Archived news and commentary: September 1 - 7, 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, September 7, 2003

News and commentary:

"Address of the President to the Nation" (George W. Bush, The White House, 2003/09/07)
"The Middle East will either become a place of progress and peace, or it will be an exporter of violence and terror that takes more lives in America and in other free nations. The triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq, in Afghanistan and beyond would be a grave setback for international terrorism. The terrorists thrive on the support of tyrants and the resentments of oppressed peoples. When tyrants fall, and resentment gives way to hope, men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror, and turn to the pursuits of peace. Everywhere that freedom takes hold, terror will retreat. ...
Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front. Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there - and there they must be defeated. This will take time and require sacrifice. Yet we will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom and to make our own nation more secure."

"Verschwörung 11.September"
(Der Spiegel, 2003/09/08)

"The new Holocaust deniers of 9/11" (Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine, 2003/09/07)
"The latest: Der Spiegel's cover story this week puts the burning Twin Towers on their head with a cover story that asks: "Were the attacks on New York and Washington the biggest act of terrorism in history - or a gigantic plot by the secret services? Conspiracy theorists are writing bestsellers with their alleged evidence, and already a fifth of Germans believe their half-truths."
As Eamonn Fitzgerald points out, this is a most cynical act: The editors of Der Spiegel cloak their story in doubt - but if there's so much doubt, why is this a story, why is it a long story (14 pages of solid text on my printout), and why is it a cover story?
I couldn't bear to translate the whole thing but from what I read, it's enough to make me suggest that we all buy European tinfoil futures. Fitzgerald has more about the list of "authors" the magazine promotes:

And as Der Spiegel doesn't want to be left behind in this race to the bottom, it joins a growing list of charlatans doing a steady business pawning their fabrications to a credulous public. ... The latest to join this bizarre list is Andreas von Bülow, a former SPD Minister of Research. His volume, which is doing brisk business, is entitled The CIA and the 11th of September: International Terror and the Roll of the Intelligence Agencies. It fingers the CIA and Mossad as the sponsors of 9/11 while sticking to the golden conspiracy-theory formula of offering supposition instead of evidence.
Add the numbers in the date 11.09.2001 together and what do you get? 23! Add four hijacked planes + nineteen terrorists and what do you get? 23! What's the secret number of the Illuminati? 23! It is to this level of craziness that Der Spiegel has descended. It should not be regarded as a serious magazine anymore. ...

Yet these "editors" are choosing not to shoo these nut jobs but instead to make them famous. They are choosing to pander to prejudices and suspicions that have not basis in fact. They are sacrificing their only asset: credibility. They are the shame of the news business.
The "editors" are more vile than the crackpots, for they should know better." (See also: "Der Spiegel sinks to all-time low" (Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day, 2003/09/06), "Moonbats: The Gathering" (Michele Catalano, A Small Victory, 2003/09/06) and "Sept 11 theorists to meet in Berlin" (DPA/Expatica, 2003/09/05). Also: "The September 11 X-Files" - News and commentary on conspiracy theories regarding the September 11 attacks and the war on terror.)

"North Of The Border" (CBS News, 2003/09/07)
And the border is wide open: "In the past decade, Canada has opened its doors to more than two million immigrants to keep its economy growing. They have settled into diverse, ethnic neighborhoods of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, where Arabic and Farsi are now as likely to be spoken as English or French.
Tens of thousands have come from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Iran and North Africa -and some have brought their radical politics with them.
"We've established through our intelligence services and other means that we have 50 terrorist organizations now on our soil. And a good number of these are world class. They range in scope from the IRA to Hezbollah, Hamas … certainly al Qaeda," says Harris, who believes that they are targeting the United States. ...
Mahmoud Mohammad is a Palestinian who, in 1968, attacked an El Al jet at the Athens Airport, throwing hand grenades and machine-gunning the plane. One passenger was killed.
Mohammad was sentenced to 17 years in prison in Greece, but was released as part of a prisoner exchange. He found his way to Canada 15 years ago using a fake name. After more than 40 court hearings, the Canadian government still hasn't managed to get rid of him.
"I was the head of immigration at the time. I remember it very well. That was in 1987. This guy is still here. He's free. He's running a little grocery store in Sullivan, Ontario, with his family. It's calculated that it's cost the Canadian taxpayer $3 million in court costs because he hasn't got the money," says Bissett.
And the legal process is still going on."

"Arafat choice for PM named" (BBC News, 2003/09/07)
"Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has told his Fatah movement that he wants parliamentary speaker Ahmed Qurei as his next prime minister, Palestinian officials say.
Mr Qurei, also known as Abu Ala, would replace Mahmoud Abbas, whose resignation on Saturday threw the Palestinian leadership into turmoil.
A senior Palestinian official quoted by Reuters news agency said "Arafat has told the Fatah leadership that he nominates Abu Ala to form a new government.'" (See also: "Profile: Ahmed Qurei" (Fiona Symon, BBC News, 2003/09/07))

"Italy Study Sees Al Qaeda Link to Human Trafficking" (Luke Baker, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/07)
"Italy's secret services say they see increasing evidence militant groups such as al Qaeda are moving into the smuggling of illegal immigrants, a billion dollar trade they can use to fund other activities.
An intelligence report released at the weekend says "terror networks" and groups who traffic in illegal immigrants share a natural overlap, often relying on false documents and intricate logistics, transport and communication setups.
"There is the fear, too, that the same routes used for illegal immigration are being used by militants to help form Islamic terrorist groups," says the report, compiled by Cesis, which coordinates the work of Italy's secret services.
The document comes just days before senior EU ministers are due to gather in Rome for an informal meeting to discuss immigration and terrorism-related issues." (Note: Found via Little Green Footballs.)

"Saudis sentenced me to crucifixion, says freed Briton" (Drudge Report, 2003/09/07)
"A man who faced a death sentence in Saudi Arabia over his alleged part in a bombing campaign describes how he was tortured.
Sandy Mitchell - who was among six Britons and a Belgian national freed from jail last month after being granted clemency by Saudi's King Fahd - says he suffered brutal torture when being forced to confess to a car bombing.
In an interview with BBC's Frontline program, Mitchell, from Kirkintilloch near Glasgow, describes the beatings which he claims led him to sign false confessions.
He also reveals that he was sentenced to be partially beheaded then fixed to an X-shaped cross in public view!
He says: "The beatings started with punching, kicking and spitting and eventually progressed to hitting me with sticks.
'They had this axe handle and I was beaten on the soles of my feet.'" (See also: "'I am not quite the man I was'" (William Sampson with Francine Dubé, National Post, 2003/09/06))

"Predators aren't looking for peace" (Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 2003/09/07)
"On the Eastern Seaboard, the weeks leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, were the summer of shark attacks. Jessie Arbogast, an 8-year old lad from Pensacola, Fla., had his arm ripped off, but his quick-witted uncle wrestled the predator back to shore, killed him, and retrieved the chewed-up limb from his jaws. In a thoughtful editorial, the New York Times came down on the side of the shark: ''Many people now understand that an incident like the Arbogast attack is not the result of malevolence or a taste for human blood on the shark's part,'' explained the Times. ''What it should really do is remind us yet again how much we have to learn about them and their waters.''
In other words, we need to work harder to understand ''why they hate us.'' Just blundering into their waters in ever more culturally insensitive bathing suits will only provoke the vast majority of nonviolent members of the shark community to hate us even more.
Two years after ''the day America changed forever,'' the culture is in thrall to the same dopey self-delusion it held on Sept. 10, 2001: There are no enemies, just friends we haven't yet apologized to. The terrorist won't be a problem if, like young Jessie with the shark, we just give him a helping hand. Or, as the novelist Alice Walker proposed for Osama bin Laden, ''I firmly believe the only punishment that works is love.''
That's why America's TV networks have decided to sit out this week's anniversary. ... The alternative would be to treat 9/11 as what it was - an act of war - and they don't have the stomach for that. War presupposes enemies, and enemies means people you have to kill, or at least stop, or at the very least be ever so teensy-weensily judgmental about. And, in an age when presidents rewrite ''Peter And The Wolf'' to end with Peter apologizing to the wolf, why should the network sob sisters be any tougher?"

"Flypaper - A Strategy Unfolds" (Andrew Sullivan, The Sunday Times/andrewsullivan.com, 2003/09/07)
"Some time before the Iraq war, I found myself musing out loud to someone close to the inner circles of the Bush administration. We were talking about the post-war scenario, something that even then was a source of some worry even to gung-ho hawks like myself. ... And what he said surprised me. If the terrorists leave us alone in Iraq, fine, he said. But if they come and get us, even better. Far more advantageous to fight terror using trained soldiers in Iraq than trying to defend civilians in New York or London. "Think of it as a flytrap," he ventured. Iraq would not simply be a test-case for Muslim democracy; it would be the first stage in a real and aggressive war against the terrorists and their sponsors in Ryadh and Damascus and Tehran. Operation Flytrap had been born. ...
Listen to U.S. Army Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq. He just opined on CNN that attacks against U.S. forces have increased in "sophistication, especially in the improvised explosive devices that they are using, and we're working to learn from that and to be able to counter them." He went on, critically: "This is what I would call a terrorist magnet, where America, being present here in Iraq, creates a target of opportunity... But this is exactly where we want to fight them. ...This will prevent the American people from having to go through their attacks back in the United States." You won't find a better description of the "flytrap" strategy anywhere - or from a more authoritative source." (See also: "Interview With Ricardo Sanchez" (CNN.com, 2003/07/27))

"Winning the Peace, Quietly" (Max Boot, Los Angeles Times, 2003/09/07)
"Having just returned from visiting our troops in Iraq, I couldn't help but see parallels with Vietnam. But not in the way you'd think.
Usually Vietnam is invoked to warn of a quagmire, of an impending U.S. defeat against a guerrilla foe. El Salvador, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan were all going to be the "next" Vietnam before winding up U.S. victories. Now it's Iraq's turn to be seen, unfairly, as the looming quagmire.
But the real parallel with Vietnam is the disparity between battlefield realities and home-front perceptions.
In the popular view, Vietnam became "unwinnable" after the Tet Offensive in 1968. Actually, that campaign was a major American victory that all but destroyed the Viet Cong as an effective fighting force. By 1970 more than 90% of South Vietnam's population was under Saigon's control. But by then it didn't matter: Congress, the media and the voters had tired of the war and forced a sharp decrease in American aid. The result was that Saigon fell in 1975 — not to guerrillas but to North Vietnamese regulars driving T-54 tanks.
Now the media are portraying Iraq as a proto-Vietnam, a land where U.S. troops can't do anything right and where they can expect a prolonged and painful defeat. But as in Vietnam, U.S. troops in Iraq are slowly winning the war on the ground, even as they're losing the public relations battle back home." (See also: "Reconstructing Iraq" (Max Boot, The Weekly Standard, from the 2003/09/15 issue))

"Al Qaeda Plans A Front in Iraq - Strategy Shift May Signal Weakness" (Peter Finn and Susan Schmidt, The Washington Post, 2003/09/07)
"The turn toward Iraq was made in February, as U.S. forces were preparing to attack, the sources said. Two seasoned operatives met at a safe house in eastern Iran. One of them was Mohammed Ibrahim Makawi, the military chief of al Qaeda, who is better known as Saif Adel. He welcomed a guest, Abu Musab Zarqawi, who had recently fled Iraq's Kurdish northern region in anticipation of the U.S. targeting of a radical group with which he was affiliated, Arab intelligence sources said.
The encounter resulted in the dispatch of Zarqawi to become al Qaeda's man in Iraq, opening a new chapter in the history of the group and a serious threat to American forces there.
"The monster is already near you," said one Arab official who is familiar with the intelligence and who spoke on condition that he not be identified by name or nationality. "I don't know if you can kill it."
The official added: 'Iraq is the new battleground. It is the perfect place. It will be the perfect place.'"

"Bush on warpath over UN's shock report on Iran A-bomb" (Con Coughlin, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/09/07)
"America will tomorrow demand that the United Nations takes urgent action to prevent Iran acquiring the atom bomb as fears mount that Teheran is on course to develop a nuclear weapons capability within two years.
United States officials will make the demand at a special meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna that has been arranged to consider a 10-page report by Mohammed al-Baradei, the agency's director-general, into the state of Iran's nuclear programme. ...
Although Mr al-Baradei admits that the Iranians have deployed a variety of delaying tactics to prevent UN inspectors gaining access to secret nuclear facilities, he believes that they should be given more time to comply with their obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
American officials fear that many Europeans on the IAEA's 35-member board of governors, some of whose countries have lucrative trade ties with Teheran, will back Mr al-Baradei's position." (See also: "They're out of excuses, we're out of time" (Con Coughlin, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/09/07): "But as will be made clear in a highly critical report to be delivered to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna tomorrow, UN inspectors have uncovered a disturbing number of glaring inconsistencies in Iran's nuclear programme that has led many weapons experts to conclude that Iran is not only working hard to develop an atom bomb, but, left to its own devices, could achieve its stated goal of acquiring a nuclear arsenal within two years.
With the development of the Shahab 3 missile, which has a range of nearly 1,000 miles carrying a payload of 2,200lbs, the Iranians also have a ready-made delivery system capable of hitting targets throughout the Middle East, including Israel.")

"A Rare View of 9/11, Overlooked" (James Glanz, The New York Times, 2003/09/07)
"They did not even see the pale fleck of the airplane streak across the corner of the video camera's field of view at 8:46 a.m. But the camera, pointed at the twin towers from the passenger seat of an S.U.V. in Brooklyn near the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, kept rolling when the plane disappeared for an instant and then a silent, billowing cloud of smoke and dust slowly emerged from the north tower, as if it had sprung a mysterious kind of leak. ...
The camera, pointed upward, zoomed in and out, and then, with a roar in the background that built to a piercing screech, it locked on the terrifying image of the second plane as it soared, like some awful bird of prey, almost straight overhead, banking steeply, and blasted into the south tower.
It was not until almost two weeks later that the worker, Pavel Hlava, even realized that he had captured the first plane on video. Even then, Mr. Hlava, who speaks almost no English, did not realize that he had some of the rarest footage collected of the World Trade Center disaster. His is the only videotape known to have recorded both planes on impact, and only the second image of any kind showing the first strike."

"Sharon: Hamas Leaders Marked for Death" (Karin Laub, AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/07)
"Hamas leaders are "marked for death" and won't have a moment's rest, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned Sunday, after Israel failed in an attempt to kill the top Hamas echelon with a 550-pound bomb dropped on a Gaza City apartment. ...
Sharon told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper that Israel's campaign would continue.
"They are marked for death," Sharon was quoted as saying, referring to Hamas leaders. 'We won't give them a moment's rest. We will continue to hunt them because they have only one objective: the destruction of Israel.'"

"Police on high alert after Yassin hurt in IAF strike" (The Jerusalem Post, 2003/09/07)
Perhaps the Arab League should have THE GATES OF HELL ARE OPEN as their slogan?: "Senior Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi confirmed that Yassin and Haniya were in the targeted building, and said they were both targeted for assassination. Rantisi added that both Yassin and Haniya were injured in the attack. "The Gates of hell are open," Rantisi added.
"Following this attempt there is no more room for negotiation. Now there is only room for our response. The Hamas movement does not weaken when its senior activists are killed, and its responses will come. Israel does not differentiate between militant and political leader, between a handicapped man and every other man. Therefore there will be no differentiation from our side between any Zionist target," Rantisi said." (See also: "Arab League: Iraq Strike Would 'Open Gates of Hell'" (Andrew Hammond, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/05))

Saturday, September 6, 2003

News and commentary:

"The fourth world war" (Doug Sanders, The Globe and Mail, 2003/09/06)
An interesting article about the global scope of the war on terror: "They call it World War Four, an unofficial title that is now used routinely by top officials and ground-level operatives in the U.S. military and the CIA. It is a global war, one of the most expensive and complex in world history. And it will mark its second anniversary this week, on Sept. 11. ...
Over the summer, while the world's attention was focused on Iraq, the Pentagon was busily preparing to shift hundreds of thousands of soldiers to new real estate, in places most Westerners known little about, in preparation for a world war that could last decades. "Everything is going to move everywhere," Pentagon undersecretary Douglas Feith said. "There is not going to be a place in the world where it's going to be the same as it used to be." ...
So American soldiers and spooks are moving out of Germany and into Africa - the east now, and soon into the western Sahara and the northern Mediterranean coast as well. They are moving out of Japan and Korea and into Southeast Asia, which has the world's largest Muslim population and is believed to be the area at highest risk of al-Qaeda outbreaks. This fall, large numbers of U.S. soldiers are expected to land in the southern Philippines, whose Muslim terrorists are accused of having links to al-Qaeda.
And the soldiers are also manning bases created in such central Asian republics as Uzbekistan for the Afghan war, and on the Black Sea in Bulgaria and Romania for the Iraq conflict, but now expected to become permanent."

"Moonbats: The Gathering" (Michele Catalano, A Small Victory, 2003/09/06)
"Hot on the heels of Michael Meacher's conspiracy theory laden piece on 9/11 in today's Guardian, comes word that the tin foil hat brigade will be gathering in Berlin on Sunday to discuss how Bush "facilitated" the attacks.
Among the speakers will be America's own Cynthia McKinney, who told a reporter, Who else knows ... why were the innocent people of New York not warned.
One of the organizers, Nicholas Levis from New York, said the conference was encouraged by the fact that a recent opinion poll showed 19 per cent of Germans believed the US government may have given the order for the September 11 attacks.
Want to know more about these wingnuts who call themselves the 9/11 Truth Alliance? They are the ones who believe that a plane never really crashed into the Pentagon. They are endorsed by fellow foil friends Unanswered Questions.
And they aren't the skeptics out there. There's 9/11 coverup. And there's Barbara Honegger, who claims that the U.S. set the date for the attacks. The endless theories about Flight 93.
Oh, in case you haven't heard, the movie 2001 not only predicted 9/11 but that prediction also led to the death of Stanley Kubrick.
There's all kinds out there. It's unfortunate that people like Cynthia McKinney, who once represented the U.S. government and Michael Meacher, who once represented Britian's government, give credence to all these theorists." (See also: "This war on terrorism is bogus" (Michael Meacher, The Guardian, 2003/09/07) and "Sept 11 theorists to meet in Berlin" (DPA/Expatica, 2003/09/05). Also: 9/11 Truth Alliance and Unanswered Questions.)

"This war on terrorism is bogus" (Michael Meacher, The Guardian, 2003/09/07)
9/11 conspiracy theorizing is fast coalescing into The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Redux. That a former minister can believe this - and a major paper publish it - is an ominous sign of the times. Just imagine - the "Cabal" thought North Korea, Syria and Iran were dangerous regimes a year before 9/11!!!:
"We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC). ...
Finally - written a year before 9/11 - it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a "worldwide command and control system". This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis. This can be seen in several ways.
First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested. ...
The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project." (Note: Found via A Small Victory. See also: "Sept 11 theorists to meet in Berlin" (DPA/Expatica, 2003/09/05) and "The September 11 X-Files" - News and commentary on conspiracy theories regarding the September 11 attacks and the war on terror. Also: "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century" (Project for the New American Century, September 2000))

"Hamas Founder Yassin Hurt in Israeli Air Strike" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/06)
I've always thought it is completely absurd that Israel haven't gone after Yassin - somewhat as if America would consider Osama bin Laden untouchable: "Israel wounded Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the Islamic militant movement Hamas, and about 14 other people in an air strike in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, medics said.
Hamas officials said the wheelchair-bound Yassin, a co-founder of Hamas, had left a house moments before a missile struck it in a densely populated area in Gaza City and was treated in hospital for a slight hand wound.
They said they believed Yassin was the target of the attack and that Marwan Abu Ras, a university lecturer who is also a Hamas official, was also among the wounded. ...
Abu Ras told Reuters the missile struck his home just moments after Yassin and another Hamas official, Ismail Haniyeh, left after hearing Israeli fighter aircraft overhead."

"EU Joins U.S. in Denouncing Hamas as Terrorist Group" (Reuters, 2003/09/06)
Better late than never: "European Union foreign ministers on Saturday denounced the political wing of Hamas as a terrorist organization following the group's claim of responsibility for a truce-shattering bomb attack in Jerusalem.
The decision, long sought by both Israel and the United States, opens the way for Europe to freeze the group's assets and place its leaders on a terrorist blacklist.
"A consensus emerged to decide on putting Hamas on the list of terrorist organizations," French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told reporters, dropping France's earlier objections to outlawing the Palestinian militant movement. ...
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, whose country had long urged the EU to join the United States in banning the political wing, suggested there would be swift financial repercussions.
"There was complete agreement that, given the outrage perpetrated by Hamas...on the 19th of August and which killed so many innocent people and for which there was no conceivable justification, we've taken a political decision to freeze the assets of Hamas and other actions," he said." (See also: "France: No proof Hamas and Islamic Jihad are terror groups" (The Jerusalem Post, 2003/08/25) and "EU decides Hamas political wing is a terrorist organization after all" (The Jerusalem Post, 2003/09/06): "Senior Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi said Saturday that the EU's decision reflected its "crusader mentality and fits in perfectly with the Zionist and American mentality."
"The crusaders gave birth to Israel and the will pay the price for their decision," added Rantisi.")

"Palestinian PM resigns" (BBC News, 2003/09/06)
"Yasser Arafat has accepted a letter of resignation from the Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, officials say.
Mr Abbas tendered his resignation ahead of a closed-door meeting of MPs in Ramallah, amid an ongoing power struggle with the Palestinian leader.
Mr Arafat has asked Mr Abbas to stay on in a caretaker role, it is reported. ...
Mr Arafat has refused to hand over crucial powers to Mr Abbas, limiting his ability to control militant violence and doing nothing to bolster his standing among ordinary Palestinians.
By resigning, Mr Abbas may be hoping Mr Arafat will bow to international pressure and bring him back - or bring in another prime minister with more authority."

"Why Are We In Iraq? (And Liberia? And Afghanistan?)" (Michael Ignatieff, The New York Times Magazine, from the 2003/09/07 issue)
"Its allies wept with America after Sept. 11 and then swiftly concluded that only America was under attack. The idea that Western civilization had been the target was not convincing. While America and its allies stood shoulder to shoulder when they faced a common Soviet foe, Islamic terrorism seemed to have America alone in its sights. Why cozy up to a primary target, America's allies asked themselves, when it will only make you a secondary one? Indeed, after Sept.11 an astonishing number of the United States' friends went further. They whispered, America had it coming. Aggrieved Americans were entitled to ask, For what? For guaranteeing the security of their oil supplies for 60 years? For rebuilding the European economy from the ruins of 1945? For protecting innumerable countries from Communist takeover? No matter, after Sept. 11, memories of American generosity were short, and the list of grievances against it was long. ...
There are those who think that the damage done by the Iraq debate at the United Nations can be repaired and that a coalition of the willing, at least one with more active players, might have been possible if the United States hadn't been so backhanded with its diplomacy. Yet the days when the United States intervenes as the servant of the international community may be well and truly over. When it intervenes in the future, it will very likely go it alone and will do so essentially for itself.
If this is the new world order, it will have costs that the rest of the world will have to accept: fewer humanitarian interventions on behalf of starving or massacred people in the rest of the world, fewer guarantees of other people's security against threat and invasion. Why bother with rescue and protection if you have to do everything alone? Why bother maintaining a multilateral order - of free trade, open markets and common defense - if your allies only use it to tie Gulliver down with leading strings?" (See also: "The Burden" (Michael Ignatieff, The New York Times Magazine/mtholyoke.edu, 2003/01/05))

"America's Responsibility" (William Kristol and Robert Kagan, The Weekly Standard, from the 2003/09/15 issue)
"These efforts to shift responsibility onto others - regardless of whether they are ready, able, or willing - are wrong, and will in any case fail. The United States invaded Iraq, and did so for good reasons. It is the responsibility of the United States to build in Iraq a condition of security and stability, moving toward prosperity and democracy. Nor should we forget for a moment that the whole world is watching - especially Arabs and Muslims. Right now, a scant few months after the war, Washington already seems short of breath. This can only encourage our deadly enemies to escalate the pressure.
It is an illusion to imagine that this mess can be handed off to someone else and we can go on about our business. That option does not exist. The choices are stark: Either the United States does what it takes to succeed in Iraq, or we lose in Iraq. And if we lose, we will leave behind us not blue helmets but radicalism and chaos, a haven for terrorists, and a perception of American weakness and lack of resolve in the Middle East and reckless blundering around the world. That is the abyss we may be staring into if we do not shift course now.
We trust the president knows he cannot cut and run in Iraq. It is heartening that he has decided to send a large budget request for Iraq to Congress, though we fear he may actually have asked for too little in reconstruction funds. What we fear more, however, is that no amount of aid will suffice if Iraq remains insecure. The goal of a secure Iraq requires an unapologetic assertion of U.S. responsibility and a redoubling of U.S. effort - not clinging to illusions."

"Reconstructing Iraq" (Max Boot, The Weekly Standard, from the 2003/09/15 issue)
"Driving through towns like Karbala and Najaf you see shops overflowing with goods and Iraqi cops in blue uniforms directing traffic. Violence hasn't entirely disappeared, as witness the August 29 car-bomb murder of Ayatollah Hakim and scores of his followers, but little animosity is directed toward the Americans, who are generally seen as liberators.
Every drive through Iraq in a U.S. military vehicle becomes a referendum on the occupation. Do the people smile or frown as you pass? In the Sunni Triangle, U.S. army patrols are often met with sullen stares. In central Iraq, smiles and thumbs up are commonplace. Little kids are especially enthusiastic. I felt like the queen of England waving regally at Iraqis as we drove by in our three-Humvee convoy.
Support for the occupation isn't universal, of course. There are still some clerics who want a theocracy, and they have received support from Iran and other sources. But they have gained little traction among Iraqis. The most prominent troublemaker, Moqtada al-Sadr, scion of a family of prominent ayatollahs, appears to be rapidly losing support, as judged by the sparse attendance at his sermons in Najaf. The attack on Ayatollah Hakim was the extremists' attempt to win through violence what they could not achieve by peaceful means - an attempt that will almost surely backfire by uniting the Shiites against the barbarians who desecrated their holiest shrine."

"For the antis, Kelly is just a cudgel with which to beat Blair" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/09/06)
"Since everyone seems to use Dr Kelly, alive or dead, for whatever line they want to peddle, let me belatedly join in. He is an emblem of the anti-war movement - or, to be more precise, of its utter vacuity and incoherence. If anyone stands naked, it's these fellows. Dr Kelly is just a convenient cudgel with which to beat Blair: in that sense, he sums up the sour oppositionism of the anti-war movement.
They're against Blair and against Bush and they'll use whatever's to hand. But ask them what they're for , what they'd do instead of war, and they've got no suggestions, unless you count Jeanette Winterson's response to 9/11: "Touch me. Kiss me. Remind me what I am." ...
And the question remains: other than grabbing Dr Kelly's shroud, what have you got? The other day, a terrorist called Sawad, who helped mix the Bali bomb, expressed his gratitude to the anti-war movement. "I want to thank the Australian people who supported our cause when they demonstrated against the policies of George Bush," he said. "Say thank you to all of them." Aussie peaceniks reacted somewhat huffily to this endorsement, insisting Sawad was no pal of theirs.
True. They weren't on the side of the Bali bombers, any more than Dr Kelly was on the side of the anti-war movement. But Sawad found the peaceniks useful, just as the peaceniks found Dr Kelly useful. And you can't blame Sawad for being confused as to what, underneath the opportunism and narcissism and 1960s nostalgia, the anti-war movement is actually for. They're the ones who need to get some new clothes." (See also: "The 'Writers' who let their words get in the way as tragedy unfolded" (Sam Leith, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/09/20) and "Bali bomber thanks anti-war protesters" (Cindy Wockner, Herald Sun, 2003/08/27))

"'I am not quite the man I was'" (William Sampson with Francine Dubé, National Post, 2003/09/06)
William Sampson tells of his torture and survival in a Saudi prison: "I was held in solitary confinement in a Saudi Arabian prison for two years, seven months, three weeks and two days.
At the beginning of my incarceration, I was chained upright in my cell, 24 hours a day and subjected to sleep deprivation. I was punched, kicked, hung upside down from a metal bar and beaten with a bamboo cane on the soles of my feet.
I was tortured until I confessed to crimes I did not commit.
I was tried in secret without representation, convicted and sentenced to death by beheading. ...
Every time they took something away from me as a punishment, I refused to accept it back. They took away my soap, my towel, my toothbrush, my clothes, my footwear, my mattress. I refused to wear the thobe, the ankle-length white shirt they had given me to wear. I remained naked in my cell, covering the floors and walls with my excreta so the guards would have to walk through it to get to me. This might appear crazy, but when you're at the bottom of the abyss, it doesn't seem crazy at all.
I am not quite the man I was. I am trying to rediscover the part of me they nearly destroyed." (See also: "Saudi 'bomb' Britons return" (BBC News, 2003/08/08))

"Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds" (Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane, The Washington Post, 2003/09/06)
"Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.
Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents."

"Bush to address the nation on Iraq" (Bill Sammon, The Washington Times, 2003/09/06)
"President Bush will give a rare, nationally televised speech during prime time tomorrow, laying out his case for staying the course on Iraq, where U.S. casualties have mounted.
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said the 15-minute speech, to be delivered at 8:30 p.m. from the White House, comes at a "critical moment in the war on terrorism."
"Iraq is now a central part in the war on terrorism," the spokesman told reporters. 'The world has a stake in helping the Iraqi people realize a better future, realize a free and democratic society. The world has a stake in confronting the terrorists that have come into Iraq.'"

Friday, September 5, 2003

News and commentary:

"The Importance of Losing the War" (Jonathan Schell, The Nation/AlterNet, 2003/09/05)
Hysteria meets defeatism. We must lose this war, says Schell. Never mind the Iraqis: "Biden says we must win the war. This is precisely wrong. The United States must learn to lose this war – a harder task, in many ways, than winning, for it requires admitting mistakes and relinquishing attractive fantasies. This is the true moral mission of our time (well, of the next few years, anyway).
The cost of leaving will certainly be high, but not anywhere near as high as trying to "stay the course," which can only magnify and postpone the disaster. And yet – regrettable to say – even if this difficult step is taken, no one should imagine that democracy will be achieved by this means. The great likelihood is something else – something worse: perhaps a recrudescence of dictatorship or civil war, or both. An interim period – probably very brief – of international trusteeship is the best solution, yet it is unlikely to be a good solution. It is merely better than any other recourse."

"Sept 11 theorists to meet in Berlin" (DPA/Expatica, 2003/09/05)
"Sept 11 theorists"? Crackpot conspiracy theorists is more to the point. Found via A Small Victory: "Writers and activists who believe the United States government is hiding the truth about the September 11 attacks will hold a conference in Berlin this Sunday, organisers announced.
The meeting of US and European activists will compile a list of questions and demands for documents to be submitted to the US and German governments as well as the European Union on the second anniversary of the attacks.
"I take the position that the (US President George W) Bush administration had absolute fore-knowledge of the attacks," said Michael Ruppert, who is one of the organisers, adding that he believed Bush had "facilitated" the attacks.
A former member of the US Congress, Cynthia McKinney, who is also due to address the conference, told reporters: "Who else knows ... why were the innocent people of New York not warned."
Another organiser, Nicholas Levis from New York, said the conference was encouraged by the fact that a recent opinion poll showed 19 per cent of Germans believed the US government may have given the order for the September 11 attacks."

"Angry? Almost two years later I’m still f*#king furious about it..." (James Lileks, The Bleat, 2003/09/05)
Lilek responds to a a Metafilter poster questioning his anger over 9/11 ("What the hell does he have to be angry about? He's Caucasian, male, and living in the richest nation in the world. He has more opportunities in one day than a Third World citizen has in a lifetime. Is he being targeted because of his ethnicity?"):
"Angry? Almost two years later I’m still f*#king furious about it, if you want to know the truth. ... Because from where I stand, I see the two forces I thought the left deplored: religious intolerance and fascism. Together at last! Swirled into one cone! If Kluxers had flown planes into the UN building, these people would be insisting that America was bubbling over with millions of Bubbanazis, and the failure of the networks to mount Second Anniversary specials would be proof that the media secretly embraced the White Power agenda. ...

The 9/11 victimhood seems to me an excuse for the Angry White Male to make a comeback. Except this time it seems to be justified, even if you weren't anywhere near the WTC. And that's the sick cancer festering within the American psyche.

There you go. The problem isn't Islamist fascism. It's the sick cancer of men with low melanin concentrations who can't forget that picture of two strangers - one Asian, one Black - embracing in sobs in a bodega as the smoke and dust rolled down the street. This is why I left Metafilter right after 9/11. They don’t mind if you’re angry. You can be angry about important things, like Microsoft security lapses and Ashcroft crusades. But 200 stories of skyscraper falling to the ground? Thousands dead, ten thousand orphaned, ten million mourning?
Dude. Get a grip."

"Europe and the Muscle-Bound Superpower" (William Drozdiak, The Washington Post Outlook, from the 2003/09/07 issue)
"The results of a new survey conducted in the United States and seven European countries, shows just how differently Europe and the United States view the world. The first comprehensive poll taken in the wake of the Iraq war, it vividly illustrates the yawning gap between the ways Americans and Europeans perceive the value and purpose of military force. The Transatlantic Trends 2003 poll of 8,000 Europeans and Americans, sponsored by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Italian foundation Compagnia di San Paolo, shows that strong majorities in Europe - as high as 81 percent in Germany and 84 percent in France - now believe the Iraq war was not worth the financial and human costs. While disaffection may be setting in among many Americans, most polls still show a considerably higher level of support among Americans for the invasion of Iraq.
Other responses underscore Europe's anti-militarist attitudes. While a clear-cut majority of inhabitants in the Old World would like to see the European Union emerge as a superpower partner equal in stature to the United States, support for that view plummets to about 36 percent when it is suggested that greater military spending would be required. ...
The values gap across the Atlantic was even more glaring on the question of whether there were circumstances when war was necessary to obtain justice - 84 percent of Americans agreed, while only 48 percent of the Europeans said yes." (See also the survey: "Transatlantic Trends 2003" (transatlantictrends.org, 2003/09/04))

"Spain arrests Al-Jazeera reporter" (Al Goodman, CNN.com, 2003/09/05)
"Police have arrested a correspondent for Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV at his home in southern Spain accusing him of having links to the al Qaeda terrorist group.
Authorities believe that Tayseer Allouni - who interviewed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden nearly two years ago - provided support for two suspected members of the group, a Spanish court official told CNN. ...
Authorities believe Allouni provided support for Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, alias Abu Dahdah, who was arrested on November 13, 2001, and is thought to have been an al Qaeda ringleader in Spain, the court official said.
Allouni is also suspected of providing aid to Mohamed Bahiah, alias Abu Kalhed, a suspected al Qaeda fugitive thought to be in Afghanistan, the official said." (See also Allouni's interview with Osama bin Laden: "A Discussion on the New Crusader Wars" (terrorisme.net, 2001/10/21))

"Secretary Rumsfeld Media Roundtable at Camp Victory, Iraq" (U.S. Department of Defense, 2003/09/05)
"Bremer: Mr. Secretary, I would just add a little more on the point you made about the good news.
Every day in this country there are dozens of success stories. We have now completed almost 6,000 individual reconstruction projects throughout this country. ... Schools are being rebuilt. We are rebuilding a thousand schools between now and when the school season starts in three weeks.
We have got all 240 hospitals in this country working now. Ninety percent of the health clinics are working. All of the universities finished the school year this summer and gave exams. Ninety-five percent of the schools were open before the end of the school year. All of this happened in basically five weeks, six weeks, in April and May. And the process goes on.
There are very good stories, and one of the stories that isn't also written about much is that 85 percent of the towns in this country now have elected town councils. Every major city has a town council. ...
Democracy is on the march in this country. And it's on the march at the grassroots level where it really matters. ...
Rumsfeld: And if you think about it, it happened in four or five months. Four or five months. Not four or five years. Four or five months. If one looks back at Germany, at Japan, at Bosnia or Kosovo and measures the progress that's taken place in this country in four or five months, it dwarfs any other experience that I'm aware of."

"Are We at War or Peace?" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2003/09/05)
"Just as in World War II the lull between the storms of Iwo Jima and Okinawa or the false calm between conquest of Sicily and the invasion of Italy was not peace, so too after September 11 we are in a real war that will ebb and flow as our enemies regroup and retreat. The key instead is to ignore the daily hype of the media, and keep focused on the larger picture: Which side is in the improved situation? What resources are available to the respective belligerents? What are the costs that each side has endured? By any fair token, the losses after 9/11 have been nearly all our enemies — human, material, and psychological — from bases in Afghanistan to entire nations. Yet such is the extent of our power that al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Baathists alike sorely feel that they are losing a war, while Americans attuned to the new fall season sitcoms are breezily oblivious that they are winning it.
After Afghanistan and Iraq, we are no longer at the beginning of the struggle, but not near the end either. Rather we are in a difficult middle, in an election year with a restless public that has been so nursed on such rapid, easy victories that even relative successful efforts look feeble in comparison to past miracles. It is not an easy thing, after all, to restore sanity after decades of fascism in the heart of the Arab world, amid enemies like Syria and Iran, and friends such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan."

"Israel Kills Senior Hamas Commander in West Bank" (Nadia Sa'ad, Reuters, 2003/09/05)
"Israeli commandos killed a West Bank commander of the militant group Hamas in a raid on Friday that could deal a blow to reformist Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas's battle for political survival.
An Israeli soldier was also killed and four wounded in the operation in the city of Nablus, which ended when soldiers blew up an apartment building where Mohammad al-Hanbali had been holed up, making 28 families homeless.
The spectacle of the seven-story structure crumpling in a heap of dust was likely to give ammunition to opponents of Abbas's efforts to promote a U.S.-backed peace plan and persuade President Yasser Arafat to hand over control of Palestinian security forces.
The army said naval commandos, who also participate in ground-launched attacks, raided the building to detain Hanbali, 27, who opened fire at them from an elevator shaft where he had been hiding.
Israeli security sources said he was chief commander of Hamas militants in the northern West Bank and responsible for the deaths of dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings in a three-year-old Palestinian uprising for statehood."

"The sick smell of panic" (Jonathan Foreman, New York Post, 2003/09/05)
"The Bush administration's sudden decision to go to the U.N. Security Council for a new Iraq resolution looks like bad news for America and for the prospects of a democratic Iraq.
The resolution's specific contents — and even whether or not it gets passed — can't change that. (Indeed, yesterday's Franco-German démarche suggests that we're simply in for another pointless Security Council pummeling.)
The issue isn't the further internationalization of the occupation. (Thousands of foreign troops are already patrolling vast stretches of Iraq.) It is symbolism and timing.
The hasty turn to the United Nations smells of panic, unwarranted panic at that, and even worse, the foolish subordination of Iraq policy to electoral concerns.
The administration may genuinely believe it isn't engaged in a humiliating climbdown, but that is inevitably going to be the perception, here and abroad. ...
To go crawling back to the United Nations, tail between our legs, only a week after the Najaf bombing, tells the world — and, more importantly, the people of Iraq — that the bombings and attacks on U.S. troops have succeeded. It signals that America is, if not exactly on the run, severely rattled."

"'Bush equals Hitler' adds up to holocaust denial" (Jonah Goldberg, The Washington Times, 2003/09/05)
"We may be living in the worst period of Holocaust denial since the Nuremberg trials. I'm not referring to the twisted morons who insist that the Holocaust never happened the way the Monty Python guys insisted the parrot wasn't dead. I'm referring to the legions of Holocaust deniers in the Democratic Party, on the Web, on college campuses, in the mainstream press and, most acutely, in my e-mail box every morning, who reduce to the Holocaust to a triviality. ...
The examples are everywhere. Vanity Fair magazine asks if Richard Perle and Joseph Goebbels were "separated at birth." Whole Web sites are dedicated to the most astoundingly stupid and superficial comparisons between George Bush and Hitler (they both liked dogs, for example). ...
My favorite example of this moral myopia comes from a few years ago. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said of the Contract With America: "Hitler wasn't even talking about doing these things." And his colleague, Rep. Major Owens declared of the new Republican leadership in the House, "These are people who are practicing genocide with a smile; they're worse than Hitler."
If you believe such nonsense, just get it over with and say the Holocaust never happened at all. Because at least that form of Holocaust denial admits that if it "had happened," it would have been a really bad thing. Saying the Holocaust is no worse than tax cuts or some such doesn't even give the victims of Nazism that dignity." (See also, for example: "Annals of Bush-Hating" (Byron York, National Review, 2003/09/04) and "Separated at birth?" (Vanity Fair/Slate, from the September 2003 issue))

"Much known, little done" (Richard Miniter, The Washington Times, 2003/09/05)
The fourth and last excerpt from Miniter's "Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror": "Sudan offered to arrest and turn over bin Laden at this meeting, according to Erwa. He brought up bin Laden directly. "Where should we send him?" he asked. ...
Sudan's files on bin Laden and his network were extensive. Sudan had dossiers on all of bin Laden's financial transactions, every fax he sent (the Mukhabarat had even bugged his fax machines), and every one of bin Laden's terrorist associates and his dubious visitors. If Sudan's surveillance was as good as Erwa claimed, bin Laden's entire global terrorist network would be laid bare. And the CIA would be able to track the movements of his foot soldiers and lieutenants across the Middle East. ...
Over the next few months and years, Sudan would repeatedly try to provide its voluminous intelligence files on bin Laden to the CIA, the FBI, and senior Clinton Administration officials — and would be repeatedly rebuffed through both formal and informal channels. This was one of the greatest intelligence failures of the Clinton years — the result of orders that came from the Clinton White House." (See also: "Unprepared for battle" (Richard Miniter, The Washington Times, 2003/09/04), "Bill Clinton's indifference" (Richard Miniter, The Washington Times, 2003/09/03) and "Bill Clinton's failure on terrorism" (Richard Miniter, The Washington Times, 2003/09/02))

"Jihad In America" (Evan McCormick, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/09/05)
"Federal agents are peeling away the layers of an extensive domestic terrorist support nexus, and some of America's most politically active Muslim groups have been implicated in the process. ...
When the man who once said he would defend Osama bin Laden is defending a former AMC and CAIR employee; when an AMC board member is under federal investigation for his company’s illicit ties to terrorists; when founding members of American Muslim organizations become designated terrorists, we must ask ourselves how much longer we can continue to believe the claim that such groups represent the interests of America’s moderate Muslims, and whether the Bush administration should continue to give them a political avenue to further their dangerous agenda."

Added in archive:
"Not a dress rehearsal" (The Economist, 2003/08/14)

Thursday, September 4, 2003

News and commentary:

"France and Germany Oppose U.S. Plan for U.N. Role in Iraq" (Richard Bernstein, The New York Times, 2003/09/04)
"The leaders of France and Germany, giving their first response to the Bush administration's turn to the United Nations for help in the occupation of Iraq, announced that their countries would not support an American draft of a Security Council resolution that would authorize both an expanded international force and financial help in Iraq.
Meeting in the German city of Dresden today, President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany said the American proposal, circulated to the Security Council on Wednesday, did not go far enough in transferring political control of Iraq to the Iraqis or give the United Nations a strong enough role in the proposed international force.
"We are ready to examine the proposals, but they seem quite far from what appears to us the primary objective, namely the transfer of political responsibility to an Iraqi government as soon as possible," Mr. Chirac said in a joint news conference."

"Annals of Bush-Hating" (Byron York, National Review, 2003/09/04)
York on Bush haters, with links to some truly loony sites:
"A staple of Bush-hating is the portrayal of the president as a Nazi. That has, of course, been a prominent part of other attacks against other presidents, but today it seems to be deployed with particular aggressiveness against Bush. There are thousands of references, across the vastness of the Internet, linking Bush to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. ...
And it's not just doctored photos. There is a lot of writing, much of it quite serious, claiming similarities between Bush and Hitler. "It's going a bit far to compare the Bush of 2003 to the Hitler of 1933," writes Dave Lindorff in "Bush and Hitler: The Strategy of Fear," which appeared in February on the far-left site Counterpunch.org. "Bush simply is not the orator that Hitler was. But comparisons of the Bush administration's fear-mongering tactics to those practiced so successfully and with such terrible results by Hitler and Goebbels . . . are not at all out of line." ...
The day before Lindorff's article appeared, another author, Wayne Madsen, wrote that Bush is "borrowing liberally from Hitler's play book." The Führer, Lindorff said, "would be proud that an American president is emulating him in so many ways." ...
One antiwar site, Takebackthemedia.com, which attracted some attention in the press during the run-up to war in Iraq, features a variety of anti-Bush "flash movies." One, entitled "Bush is not a Nazi, so stop saying that," begins with ominous music and the warning: "The media will not tell you of the Bush family Nazi association." The movie goes on to accuse the Bushes of first financing the Third Reich — and then coming up with a clever plan to conceal their treason..." (See also: "Bush and Hitler: The Stategy [sic] of Fear" (Dave Lindorff, CounterPunch, 2003/02/01))

"Al-Qaeda: The 39 principles of Holy War" (Joel Leyden, Israel News Agency/IMRA, 2003/09/04)
"Al-farouq recently published a newly written book on its Web site entitled: "The 39 Principles of Jihad". ...
Al-Salem's book sheds light on the intimate ties between the political and ideological echelon of Islamic organizations and of their military wings which clarifies the importance of civil infrastructure in terrorist activity. "Once again the remarkable role of the Saudi and Palestinian scholars in supporting terrorism is exposed," says Halevi. "They still serve as the ideological source to radical Islam and the concept of waging constant Islamic holy war against the West and all democratic nations." Following are the 39 principles of Jihad as described by Al-Qaeda in Al-salem's book:
1. Preparing and urging the mind for Jihad - Every Muslim must obey the call for the Jihad against the infidels out of sheer belief and intention. ...
3. Taking part in the Jihad - Every Muslim has to take an active role in holy war against the infidels, prepared to self sacrifice for the sake of Allah. Participation in Jihad is the most distinguished action in the eyes of Allah. ...
31. Expressing hostility and hatred toward infidels - A call for reconciliation or co-existence with the infidels might weaken the Mujahudeen. One may call for a Hudna, but to place it in practice is forbidden. ...
36. Educating the younger generation to adore Jihad and the Mujahideen - The children, asserts Al-Salem are the "fuel" of the next stage of confrontation with the infidels. Parents have the duty to educate them to adore Jihad and the Mujahideen and to prepare themselves mentally for self-sacrifice for the sake of Allah. Al-Salem recommends believers to tell their young stories about the life of Prophet Mohammad, his associates, the great Muslim conquerors and the Mujahideen in our time. In addition it is recommended to display to the children Jihadi films and taped preaches which praise martyrdom."

"London: A Leftist Axis of Anti-Semitism" (Melanie Phillips, Hadassah/FrontPageMagazine, 2003/09/04)
"So why does Middle Britain now think Israel and the United States, rather than al-Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and the "axis of evil," are the root cause of world terror?
The answer is complex, but no less terrifying. The first factor is the influence of the political Left, which has captured the Establishment: the media, politics, civil service, legal profession and the churches. As a result, its worldview has increasingly become the received wisdom of the public. And it is the Left which now openly promulgates the opinions that Israel should not exist, that it is a Nazi state and that the Jews control America.
Why does the Left take this position? The most obvious explanation is that it demonizes America and capitalism and lionizes the Third World and all liberation movements.
At a deeper level, its embrace of victim-culture means that it now confuses truth with lies. People are increasingly unable to make moral distinctions based on behavior; there is a tendency to equate and then invert the role of the perpetrators of violence and that of their victims, so that self-defense is misrepresented as aggression while the original violence is viewed sympathetically as understandable and even justified. The human bomb is therefore a hero, while his victim had it coming. ...
This has produced an Orwellian situation in which hatred of the Jews now marches behind the banner of anti-racism and human rights; and in which, moreover, a strategic nexus has been forged between Europe and the Arabs. Europe has waited more than 50 years for a way to blame the Jews for their own destruction. So instead of sounding the alarm over genocidal Islamist Jew-hatred, the Europeans have embraced a narrative that depicts the Jews as Nazis. ...
A culture that no longer believes in objective truths but thinks everything is a matter of opinion has become gullible and credulous toward lies and propaganda, which it is unable to distinguish from facts and logic. The result is the reemergence in Britain of the oldest hatred and a refusal to grasp the true nature of the peril facing the West."

"Al Qaeda's agenda for Iraq" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2003/09/04)
"'It is not the American war machine that should be of the utmost concern to Muslims. What threatens the future of Islam, in fact its very survival, is American democracy.' This is the message of a new book, just published by al Qaeda in several Arab countries.
The author of "The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad" is Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama bin Laden's closest associates since the early '90s. A Saudi citizen also known by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad, he was killed in a gun battle with security forces in Riyadh last June. ...
Al-Ayyeri argues that the history of mankind is the story of "perpetual war between belief and unbelief." ...
What Al-Ayyeri sees now is a "clean battlefield" in which Islam faces a new form of unbelief. This, he labels "secularist democracy." This threat is "far more dangerous to Islam" than all its predecessors combined. The reasons, he explains in a whole chapter, must be sought in democracy's "seductive capacities." ...
The goal of democracy, according to Al-Ayyeri, is to "make Muslims love this world, forget the next world and abandon jihad." If established in any Muslim country for a reasonably long time, democracy could lead to economic prosperity, which, in turn, would make Muslims "reluctant to die in martyrdom" in defense of their faith.
He says that it is vital to prevent any normalization and stabilization in Iraq. Muslim militants should make sure that the United States does not succeed in holding elections in Iraq and creating a democratic government. "If democracy comes to Iraq, the next target [for democratization] would be the whole of the Muslim world," Al-Ayyeri writes."

"Blair's bridge" (Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian, 2003/09/04)
"The year of Iraq followed the year of 9/11, and the wholly justified response to it in Afghanistan. Blair exploded into the new political season with Saddam in his sights for two main reasons. First, he thought the combination of weapons of mass destruction, rogue states and terrorism constitute one of the great new security threats of our time. On this, he's right. Anyone who disputes it is either foolish or dishonest. ...
So the second, deciding reason for Blair's up-front advocacy on Iraq was his conscious strategic choice to remain close to the United States, wherever it chose to take the "war against terrorism". In Blair's view, this was not an alternative to Britain's ties with Europe but the precondition for Britain being a "bridge" between Europe and the US. That strategy had developed during the Clinton years; it informed his unexpected embrace of George Bush in 2001; it was greatly reinforced by the 9/11 attacks; now it would face its hardest test. ...
One possible conclusion from all this is that the Blair strategy is just wrong: Britain must choose between Europe and America. The other is that the basic strategy is right, but much more difficult to realise than he had hoped. Those of us who believe this now have to show why - and how it may still be done."

"Jack Straw fears failure in Iraq: determination is the answer" (Daniel Johnson, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/09/04)
"Yesterday's meeting at 10 Downing Street between Jack Straw and Tony Blair revealed that they are now seriously alarmed by the deteriorating situation in Iraq, and confidential advice to the Foreign Secretary depicts a country on the brink of collapse. ...
What is to be done? Mr Straw recommends that an additional brigade be sent to Iraq, bringing British forces back to roughly the level at the end of hostilities. The aim is threefold: to demonstrate resolve to the Iraqi people and coalition partners; to provide more manpower for security and reconstruction; and to persuade America to send more troops, too. ...
However, Mr Bush, too, is reassessing American policy in Iraq. In recent days he has mounted a diplomatic offensive to obtain a new UN resolution, though anticipating French opposition.
He aims to restore full international status to Iraq, so that trade in oil, food and other necessities can resume. He has asked Congress for a further $2.75 billion to spend on reconstruction, with the grid as top priority. ...
Mr Blair and Mr Bush may have underestimated the task of transforming Iraq into a model of freedom for the Muslim world to follow. That does not render their enterprise less noble or less necessary. The fate of the West hangs on its outcome."

"Unprepared for battle" (Richard Miniter, The Washington Times, 2003/09/04)
The third excerpt from Miniter's "Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror": "Meanwhile, the U.S. Special Forces Command and CIA planners continued to draft a detailed operations plan. All of the elements were in place for a bold covert operation to take bin Laden, dead or alive. But it was the plan, not bin Laden, that was soon killed.
The problem was the CIA, Clarke told the author. Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet asked that the plan be extensively revised, touching off another months-long cycle of meetings, drafts, and consultations. Tenet's stated reasons sounded as if he was either repeating or anticipating White House objections. Bin Laden and his band often traveled with their wives and children, raising the risk of unintended civilian deaths. That would be unacceptable to the president. (Of course, bin Laden had no qualms about civilian deaths.) Tenet wanted better safeguards for non-combatants.
Yet another concern came from the Pentagon: U.S. military casualties. Once a firefight began, it would be very difficult to extract wounded or trapped soldiers. If the mission went sour, dozens of Americans would be dead and bin Laden might escape. The military wanted a war without casualties or risks. The planners went back to the drawing board. ...
America was at war with bin Laden. But on America's side it was a phony war, while America's adversaries were waging a real one." (See also: "Bill Clinton's indifference" (Richard Miniter, The Washington Times, 2003/09/03) and "Bill Clinton's failure on terrorism" (Richard Miniter, The Washington Times, 2003/09/02))

"Syrian Gov't Media: Israel Bombed Baghdad's U.N. Headquarters, Jordanian Embassy, Abu Gharib Prison and Water Main" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 565, 2003/09/04)
Blame the Jews II: "An editorial in the Syrian government daily Teshreen accused Israel in explicit terms: ... "Who can say that what happened at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad was not by the hands of the Zionist gangs, represented by the Israeli occupation army, and by the intelligence apparatuses headed by the Mossad, which has committed similar crimes against countries, governments, and international figures in the past?" ...
Another Teshreen editorial blamed Israel for other recent terrorist acts in Iraq: '…The first act was the bombing of the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad using the familiar Israeli method of a booby-trapped car… The second act was the bombing of the Abu Gharib prison, in which dozens of prisoners were killed and wounded. The third act was two motorcyclists' bombing of the Baghdad water main…
Such acts have one aim: to prove that the resistance is sowing destruction among the Iraqi people and against the Arab brethren and the U.N…
There is no doubt that Israel faces security dangers from Hizbullah in Lebanon and from resistance factions in the West Bank and Gaza. To prove the validity of his claims, Sharon has complicated the situation, thus also providing a cover for the aerial bridge that brought Mossad members and equipment to Baghdad. This Zionist unit hastened to act, beginning with the bombing of the Jordanian embassy.'"

"'They Deal in Danger'" (Anthony Shadid, The Washington Post, 2003/09/04)
"Dayikh's life and, perhaps more telling, his death provide a glimpse into the obscure world of the campaign against U.S. troops occupying Iraq - of the interplay between crime and resistance, of the fear that still prevails in the parts of Baghdad where the U.S. presence and police are rarely seen, and of the anger that the lawlessness breeds. ...
Several residents insisted that Dayikh was the man responsible for blowing a foot-wide hole in the water main in nearby Adhamiya last month, which cut supplies to hundreds of thousands of residents and formed a four-foot-deep pool along a six-lane section of a busy underpass.
No one said they would have been willing to inform on Dayikh to the police, much less go to the Americans.
In conversation after conversation, they insisted the Americans were unresponsive, and they were resentful. Even worse, they said, the police were corrupt. While police at the nearby station denied taking bribes, Saad Nusayif, an uncle of Osama and Emad, said they demanded 500 Iraqi dinars, about 30 cents, just to get through the front door. It cost almost $40, he said, to file a complaint.
"The people are too scared to inform," he said. 'Someone can kill you over a pack of cigarettes.'"

"Send more troops or risk failure, Blair told" (Toby Helm, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/09/04)
"Jack Straw has issued a grim warning to Tony Blair that Britain and America risk "strategic failure" in Iraq unless they send more troops to improve security and speed up moves towards self-government.
The Foreign Secretary's deep concerns about the "deteriorating" situation in Iraq are spelt out in notes drawn up for a meeting between him and the Prime Minister at No 10. ...
In his gloomy point-by-point analysis, Mr Straw says that 'lack of political progress in solving the linked problems of security, infrastructure and the political process are undermining the consent of the Iraqi people to the coalition presence and providing fertile ground for extremists and terrorists.'"

Wednesday, September 3, 2003

News and commentary:

"Reading Najaf" (Stephen Schwartz, The Weekly Standard, 2003/09/03)
"In my view, the real significance of the Najaf bombing and the death of Ayatollah Bakir ul-Hakim was eloquently stated by Imam Hijazi, who recounted, at the memorial, the words of Ayatollah ul-Hakim in the Friday sermon he had delivered only minutes before his death. Bakir ul-Hakim called for a democratic Iraq, which will respect Islam but in which no religious standard is imposed by the state; full status and protection for religious minorities; and a constitution developed by a popular assembly, elected on the basis of universal suffrage. Hijazi's phrase to sum up: an Islamic democracy.
Another speaker, the fiery Sheikh Khedim, spoke with bitterness and barely-concealed anger. "Iraq is now free," he said. "But this freedom includes the freedom of agents from other Arab governments in the region, working as a Mafia, and who do not want to see Shias leading Iraq, to infiltrate and attack Iraq."
I believe Iraqi Shias remain grateful for their liberation by the coalition, and look toward a future of stability and democracy. But the United States and other coalition partners must stop dithering and telling themselves they know more about the situation than the Shia clerics and the Shia masses, who understand exactly who their enemies are. The United States should stop relying on Iraqi police bodies filled with Baathists. No more American troops are needed, and United Nations troops should not even be considered. Iraqi Shias, non-Wahhabi Sunnis, and Kurds, working together, can establish order in Iraq. But the Iraqi border with Saudi Arabia should be sealed, and Saudi Arabia should be put on notice to end the migration of Wahhabis north. As if they'll listen; I predict the Najaf bombing will simply be added to the list of Wahhabi crimes, exemplified by September 11, about which the West has assumed a uniquely spineless attitude."

"Bombshell hits government's claims" (Ciar Byrne et al., The Guardian, 2003/09/03)
"Brian Jones, a retired branch head of the defence intelligence analysis staff, told the Hutton inquiry there were several concerns about the 45 minute claim and one of his staff felt some of the assessements of the threat posed by Iraq were "over-egged" in the dossier.
The inquiry heard the "shutters came down" on the dossier before intelligence officials' reservations had a chance to be properly considered and there were fears "spin merchants" had been too involved in the dossier's production. ...
Earlier Dr Jones told the Hutton inquiry he felt the 45 minute claim warranted inclusion in the dossier but it should have been made clear it was a tentative and not a conclusive claim.
His staff, he said, had three principle concerns: first that there was lack of detail and second there was a lack of supporting evidence for the claim.
Third, and most significantly, the intelligence staff also questioned the credibility of the source of the 45 minute claim, revealing they did not feel the source knew enough about the subject."

"Troops Seize Taliban Retreat After 9 Days" (Noor Khan, AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/03)
"Afghan officials claimed victory Wednesday after a 9-day siege by U.S and Afghan troops against suspected Taliban fighters holed up in a region of mountains and caves of southern Afghanistan.
Scores of Taliban guerrillas were killed and others retreated in Zabul province, local officials said.
In a sign that major fighting is over, about 600 Afghan troops have pulled out of Dai Chupan, a remote district of Zabul province, said Khalil Hotak, the province's intelligence chief. That area has been the scene of the heaviest fighting since the Taliban's fall from power in late 2001.
Afghan troops found bodies along gorges, in caves and scattered across the front lines, Hotak told The Associated Press from a command center in Qalat.
Troops found the bodies of at least 124 rebels since the joint offensive by Afghan government and U.S.-led forces began early last week, Hotak said, while most of the other Taliban fighters were believed to have slipped away. Five Afghan government troops were killed in the fighting, he said."

"The BBC is playing at power games" (Janet Daley, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/09/03)
"The charge that the Gilligan story had made against Tony Blair and later, by name, Alastair Campbell, was the most serious allegation that it is possible to make against a government. What was being claimed was that the country had been sent to war, and British lives had been lost, on the basis of a lie.
This is practically tantamount to accusing the Prime Minister of murder. It is far more grave than any accusation of financial corruption or even criminal misdemeanour in office.
To make such an assertion was effectively to say to every British family that had lost a serving soldier in Iraq: your son, or brother, or husband, died on false premises, to serve the vanity of a deceitful political leader.
It is absolutely inconceivable that this could have been allowed to stand as a story having the imprimatur of the BBC. It is vital to note this point." (See also: "Dispute Over Arms Dossier Wounds the BBC" (Warren Hoge, The New York Times, 2003/09/01): "While the 11 days of testimony have uncovered evidence that the government was feverishly involved in the wording and shaping of the intelligence dossier, it has not turned up any corroboration for Mr. Gilligan's report that it deliberately published dubious claims over the objections of intelligence chiefs.")

"Bill Clinton's indifference" (Richard Miniter, The Washington Times, 2003/09/03)
The second excerpt from Miniter's "Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror": "CIA Director James Woolsey was fighting other bureaucratic battles — instead of [Osama] bin Laden. The CIA was critically short of translators who spoke or read Arabic, Farsi, Pashto and the other languages of the great "terrorist belt." ... In the world's most terror-prone region, the CIA was essentially blind, deaf, and dumb.
Partly as a result, the intelligence community was able to decipher and translate less than ten percent of the volume of telephone and other intercepts gained from its extensive networks of spy satellites and listening stations. Indeed, throughout the Islamic world, even many radio and television news reports went untranslated. While state-run broadcasts from the Communist bloc were a prime source of intelligence during the Cold War, in the Clinton years the CIA did not have the same capability against militant Islamists. And that deficiency was largely Clinton's fault." (See also: "Bill Clinton's failure on terrorism" (Richard Miniter, The Washington Times, 2003/09/02))

"Malay Islamic leader warns lipstick and perfume are rape risks" (Gethin Chamberlain, The Scotsman, 2003/09/03)
"One of the leaders of Malaysia’s Islamic opposition has upset women in the country by suggesting that they should stop wearing lipstick and perfume to lower the risk of being raped.
Nik Abdul Aziz, the spiritual leader of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, claimed that even women who wore Muslim head-scarves could arouse men if they also wore make-up and perfume. The end result could be rape or molestation, he said. ...
The fundamentalist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party is the country’s largest opposition group." (Note: Found via Tim Blair.)

"Shots close UK Iran mission" (BBC News, 2003/09/03)
"The UK embassy in the Iranian capital, Tehran, has been closed after a number of shots were fired at the building from a nearby street.
A spokesman said that five shots had hit the embassy but nobody was hurt in the attack which took place just before midday local time (0730 GMT).
The incident comes hours after the announcement that Iran had temporarily recalled its ambassador to Britain amid an escalating dispute between the two countries.
Iran's ambassador to Britain, Morteza Sarmadi, is said to have been recalled after failing to win concessions following the arrest of another Iranian diplomat in Britain, Hade Soleimanpour.
Mr Soleimanpour's extradition is being sought by Argentina in connection with the bombing of a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, when he was Iranian ambassador there." (See also: "Iran ex-diplomat faces terror hearing" (BBC News, 2003/08/22))

"U.S. to Ask U.N. for Wider Role in Iraq" (George Gedda, AP/The Washington Post, 2003/09/03)
"The Bush administration is preparing to ask the United Nations to transform the U.S.-led force in Iraq to a multinational force and to play a leading role in forming an Iraqi government.
President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell met on the issue Tuesday and agreed to move forward with a new U.N. resolution, an effort to attract more foreign contributions to postwar Iraq, three senior administration officials said on condition of anonymity.
Powell and his aides will begin talking about the new resolution in coming days with key members of the Security Council whose support is critical - close ally Britain, as well as France and Russia, two countries that opposed the U.S.-led war.
The United States hopes that expanding the U.N. role in postwar Iraq will attract badly needed troop contributions from additional countries to help stabilize Iraq and more money to help rebuild the country."

"U.S. rushed post-Saddam planning" (Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, 2003/09/03)
"A secret report for the Joint Chiefs of Staff lays the blame for setbacks in Iraq on a flawed and rushed war-planning process that "limited the focus" for preparing for post-Saddam Hussein operations.
The report, prepared last month, said the search for weapons of mass destruction was planned so late in the game that it was impossible for U.S. Central Command to carry out the mission effectively. "Insufficient U.S. government assets existed to accomplish the mission," the classified briefing said.
The report is titled "Operation Iraqi Freedom Strategic Lessons Learned" and is stamped "secret." A copy was obtained by The Washington Times. ...
On the weapons search — the prime reason Mr. Bush cited for going to war — the Joint Chiefs report states: "Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) elimination and exploitation planning efforts did not occur early enough in the process to allow CentCom to effectively execute the mission. The extent of the planning required was underestimated. Insufficient U.S. government assets existed to accomplish the mission." ...
The report said the planning was poor because "WMD elimination/exploitation on a large scale was a new mission area. Division of responsibility for planning and execution was not clear. As a result planning occurred on an ad hoc basis and late in the process. Additionally, there were insufficient assets available to accomplish the mission. Existing assets were tasked to perform multiple, competing missions." (See also: "More WMD hunt incompetence" (Alex Knapp, Heretical Ideas, 2003/06/10) and "Odyssey of Frustration" (Barton Gellman, The Washington Post, 2003/05/18))

Added in archive:
"Depleted Uranium - the Science" (Michael McNeil, Impearls, 2003/08/15)

Tuesday, September 2, 2003

News and commentary:

"Two years of gibberish" (Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Prospect, from the September 2003 issue)
Apart from Wheatcroft defining 9/11 as a "small event" ("All the same, buildings are destroyed by fire every day, and thousands are killed in accidents."), which is gibberish in itself, this is a must-read essay on the "garbled utterances of the left" after the worst terrorist attack in history:
"One after another, literary luminaries and academic pundits felt unable to condemn the killing, express sympathy, and leave it at that. They had to say, "Butwhatabout" US imperialism, what about globalisation, what about Palestine? Rana Kabbani’s reaction was to howl that "All must kowtow to the Pentagon and the almighty dollar, or be blown to smithereens," and she described the murder of thousands of ordinary New Yorkers as "a painful lesson that Americans have had to learn."
Once an armed response by the US had begun, "Butwhatabout" turned into moral equivalence, or "we are all guilty," or tu quoque. The veteran critic and novelist John Berger (yes, still with us) called the mass murder in New York "the direct result of trying to impose everywhere the new world economic order (the abstract, soaring, groundless market) which insists that man’s supreme task is to make profit," and he added that the American war in Afghanistan was an "act of terror against the people of the world." ...
Other pundits came close to admitting defeat. "There is no real solution," John Mortimer sighed, and Jon Snow added limply that "There has to be a complete re-evaluation of how the world ticks." Tom Paulin did have a pragmatic answer — "I'm in favour of the symbolic notion of dropping food parcels into Afghanistan" — and Bruce Kent suggested that the al Qaeda leaders should be tried in absentia: "I would even go as far as combing through their bank accounts." ...
If the old Leninist left was buried politically in the rubble of the Berlin wall, the literary-academic intelligentsia disappeared morally in the ashes of ground zero." (See also: Celebrity Watch - A look at what some celebrities have said and written about the terrorist attacks in America and the war on terror.)

"Separated at birth?"
(Vanity Fair/Slate, from the September 2003 issue)