Archived news and commentary: February 3 - 9, 2003

2003/03/24 - 2003/03/30
2003/03/17 - 2003/03/23
2003/03/10 - 2003/03/16
2003/03/03 - 2003/03/09
2003/02/24 - 2003/03/02
2003/02/17 - 2003/02/23
2003/02/10 - 2003/02/16
2003/02/03 - 2003/02/09
2003/01/27 - 2003/02/02
2003/01/20 - 2003/01/26
2003/01/13 - 2003/01/19
2003/01/06 - 2003/01/12
2002/12/30 - 2003/01/05

Sunday, February 9, 2003

News and commentary:

"Mowlam says there is 'no justification' for war" (The Daily Telegraph, 2003/02/09)
Breathtaking idiocy, found via Andrew Sullivan: "Mo Mowlam, the former Northern Ireland Secretary, has attacked on Tony Blair's stance on Iraq, warning that it would boost the number of terrorists in the Arab world. ...
'You don't beat terrorists by bombing them. All you do is act as a very good recruiting agent for them because more young people then turn towards the terrorists, and you alienate the complete civil population because you bomb them. Do you expect them to like us any more than they do now, which is not very much.
You beat terrorists by talking to them. It's the only way you can do it. If not, if you attack with troops or bombs, all you do is increase more young people to join them.'"

"Iraqi bio-scientist breaks silence" (Jane Corbin, BBC News/Panorama, 2003/02/09)
The first interview ever with Iraq's leading biologist, Dr Rihab Taha, aka "Dr Germ" and "toxic Taha": "Dr Rihab Taha was head of Iraq's biological weapons programme for seven years, until 1995. And she is top of the list of scientists the UN team want to interview. I asked her if she was ashamed of her past work.
"No, not at all," came Taha's answer. "Iraq has been threatened by different enemies, and we are in an area which suffers from regional conflict. It is our right to defend ourselves."
While she acknowledged research and development into biological agents, she insisted the regime never weaponised the bacteria it developed.
"We never intended to use it," she continued. "We never wanted to cause harm or damage to anybody."
But the facts are undeniable. Dr Taha's team grew 19,000 litres of botulinum toxin, a food poison that swells the tongue and suffocates its victim. Two thousand litres of aflatoxin were produced, which causes liver cancer. And they also prepared gas gangrene, which causes skin to melt away."

"Khatami Says Iran Mines Uranium for Nuclear Plant" (Parisa Hafezi, Reuters/ABC News, 2003/02/09)
"President Mohammad Khatami said on Sunday Iran had mined uranium for nuclear energy, and insisted its nuclear program was solely for civilian use, the official news agency IRNA said.
The surprise announcement -- the first time an Iranian leader has acknowledged possession of uranium ore reserves -- may alarm Washington, which accuses the Islamic Republic of harboring secret plans to develop nuclear weapons.
"Iran has discovered reserves and extracted uranium...we are determined to use nuclear technology for civilian purposes," IRNA quoted Khatami as saying."

"Paradoxical Pacifism" (Pascal Bruckner, Le Monde/Watch, 2003/02/03 [2003/02/09])
An article from Le Monde, translated by Douglas: "The world over, the partisans of a non-intervention in Iraq are ceaselessly growing in number and this is a good thing. Still, one fears that their determination is out of visceral hostility for Washington rather than an authentic taste for democracy. ...
If the D-Day landings took place today, let's bet that uncle Adolf would enjoy the sympathies of countless humanists and far-Left radicals because Uncle Sam would be trying to crush him. ...
The eternal paradox of pacifism: preferring to maintain a disarrayed tyranny in power rather than see its possible reversal, on the pretense of the best of intentions. In the present case: criminalizing George W. Bush, the better to exculpate the Iraqi head of State." (See also the French original: "Paradoxal pacifisme" (Pascal Bruckner, Le Monde, 2003/02/03))

"Zacarias, My Brother: The Making of a Terrorist" (Abd Samad Moussaoui, The New York Times Magazine, 2003/02/09)
"Chapter Seven: The Brainwashing of Zacarias" from Moussaoui's book about his brother, the alleged "twentieth hijacker": "What is surprising is that those who have a voice, through the media, do not address the roots of the problem. Though they condemn attacks and assassinations, they do not denounce Wahhabi ideologists such as Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhâb, Ibn Baz, and Al-Outhaymine, and "Muslim Brotherhood" ideologists Sayyid Qotb, Al-Mawdoudi, and Al-Qaradawi. People of goodwill must be united in denouncing and ostracizing from society those who espouse the destructive ideology of these terrorist movements. Politicians must make sure that we do not ourselves become the executioners' accomplices, be it out of ignorance or mere laxity." (See also an interview with Moussaoui's mother and sister: "Everybody Has a Mother" (Susan Dominus, The New York Times Magazine, 2003/02/09))

"The Best Dissent Has Never Been Anti-American" (Michael Kazin, The Washington Post Outlook, 2003/02/09)
"But the American left, the natural vehicle for opponents of imperial overreach, remains a tiny persuasion - and a sharply divided one at that. The organizers of the recent Washington and San Francisco marches refuse to say anything critical of Saddam Hussein; many belong to the Workers World Party, whose stated goal is "solidarity of all the workers and oppressed against this criminal imperialist system." ...
Noam Chomsky derisively describes patriotism as the governing elite's way of telling its subjects, "You shut up and be obedient, and I'll relentlessly advance my own interests." Protesters against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank echo Malcolm X's description of himself as a "victim of Americanism" who could see no "American dream," only "an American nightmare." ...
Yet the left's cynical attitude toward Americanism has been a terrible mistake. Having abandoned their defense of national ideals, progressives also lost the ability to pose convincing alternatives for the nation as a whole." (See also: "A Patriotic Left" (Michael Kazin, Dissent, from the Fall 2002 issue))

"The wishful thinkers who would evade evil" (Alasdair Palmer, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/02/09)
"Next Saturday, more than half a million people are expected to march to Hyde Park Corner. They will be demonstrating against the attempts of George W Bush and Tony Blair to prevent a man who is a proven mass murderer from holding on to his weapons of mass destruction. ... They will ignore the much worse terrors that will follow if the decision to disarm him is not taken now. The plausibility of the anti-war stance depends on the deluded but comforting hope that if we don't confront evil, we'll manage to escape being overwhelmed by it. That is a profound mistake, as the history of the last century has taught us. We know that Saddam has, over many years, been in touch with terrorist groups, and that such groups are seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. They will use them on our cities if they get them. When that happens, children will die on a far, far greater scale than in the course of a war to topple the Butcher of Baghdad."

"Vote France Off the Island" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2003/02/09)
"The French position is utterly incoherent. The inspections have not worked yet, says Mr. de Villepin, because Saddam has not fully cooperated, and, therefore, we should triple the number of inspectors. But the inspections have failed not because of a shortage of inspectors. They have failed because of a shortage of compliance on Saddam's part, as the French know. The way you get that compliance out of a thug like Saddam is not by tripling the inspectors, but by tripling the threat that if he does not comply he will be faced with a U.N.-approved war.
Mr. de Villepin also suggested that Saddam's government pass "legislation to prohibit the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction." (I am not making this up.) That proposal alone is a reminder of why, if America didn't exist and Europe had to rely on France, most Europeans today would be speaking either German or Russian."

"Material Girl in a Political World: Madonna Plans to Protest War, Bush" (Drudge Report, 2003/02/09)
Madonna is hoping to cause maximum controversy with a new video from her forthcoming CD, American Life, the Drudge Report can reveal.
Editing is in progress on a musical video concept which insiders say may be the most shocking anti-war, anti-Bush statement yet to come from the showbusiness industry. ...
The song will be released to radio next week.
Dressed in commando fatigues, Madonna throws grenades as the techno terror beat pounds, claims a source. Limb-less men and women are reportedly shown, with bloody babies.
One disturbing clip features Iraqi children.
'The video escalates into a mad frenzy depicting the catastrophic repercussion and horror of war.'"

"The missing link?" (Jason Burke, The Observer, 2003/02/09)
An interview with Mohammed Mansour Shahab, "claimed to be the key link between Iraq and al-Qaeda":
"An hour earlier I had seen pictures of Mohammed Mansour Shahab holding a bloodied knife over the corpse of a man who had been strangled with a length of blue chord. Shahab was holding the man's right ear which he appeared to have just severed. Shahab, in a pale shirt and grey trousers, looked relaxed and was smiling at the camera. ...
Shahab had confessed to being an Iraqi agent who had been sent to kill someone in the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, the Baghdad-backed terrorist group operating within Iran. ... When, in the early spring, a reporter from The New Yorker was in Sulamaniya Shahab told him too. The resulting story was published in March with the headline 'The Threat of Saddam' and announced that 'the Kurds may have evidence of [Saddam's] ties to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.' ...
However Shahab is a liar. He may well be a smuggler, and probably a murderer too, but substantial chunks of his story simply are not true. ... At the end of our interview I told Shahab that I didn't think he had ever been to Kandahar or met bin Laden. He didn't deny it. Instead he just asked a series of questions about who I was. Why was I in Afghanistan? Was I a spy? An American? Who? I showed him my British passport and press card.
He laughed. 'You are a difficult man,' he said." (See also: "The Great Terror" (Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Yorker, from the 2002/03/25 issue))

Saturday, February 8, 2003

News and commentary:

"Nude Protests"
(Icon Images/The Age, 2003/02/08)
"Around 1000 women lie nude on a hillside at Byron Bayon, on the New South Wales north coast about 200 km miles south of Brisbane, in the shape of a heart with no war spelled inside."

"750 women go nude in protest" (Herald Sun, 2003/02/08)
Meanwhile, outside the torture chamber: "Hundreds of women bared all today in a visual anti-war demonstration on a hillside near the northern NSW beach town of Byron Bay. More than 750 female protesters shed their clothing during the protest, lying naked end to end on a grassy knoll on a private property, to form a heart shape around the words "No War" for an aerial photograph." (See also: "Snow Flakes Bare All" (Aly Sujo, New York Post, 2003/02/08): "Thirty stripped-down activists in Central Park braved yesterday's surprise early-morning snowstorm to show their bare-naked distaste for President Bush's plans to strip Saddam Hussein of his deadly arsenal. There was only one problem - not enough of them showed up. ... Braving 20-degree temperatures, members of the group Baring Witness lay stark naked in a head-to-toe formation and came close to spelling out the words "NO BUSH." But the group, which performed a similar stunt in San Francisco last November, was two nudes shy of spelling 'B.'")

"Rumsfeld annoyed over secret plan on Iraq" (Pamela Hess, UPI, 2003/02/08)
"The United States is likely to reject a proposal France and Germany are crafting for beefed up U.N. arms inspections in Iraq, a plan being developed without consulting the United States, U.S. officials said Saturday.
An annoyed U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld learned of the proposal Saturday night after it was reported in the German newsweekly der Spiegel.
The proposal, to be presented next week to the U.N. Security Council, would send thousands of U.N. troops - so-called "blue helmets" - and hundreds, possibly thousands, more inspectors to enforce U.N. resolutions calling for Iraq's disarmament."

"Rumsfeld Rebukes U.N. and NATO on Approach to Baghdad" (Thom Shanker, The New York Times, 2003/02/08)
"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld issued uncompromising challenges to both the United Nations and NATO over Iraq today, warning that the global body risked ridicule and discredit and cautioning three of America's European partners that delaying plans to defend Turkey weakened the Atlantic alliance. ...
Mr. Rumsfeld said the United Nations, by allowing Iraq to violate 17 Security Council resolutions over more than a decade, appeared to be following the League of Nations in choosing bluff over action.
Allowing Iraq to become chairman of the United Nations Commission on Disarmament and selecting Libya to lead its Commission on Human Rights showed that the institution "seems not to be even struggling to regain credibility," he said.
"That these acts of irresponsibility could happen now, at this moment in history, is breathtaking," Mr. Rumsfeld said. 'Those acts will be marked in the history of the U.N. as either the low point of that institution in retreat, or the turning point when the U.N. woke up, took hold of itself, and moved away from a path of ridicule to a path of responsibility.'" (See also a transcript of the speech: "The Global Fight against Terrorism: Status and Perspectives" (Donald H. Rumsfeld, Munich Conference on Security, 2003/02/08): "There are moments in history when the judgment and resolve of free nations are put to the test. This is such a moment. The security environment we are entering is the most dangerous the world has known. The lives of our children and grandchildren could well hang in the balance. When they look back on this period, what will they say of us? Will they say we stood still - paralyzed by a straightjacket of indecision and 20th century thinking - while dangers gathered? Or will they say that we recognized the coming danger, united, and took action before it was too late? The coming days and weeks will tell.")

"The Global Fight against Terrorism: Status and Perspectives" (John McCain, Munich Conference on Security, 2003/02/08)
A transcript of Senator McCain's speech: "Some European politicians speak of pressure from their "street" for peaceful solutions to international conflict and for resisting American power regardless of its purpose. But statements emanating from Europe that seem to endorse pacifism in the face of evil, and anti-Semitic recidivism in some quarters, provoke an equal and opposite reaction in America.
There is an American "street," too, and it strongly supports disarming Iraq, accepts the necessity of an expansive American role in the world to ensure we never wake up to another September 11th, is perplexed that nations with whom we have long enjoyed common cause do not share our urgency and sense of threat in time of war, and that considers reflexive hostility toward Israel as the root of all problems in the Middle East as irrational as it is morally offensive."

"How to make a martyr" (Margaret Wente, The Globe and Mail, 2003/02/08)
A must-read report from the West Bank on the Palestinian cult of death in general and the story of Aayat Al-Akhras, a 17-year-old school girl turned suicide bomber, in particular, found via Little Green Footballs: "Recruitment aimed at teenage girls is relatively recent, but the glorification of female terrorists has deep roots. One of Palestine's cultural heroes is Dalal Mughrabi, a young woman who blew up a bus (but not herself) in 1978, killing 36 people. Today, summer camps, schools and college courses are named after her. Her life has been featured in a TV documentary and an 18-part newspaper series, and her name features in quiz shows and crossword puzzles. "Dalal," as the narrator of the documentary puts it, "is a symbol for the Palestinian nation."
Just over a year ago, Wafa Idris became the first Palestinian woman to blow herself up. Soon after she died on Jan. 27, 2002, a lavish concert video in her honour was broadcast on TV. "My sister Wafa," goes a song dedicated to her. "Oh, the heartbeat of pride, Oh, the blossom who was on the Earth and is now in Heaven." A school has been named after her, as well as a university course. The subject of the course is democracy and human rights."

"Anti-Anti-Americanism" (Todd Gitlin, Dissent, from the Winter 2003 issue)
A review of four books, including Gore Vidal's "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated": "Anti-Americanism is an emotion masquerading as an analysis, a morality, an ideal, even an idea about what to do. When hatred of foreign policies ignites into hatred of an entire people and their civilization, then thinking is dead and demonology lives. When complexity of thought devolves into caricature, intellect is close to reconciling itself to mass murder. ...
Toward the likes of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who would define their atrocities as retaliations against the United States of America and its incidental citizens, Vidal burns with sympathy. Not for him so banal an act as moral condemnation or investigation of what sort of person commits mass murder out of political grievance. Rather, Vidal thinks it is tough-minded to indulge his desire to know "the various preoccupations on our side that drove them to such terrible acts." Note: "drove them." These killers were presumably helpless. All one needs to know about them is "the unremitting violence of the United States against the rest of the world." ...
If you wonder what might be a better society, Vidal helpfully offers up what he calls "Tim's Bill of Rights," which includes (a) no taxes, (b) metal-based currency, and (c) low legislative salaries. So much for political theory." (Note: Ironically, Gitlin himself provides an example of his description of anti-Americanism as "an emotion masquerading as an analysis" when it comes to his view of the Bush administration: "This is no easy time for anti-anti-Americans, for the Washington usurpers in power actively dare the world to hate the country they bestride. The small-minded Bush cadres are so benightedly self-interested, so contemptuous of world (and American) opinion, so reckless in rhetoric, so heedless of argument, that they will for the next two years pose an immense challenge to people of good will everywhere to resist their overweening designs without succumbing to barbarism.")

"Muslim P.C. in Cincinnati" (Christopher Caldwell, The Weekly Standard, from the 2003/02/17 issue)
A fascinating tale about the controversy surrounding the staging of "Paradise", a play based on the story of a female suicide bomber: "'Fatima,' the bomber, is an attractive character. The first thing we learn about her is that she earned a creative writing prize. Like Milton's Satan, she has the best lines, turning her invective against the Israeli army, and arguing that Jewish victims have turned perpetrators:
"Terrified of the sounds of engines in the night as they bulldoze home after home crushing grandmothers and babies into the rubble. . . . How can you do this? You! You, who know camps and humiliation and hate and death. You know IT! You have suffered it! How can you do this to a whole people? . . . My only answer is that IT has . . . become . . . you." ...
Stern and Goldstein decided to get "input" from some people who knew about the Middle East. Just to make sure there were no egregious or insulting errors of fact or emphasis. And it was at that point that trouble started. ...
Almost all of the Muslims present agreed that the play (which, it bears repeating, slants the particulars of the suicide-bombing incident in a way that favors the Palestinian side) was "Zionist propaganda." Several present say Dabdoub complained that Fatima was portrayed as a "whore," in that she had a boyfriend. (As Dabdoub later put it, having a boyfriend "is not permitted in Islam.") One man (curiously, for a Palestinian living in the United States) objected to the portrayal of this boyfriend as wanting to immigrate to the United States, which made him a "traitor"; while others called him a "coward" for urging Fatima to avoid politics. O'Malley was called a racist. At times, the complainants seemed to fault him for not himself following Islamic law."

"Total Information Unawareness" (Heather Mac Donald, The Weekly Standard, from the 2003/02/17 issue)
"Score a big one for the Luddites, and maybe for al Qaeda. On January 23, the Senate voted unanimously to ban the use of revolutionary anti-terror software before it is even developed. (Research on the software can continue provisionally for 60 days.) A hysterical media and advocacy-group campaign against the software project produced this rare senatorial unanimity. The Bush administration, so far missing in action, must finally defend this vital project.
The now-banned technology - being developed by the Pentagon's prestigious Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and dubbed Total Information Awareness (TIA) - would allow government entities involved in counterterrorism like the CIA and FBI to link their databases and analyze intelligence more effectively. ...
The breadth of the Senate's overreaction is stunning. Until now, the government has been allowed to search its own databases and even - heaven forbid! - try to improve the efficiency of those searches. No more. The Senate bill, sponsored by Oregon's Ron Wyden, freezes government intelligence analysis in its current abysmal state." (See also: "Total Misrepresentation" (Heather Mac Donald, The Weekly Standard, from the 2003/01/27 issue))

"The Rat That Roared" (Christopher Hitchens, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/02/08)
Hitchens on Jacques Chirac: "Here, also, is a positive monster of conceit. He and his foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, have unctuously said that "force is always the last resort." Vraiment? This was not the view of the French establishment when troops were sent to Rwanda to try and rescue the client-regime that had just unleashed ethnocide against the Tutsi. It is not, one presumes, the view of the French generals who currently treat the people and nation of Cote d'Ivoire as their fief. It was not the view of those who ordered the destruction of an unarmed ship, the Rainbow Warrior, as it lay at anchor in a New Zealand harbor after protesting the French official practice of conducting atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific. (I am aware that some of these outrages were conducted when the French Socialist Party was in power, but in no case did Mr. Chirac express anything other than patriotic enthusiasm. If there is a truly "unilateralist" government on the Security Council, it is France.)"

"Losing patience with the left" (Pamela Bone, The Age, 2003/02/08)
"A reader who says he has lived in Iraq emailed from London: "I am eclectically left-leaning in politics, but I cannot comprehend how the left can blithely leave the Iraqi people in the hands of one of most monstrous regimes imaginable. I hear a strong voice of isolationist hedonism in the Western left on this issue. I suspect that the left of George Orwell would never have doubted what was right." ...
I have always thought of myself as "left" (maybe "eclectically left-leaning" is a better way of putting it), but I'm not sure I know what the left stands for any more. I don't understand a left that is so imbued with cultural relativism that it thinks America, or Australia, is just as bad as Iraq. I don't understand a left that is so selective in its compassion.
If the old, left ideas of internationalism mean anything, they mean we should be trying to rid the world of Saddam Hussein, and every other rotten dictator like him. It means absolutely refusing to tolerate any longer the massive inequalities between countries. It means that everyone who goes to a peace rally should donate at least the price of a caffe latte to Oxfam." (Note: Found via Tim Blair.)

"Extremist Groups Renew Activity in Pakistan" (John Lancaster and Kamran Khan, The Washington Post, 2003/02/08)
"Over the past few months, leaders of four groups banned by Musharraf have been released from house arrest or jail. One of them, Hafiz Sayeed of Lashkar-i-Taiba, has been traveling around the country to meet with supporters and whip up enthusiasm for renewed attacks on Indian forces in Kashmir, according to a top aide. Another, Azam Tariq of Sipah-i-Sahaba, serves in parliament.
Pakistani authorities have released almost all of the hundreds of militants detained after Musharraf pledged on Jan. 12, 2002, to dismantle extremist groups that he said were "bringing a bad name to our faith," according to Pakistani officials and Western diplomats."

"The choice for Iraq's rag-tag army: be killed by the US or by Saddam" (Luke Harding, The Guardian, 2003/02/08)
An interview with a defector from Iraq's army: "Morale was very low, he said, both among his fellow conscripts and among civilians. "We want America to attack because of the bad situation in our country. But we don't want America to launch air strikes against Iraqi soldiers because we are forced to shoot and defend. We are also victims in this situation." ...
As the US military puts the finishing touches to its invasion plan, it is clear that Saddam Hussein's recruits and volunteers face bleak choices in the coming weeks. If they remain in their positions they run the risk of being pulverised by American missiles. But if they try to surrender they risk being shot. ...
The soldiers Abbas left behind, meanwhile, sit in their hilltop bunkers, pondering an unenviable fate. "We are all very tired," Abbas said. 'I haven't heard of Tony Blair. But if George Bush wants to give us freedom then we will welcome it.'"

Friday, February 7, 2003

News and commentary:

"Lebanese Druze Leader: Bush 'Mad Emperor,' Rice 'Oil-Colored,' Blair 'Peacock' With A 'Sexual Complex'; 'My Joy Was Great' at Columbia Disaster" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 466, 2003/02/07)
"Lebanon's English-language paper, The Daily Star, published a February 3, 2003 article on Walid Jumblatt, a Druze leader in Lebanon and parliamentary opposition member. The article quoted Jumblatt as saying that the true axis of evil was one of "oil and Jews," calling President George W. Bush a "mad emperor"...":
'The true axis of evil that rules the world today is an axis of oil and Jews,' Jumblatt said at his family home of Mukhtara, Chouf.
The oil axis is present in most of the U.S. administration, beginning with its president, vice-president and top advisers, including (Condoleezza) Rice, who is oil-colored, while the axis of Jews is present with Paul Wolfowitz, the leading hawk who is inciting (America) to occupy and destroy Iraq,' he continued."

"Bush Administration Raises Terror Alert" (Curt Anderson, AP/The Washington Post, 2003/02/07)
"The Bush administration Friday raised the national terror alert from yellow to orange, citing a U.S. intelligence warning of a "high risk" of terrorist attack, a senior administration official said. It's the second highest level in the color-coded system. ...
Government officials have grown increasingly concerned about the likelihood of terrorist attacks within the United States as intelligence sources are reporting an increase in terrorist activity or "chatter." One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said this activity appeared to be peaking and was rivaling that seen before the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks." (See also: "What’s Behind Latest 'Orange Alert'" (Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, Newsweek, 2003/02/07): "The Bush administration raised the national threat alert from "yellow" to "orange" Friday after receiving new intelligence reports that pointed to the possibility of multiple imminent attacks by Al Qaeda against Jewish groups and Jewish-owned businesses inside the United States, Newsweek has learned. ... Officials said the new intelligence warned about the possibility of attacks on synagogues, Jewish community centers, Jewish hospitals, youth groups, hotels and resorts.")

"Classroom Jihad" (John J. Miller, National Review, 2003/02/07)
Miller on a "report on how our schools' most popular world-history books fail to grapple honestly with the problem of militant Islamism": "'History textbooks accommodate Islam on terms that Islamists demand,' writes Gilbert T. Sewell in his 35-page analysis. "On controversial subjects, world history textbooks make an effort to circumvent unsavory facts that might cast Islam past or present in anything but a positive light. Islamic achievements are reported with robust enthusiasm. When any dark side surfaces, textbooks run and hide. ...
Take the concept of jihad, which Bernard Lewis, our most gifted interpreter of Arab culture, defines this way: "The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic law." Throughout history, of course, many Muslims have sought to achieve this goal with swords, guns, and bombs. Students reading Across the Centuries, a seventh-grade textbook published by Houghton Mifflin, however, receive a sanitized version of this reality. Jihad, according to this book, is merely a struggle "to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil." There's an element of truth in this definition, insofar as militant Islamists think anybody or anything not subscribing to their strict theology is "evil." But the book gives students no way of appreciating this larger context. To them, jihad must seem like a useful tool to suppress their urges to pass notes in class, run in the hallways, and stick chewing gum under their desks." (See also the report: "Islam and the Textbooks" (Gilbert T. Sewell, ATC, 2003/02/07): "Its main conclusions include: (1) world history textbooks hold Islam and other non-Western civilizations to different standards than those that apply to the West, (2) domestic educational activists, Muslim and non-Muslim, insist at once on harsh perspectives for the West while gilding the record of non-Western civilizations...")

"Doom, Doom, and More Doom" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2003/02/07)
"For much of the fall of 2001, I listened to and often debated a number of commentators who pontificated about the high peaks and the "Afghan winter," Ramadan, the Russian and British empires, the Arab Street — about almost anything but the respective history and efficacy of the American and Taliban military forces. And rather than being contrite about their error in predicting American slaughter in Afghanistan, our critics have moved on to Iraq to find renewed opportunity to vent their almost religious cultural pessimism. ...
If we ponder the recent past, I would think that all of Iraq outside Baghdad will be overrun in a matter of days — to the cheers of most of his citizenry. ... So if it comes to war, we will win and most likely win quickly. We will be safer — and Iraq immediately a better place — for our efforts. And we can at least say that we did not leave a madman with frightening weapons in an age of mass murder for our children to deal with. ...
Yet remember, this is also an age of untruth and boutique piety. "Internationalism" and "multilateralism" can mean that Libya, which butchered the people of Chad, adjudicates human rights; that Syria, which practiced genocide, sits on the "Security" Council, and that the two gassers, Iran and Iraq, discuss protocols of illegal weaponry — even as the Nobel Peace prize goes to the terrorist Yasser Arafat, to a Korean statesman who bribed a mass murderer for the chance at a summit, and to an ex-president who was praised by his benefactors precisely for criticizing his own government at a time of crisis and war."

"Rumsfeld remark outrages German press" (BBC News, 2003/02/07)
"Donald Rumsfeld's latest comments comparing Berlin's attitude to a war on Iraq with that of Cuba and Libya have touched a raw nerve in Germany's press.
"Axis of the ignorant" is how the left-leaning Tageszeitung headlines its report. ...
The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says "there are good reasons to criticize the German position on Iraq.. but this is a mixture of tastelessness and insult." ...
Only one major paper - Berlin's Die Welt - shows some understanding for the Rumsfeld comments. "Outrageous, but true", it says.
It warns of even worse to come if Germany votes against a possible second UN resolution on Iraq.
'Berlin's plunge into the company of pariahs, thieves and the usual suspects for anti-American activities would be complete.'" (See also: "Powell Lays Out Case Against Iraq" (Glenn Kessler and Colum Lynch, The Washington Post, 2003/02/06))

"The Coward's Way" (John Podhoretz, New York Post, 2003/02/07)
Podhoretz on a column by Mary McGrory: "McGrory wrote she "heard enough to know that Saddam Hussein, with his stockpiles of nerve gas and death-dealing chemicals, is more of a menace than I had thought . . . Colin Powell has convinced me that [war] might be the only way to stop a fiend, and that if we do go, there is reason."
"Three cheers for McGrory," Andrew Sullivan said yesterday on his Web site.
I understand the impulse to cheer. But McGrory and her ilk don't deserve it. They deserve raspberries, not cheers. They deserve ridicule, not praise. We hawks shouldn't feel vindicated by their conversion. Rather, they should feel embarrassed by how long it took them and how patently silly the cause of their conversion is.
A single speech by Powell made all the difference? Whom are they kidding? That would be acceptable for a regular citizen who doesn't read four or five newspapers a day, who doesn't attend panel discussions on world topics and who doesn't make judgments on matters of national import for a living." (See also: "I'm Persuaded" (Mary McGrory, The Washington Post, 2003/02/06) and "Anti-war argument based on emotions, not facts" (Jonah Goldberg, TownHall, 2003/02/07): "This is a woman who writes a regular column for The Washington Post, and not one of her reasons has anything to do with the actual facts at issue. She doesn't like Bush. She doesn't like his advisers. Comments about Bush's intelligence seem to be the lynchpins of her opposition to war. ... Ultimately, McGrory says she's convinced because Powell's on board with a war and she likes Powell. She deserves credit for publicly changing her mind, but that is what's so damning about the knee-jerk opposition of so many anti-war liberals - it's based in animus, not logic.")

"The Left on the New Europe" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/02/07)
Sullivan on an astonishingly ugly column in The Guardian. It would be interesting to see Steele read it in person to, say, a Czech audience: "The emergence of solid support for freedom from terror and support for the United States among so many Eastern European countries has clearly rattled some elements of the European left. It has taken a while for them to come up with some way to undermine this development, to smear it, or simply sneer at it, but we now have the new line. Here it is:

"After all, eastern Europe's elites had spent 40 years accommodating themselves to superior power. Neither the reform movement in Czechoslovakia in 1968 nor Solidarity in Poland in 1981 challenged their countries' links with Moscow. It was only when Mikhail Gorbachev told them in 1987 that they need not follow the Soviet lead that they began to break loose. It was therefore inevitable that after the USSR collapsed these countries would sense the new reality that Europe belongs to the US. The fact that ex-communist leaders such as Aleksander Kwasniewski, Gyula Horn and Ion Iliescu led the way is not a paradox so much as proof that the survival instinct usually trumps vision or principle."

This is as historically inaccurate as it is morally foul. The writer, a Guardian columnist called Jonathan Steele, seems to forget that the reason that Eastern European countries were vassals of the Soviets is because such subservience was enforced by tanks in the streets. No such tanks now exist. And maybe - just maybe - the Eastern Europeans have a better appreciation of what tyranny is and therefore a deeper loathing for Saddam than, say, columnists for the Guardian." (See also: "The new vassals" (Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, 2003/03/07), "Ten eastern European states to join in war" (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/02/06) and "United We Stand" (José María Aznar et al., The Wall Street Journal, 2003/01/30))

"Saddam stands alone" (Ferry Biedermann, Salon.com, 2003/02/07)
A report from Jordan: "While the conventional wisdom holds that Saddam's secular Baath regime and Islamic extremists regard each other with suspicion, the presence of the fundamentalists in the protests suggests that two sides are willing to put aside their differences and to join in battle against the United States. "We all hate the U.S. for what it is doing in the region," says Dr. Mohammed el-Oran, chairman of the Jordanian Medical Association and head of the Al-Ard political party, which he says is "very close" to Iraq's Baath party. As protesters chanted for "war, war, war against the Jews," and their banners proclaim the U.S. "the head of the snake," El-Oran blithely refuted the reports that his country will cooperate with the U.S. "We will not allow any American soldiers to cross Jordan to attack Iraq," he blusters. "If they even try they will be dead before they reach Iraq. They will be killed." ...
There are others, however, who despise Saddam as much as El-Oran seems to admire him. ... Antiwar demonstrations and opinions, whether Arab or European, are quickly dismissed at the Central's sticky metal tables. "Those people don't know what they are talking about," says one playwright. "It is easy to demonstrate if you haven't been in the torture chamber." Some denizens of the cafe have in fact been tortured and bear the scars to prove it. Over the past decade, their hostility to Saddam has filtered down to the grassroots through much of the Arab world."

"'The Game Is Over,' Bush Warns Iraq" (Karen DeYoung, The Washington Post, 2003/02/07)
"President Bush said yesterday that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is wasting his chance to comply with international demands that he give up his weapons of mass destruction and warned that a "last-minute game of deception" with U.N. weapons inspectors would not avoid war. "The game is over," Bush said."

Note: Sorry for the downtime. Unfortunately, as this is a free webhosting service, without any support, there's nothing I can do about it. :/

Thursday, February 6, 2003

News and commentary:

"Let's quit the UN" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2003/02/08 issue)
"But amazingly the Anglican position has now been embraced by huge majorities of the British, Australian and American peoples: only the UN can confer moral respectability on the war.
I can't see it myself. UN support for the war presently depends on Washington giving certain understandings to France. Nothing very moral about that. Some of us think the Iraqi people should be allowed to decide for themselves whether, post-Saddam, they want anything to do with the dictator's best pal, M. Chirac. But no, apparently the moral position is to hole up in the smoke-filled rooms until Jacques comes around.
So I find myself in a position the pollsters don’t seem to have provided for: I support a US-led war against Saddam, but not a UN war. ...
So I say: go ahead, Jacques, make my day. Wield your veto, and let the Texan cowboy and his ever-expanding posse go it 'alone'. I don't know whether a haughty Gallic 'Non!' would be enough to finish off the UN once and for all — these institutions are like those nuke-proof cockroaches — but I do know that another UN-sanctioned war would enshrine the principle that only the UN can sanction war."

"The Powelling" (David Warren, Ottawa Citizen/DavidWarrenOnline, 2003/02/06)
"This is why the publication of actual proof is so anticlimactic. The people demanding proof were not going to change their positions after it was supplied. They predictably shifted the criteria for action another step higher, so that now they demand even more U.N. inspectors. ...
As wise old Alistair Cooke said on Britain's BBC, we're hearing an old song from the 1930s. "Most historical analogies are false because, however strikingly similar a new situation may be to an old one, there's usually one element that is different and it turns out to be the crucial one. It may well be so here. All I know is that all the voices of the thirties are echoing through 2003."
This is the fact. The appeasers of Saddam have used the same arguments and the same language as the appeasers of Hitler. They have relied on the same fundamental reasoning - that there is no price too high, if we can win "peace in our time" - and under the same inspiration, a pant-wetting fear. They want to believe, in the face of any evidence that is presented to them, that security can be obtained by some kind of negotiation. They chant all the old 'thirties mantras about "collective security", and invoke the United Nations as their grandfathers invoked the League of Nations." (Note: Warren also mentions this appraisal of France: "The line that is now going around Washington is that of a former undersecretary of defence, who observed, 'Going to war without the French is like going deerhunting without an accordion.'" See also: "Peace for our time" (Alistair Cooke, BBC News, 2003/02/03))

"Why Washington's hawks see further than Europe's doves" (Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/02/06)
"Every time I go to Washington - I returned from there this week - I find a seriousness and depth of thought about terror, the Middle East and the nature of power that, whether one agrees with it or not, is not matched by an alternative vision this side of the Atlantic. ...
As long as ago as the 1970s, Wolfowitz was warning (in a document still classified today) of the international threat posed by Saddam Hussein. He saw the Middle East as a crucible in which were commingled the hatred of America and Britain, the resentments of an Arab world whose politics prevented both democracy and economic progress, the loathing of Israel and the adaptation of Islam for extreme political ends. ...
Is some of this rather starry-eyed? Perhaps. Is it a rhetoric that seeks to justify in moral terms the bald assertion of American power? Certainly. But if the conflict is between extremists who hate the West and want to destroy it and the political and cultural values that all European nations claim to share, why is it so wrong? And what, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder, is the alternative?"

"Despising America" (Greg Sheridan, The Australian, 2003/02/06)
"One of the fascinating things about the Australian Iraq debate is that Iraq doesn't figure in it much. The Government is almost the only participant talking about Iraq. Simon Crean barely mentioned it in his speech on Tuesday. Many of the commentators ostensibly on Iraq hardly mention Iraq at all, because analysing Iraq requires some intellectual work, whereas sounding off about the US requires only attitude.
Anti-Americanism should be studied as a serious psychological affliction, a pathological condition which paralyses the mind's analytical capacity. Contemporary anti-Americanism has many sources. Let me offer you just a few.
The first is the US itself. No society is more self-critical or self-analytical than the US. As most of our intellectual life is an imitation of the US, so our critique of the US is often an imitation, sometimes a direct import, of the US. Journalists strive to be Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate fame. ...
Many of the chattering classes cherish the image of themselves as rebels. But they live and breathe in the security provided ultimately by the US alliance system. They're rebelling against mum and dad. No one is more celebrated in contemporary Western culture than the individualistic rebel. Baby boomers are especially assiduous in awarding themselves the status of rebel moral hero. By only rebelling against the ever tolerant US they risk no personal discomfort from their heroism, always a happy combination."

"Arab Media Reactions to the Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster" (MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 122, 2003/02/06)
"In an article titled "Ramon Can Go to Hell," Hamed Salamin, a columnist for the UAE daily Al-Bayan, wrote: 'Feelings of sadness and joy intermingle at the sight of the fragments of the American space shuttle Columbia scattering in the skies of Texas. These conflicting feelings make those feeling them probe the obscurity of their souls to seek out the reasons for the sadness and the joy… An atmosphere of sadness and shock overcame the Israelis two days ago when NASA announced [Ramon's] death… This is enough to arouse joy in every heart that beats Arabism and Islam…'"

"Powell Lays Out Case Against Iraq" (Glenn Kessler and Colum Lynch, The Washington Post, 2003/02/06)
"In a statement sure to annoy the Germans, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in testimony before Congress today, lumped Germany with Libya and Cuba as countries that have ruled out any role in a U.S.-led attack or postwar reconstruction of Iraq. "I believe Libya, Cuba and Germany are ones that have indicated they won't help in any respect, I believe," said Rumsfeld, who last month angered the German and French governments by referring to them as 'old Europe.'"

"At least 31 Palestinian women murdered in 'honor killings' in 2002" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/02/06)
"At least 31 Palestinian women have been murdered in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2002 in what is known as "honor killings", where a female is executed by a male member of her family for perceived misuse of her sexuality. ... Maisoun Wahidi, a senior official with the PA's Ministry of Social Welfare, said "honor killings' constitute a very serious threat to Palestinian society. "Most of the victims are adolescent girls who were sexually abused or raped by members of their families and later killed for bringing shame," she explained. Wahidi said the ministry was working toward opening shelters for battered women and victims of sexual abuse."

"N Korea warns US of pre-emptive action" (BBC News, 2003/02/06)
North Korea has warned the United States that any decision to send more troops to the region could lead the North to make a pre-emptive attack on American forces.
US officials said on Tuesday that Washington was considering strengthening its military forces in the Pacific Ocean as a deterrent against North Korea. ...
North Korea also warned that any US strike against its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon would trigger 'full scale war'." (See also: "North Korea Reactivates Nuke Plant" (CBS News, 2003/02/05))

"Ten eastern European states to join in war" (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/02/06)
Who's unilateral now?: "Ten more countries across eastern Europe threw their support behind United States policy in Iraq last night, further demolishing Franco-German claims to speak for the continent on the crisis.
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Macedonia, and Albania pledged to take part in military action to disarm Saddam Hussein if he continues to defy the United Nations. ...
"Our countries understand the dangers posed by tyranny and the special responsibility of democracies to defend our shared values. The trans-Atlantic community must stand together to face the threat posed by the nexus of terrorism and dictators with weapons of mass destruction."
They said it was already clear that Iraq was in breach of UN Security Council resolution 1441. 'In the event of non-compliance, we are prepared to contribute to an international coalition to enforce its provisions and the disarmament of Iraq.'" (See also: "Statement of the Vilnius Group Countries" (novinite.com, 2003/02/05))

"Intelligence Break Led U.S. to Tie Envoy Killing to Iraqi Qaeda Cell" (Patrick E. Tyler, The New York Times, 2003/02/06)
"Mr. Powell said that after Mr. Zarqawi fought against the Soviets, he returned to Afghanistan at the peak of Mr. bin Laden's influence in 2000 and ran a training camp. His leg injury during the allied military campaign in 2001 may have been serious enough for amputation by the time he reached Baghdad.
Soon after Mr. Zarqawi arrived, Mr. Powell said, "nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there." ...
Mr. Powell withheld some critical details today, like the discovery by the intelligence agencies that a member of the royal family in Qatar, an important ally providing air bases and a command headquarters for the American military, operated a safe house for Mr. Zarqawi when he transited the country going in and out of Afghanistan.
The Qatari royal family member was Abdul Karim al-Thani, the coalition official said. The official added that Mr. al-Thani provided Qatari passports and more than $1 million in a special bank account to finance the network."

Added in archive:
"Anti-American Studies" (Alan Wolfe, The New Republic, 2003/01/30)

Wednesday, February 5, 2003

News and commentary:

"Germany's leading role in arming Iraq" (Marc Erikson, Asia Times, 2003/02/05)
The German Way: "Friedbert Pflueger, foreign policy spokesman of the main opposition Christian Democratic parties and an embittered critic of Schroeder's and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's Iraq policy, last Thursday accused the red-green coalition government of deliberately keeping the German and world public uninformed of BND (German foreign intelligence service) evidence and assessments on the continued existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). "If we trust our [intelligence] services, and I do, then we know that there exist weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," said Pflueger, and referred to a November 13, 2002, BND briefing of members of parliament's foreign affairs committee in which relevant information was disclosed. ...
The reason the BND is well-informed of Iraqi WMD programs - nuclear, biological and chemical - is straightforward: since the early 1980s, it has monitored German exports of dual-use nuclear technologies, precursor chemicals for poison-gas weapons, and "pharmaceutical" products and equipment for biological weapons manufacture to the Middle East. Indeed, there are strong suspicions that it was a silent partner in a Hamburg front company, Water Engineering Trading or WET, which covered for and facilitated such exports. Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said in his January 27 report that tons of Iraqi chemical and biological agents and precursors were unaccounted for. Over the years, well over half of the precursor materials and a majority of the tools and know-how for their conversion into weapons were sold to Iraq by German firms - both prior to and after the 1991 Gulf War. The BND has the details."

"Our Friends the Saudis" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/02/05)
"Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal ... has a chilling report on Warith Deen Umar, a New York-based Wahhabi imam who until his retirement in 2000 "helped run New York's growing Islamic prison program, recruiting and training dozens of chaplains, and ministering to thousands of inmates himself." Here are Umar's views on the Sept. 11 massacre: "The hijackers should be honored as martyrs, he said. The U.S. risks further terrorism attacks because it oppresses Muslims around the world. "Without justice, there will be warfare, and it can come to this country, too," he said. The natural candidates to help press such an attack, in his view: African-Americans who embraced Islam in prison."
And who's behind this? Read on:
'Imam Umar - born Wallace Gene Marks and later known as Wallace 10X - twice has traveled to Saudi Arabia for worship and study at the expense of the Saudi government and its affiliated charities, part of an extensive program aimed at spreading Islam in U.S. prisons....'" (See also: "Saudis Aided Subpoenaed Woman's Trip Out of U.S." (Susan Schmidt, The Washington Post, 2003/02/05))

"Just Like Monica" (Mark Steyn, National Review, 2003/02/05)
"If the Powell evidence made anything plain, it's this: The idea of "monitoring" a dictator is ludicrous. Saddam is quite happy to participate for another decade or two in an eternal ongoing U.N. field study of dictatorship. ...
France: "They raise questions which deserve further investigation…."
China: "We support the continuation of inspections…."
"Russia welcomes the continuation of dialogue…. We hope that this dialogue will be extremely concrete…. The Security Council may need to adopt a new resolution, and perhaps more than one…." ...
This is serious business. The U.S. and British remarks were sober and credible. The French, Russian, and Chinese were frivolous. The most relevant observation was Powell's assertion of al Qaeda's presence in Iraq for the last eight months. If that's accurate, it's not a U.N. matter, it's a threat to America's national security. Which shouldn't be dependent on the whims of the French veto."

"Powell Has It Down" (Mark Bowden, National Review, 2003/02/05)
"Powell made a compelling case that Saddam is in stark violation of the U.N. mandate. Those opposed to forcibly disarming the Baath regime will find it hard to argue anything other than an unwillingness to accept the risks and costs of doing so. Taking that position will, as Powell reiterated, render the U.N. Security Council irrelevant, and it will mean accepting the likelihood of terror attacks on America, Israel, or Europe far worse than any in recorded history."

"France: 'The Use of Force Can Only Be a Final Recourse'" (The Washington Post, 2003/02/05)
Transcripts of statements by members of the U.N. Security Council following U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N.: "French Foreign Minister Dominique De Vellpin: ... For now, the inspections regime favored by Resolution 1441 must be strengthened, since it has not been completely explored. The use of force can only be a final recourse.
Why go to war if there still exists some unused space in Resolution 1441?
Consistent with the logic of this resolution, we must move on to a new stage and further strengthen the inspections. Given the choice between military intervention and an inspections regime that is inadequate because of a failure to operate on Iraq's part, we must choose the decisive reinforcement of the means of inspection."

"Remarks to the United Nations Security Council" (Colin L. Powell, U.S. Department of State, 2003/02/05)
"The question before us all, my friends, is when will we see the rest of the submerged iceberg?
Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein has used such weapons. And Saddam Hussein has no compunction about using them again - against his neighbors and against his own people. And we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his field commanders to use them. He wouldn't be passing out the orders if he didn't have the weapons or the intent to use them.
We also have sources who tell us that since the 1980s, Saddam's regime has been experimenting on human beings to perfect its biological or chemical weapons. A source said that 1600 death-row prisoners were transferred in 1995 to a special unit for such experiments.
An eyewitness saw prisoners tied down to beds, experiments conducted on them, blood oozing around the victims' mouths, and autopsies performed to confirm the effects on the prisoners.
Saddam Hussein's humanity, inhumanity, has no limits."

"Powell lays out U.S. case" (CNN.com, 2003/02/05)
"In the highly anticipated presentation, Powell used electronic intercepts, satellite photographs and other intelligence sources to try to convince skeptical members of the council that Iraq had failed to comply with U.N. resolutions and was actively working to deceive weapons inspectors.
Powell also said that an al Qaeda terrorist network headed up by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a high-ranking Osama bin Laden lieutenant who fled to Iraq from Afghanistan, had been operating freely in Iraq for more than eight months and was using Baghdad to coordinate its activities. ...
In the U.S. translation, one official is heard to say, "We have this modified vehicle. What do we say if one of them sees it?" The other official says, "I'll come to see you in the morning. I'm worried. You all have something left."
The other official then says, "We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left."
Powell called the recordings 'part and parcel of a policy of evasion and deception that goes back 12 years.'"

"North Korea Reactivates Nuke Plant" (CBS News, 2003/02/05)
"North Korea said Wednesday that it had reactivated its nuclear facilities and is going ahead with their operation "on a normal footing."
The communist country will use the facilities to generate electricity "at the present stage," an unidentified North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said. His remarks were carried by the official KCNA news agency. ...
"The DPRK government has already solemnly declared that its nuclear activity would be limited to the peaceful purposes including the production of electricity at the present stage," the spokesman said.
However, U.S. officials and nuclear experts say the amount of electricity that North Korea can produce at its nuclear facilities is negligible. The facilities at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, were the center of a suspected nuclear weapons program in the 1990s."

"Tea with Hitler" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2003/02/05)
Peters on the "peace movement" in general and Tony Benn's interview with Saddam in particular: "Since Saddam has not given an interview with a Western TV camera present in a dozen years, it truly is a shame that Benn, who makes much of his pacifist and humanitarian credentials, didn't ask his idol a single probing question: No queries about Saddam's use of weapons of mass destruction against his own people; no questions about the slaughter of the Marsh Arabs and the Kurds; no accusations about the regime's use of torture, rape and execution on a massive scale. Nor did Benn, once an elected member of Parliament, offer a whisper about free and fair elections.
But then Saddam isn't really the point. Tony Benn has yet to buy himself a retirement home in the Baghdad suburbs. The strange - indeed, twisted - purpose was to spit in America's face.
For the European left, America is the last and only demon, with Israel portrayed alternately as its master and its servant." (See also: "Full text of Benn interview with Saddam" (BBC News, 2003/02/04))

"Pining for Freedom" (Claudia Rosett, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/02/05)
A report from Beirut on Syria's occupation of Lebanon: "On the matter of this outrageous occupation, there is from many quarters a disturbing indifference. From the Arab world, so full of dictators professing deep concern over democratic Israel's dealings with the Palestinians, there comes not a croak of indignation that despotic Syria continues to occupy Lebanon. From the democratic club of nations comes the occasional groan, including noises recently from both Congress and the European Union. But there has been no serious effort to lever Syria out of Lebanon, or to end Syria's support for Hezbollah - whose terrorists bombed the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks here in the 1980s, and today carry out assaults on Israel and threaten the U.S. itself. ...
As the more enlightened nations of Europe, along with America, ponder ways of bringing true peace and stability to the Middle East, it would be wise to put the liberation of Lebanon high on the agenda. To ignore the democratic promise of this country's early past, while leaving Syria to manage its future "stability," would be to go on incubating monsters."

"Prisoner Nation" (Norbert Vollertsen, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/02/05)
"President Bush is right to call the regime in Pyongyang "evil." I know, because I have seen the evil with my own eyes. From July 1999 to December 2000, I traveled with the German medical-aid group Cap Anamur and gained access to some of the country's most secretive regions. What I witnessed could best be described as unbelievable deprivation. As I wrote in April 2001: "In the hospitals one sees kids too small for their age, with hollow eyes and skin stretched tight across their faces. They wear blue-and-white striped pajamas, like the children in Hitler's Auschwitz." ...
As a German, I also know about Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany, how badly it failed, and how disastrous were its consequences. The only way to truly help the North Korean people and to end Pyongyang's nuclear blackmail is to hasten the collapse of Kim Jong Il's murderous regime. As President Bush said of Iraq in his State of the Union address, so too should it be said of North Korea: the real enemy of the North Korean people is not surrounding them but ruling them." (See also: "A Prison Country" (Norbert Vollertsen, The Wall Street Journal, 2001/04/17))

"Give Us a Chance to Build a Democratic Iraq" (Barham A, Salih, The New York Times, 2003/02/05)
Salih is co-prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Goverment in Iraq: "We have watched demonstrators in Washington and other cities chant, "No to war." But the Baathist dictatorship has been waging war for decades. It has inflicted hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties. Every day, Iraqis of all ethnic and religious groups are tortured in horrible ways. The regime even now is waging a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in the parts of Iraqi Kurdistan it still controls. ...
Some of the protesters in the West say that this war is simply for oil. Iraqis know that their mistreatment has too often been ignored because Iraqi oil was more important to the world than Iraqi lives. It would be a wonderful turn if at long last oil would become the vehicle of our liberation — the oil will then be a blessing and not the curse that it has been for so long.
Others say, "Justice for Palestine first." Why should justice for the Palestinians, and for the Israelis as well, be a reason to postpone justice for the Iraqis? If anything, this Iraqi dictatorship has made it all the more difficult to bring an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. A democratic Iraq will foster peace and justice in the entire region. ...
The only way for Iraqis to escape their nightmare is for the international community to help us liberate Iraq and build a postwar democracy that is peaceful, stable and based on the rule of law."

"The talking has to stop and the UN has to act" (Jack Straw, The Times, 2003/02/05)
"Calls to give the inspectors more time are futile as long as Saddam refuses to co-operate. We must not allow endless calls for more time to become a cop-out. Iraq's non-compliance stretches back not just 60 days but 600 weeks. ...
The time has arrived for the Security Council to recognise that Iraq can no longer be allowed to hold its demands in contempt. In the Security Council today, I will be making clear that we must all face up to the responsibility to deal with this issue, not defer it.
Our world faces many threats, from WMD to poverty, from disease to terrorism. By living up to the fine words of its founding charter, the United Nations has the capacity to tackle these challenges. But if we are to do so, the decisions it takes must have a force beyond mere words."

"Saudis Aided Subpoenaed Woman's Trip Out of U.S." (Susan Schmidt, The Washington Post, 2003/02/05)
"The Saudi embassy quietly provided the wife of a terror suspect a passport and transit out of the United States in November, after she was subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in New York investigating her husband's possible links to the al Qaeda terrorist network, diplomatic and law enforcement sources said. ...
Maha Hafeez Marri and her five young children flew to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 10, three days after law enforcement sources said federal prosecutors had their last contact with a lawyer representing her. The FBI had confiscated passports for Marri and her children soon after her husband was arrested in Peoria, Ill., in late 2001.
Ali S. Marri, a native of Saudi Arabia and a citizen of Qatar, is charged with lying to the FBI about phone calls he allegedly made in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to a number in United Arab Emirates that belonged to a suspected al Qaeda operative. The operative, Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, allegedly received calls from several of the Sept. 11 terrorists and managed a bank account they used."

Tuesday, February 4, 2003

News and commentary:

"Benn and Saddam: the transcript" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2003/02/04)
"SH: Let me tell you my friend - and through you the world - that Iraq has never possessed such weapons. And those we had, we never used. And even when we used them it was purely in self-defence. And then we destroyed them. Except for some warheads and bombs that got lost. And if President Bush knows where they are then he should come here personally, as you have, and find them. That would be helpful. But he will not, and the world knows why. Because he wants Iraq's oil.
TB: Well, it's interesting you should raise that. America goes to war where there's an oil interest, as we did in the Falklands, because the Falklands was an oil war - there's more oil around the Falklands than there is around the United Kingdom. And, of course, some companies are now bigger than nation states. Ford is bigger than South Africa. Toyota is bigger than Norway.
SH: Bigger than Norway?
TB: Bigger than Norway. And I do not want a world which is safe only for oil companies and motor companies, but which is dangerous for my grandchildren.
SH: I too am a grandfather. I too think of my grandchildren, Raghda and Rana's fatherless children.
TB: Fatherless? What happened to their fathers?
SH: I shot them. But there were others I didn't personally shoot, you understand. Family gatherings in our country can sometimes become, how do you say, over-exuberant."

"Full text of Benn interview with Saddam" (BBC News, 2003/02/04)
Merriam-Webster defines fair-minded as "marked by impartiality and honesty". Saddam's definition is probably "marked by torture": "Benn: Mr President, may I ask you some questions. The first is, does Iraq have any weapons of mass destruction?
Saddam: Most Iraqi officials have been in power for over 34 years and have experience of dealing with the outside world.
Every fair-minded person knows that when Iraqi officials say something, they are trustworthy. ...
There is only one truth and therefore I tell you as I have said on many occasions before that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever. ...
Benn: In relation to the inspectors, there appears to be difficulties with inspectors, and I wonder whether there's anything you can tell me about these difficulties and whether you believe they will be cleared up before Mr Hans Blix and Mr ElBaradei come back to Baghdad?
Saddam: You are aware that every major event must encounter some difficulty. ... Every fair-minded person knows that as far as resolution 1441 is concerned, the Iraqis have been fulfilling their obligations under the resolution."

"The West, Christians and Jews in Saudi Arabian Schoolbooks" (The American Jewish Committe. 2003/02/04)
A comprehensive analysis of "93 books taught in grades 1-10, mostly from the years 1999-2002" in Saudia Arabian schools: "There is no doubt that the Muslims' power irritates the infidels and spreads envy in the hearts of the enemies of Islam - Christians, Jews and others - so they plot against them, gather [their] force against them, harass them and seize every opportunity in order to eliminate the Muslims. Examples of this enmity are innumerable, beginning with the plot of the Jews against the Messenger and the Muslims at the first appearance of the light of Islam and ending with what is happening to Muslims today - a malicious Crusader-Jewish alliance striving to eliminate Islam from all the continents. Those massacres that were directed against the Muslim people of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Muslims of Burma and the Philippines, and in Africa, are the greatest proof of the malice and hatred harbored by the enemies of Islam to this religion.
Geography of the Muslim World, Grade 8, (1994) p. 32"

"History Lessen" (Spencer Ackerman, The New Republic, 2003/02/04)
"It is by now a well-established fact that chemical weapons claimed the lives of over 5,000 Kurds in the northern Iraqi town of Halabja on March 16, 1988. It is equally well-established that responsibility for this atrocity lies with Saddam Hussein. Indeed, there is virtual unanimity among the dozens of journalists, government delegations, and international human rights groups who have investigated the matter that Halabja was the first frightful act of Saddam's Anfal campaign, a genocide that consumed almost 100,000 Kurds in all. Yet according to a chilling and incoherent op-ed published in Friday's New York Times, Saddam had nothing to do with the massacre after all. ...
More important, though, Van Hollen grasps the distinction that eludes Pelletiere, which is that while Bush invokes the Kurdish genocide in his brief against Saddam, the president does so to establish Saddam's willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, not to argue that, as Pelletiere ludicrously puts it, "we go to war over Halabja." The only one fighting a war over Halabja, it seems, is Stephen Pelletiere. And it's one he lost before he'd ever begun." (See also: "A War Crime or an Act of War?" (Stephen Pelletiere, The New York Times, 2003/01/31))

"UK Profs Nix Israel" (Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, 2003/02/04)
Dalrymple on the British academic boycott of Israel : "But why Israel, you may ask, when the world pullulates with undesirable regimes whose performance would make Israel's seem positively splendid even if every last accusation against it were true? ...
Why do Rose and his acolytes not fulminate against Syria and call for a boycott of a government that has, after all, killed many more Arabs than Israel ever has? The first reason, no doubt, is that a boycott of Syrian science would not require much in the way of positive activity: Syrian science is self-boycotting, as it were. The second reason - a more important one - is contempt for the Arabs masquerading as sympathy for them. They are not to be held to the same standards of conduct as the Israelis, because they are…well, Arabs - and everyone knows that you can't expect an Arab government to refrain from massacring its own people, let alone to be democratic and to expose itself to regular elections that it might actually lose.
Here is one more example of what the French author Pascal Bruckner described: compassion as contempt. We boycott the Israelis because they are like us, and therefore ought to know better; we don't boycott the Arabs because, poor things, they don't know any better."

"Pentagon adviser: France 'no longer ally'" (Martin Walker, UPI, 2003/02/04)
"France is no longer an ally of the United States and the NATO alliance "must develop a strategy to contain our erstwhile ally or we will not be talking about a NATO alliance" the head of the Pentagon's top advisory board said in Washington Tuesday.
Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and now chairman of the Pentagon's Policy Advisory Board, condemned French and German policy on Iraq in the strongest terms at a public seminar organized by a New York-based PR firm and attended by Iraqi exiles and American Middle East and security officials. ...
Although he is not an official of the Bush administration, Perle's position as the Pentagon's senior civilian adviser gives his harsh remarks a quasi-official character and reflects the growing frustration in the White House and Pentagon with the French and German reluctance to support their U.S. and British allies.
"Very considerable damage has already been done to the Atlantic community, including NATO, by Germany and France," Perle said."

"France talks peace but sends warships east" (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/02/04)
"Watch what Jacques Chirac does, not what he says. ... His public posture is to resist the slide towards an "unjustifiable" war that is opposed by the citizens of every European state.
But early today a French armada including an aircraft carrier, nuclear submarine and other warships slipped out of Toulon and headed for the eastern Mediterranean. ...
It suggests that he may copy President François Mitterrand's tactics in the first Gulf war, which was to join the US-led coalition at the last moment after extracting every ounce of possible advantage. ...
M Chirac is walking a political tightrope at home, where public opinion is set against any military action not sanctioned by the UN and where an immigrant population of four million Muslims exercises an unspoken influence on policy.
Muslim youths in Paris and other cities are carrying out a low-level "intifada" against French authority, burning cars in nightly raids, mostly unreported in the national news. The risk of escalating violence is real."

"The UN is fast becoming a threat to world peace" (Barbara Amiel, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/02/04)
"The United Nations has been a thorn in the side of the free world since the mid-1970s, when Unesco was taken over by unfree countries of the Third World and the General Assembly passed the "Zionism is racism" resolution in 1975. Even so, some of us argued in print that, so long as the UN contributed a 0.1 per cent chance to helping maintain world peace, it was a worthwhile investment. That argument has worn thin.
By now the United Nations, with its Human Rights Commission chaired by Libya, is not only irrelevant; it is coming perilously close to endangering world peace and security. The majority of its members are in breach of most tenets of the UN Charter and yet these same members are rewarded with plum UN assignments.
In March, Iraq will assume the chairmanship of the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. The UN is rapidly becoming more of a force for harm than good.
Countries that actually practise and value the UN constitution should probably withdraw from it. ... Still, if America pulled out, an unreformed UN steered by such luminaries as Kofi Annan and Mary Robinson would likely collapse under its own irrelevant ineptitude or be forced to reveal itself as a collection of quasi-Marxist and Islamist dictatorships with a few whey-faced Europeans strutting about."

"The '68 reasons why Germany will always fail" (Michael Gove, The Times, 2003/02/04)
"Germany may console itself that its position on Iraq, as Europe's sternest critic of the Anglo-American determination to disarm President Saddam Hussein, is at least a sign of moral strength. Unfortunately, it is only the most egregious example of one of the country's greatest political weaknesses — the hold on power now exercised by those infused with the student revolutionary spirit of 1968. ...
There has been a tendency among German elites over the past 200 years to invest the ruling ideology of the moment with the quasi-mystical quality of a political religion. Those thinkers who reacted against the French Enlightenment, such as Hegel and Herder, contributed to a romantic, anti-liberal, nationalist temper in 19th-century Germany. ...
The tragedy of the '68 generation is that they are more like their ancestors than they will ever admit. They also want Germany to follow a special path, a Sonderweg, more elevated than that taken by grubby mercantile nations such as Britain and America. The problem with the special path Germans are now treading, however, is that it takes their nation further into the wilderness."

"'A Sea of Fire,' or Worse?" (Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times, 2003/02/04)
"The North Korean nuclear crisis is far more perilous than many people realize. The White House, wanting to keep the focus on Iraq, did not even bother to tell us that satellite images show North Korea apparently taking steps toward reprocessing plutonium. It was left to my Times colleague David (Scoop) Sanger to alert the public a few days ago. ...
To understand how dangerous the Korean Peninsula could become, consider one worst-case scenario: ...
March 26: North Korea test-fires a two-stage Taepodong 2 missile. It soars over Japan, knocking 9 percent off the Tokyo stock market. C.I.A. analysts warn that a three-stage version of the Taepodong 2 could reach the U.S. mainland. ...
July 10: North Korea tests a nuclear device. Stocks tumble worldwide, leading a big Japanese bank to the edge of bankruptcy.
July 12: North Korea formally declares itself a nuclear state, proudly asserting that the "Korean Bomb" will be used on behalf of all Koreans to combat Japanese and American aggressors. Stocks plunge worldwide, triggering a Japanese banking crisis and a global recession. ...
Aug. 5: Iranian and Libyan nuclear buyers are spotted shopping in Pyongyang." (See also: "Satellites Said to See Activity at North Korean Nuclear Site" (David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, The New York Times, 2003/01/31))

"Arrests of al Qaeda terrorists disrupt plans for attack" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2003/02/04)
"Al Qaeda is planning a mass-casualty attack to rival September 11, but preparations have been disrupted by arrests of terrorists during the past several months, according to U.S. intelligence officials. ...
Additionally, the intelligence reports stated that any major attack is likely to be preceded by smaller-scale strikes, including assassinations of prominent people in the United States, the official said.
Officials did not provide details on the latest threat, which was contained in intelligence reports sent to senior Bush administration officials last week. The warning did not say whether the attacks would be in the United States or abroad."

Monday, February 3, 2003

News and commentary:

"European Union Must Put a Stop to Duplicity!" (SMCCDI, 2003/02/03)
A statement by The Movement of Iranian Students, found via Little Green Footballs: "Freedom-loving Europeans:
That group of European policy-makers who for a long time have been busy profiting from poverty, suffering, torture, and death must know that the great Iranian nation, in a not-so-distant future, will uproot the vile presence of the fascist Hezbollah; and, following it, all of the inequitable contracts, which are in fact the price of European silence towards the crimes of the Islamic Republic, will be reanalyzed. It is clear that the future relations of a free Iran with each European country will be shaped by what their current basic position is towards the Islamic Republic! ...
The "Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran," while condemning the opportunistic policy of the European Union pertaining to the Islamic Republic - especially the shameful act of its members in abstaining from condemning the Islamic Republic's top officials - seeks support from the public opinion of the nations across that continent to make a decisive stance against the continuous violation of human rights in Iran."

"The Unknown" (Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Yorker, from the 2003/02/10 issue)
"According to several intelligence officials I spoke to, the relationship between bin Laden and Saddam's regime was brokered in the early nineteen-nineties by the then de-facto leader of Sudan, the pan-Islamist radical Hassan al-Tourabi. Tourabi, sources say, persuaded the ostensibly secular Saddam to add to the Iraqi flag the words "Allahu Akbar," as a concession to Muslim radicals.
In interviews with senior officials, the following picture emerged: American intelligence believes that Al Qaeda and Saddam reached a non-aggression agreement in 1993, and that the relationship deepened further in the mid-nineteen-nineties, when an Al Qaeda operative - a native-born Iraqi who goes by the name Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi - was dispatched by bin Laden to ask the Iraqis for help in poison-gas training. Al-Iraqi's mission was successful, and an unknown number of trainers from an Iraqi secret-police organization called Unit 999 were dispatched to camps in Afghanistan to instruct Al Qaeda terrorists."

"CBS TV Star Compares America to Nazi Germany" (NewsMax.com, 2003/02/03)
Can we please, please, please stop this braindead habit of comparing America, Bush, Israel, Sharon and their policies with Nazi Germany, Hitler and the Holocaust? To compare liberal democracies with the worst totalitarian regime in the history of mankind is not only an outrageous mockery of democratic values and freedoms, but also of the actual victims of the Nazi regime's atrocities: "David Clennon, star of the hit CBS television series "The Agency," said Monday that the "moral climate" of America under President Bush is similar to that which pervaded Nazi Germany. Then, apparently not satisfied with merely insulting the U.S., Clennon contended that the only difference between Bush and Adolf Hitler is that Hitler was smarter.
"I'm saying that the moral climate within the ruling class in this country is not that different from the moral climate within the ruling class of Hitler's Germany," Clennon told nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity.
When Hannity asked if Clennon was comparing the U.S. president to the Nazi leader, the CBS star replied, 'I'm not comparing Bush to Adolf Hitler - because George Bush, for one thing, is not as smart as Adolf Hitler. And secondly George Bush has much more power than Adolf Hitler ever had.'" (Note: Found via Right Wing News. See also: "Godwin's Law" (The Jargon Dictionary): "'As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.' There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.")

"Hamza Shuttle Outrage" (Sky News, 2003/02/03)
"Firebrand Muslim cleric Abu Hamza has sparked outrage by saying the shuttle disaster showed the mission was a "Trinity of Evil" punished with death by Allah.
Mr Hamza, who until recently preached at Finsbury Park mosque in north London, made the claim because the shuttle carried Americans, an Israeli Jew and an Indian-born Hindu. ...
He said British Muslims would take it as a "sign from God" that Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli in space, was killed over an area of Texas called Palestine. ... 'It is a punishment from God. Muslims see it that way. It is a trinity of evil because it carried Americans, an Israeli and a Hindu, a trinity of evil against Islam.'"

"Evidence against Iraq 'unmistakable'" (BBC News, 2003/02/03)
"'Eight weeks have now passed since Saddam Hussein was given his final chance. The evidence of co-operation withheld is unmistakable,' Mr Blair told British MPs, many of whom are unsure if war against Iraq can be justified.
Mr Blair's comments follow the release by Downing Street at the weekend of a dossier which accuses the Iraqi regime of "deliberately hampering" the searches by weapons inspectors.
The report declares that Iraqi officials "start long arguments" with their colleagues while investigations are under way to allow time for "incriminating evidence" to be hidden, and insists that car crashes are being organised to hinder inspectors if they start heading to another site." (See also the dossier: "Iraq's regime of fear and deception detailed in new report" (10 Downing Street, 2003/02