Archived news and commentary: April 14 - 20, 2003

2003/06/23 - 2003/06/29
2003/06/16 - 2003/06/22
2003/06/09 - 2003/06/15
2003/06/02 - 2003/06/08
2003/05/26 - 2003/06/01
2003/05/19 - 2003/05/25
2003/05/12 - 2003/05/18
2003/05/05 - 2003/05/11
2003/04/28 - 2003/05/04
2003/04/21 - 2003/04/27
2003/04/14 - 2003/04/20
2003/04/07 - 2003/04/13
2003/03/31 - 2003/04/06

Sunday, April 20, 2003

News and commentary:

"Saddam's Family Lifestyles Shock Iraqis" (Niko Price, AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/04/20)
"The blacksmith paused from his looting of the palace to gape at a door a foot thick, and at the empty, marble-lined safe inside.
"This safe is as big as the room I rent, and I live there with my wife and two children," said Ahmed Hamza, 28. "I thought the rumors were exaggerated, but these people lived in a different world."
This house was owned by Hala Hussein, Saddam's thirtysomething daughter, whereabouts currently unknown. She had two more across the street, several across the river, and even more scattered around the city. And that was just Baghdad. ...
Based on visits to several of the houses, Saddam appears to have lived more like a drug lord than a president. Iraq's rulers had more money than taste — and an obsession with guns, cash and women.
Odai Hussein, Saddam's eldest son, had a compound in the corner of the Republican Palace — a city-within-a-city complete with six-lane highways and traffic lights — that included a zoo featuring lions, cheetahs and bear.
Odai's house had reams of pornography off the Internet, boxes of sexual fortifiers, rooms of fine wines and liquors and Cuban cigars with his name on the wrappers.
Nearby, U.S. soldiers are living in a domed house they believe was the residence of Odai's concubines. With a pink-and-white color scheme, it has statuettes of couples in foreplay, couches with fluffy pillows and a swimming pool with a bar."

"Last Days of a Brutal Reign" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2003/04/20)
"Much the most frequent of the visitors to the Palestine Hotel was the information minister, Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, whose performances were so far removed from reality that reporters flocked to see if he could top his own extravagant inventions with yet more fantastical accounts of Iraqi battlefield triumphs. The more dire the situation facing the Iraqi forces, the more triumphalist Mr. Sahhaf became. ...
The following day, acknowledging that Americans were indeed at the airport, he offered a new spin. "I can say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that they have started to commit suicide under the walls of Baghdad."
By the time American tanks were in plain view from where he spoke to reporters, he had resorted to a sort of magician's art, of now you see it, now you don't. "I am here to inform you that you are too far from reality," he said.
But perhaps the most revealing of his statements had to do with truth, a commodity always in short supply under Mr. Hussein. At the Information Ministry, destroyed by American cruise missiles about halfway through the war, the most mendacious and corrupt officials were often the ones most intent on offering lectures about truth. Come the war, and Mr. Sahhaf was the unquestioned champion. 'Lying is forbidden in Iraq," he said at one news conference. 'President Saddam Hussein will tolerate nothing but truthfulness, as he is a man of great honor and integrity.'"

"German spies offered help to Saddam in run-up to war" (David Harrison, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/04/20)
"Germany's intelligence services attempted to build closer links to Saddam's secret service during the build-up to war last year, documents from the bombed Iraqi intelligence HQ in Baghdad obtained by The Telegraph reveal.
They show that an agent named as Johannes William Hoffner, described as a "new German representative in Iraq" who had entered the country under diplomatic cover, attended a meeting with Lt Gen Taher Jalil Haboosh, the director of Iraq's intelligence service.
During the meeting, on January 29, 2002, Lt Gen Haboosh says that the Iraqis are keen to have a relationship with Germany's intelligence agency "under diplomatic cover", adding that he hopes to develop that relationship through Mr Hoffner.
The German replies: "My organisation wants to develop its relationship with your organisation."
In return, the Iraqis offered to give lucrative contracts to German companies if the Berlin government helped prevent an American invasion of the country."

Saturday, April 19, 2003

"Volunteers Recall Bitter Memories, Betrayal In Iraq" (Mohamed Forati, IslamOnline.net, 2003/04/19)
"After three tough weeks in Iraq, Tunisian volunteers who fought against the U.S.-led invasion forces returned home with haunting memories and bitter feeling of betrayal and hatred.
"We left for Iraq as volunteers to join the Iraqis who are die-set to defend their country, but returned victims to betrayal by some Iraqi army members and hatred - and even attacks - by some Iraqi civilians," recalled Al-Tayeb Bin Othman, a 27-year-old teacher. ...
To add up to the plight of people leaving their country for the defense of another, the inhabitants of southern town of Nassiriyah welcomed Arab volunteers with nothing but gunfire.
"We were fired at by the town residents, who killed three of us. They just shouted asking us 'why you are here? Did you came to defend Saddam?'" Emad, another volunteer, asserted." (Note: Found via Best of the Web Today.)

"WaPo Opposes Pipes Nomination" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2003/04/19)
Don't mention the war: "The gutless ostrich known as the Washington Post comes out against the nomination of Daniel Pipes to the U.S. Institute of Peace: Fueling a Culture Clash.

Many Muslims received the news that the White House had nominated scholar Daniel Pipes to, of all places, the U.S. Institute of Peace as sort of a cruel joke. The institute is a quasi-governmental think tank dedicated to international "peace and conflict resolution"; one of its latest projects is the Special Initiative on the Muslim World, begun after Sept. 11, 2001, as a bridge between cultures. Mr. Pipes has long been regarded by Muslims as a destroyer of such bridges. And it takes only a glimpse at the latest column posted on his Web site to see why. The column, written for the New York Post, is about Hasan K. Akbar, the U.S. soldier in Kuwait charged with throwing a grenade at his fellow soldiers: "No one yet knows Akbar's motives, but ignoring that it fits into a sustained pattern of political violence by American Muslims amounts to willful self-deception. When will officialdom acknowledge what is staring it in the face?"

Aaarrrrggghh!
The editors of the WaPo do not even bother to argue against this quote from Pipes, which is plainly true on the very face of it; they seem to believe that simply quoting the statement proves their point." (See also: "Fueling a Culture Clash" (The Washington Post, 2003/04/19))

"The Cassandra Chronicles" (The Weekly Standard, from the 2003/04/21 issue)
A chronicle of the "stupidity of the antiwar doomsayers": "The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated....We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable. . . . [W]e will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost."
- Scott Ritter, on a South African radio station, March 25, 2003 ...
"If history is a guide, you cannot subdue a large and hostile city except by destroying it completely. Short of massacre, we will not inherit a pacified Iraq. . . . To support 'the groundwork' for this effort is to support a holocaust, quite soon, against Iraqi civilians and also against the troops on both sides. That is what victory means."
- James K. Galbraith on the American Prospect website, April 1, 2003"

"Soldiers Stumble on Outrageous Fortune" (David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times, 2003/04/19)
"Two Army sergeants went searching for saws Friday to clear away branches that were blocking their Humvees. But they stumbled across a sealed-up cottage that aroused their curiosity — and ultimately led to the discovery of an estimated $650 million in cash.
The sergeants tore down a cinder-block and concrete barricade at the cottage door and found 40 sealed galvanized aluminum boxes lined up neatly on the stone floor. Breaking open one box, they were stunned to discover 40 sealed stacks of uncirculated $100 bills — $100,000 per stack, or $4 million in the box. In all, the 40 boxes were assumed to contain $160 million. ...
Their discovery set off a nighttime search of abandoned estates tucked among parks and canals. By 11 p.m., soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division had found two more cottages containing at least 84 more boxes presumed to hold $336 million in cash, for a total of $656 million.
The loot apparently was hidden by fleeing Baath Party members and senior Republican Guard commanders who had lived in the wooded neighborhood just east of Saddam Hussein's Presidential Palace. Commanders scrambled to secure the area overnight before word of the discoveries triggered a crush of fortune seekers."

News and commentary:

"'I'm Right, You're Wrong, Go To Hell'" (Bernard Lewis, The Atlantic, from the May 2003 issue)
"To what extent is a religiously defined civilization compatible with pluralism - tolerance of others within the same civilization but of different religions? This crucial question points to a major distinction between two types of religion. For some religions, just as "civilization" means us, and the rest are barbarians, so "religion" means ours, and the rest are infidels. Other religions, such as Judaism and most of the religions of Asia, concede that human beings may use different religions to speak to God, as they use different languages to speak to one another. God understands them all. ...
For those taking the relativist approach to religion (in effect, "I have my god, you have your god, and others have theirs"), there may be specific political or economic reasons for objecting to someone else's beliefs, but in principle there is no theological problem. For those taking the triumphalist approach (classically summed up in the formula "I'm right, you're wrong, go to hell"), tolerance is a problem. Because the triumphalist's is the only true and complete religion, all other religions are at best incomplete and more probably false and evil; and since he is the privileged recipient of God's final message to humankind, it is surely his duty to bring it to others rather than keep it selfishly for himself."

"Oil, Food and a Whole Lot of Questions" (Claudia Rosett, The New York Times, 2003/04/18)
"The oil-for-food program is no ordinary relief effort. Not only does it involve astronomical amounts of money, it also operates with alarming secrecy. Intended to ease the human cost of economic sanctions by letting Iraq sell oil and use the profits for staples like milk and medicine, the program has morphed into big business. Since its inception, the program has overseen more than $100 billion in contracts for oil exports and relief imports combined. ...
Initially, all contracts were to be approved by the Security Council. Nonetheless, the program facilitated a string of business deals tilted heavily toward Saddam Hussein's preferred trading partners, like Russia, France and, to a lesser extent, Syria. About a year ago, in the name of expediency, Mr. Annan was given direct authority to sign off on all goods not itemized on a special watch list. Yet shipments with Mr. Annan's go-ahead have included so-called relief items such as "boats" and boat "accessories" from France and "sport supplies" from Lebanon (sports in Iraq having been the domain of Saddam's Hussein's sadistic elder son, Uday)."

"Oleaginous" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2003/04/18)
Hitchens on "People who prefer Saddam Hussein to Halliburton": "In the waning days of the argument over whether to intervene in Iraq, I came to think that I could, with a 99 percent chance of being bang! on target and inflicting no collateral damage, spot an obvious phony. At the meeting or the debate, someone would get up and announce that of course we'd all be better off without the "bad guy" Saddam Hussein. Having cleared his or her throat in this manner, the phony would go on to say what the real problem was (East Timor sometimes, or the imminent obliteration of tens of thousands of Baghdadi civilians, or Ariel Sharon's plan to expel all the inhabitants of the West Bank under cover of an American imperialist war).
None of these hysterical predictions came true, but now I can't open a bulletin from the reactionary right or the anti-war left without being told that Iraq is already worse off without Saddam Hussein. And how can we tell that Iraq is worse off? Because contracts for its reconstruction are being awarded to American corporations. ...
But unless the anti-war forces believe Saddam's fires should be allowed to burn out of control indefinitely, they must presumably have an idea of which outfit should have got the contract instead of Boots and Coots. I think we can be sure that the contract would not have gone to some windmill-power concern run by Naomi Klein or the anti-Starbucks Seattle coalition, in the hope of just blowing out the flames or of extinguishing them with Buddhist mantras." (See also: "Thanks for Nothing" (Michael Kinsley, Slate, 2003/04/18))

"Hezbollah: 'A-Team Of Terrorists'" (CBS News, 2003/04/18)
"The Islamic government of Iran reportedly subsidizes Hezbollah to the tune of $100 million a year, providing its several thousand well-trained fighters with sophisticated weapons systems. Iran also sends advisors, and according to U.S. intelligence, issues its marching orders. ...
Openly calling for terrorism against Israel, Nasrallah is also urging on suicide operations.
"In Palestine, these operations are the only way to root out the Zionists," says Nasrallah during a speech.
That's the kind of material Hezbollah broadcasts daily on its own television station, Al Manar, which reaches a worldwide audience by satellite. Because of Washington's support for Israel, Hezbollah is conducting a ferocious propaganda offensive against the United States.
This propaganda message broadcast on Al Manar portrays U.S. foreign policy as Satanic and shows an image of the Statue of Liberty, a skull for her face, wearing a gown dripping with the blood of other nations."

News and commentary:

"The Agony of Deceit" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/04/17)
Taranto on Joshua Micah Marshall's article "Practice to Deceive": "But Marshall also accuses the Bush administration of actually deceiving the American people, by concealing its true purposes:

The president has not even leveled with the public that such a clean-sweep approach to the Middle East is, in fact, their plan. This breaks new ground in the history of pre-war presidential deception. . . .

The great majority of the American people have no concept of what kind of conflict the president is leading them into. The White House has presented this as a war to depose Saddam Hussein in order to keep him from acquiring weapons of mass destruction--a goal that the majority of Americans support. But the White House really has in mind an enterprise of a scale, cost, and scope that would be almost impossible to sell to the American public. The White House knows that. So it hasn't even tried. Instead, it's focused on getting us into Iraq with the hope of setting off a sequence of events that will draw us inexorably towards the agenda they have in mind.

Jonah Goldberg asks the pertinent question: "If this is a secret plan, how did Josh Marshall stumble on it? Marshall's proof that there is a secret plan afoot actually derives from on-the-record quotes and public statements." Marshall might respond that the average American doesn't read Foreign Affairs or The Weekly Standard and isn't familiar with the thoughts of Richard Perle and Max Boot. ... Now, maybe Marshall is right and this is all a recipe for disaster. Maybe Howard Dean or John Kerry will become president in 2005 and reverse course, so that we'll never find out. But it's hard to see how anyone can accuse the president of deceiving the American people about his reformist ambitions or the possibility of a long war on many fronts. He's said it all, over and over, to anyone who'll bother to listen." (See also: "Practice to Deceive" (Joshua Micah Marshall, The Washington Monthly, from the April 2003 issue))

"Solidarity With Terrorists" (Brian Sayre, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/04/17)
Sayre on the International Solidarity Movement: "On March 27th, a counterguerilla squad of the IDF's Golani brigade was in close pursuit of a leading member of Islamic Jihad, Shadi Sukia, responsible for recruiting several suicide bombers, laying land mines, and sniping. They traced him to a building in Jenin holding an ISM office, but the coordinator, Susan Barcley, refused to let them in. Unfortunately for both ISM and the terrorists, the Israeli Defense Force was not requesting. They entered the office, found the hiding terrorist, and arrested both him and Barcley.
While the International Solidarity Movement coordinator later claimed she did not know Sukia was a terrorist, this does not excuse her refusal to cooperate with the IDF. And it most certainly does not excuse what the IDF found in a search of the International Solidarity Movement's premises - a pistol and a cache of Kalashnikov rifles. ...
When the facts are out, no one should be fooled by the International Solidarity Movement's attempts to turn Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall into martyrs. These people defended the most depraved type of violence - the violence of bombs in marketplaces, the violence of 9/11, the violence of dictators like Saddam Hussein. It's no coincidence that Hurndall served as a human shield for the Iraqi dictatorship before arriving in Israel. His claim, that he was in Iraq taking pictures for a college course, rings hollow - most young men don't travel to war zones for a few credit-hours."

"North Korea's Human Catastrophe" (Carl Gershman, The Washington Post, 2003/04/17)
"The human catastrophe that until now has been a sideshow to the controversy over nuclear proliferation has three interlocking dimensions. The first is the famine that has been responsible for anywhere from 1 million to 3 million deaths since the mid-1990s. The famine is not the result of drought or agricultural failure, nor is it the result of the absence of feedback mechanisms, such as a free media, that might alert governments to food shortages. In North Korea the government is fully aware of the famine, so much so that it uses it deliberately as a weapon against those parts of the population it classifies as least loyal to the regime. In keeping with this policy, it has prohibited relief agencies from monitoring food deliveries to the most severely affected regions.
The famine has caused desperate North Koreans to flee the country, thus producing a refugee crisis that is the second dimension of the human catastrophe from which the rest of the world has turned its gaze. Some 300,000 North Korean refugees are now hiding in China, fearful of being rounded up and forcibly repatriated. ...
This raises the third dimension of the human catastrophe, which is the North Korean gulag. It is estimated that the system of political prisons and labor camps in North Korea holds more than 200,000 people, and that, given the harsh conditions in these camps, some 400,000 prisoners have perished in the past three decades. In keeping with North Korean founder Kim Il Sung's dictate that class enemies "must be eliminated through three generations," parents, children, grandchildren and other relatives of prisoners are also sent to the gulag; and forced abortion and infanticide are standard practice, as prisoners are considered subhuman and are not permitted to have children."

"Political Shock and Awe" (James Schlesinger, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/04/17)
"The war has most dramatically conveyed the following realities:
1.) The U.S. is a very powerful country.
2.) It is ill-advised to arouse this nation by attacking or repeatedly provoking it - or by providing support to terrorism; and
3.) Regularly to do so means a price will likely be paid. Far less credence will now be placed in the preachments of Osama bin Laden regarding America's weakness, its unwillingness to accept burdens, and the ease of damaging its vulnerable economy, etc.
Many have argued that greater self-criticism or better understanding of the roots of terrorism would magically dispel the hostility displayed in much of the Arab world. This was reflected in widespread demonstrations as we responded to 9/11 in Afghanistan; pervasive sympathy for, as well as some direct support of, bin Laden; celebration of 9/11 itself; constant anti-American whining in the Arab press; and a steady flow of critiques from Arab governments (albeit sometimes primarily for domestic consumption.) ...
There is a notable diminution of the earlier braggadocio. The many-heralded "catastrophes" did not take place. There was no "explosion" in the Middle East, no widespread unrest immediately upsetting governments, no endless urban warfare, no heavy casualties, no use of chemical and biological weapons (which Saddam supposedly did not have). What we have seen instead is a stunned realization of an awesome display of military power."

"Experts: Looters Had Keys to Iraqi Vaults" (Jocelyn Gecker, AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/04/17)
"Some of the looters who ravaged Iraqi antiquities appeared highly organized and even had keys to museum vaults and were able to take pieces from safes, experts said Thursday at an international meeting.
The U.N. cultural agency gathered some 30 art experts and cultural historians in Paris on Thursday to assess the damage to Iraqi museums and libraries looted in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion.
Although much of the looting was haphazard, experts said some of the thieves clearly knew what they were looking for and where to find it, suggesting they were prepared professionals."

"Unmarked Graves Testify Silently to Iraq's Decades of Grief" (C. J. Chivers, The New York Times, 2003/04/17)
"The mounds stretch in rows for more than a quarter-mile across the hard, cracked earth at the edge of an industrial park here. Many are covered in weeds; all but two look undisturbed.
They are unmarked graves, nearly 1,600 in neat lines. They are close enough together in places that it would seem the skull of one skeleton might be within a yard of another skeleton's feet.
The first of the potential mass graves has been found in this northern Iraqi city, between a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant and one of the mansions of a cousin of Saddam Hussein. ...
Charles A. Forrest, executive director of Indict, a London-based organization that has been seeking war crimes against Mr. Hussein and senior Baath officials, said a period of methodical examination would be required at this site and the others almost certain to be found.
He said teams of researchers and examiners were departing for Iraq to begin the work.
"This is exactly what we expected would be found when the situation opened up," he said. 'Where are the bodies of the 182,000 Kurds killed in the Anfal? They have to be somewhere.'"

News and commentary:

"Captain America, Traitor?" (Michael Medved, National Review, 2003/04/16)
Et Tu, Captain America?: "Captain America, the patriotic superhero whose comic-book exploits inspired the nation in World War II, now feels uncertain about the nation’s cause; in his latest adventures, The Sentinel of Liberty seems disillusioned, embittered, and surprisingly sympathetic to terrorists. ...
In addition to making one-sided, damning references to controversial elements of American foreign policy, Marvel Comics recently highlighted totally invented atrocities to underscore the nation’s vicious, racist nature.
In January, 2003, the company published Truth — Red, White and Black, a prequel to the original Captain America story. That classic tale from 1941 focused on Steve Rogers, a blond-haired weakling who, after rejection for military service, volunteers for a secret government program. Scientists inject him with "super soldier" serum, producing a muscular fighting machine.
In the new addition to the yarn, we learn that the government first tested the formula on unsuspecting black soldiers, employed as human guinea pigs. The evil Army scientist in the comic baldly declares: "It's necessary to see if our methods apply to the inferior races." White commanders separate African-American GI's into two groups, one of which speeds away on locked trucks (like Nazi train transports) to a secret laboratory, while the remaining soldiers face mass murder from squadrons of machine gunners (like Nazi Einsatzgruppen). The sadistic experimentation on the survivors (in the PG-rated series) includes horrific panels showing bodies exploding, and laboratory walls splattered with blood. The recent comic unequivocally suggests a heavy-handed analogy to the death-camp experiments of Dr. Mengele."

"War's New Face" (Daniel Pipes, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2003/04/16)
"In both the Afghanistan war of 2001 and the Iraq one now concluding, traditional features of warfare have been turned upside-down. But it's not just an American phenomenon; the same rewriting also applies in Israel's war against the Palestinians.
Some of the changes include:
Who is the enemy: War used to be aimed against a whole country; during World War II, for example, whole peoples were vilified "Huns," "Japs"). Now, the authorities painstakingly distinguish between the government (the Taliban, Saddam Hussein's regime, Arafat) and the people (Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians). The former is the enemy; the latter, potentially friendly. This leads to such developments - astounding from the standpoint of traditional warfare - as U.S. planes winging to Afghanistan, simultaneously carrying bombs to destroy the regime and food to relieve the populace. ...
In the aggregate, these changes amount to a transformation of warfare. In important ways, Western operations against non-Western states resemble police raids more than warfare. Western governments are the police, local tyrants are the criminals and the subject populations are the victims.
Note the parallels: Like gangland capos, Mullah Omar and Saddam Hussein disappeared (will Arafat be next?). The outcome of these operations is not in doubt. The rights of victims are as important as the safety of police. Not using excessive force is a paramount concern. And the Left goes easy on the criminals."

"France May Expel Islamic Extremists" (Kim Housego, AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/04/16)
"Worried by the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in France, the country's interior minister has threatened to expel any foreign Muslim religious leader who disseminates extremist propaganda.
Nicolas Sarkozy issued the warning after the unexpectedly strong showing of a Muslim fundamentalist party in weekend elections for a new council to represent France's various Islamic factions.
The Union of Islamic Organizations of France — inspired by Egypt's banned fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood — won 19 of the council's 58 seats. The moderate, Algerian-backed Mosque of Paris, which was considered a favorite, won just 15 seats.
"We want to say very simply: imams who propagate views that run counter to French values will be expelled," Sarkozy told Europe-1 radio on Tuesday."

"Palestinian Authority Demands U.S. Free Abu Abbas" (Reuters/The Washington Post, 2003/04/16)
"The Palestinian Authority demanded the release of veteran Palestinian guerrilla leader Abu Abbas on Wednesday, saying his detention in Iraq by U.S. forces violated an interim Middle East peace deal.
"We demand the United States release Abu Abbas. It has no right to imprison him," Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat told Reuters." (See also: "Abu Abbas not covered by 1995 immunity deal: US official" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2003/04/16))

"Riots greet would-be leader of Mosul" (Michael Howard, The Guardian, 2003/04/16)
"US special forces struggled to impose order in Mosul yesterday after a public address by the self-styled governor of Iraq's third largest city descended into a riot involving several thousand people, in which 12 were reported killed and at least 16 injured. ...
A witness told the Guardian that US troops protecting the city's government building had fired on a crowd which became hostile towards Mashaan al-Juburi, a prominent Iraqi opposition leader, as he was making a speech. ...
A US marine officer last night confirmed there had been a gun battle lasting about 15 minutes after US forces came under attack from elements within the crowd. They returned with 'accurate fire.'"

"Pledge Made to Democracy by Exiles, Sheiks and Clerics" (Marc Santora and Patrick E. Tyler, The New York Times, 2003/04/16)
"Iraqi exile leaders, tribal sheiks, ethnic Kurds and Shiite clerics gathered in a tent near the birthplace of Abraham today and said they would work to create a fully democratic government in Iraq.
Meeting under heavy security at Tallil Air Base here in the presence of American, British and Polish diplomats, the Iraqis called for an end to the violence and looting that have ravaged the country since the collapse of President Saddam Hussein's government. They issued a statement that included 13 points outlining how they would seek to establish a "federal system" under leaders chosen by the Iraqi people and not "imposed from outside."
Yet, as the group of more than 70 Iraqi notables conferred in a conference organized by and under the protection of United States military forces, thousands of Iraqis demonstrated in nearby Nasiriya, chanting "No no Saddam, no no United States." Many demonstrators demanded a central role for Shiite religious leaders in a new government."

Note: Watch will not be updated until April 27 as I'm leaving for Spain later today. Tomorrow afternoon I'll be in Salamanca, which seems to be spectacularly beautiful. But mainly I'll be in northern Portugal and Madrid. See ya!

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

News and commentary:

"A shoe rests on top of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's head..."
(AP Photo/Hussein Malla, 2003/04/15)
"A shoe rests on top of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's head taken from a statue with a Star of David drawn on his forehead in Baghdad, Iraq, on Tuesday April 15, 2003."

"Fugitive Abu Abbas captured in Iraq" (MSNBC, 2003/04/15)
"Abu Abbas, convicted in the October 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, has been captured by U.S. forces in Iraq, NBC News has learned.
U.S. officials tell NBC News that Abbas was captured by U.S. special operations forces based on information obtained through the interception of a cell phone call. He was found in a private residence in Baghdad after being turned back earlier at a checkpoint in an attempt to escape to Syria, the sources said."

"Fears of prisoners 'buried alive'" (The Guardian, 2003/04/15)
This might prove to be unsubstantiated, but if so it is eeringly similar to the tales told by Basra residents of buried voices heard from relatives entombed in underground cells: "The Sun's Nick Parker reported tonight that British troops were racing against time to free prisoners believed to have been buried alive by Saddam's fleeing henchmen.
He said army engineers were called in after British officers confirmed the sound of scratching beneath the plinth of a wrecked statue of Saddam in al-Faw in southern Iraq. Locals said they had seen two coachloads of prisoners being sealed into a secret chamber under the site.
"Hundreds of Iraqis kept a vigil as engineers with pneumatic drills and a bulldozer worked non-stop. The excavators were battling to break through a metre-thick layer of concrete believed to have been poured into a stairwell leading to the dungeon," he said.
'Several British troops said they had heard a response after they stopped digging, called for quiet and knocked on the floor. The sound of a series of scratching noises has been distinctly picked up at least twice since work started yesterday afternoon.'" (See also: "Haunted by the ghosts from 20 years of violence" (Richard Lloyd Parry, The Times, 2003/04/14))

"Error" (Pascal Bruckner, André Glucksmann and Romain Goupil, Le Monde/Watch, 2003/04/14 [2003/04/15])
"One day, we’ll have to recount the hysteria, the collective intoxication that struck the Hexagon for months, the Apocalyptic anguish that befell our greatest minds, the quasi-Soviet atmosphere that bound 90% of the population together in a triumph of monolithic thinking, allergic to the least debate. We shall have to review the biased coverage of the war by the media — which, with rare exceptions, were less objective than militant, minimizing the horrors of Ba’athist tyranny the better to indict the Anglo-American expedition, guilty of every crime, every mistake and every unhappiness in the region. ...
When Baghdad dances, Paris frowns. While some intellectuals and politicians publicly declared their shock, if not their “nausea” upon seeing the Anglo-Saxon victory, the weekly Marianne ran the headline “Catastrophe” on the day when Baghdad savored its first hours of deliverance. There’s no avoiding it: there shall always exist in our democracies a significant sector who are aggrieved by the fall of a dictator. The land of human rights loves not freedom perhaps as much as it claims to. From Jean-Marie Le Pen to Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Saddam Hussein counted many friends among us, modestly dubbed “friends of the Iraqi people.” Will the Republic, with Berlin and Moscow, establish a national day of mourning over the loss of the reis?" (Note: Translated by Douglas. See also the French original: "La faute" (Pascal Bruckner, André Glucksmann and Romain Goupil, Le Monde, 2003/04/14))

"Syria's leadership has the political guile to keep the dogs of war at bay" (Amir Taheri, The Times, 2003/04/15)
"The hawks around President Bush are right to focus on Syria for three reasons. First, Syria, in tandem with the mullahs of Tehran, supports a variety of terrorist groups that have targeted American interests (for example they murdered more than 300 Americans, including 241 Marines, in Beirut in 1982-83) and Israel. Today, 22 terrorist groups have offices in Damascus.
The second reason is Syria’s efforts to form a front with Iran to oppose what President Assad calls “imperialist domination” of Iraq. The President visited Tehran days before the war started to encourage the mullahs to use their Iraqi Shia clients to make life difficult for the US-led coalition. The mullahs moved the so-called Badr Brigade, a force of 10,000 Iraqi Shias armed by Iran, to the border with Iraq in a show of force. ...
The Assad regime will try to give the minimum to ensure its survival, as it has always done. But, unlike Saddam’s, it also knows when not to believe its own slogans. Using diplomatic, political and economic pressure while keeping the military option open, the US-led coalition should ask for the maximum. That includes support for the growing reform movement in Syria itself, a movement that many say is secretly endorsed by President Assad against the old guard."

"America is fighting a global civil war" (MacGregor Knox, Financial Times, 2003/04/15)
America as a militant democracy fighting a global and total civil war: "But the country's formative conflict was the "second American revolution" of 1861-65, which destroyed slavery. The civil war cost 600,000 dead - the largest and deadliest war between industrial societies before 1914. The winning side fought for an objective more total than any in the western world since the Wars of Religion: destruction of the enemy state and "reconstruction" of its society. ...
Pearl Harbor committed the US to a fight to the finish. It also revived American total war - destruction followed by reconstruction. ...
A further devastating attack on the US, failure in America's apparently quixotic enterprise of founding democracy in Iraq, or some passing inspiration of the diminutive nuclear-armed psychopath in Pyongyang may interrupt Mr Bush's run of success. But at present both the president and his "global war on terrorism" enjoy unstinting support from those Americans who are neither intellectuals nor film stars.
Europeans may wish to believe that a small coterie of "neo-conservative" maniacs has hijacked US policy. They may assume that the natural order of things as they perceive it - the restraint of American power through European wisdom - will sooner or later triumph. But such expectations are delusional. Those who find militant Islam terrifying have clearly never seen a militant democracy." (Note: Thanks to Barry Kaplovitz for the pointer.)

"Corruption at CNN" (Peter Collins, The Washington Times, 2003/04/15)
Collins on his period as a reporter for CNN in Baghdad: "In each of these meetings, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jordan made their pitch: Saddam Hussein would have an hour's time on CNN's worldwide network; there would be no interruptions, no commercials. I was astonished. From both the tone and the content of these conversations, it seemed to me that CNN was virtually groveling for the interview.
The day after one such meeting, I was on the roof of the Ministry of Information, preparing for my first "live shot" on CNN. A producer came up and handed me a sheet of paper with handwritten notes. "Tom Johnson wants you to read this on camera," he said. I glanced at the paper. It was an item-by-item summary of points made by Information Minister Latif Jassim in an interview that morning with Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jordan.
The list was so long that there was no time during the live shot to provide context. I read the information minister's points verbatim. Moments later, I was downstairs in the newsroom on the first floor of the Information Ministry. Mr. Johnson approached, having seen my performance on a TV monitor. "You were a bit flat there, Peter," he said. Again, I was astonished. The president of CNN was telling me I seemed less-than-enthusiastic reading Saddam Hussein's propaganda." (See also: "The News We Kept to Ourselves" (Eason Jordan, The New York Times, 2003/04/11))

"Good News" (Max Boot, The Weekly Standard, 2003/04/15)
"I was recently interviewed by a reporter for one of the major network affiliates in New York City. All his questions were about looting, suicide bombings, civilian casualties, Arab resentment of Christian military forces, the possibility of protracted guerrilla warfare, and even the specter of "another Vietnam." That's pretty typical of the news coverage, especially among overseas news outlets, but also among many U.S. papers and TV networks.
And mainstream TV executives wonder why the Fox News Channel - which has been a notable dissenter from this gloomy orthodoxy - has suddenly become so popular!
The rest of the press should get a grip. This is the most successful U.S. military intervention since 1945. This was no half victory like Kosovo, in which U.S. forces liberated only one province, or Afghanistan, where the U.S. left warlords in control of much of the country. This was the real deal: marching to the enemy capital and imposing peace on our terms. This calls for champagne and tickertape. Instead the press, and opponents of the war, are moving the goalposts.
It's not enough to win a smashing military victory at small cost. To listen to the critics, if Iraq doesn't suddenly become as law-abiding and peaceful as Switzerland, then we haven't really won."

"If Syria isn't next on America's hit list, it certainly should be" (Stephen Pollard, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/04/15)
"Satellite intelligence shows that Syria's Scud-C missiles, integrated with its chemical warheads, are sited to provide the option of a first strike against Israel's nuclear reactor in Dimona, and take out airports and large cities. In April 2000, General Mustafa Talas, the defence minister, published Biological (Germ) Warfare: A New and Effective Method in Modern Warfare (which was immediately translated into Persian for publication in Teheran).
Syria has long manufactured aerial bombs with sarin and has thousands of other chemical aerial bombs carried by Su-22, Su-24, and MiG-23 planes.
It has not just the weapons, but the ability to deliver them. Syrian missile command controls three mobile surface-to-surface missile brigades, with ranges between 45 and 180 miles. There are at least 15 tunnels, built with North Korean and Chinese assistance, for Syria's 1,000 Scud-C missiles, with a range of 300 miles. A further four tunnels house Scud-D missiles with a 450-mile range. The plan has always been to mount biological warheads on all long-range surface-to-surface missiles."

"Americans See Clear Victory in Iraq, Poll Finds" (Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder, The New York Times, 2003/04/15)
"Americans overwhelmingly consider the war in Iraq a success, and a majority say the victory will stand even if Saddam Hussein remains at large or if the United States fails to unearth chemical or nuclear weapons, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll. ...
At home, the fall of Baghdad has fortified President Bush's political standing. The poll found that 73 percent of Americans approve of his job performance — up from 59 percent the week before the war — and that his approval rating among Democrats was 61 percent." (See also: "Surge in war support confirms dramatic shift in public opinion" (Alan Travis, The Guardian, 2003/04/15): "Support for the war among British voters has surged to a new record level of 63%, according to results of this week's Guardian/ICM war tracker poll. The seven-point rise in support for military action since the fall of Baghdad confirms the war has been accompanied by one of the most dramatic shifts in public opinion in recent British political history.")

"Oasis of Hedonism In Nation of Poverty" (Nico Price, AP/The Washington Post, 2003/04/15)
A report on Uday Hussein's Baghdad house: "The walls of a gym are plastered with photographs of women downloaded from the Internet - "the biggest collection of naked women I'd ever seen," said Army Capt. Ed Ballanco of Montville, N.J. "It looked like something at the Playboy Mansion." ...
There were "Dom Perignon, French wines - all appellation controlee, some 30 to 40 years old - a lot of very good brandy, a lot of good whiskey," Ballanco said. "There were boxes of Cuban cigars that said 'Uday Saddam Hussein' on them, hundreds of them. My guys smoked them."
He said there were also six bags of heroin, but he didn't know how much they held.
"There are UNICEF boxes in there with kids' school supplies meant for the children of Iraq, yet these jerks took it," said Maj. Kent Rideout, 39, of San Antonio. ...
Uday's interest in sex was evident everywhere. The house was adorned with paintings of naked women, as well as bundles of Internet printouts of what appeared to be prostitutes, complete with handwritten ratings of each. One black book listed hundreds of women's names and phone numbers."

Monday, April 14, 2003

News and commentary:

"War 'close to end' after Tikrit seized" (BBC News, 2003/04/14)
"US Central Command says the war in Iraq is "coming to a close" after US troops took control of the northern city of Tikrit, the hometown of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. ...
Backed by helicopters and war planes, US marines and armoured vehicles have taken up positions on a central square in Tikrit, which had been the last Iraqi city controlled by the former regime.
The BBC's Dumeethra Luthra in Tikrit says that contrary to predictions there was no dramatic last stand by Iraqi forces. She says the city is quiet, with shops boarded up and streets deserted."

"PA Daily: Asian American marines are Mongols" (Itamar Marcus, PMW/IMRA, 2003/04/14)
As if to prove Ajami right, the official Palestinian Authority daily portrays the Coalition as Mongols in this translated excerpt from an unashamedly racist article by Editor-in-Chief Hafez Barghouthi: "Have you noticed the face of the Marine who climbed Saddam's statue to hang him with a rope pulled by a tank? Concentrate very closely: He has slanted eyes, a flat nose, smooth and hairless chin, thin lips. His face is round and his cheekbones protrude. He is not a Western American. He is of Chinese origin, or Japanese. He has a connection to Mongol origins. This Mongol arrived almost seven hundred years after the Mongol invasion of Baghdad to finish Holako's plan [Tatar who invaded Baghdad in 13 th Cent]. He has the same idea as Genghis Khan. The main target of the Mongols was Mecca in order to exterminate the Islamic religion..." (See also: "Through Arab eyes, blindly" (Fouad Ajami, usnews.com, from the 2003/04/14 issue))

"Out of the 'Quagmire'" (J. Michael Waller, Insight on the News, 2003/04/14)
Waller on media's defeatism during the war, with day by day examples: "Day after day the mood in the TV studios was one of impatience and incoherence about what U.S. military leaders now are calling one of the most awesome military campaigns in history. At the same time, in the three weeks it took U.S. forces to topple Saddam Hussein's regime and seize Baghdad, Americans were treated to some of the most professional and thorough war reporting ever - contaminated from the editorial suites and studio directorate by a steady, noxious dripping of ill-informed speculation, whining and defeatism. ...
Day 8, March 26: Jennings said that Iraq sometimes "feels like Vietnam." By now, backstabbers in the Pentagon and elsewhere in the administration were several days into telling reporters and paid TV military analysts that the quagmire, dangerously stretched supply lines and near-certain failure were Rumsfeld's fault. ...
Day 12, March 30: Apple was at it again in the New York Times, commenting, "With every passing day, it is more evident that the allies made two gross military misjudgments in concluding that coalition forces could safely bypass Basra and Nasiriya and that Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq would rise up against Saddam Hussein." But New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd beat Apple's record, calling Iraq another Vietnam after just a week and five days, as opposed to Apple's false prediction three weeks into Afghanistan."

"Our Western Mob" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2003/04/14)
"There is something profoundly amoral about this. A newsman who interviewed a state killer at his convenience later revisits a now liberated city and complains of the disorder there. A journalist who paid bribe money to fascists and whose dispatches aired from Baghdad in wartime only because the Baathist party felt that they served their own terrorist purposes is disturbed about the chaos of liberation. ....
In general, the media has now gone from the hysteria of the Armageddon of Afghanistan to the quagmire of Iraq to the looting in Baghdad — the only constant is slanted coverage, mistaken analysis, and the absence of any contriteness about being in error and in error in such a manner that reflected so poorly upon themselves and damaged the country at large at a time of war. It is as if only further bad news could serve as a sort of catharsis that might at least cleanse them of any unease about being so wrong so predictably and so often."

"Columbia Prof Plumbs the Shiite Mind" (Martin Kramer, Sandstorm, 2003/04/14)
Compare Taheri's informed and hopeful article below with this quote by Professor Hamid Dabashi, "head of the department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) at Columbia": "The other day, a correspondent from the Boston Globe asked him about the mood among the Shiites. "The Shiites are horrified," announced Dabashi.

Not only are their fellow Shiites and, in fact, their fellow Muslims maimed and murdered right in front of their eyes by the Americans, but the most sacrosanct sites in their collective faith are now invaded by foreign armies. The next time the British and Americans ask themselves, "Why do they hate us?," they better remember the horrid scenes of their armies trampling on the sacred sites.

What in the world is Dabashi talking about? Coalition forces have been absolutely scrupulous about avoiding the sacred Shiite shrines in Najaf, Karbala, Kazimayn, and elsewhere. ... Dabashi, of course, doesn't have a clue as to what "the Shiites" think. He simply knows what he thinks. ... Dabashi finds the war horrid, therefore when asked what "the Shiites" think about it, he says they are "horrified." It's pure projection, which is what passes for "expertise" on the Middle East when people don't know what they are talking about. So we are told that "the Arabs" think this, or "the Muslims" believe that, when in fact they're just racks on which to hang the prejudices and preferences of the 'expert.'" (See also: "In Shi'ite world, anger toward US seen growing" (Geneive Abdo, The Boston Globe, 2003/04/12))

"They Couldn't Kill Hope" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2003/04/14)
Taheri on Hojat al-Islam Abdel-Majid Mussavi Khoei, the leading Shia cleric who was murdered in Najaf last week: "Khoei had played a key role in persuading Iraq's Shiite establishment to welcome the U.S.-led coalition's campaign to end Saddam Hussein's rule. He succeeded beyond his expectations. ...
A string of Iraqi Shiite leaders - including Ayatollahs Hassan Jawaheri, Amer al-Manshadawi and Saeed al-Sa'edi - have vowed to pursue Khoei's work of "peace and reconciliation" and "joint efforts to rebuild a new Iraq with the help of the liberating coalition." ...
On Friday, Khoei was due to lead the first mass prayer in the shrine of Imam Ali since liberation. The prayer was held in his absence. But his name was on every lip as thousands of believers, now free from tyranny, prayed for his soul.
Khoei's last words, in a telephone call less than 20 hours before the tragedy, were: 'I still cannot believe I am talking to you from Najaf, free Najaf!'" (See also: "Top Iraqi cleric killed in Najaf" (The Daily Telegraph, 2003/04/10))

"Media Meltdown" (Dick Morris, New York Post, 2003/04/14)
"Never before have Americans had the chance to watch the establishment media while also seeing events unfold for themselves, live, on television. Our collective understanding of the dissonance between the two is breeding a distrust of the major news organs that will likely long outlast this war. ...
Each morning, we sat reading our copy of The New York Times, The Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times and ruminated on their prophecies of doom and quagmire. Then we looked up to see, on television, correspondents actually embedded with our troops reporting quick advances, one-sided firefights, melting opposition and, finally, welcoming crowds.
Then the TV would cut back to the anchors and military analysts far from the battlefield. There, with their pointers and maps, we heard all about how we had too few troops in Iraq and the war plan had misfired and that Bush's failure to enlist Turkish cooperation was likely to prove disastrous. ...
The disjuncture between the reality and the reporting became obvious to anyone who had eyes and ears. ...
This has been a rough war for tyrants and those who try to control the thoughts of their people. In Baghdad - but also in Manhattan, at the headquarters of the Times, NBC, CBS and ABC."

"They were wrong" (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun, 2003/04/14)
Lots of examples on predictions about the war made by Australian "peace" activists, plus the outrageous suggestion that people should be held accountable for their actions. Found via Tim Blair: "Saddam is gone, and his worst weapons will be found and destroyed. His people have lost a tyrant. Terrorists have lost a sponsor. Iraq's neighbours have lost a threat. Dictators elsewhere have lost sleep. And to all this, our anti-war protesters said: Not In Our Name.
It is astonishing that so many Australians - including most of the people who preach and teach - tried so hard to stop all this from happening, by resisting the only means we had left of ending Saddam's evil.
How is it that people priding themselves on morality in fact aided a genocidal killer, and not his victims? How is it they now watch Iraqis celebrate their liberation, and feel . . . sad? ...
It is time we held them accountable. No more must they lightly skip from one disreputable cause to another - preaching woe in the first Gulf War, disaster in Afghanistan, apocalypse in Iraq - and always warning of the catastrophic consequences of resisting evil.
The war in Iraq has been won well. Let's move on to the next war - a war for our culture. A war for truth, rationality, humanity, democracy and wisdom. Let the accountability begin."

"The liberation of Iraq started on July 4, 1776" (William Rees-Mogg, The Times, 2003/04/14)
"The American victory in Iraq is a warning to the tyrants and terrorists of the world. The momentum of liberty continues to accelerate. The dictators have had a very bad couple of decades; in 1980 the world was still "half slave and half free". Now the remaining dictators, old Castro, young Assad, Kim Jong Il, mad Mugabe and the others, look foolish and obsolete, though still horrible. They must mend their ways or liberty and democracy will amend them. In the Lockean phrase quoted in the Boston Freemen's Declaration of 1774: "'Just and true Liberty, equal and impartial Liberty' is a thing that all men are clearly entitled to." Despite the failures of the Security Council, the people of Iraq now have the expectation of liberty."

"Europe Seems to Hear Echoes of Empires Past" (Richard Bernstein, The New York Times, 2003/04/14)
The exception as rule. The moment an American flag was wrapped around the head of the Saddam statue was really an exception to a rule. And a fleeting one at that. It's interesting to note how Milne has to cling to that moment to prove his thesis, exactly as many Islamists maintain that Bush's use of the word "crusade" once proves that the war on terror really is a crusade against Islam: "'What cannot now be disguised, as U.S. marines swagger around the Iraqi capital swathing toppled statues of Saddam Hussein with the stars and stripes and declaring 'We own Baghdad,' is the crudely colonial nature of this enterprise,' wrote Seumas Milne, a columnist in The Guardian, the leftist British daily.
Mr. Milne's comment, in a newspaper that rarely misses a chance to cast the United States in a negative light, was an especially virulent and hostile expression of a view that has become common in recent days. ...
In the more radical view of American power — represented by The Guardian or by Mr. Frölich — the United States is seeking global dominance almost for its own sake. ...
But there seems to be a strong emerging view that the immensity of American power amounts to something different in the world.
"Throughout the history of mankind, certainly no country has existed that has so thoroughly dominated the world with its politics, its tanks and its products as the United States does today," Der Spiegel said."

"Haunted by the ghosts from 20 years of violence" (Richard Lloyd Parry, The Times, 2003/04/14)
"The voices had been floating across Basra for two days when they finally settled on the former headquarters of the state security police. ...
Inside the compound, where so many Iraqis have been shackled, tortured and killed, an extraordinary spectacle is being enacted. In the caged cells and on the dusty ground, people are digging frantically. A huge mechanical excavator has been commandeered and is flailing its digging arm in the central courtyard.
In the cells, men with picks are chipping away at the concrete floor. "There have been voices at night, everyone has heard them, all kinds of voices," one man says. "Listen, listen! All of you, shhh! Shhh."
The shouting and hammering falls away, and I press my ear to the floor.
There are two or three thousand people here and they are convinced of a remarkable thing: that, beneath here, hundreds of their friends, sons and brothers are entombed in a secret underground cell, abandoned there by the Iraqi security police.
It is a week since the security police fled from British troops entering Basra. Anyone trapped down there must be close to death from hunger and dehydration. The people of Basra hear the voices and plead with the soldiers to come and save their loved ones. But there is no evidence that any of it is true.
At half a dozen spots around the city, similar scenes have taken place over the past few days — a vast crowd, scrabbling at the earth in response to cries and voices."

"Days of Darkness, With Death Outside the Door" (Peter Baker, The Washington Post, 2003/04/14)
"In their first interviews after being freed, all seven former prisoners described a harrowing journey through the Iraq war - from their ill-fated missions and capture through an arduous imprisonment where death often seemed around the corner. Speaking to reporters aboard a C-130 Hercules transport plane evacuating them from Iraq, they alternated between tears and smiles and hollow gazes as they told their stories."

"Groups of Kurds Are Driving Arabs From Northern Villages" (C.J. Chivers, The New York Times, 2003/04/14)
"Ms. Muhammad and her trembling infant are victims of a new wave of intimidation and crime in northern Iraq. They are among thousands of Arabs expelled from their homes by armed Kurds — among the United States' most exuberant allies in this war — and ordered to move away within three days. ...
Now, days after seizing control of Kirkuk, an ethnically diverse city located astride Iraq's northern oil field, Kurds are forcing Arabs in outlying villages to move from their homes, leaving entire hamlets nearly abandoned and crowding some families into wheat fields that have become hastily erected camps.
For decades, Kurds have complained of abuses against them, including intimidation, expulsions and property seizures. Now, the newly prominent Kurds are indulging in some of Mr. Hussein's abuses themselves."

"Washington turns its sights on Damascus" (Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz, 2003/04/14)
"America grew even angrier when it discovered that even after Saddam Hussein's defeat, the Syrians, in coordination with Hezbollah's leader, continued to determine how to hurt the Americans in Iraq and disrupt their progress. The leading concept in Syria today is that Iraq should be to the Americans what Lebanon was for Israel - namely, to cause terror attacks and suicide bombers and generate as many American casualties as possible. It is yet unknown whether Syria or Hezbollah has any operational plans to back up these professed policies."

"Bush Demands 'Cooperation' From Syrians" (Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger, The New York Times, 2003/04/14)
"President Bush accused Syria today of harboring senior Iraqi military and government officials and demanded "cooperation" in punishing some of them. But he stopped short of threatening to use military force against Syria. ...
In the latest warning to Syria, Mr. Bush said that 'the Syrian government needs to cooperate with the United States and our coalition partners and not harbor any Baathists, any military officials, any people who need to be held to account for their tenure during what we are learning more and more about what was one of the most horrendous governments ever.'" (See also: "Bush's Warning to Syria, and Words From the Deputy Syrian Ambassador" (The New York Times, 2003/04/14))

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

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"When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label."

Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)

"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)

"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)

"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)

"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)

"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)

"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)

"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)

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