Archived news and commentary: September 8 - 14, 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 14, 2003

News and commentary:

"DIA says Pakistan backed al Qaeda" (AFP/The Washington Times, 2003/09/14)
"Pakistan helped al Qaeda launch its operations in Afghanistan in the 1990s and secretly ran a major training camp used by Osama bin Laden's terror network, according to U.S. intelligence documents.
The documents, produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency in the fall of 2001 and declassified in a censored version this week, also indicate that legendary Afghan guerrilla commander Ahmad Shah Masood may have been killed two days before the September 11 attacks because he had learned something about bin Laden's plan and 'began to warn the West.'" (See also: "The September 11th Sourcebooks - Volume VII: The Taliban File" (The National Security Archive, 2003/09/11))

"Israeli Vice Premier Says Killing Arafat an Option" (Corinne Heller, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/14)
"Israel's vice premier said on Sunday killing Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was an option in its threat to "remove" him and the United States rejected the idea, warning it would trigger "rage throughout the Arab world."
Also alarmed at Israel's threat was the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, Saeb Erekat, who expressed the fear that if Israel kills Arafat, Palestinian militias could unleash their wrath against moderate leaders such as himself.
"Killing (him) is definitely one of the options," Ehud Olmert, a mainstream member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet, told Israel Radio Sunday.
"We are trying to eliminate all the heads of terror, and Arafat is one of the heads of terror," said Olmert, who elaborated on a decision taken Thursday by Israel's security cabinet to "remove" Arafat, calling him an obstacle to peace."

"9/11? It Never Happened" (Stefan Theil, Newsweek, from the 2003/09/22 issue)
"To get a sense of how deep mistrust of the United States runs in Germany, take a look at the bookshelves. Two years after September 11, German bookstores are flooded with such works as "The CIA and September 11," in which a former government minister of Research and Technology, Andreas von Bulow, insinuates that the U.S. and Israeli intelligence services blew up the World Trade Center from the inside. The two Boeings, he claims, were flown in by remote control as a cover-up. The whole thing was a cynical plot by America's neoconservatives to take over the world. ...
Recently, more crackpot 9/11 theorists have gotten a kind of official blessing. In June, German government-run WDR television broadcast a "documentary" claiming that no airplane ever crashed in Pennsylvania.
Amid the antiwar fervor, conspiracy theories played a big role in many Germans' thinking. Indeed, some mainstream media virtually specialized in sinister plots. In suggestive cover stories titled blood for oil and warriors of god, the German newsweekly Der Spiegel described U.S. policy as a conspiracy to control the world — fomented and led by the oil industry one week and the Christian right the next. That kind of hysteria can't disappear overnight. ...
All around the globe, the Bush presidency has turned out to be "the most fertile period for conspiracy freaks since JFK was shot," says Jorg Lau, a Die Zeit reporter who's been tracking the phenomenon."

"Don't Rush to Disaster" (Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, from the 2003/09/22 issue)
"It is strange that U.N. officials argue that we must quickly move, in Kofi Annan's phrase, from "the logic of occupation" to that of Iraqi sovereignty. The United Nations has blessed and assisted in the occupation of Bosnia, where it took seven years to transfer power to the locals. It boasts of "the logic of occupation" in Kosovo, which has gone smoothly for the past four years, with no prospect of ending any time soon. It administered tiny East Timor for two years before handing over power. Does Kofi Annan really think that what took seven years in Bosnia can take one year in Iraq, with six times as many people?
It is touching to learn of the French faith in the Governing Council. When the council was set up, the French government (as well as the Germans) refused to endorse it, privately disparaging the group as American puppets. It took a month for the United States to get it to vote in the Security Council simply to welcome the formation of the council. France's newfound love for the council is simply an attempt to get the United States out as soon as possible. ...
Popular sovereignty is a great thing, but a constitutional process is greater still. The French know this. The French Revolution emphasized popular sovereignty with little regard to limitations on state power. The American founding, by contrast, was obsessed with constitution-making. Both countries got to genuine democracy. But in France it took two centuries, five republics, two empires and one dictatorship before getting there. Surely we want to do it better in Iraq." (See also: "Powell calls French timetable for Iraq 'totally unrealistic'" (David R. Sands, The Washington Times, 2003/09/13))

"Passive Saboteurs" (Martin Peretz, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/09/14)
"The world is now witnessing an exodus from Iraq. But it is not an exodus of refugees, whom critics of the war told us would flood in panic across the borders into neighboring states. These simply didn't materialize - and it tells us much that is good about the postwar realities of the country that they didn't.
So who exactly is abandoning Iraq and its still considerable deficiencies in sanitation, clean drinking water, medicine, medical care and an equitable distribution of food? The answer is astonishing because the deserters are many of those nongovernmental organizations and other groupings organized by governments whose precise moral singularity is that they arrive and stay to dispel human distress when no one else will. ...
I do not wish to demean the value of relief workers and their contributions. But let's face the truth: Any success in rebuilding Iraq would undermine the widely diffused ideological presumption of relief organizations and many international agencies that powerful nation-states cannot provide the impetus for decent change or even real relief among suffering pre-industrial and pre-modern populations. That is a task, the humanitarian professionals argue, for the practitioners of the post-sovereign ideal - for them, that is. It is for this reason that these professionals actually engage in what one might call passive sabotage in Iraq, a mean-spirited version of what Thorstein Veblen called "the conscientious withdrawal of efficiency." They do not want the water to flow if the tap is turned by Paul Bremer."

"The truth is that Mr Blair said too much" (Matthew d'Ancona, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/09/14)
Matthew d'Ancona on Blair's "dossier strategy": "As so often, Donald Rumsfeld was right. A fortnight after the September 11 attacks, the US National Security Council convened to discuss, among other things, the possibility of a dossier - or "white paper" as the Americans call such documents - to prove that Osama bin Laden was behind the atrocities. According to Bob Woodward's book, Bush at War, Rumsfeld foresaw grave dangers in this apparently straightforward exercise.
Woodward records the Defense Secretary's warning: "It could set an awful precedent. Suppose they [the US] wanted to launch a preemptive military attack on terrorists or some state sponsor? They could create an expectation that some white paper would follow. That might not be possible. National security decisions about military action often had to be made on the best available evidence and that might fall far short of courtroom proof. They could be setting themselves up." ...
It is worth noting that many of those now accusing the Prime Minister of making Saddam's WMD available to terrorists by plunging Iraq into chaos are precisely the same people who, until the committee's report last Thursday, were crowing that Saddam had never had any WMD to start with. In logic, Mr Blair cannot be guilty both of inadvertently creating an arms bazaar for Islamic fanatics in liberated Iraq, and of lying about the existence of those arms in the first place. ...
Full disclosure was never remotely possible in this case. But Mr Blair created precisely that expectation by revealing what he did. This has been the bitter paradox of the dossier strategy: far from reassuring people, it has encouraged the impression of concealment, deviousness and economy with the truth."

"Why Israel is right to assassinate Hamas leaders" (Stephen Pollard, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/09/14)
"Most coverage of Hamas in the Western media betrays a quite astonishing misunderstanding of its role and its aims. The received wisdom is that, although its tactics may be repellent, Hamas is a group of freedom fighters battling against the Israelis for their rights - something akin to nationalist terrorist groups such as the IRA or ETA, which, however foul their methods, have an aim - national self-determination - that can be shared by perfectly decent, non-violent supporters. ...
If the IRA had espoused not merely the separation of Northern Ireland from the UK but also the murder of every Unionist and every Anglican in Great Britain, the abolition of the United Kingdom and its replacement with a Catholic state, run by the IRA and dedicated to converting the rest of the world to Catholicism by force, then there might be some merit in the comparison. ...
A Hamas member explained to an interviewer last month that: "The Jews have destroyed your Christianity just like they are trying to destroy our Islam. You should read the words of the Prophet. Join us. We do not just want to liberate Palestine. We want all countries to live under the Caliphate. The Islamic army once reached the walls of Vienna. It will happen again."
Talk of "negotiation" with Hamas is meaningless - as meaningless as the idea that you can negotiate with Osama bin Laden. You cannot negotiate with the man who intends only your murder and the destruction of your country and who is prepared to die - and kill you in the process - rather than settle for less."

"Charity's Fate Seen as Test of Wider War on Terror" (Stephen Braun, Los Angeles Times, 2003/09/14)
An article on the case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development: "The memo is the government's core case against the charity, based on classified volumes of phone intercepts, seized documents and informant testimony. The 49-page file offers glimpses of Baker and other Holy Land officers allegedly meeting with Hamas operatives and hatching financial deals with some — including Hamas strategist Marzouk.
U.S. authorities have never said how much money they think Holy Land funneled to Hamas. Instead, the FBI memo describes how Holy Land sent a steady stream of funds to Palestinian charity committees dominated by Hamas operatives across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In turn, the committees meted out food, medical and other social services to the poor, "building Hamas grass-roots support through charitable projects," the FBI said.
According to the FBI, a trove of secret evidence gleaned from wiretaps and informants document that Holy Land's "annuities to families of Hamas members" provided "a constant flow of suicide volunteers and buttressed a terrorist infrastructure." ...
Their suspicions date to October 1993, when a wiretap aimed at a Hamas suspect overheard Baker and other activists in a Philadelphia hotel allegedly discussing plans to raise funds for the terrorist group and cryptically referring to "Samah" — Hamas spelled backward." (UPDATE: Here's a mirrored copy of the article.)

"Supporters rally round Arafat" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/09/14)
Arafat does his usual stunt — preaching peace to Westerners/Israelis and martyrdom to Palestinians/Arabs. And, also as usual, useful idiots gather around him:
"Arab MKs, left-wing activists, and representatives of European, Asian, and Arab countries were among those who visited Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat in his Ramallah headquarters on Saturday to express solidarity following Israel's decision to "remove" him. ...
Among the visitors were MKs Ahmed Tibi and Issam Makhoul and left-wing activists Uri Avnery and Latif Duri.
Avnery told reporters that he plans to serve as a human shield to protect Arafat against an IDF attempt to expel him.
"If [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon decides to kill Arafat, this would be an unprecedented historic catastrophe for the people of Israel," Avnery said. "This would destroy any hope for achieving peace for generations." Tibi said after the meeting that Sharon "is the real obstacle to peace, not Arafat." ...
Meanwhile, Arafat waxed lyrical on his role as a peacemaker. "The duty of all of us is to reach a peace that is just, that is permanent, and that is comprehensive for the whole area, for the sake of our children," he said. ...
Addressing Israel, he said: 'Come to peace, come to make peace together.'" (See also: "Arafat Emerges From Compound a Second Time" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/12): "Yasser Arafat emerged from his office for a second straight night Friday and rallied hundreds of supporters. "To Jerusalem we are going as martyrs in the millions," he told the crowd.")

Saturday, September 13, 2003

News and commentary:

"Wielding the moral club" (Ian Buruma, Financial Times, 2003/09/13)
A must-read essay on the "moral paralysis" of left-liberal intellectuals when it comes to non-western tyrants:
"What is astonishing here is not the naivety, but the off-handed way well-heeled commentators in London, California, or New Delhi, talk about the suffering of the very people they pretend to stand up for. Vidal dismisses it as "not my problem". Tariq Ali calls for more violence. And Arundathi Roy prattles about civil society. ...
But this does not answer the question of what to do, as citizens of the richest and most powerful nations on earth, about dictators who commit mass murder or happily starve millions to death. Why are our left-liberal intellectuals so hopeless at answering this vital question? ...
It was the left that wanted to change the world, no matter where. Left-wing internationalism did not wish to recognise cultural or national barriers. To them, liberation was a universal project. Yet now that the "Bush-Cheney junta" talks about a democratic revolution, regardless of culture, colour or creed, Gore Vidal claims it is not our business, and others cry "racism". ...
Unless, of course, one really believes that the problems of faraway peoples are for them to solve alone, and that we have no business intervening on their behalf against tyrants, and that any attempt to do so has to be, by definition, racist, or colonialist, or venal.
This belief may indeed be more pragmatic, even realistic. But those who hold it should at least have the honesty to call themselves conservatives, of the Henry Kissinger school, and stop pretending they speak for the liberal-left."

"Interview: Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad" (Bassam Alloni, UPI, 2003/09/13)
An interview with the leader of the Al-Muhajiroun, who planned to celebrate "The Magnificent 19" on the two-year anniversary of Sept. 11: "Q. Don't you think that holding a conference under the slogan of "positive September consequences" or "the magnificent 19" is a provocative matter?
A. ... When I say the magnificent 19, I mean they are great because they changed the course of history and created a turning point that separated between Islam as a civilization and the Western civilization. That is why I consider what those who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks have done is a legitimate action. ...
Q. Then, what is your relationship with the leader of al-Qaida's bin Laden, and do you consider him a mujahed (holy fighter)?
A. Bin Laden is the lion of the Muslim nation, in which he has made a major landmark. It is an honor for me to be labeled as a follower of bin Laden, but the truth is that I am much less than that. I see Sheikh bin Laden as carrying out legitimate activities. And I want to affirm that I have never been in contact with bin Laden, from near nor far." (See also: "Honoring the 9/11 hijackers" (Lisa Myers, NBC News, 2003/08/27))

"Funeral for 10 Iraqi Police Officers Draws Angry Crowd" (Alex Berenson, The New York Times, 2003/09/13)
"In a chaotic mass funeral at a mosque on Falluja's main road, a crowd of mourners laid to rest seven officers while firing Kalashnikov assault rifles into the air, the crowd chanted anti-American slogans and warnings. The crowd consisted entirely of men, and most mourners seemed to have a weapon.
"Hot, hot or else the blood will run cold," mourners shouted, warning that American troops will soon face revenge attacks. "Where will the wanted go from us?"
Two masked men holding rocket-propelled grenades jumped on a motorcycle while threatening an imminent attack on American soldiers. As photographers and television cameramen followed, the mourners surrounded and attacked them, injuring at least two cameramen. American soldiers were nowhere in sight, aside from two helicopters cruising slowly at least a mile to the north." (See also: "US 'Friendly Fire' Kills 8 Iraqi Allies, Jordanian" (Fadhil Badran, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/12))

"Saudis Promising Action on Terror" (Don Van Natta Jr. and Timothy L. O'Brien, The New York Times, 2003/09/13)
"Since May, the Saudis have acknowledged that their terrorist problems are far worse and more difficult to combat than they had imagined, American officials said. ...
Only weeks after the May bombings in Riyadh, Saudi security forces cornered a senior Qaeda operative suspected of orchestrating the attacks and fatally shot him as he tried to flee in his car on a Riyadh street. ...
But less than a month later, security officials stumbled upon enormous caches of terrorist weaponry — 20 tons of explosives and detonators, rocket-propelled grenades and high-powered rifles — at three different locations. ...
"They have realized that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of terrorists inside Saudi Arabia," a senior American official based in the Middle East said."

"In Danny Pearl Book, Lévy Says Next 9/11 Brewing in Pakistan" (Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Observer, from the 2003/09/15 issue)
Rosenbaum on Bernard-Henri Lévy's "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?": "His investigation of the kidnapping’s organizer, Omar Sheikh, who is currently facing a death sentence in Pakistan (although Mr. Lévy quotes Omar making the chilling boast that the authorities who put him in jail will die before he does), and of Omar's connections to Pakistani intelligence and Al Qaeda figures — even possibly to 9/11 — is the heart of the book. ...
He demonstrates persuasively that Omar had ties to factions within Pakistani intelligence (the I.S.I.) that may date back to his student days in the U.K., where he seemed on the outside to be a perfectly assimilated Englishman. More than that, he paints a disturbing portrait of Omar as a divided soul, a "laboratory" for the "clash of civilizations," between tolerance and religious fanaticism.
Mr. Lévy captures this divide in his book when he reports that Omar "played chess and read Mein Kampf." At one point during the C-Span interview, I asked him about Omar and Mein Kampf: "There are those who say 'Hitler is dead,' but among people like Omar — terrorists, jihadists like him — Hitler is spoken of with affection, right?"
True, Mr. Lévy said: According to the testimony of one of the men he kidnapped in India, Omar "was able to recite entire pages of Mein Kampf by heart." Mr. Lévy gave a world-weary, Gallic shrug: "Everybody has the poetry he deserves." And he went on to add that Omar was not alone in seeking to finish what Hitler started: 'You have today, in Damascus, in Syria, in Libya, some people who think that the anti-Semitic message of the Nazis was a good message — and has to be completed.'" (See also: "Doubts About an Ally" (Bernard-Henri Levy, The Washington Post, 2003/09/12) and "The Anti-Anti-Americans" (Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, from the 2003/09/01 issue))

"Powell calls French timetable for Iraq 'totally unrealistic'" (David R. Sands, The Washington Times, 2003/09/13)
"As the foreign ministers of the U.N. Security Council's five permanent powers gather here today for a wide-ranging discussion on the U.N.'s role in Iraq, Mr. Powell issued a blunt condemnation of a plan floated by his French counterpart, Dominique de Villepin.
The de Villepin plan, outlined yesterday in the French newspaper Le Monde, calls for a new constitution for Iraq by this fall and the restoration of full sovereignty to an Iraqi government in six months. ...
The French plan is "totally unrealistic," Mr. Powell told reporters in a briefing aboard his plane last night before landing in this Swiss city."

"Iran Given Deadline to Lay Bare Nuclear Program" (Joby Warrick, The Washington Post, 2003/09/13)
"The United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency took a dramatically tougher line with Iran yesterday after months of diplomacy, setting an Oct. 31 deadline for the Islamic republic to prove to the world that it is not secretly building nuclear weapons.
Iranian representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna walked out in protest after the agency's 35-nation governing board unanimously approved the U.S.-backed deadline. In an ominous turn, the leader of Iran's delegation warned that the country may cease cooperating with U.N. nuclear inspectors, prompting fears that Iran could follow North Korea in renouncing international treaty obligations that prohibit nuclear weapons research. ...
The IAEA's decision sets up a possible showdown with Iran, which must now choose between granting U.N. inspectors full access to its nuclear facilities and documents or risk being brought before the Security Council for possible sanctions."

Friday, September 12, 2003

News and commentary:

"William Sampson: Confession, torture and freedom - in his own words" (National Post, 2003/09/12)
Sampson's chronicling of his horrific ordeal in Saudi Arabia is finally available online. This is from "My eleven days of Saudi torture" (William Sampson with Francine Dubé, National Post, 2003/09/08):
"About an hour after I was abducted from my home on Dec. 17, 2000, and brought to the jail, the process of brutalization began.
The torture took place in offices upstairs from my cell. I nicknamed my torturers - Mr. Acne had a pock-marked face and burning eyes. The Midget had a look of smug stupidity that reminded me of Dopey the dwarf. The Greaser had a pencil-thin moustache.
At the first interrogation on the day of my arrest, Mr. Acne, the only English speaker of the three, acting both as an interrogator and translator, told me they knew who I was, what I had done, that I was guilty of setting off the three car bombs and that I would tell them everything they wanted.
They bounced me around the room as if playing a violent game of pass-the-parcel. I was pushed to the floor and repeatedly kicked in the backside, crotch and stomach. My head was held up and I was slapped on the back of the head and face, around the ears.
They took inordinate care not to hit me in the front of the face.
They threatened me with the use of electric shocks. I was told they would continue to apply this pressure until "We have put you in the right way," and "we get your mind right."
There was a desk and chairs in the room. From time to time they would sit me down, the Greaser beside me, aggressively caressing and fondling me, a means of sexual intimidation he was to use often.
My mind was blank, except for fear." (See also: "I angrily lunged toward my father" (William Sampson with Francine Dubé, National Post, 2003/09/11) "And then I began to fight back" (William Sampson with Francine Dubé, National Post, 2003/09/10) "'I was having a heart attack'" (William Sampson with Francine Dubé, National Post, 2003/09/09) and "'I am not quite the man I was'" (William Sampson with Francine Dubé, National Post, 2003/09/06))
(UPDATE: As the he original links to William Sampson's articles of his torture and survival in a Saudi prison are down and as it is a must-read series, I've posted them on Watch:
"I angrily lunged toward my father" (William Sampson with Francine Dubé, National Post/Watch, 2003/09/11)
"And then I began to fight back" (William Sampson with Francine Dubé, National Post/Watch, 2003/09/10)
"'I was having a heart attack'" (William Sampson with Francine Dubé, National Post/Watch, 2003/09/09)
"My eleven days of Saudi torture" (William Sampson with Francine Dubé, National Post/Watch, 2003/09/08)
"'I am not quite the man I was'" (William Sampson with Francine Dubé, National Post/Watch, 2003/09/06))

"Jazeera Airs Tape Said to Be of Sept 11 Hijacker" (Reuters, 2003/09/12)
"Arab television channel Al Jazeera on Friday aired a new videotape of a man it said was one of the September 11 hijackers, reading his will and saying it was a Muslim duty to fight the "American enemy." ...
"America is the enemy that every Muslim should fight. There is no way the Arab nation can be saved except through jihad (holy war)," said the speaker, identified as Saeed Alghamdi, wearing military fatigues and an Arab headscarf. ...
In his taped will, dated December 2000, the speaker declared his readiness to die in a suicide attack.
"Martyrdom attacks heal the hearts of Muslims, and have a moral and material impact...These attacks break their (Americans') hearts and destroy their morale," he said."

"US 'Friendly Fire' Kills 8 Iraqi Allies, Jordanian" (Fadhil Badran, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/12)
"American troops killed eight members of a U.S-trained Iraqi security force on Friday when they mistook them for guerrillas and witnesses said a Jordanian hospital guard was also killed in the crossfire.
Elsewhere in the restive "Sunni Triangle," where Washington suspects deposed President Saddam Hussein is hiding, two U.S. soldiers died and seven more were wounded in a botched pre-dawn raid in Ramadi likely to further fuel anti-American sentiment."

"Plot to assassinate Arafat feared" (Ala Mashharawi, Gulf News, 2003/09/12)
Another fascinating glimpse into the bizarro world: "Palestinians have thrown a tight security cordon around President Yasser Arafat fearing his assassination by unconventional means that could be construed as "a natural death", highly informed sources told Gulf News yesterday.
The new security steps include searching and close monitoring of all Arafat's visitors. The sources said that one speculated method of assassination could be the direction of poisonous rays towards Arafat's brain.
These rays can cause palpitations in the heart leading to a failure of brain resulting in gradual stop in breathing and ultimate death." (Note: Found via Little Green Footballs.)

"'We Are the Victims of Terrorism'" (AFP/Arab News, 2003/09/12)
The Arab curriculum seems to be stuck with Victimology 101 as an eternal course: "Two years on, Saudi Arabia, blamed in the West for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, feels more of a victim than a defendant in the dock for the case against global terrorism. ...
Author Hani Wafa pondered the woes Sept. 11 had caused the Saudis in general and Muslims in particular.
"These events had a negative side ... and became a catastrophe for us," he told AFP. "We have lost the consideration of the world and our confidence in ourselves, in our intellectual approach and our social customs."
"Worse still, these events gave an opportunity for those who were waiting for the slightest opportunity to attack us and undermine our beliefs. As Arabs and as Muslims, we are the greatest losers from what happened on Sept. 11," Wafa noted.
Ali Saad Mussa, another intellectual, writing in Al-Watan newspaper this week, offered a similar theme: Islam 'has been the greatest loser.'"

"Al Jazeera Reporter Charged" (Sebastian Rotella and Cristina Mateo-Yanguas, Los Angeles Times, 2003/09/12)
"A Spanish judge formally accused a war correspondent for Arabic television station Al Jazeera of terrorist activity Thursday, ordering him jailed for alleged financing, logistical support and recruitment for Al Qaeda.
Investigative magistrate Baltasar Garzon ordered Taysir Alouni, a Syrian-born Spaniard, held without bond. Alouni won fame as a correspondent in Kabul, Afghanistan, for obtaining the first interview and first videotaped message from Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Alouni's arrest last week set off an outcry in the Arab world, and Thursday's decision raised the stakes in a case in which journalism, politics, religion and terrorism have converged. ...
On Thursday, Garzon filed a 23-page order outlining Alouni's alleged participation in a Syrian-dominated Al Qaeda cell in Madrid that is suspected of having links to the Hamburg, Germany, cell responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. The Madrid suspects have been in jail pending trial for nearly two years." (See also: "Spain arrests Al-Jazeera reporter" (Al Goodman, CNN.com, 2003/09/05))

"British FM Straw accuses French of anti-American 'neurosis'" (AFP/Yahoo! New, 2003/09/12)
"The Daily Mail reported that Straw "reignited tensions" over the Iraq war, which France opposed, by accusing French leaders of being anti-American.
"There isn't any question but that a significant part of the way in which the French political diplomatic class defines itself is against America, and this has been a continuing neurosis amongst the French political class for many decades," Straw was quoted as saying."

"10 Years On" (The Jerusalem Post, 2003/09/12)
Twelve commentators on "what went wrong" with the Oslo accords. This is from "The road to hell" (Ruth Wisse, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/09/12):
"When Israel recognized the world's then-leading terrorist as the legitimate leader of the Palestinian people and pledged to arm his "police force" to prevent further attacks upon its citizens, it became the first country ever to arm its professed enemy with the expectation of gaining security. That Yitzhak Rabin thought such an action was "reversible" if it didn't work, only magnifies the folly of his government's actions.
Many Israelis assure me that by now "everyone" recognizes the error of Oslo. Yet those who express their disappointment in Yasser Arafat usually frame this admission in a glow of innocence, as though they expected to be praised for having paved their road to hell with good intentions. They proudly recount how much they were prepared to risk for peace, as if a gambler should be congratulated rather than treated for his desperation.
They boast that at Camp David, in the summer of 2000, Ehud Barak promised Arafat everything that he had wanted even though none of the obligations of Oslo had been fulfilled! These Israelis want to show off their readiness for compromise and accommodation, as if stupidity should be rewarded for being imprudent."

"Israel Should Never Again Negotiate Peace With Terrorists" (Yossi Klein Halevi, Los Angeles Times, 2003/09/12)
"None of us who at first supported the White House handshake on Sept. 13, 1993, which initiated the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo process, would have imagined then that it would end in the worst wave of terrorism in Israel's history.
This week's terrorist attacks, grimly marking the 10th anniversary of the Oslo process, only reaffirm the bitter lesson Israelis have learned about the consequences of empowering terrorists as peace partners.
Every prediction made by the Israeli right about the Oslo process has been vindicated. The more territory Israel ceded, the more terrorism it received in return. ...
Oslo envisioned a Palestinian state emerging after a gradual process of reconciliation. Instead, the opposite has happened. The Palestinian leadership made a strategic decision to create a Palestine not through negotiations but blood."

"Doubts About an Ally" (Bernard-Henri Levy, The Washington Post, 2003/09/12)
"It is in this context that it's advisable to consider the problem of the Pakistani nuclear program and the dangers of proliferation that it presents - with Iran certainly, but also with al Qaeda and the still-at-large elements of the Taliban. In my book I bring up the case of the so-called "father of the Islamist bomb," the man after whom Pakistan's leading nuclear laboratory is named, Abdul Qader Khan. He is a revered figure in his country. He is cheered in the streets. His birthday is sanctified in the mosques. I witnessed an Islamist demonstration in which gigantic portraits of him led the march. But this man has long been not only a government official but a fanatical Islamist. This public figure, this great scientist, this man who knows better than anyone (since it is he who developed them) the most sensitive secrets of Pakistan's nuclear program, is both close to the ISI and a member of Lashkar e-Toiba, a group closely allied with al Qaeda. My story concerned Khan's "vacations" to North Korea and his links with bin Laden's men; one of my hypotheses is that Pearl may have been killed to prevent him from reporting on such trafficking of nuclear know-how." (See also: "The Anti-Anti-Americans" (Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, from the 2003/09/01 issue))

Thursday, September 11, 2003

News and commentary:

"Falling"
(Richard Drew, AP, 2001/09/11)

"The Falling Man" (Tom Junod, Esquire, from the September 2003 issue)
"They began jumping not long after the first plane hit the North Tower, not long after the fire started. They kept jumping until the tower fell. They jumped through windows already broken and then, later, through windows they broke themselves. They jumped to escape the smoke and the fire; they jumped when the ceilings fell and the floors collapsed; they jumped just to breathe once more before they died. They jumped continually, from all four sides of the building, and from all floors above and around the building's fatal wound. They jumped from the offices of Marsh & McLennan, the insurance company; from the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond-trading company; from Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors — the top. For more than an hour and a half, they streamed from the building, one after another, consecutively rather than en masse, as if each individual required the sight of another individual jumping before mustering the courage to jump himself or herself. One photograph, taken at a distance, shows people jumping in perfect sequence, like parachutists, forming an arc composed of three plummeting people, evenly spaced. Indeed, there were reports that some tried parachuting, before the force generated by their fall ripped the drapes, the tablecloths, the desperately gathered fabric, from their hands. They were all, obviously, very much alive on their way down, and their way down lasted an approximate count of ten seconds. They were all, obviously, not just killed when they landed but destroyed, in body though not, one prays, in soul." (See also: "Richard Drew" (Peter Howe, The Digital Journalist, October 2001) and "The Horror of 9/11 That's All Too Familiar" (Richard Drew, Los Angeles Times, 2003/09/10): "Tom Junod, who wrote the Esquire article, interviewed the families of several victims trying to identify the man he calls "9/11's Unknown Soldier." ... Though his quest proved fruitless, Junod eventually concluded, as I did, that the point is moot, for we already know the identity of the man in the picture. He is you and me.")

"Official: N. Korea Developing New Missile" (George Gedda, AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/11)
"The Bush administration has received information that North Korea is developing a long-range ballistic missile designed to reach targets throughout the United States, two government officials said Thursday.
The officials, asking not to be identified, said the potential reach of the missile is 9,400 miles, a distance within the range of any U.S. state or territory. ...
The updated model is based on Russia's SSN6, a Soviet-era, submarine-launched ballistic missile. This suggests cooperation, at a minimum, from Russian scientists or other entities, the officials said.
The administration has raised the issue with Russian government officials, who indicated surprise and disapproval of the activity, according to the U.S. officials."

"Arafat Defiant Over Expulsion Calls" (Karin Laub, AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/11)
"Israel issued an ominous threat Thursday to "remove" Yasser Arafat because he has failed to halt suicide bombings. Thousands of Palestinians rushed to Arafat's compound to protect their leader, fearing Israel wants to expel or even kill him.
A defiant Arafat, grinning broadly, emerged from his sandbagged West Bank office building shortly after the Israeli security Cabinet's announcement, flashing victory signs to his supporters. "The leader is Abu Ammar," the crowd chanted, referring to Arafat by his nom de guerre.
Using a bullhorn, the 74-year-old Palestinian leader recited a passage from the Quran, the Muslim holy book, about being steadfast in the face of an oppressor. He then led the crowd in a chant, waving his finger in rhythm: 'To Jerusalem, to Jerusalem, to Jerusalem.'" (UPDATE. See also: "Arafat enraged at being called 'incompetent' by PA minister" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/09/11): Arafat told the rally that the Palestinians will march towards Jerusalem until they achieve victory. The crowd responded by shouting, "We will sacrifice millions of martyrs on the road to Jerusalem.")

"Cabinet approves Arafat expulsion" (The Jerusalem Post, 2003/09/11)
"In Ramallah, Arafat stormed out of a meeting of the Fatah central council on Thursday after a bitter confrontation with Gen. Nasser Youssef, the Interior Minister nominee in the new cabinet led by Ahmed Qurei.
According to well-informed sources, an enraged Arafat left the meeting after Youssef described him as "the most incompetent revolutionary leader in history."
The sources said Arafat hurled insults at Youssef as he walked out of the room.
"It was a very tense meeting," a member of the Fatah central council told The Jerusalem Post. "The situation in general is tense because of the Israeli threats to expel President Arafat." He denied a report according to which Arafat spat at Youssef on his way out.
After the meeting, a visibly shaken Arafat vowed to reporters that he would stay put and never leave the Palestinian territories out of his own free will. "This is my homeland. This is Terra Sancta. No one can kick me out," he said. "They can kill me. They have bombs," he said, adding that he would definitely not leave out of his own free will."

"Israel decides to expel Arafat" (BBC News, 2003/09/11)
"The Israeli security cabinet has agreed in principle to expel Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
The cabinet is understood to have asked the army to draw up a series of options for Mr Arafat's expulsion from his compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah. ...
"Arafat is an obstacle to peace and Israel will act to remove this obstacle," a statement from the meeting was quoted as saying.
No action against Mr Arafat is expected to be taken straight away, although Israeli troops are reported to have taken control of buildings close to Mr Arafat's headquarters on Thursday in advance of the cabinet meeting."

"ISC report: key quotes" (Tom Happold, The Guardian, 2003/09/11)
The ISC report was released today and it even clears the so-called "NIGER URANIUM LIES!!!": "Based on the intelligence and the JIC assessments that we have seen, we accept that there was convincing intelligence that Iraq had active chemical, biological and nuclear programmes and the capability to produce chemical and biological weapons.
We are content that the JIC [joint intelligence committee] has not been subjected to political pressures, and that its independence and impartially has not been compromised in any way. The dossier [on Iraq's weapons programmes] was not "sexed up" by Alastair Campbell or anyone else. ...
The SIS [Secret Intelligence Service] continues to believe that the Iraqis were attempting to negotiate the purchase of uranium from Niger. We have questioned them about the basis of their judgment and conclude that it is reasonable." (See also the full report: "Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction – Intelligence and Assessments" (Intelligence and Security Committee/The Guardian, 2003/09/11))

"The Coming Anti-Semitism" (Le Figaro/EuroPundits, The Guardian, 2003/09/11)
An interview with Alain Finkielkraut from Le Figaro, translated by C.Bloggerfeller: "LF: In In the Name of the Other, you are worried about the development of a form of anti-semitism under the banner of progressivism. What's happening in Europe?
AF: After a brief parenthesis, the grands simplificateurs are back. Since the fall of communism, we've been witnessing the stupefying restalinization of part of the intelligentsia and the movement of the socially-concerned. No longer having any adversary to measure up to it, America appears all-powerful. And this image of American omnipotence has breathed new life into the pernicious idea that politics can do everything: all the world's misfortunes are perceived as crimes; the objective universe seems to be made up of subjective wills, those which resist evil and those which foment it. This is why the idea of conspiracy has once more seized hold of the feeble-minded, and whoever talks about conspiracy soon or later ends up talking about the Elders of Zion."

"We're winning this war" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2003/09/13 issue)
"I don't think you could find many Americans who went to bed that night expecting to get through the next two years without another major terrorist attack on US soil.
Yet here we are.
That in itself is remarkable. Even more remarkable is the lack of credit that the Bush administration gets for it. ...
Meanwhile, in Europe, the tinfoil-hat brigade has gone mainstream. Of course America hasn't been attacked again. That's because 9/11 was a neocon conspiracy to give Washington a pretext to grab Iraq's oil and Afghanistan's, er, rubble. The conspirazoids now include the Rt Hon Michael Meacher, MP, a man who until a few weeks ago was one of Her Majesty's ministers of state, a fellow who sat at the Cabinet table with Tony Blair and discussed troop deployments. ...
The story of the summer is that the American people refused to be panicked by the media, the Democrats and the Europeans. Indeed, the awesome divide between the postmodern sophists and everybody else is the real legacy of 11 September. As the day itself recedes into the past, the splinter it opened up in the settled international order gets wider and wider to the point where 9/11 is a fault line through reality itself. Depending on which side you stand, success is failure, victory is disaster. ...
If 9/11 liberated the Bush administration to put into action its scheme to take over the world, then it also liberated the Western elites to embrace finally and wholeheartedly anti-Americanism as the New Unifying Theory of Everything." (See also: "This war on terrorism is bogus" (Michael Meacher, The Guardian, 2003/09/07))

"The Great Divide" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2003/09/11)
"America was aroused after 9/11 in the manner that a comatose patient suddenly jerks up to find that an entire world in his slumber has become unrecognizable . ...
And when a Norman Mailer or Michael Moore and a host of writers and actors in the aftermath of 9/11 have uttered such atrocities after 3,000 vanished, what has happened to our intelligentsia and artists, so much the beneficiaries of the very wealth and leisure of the American engine they sneer at? Did they, like our brave firemen and police in New York and Marines in Iraq, show themselves in the hour of our need to be even better than we thought them — or was it instead to be abjectly worse? ...
In our current feeding hysteria that diminishes astounding success to quagmire or worse, what disinterested observer would ever believe that in just 24 months we have liberated 50 million people, destroyed the odious Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and routed 60% of the al Qaeda leadership — all at the cost of less than 300 American dead? It is almost as if the more amazing our accomplishments, the more we must deprecate them.
It will require an economist, politician, historian, philosopher, and artist to make sense of the world turned upside down after September 11, which unlike Y2K really did prove to be the abyss between the millennia.
Until then, we would do better to think simply of the dead, and to pledge both that we shall never forget them and in our lifetimes and, according to our efforts and station, we shall not allow it to happen again to any others on these shores — so help us, God."

"No final victory" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2003/09/11)
"In the War Against Terror, no other power or organization can defeat America.
But America remains dangerously capable of defeating itself.
Our strength is without precedent in the social, cultural, economic, military and moral spheres. But, when faced with determined enemies whose capabilities are no more than the smallest fraction of our own, we reveal two dangerous weaknesses: Impatience, and the profoundly mistaken notion that the absence of a clear-cut victory means that we have been defeated. ...
Iraq will never become Iowa - our goal should be a better, if still imperfect, Iraq. Afghanistan will always remain Afghanistan. It is enough if it is a somewhat-improved country, less dangerous to us and less oppressive to its citizens. By such rational measures, we already have achieved notable victories.
Despair is the preferred narcotic of the intellectual classes. The rest of us must stand up for what we know in our hearts and souls to be right and true. Our cause is just. Our efforts in this great, global war have been admirably successful. Our soldiers have kept us safe and made us proud. We owe them unity, not divisiveness.
No power on this earth can defeat us, unless we defeat ourselves."

"A Civil War of Ideas" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2003/09/11)
"In military and police terms, the War on Terror has gone much better than anyone would have expected.
Of the dozens of bases the terrorists had in Afghanistan and Pakistan, only two or three may still be operational in the Mohand area, one of the seven mountain enclaves in Pakistan. The last place in the Muslim world where the terrorists could gather, as late as December 2002, is the dusty town of Rabat, a thieves bazaar located in the so-called "Devil's Triangle" where the borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan meet.
The liberation of Iraq has shattered the structures of two dozen terror organizations, at least one of which was directly linked to al Qaeda. ...
No one can deny that the party of terror in the Muslim world has failed to attract any significant level of popular support. The liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq was largely approved by the silent majority of Muslims.
The loudest protests came from within Western societies, including the United States."

"A sad case of schadenfreude" (Andrew Gimson, The Spectator, from the 2003/09/13 issue)
"Last Sunday I attended a very odd and unpleasant meeting at the Tempodrom in Berlin. The several hundred people who were present believe the American government is to blame for the attack on the World Trade Center, which it either carried out itself, or else allowed others to carry out, in order to have an excuse to invade Iraq and establish world domination. ...
One speaker described at length how the airliners had been controlled by propeller-driven aircraft that appeared in the sky near them. A British student from East Anglia University, who had started to find out about these conspiracy theories on the Internet and had helped to put up posters for the conference, said in tones in which one might describe a religious conversion, 'This stuff is the truth, the real world.' ...
A venomous stream of anti-American and anti-Semitic resentment has burst forth in Germany during the Iraq crisis. ...
With every reverse, or seeming reverse, that the Americans suffer in Iraq, the schadenfreude in Germany reaches new heights, or depths. The Germans hope the Americans will fail in Iraq. They expected them to lose the war, and now they expect them to lose the peace." (See also: "Moonbats: The Gathering" (Michele Catalano, A Small Victory, 2003/09/06) and "Sept 11 theorists to meet in Berlin" (DPA/Expatica, 2003/09/05))

"J'Accuse" (Stephen Schwartz, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/09/11)
"On the second anniversary of the darkest day in recent American history, U.S. relations with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia remain clouded by an undeniable reality: the conspiracy to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as well as other probable targets, was a product of Saudi society. ...
The U.S.-Saudi relationship represents an inveiglement with corruption, repression, and terror as bad as or worse than that between our country and any left- or right-wing dictatorship in the past. Can we really imagine that if 15 out of 19 of the 9/11 murderers had been Cuban agents, even the Hollywood left that adulates Castro would call for a hands-off approach to the Havana regime? And if 15 out of the 19 had been representatives of one of the right-wing dictators of the past, like Pinochet, we can only imagine liberals calling for the most extreme sanctions against the regime with which it originated. But in the Saudi case, an uneasy silence prevails in the executive branch of government, and even in influential media. ...
I accuse: The blood of the martyrs of September 11th remains unatoned, and those we Americans have trusted to gain justice have, as yet, failed us. The blood of coalition troops and innocent Iraqis is at stake, and our country's leaders have yet to face the truth about the danger to these potential victims. But the sands of the vast desert hourglass are running out, for us as well as for the rest of the victims of Saudi-Wahhabi tyranny."

"Foreign Views of U.S. Darken Since Sept. 11" (Richard Bernstein, The New York Times, 2003/09/11)
"In interviews by Times correspondents from Africa to Europe to Southeast Asia, one point emerged clearly: The war in Iraq has had a major impact on public opinion, which has moved generally from post-9/11 sympathy to post-Iraq antipathy, or at least to disappointment over what is seen as the sole superpower's inclination to act pre-emptively, without either persuasive reasons or United Nations approval. ...
I think the turnaround was last summer, when American policy moved ever more decisively toward war against Iraq," said Josef Joffe, co-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit. "That's what triggered the counteralliance of France and Germany and the enormous wave of hatred against the United States." ...
"America has taken power over the world," said Dmitri Ostalsky, 25, a literary crtic and writer in Moscow. "It's a wonderful country, but it seized power. It's ruling the world. America's attempts to rebuild all the world in the image of liberalism and capitalism are fraught with the same dangers as the Nazis taking over the world." ...
"One could conclude that there is today a serious question as to whether Europe and the United States are parting ways," Mr. Sandschneider writes.
From this point of view, as he and others have said, the divergence will not be a temporary phenomenon but permanent." (See also: "Reinventing Transatlantic Relations" (Eberhard Sandschneider, AICGS, 2003/06/18))

Added in archive:
"The fourth world war" (Doug Sanders, The Globe and Mail, 2003/09/06)
"The Importance of Losing the War" (Jonathan Schell, The Nation/AlterNet, 2003/09/05)

Note: This is a sombre day in Sweden. I woke up by a phone call from a friend who told me that Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh just had died from her stab wounds after yesterday's attack.
It's difficult to not draw parallels with the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme 1986.
First of all the utter failure of the Security Police to do their job — they were not even present in either case. It's incomprehensible that they didn't heighten security around her the final days before the Euro referendum, which naturally has pitched up the political climate and for which she was one leading campaigner — her portrait is on thousands of YES-posters right now.
Also, the attacker is still at large and given the abysmal performance of the Swedish Police generally and in the still unsolved Palme case particularly, it's only too easy to be pessimistic now as well. Hopefully they will succeed in this case.
We have lost one of our most brilliant politicians. My thoughts go out to Anna Lindh's family and friends. (See also: "Swedish minister dies after stabbing" (BBC News, 2003/09/11))

Wednesday, September 10, 2003

News and commentary:

"It would be so unfair if there was another 9-11!"
(Le Monde, 2003/09/10)
Apparently the United States not only deserved 9/11, but deserves more terrorist attacks like it, according to Le Monde. Front page cartoon, found via Merde in France. [OMC = World Trade Organization.]

"Two years later" (Le Monde/Watch, 2003/09/10)
"They were rare who then dared to rejoice..." This editorial accompanies the cartoon above as Le Monde's commemoration of the second anniversary of 9/11:
"The attacks of 11 September 2001 on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington provoked a wave of sympathy with Americans, unprecedented in history. The number of dead, the means used and the symbols destroyed aroused feelings the world over. They were rare who then dared to rejoice in the bloody "punishment" inflicted on the West's most emblematic representatives.
Two years later, the United State's stock has hit bottom. Compassion has given way to the fear that ill-considered actions will exacerbate problems and that the fight against terrorism is only a pretext for the expansion of American hegemony.
President George W. bush is convinced that the civilized world is engaged in a new world war against a new totalitarianism. This crusader mind-set has won few adepts, including among those traditional allies of the United States. The world, so say the allies, is more complex than the double feeling of vulnerability and omnipotence might lead one to believe.
The union of fundamentalism, weapons of mass destruction and failed states surely constitutes a threat heretofore unknown to democracies. Still, must the United States pose as the world's judge and policeman, a recurrent temptation that has returned in force since 11 September?" (Note: Translated by Douglas. See also the French original: "Deux ans après" (Le Monde, 2003/09/10) Also: "The Falseness of Anti-Americanism" (Fouad Ajami, Foreign Policy, from the September-October issue), in which Ajami points out the obvious — that anti-Americanism prevailed also before and immediately after 9/11.))

"New Bin Laden Video Shown on Al Jazeera" (FOX News, 2003/09/10)
"On the eve of the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Arabic television channel Al Jazeera aired what it claimed to be a new videotape from Usama bin Laden. ...
The news channel also broadcast audiotape it claimed was a recording of al-Zawahri calling on Iraqi forces to "bury" American troops in Iraq. No one is heard to speak on the video.
New video images of Al Qaeda leader bin Laden have not been seen for months, but there was no way to independently verify when the "new" footage was shot.
Al Jazeera said the videotape was made in late April or early May of this year. No snow is visible in the footage, and the grass is a bright green among darker pine trees. ...
'On the second anniversary of the raids on New York and Washington, we challenge America and its Crusade, which is teetering from its wounds in Afghanistan and Iraq," the speaker on the audiotape says, as translated by the Associated Press. "We tell them that we do not seek to kill, but we will chop off the hand which seeks to inflict harm on us, God willing."
The voice also threatens more attacks on Americans.
"What you saw until now are only the first skirmishes," the voice says. 'The true epic has not begun.'" (See also: "Bin Ladin on new Aljazeera tape" (Aljazeera.Net, 2003/09/10))

"The Saudi-Al Qaeda Connection" (Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, 2003/09/10)
"A cache of documents purportedly recovered from the files of ex-Taliban chief Mullah Omar in Afghanistan provides potentially damning new evidence of a secretive money trail through which millions of dollar in funds from Saudi Arabia allegedly flowed to Al Qaeda terrorists in the late 1990s.
One of the documents, obtained by Newsweek, appears to be a direct order from Mullah Omar to the Afghan ambassador in Pakistan to turn over $2 million "in Saudi Arabia aids" to Jon Juma Namangani, a charismatic former Soviet paratrooper who became one of the most feared terrorists in Central Asia. ...
English versions of other documents, prepared by translators working for Motley, appear to show the Taliban leader ordering similar releases of millions of dollars in funds "from the aids of Saudi Arabia, brotherly country," as well as the "the brotherly nation" of the United Arab Emirates. Other orders refer to "Wafa aids" and "the aids of Al-Rasheed" — two apparent references to Islamic charities that have been linked by U.S. officials to the financing of terrorism. ...
In addition, Newsweek has learned, a Senate resolution threatening Saudi Arabia with economic sanctions is rapidly gaining support and may be introduced in the next few days. The resolution would call on the Treasury Department to impose sanctions on the Saudis unless the president annually certifies the country is taking demonstrable steps to curb the financing of terror groups.
A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy did not respond to a request for comment."

"US has failed in Iraq, says Fischer" (DPA/Expatica, 2003/09/10)
I've criticized the unrealistic demand for Instant Gratification previously, but this is perhaps the worst case so far. Found via Steven Den Beste, who notes - "But to claim that our strategy is now a failure is fatuous. It's a process expected to take decades rather than weeks. It is much too early to determine that it's failed. At best this is rhetoric; at worst it's a deliberate lie.":
"German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer asserted Wednesday that US policy in Iraq had failed while calling for German-American ties to be redefined on the basis of equal partners.
"The American domino theory under which a liberated Iraq was supposed to stabilise the Middle East and democratise one country after another has not proven right," said Fischer in an interview with the news magazine Stern.
He added: 'The decisive question now is whether a strategy which has not worked will be replaced by one that can.'"

"Dalai Lama: Iraq War May Be Justified" (Scott Lindlaw, AP/The Guardian, 2003/09/10)
When the Dalai Lama is more hawkish than the avarage European, you know you live in interesting times:
"The Dalai Lama said Wednesday that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan may have been justified to win a larger peace, but that is it too soon to judge whether the Iraq war was warranted.
"I think history will tell,'' he said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, just after he met with President Bush. ...
The exile Tibetan leader, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, said the Vietnam War increased suffering and was a "failure.'' But, he said, some wars, including the Korean War and World War II, helped "protect the rest of civilization, democracy.''
He said he saw a similar result in Afghanistan - "perhaps some kind of liberation.''
"The people themselves, I think, suffer a lot under their previous regimes,'' he said. But he was adamant that the United States not lose sight of rebuilding Afghanistan. ...
The Tibetan Buddhist leader, who is a five-city, 20-day tour of the United States that is timed to coincide with the Sept. 11 anniversary, called on Americans to channel their lingering grief "into a source of inner strength.''
"Big, unthinkable tragedies happen,'' he said. 'Now, instead of keeping that and developing hatred or sense of revenge, instead of that, think long-term. The negative event, try to transform into a source of inner strength.'''

"Grasso got $5m bonus for '9/11 leadership'" (Andrei Postelnicu and Vincent Boland, Financial Times, 2003/09/10)
There were hundreds and hundreds of real heroes on 9/11, many of whom sacrificed their lives for others. Grasso gets $5m for re-opening the stock market: "The New York Stock Exchange awarded its chairman Richard Grasso a special bonus of $5m to reflect his "sterling leadership" following the September 11 attacks taking his total 2001 pay to $30.5m, it emerged on Wednesday.
Ken Langone, then chairman of the NYSE compensation committee, said the payment was "a very objective analysis of all the contributions he made". This included "his leadership through 9/11, the fact that the stock exchange was ready to open the very next day".
The $5m was in addition to Mr Grasso's performance-related bonus of $16.1m. The level of this award was based partly on Mr Grasso's own evaluation of the exchange's performance."

"Andre Glucksmann: The three deliriums: red, green and brown" (Le Figaro/Cinderella Bloggerfeller, 2003/09/10)
A translated interview from Le Figaro with Glucksman about his new book "West Against West":
"On Friday, August 29, at the funeral of Sergio Vieira de Mello, there was talk - quite rightly - of a "September 11 for the UN". This phrase was not an exaggeration. In the assumption of absolute destructiveness, the indiscriminate aspect of Islamism shows itself once again.
The attack on the Jordanian embassy was the September 11 of the moderate Arab states. The attack in Najaf, the desecration of the mosque of Ali and the assassination of Ayatollah Hakim was the September 11 of the Shi'ites. The threat is universal. It shows the rage to destroy, the pure power of nothingness. By blowing up water pipelines, the terrorist condemns Iraqi babies to die of dehydration and makes the whole population go thirsty. You have to be a racist to believe that these terrorists who are murdering their own people represent them. They are the representatives of nihilism. ...
When the Americans speak of the "axis of evil", the important thing is not the term "axis", an unfortunate one, since we live in the era of networks: the important thing is the word "evil": it means the complex "terrorism-Islamism-nihilism". Terrorism forms the backdrop to an era which opened a century ago with the alliance between war and revolution, in the exaltation of a modernity without human rights. Islamism replaces the secular final struggle of communism with a form of theological apocalyptism, it works the same way on the societies in its grip: it's a vehicle of terror. Everything is permitted in the name of a radiant future. Islamism brings something quite different from religion into play. Let's not forget that the first victims of Islamist terrorists were Muslim populations themselves. Look at the work of the GIA in Algeria. ...
September 11 is the proof: we Westerners are immensely vulnerable when confronted with a collective evil which is always ready to strike. The idea that September 11 only concerns the Americans and that we can remain neutral while counting the punches is absurd. The Jordanians are targets, the UN is a target, the Shi'ites are targets and if the anti-war Europeans think they are off limits, then they are fooling themselves."

"How's This for an Answer?" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/09/10)
"Blogress Karol Sheinin reports that an Iranian democracy activist named Banafsheh contacted the most prominent "antiwar" group asking them to take a stand against Tehran's thuggish theocracy. In an e-mail (quoted verbatim), Banafsheh describes the answer she got:

... When I explained that the people of Iran are acting on their own but that encouragement from the PEOPLE of the west was crucial in holding anti-Islamic Republic demonstrations etc. (that's all I had asked them for: help in organizing demonstrations) the woman basically said that they won't help because their cause was to eradicate Imperialism! ...
I told her about my father and other political prisoners in Iran (not to mention the number of people stoned to death, hung, assassinated, raped...), she thought for a moment and said that my father is probably a dissident and that the Islamic Republic was possibly justified in putting him in prison!!!!! I don't know, but doesn't that seem oxymoronic coming from someone working at an "activist/protestor" organization?????

Well, not really. International Answer is the brainchild of America-hating ex-attorney general Ramsey Clark. As we've noted before, this group makes common cause with every one of America's enemies, from Fidel Castro to Saddam Hussein to Kim Jong Il." (See also: "I mentioned a few months ago..." (Karol Sheinin, Spot on, 2003/09/10))

"Jordan's dilemma over 'honour killings'" (BBC News, 2003/09/10)
"'A woman is like an olive tree. When its branch catches woodworm, it has to be chopped off so that society stays clean and pure.'
So declared one tribal leader when pressed on the issue of "honour killings" in Jordan, where approximately every two weeks a woman is killed by a male relative because of the shame she has brought upon her family by an alleged sexual transgression - "sins" which include being raped.
Her killer will, on average, receive a sentence of some six months' imprisonment.
Latest efforts to impose a harsher penalty on men who kill their daughters and sisters suffered a fresh setback in parliament this week, after deputies refused to sanction an amendment to the penal code. ...
"It's also a question of culture and identity," says Adab Saoud, one of six female deputies who holds her seat thanks to a royal-imposed quota and one of the MPs who voted against the bill.
'Obviously these killings are wrong and against our religion. But the notion of honour is a very important one in our society. And we need to accept that.'"

"Fresh 'honour killing' in Jordan" (BBC News, 2003/09/10)
"Three brothers hacked their two sisters to death in Jordan in an "honour killing", one day after parliament rejected tougher sentences for such crime, officials are quoted as saying.
The unidentified sisters, aged 20 and 27, were killed with axes in the capital Amman on Monday, according to a report in the Jordan Times newspaper.
Officials told the paper the three brothers - who are in detention - admitted that they carried out the killing for reasons of "family honour". ...
The 27-year-old left her family home nearly two years ago to marry a man without her family's consent, the paper says.
Her 20-year-old sister ran away three months ago to join her.
Tipped on their whereabouts, the brothers went to their home with axes, and hacked their sisters to death, the paper says.
"It was a brutal scene. One victim's head was nearly cut clean off," an official is quoted as saying." (See also: "'Honour killings' law blocked" (BBC News, 2003/09/08))

"Hamas Leader Survives Israeli Air Strike" (Ibrahim Barzak, AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/10)
"Israeli warplanes on Wednesday flattened the home of a Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, wounding him and killing his son and a bodyguard, in retaliation for twin suicide bombings that killed 15 Israelis a day earlier. ...
Less than 12 hours after the attack on the Jerusalem coffee house, Israeli warplanes bombed the home of Zahar, a senior official in Hamas, flattening the two-story structure. Witnesses said Zahar was not indoors, but was nearby at the time.
Zahar's bodyguard and a 29-year-old son Khaled were killed in the bombing, hospital officials said. Twenty-five people were wounded, including three women and five children. Rescue workers were digging through the rubble to search for possible survivors."

"Militant Behind Bali Blasts Gets Death Sentence" (Jane Perlez, The New York Times, 2003/09/10)
"A defiant Islamic militant was sentenced to death today after being convicted of playing a major role in the Bali nightclub attacks that killed 202 people last year.
The defendant, Imam Samudra, 33, was described by a panel of five judges as the "intellectual actor" behind the bombings. He is the second man to be convicted in the Bali case.
After hearing the sentence, Mr. Samudra, who has shown a belligerent demeanor throughout his three-month trial, shouted, 'America, Australia go to hell!'"

"Blue Movies Proliferate in Post-Saddam Iraq" (Reuters/Netscape News, 2003/09/10)
Democracy. Whiskey. And sexy!: "Outside the cinemas on Saadoun Street, groups of men loiter round film posters of naked women, whose private parts are crudely super-imposed with underwear drawn in colored pen.
Behind doors in Baghdad's main movie strip, there is no such teasing.
Barely a seat is empty as hundreds of men, most puffing cigarettes, sit in total silence and darkness to enjoy scenes of nudity and sex for 1,000 Iraqi dinars ($0.50) a time.
"Under Saddam, forget it. You would go to jail for showing or watching this," said movie-watcher Mohammed Jassim at the Atlas Cinema where one of the films on offer was disturbingly named "Real Raping." ...
Faris Sami, who owns a shop selling films on CDs - including a fair sprinkling of "romantic" and "sexy" films - is worried about the corrupting effect on teenagers and would like to see some restrictions back.
But he is relieved not to be running the same risks as before when he and his business partner would secretly sell sex films to trusted clients and friends.
"Uday (Saddam's son) had a big campaign a couple of years ago. They put my partner in jail for three months," Sami said in his Baghdad shop. 'For them, everything was allowed. For the people, everything prohibited.'" (See also: "Exuberant, Shiite Crowd Calls Vainly for Water" (Jim Dwyer, The New York Times, 2003/04/03): "What, the man was asked, did he hope to see now that the Baath Party had been driven from power in his town? What would the Americans bring? "Democracy," the man said, his voice rising to lift each word to greater prominence. "Whiskey. And sexy!" Around him, the crowd roared its approval.")

"Sampson's ordeal is Canada's shame" (Peter Worthington, Toronto Sun, 2003/09/10)
"Bill Sampson, recently released from a Saudi Arabian prison, has been telling his story in the National Post and on Global television, and as horrific as his ordeal was, even more appalling is the Canadian government's behaviour throughout. ...
Sampson's accounts are graphic: Strung upside down and beaten, the soles of his feet whipped, being forced to squat, arms tied around his legs and a bar pushed under his knees and then hung between chairs and spun and beaten, his genitals hit, testicles stamped on, and more.
"No evidence of torture," insisted the Canadian government for 31 months of his imprisonment on trumped up charges. Sampson was sentenced to death in secret - not by beheading as we understand the term, but tied to a cross and his throat sliced with a sword, leaving the spinal column intact. Civilized, eh? ...
Bill Sampson's case is a greater indictment of Canadian policy than it is of Saudi Arabia, about which we shouldn't harbour illusions.
What could Canada have done for Sampson in prison? Easy, we should have been prepared to expel the Saudi ambassador, cut cultural and trade relations, ban Saudis from entering Canada, treat that country as an enemy if necessary.
If we had any reputation for standing up for innocent citizens in trouble, Sampson would have been freed soon after his arrest.
Shame on Bill Graham; shame on Jean Chretien; shame on Canada." (See also: "'I am not quite the man I was'" (William Sampson with Francine Dubé, National Post, 2003/09/06))

"The latest anti-Bush spin" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/09/10)
"If there's one truly pathetic anti-war line being peddled right now, it is that the Bush administration tragically "blew" the world-wide sympathy for Americans in the wake of 9/11. How did they DO this? By allegedly refusing allied support in Afghanistan and Iraq, sidelining the U.N., acting all "unilateral," and ... well, you've probably listened to enough NPR to finish the sentence. Fred Kaplan in Slate lays it on with a trowel this week. After European sympathy two years ago, he claims,

the Bush administration brushed aside these supportive gestures — and that may loom as the greatest tragedy of Sept. 11, apart from the tolls taken by the attack itself. ...

To put it bluntly, Kaplan's piece amounts to a series of wild stretches and utter fabrications. The U.S. did everything to win the support of as many countries as we could for a war which many, frankly, do not have the stomach to fight. ... He surely knows that it was the French who scuttled any chance for a compromise on Iraq in the last days at the U.N. He knows that the Bush administration did everything it possibly could to bring the U.N. around. ... A useful lesson, this, about some foreign policy liberals. Ignore them: they'll attack you. Do what they want: they'll attack you anyway. If it means a grotesque distortion of history, so be it." (See also: "Bush's Many Miscalculations" (Fred Kaplan, Slate, 2003/09/09))

"Enough" (The Jerusalem Post, 2003/09/10)
"The world will not help us; we must help ourselves. We must kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible, as quickly as possible, while minimizing collateral damage, but not letting that damage stop us. And we must kill Yasser Arafat, because the world leaves us no alternative. ...
Arafat does not just stand for terror, he stands for the refusal to make peace with Israel under any circumstances and within any borders.
In this respect, there is no distinction, beyond the tactical, between him and Hamas. Europe's refusal to utterly reject him condemns Palestinians, no less than Israelis, to endless war and dooms the possibility of the two-state solution the world claims to seek. ...
We complain that a double standard is applied to us, and it is. But we cannot complain when we apply that double standard to ourselves. Arafat's survival, under our watchful eyes, is living testimony to our tolerance of that double standard. If we want another standard to be applied, we must begin by applying it ourselves."

"Haaretz Poll: Israelis back assassinations in war on terror" (Yossi Verter, Haaretz, 2003/09/10)
"A total of 504 people were questioned for the survey (which has a 4.4 percent margin of error), which sought to decipher Israeli public opinion following Saturday's assassination attempt on Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and the announcement by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) that he was stepping down as Palestinian prime minister.
The vast majority of the public backed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz in these cases. The failed hit on Yassin was even more popular than the "Star is Born" television show, with 68 percent of respondents saying that it was justified and 59 percent wanting to see a second attempt. ...
A total of 18 percent want to see Israel assassinate Arafat, 28 percent suggest sending him off into exile overseas, 27 percent think that he should be further degraded by increasing his isolation at his Muqata compound in Ramallah and 20 percent think Israel should continue with its current policy where he is under a "comfortable" house arrest. No one suggested easing the policy toward him."

"Syrian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Glorifies Martyrs and Martyrdom" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 570, 2003/09/10)
A translation of "The Blood of Martyrs" by the Syrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Dr. Buthayna Sha'ban:
"The blood of martyrs inscribes a scroll that can be read only by those with faith in their peoples and in the future of the [Arab] nation, who are convinced that however great their [personal] accomplishments, they are but a single link in the life of the homelands and the peoples. Therefore, they are ready for giving, the utmost of all kinds of giving, so that the scattered drops [of blood] join together to form a stream, then a river, then a gushing torrent.
The blood of martyrs brings to memory all the blood sacrificed from the dawn of history to today; and it gushes forth in purity, so that those who died will not think their blood was cheap, or their sacrifice blew away in the wind."

"What Iraqis Really Think" (Karl Zinsmeister, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/09/10)
"Working with Zogby International survey researchers, The American Enterprise magazine has conducted the first scientific poll of the Iraqi public. ...
• Our interviewers inquired whether Iraq should have an Islamic government, or instead let all people practice their own religion. Only 33% want an Islamic government; a solid 60% say no. A vital detail: Shiites (whom Western reporters frequently portray as self-flagellating maniacs) are least receptive to the idea of an Islamic government, saying no by 66% to 27%. It is only among the minority Sunnis that there is interest in a religious state, and they are split evenly on the question. • Perhaps the strongest indication that an Islamic government won't be part of Iraq's future: The nation is thoroughly secularized. ...
Perhaps the ultimate indication of how comfortable Iraqis are with America's aims in their region came when we asked how long they would like to see American and British forces remain in their country: Six months? One year? Two years or more? Two thirds of those with an opinion urged that the coalition troops should stick around for at least another year."

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Tuesday, September 9, 2003

News and commentary:

"That PBS Special" (Sheila Astray's Redheaded Ramblings, 2003/09/09)
Astray on the PBS Special "The Center of the World - New York: A Documentary Film":
"You could play a drinking game watching it. Actually, that would make the whole thing more watchable. Here's what you do: Take a drink every time you hear the word "hubris". You would be SMASHED before the first hour was out.
The implication was that those buildings were asking for it. They were asking for it even before they were built. We were asking for it. You know what happens to people who have hubris! The Greeks taught us that! Hubris is punished!
The way all of the "experts" talked, September 11 was a done deal from Day One of the project 30-something years ago. They were talking as architects. They spoke abstractly.
They spoke of symbols. They spoke of globalization (and they all took the position, as if there were no possible fair-minded question about it, that globalization was a bad thing). They spoke of symbols of globalization. They spoke of hubristic symbols of globalization.
One of them particularly got on my nerves. He was talking about blueprints and floor plans, but he smirked the entire time. His political views had been vindicated by the downfall of those buildings. The entire experience of September 11 was, for him, a morality tale, an aesop's fable, a symbolic fairy tale, an allegory.
Kudos to you if you are able to float so loftily above the dirt and grime of REAL EVENTS, and see everything in an abstract way, see everything as a symbol. Great for you for being able to be so cut off. Not all of us can do that, and I, for one, do not WANT to do that." (See also the transcript: "The Center of the World - New York: A Documentary Film" (PBS, 2003/08/22): "William Langewiesche: One of the surprising things, you could call it almost a sad poetic justice, is that the only buildings that were completely destroyed by this collapse were the buildings that carried the Trade Center label, buildings One through Seven. No other buildings, with the exception of the small Orthodox church there that dissolved, were destroyed. And every building that carried the label, died.")

"Father, daughter buried together on day she was to get married" (The Jerusalem Post, 2003/09/09)
"A father and his daughter out together on the night before her wedding were among the seven killed and 57 wounded in a suicide bombing at a popular coffee shop in Jerusalem Tuesday night.
Dr. David Appelbaum, 50, a native of Cleveland, and his daughter Nava, 20, were buried Wednesday at 10 a.m. in Jerusalem.
Appelbaum was the head of the emergency department at Shaarei Zedek Hospital and the founder of the Terem 24-hour emergency clinic in Jerusalem.
Nava was a volunteer with children suffering from cancer as part of her national service. At the funeral, the intended groom, aged 20, placed their wedding ring on her body as it was lowered to the grave."

"Seven dead, 40 wounded in Jerusalem suicide blast" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/09)
"At least seven people were killed and around 40 others wounded in a suicide bombing by the entrance of a cafe in west Jerusalem, medical sources said.
They did not say whether the toll included the bomber whose attack devastated the Hilel cafe on Hemek Refaim road.
Police said that a security guard had tried to prevent the attacker from entering the building. He then blew himself up outside the cafe.
Ambulances rushed to the scene to treat the wounded, several of whom were said to be in a serious or critical critical condition.
"I looked up and saw somebody with something that looked like a crate on his back, under his clothes," an eyewitness told Israel public television. 'But within a second everything blew up.'" (See also: "Seven killed in Jerusalem blast" (Aljazeera.Net, 2003/09/09): "The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas resistance group, hailed the blast in Jerusalem and an earlier explosion near Tel Aviv, in a statement read on Aljazeera television. "After the two attacks in Tel Arabiya (Tel Aviv) and Jerusalem, despite all the Israeli security precautions, we told the Zionists it was payback time," read the statement".)

"At least six killed, 15 wounded in suicide bomb near Tzrifin base" (Jonathan Lis et al., Haaretz, 2003/09/09)
"At least six people were killed and several others were reported wounded Tuesday, 10 of them seriously, when a suicide bomber blew up just before 6 P.M. at a crowded bus stop adjacent to the Tzrifin military base near Rishon Letzion. Security officials said there were many soldiers