Archived news and commentary: June 9 - 15, 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, June 15, 2003

News and commentary:

"U.S. Troops May Have to Go After Hamas, Lawmaker" (Lori Santos, Reuters/The Washington Post, 2003/06/15)
"In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Sen. Richard Lugar, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said American forces might be part of an international force to help stop attacks by Hamas, the main group behind a campaign of suicide bombings against Israelis, and other groups.
Hamas has said it would reject any peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Lugar said such a force could be used to quell Israeli and Palestinian disputes, "and, maybe even more important, to root out the terrorism that is at the heart of the problem."
Asked if that meant such troops would go after Hamas or other groups, he said, "That may be the conclusion."
"...It may not be just Hamas but clearly Hamas is right in the gunsights," he added.
"...The terrorist aspect really has to be dealt with and that's why I say don't underestimate President Bush," Lugar said." (See also: "Bush Urges: 'Deal Harshly' with Hamas" (Randall Mikkelsen, Reuters, 2003/06/15): "President Bush on Sunday said the world must "deal harshly" with the Palestinian militant group Hamas and a leading Republican senator said U.S. troops may have to go after them. "The free world and those who love freedom and peace must deal harshly with Hamas and the killers," Bush told reporters when asked whether Israel was justified in recent attacks against the group.")

"Iran recruits Saddam's scientists to build long-range missile" (Philip Sherwell, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/06/15)
"Iran is recruiting top Iraqi weapons scientists to join a dangerous brain drain from Baghdad as international concern grows about Teheran's clandestine arms programme.
The pro-Iranian Badr Brigade, an Iraqi Islamic militia, is helping scientists to travel through tribal areas north east of Baghdad and across the border for meetings with senior military and regime figures in Teheran, The Telegraph has learnt.
The Iranian regime is particularly seeking Iraqi specialists in solid missile propellants, a technology in which Baghdad was strong but Teheran weak. Iran wants to switch from liquid to solid fuels to improve the performance of its long-range Shahab missiles, which may soon be able to reach Europe."

"A perfect match for political protest" (John Naughton, The Observer, 2003/06/15)
Well, I certainly agree that the current atmosphere is hysterical. In fact, this outworldy portrayal of America is a interesting example of this phenomenon: "The mainstream US media seem to be largely in cahoots with Bush, Ashcroft & Co. It is as if the opposition to Bush has been atomised into millions of isolated individuals who are afraid to speak out because they fear being labelled unpatriotic.
In the current hysterical atmosphere, putting an anti-Bush poster in your window might result in a brick being thrown through it. Alternatively, of course, it might result in a ring at the doorbell and a neighbour saying 'Thank God someone has spoken out against this nonsense'. The point is that you cannot know in advance, and nobody is willing to take the risk." (Note: Found via Tim Blair.)

"Al Qaeda in America: The Enemy Within" (Evan Thomas, Newsweek, from the 2003/06/23 issue)
"Khalid Shaikh Mohammed looked more like a loser in a T shirt than a modern-day Mephistopheles. But "KSM," as he is always referred to in FBI documents, held the key to unlock the biggest mystery of the war on terror: is Al Qaeda operating inside America?
The answer, according to KSM's confessions and the intense U.S. investigation that followed, is yes. ...
After 9-11, Osama bin Laden’s terror network "was clearly here," a top U.S. law-enforcement official told Newsweek. "It was organized, it was being directed by the leaders of Al Qaeda." Though rumors of sleeper cells have floated about for months, it is a startling revelation that Al Qaeda’s chief of operations was directly running operatives inside the United States. ...
They recruited U.S. citizens or people with legitimate Western passports who could move freely in the United States. They used women and family members as "support personnel." And they made an effort to find African-American Muslims who would be sympathetic to Islamic extremism. Using "mosques, prisons and universities throughout the United States," according to the documents, KSM reached deep into the heartland, lining up agents in Baltimore, Columbus, Ohio, and Peoria, Ill. The Feds have uncovered at least one KSM-run cell that could have done grave damage to the United States."

"The Euro Menace - The USE Vs The USA" (Andrew Sullivan, The Sunday Times/The Daily Dish, 2003/06/15)
"In the next global conflict, the French hope the American president will not be able to call up the British or Spanish prime ministers or the Polish president and make a deal. He will have to phone the president of the USE in Brussels. And the conversation won't be pretty. ...
At the same time, Americans need to wake up and understand the significance of this new rival to U.S. global power. No, it will not be a military threat. But it can be an enormous deadweight on U.S. power, as we saw earlier this year. And its anti-American timbre is unmistakable. Hence the strange paradox of the European Union. It has fostered a culture of post-nationalism. It pretends to oppose the exercise of raw international power. But its rationale - now and for a long time - has been precisely to regain global power for Europe, lost in two world wars and the American century. If the European Union can achieve this, if it can slowly absorb its member states into a uniform and vast new entity, then it will represent a real challenge to U.S. influence in Africa, the Middle East, and every major international institution. The major power that will benefit from this will be France, and France's intentions, as we now know from bitter experience, are essentially hostile to the United States, culturally, economically, diplomatically. That's the current challenge to U.S. foreign policy: how to prevent the new European constitution from becoming a reality, how to woo and keep the loyalty of pro-American European governments and states, how to save new Europe from the stultifying and malign embrace of the old. It may, alas, be too late to prevent the worst. But better late than never."

"If it makes America look bad it must be true, mustn't it?" (Sarah Baxter, The Sunday Times, 2003/06/15)
Baxter on the Wolfowitz story: "A powerful editor of The New York Times just lost his job over the fabrications of Jayson Blair, a young newsroom protégé. Admittedly Blair lied deliberately, pretending to be all over America when he was actually at home in Brooklyn, but his little flights of fancy look trivial next to the casual anti-American distortions of so many newspapers.
The Wolfowitz story was too good to be true and too good to check. A freelance at The Guardian was so delighted with it that he went to the trouble of translating Wolfowitz from German into English, when he had spoken in English in the first place. And the German story was wrong anyway. No matter: another journalist turned it into the splash. ...
Trying to counter these myths as they spread around the world is a boggling task. Thinking the worst about the Americans has become ingrained. Bell feels The Guardian has done all it can. "We made a mistake and we apologised for it and if people choose to ignore our correction I can’t take responsibility for them."
Ian Mayes, the readers' editor of The Guardian, noted in his column that it had not been the "best of weeks" for his paper, especially as The Guardian had just apologised to Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, for "locating him at a meeting which he did not attend".
This was an alleged meeting at the Waldorf hotel in New York between Straw and Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, where they were said to have discussed the poor intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Except Straw wasn't there." (See also: "Gross Distortion at the Guardian" (Gregory, The Belgravia Dispatch, 2003/06/04) and "What Wolfowitz Really Said" (William Kristol, The Weekly Standard, from the 2003/06/09 issue))

"The hateful hypocrisy of Hamas" (Stephen Pollard, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/06/15)
"Hamas terrorists, let us be clear, are not freedom fighters. Hamas is a racket, run not to help Palestinians but to exploit them. Take Dr Rantisi himself. Palestinian intelligence recently picked up a telephone call to Dr Rantisi and his wife. The transcript, which subsequently found its way into the press, records how the caller wanted to know why the Rantisis' son, Muhammad, had failed to turn up to a drill of young Hamas activists, and where he was. After all, he went on, Muhammad would soon be ready to become a martyr and needed proper training.
The Rantisis had rather different plans for their son, however: Muhammad would not be blowing himself up. He would be doing what the child of any eminent Palestinian family would do: studying and then pursuing a career. ...
The strategists and leaders of the intifada make sure that their children are protected from the reward and honour of martyrdom. Instead of enjoying endless sexual pleasure with 72 virgins, they remain earthbound, often far away from the Middle East in prestigious universities such as Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge, where they prepare for their own turn at the top of the orderly, pyramidal structure of Palestinian society." (See also: "Rantisi mocks tape of his wife refusing to send their son on a suicide mission" (Haaretz, 2002/08/02) and "Suicide Bomber's Father: Let Hamas and Jihad Leaders Send Their Own Sons" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 426, 2002/10/08))

"Islam and the Unveiled Photograph" (Edward Rothstein, The New York Times, 2003/06/15)
"A Florida judge ruled last week that a Muslim woman could not pose for a driver's license photograph in a veil, with only her eyes peering out. The state, the judge wrote, had a "compelling interest" in identifying its drivers; she rejected the arguments, supported by Muslim organizations, that the decision threatened "religious liberty." ...
Although the evidence wasn't permitted in court, the woman, Sultaana Freeman, was convicted of aggravated battery in Illinois, The Chicago Tribune reported, in the beating of her twin 3-year-old foster children. According to police reports, child welfare workers said she invoked religious modesty to hinder investigators from looking under the children's Muslim garb, where one daughter had a broken arm, and both were covered with bruises. The mother's mug shot was taken without a veil. At any rate, even religious pilgrims to Mecca have to have uncovered faces in their passport photographs.
So why, Mr. Fadl asked, was this case given such widespread support in the Muslim communities? And why was his cross-examination so "bizarre," he wondered, as it had focused solely on whether he was sufficiently orthodox in his own religious beliefs. What the American Muslim culture seemed to be demanding, as he described it, was absolute loyalty to an extreme position." (See also: "Freeman loses veil lawsuit" (Newsday.com, 2003/06/06))

"Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, report finds" (Peter Beaumont et al., The Observer, 2003/06/15)
"An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist.
The conclusion by biological weapons experts working for the British Government is an embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who has claimed that the discovery of the labs proved that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction and justified the case for going to war against Saddam Hussein.
Instead, a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer last week: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.'"

"Account of Iraq Strike Revised" (William Booth, The Washington Post, 2003/06/15)
"Relatives of the five Iraqis who were killed said they believe the assailants who targeted the U.S. troops chose their village, five miles south of Balad, as an ambush point not only to kill the Americans but to produce civilian casualties that would stir anti-occupation sentiments.
"We understand this is a mistake - that in war, these things happen," Saad Hashim Atia, a cousin of the dead men, said as he gathered with about 100 men in three sweltering tents outside their home to mourn the dead. In a fourth tent, women could be heard wailing and crying as helpers prepared a feast.
"But this is a whole family," Atia said. "Gone. All gone."
He said that his tribe and village hated Hussein and suffered under his rule and that they support the Americans and want them to stay. ...
"Why would we ambush the Americans in front of our own homes? It does not make sense," Atia said. 'It would be suicide.'" (See also: "U.S. forces kill 27 attackers in Iraq" (CNN.com, 2003/06/13))

Added in archive:
"On Ignoring Anti-Semitism" (Ruth Wisse, Harvard Israel Review, from the Fall 2002 issue)

Saturday, June 14, 2003

News and commentary:

"Romania denies Holocaust" (Shamillia Sivathambu, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/06/14)
"The Romanian government issued a blunt denial yesterday that the Holocaust hit the country during the Second World War, defying historical accounts of a campaign of anti-Semitic persecution orchestrated by its pro-Nazi wartime regime.
The statement, issued by the Public Information Ministry, startled Jewish leaders in Romania, where 250,000 Jews were killed or deported to concentration camps under the rule of Marshal Ion Antonescu.
"We firmly claim that within the borders of Romania between 1940 and 1945 there was no Holocaust," the ministry said."

"Hamas rejects reported Israeli proposal for ceasefire" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2003/06/14)
"The Islamist movement Hamas rejected the possibility of a ceasefire with Israel after one of the bloodiest weeks in their 32-month-old conflict.
"Hamas is rejecting any call for ceasefire under occupation," senior Hamas leader Abdul Aziz al-Rantissi told AFP Saturday. "The word ceasefire is not in our dictionary."
Contacts were reported between Palestinian officials and Hamas on a possible truce amid reports Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had proposed a three-day ceasefire with the hardline movement."

"The Euro-Menace" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/06/14)
"Ash even has something of a scoop. He recalls an incident in Germany recently:

In the Cafe Orange on the Oranienburgerstrasse, in the now trendy heart of what used to be East Berlin, I talk to a guy dressed in T-shirt, sandals and designer sunglasses. An old '68er, he is sharply critical of the current policies of the Bush administration. At one point he leans forward and says, teasingly: "Don't you think we need a new Boston tea party?" Surely, he jokes, the Boston tea party was good for relations between Britain and America - in the long term. When he gets up to leave, I notice that he puts on a black baseball cap advertising "American Eagle". "Ja," he says, "das habe ich in Boston gekauft." ("I bought it in Boston.")

Who was the German? German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer. Isn't it a little, er, undiplomatic for a foreign minister of a putative ally to be speaking of the need to overthrow the current American constitution? Or is it a clue to what he really believes?" (See also: "The banality of the good" (Timothy Garton Ash, The New Statesman, from the 2003/06/16 issue))

"Hardline vigilantes in Iran beat up students in their bed inside dormitories" (AP/Canadian Press, 2003/06/14)
"Dozens of vigilantes stormed at least two student hostels overnight, beating up students in their beds and detaining several of them, students said Saturday.
"We were sleeping in our beds. Suddenly we heard windows being smashed. Fists and kicks by hardline vigilantes woke up some of the students held up in their rooms,'' student Mojtaba Najafi said.
Najafi said about 200 students were sleeping in their rooms in Hemmat Hostel, affiliated to Allameh Tabatabai University, when the attacks began. He said over 50 students were injured and taken to the hospital and about two dozen have disappeared after the attack." (See also: "Who are Iran's Islamic vigilantes?" (BBC News, 2003/06/14) and pictures of two students as well as the building after the assault (NEWS.gooya.com, 2003/06/14). Note: Found via Iranian girl.)

"Rummy was right: it was the same vase, 170,000 times over" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/06/14)
"Five weeks ago, I wrote in this space that the sack of the Iraqi National Museum was "as mythical as the great Jenin massacre of exactly a year ago". This was apropos my deranged colleague Boris Johnson's endearingly insane claim that the looting of Iraq's antiquities had been planned by a cabal of American art lobbyists. ...
That was the upshot of Simon Jenkins's column in The Times, in which he predicted that 2003 would go down in history as the year of "the destruction of the greatest treasure from the oldest age of Western civilisation, the greatest heritage catastrophe since the Second World War. We who claim to crusade for civilised values could not summon one tank to defend their earliest repository." Etc, etc.
Current official number of missing items: reduced from 38 to 33 and going down faster than proverbial interns in old Bill Clinton jokes. ...
I mean, in what way is Simon Jenkins's column any less risible than that Iraqi information minister announcing that the American aggressors' stomachs are now being roasted in hell? And which ought to be the greater media embarrassment - the sacking of Jayson Blair or the non-sacking of the Baghdad Museum?" (See also: "Tam is talking a lot of cabals about sinister controllers" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/05/10) and "A shameful theft of the crown jewels of memory" (Simon Jenkin, The Times/museum-security.org, 2003/05/02))

"The 36-Year War" (Michael B. Oren, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/06/14)
"The Six Day War resulted from many factors, including disputes over borders and waterways. But the most basic factor was the Arabs' refusal to accept a Jewish state, and their readiness to wage war to destroy it. Israel's peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan were achieved precisely by addressing the root cause of Arab rejection. While Palestinian tactics have become more flexible, Palestinian goals remain unaltered since 1967. If President Bush succeeds in changing those goals, the road map may indeed lead to the mutual recognition, renunciation of force, and foreswearing of all future claims, which form the only basis for durable peace. Failure to do so, however, will only create conditions for yet another Middle East war."

"Protests continue to rock Tehran" (Ali Akbar Dareini, AP/The Washington Times, 2003/06/14)
"Hundreds of pro-cleric militants and state security forces fired bullets and tear gas and beat bystanders in Tehran late yesterday, the fourth and most widespread night of clashes in the Iranian capital.
Violence erupted in scores of locations throughout the capital, particularly in areas surrounding Tehran University's dormitory complex, the scene of demonstrations against the country's Islamic clerical regime that triggered the crackdown. ...
Hundreds of young Iranians, many in their teens, had taken to the streets late Thursday and early yesterday around Tehran University and a nearby hotel to denounce Ayatollah Khamenei and his regime.
Criticism of the supreme ayatollah is usually punished by imprisonment, and public calls for his death had been unheard of until this week."

Friday, June 13, 2003

News and commentary:

"An Iranian student gestures..."
(AP Photo/ISNA, 2003/06/13)
"An Iranian student gestures as another holds a stone, among other masked students during a protest in front of the Tehran University in Tehran, Iran, in the early hours of Friday, June 13, 2003. Hundreds of protesters participated in the third day of demonstrations in the capital despite threats by the hard-line regime to crack down to end the disturbances."

"Terror suspects planned Bangkok bombs for APEC Summit: Thaksin" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2003/06/13)
"Terror suspects had planned a bombing spree against western embassies and tourist sites in Thailand during the APEC Summit when leaders from 21 nations gather here in October, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said.
He said the information was based on the written confession of alleged Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terror network member Arifin bin Ali of Singapore, who was arrested in Bangkok in May and handed over to Singaporean authorities.
"Arifin had admitted in written confession that they had planned to bomb western embassies in Bangkok during the APEC Summit," Thaksin said in his weekly radio address."

"Rome imam sacked" (BBC News, 2003/06/13)
"Islamic authorities in Italy have sacked the imam of Rome's Grand Mosque after he praised Palestinian suicide bombers.
Abdel-Sami Mahmoud Ibrahim Moussa sparked controversy during last Friday's prayers when he called on Allah to "annihilate the enemies of Islam".
The 32-year-old Egyptian national became head of Europe's largest mosque recently.
His remarks were a "sin of youth", Mario Scialoja, head of the Italian branch of the Muslim World League, told Reuters news agency.
But days after the sermon, Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Italian mosques must be freed from preachers of violence and agents of foreign interests in Italy." (See also: "Rome imam: Destroy Islam's enemies" (WorldNetDaily, 2003/06/10))

"Israeli Missile Kills Hamas Man, U.S. Urges Restraint" (Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters, 2003/06/13)
"An Israeli missile strike killed a Hamas militant and wounded 23 other Palestinians in Gaza City on Friday as the Jewish state promised a "war to the bitter end" against the Islamic group, despite U.S. calls for restraint.
Witnesses said at least two helicopter rockets slammed into a car carrying Fuad al-Lidawi in Gaza's Sabra district, within sight of the home of Hamas spiritual head Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. It was the fourth such attack in a week of violence that has left the new U.S.-backed "road map" peace effort in jeopardy."

"U.S. forces kill 27 attackers in Iraq" (CNN.com, 2003/06/13)
"An "organized group" of attackers ambushed a U.S. tank patrol Friday north of Baghdad, sparking a battle that killed at least 27 of the assailants, U.S. Central Command said.
The attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades at the 4th Infantry Division patrol in Balad, according to a Central Command statement. The tanks immediately returned fire, killing four attackers and forcing the rest to flee, the statement said.
Tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, backed by Apache helicopters, pursued the attackers, killing 23, according to Central Command."

"Arab Press Fans the Flames of Hate" (J. Michael Waller, Insight on the News, 2003/06/13)
"With the State Department signing off every year on American taxpayers' annual $2 billion subsidy to the Egyptian government, the average citizen might think someone in Washington would be leaning on Cairo to stop inciting anti-U.S. hatred through the regime's mouthpieces. That citizen would be wrong. The controlled media in Egypt and across the Arab/Muslim world have loaded both their editorials and news sections with vitriol against the United States, providing legitimacy and political cover for ever-intensifying extremism. ...
Al-Ahram ran a column on Jan. 26, 2002, saying that U.S. treatment of captured al-Qaeda terrorists was "unseen in history - worse than what Hitler did." The paper's Website published a piece the following March that said, "What we have here is not an axis of evil under attack; rather, what we have is an axis of evil in the making." Earlier this year, Al-Ahram's weekly edition carried a piece comparing the Bush administration's policymaking to "the manner in which Hitler manipulated the German people to adopt the agenda of the Nazi Party."
The Saudi Arabian press, which is subject to severe censorship (and therefore, frustrated administration officials say, subject to as-yet nonexistent U.S. pressure), compares President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler and the Roman emperor Caligula, and calls the global war on terrorism "an evil crusade against Muslims everywhere." Meanwhile, Saudi media glorify terrorism in the name of jihad worldwide. The state-owned TV1 channel, which like the rest of the Saudi media is tightly controlled by political and religious police, broadcasts the sermons of government-endorsed Wahhabi clerics who call for the destruction not only of Israel and Jews, but of Christians and other "infidels" all around the world."

"Hoaxes, Hype and Humiliation" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2003/06/13)
Krauthammer on the alleged "destruction" of the National Museum in Baghdad: "What now becomes of Rich's judgment that the destruction of the museum constitutes "the naked revelation of our worst instincts at the very dawn of our grandiose project to bring democratic values to the Middle East"? Does he admit that this judgment was nothing but a naked revelation of the cheapest instincts of the antiwar left - that, shamed by the jubilation of Iraqis upon their liberation, a liberation the Western left did everything it could to prevent, the left desperately sought to change the subject and taint the victory?
Hardly. The left simply moved on to another change of subject: the "hyping" of the weapons of mass destruction. ...
Everyone thought Hussein had weapons because we knew for sure he had them five years ago and there was no evidence that he had disposed of them. The weapons-hyping charge is nothing more than the Iraqi museum story Part II: A way for opponents of the war - deeply embarrassed by the mass graves, torture chambers and grotesque palaces discovered after the war - to change the subject and relieve themselves of the shame of having opposed the liberation of 25 million people." (See also: "And Now: 'Operation Iraqi Looting'" (Frank Rich, The New York Times/Rules of War, 2003/04/27) and "Lost from the Baghdad museum: truth" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2003/06/10))

"Losing the war of the words" (Yair Sheleg, Haaretz/FrontPageMagazine, 2003/06/13)
"Prof. Ruth Wisse fears for the fate, for the very existence, of the State of Israel. And not only because of the waves of Arab hatred and terror, which she describes as worse than that of the Nazis, "because they come after the Nazis, when all of us already know exactly what anti-Semitism can lead to." ... Wisse's main fear concerns the weakness of Israelis, first and foremost the weakness of the Israeli intellectuals and the sense of self-accusation that characterizes them. ...
She most certainly understands the source of this weakness: "Self-accusation makes you feel better, because it creates the illusion that everything depends on us. If only we move out of Nablus, or vote for Mitzna, it will solve all the problems. We only have to convince each other, and then everything will be okay." ...
She says her concerns for Israel's fate began at the time of the UN resolution in 1975 that compared Zionism with racism. It isn't hard to imagine that in her eyes, the Oslo Accords are the source of all evil, an event that spiked her fear for Israel to apocalyptic levels. 'When I heard about the accords, I felt it was the worst moment in my life. I truly thought it was the end of the state. It was the most foolish decision ever made in human history. This is the first state in human history that armed its enemies, in the expectation of gaining security. It only shows the depth of the pathology.'" (See also: "From Oslo to Ground Zero" (Ruth Wisse, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/07/18))

"In Iraq, Things Really Aren't That Bad" (George Ward, The New York Times, 2003/06/13)
"Two months after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraq is widely depicted as a nation in chaos, with armed gangs dominating Baghdad's streets amid a widespread breakdown of public services. Having returned from Iraq two weeks ago, I believe this picture is distorted. In fact, we may soon look back at the postwar looting as only a bump in a long road. ...
All major public hospitals in Baghdad are again operating. Sixty percent of Iraq's schools are open. Nationwide distribution of food supplies has resumed. Despite some damage to the oil wells, petroleum production exceeds domestic needs, and exports should begin again soon. More Iraqis are receiving electric power than before the war. This progress is the result of efforts by capable Iraqi civil servants working with experts from the coalition governments and international humanitarian groups."

"Bled dry, Marsh Arabs retaliate" (Paul Salopek, Chicago Tribune, 2003/06/13)
"'Thanks be to Allah for giving our water back!' declared grinning old Mutashir, one of thousands of nomads displaced by Hussein's cataclysmic reclamation projects. His dingy robes flapping about him, he hugged himself with his scrawny arms and added, "Thanks be to George Bush!" ...
The U.S. government is considering plans to restore at least part of the Mesopotamian Marshes, a legendary swamp that once was the biggest in the Middle East, and a steaming wilderness that biblical scholars identify as the Garden of Eden. ...
What the Americans will find isn't so much a challenging engineering project as a colossal crime scene, a wasteland monument to human cruelty and survival.
"The destruction of Iraq's marshes involved a genocide," said Emma Nicholson, a British parliamentarian whose group, Assisting Marsh Arabs and Refugees, has been trumpeting the plight of the region for years. 'The best way I could describe it is an open-air Auschwitz.'" (Note: Found via InstaPundit. See also: "Life floods back in the wetlands" (Charles Clover, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/05/29))

"Students Roil Iranian Capital in 3rd Night of Protests" (Neil MacFarquhar, The New York Times, 2003/06/13)
"A third night of student protests outside Tehran University's dormitories exploded into the surrounding middle-class neighborhoods early today, with large gangs of students fighting running street battles against vigilantes armed with sticks and chains. At one major intersection demonstrators hurled bricks at trucks of riot policemen who were rushing to lift barricades and douse fires protesters had ignited in the streets.
The protesters chanted "Death to Khamenei," a slogan that can bring a jail term in this country, where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme religious leader, goes unquestioned. ...
"We want more freedom," said one 34-year-old government worker, who gave his name as Mahmoud. 'For 25 years we have lived without any freedom. We want social freedom, economic freedom and political freedom.'" (See also: "Rioters seek death of Tehran leader" (Ali Akbar Dareini, AP/The Age, 2003/06/14): "Hundreds of protesters called for the death of Iran's Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as thousands of onlookers watched early yesterday, the third day of demonstrations in the capital despite threats by the hardline regime to crack down on the disturbances. ... They shouted chants including, "Khamenei the traitor must be hanged", "guns and tanks and fireworks, the mullahs must be killed" and "student prisoners must be freed", witnesses said.")

Thursday, June 12, 2003

News and commentary:

"Vicious 'Cycle'" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/06/12)
"It's time for a ban on the phrase cycle of violence. Not only is it a journalistic cliché - a substitute for thought - but it paints a fundamentally false picture of what's going on in the Middle East. ...
"Cycle of violence" suggests that Israel and its enemies - in the most recent case, Hamas - are somehow equivalent. Israel attacks Hamas leaders in response to a Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, which itself was a response to an Israeli attack on a Hamas leader, and so on. Who knows, who cares, where it all began? It's a destructive cycle, and it must stop. ...
Israel is practicing self-defense; Hamas is practicing genocide. Palestinian civilian deaths are a tragic but unavoidable side effect of Israel's defending itself; Israeli civilian deaths are Hamas's goal. They are no more caught up in a "cycle of violence" than are America and al Qaeda. ...
The only way to stop the "cycle of violence" is to kill or incapacitate the instigators. If Abbas cannot or will not do so, how can anyone fault Israel for acting in its own defense?"

"Israeli Missiles Kill Nine in Gaza City" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/06/12)
"Israeli helicopters fired rockets at two cars carrying Hamas activists Thursday in Gaza, the latest strikes after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon swore to hunt Palestinians militants in response to a suicide attack on a bus that killed 16 people and wounded 100. ...
Hamas said the car belonged to one of its activists. A leader of the Islamic militant group, Mahmoud Zahar, said those killed in the airstrike were Yasser Taha, a member of the Hamas military wing, Taha's wife, and the couple's two small children."

"Israeli army ordered to 'wipe out' Hamas" (ABC News, 2003/06/12)
"Israeli army radio reports the army has been ordered to 'completely wipe out' the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas, a day after a suicide bomber killed 16 people on a Jerusalem bus.
Israeli helicopters killed nine Palestinians in strikes on militants after the bombing, leaving the US-backed peace "roadmap" in tatters.
Israeli Internal Security Minister Tzachi Hanegbi says no Hamas leader is safe.
The army order, which directs the military to use "whatever means necessary," was issued following a meeting of Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz with the army's top command shortly after the attack.
It is directed not only at the infrastructure of the organisation, but at its leadership, with everyone, "from the lowliest member to Sheikh Ahmad Yassin," a Hamas founder and its spiritual guide, as a legitimate target."

"Hamas declares all-out war on Israel" (AP/Toronto Star, 2003/06/12)
"The Palestinian resistance group Hamas said today it has ordered "all military cells" to take immediate action and carry out more attacks on Israelis. ...
The bus bombing "is the beginning of a new series of attacks and part of a bill the Zionists must pay," a Hamas statement said.
"We call upon all foreigners to evacuate the Zionist entity immediately in order to protect their lives," Hamas said.
'We call on all military cells to act immediately and act like an earthquake to blow up the Zionist entity and tear it to pieces.'"

"U.S. Can't Rule Out N.Korea Strike, Rumsfeld Adviser Says" (Jim Wolf, Reuters, 2003/06/12)
"The United States should be prepared to destroy North Korea's Yongbyon reactor if necessary to keep Pyongyang from trafficking in nuclear weapons, an influential member of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's advisory panel said on Wednesday.
"Whether we can effectively mobilize a coalition - including China, Russia, the South Koreans, the Japanese, ourselves - and so isolate them that they will abandon this program, that remains to be seen," said Richard Perle, an architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
"That's certainly the preferable way to deal with it," he added in a speech to a conference on Iraqi reconstruction.
"But I don't think anyone can exclude the kind of surgical strike we saw in 1981," he said, referring to Israel's surprise air attack that destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad on June 7, 1981. 'We should always be prepared to go it alone, if necessary.'"

"U.S. Helicopter Is Shot Down in Iraq" (AP/ABC News, 2003/06/12)
"Iraqi forces shot down a U.S. helicopter gunship in western Iraq on Thursday, just hours after U.S. fighter jets bombed what they said was "a terrorist training camp" in central Iraq.
The incidents came as U.S. ground troops wound up a massive sweep in a Sunni Muslim enclave north of Baghdad, aimed at routing out the organizers of attacks on occupation forces. Thursday's events marked a sharp escalation of U.S. military operations in central and western Iraq, where guerrillas have intensified attacks on U.S. troops in recent weeks.
"It's one of the largest operations since the war," U.S. Central Command spokesman Lt. Ryan Fitzgerald said."

"From Tragedy to Farce" (Roger Kimball, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/06/12)
"Fifteen minutes ago, when recriminations about an unprecedented historical loss were all the rage, it was all the fault of the Yanks and in particular the administration of George W. Bush. Quoth Prof. Zinab Bahrani from Columbia University: "Blame must be placed with the Bush administration for a catastrophic destruction of culture unparalleled in modern history." ...
But don't single out Columbia. That's what establishment academic culture is like in America and Europe today. It's the received opinion - not the only opinion, but the dominant one, the agenda-setter. Go to virtually any college or university in America or Western Europe: Anti-Americanism is a growth industry, so thriving that it is simply taken for granted: It's the state of nature.
And these days the assumptions that inform university attitudes also shape media culture. When NPR or the BBC or the New York Times goes to war, it goes with the lectures of people like Prof. Bahrani ringing in its ears and sentiments like those espoused by Prof. de Genova stirring its heart. As one disabused reporter from the Guardian put it: "You cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be believed."
The story of nonlooting of the Iraqi museums gave us a glimpse into that heart of darkness. That tragedy has collapsed into farce. Now playing: the saga of weapons of mass destruction. Plenty of those, I predict, will be found, and then we'll be treated to long analyses of exactly why the media got that wrong, too. Stay tuned." (See also: "Lost from the Baghdad museum: truth" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2003/06/10))

"'People burned like torches'" (Tovah Lazaroff, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/06/12)
"I saw a woman going up in flames, as if she were a torch. Her clothes burned first and then her skin," said Eli Shmueli as he described the Jerusalem suicide bomb attack that killed 16 and wounded 100 others.
A parking inspector for the city, Shmueli, 36, was standing by the Clal Building on Jaffa Road late Wednesday afternoon when he heard the explosion. He turned to see a bus full of burning people.
Shmueli ran toward them. There was no glass left in the mangled bus. So he was able to reach inside to try and help douse the flames on people's skins, slightly hurting his own hands in the process.
"It was a barbecue, people burned like torches," he said.
It was worse, he said, than anything he had seen at Yad Vashem." (Note: Yad Vashem's Historical Museum "combines contemporary visual and textual documentation with artifacts and brief written explanations, to tell the story of the Holocaust from the Nazis' rise to power through the first postwar years.")

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

News and commentary:

"'Suicide blast' hits Jerusalem bus" (BBC News, 2003/06/11)
"At least 15 people have been killed in an explosion on a bus in central Jerusalem, Israeli police have said.
Dozens of people were injured in the blast, reportedly caused by a Palestinian suicide bomber, on one of the city's main thoroughfares during rush-hour.
About an hour after the blast, an Israel helicopter gunship fired a missile at a car in Gaza City, killing at least six people, Palestinian medical sources said. ...
Palestinian hospital sources said a senior member of Hamas, Tito Massoud, was killed in the Gaza missile strike, as well as four passers-by." (See also: "Jerusalem bomber disguised himself as religious Jew" (CNN.com, 2003/06/11): "He might have caught the odd second glance in any other city in the world, but in Jerusalem the ultra-Orthodox Jewish man in traditional black clothing blended seamlessly with other passengers waiting for a bus. Using a tried and true disguise, the suicide bomber blew himself up as the work day drew to a close Wednesday shortly after stepping into the red-and-white number 14 bus near the city's main Mahane Yehuda marketplace on Jaffa Road.")

"A Rude Dude" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/06/11)
"Hans Blix is still giving interviews, and now he's accusing American officials of being impolite: "There are people in this administration who say they don't care if the UN sinks under the East river, and other crude things," the Guardian quotes him as saying.
Blix should talk. In the same interview, he himself resorts to name-calling: "I have my detractors in Washington. There are bastards who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media."
Oh yeah? Well, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons may break our bones, but words can never hurt us." (See also: "Blix: I was smeared by the Pentagon" (Helena Smith, The Guardian, 2003/06/11))

"'Iraqis did have Scuds'" (Ciar Byrne, The Guardian, 2003/06/11)
"Channel 4 News diplomatic correspondent Lindsey Hilsum has admitted that she "self-censored" her reports from Baghdad and did not tell viewers that Saddam Hussein's regime was hiding Scud missile launchers in residential areas, because she did not want to be thrown out of the city. ...
"We were not censored. Some of the broadcasters had Mukhabarat with them all the time. Channel 4 News didn't have any problems like that. But there was one occasion when we did censor ourselves," she said.
"After the first marketplace bombing we heard there had been a hit and we were able to go there in our own vehicle. We got lost and a couple of blocks from where the two missiles had hit there was a Scud missile launcher with a Scud on top.
"We then realised the Iraqis were hiding Scuds in residential areas. If I'd said that I think we would have been thrown out the next day," she told a Media Society event last night."

"Lessons of the War" (Victor Davis Hanson, Commentary, from the June 2003 issue)
Victor Davis Hanson on the Arab habit of denial and falsification when it comes to war: "Especially when baseless bragging takes the form of protestations about unprecedented Arab suffering and victimization — and even if presented without quite the dramatic flair of the Iraqi information minister — the press has proved all too ready to lend its credibility-enhancing energies to the Arab cause. ...
From this perspective, the Arab inebriation with falsehood and the propaganda of the lie begins to look not so irrational after all. However injurious such habits of delusion may turn out to be when tested in actual clashes of arms, politically they have proved, at least until now, rather useful — and quite in step with the deductive predispositions of influential sectors of opinion in the West. This is especially so where the subject of Israel and the Palestinians is concerned, but it applies elsewhere as well. European efforts over the years to sell arms to Saddam Hussein’s regime, machinations to hamper American military action, and the postwar European support for Syria to resist the extradition of Iraqi Baathists — these are some of the fruits of a tacit acquiescence in the idea of Arab victimhood. So are the large percentages of Frenchmen and other Europeans favoring Palestinian terror over Israeli democracy. Whatever the particular motive involved, it has been generally the case that Arab adversaries of Israel or of the United States have been able to win politically and diplomatically what they have been unable to achieve through arms on the battlefield."

"From the evil empire to the empire for liberty" (Paul Johnson, The New Criterion, from the June 2003 issue)
"The Bush administration is only beginning to grasp the implications of the course on which it has embarked. It still, albeit with growing difficulty, speaks the language of anti-imperialism. But that is the jargon of the twentieth century, or its second half; who says it will be the prevailing discourse of the twenty-first? As it happens, in America’s own parlance, imperialism became a derogatory term only during the Civil War, when the South accused the North of behaving like a European empire. It then became politically correct to speak only of "American exceptionalism." But it is worth recalling that up to 1860 "empire" was not a term of abuse in the United States. George Washington himself spoke of "the rising American Empire." Jefferson, aware of the dilemma, claimed that America was "an Empire for liberty." That is what America is becoming again, in fact if not in name. America’s search for the security against terrorism and rogue states goes hand in hand with liberating their oppressed peoples. From the Evil Empire to an Empire for Liberty is a giant step, a contrast as great as the appalling images of the wasted twentieth century and the brightening dawn of the twenty-first. But America has the musculature and the will to take giant steps, as it has shown in the past."

"America, the Gulag" (Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, 2003/06/11)
Welcome to Europe: "'Do you see any parallels between the security state that George Bush has created in America since 9/11 and the Gulag?' For a moment, the question struck me dumb. It had been put by a BBC radio interviewer, and we were on the air. It seemed impolitic to say, "What a ridiculous question," and I was too surprised to laugh. Finally I mumbled something about not having noticed that great a difference between daily life in George Bush's America and daily life in Bill Clinton's America, and left it at that. ...
I was in London because a book I wrote about Soviet concentration camps had just been published there. For some, it seemed, the combination of that subject and my nationality offered the perfect opportunity to discuss the viciousness of contemporary American society. Several times I was asked if Guantanamo Bay should be considered a concentration camp. One reviewer, after saying a few neutral words about my book, complained that "the author has missed an opportunity to condemn human rights violations in her own country." Another interviewer asked whether people in America are often arrested for insulting the president on the Internet."

"We, too, are deeply troubled" (The Jerusalem Post, 2003/06/11)
"All of this of course brings us to the blatant hypocrisy of the US when considering Palestinian terrorists. While it is clear that anyone in any way related to al-Qaida is a terrorist, we are told that there is a distinction between "political" and "military" wings of the terrorist organizations that are mainly dedicated to killing Israelis. The only thing "political" about a killer like Rantisi is that he orders others to do the dirty work for him.
While the US can take out anyone related to al-Qaida, it expects Israel to protect bin Laden's Palestinian counterparts in the terrorism business. We must by this logic allow them to freely congregate to plan attacks, appear on television to incite attacks in Arabic and justify them in English, and watch quietly as they conduct "negotiations" with Egypt and the EU.
Like Bush, we too are deeply troubled by yesterday's attempt to take out a mass murderer of our fellow citizens. We are troubled because Rantisi has lived to murder another day. We wish the air force better luck in the future in carrying out its mission of safeguarding the lives of Israeli citizens from the murderous likes of Rantisi."

"Hamas head vows vengeance for botched assassination" (The Jerusalem Post, 2003/06/11)
"The botched attempt to assassinate Abdel Aziz Rantisi, one of the leaders of Hamas, drew criticism from US President George W. Bush Tuesday, as well as putting into motion an escalation of Israeli-Palestinian violence, with Palestinians firing Kassam-type rockets into a southern Israeli town, and the IDF killing a further three Palestinians in Gaza. ...
US President George W. Bush said he was "deeply troubled" with the rocket strike on Rantisi, and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas angrily denounced it as a "terrorist act" and a "terrible deterioration" of the peace efforts."

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

News and commentary:

"More WMD hunt incompetence" (Alex Knapp, Heretical Ideas, 2003/06/10)
Knapp on an article in TNR which only is available for subscribers:
"The editors at the New Republic point out that the real scandal of the Bush Administration regarding WMD’s is the failure to secure the suspected WMD sites. ... The article also points out that the new task group assigned to look for WMD’s doesn’t seem to be taking their job all that seriously.

Beyond Al Kindi and Tuwaitha, there are more than 600 potential WMD installations that American forces have not yet investigated or secured. That task falls to the recently created Iraq Survey Group, which is helmed by U.S. Army Major General Keith W. Dayton. Dayton’s team replaces the previous unit in charge of the WMD hunt, the 75th Exploitation Task Force, but, while the Iraq Survey Group will have about 100 more on-scene searchers than its predecessor, those searchers must also investigate Iraqi war crimes, Saddam’s potential links to terrorists, POW/MIA issues, and more. ...
Will Dayton’s approach ultimately turn up WMD? It’s possible. But it will not rule out the presence of WMD at other suspected sites, nor will it secure them–leaving the possibility that looters (or worse) will get their hands on yet more dangerous weapons. The Bush administration once upon a time argued that there was no margin for error when dealing with Iraq’s WMD, famously stating that the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud. It’s at least eight weeks past time the administration started taking its own message to heart.

Damn straight it is." (See also: "Odyssey of Frustration" (Barton Gellman, The Washington Post, 2003/05/18))

"Populism Without People" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/06/10)
"LBJ aide turned public-broadcasting tycoon Bill Moyers gave a speech in Washington the other day to something called the "Take Back America conference." ...

Condemning "the unholy alliance between government and wealth" and the compassionate conservative spin that tries to make "the rape of America sound like a consensual date," Moyers charged that "rightwing wrecking crews" assembled by the Bush Administration and its Congressional allies were out to bankrupt government. Then, he said, they would privatize public services in order to enrich the corporate interests that fund campaigns and provide golden parachutes to pliable politicians. If unchecked, Moyers warned, the result of these machinations will be the dismantling of "every last brick of the social contract."

In case you don't get the point - and really, who can follow all these violently clashing metaphors? - here's how Moyers sums up the GOP agenda: "I think this is a deliberate, intentional destruction of the United States of America."
We hate to rain on Moyers's parade, but isn't this just a bit over the top? We suppose demonization has its place in political rhetoric, but no reasonable person could seriously entertain the notion that the Republican Party is trying to destroy America. Moyers's assertion that it is, and the enthusiastic reception he received from the party faithful, is a sign of the Democratic Party's profound weakness." (See also: "Bill Moyers' Presidential Address" (John Nichols, The Nation, 2003/06/09))

"It's the Same Old Blame Game Again" (Bander ibn Abdullah ibn Muhammad, Arab News, 2003/06/10)
Of course, Alkarni's answer would probably be "America": "I had great hopes for our educated people and thought that after the recent devastating terrorist attacks there would be a real cultural awakening. But some of them have unfortunately gone back to repeating the same old saw — that all our problems originate abroad. Typical is an article sent to me in an e-mail message. I don't know whether it was published or not, but the name of the author was given as Dr. Ali ibn Shuwail Alkarni, chairman of the board of directors of the Saudi Society for Information and Communications, and assistant professor of information at King Saud University in Riyadh. ...
He asked a direct question: "Did the United States try to transport terrorism to the Middle East?" ...
Alkarni summarized his article in ten points which, he says, confirm America's role in the Riyadh bombings. One point in particular struck me. "The intent of the United States is to export terrorism outside its borders, so it will be concerned with managing terrorism abroad rather than inside the country." What terrorism is he talking about? Is it the Sept. 11 incidents that claimed the lives of 3,000 people? Who were the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks — America or Al-Qaeda? ...
America was protecting itself from attacks by terrorists at home: Was that wrong? They can hardly be held responsible if these terrorists then attack elsewhere."

"Saddam Said to Pay Bounty for Killings" (Edith M. Lederer, AP/The Washington Times, 2003/06/10)
"Saddam Hussein has been seen north of Baghdad and is paying a bounty for every American soldier killed, the leader of an Iraqi exile group said Tuesday.
Saddam has $1.3 billion in cash taken from the Central Bank on March 18, is bent on revenge and believes he can "sit it out and get the Americans going," said Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. ...
The ousted Iraqi leader has been sighted on several recent occasions moving in an arc from Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, around the Tigris River toward his hometown of Tikrit and into the Dulaimi areas to the west of the Tigris, Chalabi said.
The latest sighting was about two weeks before Chalabi left on his current U.S. trip - and the best sighting was three days old.
"Now, he's put a price on American soldiers. He will pay bounty for every American soldier killed in Iraq now. This has been spread around in the western part of the country," Chalabi told the Council on Foreign Relations."

"Rome imam: Destroy Islam's enemies" (WorldNetDaily, 2003/06/10)
"In a sermon supporting suicide bombing in Israel, the new imam of Europe's largest mosque called on Allah to help in the "destruction of the enemies of Islam."
Imam Abdel-Samie Mahmoud Ibrahim Moussa, who recently became head of the Grand Mosque of Rome, called for the "victory of Islamic fighters in Palestine, Chechnya and other areas of the world" in his sermon last Friday, the Jerusalem Post reported. ...
Moussa was selected to the post at the Saudi-financed Grand Mosque of Rome by Cairo's Al Azhar University, considered Sunni Islam's leading institution."

"AP Tallies 3,240 Civilian Deaths in Iraq" (Niko Price, AP/The Washington Post, 2003/06/10)
"At least 3,240 civilians died across Iraq during a month of war, including 1,896 in Baghdad, according to a five-week Associated Press investigation.
The count is still fragmentary, and the complete toll - if it is ever tallied - is sure to be significantly higher. ...
The AP count was based on records from 60 of Iraq's 124 hospitals - including almost all of the large ones - and covers the period between March 20, when the war began, and April 20, when fighting was dying down and coalition forces announced they would soon declare major combat over. AP journalists traveled to all of these hospitals, studying their logs, examining death certificates where available and interviewing officials about what they witnessed." (See also: "Surveys pointing to high civilian death toll in Iraq" (Peter Ford, The Christian Science Monitor, 2003/05/22))

"French say their Congo mission will have little impact on fighting" (James Astill, The Guardian, 2003/06/10)
"The French intervention on behalf of the UN in Congo will be short-lived and localised and will have a negligible impact on tribal conflict, according to a French military briefing paper obtained by the Guardian. ...
The document says: "The operation in Bunia is politicaly [sic] and military [sic] high risk; very sensitive and complex. France has no specific interest in the area except solidarity with the international community." The end of the intervention, it says, has been "firmly established at Sept 1st 2003", by which time a contingent of Bangladeshi peacekeepers is expected in Bunia. ...
A European military planner who was issued a copy of the French document said: 'This is the most cynical military briefing I've read in my entire life. Everybody is just laughing at it.'" (See also: "And then the cry went up: 'Where are the French?'" (James Astill, The Observer, 2003/06/08))

"Hamas leader Rantissi wounded in Israeli helicopter raid" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2003/06/10)
"Abdul Aziz al-Rantissi, a senior leader of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, was wounded in an Israeli helicopter raid in Gaza City that killed three people and dealt a major blow to revived prospects for peace. ...
Witnesses said Israeli helicopter gunships fired five or six rockets on Rantissi's car and another vehicle parked nearby.
"I saw Rantissi jump out of the car after the first missile was fired as people rushed to the scene to help," said Bassem Abu Osama, who was present at the scene.
Two bystanders, a 50-year-old woman and a five-year-old girl, were killed while another Palestinian died of his wounds moments later.
More than 20 other people were wounded, including Rantissi, his son and two bodyguards, Palestinian medical sources said."

"Learning from Oslo" (Daniel Pipes, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2003/06/10)
"The temptation will be - as Israel's government did during the Oslo round - to overlook the Palestinians' trespasses, hoping that further benefits will somehow cause them to stop the incitement and the violence. But that approach failed last time and will do likewise this time.
Ironically, should President Bush be serious about his round of diplomacy succeeding, he must give more consequence to the murder of Israelis than did successive Israeli prime ministers. He must be willing to delay the timetable he has set out until the Palestinians truly fulfill his requirements of them.
The White House last fall established a "zero tolerance" policy for Iraqi violations of U.N. resolutions; it must do likewise today with the Palestinians: Any incitement or sanctioned violence stops the process cold.
Doing so will permit the Bush administration to help bring about Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation. But ignoring the violence will only make things even worse than they are now."

"U.S. says Iran harbors al Qaeda 'associate'" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2003/06/10)
"A top al Qaeda associate in Iraq has fled to neighboring Iran, where he and several senior al Qaeda leaders apparently remain under the protection of the Iranian government, U.S. intelligence officials say.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi fled Iraq within the past several weeks and is in Iran, the officials told The Washington Times.
Al-Zarqawi was identified in a U.N. briefing given in February by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as an 'associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants.'"

"Lost from the Baghdad museum: truth" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2003/06/10)
"When, back in mid-April, the news first arrived of the looting at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad, words hardly failed anyone. ...
Professors wrote articles. Professor Michalowski of Michigan argued that this was "a tragedy that has no parallel in world history; it is as if the Uffizi, the Louvre, or all the museums of Washington DC had been wiped out in one fell swoop". Professor Zinab Bahrani from Columbia University claimed that, "By April 12 the entire museum had been looted," and added, "Blame must be placed with the Bush administration for a catastrophic destruction of culture unparalleled in modern history." ...
Furious, I conclude two things from all this. The first is the credulousness of many western academics and others who cannot conceive that a plausible and intelligent fellow-professional might have been an apparatchiks of a fascist regime and a propagandist for his own past. The second is that - these days - you cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be believed." (See also: "All Along, Most Iraqi Relics Were 'Safe and Sound'" (William Booth and Guy Gugliotta, The Washington Post, 2003/06/09))

"Russia arrests 121 suspected members of Islamist cell in Moscow" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2003/06/10)
"Russia's FSB security services arrested 121 members of the Hizbi Tahrir party in Moscow, dismantling the cell of a group that aims to set up a Muslim state in Central Asia, the FSB said.
NTV television aired footage of the Friday raid, showing dozens of young men lined up against a brick wall as armed soldiers in camouflage stood guard.
"These are terrorists who want to overthrow the existing regime by military means," the FSB's top spokesman, Sergei Ignatchenko, told the channel.
Russia put Hizbi Tahrir, a radical Sunni group operating out of Ferghana Valley - which straddles Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan - on its blacklist of 15 terrorist organizations in February."

Monday, June 9, 2003

News and commentary:

"The Boy Who Cried Wolfowitz" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2003/06/09)
The leader of the influential Trotskyite Cabal on the leader of the powerful Straussian Cabal: "'Yes that's all very well,' said the chap from the BBC World Service, "but what about this man Vulfervitz who seems to run the whole show from behind the scenes?" For the fifth time in as many days, and for the umpteenth time this year, I corrected a British interviewer's pronunciation. ...
It takes a lot, I hope, to make me feel queasy. (I had, during my appointment at the BBC offices in London, already had to pass a door with a sign reading "Male Prayer Room," which means that the British taxpayer is already funding not just religious observance on public property but the sexual segregation of same.) ...
Still, I don't think I am quite wrong in suspecting that a sharpened innuendo is in play here. Why else, when the very name of Paul Wolfowitz is mentioned, do so many people bid adieu to the very notion of objectivity? ...
Coming back to where I began, though, I think that there's genuine cause for alarm in the current vulgar conflation of "Kabbalah" with "cabal," and with the practice of what, if anyone else were to be the target, the left would already be calling 'demonization.'" (See also: "Gross Distortion at the Guardian" (Gregory, The Belgravia Dispatch, 2003/06/04) and "What Wolfowitz Really Said" (William Kristol, The Weekly Standard, from the 2003/06/09 issue))

"Printing Nonsense" (Arnold Beichman, National Review, 2003/06/09)
Ah, the ominous Trotskyite Cabal: "The National Post, a Toronto daily of indeterminate politics, has just published a startling exposé about President Bush by a Canadian conspiracy buff named Jeet Heer, an academic at York University. His "exposé," which ran June 7, is spread over a page of the National Post under the ungrammatical headline: "TROTSKY'S GHOST/WANDERING THE/WHITE HOUSE." Then come subheads: "Bush Administration Influence — Russian Bolshevik's writings supported the idea of pre-emptive war." Aha, Trotsky, yes, Communist Leon Trotsky was the inspiration for the war in Iraq. ...
And on the same page is a huge full face photo of Leon Trotsky described in the cut line thus: "Leon Trotsky (above) has influenced such White House confidants as journalist Christopher Hitchens, below, an advocate for military intervention in the Mideast." The National Post story said: 'Despite his leftism, Hitchens has been invited into the White House as an ad hoc consultant.'" (See also: "Trotsky's ghost wandering the White House" (Jeet Heer, National Post, 2003/06/07))

"'The real Axis of Evil is Pakistan-Saudi Arabia-Yemen'" (Cinderella Bloggerfeller, 2003/06/09)
A translated interview with Bernard-Henri Levy about his recent book "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?": "The deadly threat, I repeat, is Pakistan, whose secret services have links with Al-Qaida. Real ones. There is no need, as in Iraq, to look for bombs, to put together theories about Iraqi intelligence's eventual purchase of nuclear materials from, for example, Ukraine, their processing in Kazakhstan and their export to Afghanistan. In Pakistan everything is already in place: 70-80 warheads, the technology, and scientists who are spiritually close to Islamic fundamentalism, the creators of its nuclear programme. And what's more, there is an ideology which promotes the wider proliferation of this deadly weapon. It was precisely on the trail of the links between these people and Al-Qaida that I think Daniel Peart had stumbled. ...
The problem with today's world is that we have to deal with an anti-Americanism which has become totally demonic, which is flooding the entire planet, affecting everyone…
…frustrated people. But also honest people, as sympathetic as some of the anti-globalists.
I don't think they are quite so sympathetic. And anti-Americanism is the most dangerous global ideology. Today all the totalitarianisms, the fundamentalisms, the anti-Semitisms hide behind the banner of the fight against the USA." (See also the Polish original: "Zlo sie czai w Pakistanie" (Robert Soltyk, Gazeta Wyborcza, 2003/06/06))

"N.Korea Wants Atom Bomb to Cut Conventional Forces" (Martin Nesirky, Reuters, 2003/06/09)
"In a Korean-language commentary, the North's official KCNA news agency said if the United States did not give up what it described as its hostile policy Pyongyang would have no choice but to have a nuclear deterrent.
"We are not trying to possess a nuclear deterrent in order to blackmail others but we are trying to reduce conventional weapons and divert our human and monetary resources to economic development and improve the living standards of the people," KCNA said. A commentary on KCNA clearly has high-level approval."

"All Along, Most Iraqi Relics Were 'Safe and Sound'" (William Booth and Guy Gugliotta, The Washington Post, 2003/06/09)
"The world was appalled. One archaeologist described the looting of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities as "a rape of civilization." ...
Apparently, it was not that bad.
The museum was indeed heavily looted, but its Iraqi directors confirmed today that the losses at the institute did not number 170,000 artifacts as originally reported in news accounts.
Actually, about 33 priceless vases, statues and jewels were missing." (See also pictures and descriptions of some of the stolen artifacts: "Cultural Property Stolen Iraqi Art" (Interpol, Summer 2003))

"Iraqi 'secret plan' orders mayhem" (Paul Martin, The Washington Times, 2003/06/09)
"A document from the Iraqi intelligence service in Basra — which was captured in April as coalition forces gained control — orders agents to start campaigns of sabotage, looting and murder should Iraq lose the war. ...
The document, stamped "Extremely Confidential," described itself as an "Emergency Secret Plan" and is signed, unintelligibly, by "The Head of General Intelligence". ...
The document begins: "Please take the following measures in case of the fall of the Iraqi Leadership by the American-British-Zionist coalition, God forbid."
It then lists 11 measures. At the top is "looting and setting alight of all government offices."
It urges the destruction "in particular" of intelligence and military security buildings. ...
The document, Order 549, is dated Jan. 23, 2003, and is described as a continuation of a previous "secret letter 3870" issued on Jan. 19.
It is typed under the symbols of the government — an eagle — and of its intelligence service — an eye."

"Abbas: Summit remarks fully coordinated with Arafat" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2003/06/09)
The Palestinian Prime Minister promises to not use force against Palestinian terrorists: "In his first news conference since taking office, Abbas said he would keep trying to engage militant groups in dialogue, and would not resort to force to bring them to halt their attacks on Israelis. ...
Abbas said Monday that his summit speech was coordinated with veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
"The position that was announced in Aqaba is the commitment and is the position of the Palestinian leadership. It was fully coordinated with President Yasser Arafat," Abbas said."

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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)

› AOTW Archive



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)

Weekly archive

2006/12/04 - 2006/12/10
2006/11/27 - 2006/12/03
2006/11/20 - 2006/11/26
2006/11/13 - 2006/11/19
2006/11/06 - 2006/11/12
2006/10/30 - 2006/11/05

› From 2001/09/11 -



Monthly index

December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006

› From September 2001 -



Author index

› Ajami, Fouad - Johnson, Paul
› Kagan, Robert - Ye'or, Bat



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