Archived news and commentary: July 7 - 13, 2003

2003/09/29 - 2003/10/05
2003/09/22 - 2003/09/28
2003/09/15 - 2003/09/21
2003/09/08 - 2003/09/14
2003/09/01 - 2003/09/07
2003/08/25 - 2003/08/31
2003/08/18 - 2003/08/24
2003/08/11 - 2003/08/17
2003/08/04 - 2003/08/10
2003/07/28 - 2003/08/03
2003/07/21 - 2003/07/27
2003/07/14 - 2003/07/20
2003/07/07 - 2003/07/13
2003/06/30 - 2003/07/06

Sunday, July 13, 2003

News and commentary:

"Survey: Most Palestinian refugees don't want right of return" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2003/07/13)
"Only a minority of Palestinians who lost their homes in the war that accompanied Israel's birth 55 years ago would seek to return if allowed, according to a groundbreaking Palestinian survey that was released Sunday, sparking a small riot.
The poll, by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, showed only 10 percent of respondents questioned in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan and Lebanon would wish to rebuild their homes under Israeli rule. ...
The passions the issue arouses were made clear when Shikaki called a news conference to present his findings. About 200 Palestinian refugee activists stormed his Ramallah office Sunday, smashing furniture, throwing eggs and assaulting Shikaki and some other center staff.
"We are here to announce that our right of return is a sacred right," said a leaflet distributed by the protesters. 'We will resist any attempt to sabotage our right of return.'"

"Diverse Group of Iraqis Declare Start of Interim Government" (Patrick E. Tyler, The New York Times, 2003/07/13)
"Three months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, 25 prominent Iraqis from a variety of political, ethnic and religious backgrounds, stepped onto a stage here today and declared themselves the first interim government of Iraq.
Two wore the black turbans of Shiite Islamic clerics descended from the Prophet Muhammad, two wore the flowing robes and headdresses of tribal sheiks; three women were among them, two in headscarves and one without and the rest, all men of different political stripes, wore business suits.
They arranged themselves in a semicircle during a press conference as one of the clerics, the elderly Sayyed Muhammed Bahr ul-Uloum, read a one-page statement, saying, 'The establishment of this council is an expression of the national Iraqi will in the wake of the collapse of the former oppressive regime.'" (See also: "The Road Ahead in Iraq - and How to Navigate It" (L. Paul Bremer III, The New York Times, 2003/07/13): "Once our work is over, the reward will be great: a free, democratic and independent Iraq that stands not as a threat to its neighbors or the world, but as a beacon of freedom and justice.")

"The Cult of Rajavi" (Elizabeth Rubin, The New York Times Magazine, 2003/07/13)
Rubin on the People's Mujahedeen: "The coup de grace that metamorphosed the party into something more like a husband-and-wife-led cult was Massoud's spectacular theft of his colleague's wife, Maryam. Massoud fell in love with her and invented an entire political program to elevate her into a revolutionary queen and to justify her divorce from her husband. Women should be equal to men, Massoud claimed, and Maryam should be an equal leader by his side. But working together without being married would be a violation of Islamic law. So he maneuvered her divorce and called it a ''cultural revolution.''
As Ervand Abrahamian, a historian and author of ''The Iranian Mujahedeen,'' told me: ''Rajavi said he was emulating the prophet'' - Muhammad - ''who had married his adopted son's wife to show he could overcome conventional morality. It smacked of blasphemy.'' ...
Though Maryam and Massoud finagled it so they could be together, they forced everyone else into celibacy. ''They told us, 'We are at war, and soldiers cannot have wives and husbands,''' Afshari said. ''You had to report every single day and confess your thoughts and dreams. They made men say they got erections when they smelled the perfume of a woman.'' Men and women had to participate in ''weekly ideological cleansings,'' in which they would publicly confess their sexual desires. It was not only a form of control but also a means to delete all remnants of individual thought." (See also: "Islamist, Marxist, Terrorist" (Amir Taheri, The Wall Street Journal/FrontPageMagazine, 2003/06/23))

"A different face of Islam" (Melissa Radler, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/07/13)
An interview with Tashbih Sayyed, Editor-in-Chief of Pakistan Today: "'Any plan that helps to create a terror state cannot be termed a peace plan,' wrote Tashbih Sayyed in the May 30 edition of Pakistan Today, a moderate Muslim weekly published in southern California.
The Quartet-backed road map, he wrote, "will not only ensure the destruction of Israel, but will also sow the seeds of an eternal terror."
Sayyed, 61, a Muslim immigrant to the US and president of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance, has never hesitated to express his views. Born in India and raised in Pakistan, he spent his childhood in one of that country's notorious madrassas, where he learned the religiously sanctioned anti-Semitism of militant Islam.
"As a little boy, I thought all Jews should be killed," he says. As a young man, his virulent tirades against his purported enemy at a local radio school attracted the attention of a Pakistani Jew who quietly funneled him books on Jewish history and Israel, including Exodus by Leon Uris. When Sayyed took a closer look at the Koran, a different Islam was revealed to him: a religion of peace, free of the hatred that he argues has held his people back for centuries.
"I became vengeful, as if somebody had cheated me of my childhood, as if somebody had tried to make me a serpent when I was not a serpent. I blamed the mullahs and the clerics," he says." (See also: "The State Of Terror" (Tashbih Sayyed, Pakistan Today, 2003/05/30))

"What is al-Qaeda?" (Jason Burke, The Observer, 2003/07/13)
An extract from Jason Burke's "Al-Qaeda: Casting a shadow of terror": "But increasingly, and this is a trend that is accelerating, the extremists are no longer perceived as the "lunatic fringe". Instead they are seen as the standard bearers. And their language is now the dominant discourse in modern Islamic activism. Their debased, violent, nihilisitic, anti-rational millenarianism has become the standard ideology aspired to by angry young Muslim men. This is the genuine victory of bin Laden and our greatest defeat in the 'war on terror.'"

Saturday, July 12, 2003

News and commentary:

"Detained Canadian Journalist Dies in Iran" (AP/The Guardian, 2003/07/12)
"A Canadian photojournalist allegedly beaten into a coma by Iranian police for taking pictures of a Tehran prison has died, a senior Iranian official said Saturday.
Zahra Kazemi died late Friday in a Tehran hospital after suffering a "brain stroke," Mohammad-Hossein Khoshvaqt, an official in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, said in a statement carried by Iran's official news agency.
The Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Khoshvaqt as saying Kazemi, 54, had been authorized to cover last month's violent pro-reform protests in Tehran. No mention was made of her arrest.
Canada reiterated its demand for an explanation of the circumstances of her detention and injuries. ...
Friends who visited her in a hospital Tuesday said she was unconscious, with severe cuts and bruises on her face and head." (See also: "Quebec woman in coma after arrest in Iran" (CBC News, 2003/07/09))

"Belgium Scraps War Crimes Law Which Angered U.S." (Patrick Lannin, Reuters, 2003/07/12)
"Belgium said Saturday it has decided to scrap a controversial war crimes law which has seen cases launched against President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said his new government, sworn in Saturday, has decided as one of its first acts to scrap the law which has angered the United States.
He told a news conference the move was aimed at preventing abuses of the law, which has also seen a case launched against British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"I think we have definitely solved this question," Verhofstadt said, hours after his government had been sworn in by King Albert II.
The 1993 law gave Belgian courts the power to try war crimes cases no matter where they were committed."

"Muslim call to thwart capitalism" (Mark McCallum, BBC News, 2003/07/12)
"An Islamic conference in the Spanish city of Granada has called on Muslims around the world to help bring about the end of the capitalist system.
The call came at a conference titled 'Islam in Europe' attended by about 2,000 Muslims. ...
The keynote speaker at the conference was Umar Ibrahim Vadillo, leader of the worldwide Muslim group known as Murabitun.
The group is strongly opposed to capitalism.
Mr Vadillo said America's economic interests had become the religion of the world and that people slavishly adjusted their lifestyles to suit the capitalist model.
But he said capitalism cannot sustain itself and is bound to collapse.
Mr Vadillo, a Spanish Muslim, called on all followers of Islam to stop using western currencies such as the dollar, the pound and the euro and instead to return to the use of the gold dinar.
He said the introduction of the gold dinar to the world's economies would be the single most unifying event for Muslims in the modern era.
Shortly afterwards, he said, the capitalist structure would quickly fall and it would make the Wall Street crash of 1929 seem minor by comparison."

"A Quagmire for Bush?" (Laura Fording, Newsweek, 2003/07/12)
"Forty-five percent of Americans say the Bush Administration misinterpreted intelligence reports that proved Iraq was hiding banned chemical or biological weapons before the war, says a new Newsweek poll. And while a significantly smaller number - 38 percent - believe the administration purposely misled the public, President Bush’s approval ratings have declined significantly in recent months, the poll shows."

"C.I.A. Chief Takes Blame in Assertion on Iraqi Uranium" (David E. Sanger and James Risen, The New York Times, 2003/07/12)
"The director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, accepted responsibility yesterday for letting President Bush use information that turned out to be unsubstantiated in his State of the Union address, accusing Iraq of trying to acquire uranium from Africa to make nuclear weapons.
Mr. Tenet issued a statement last night after both the president and his national security adviser placed blame on the C.I.A., which they said had reviewed the now discredited accusation and had approved its inclusion in the speech."

Added in archive:
"Document links Saddam, bin Laden" (Gilbert S. Merritt, The Tennessean, 2003/06/25)

Friday, July 11, 2003

News and commentary:

"The Think Tank of the Arab League: The Zayed International Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up - Part II" (Steven Stalinsky, MEMRI, 2003/06/11)
More on the crackpot Arab Think Tank: "Conspiracy theories involving the U.S. and Jews are commonly discussed at the Zayed Centre, including recently developed theories regarding the SARS virus. On May 16, 2003, the Centre released a report titled "SARS Virus: The Terror Coming from the East." According to the Zayed Centre's website, 'The study aims at acquainting Arab readers with the war being fought against this disease… The study gives answers, from a scientific perspective, about the suspicions regarding the possibility that [the] SARS virus could constitute a biological war launched against China in an attempt to weaken it economically, or it could be a product of an American war against the world…'" (See also: "The Think Tank of the Arab League: The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-Up (ZCCF)" (Steven Stalinsky, MEMRI, 2003/05/16))

"Scandal!" (Clifford D. May, National Review, 2003/07/11)
"The president's critics are lying. Mr. Bush never claimed that Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium from Niger. It is not true — as USA Today reported on page one Friday morning — that "tainted evidence made it into the President's State of the Union address." For the record, here's what President Bush actually said in his SOTU: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Precisely which part of that statement isn't true? ...
I suppose you can make the case that a British-government claim should not have made its way into the president's SOTU without further verification. But why is that the top of the TV news day after day? Why would even the most dyspeptic Bush-basher see in those 16 accurate words of President's Bush's 5,492-word SOTU an opportunity to persuade Americans that there's a scandal in the White House, another Watergate, grounds for impeachment?"

"No Answer" (Peter Beinart, The New Republic, 2003/07/11)
"As the preeminent umbrella organization of the hard left, ANSWER directs its outrage across the globe. This September, for instance, it plans "International Days of Protest against Occupation and Empire, from Palestine to Iraq to the Philippines to Cuba and Everywhere."
But, as McClure found out, "everywhere" does not include Congo. In fact, it doesn't include Africa at all. ANSWER has organized no protests and issued no statements on Africa's four most ravaged countries Congo, Liberia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe although they contain exponentially more oppression and suffering than the four targeted by the group's "International Days of Protest."
ANSWER is symptomatic of the left in general. A LexisNexis search going back to 2000 finds not a single reference to the crises in Congo, Liberia, Sudan, or Zimbabwe from Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Michael Moore, Michael Lerner, Gore Vidal, Cornel West, or Howard Zinn. In Congo alone, according to the International Rescue Committee, five years of civil war have taken the lives of a mind-boggling 3.3 million people. How can the leaders of the global left men and women ostensibly dedicated to solidarity with the world's oppressed, impoverished masses not care?
The answer, I think, is that the left isn't galvanized by victims; it's galvanized by victimizers. The theme of ANSWER's upcoming protest, after all, is "Occupation and Empire." In a recent essay, Roy explained that "the real and pressing danger, the greatest threat of all, is the locomotive force that drives the political and economic engine of the U.S. government." In other words, imperialism, what she elsewhere calls "a super-power's self-destructive impulse toward supremacy, stranglehold, global hegemony."
But, if the greatest injustice in the world is U.S. imperialism, the world's greatest injustices must be found where U.S. imperialism is strongest. And, here, Africa poses a problem. Africa, after all, has less contact with the United States than any other part of the world." (See also: "Millions die, Bush is silent" (Laura McClure, Salon.com, 2003/07/04) and "Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates" (Arundhati Roy, The Guardian, 2003/04/02))

"Liberal Democrats' Perverse Foreign Policy" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2003/07/11)
"What is it that makes liberals such as Dean, preening their humanitarianism, so antiwar in Iraq and so pro-intervention in Liberia?
The same question could be asked of the Democratic Party, which in the 1990s opposed the Persian Gulf War but overwhelmingly supported humanitarian interventions in places such as Haiti and Kosovo. ...
The only conclusion one can draw is that for liberal Democrats, America's strategic interests are not just an irrelevance, but also a deterrent to intervention. This is a perversity born of moral vanity. For liberals, foreign policy is social work. National interest - i.e., national selfishness - is a taint. The only justified interventions, therefore, are those that are morally pristine, namely, those that are uncorrupted by any suggestion of national interest.
Hence the central axiom of left-liberal foreign policy: The use of American force is always wrong, unless deployed in a region of no strategic significance to the United States."

"Be Very Afraid" (Joanne Jacobs, FOX News, 2003/07/11)
"A Santa Rosa Junior College instructor told U.S. government students to send e-mail to an elected official with the phrase "kill the president." One student sent the death threat to a congressman, who sent it to the Capitol Police, who called in the Secret Service.
In the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Michael Ballou blames a "growing police state” for the resulting investigation. ...
"Just the act of saying that and knowing your e-mail could be tapped and your phone listened to, you get a wave of fear over you and you realize we're actually afraid of our own government," he said.
..."the point of the assignment was to experience fear of the government," said Andrea Joy of Windsor, adding that she didn't send an e-mail.
..."The reaction really validated his point," Joy said.
Yes, if you threaten to kill the president - which is a felony - you may have to fear the government will investigate." (See also: "'Kill the president' e-mail called matter of 'extremely poor judgment'" (Randi Rossmann, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 2003/07/11))

"Defector to Bush officials: Strike N. Korea before it's too late" (World Tribune.com, 2003/07/11)
"A North Korean defector now living in Japan came to Washington this week with an urgent message.
In a meeting with White House officials, he called for a pre-emptive strike on "selected targets" in North Korea before the Kim Jong-il regime succeeds in arming its missiles with miniaturized nuclear warheads. ...
"We cannot expect to bring down the regime of Kim Jong-il by internal means," Park said. "A pre-emptive U.S. strike against selected targets inside North Korea will succeed," he said.
"U.S. strikes against North Korean targets would force Kim Jong-il to seek asylum in China. Kim is a coward. If attacked, he will flee. The North Korean army would not fight after the regime collapsed," he said.
Park heads the National Salvation Front, a group of high-ranking North Korean exiles that includes five former generals of the North Korean army, the former vice minister of home affairs, the former vice minister of culture and the former superintendent of the North Korea Military Academy."

"Chirac 'in secret deal with Serb general'" (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/07/11)
"President Jacques Chirac negotiated a secret deal to protect Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general accused of Europe's worst atrocities since the Second World War, according to evidence submitted to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
M Chirac allegedly agreed to sabotage the extradition of Gen Mladic to face genocide charges for his role in the planned extermination of Bosnian Muslims, including the massacre of 7,000 men and boys in the UN safe haven of Srebrenica in July 1995.
In exchange, Gen Mladic handed over two French pilots held hostage for 14 weeks by his forces after their Mirage fighter jet was shot down outside Sarajevo."

"Iraqis Set to Form an Interim Council With Wide Power" (Patrick E. Tyler, The New York Times, 2003/07/11)
"Representatives of the major political, ethnic and religious groups of Iraq — some of them skilled politicians, some of them exile leaders coming home and others political neophytes united by their suffering under Saddam Hussein — will declare the first postwar interim government in Iraq this weekend, Western and Iraqi officials said tonight.
After eight weeks of negotiations with the American and British occupation powers, a "governing council" of between 21 and 25 members will be granted extensive executive powers. The new body of Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, Christians and Turkmen will share responsibility for running the country under a United Nations resolution that will continue to vest Washington and London with ultimate authority until a sovereign government is elected and a new constitution ratified, the officials said."

Thursday, July 10, 2003

News and commentary:

"Beware Wars of Altruism" (David Rieff, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/07/10)
"It seems increasingly likely that the U.S. will either lead an intervention in Liberia or direct one from behind the scenes, even if the main troop deployment comes from Liberia's neighbors. For the Liberian people, martyred by almost two decades of war, banditry and successive tyrannical, kleptocratic regimes, such an intervention cannot come soon enough, as the rapturous welcome the people of Monrovia, Liberia's capital, have been giving in the last few days to an American military evaluation team amply demonstrates. If ever that much overused term "humanitarian intervention" seems justified, it is with regard to Liberia.
And yet the prospect of such a U.S. deployment poses at least as many problems as it resolves. The most obvious question that we need to ask ourselves is whether the mission of America should really be to save other nations from their own, homegrown calamities? John Adams's stern admonition to the nation, more than two centuries ago - that it was not the job of the U.S. to go out and fight monsters - cannot and should not be dismissed lightly. It is one thing to protect the vital interests of the republic, whether economic or strategic, and quite another to commit ourselves to endless wars of altruism."

"Professors fight to keep Swift on syllabus as Pakistan's Islamists target 'vulgar' classics" (Rory McCarthy . The Guardian, 2003/07/10)
"Some of the great works of English literature could be scrapped from the syllabus of one of Pakistan's leading universities because of what professors fear is a rising tide of Muslim fundamentalism.
A review of books studied in the English courses at Punjab University in Lahore singled out several texts, including Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels as containing offensive sexual connotations which were deemed "vulgar". ...
Perhaps the most bizarre criticism is of a Sean O'Casey play, The End of the Beginning. Dr Arif makes no specific comment on the text but quotes several passages in which the apparently objectionable phrases are underlined. They include the phrase: "When the song ended, Darry cocks his ear and listens." Dr Arif has underlined the word 'cocks.'" (See also: "Reshaping Pakistan Along Religious Lines" (John Lancaster, The Washington Post, 2003/06/20))

"Kim Jong-il's appetites are ingredients of book" (David R. Sands, The Washington Times, 2003/07/10)
"Kim Jong-il, the secretive head of North Korea's Stalinist regime, has a 10,000-bottle wine cellar, favors Mazda RX-7s and tuna sushi, and once sent his wife and children on an unannounced vacation to Tokyo Disneyland, according to the man who served as his personal chef for more than a decade. ...
In one of the book's racier scenes, Mr. Fujimoto describes a banquet in "a rural city" where the president suddenly ordered the dancing women hired as entertainment to strip. ...
In the Shukan Post interview, the chef detailed the nude dancing party, saying that the Group for Pleasure women at first "hesitated, but they had no power to resist."
"They all took off their clothes and danced. Then [Mr. Kim] ordered his men, including me, to dance with them. He said, 'You can dance with them, but if you touch them, you will be arrested as thieves.'"

"Fatah gunman says he hid in Muqata for a year" (Amos Harel, Haaretz, 2003/07/10)
"Ali Alian, a member of the Fatah's military wing, was arrested in May after the army besieged a house where he was hiding in Bitouniyah, west of Ramallah.
Alian is suspected of taking part in a shooting incident on Road 443 from Jerusalem to Modi'in and other places in the Ramallah area. He is suspected of planning to send a terrorist on a suicide mission to Jerusalem recently but was arrested before he could carry out this plan.
Defense sources told Haaretz Alian had told his Shin Bet interrogators he stayed in Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Muqata compound for close to 18 months. He told them he used to leave the compound and return frequently, whenever the IDF siege there was lifted. In some cases he returned to the compound after carrying out attacks, the sources said.
They said some Palestinian activists on the IDF wanted list are still in the Muqata compound."

Wednesday, July 9, 2003

News and commentary:

"Quebec woman in coma after arrest in Iran" (CBC News, 2003/07/09)
"A freelance journalist from Quebec is in a coma in an Iranian hospital after being arrested and beaten, her family says.
Zahra Kazemi was arrested in late June after taking pictures of a prison in Tehran but family members in Canada only found out about it Tuesday. Anti-government demonstrations were sweeping the country at the time.
Her son, Stephane Hachemi, says he has spoken to family in Iran who have seen Kazemi.
They say she shows signs of having been beaten and is in very serious condition.
"She's dying, she's in a coma and the first report of the doctor was that she has a very, very small chance," he says.
Hachemi says he doesn't know why his mother was arrested, but a Canadian Foreign Affairs spokesperson says she was suspected of espionage.
Hachemi says his mother is not a spy. He has asked the Department of Foreign Affairs to help."

"Iranian Vigilantes, Police, Youths Clash in Tehran" (Jon Hemming, Reuters/The Washington Post, 2003/07/09)
"Hundreds of Iranian hardline Islamic vigilantes, police and pro-democracy youths fought sporadic street battles near Tehran University on Wednesday, the anniversary of violent 1999 student unrest.
A witness said police fired tear gas at groups of youths near the campus and also fought hand-to-hand with plainclothes Islamic militiamen to prevent them from engaging in further battles with the pro-democracy youths. ...
At one point on Wednesday, a group of armed Islamic vigilantes pushed aside police to seize three reformist student leaders after they held a news conference to announce the cancellation of planned protests.
"We cannot call it arrest, it was a kidnapping," Matin Meshkini, a student leader, told Reuters."

"EuroPress Review: Playing it for laughs" (Denis Boyles, National Review, 2003/07/09)
Boyles on European reactions to Berlusconi's Nazi joke, with lots of links: "The story wouldn't die. Day after day, the Nancies of Europe howled. To Martin Jacques, writing in the Guardian, Berlusconi was "the most dangerous political figure in Europe". To Der Tagesspeigel, Berlusconi was just too stupid to know better. To the Frankfurter Algemeine, he was a man out of control. To the Independent, it was the end of the rotating Euro presidency, in case some other lunatic politician might want to go full-Berlusconi. The angry Germans were so appalled at being called, um, funny Germans that, according to the Telegraph, they've begun banning the German language — the very language spoken by Adolf Hitler himself! — by erasing bad words, like luftwaffe.
These kinds of events, rich in hysteria and meaninglessness, illuminate the more preposterous aspects of the European Left and their strange "Union": It's not a state. It's a bureaucracy in search of a government. It takes itself far too seriously because it lacks anything but the most annoying kind of authority. But most of all, Europa, as a political entity, is a crazy invention propelled by pure sentiment." (See also: "Berlusconi must have an apology from the red rabble" (Rosemary Righter, The Times, 2003/07/04) and "Berlusconi in EU 'Nazi' slur" (BBC News, 2003/07/02))

"Crash caused Lynch's 'horrific injuries'" (Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, 2003/07/10)
"The Army will release a report tomorrow on the ambush of the 507th Maintenance Company in Iraq that will show Pfc. Jessica Lynch and another female soldier suffered extensive injuries in a vehicle accident, but not from Iraqi fighters. ...
The Army's 15-page report officially will debunk accounts that Pfc. Lynch emptied two revolvers at her attackers and was shot and stabbed before being taken prisoner of war. In fact, she was riding in a Humvee that was struck by a projectile during a frantic attempt to escape the ambush. She suffered "horrific injuries," said Pentagon sources familiar with the report. ...
The report also will show that the company's senior enlisted soldier, 1st Sgt. Robert Dowdy, worked furiously to reorganize the 507th 13-vehicle convoy so it could make a retreat. Traveling in Pfc. Piestewa's Humvee, Sgt. Dowdy stopped, got out of the vehicle and tried to motivate other soldiers. Two soldiers whose truck was disabled got into the Humvee with Sgt. Dowdy and the two female soldiers.
"This was a fight," a Pentagon source said. "They got popped at different locations. There were battles. They were fighting back."
The Humvee sped away from the scene and likely was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. Sgt. Dowdy was killed instantly." (See also the report: "Attack on the 507th Maintenance Company, 23 March, An Nasiriyah, Iraq" (El Paso Times, 2003/07/09))

"North Korea 'tested nuclear devices'" (Reuters/Evening Standard, 2003/07/09)
"North Korea recently reprocessed a small number of its estimated 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods and has also tested devices used to trigger atomic explosions, South Korea's intelligence agency said today.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS) statement to parliament on recent North Korean nuclear activity follows similar reports in US newspapers and comes as Seoul and its allies are trying to draw Pyongyang into talks."

"Bush 'warned over uranium claim'" (BBC News, 2003/07/09)
"The CIA warned the US Government that claims about Iraq's nuclear ambitions were not true months before President Bush used them to make his case for war, the BBC has learned.
Doubts about a claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African state of Niger were aired 10 months before Mr Bush included the allegation in his key State of the Union address this year, the CIA has told the BBC.
On Tuesday, the White House for the first time officially acknowledged that the Niger claim was wrong and should not have been used in the president's State of the Union speech in January."

Tuesday, July 8, 2003

News and commentary:

"Why radical Islam might defeat the West" (Spengler, Asia Times, 2003/07/08)
"'You are decadent and hedonistic. We on the other hand are willing to die for what we believe, and we are a billion strong. You cannot kill all of us, so you will have to accede to what we demand.' That, in a nutshell, constitutes the Islamist challenge to the West.
Neither the demographic shift toward Muslim immigrants nor meretricious self-interest explains Western Europe's appeasement of Islam, but rather the terrifying logic of the numbers. That is why President Bush has thrown his prestige behind the rickety prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian peace. And that is why Islamism has only lost a battle in Iraq, but well might win the war.
Not a single Western strategist has proposed an ideological response to the religious challenge of Islam. On the contrary: the Vatican, the guardian-of-last-resort of the Western heritage, has placed itself squarely in the camp of appeasement. Except for a few born-again Christians in the United States, no Western voice is raised in criticism of Islam itself. The trouble is that Islam believes in its divine mission, while the United States has only a fuzzy recollection of what it once believed, and therefore has neither the aptitude nor the inclination for ideological warfare."

"Islamic Jihad Claims Blast Responsibility" (Louis Meixler, AP/The Guardian, 2003/07/08)
"The militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility Tuesday for a bombing in central Israel that killed two people and apparently violated a weeklong cease-fire pledge.
The group threatened more violence if Israel does not meet its demand for a mass release of Palestinian prisoners.
"Release the prisoners or the consequences will be grave," the group said in a leaflet faxed to The Associated Press. ...
The group identified the bomber as 22-year-old Ahmed Yehyia from the village of Kufr Rai in the northern West Bank.
Israeli police said the Monday blast leveled a house in Kfar Yavetz, an Israeli village near the West Bank, killing the 65-year-old woman who lived there and an unidentified young man, apparently Yehyia."

"PA arrests, then frees female would-be suicide bomber" (Margot Dudkevitch, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/07/08)
"Palestinian Authority security officials, who claimed on Sunday they had arrested an 18-year-old would-be female suicide bomber near the Karni crossing in the Gaza Strip, apparently released her into her parents' custody early Monday morning.
Palestinian media reports of the arrest came a day after Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz called on the PA to combat terror and destroy the terrorist infrastructure, following his meeting with PA Security Minister Muhammad Dahlan.
Mofaz also mentioned the arrests by PA security forces of the perpetrators of rocket and mortar attacks, noting that shortly after they were taken into custody they were released and describing the Palestinian actions as serious."

"Iran Confirms Test of Missile That Is Able to Hit Israel" (Nazila Fathi, The New York Times, 2003/07/08)
"Iran has successfully conducted the final test of a midrange missile, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry here confirmed today.
The missile, called Shahab-3, was first tested in 1998 and has a range of 806 to 930 miles, which means it can reach Israel and American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. ...
"We are very concerned, especially since we know that Iran is seeking to acquire the nuclear weapon," an Israeli government spokesman, Avi Pazner, said immediately after the Iranian confirmation, according to a report from Agence France-Presse.
"The combination of Shahab-3 and the nuclear weapon would be a very serious threat on the stability of the region," he added, according to the report." (See also: "Iran's successful missile test puts Israel within range" (Amir Oren, Haaretz, 2003/07/05))

Monday, July 7, 2003

News and commentary:

"Fascist Alert!" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/07/07)
"Here's an informative piece from Wayne Madsen, "a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist," on the far-left Counterpunch site (emphasis ours):

An elite group of neo-fascists in Washington, London, Canberra, Rome, Jerusalem, and Madrid are seeking to return independent nation states to colonialism. . . . Meanwhile, in California, a state that overwhelmingly voted for Al Gore, the right-wing fascists are attempting to turn Governor Gray Davis out of office through a recall petition. . . . Typical of fascists - when elections fail, seize power through some political contrivance. . . . Bush's fellow fascist, Italian scandal-ridden Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, just two days into Italy's presidency of the European Union, caused a major intra-continental rift. . . . Berlusconi, the heir to the fascist government of Benito Mussolini, should know all about Nazis and concentration camps. Berlusconi, an Italian version of the proto-fascist Fox News Channel tycoon Rupert Murdoch, is a fervent supporter of Bush. . . . Bush must be privately gleeful that his fascist Italian friend is tearing apart the very fabric of the European Union, an economic powerhouse that stands in the way of Bush's plans for global domination."

(See also: "A Sad Independence Day - Little to Celebrate in a Country Gone Mad" (Wayne Madsen, counterpunch, 2003/07/04))

"A genealogy of anti-Americanism" (James W. Ceaser, The Public Interest, from the Summer 2003 issue)
A brilliant essay on anti-Americanism: "In a recent and widely discussed book on America, Après L'Empire, credited by many with having influenced the position of the French government on the war in Iraq, Emmanuel Todd writes: "A single threat to global instability weighs on the world today: America, which from a protector has become a predator." A similar mistrust of American motives was clearly in evidence in the European media's coverage of the war. To have followed the war on television and in the newspapers in Europe was to have witnessed a different event than that seen by most Americans. During the few days before America's attack on Baghdad, European commentators displayed a barely concealed glee - almost what the Germans call schadenfreude - at the prospect of American forces being bogged down in a long and difficult engagement. Max Gallo, in the weekly magazine Le Point, drew the typical conclusion about American arrogance and ignorance: "The Americans, carried away by the hubris of their military power, seemed to have forgotten that not everything can be handled by the force of arms ... that peoples have a history, a religion, a country."
Time will tell, of course, if Gallo was even near correct in his doubts about U.S. policy. But the haste with which he arrived at such sweeping conclusions leads one to suspect that they were based far more on a pre-existing view of America than on an analysis of the situation at hand. Indeed, they were an expression of one of the most powerful modes of thought in the world today: anti-Americanism.
According to the French analyst Jean François Revel, "If you remove anti-Americanism, nothing remains of French political thought today, either on the Left or on the Right." Revel might just as well have said the same thing about German political thought or the thought of almost any Western European country, where anti-Americanism reigns as the lingua franca of the intellectual class."

"Saddahmer Hussein" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2003/07/07)
Hitchens on the disclosure of WMD-parts and plans which was buried in a garden in Baghdad: "First of all, the trove of parts and blueprints has been there since 1991, which means that its concealment was designed to thwart not just the current inspections, or the inspections before them, but the inspections before that!
Second, it was buried at the express order of Qusai Hussein, charming son of Saddam, so there is no question of its being a "rogue" or "random" concealment. Third, it was brought to the attention of inspectors by a highly credible scientist, Mahdi Obeidi, who was too frightened to go public with his knowledge until very recently. In other words, if you think Hans Blix would ever have found this cache of stuff, you are dreaming. ...
So this is not just a "find" in itself — such gas centrifuges are used for the enrichment of uranium — but evidence of a larger and wider design to fool the international community and to wait for a better day to restart Saddam's nuclear program. ...
However, to believe that the Saddam regime had nothing to hide is to believe that he threw out the U.N. inspectors in 1998 and then said to himself: "Great. Now I can get on with my dream of unilaterally disarming Iraq!" Who can be such a fool as to believe any such thing? But that's how Jeffrey Dahmer got away with it for so long: There are enough kind-hearted and soft-headed people around who don't recognize evil even when it is glaring them brazenly in the face." (See also: "U.S.: Banned arms evidence in Iraq" (MSNBC, 2003/06/25))

"Hijacked by the Hudna" (HonestReporting, 2003/07/07)
"Look what's happened: The road map, accepted by both the PA and Israel to international fanfare, has been taken hostage by the hudna, an internal Palestinian deal that Israel never agreed to.
The world media, in surreal fashion, have accepted this shift, allowing Hamas to set the terms for road map progress:
- The New York Times reported this week: "The release of Palestinian prisoners is just one of many demands placed on both sides under the Mideast peace plan, known as the road map."
Actually, the road map says absolutely nothing about release of Palestinian prisoners. Only the hudna — which Israel never agreed to — demands a prisoner release. ...
- BBC: "Israeli officials say members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad are not included among those to be freed, a decision which could jeopardise the truce and threaten the entire peace process."
Note the BBC's logic: Israel's refusal to immediately release over 6,000 prisoners (many of whom are convicted murders) jeopardizes the "truce." The BBC would have us believe that Israel, therefore, is the guilty party for the possible failure of the road map. ...
Stage One of the road map demands that the PA "arrest, disrupt, and restrain" terror groups, eliminating their influence. How have those same terror groups not only wrestled control of the PA's negotiations, but convinced the media that their outrageous demands are actually integral to the roadmap?!"

"Why Terror Fails" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2003/07/07)
"The tactic of mass murder by suicide is subject to the same law of diminishing returns as other forms of terrorism. The 19th century Narodniks made a spectacular impression initially because they could kill lots of people while sustaining few casualties themselves. The Russian secret police, the Okhrana, though shaken at first, was retrained to think like the Narodniks and fight them more effectively. In time, the bottom line changed against the Narodniks: They had to offer two or more lives to take one life from "the enemy." Like any other enterprise with a bad bottom line, they were driven out of the market.
Later, the same thing happened to the Anarchists, whom Chesterton saw as a menace to last a thousand years. They didn't. They, too, remained in business for as long as they could kill more and die less. When that equation was reversed, they disappeared. More recent terrorists, from the air pirates of the 1960s to the Marxists of the 1970s produced similar experiences. As the cost of hijacking planes rose for the pirates, they were driven out of the market. ...
In the final analysis, terrorism, regardless of the methods used, is not a sustainable enterprise. Even the most successful terrorist organizations end up either by rallying to the system in place or by being wiped out."

"Wishful Thinking" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2003/07/07)
"The fundamental difference between the Clinton and Bush administrations' use of intelligence is that Clinton consistently refused to acknowledge the threats we faced, while Bush sometimes sees threats as more immediate than they may be.
The Clinton approach led directly to 9/11. The Bush approach led to Baghdad. Guess which one makes more sense for a nation under threat of deadly attack?"

"Disinfect the BBC before it poisons a new generation" (Barbara Amiel, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/07/07)
"That evening I watched the BBC programme The Reporters, in which the terrorist organisation Hamas was depicted as a cross between the Good Samaritans and the Girl Guides.
In the early days of the Iraq war, the BBC's architectural expert, Dan Cruikshank, filmed On the Road to Armageddon, a 60-minute documentary about the effect of the war on Middle East historical artefacts. The programme was a breathtaking farrago of distortions, historical illiteracy and appalling insinuations against Israel, despite Cruikshank's assertion that he was "objective" and had "no axe to grind".
The effect of the programme was to blame Israel for imperilling the historical monuments of the region. ...
No doubt many people at BBC news and public affairs believe themselves to be quite apolitical, and some might be. But those departments suffer from a world view that is now infecting a new generation of viewers. Like other nasty viruses, this one requires swift containment."

"Campbell cleared by MPs over Iraq dossier" (The Daily Telegraph, 2003/07/07)
"Alastair Campbell, Government communications director, has been cleared by MPs of exerting "improper influence" on the drafting of the Government's intelligence-led dossier on Iraq.
The Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said he played no role in including a controversial section saying Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were deployable within 45 minutes.
The MPs, who cleared Mr Campbell of the first charge only on the casting vote of the committee's chairman, attacked the Government over its handling of the affair.
The committee criticised a second dossier, published in February, with the MPs saying Prime Minister Tony Blair had "misrepresented its status" to MPs."

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

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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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