Condi’s List
The Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program (website, USINFO) is administered by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. (link) In order to be “honored” with a spot on this list of infamous characters one must be an accomplished terrorist and be recognized personally by the Secretary of State. The listees are “rewarded” with a “price on their heads,” in amounts up to 25 million dollars. (It may go higher, but that is the current price on Osama Bin Laden’s head.) Through the Rewards for Justice Fund, a non-profit, charitable organization, a.k.a. “your weapon in war on terror,” US citizens can actively support “America’s efforts to fight terrorism” by contributing to this tax-deductible 501(c)(3) organization that gives 100% of its contributions from the public to the State Department Rewards for Justice program. A number of states (Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, Massachesetts, South Carolina, and Virginia) have even come out with “United We Stand” license plates that give a portion of the proceeds to the fund. When the Secretary of State signs the paperwork to include a terrorist on the RFJ program, it creates an international bounty that can also include relocation, new identities, and protection for informants, and their families, courtesy of the US government. Some have called inclusion on the list an international “arrest warrant” that supercedes any extradition treaty and enlists (or some would say “unleashes”) an army of unofficial “bounty hunters” (or less charitably, “merceneries”) in the War on Terror.
Regardless of how you characterize the program, those listed on the program’s list, and those that seek its rewards; it has been remarkably effective. The program has paid out over 62 million dollars (publicly) and has a number of impressive success stories. The publicly supported fund has paid out close to 10 million dollars of that total. Scott Case (of priceline.com fame) and Joe Rutledge, the fund’s founders — who seeded the fund with a promise of $1 million dollars — are a fine example of what ordinary citizens can accomplish when dedicated to their goals. (That’s a hint, Condistas!)
Dr. Rice’s personal participation in listing the new al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al Masri, an Egyptian car bomber responsible for having had a hand in the deaths and maiming of hundreds of innocent lives, is just another example of her ability to take on the challenges of leadership during the War on Terror without equivocation, or hesitation. There’s a new sheriff in town, and her name is “Condi Rice.” (Washington Post AP article, Al-jazeera article, Khaleej Times AFP article, UPI article, Turks US Daily News article, Malaysia Sun article)
Update: As late as June 18th, and perhaps later, it was being reported (Online Wire article, Clarity and Resolve article, “Making sport of the Mujahideen”) that the online sportsbook, Bodog.com, was giving odds of +155 on Abu Ayuub al Masri’s capture (or death) by the end of the year on bets up to a maximum of $100. However, it appears that the odds makers got “cold feet” about offering terrorist gambling action after becoming much more pessimistic about the al-Qaeda leader’s life expectancy. The web page for making the wager disappeared, and the reward that Dr. Rice just announced must make their outlook for his survival even bleaker.
July 1st, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Not only does this show how tough and serious Sec. Rice is in the war on terror, her jurisdiction in these matters is also a great reminder of how intimately involved in and knowledgeable about these affairs she is.
In 2008, NO ONE will have the kind of knowledge about these important issues related to the War on Terror that Condi will. Like it’s been said before, Condi’s brain is (and in 2009 will especially be) a NATIONAL ASSET. It would be the best choice the American voting public could make to put her in the Oval Office.
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:58 am
Josiah,
You are so right. There’s no better choice for America than Condi. Our job it to keep working to get that word out.
I’m all in favor of paying rewards to catch the “bad guys”. I was reading just this morning that Al- Zarqawi’s widow is claiming that Al-Qaeda sold him out to the U.S. Ya gotta love it.
RUN CONDI, RUN!!!
August 7th, 2006 at 4:41 am
[…] The Hezbollah leadership has grown more savvy in recent years, with a charm offensive that has included a ban on attacking tourists and other civilians “even if they are American.” (Gee, thanks.) But that is just a temporary tactical ploy in the propaganda war. In the past, Hezbollah and its agents, tortured and killed a US Marine officer, Colonel William R. Higgins, who was attached to the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization as an observer. For over a year they tortured, then murdered, CIA Lebanese Station Chief William Buckley. Over 30 kidnappings of Westerners were tied to Hezbollah during the eighties and early nineties, the most famous of which was the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special peace envoy Terry Waite. A US Navy Diver, Robert Stethem, was identified as an American on a civilian flight, TWA 847, from Athens to Rome in June, 1985. For his crime of being an American, he was tortured, murdered then dumped on the airport tarmac at the Beirut airport where the aircraft had been forced to land. The Rewards for Justice program, the same one that Dr. Rice used to put a five million dollar price on the head of al-Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda replacement in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al Masri (see our post, Condi’s List), still has an outstanding $5 million dollar reward for the Flight 847 hijackers. And of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the three separate bombings in Lebanon that were directed against the US in the eighties. The US Embassy bombing in April, 1983, that killed 63. The US Marine Barracks bombing in October 1983 that killed 241, and the bombing of the “replacement” US Embassy in September, 1984, killing 22. Naturally, Hezbollah denies most, if not all, of these attacks. However, terrorists frequently use a new organization name for every attack (They’re taught that in Terrorism 101) in order to give their sponsors deniability and confound those that would retaliate. However, most Western intelligence agencies are convinced that these attacks had roots in Hezbollah due to evidence provided by intelligence gathering methods that had not yet been leaked by the New York Times. […]