic extremists might at some point use chemical or biological weapons.
Valls told the lower house of Parliament, “Terrorism hit France not because of what it is doing in Iraq and Syria … It’s what terrorists do. We know that there could also be a risk of chemical or biological weapons,” he added, though he did not talk of a specific threat.
Iraqi officials expressed concern concerning the large safe haven the extremists control has since overrunning parts of Iraq and Syria last year.
“They now have complete freedom to select locations for their labs and production sites and have a wide range of experts, both civilians and military, to aid them,” a senior Iraqi intelligence official told The Associated Press.
So far, the only overt sign of the group’s chemical weapons program has been the apparent use of mustard gas against Iraqi Kurdish fighters and in Syria. In mortars that hit Kurdish forces in northern Iraq earlier this year, preliminary tests by the U.S. showed traces of the chemical agent sulfur mustard.
Iraqi authorities clearly fear the use could be expanded. Over the summer, Iraq’s military distributed gas masks to troops deployed west and north of Baghdad, one general told the AP. A senior officer in Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad, said 25 percent of the troops deployed there were equipped with masks.
Hakim al-Zamili, the head of the Iraqi parliament’s security and defense committee said “More recently, Russia gave 1,000 protective suits against chemical attacks to Iraqi military. He said Isis has set up a branch tasked with pursuing chemical weapons. He wouldn’t give details of the program.
But al-Zamili, citing intelligence reports he has access to, told the AP that the group has managed to attract chemical experts from abroad as well as Iraqi experts, including ones who once worked for Saddam Hussein’s now-dissolved Military Industrialization Authority. The foreigners include experts from Chechnya and southeast Asia.
Isis recently moved its research labs, experts and materials from Iraq to “secured locations” inside Syria, al-Zamili added — apparently out of concern for an eventual assault on Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, captured by IS in the summer of 2014.al-Zamil continued “Daesh (the Arab acronym for Isis) is working very seriously to reach production of chemical weapons, particularly nerve gas,”, That would threaten not just Iraq but the whole world.”
Still, U.S. intelligence officials say they don’t believe Isis has the technological capability to produce nerve gas or biological agents, and that the militants were more likely to harm themselves trying to make them. A European official privy to intelligence on the extremist group’s programs agreed, saying so far even Isis production of mustard gas was in small quantities and of low quality.
The United States and its allies accused the military of Syrian President Bashar Assad of using chemical weapons in its nearly 5-year war with rebels, including a 2013 attack in a rebel-held Damascus suburb that killed hundreds. The Syrian government denies using any such weapons, but after that attack it struck a deal to give up its chemical weapons stockpiles. Still, it has been accused of continuing to use chlorine gas, a claim it denies.
Retired Lt. Gen. Richard Zahner, who was the top American military intelligence officer in Iraq in 2005 and 2006 and went on to lead the National Security Agency’s electronic spying arm, noted that al-Qaida tried for two decades to develop chemical weapons and didn’t succeed, proving the technical and scientific difficulties.However, he said, U.S. intelligence agencies have consistently underestimated the Islamic State group, which has shown itself to be more capable and innovative than al-Qaida and has greater financial resources. They are absolutely not a JV team!
“Even a few competent scientists and engineers, given the right motivation and a few material resources, can produce hazardous industrial and weapons-specific chemicals in limited quantities,” Zahner said.
Developing chemical weapons has been an ambition of the group — and various other jihadi movements — for years. There are also concerns about militants trying to obtain radioactive materials. An AP investigation published last month uncovered that authorities in the Eastern European nation of Moldova, working with the FBI have interrupted four attempts in the past five years by gangs with suspected Russian connections that sought to sell radioactive material to Middle Eastern extremists.
A senior deputy of the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi wrote in a 2013 report to al-Baghdadi of “significant progress” toward producing chemical weapons. In it, the deputy, Sameer al-Khalifawy, wrote that chemical weapons would ensure “swift victory” and “terrorize our enemies.” But, he added, what was needed was “to secure a safe environment to carry out experiments.”
In May 2013, Iraqi security forces, acting on a tip from the Americans, raided a chemical weapons research lab in Baghdad’s Sunni-majority district of al-Doura. Security forces arrested two militants running the lab, one held a master’s degree in chemistry, and the other had a bachelor’s degree in physics and worked at Saddam’s Military Industrialization Authority before it was disbanded in 2003.
Iraqi officials complained of lack of cooperation from neighboring Syria. They cited the case of a veteran Iraqi jihadist and weapons expert, Ziad Tareq Ahmed, who fled to Syria after Iraqi security agents raided his Baghdad home in 2010 and arrested members of his cell. The agents found large amounts of material that could be used for making mustard gas.
Security officials said Ahmed has worked with several Islamic militant groups without formally joining any. He was arrested by the Syrians last year. The Syrian government allowed Iraqi officials to interrogate him in prison but refused to hand him over. Then last month, they released him.
“This is a very grave development,” said one of the officials, who heads one of Iraq’s top counterterrorism agencies. “His release adds significantly to our concerns.”
Today In History Part 2 – November 21
Today In History Part 2 - 11 21