Archived news and commentary: September 22 - 28, 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 28, 2003

News and commentary:

"Bloodied words for 'the Martyred Ones.'"
(Teun Voeten/SIPA, 2003/09/28)
From the slide show "Street Scene in Gaza" (The New York Times, 2003/09/28). See also: "Street Scene in Gaza: An Outdoor Gallery of Gore" (Greg Myre, The New York Times, 2003/09/28)

"Militants vow to fight on as thousands mark Palestinian uprising" (AFP, 2003/09/28)
"The radical Palestinian groups Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades vowed to continue the armed uprising against Israel as thousands of people rallied to mark the intifada's third anniversary.
"We affirm our determination to continue the intifada until occupation ends and we demand that the Palestinian Authority and new government resist pressure from the Americans and the Zionists aimed at ending our right to resist," Hamas said in a statement on Sunday. ...
In the West Bank town of Nablus, meanwhile, some 5,000 Palestinians hit the streets in a new rally to mark the anniversary, an AFP reporter said.
The demonstrators, many carrying Palestinian flags and those of Hamas and its smaller rival Islamic Jihad, marched from al-Najah University to the town centre, chanting slogans of defiance."

"Chasing a Mirage" (Nancy Gibbs and Michael Ware, TIME, 2003/09/28)
"Over the past three months, Time has interviewed Iraqi weapons scientists, middlemen and former government officials. Saddam's henchmen all make essentially the same claim: that Iraq's once massive unconventional-weapons program was destroyed or dismantled in the 1990s and never rebuilt; that officials destroyed or never kept the documents that would prove it; that the shell games Saddam played with U.N. inspectors were designed to conceal his progress on conventional weapons systems — missiles, air defenses, radar — not biological or chemical programs; and that even Saddam, a sucker for a new gadget or invention or toxin, may not have known what he actually had or, more to the point, didn't have. It would be an irony almost too much to bear to consider that he doomed his country to war because he was intent on protecting weapons systems that didn't exist in the first place."

"A bloody delusion" (David Aaronovitch, The Observer, 2003/09/28)
"Last week I could, had I wanted, have attended 'An evening with Tariq Ali', organised not by the Stop The War campaign or Worker's Vanguard, but by the British Museum. ...
At the time of the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, Ali said that he wasn't surprised. 'Resistance is (not) coming only from the remnants of the regime. There are dozens of resistance organisations being formed north and south, and once the resistance starts in the south, I think that the occupation will be in very serious trouble.' On the bombing itself: 'The United Nations has been seen as the enforcer of unfair sanctions which the Iraqi people resent.'
Thus, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, Ali reconstructs the bombing as a semi-spontaneous act of resentment, rather than a calculated atrocity aimed at forcing international agencies out, and isolating the Americans. It is an act of 'resistance' rather than an act of terrorism carried out against the wishes of most Iraqis. Presumably the murder of Ayatollah Mohamed Baqir al-Hakim and 90 others in Najaf last month was also the work of the 'resistance'. ...
My point is whether the reader can imagine the British Museum inviting to speak someone called, say, Tariq Wolfowitz, who has written a passionate defence of the war, in which he polemicises against non-interventionists, citing the history of Iraq. Could they have discovered a 'context' for such a view?"

"Baghdad City Cop" (Bernard B. Kerik, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/09/28)
Kerik "has just returned from a four-month stint in Baghdad as senior policy adviser to Ambassador Bremer":
"Due to our efforts, 40,000 Iraqi police are back to work helping to restore law and order, and assisting the U.S.-led coalition in its hunt for Saddam and his loyalists. It's the beginning of a long haul. Like it or not, building a country from scratch takes time and money. Securing a country such as Iraq will take a professional civil police service, 65,000 to 75,000 strong, an Iraqi army of hundreds of thousands, and a temporary civil defense force to augment U.S. and coalition forces. ...
Five months ago in Iraq, we adopted a country of 24 million, with no electricity, water, technology, Internet, telephones or radio communications, etc. There was nothing, and yet the critics are saying that it's taking too long. One would think that they themselves have the answer, or the magic pill that will fix it all, but unfortunately, there isn't one! ...
What we need is the ability to identify, locate and capture or kill the enemy that's trying to prevent freedom from growing in Iraq - and no one can do that better than the Iraqis themselves. The creation of a new Iraqi intelligence service is more critical right now than ever and expediting that, and the recruiting, training and deployment of Iraq's new police and military, is essential. All of this is being done, and at speeds that make our federal and state bureaucracies look like they're standing still. And yet the political criticism is deafening." (See also, for example, the cover story of Time: "So, What Went Wrong?" (Michael Elliott, TIME, 2003/09/28) and "The Unbuilding of Iraq" (John Barry and Evan Thomas, Newsweek, from the 2003/10/06 issue): "How Team Bush's reconstruction efforts went off the rails from day one."))

"Iranian agents flood into Iraq posing as pilgrims and traders" (Philip Sherwell and Jessica Berry, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/09/28)
"Iran has dispatched hundreds of agents posing as pilgrims and traders to Iraq to foment unrest in the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala, and the lawless frontier areas.
Teheran's hardline regime has also allowed extremist fighters from Ansar al-Islam, a terror faction with close links to al-Qa'eda, to cross back into Iraq from its territory to join the anti-American resistance.
The Pentagon believes that Iran is building a bridgehead of activists inside Iraq, ready to destabilise the country if that serves its future interests. So concerned is the coalition about Teheran's activities that it is recruiting former agents from the Iranian section of Saddam Hussein's notorious mukhabarat (intelligence) to help to counter Iran's influence in the predominantly Shia south and east of Iraq.
"They are provoking sectarian divisions, inciting people against the Americans and trying to foment conflict and anarchy," said Abdulaziz al-Kubaisi, a former Iraqi major who was jailed by Saddam and is now a senior official in the Iraqi National Congress."

"Nukes Endanger Asia's Future" (Joseph Cirincione and Husain Haqqani, Los Angeles Times, 2003/09/28)
"If Tehran pursues nuclear arms, then, for the first time since the advent of nuclear weapons, several volatile, contiguous states would possess them. Unless Iran and North Korea are stopped, and Pakistan and India engage in nuclear arms-control negotiations, we could be headed for a nuclear showdown. ...
In February, Tehran publicly declared its intention to become a "self-sufficient" nuclear state but claimed that its program was for peaceful purposes. Pakistan had also made similar promises before testing a nuclear device in 1998, soon after India publicly joined the nuclear club.
Iran is even more likely to break its nonproliferation promises. Just as Pakistan's pursuit of the atomic bomb was driven by its insecurity vis-a-vis India, Iran's leaders feel that their country must achieve nuclear parity with Israel, Pakistan and India.
According to the IAEA report, Iran began enriching uranium in mid-August at 10 of the 160 centrifuges it has built at a pilot facility in Natanz. It is also constructing two huge underground facilities to house 50,000 centrifuges. Iranian officials say they are simply enriching uranium for reactor fuel, but the same machines and technologies can produce weapons-grade uranium. When completed later this year, the pilot plant could produce enough fissionable material to make one bomb a year. Planned larger-scale facilities, when completed in 2005, could create enough fuel to construct 15 to 20 nuclear weapons a year."

Saturday, September 27, 2003

News and commentary:

"Media new boogeyman of Iraq" (Pamela Hess, UPI, 2003/09/27)
A balanced analysis of media's negative coverage of Iraq: "It is an important debate to have. Coverage out of Iraq is largely negative, and the surprise to me upon arriving there in July was that it wasn't nearly as dangerous as I thought it was going to be. People are on the streets evening and morning, eating at restaurants and doing their shopping. They swim in the Tigris to keep cool. They play soccer.
And at least as far as operations in the south are concerned, I can attest to a nearly constant stream of heartwarming developments - the engraved bells donated to each new school the U.S. Marines rebuild and open; the young reserve Army sergeant now enthusiastically leading the clean up of a Najaf slaughterhouse; the happy children running out to greet Marines when they walk through downtown Hillah without body armor or rifles because they have worked long and hard to win the trust of the townspeople, and they have succeeded. ...
If the CPA wants the media to cover "good news," it must do a dramatically better job of telling its story. It must have sufficient media officers ready and willing to act quickly on reporters' requests; it must know its story better than the reporters covering it; and it must learn to trust its own people to speak for it. Reporters suspect organizations that tightly control their staffs' contact with the press do so because they fear the truth."

"Putin makes no commitment on Iraq, Iran" (CNN.com, 2003/09/27)
"Russian President Vladimir Putin emerged from talks with President Bush at Camp David with no commitment on his country's cooperation in postwar Iraq or to end its supply of nuclear technology to Iran. ...
Putin offered no commitment to increase Russian participation in the postwar reconstruction of Iraq, saying his country's involvement will depend on the scope of a new resolution being considered by the U.N. Security Council. ...
At his joint appearance with Bush, Putin offered no commitment to end Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran. But he made it clear that Russia was opposed to development of nuclear weapons by Iran -- and that the Iranians must continue to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which verifies compliance with nuclear nonproliferation agreements.
"It is our conviction that we shall now give a clear but respectful signal to Iran about the necessity to continue and expand its cooperation with IAEA," Putin said. 'Russia has no desire and no plans to contribute in any way to the creation of weapons of mass destruction, either in Iran or in any other region in the world.'"

"WANTED - For Deception, Fraud, Mass Murder..."
(AP Photo/John D McHugh)
Down the slippery slope of anti-Americanism II: "Anti-war protesters demanding the pullout of coalition troops from Iraq march in central London, Saturday, Sept. 27, 2003 in the first national protest since the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

"North Korea Calls Rumsfeld Illiterate Psychopath" (Reuters, 2003/09/27)
Down the slippery slope of anti-Americanism I: "Rumsfeld told U.S. and South Korean business leaders on Tuesday he had a night-time satellite picture of the divided peninsula in his office that showed the North almost entirely in darkness and the South aglow.
"While the situation in North Korea sometimes looks bleak, I'm convinced that one day freedom will come to the people and light up that oppressed land with hope and promise," he said in a speech mostly about the U.S.-South Korean military alliance. The response from the North's official KCNA news agency was harsh even by its own rich rhetorical standards.
"His remarks only go to prove that he is just an old man politically illiterate as he cannot measure up the present reality when all the countries are promoting peaceful co-existence, reconciliation and cooperation irrespective of ideologies and beliefs," it said in a long commentary.
'It is not likely at all that he would speak truth as he is obsessed with wantonly harassing peace and security in different parts of the world and igniting wars. His outbursts, therefore, cannot be construed otherwise than a desperate shrill cry of a psychopath on his death bed.'"

"The Slippery slope of anti-Semitism" (Ilan Greilsammer, Libération/Watch, 2003/09/24 [2003/09/27])
Greilsammer on the slippery slope of anti-Semitism in French society: "But another group of people, far more dangerous to my eyes, also have an definitive view of things: they are all those highly respected intellectuals for whom anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism can never, no, never, contain an ounce of anti-Semitism. One could say anything about Israel and the support that Jewish communities have for it, unleash a torrent of insults on the Israeli people, define the Israeli-American axis as a new axis of Evil, name what happened at Jenin as an “Auschwitz” (dixit Saramago), compare Israeli soldiers to the SS, treat the Jewish state as a pariah among nations, without ever being accused of anti-Semitism. ...
What is serious in my view is that the perverse efforts of this little group are starting to bear fruit in French society: more and more people are saying and writing things about Israel and the Jews that they never would have allowed themselves to say or write a few years ago. They would never have allowed themselves to say such things because they would have been immediately put in their place by their neighbors, their friends and acquaintances, because their co-workers, at university or in the laboratory, would have turned their backs on them. Apparently, such opprobrium no longer exists, which is why they can say whatever they want. It is for those who might be tempted to follow them down this slippery slope that we must recall a few basic truths." (Note: Translation by Douglas. See also the French original: "La pente savonneuse de l'antisémitisme" (Ilan Greilsammer, Líbération, 2003/09/24))

"Bremer Says 19 Qaeda Fighters Are in U.S. Custody in Iraq" (Douglas Jehl, The New York Times, 2003/09/27)
"The top American civilian official for Iraq said today that the United States was holding at least 19 members of Al Qaeda in custody there.
The disclosure by the official, L. Paul Bremer III, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, was the first public mention by an American official of the detention of Qaeda members.
He said he did not know the nationalities of those detained, but suggested they were among the 248 foreign fighters held in Iraq, including 123 from Syria."

Friday, September 26, 2003

News and commentary:

"The U.N. Cuts and Runs" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/09/26)
"Here's why the idea of turning over authority over postwar Iraq to the U.N. is insane: "The United Nations ordered a further pullout of staff from Iraq on Thursday," Reuters reports. ...
"There have been two attacks and we cannot go on like this," says the spokeswoman, Veronique Taveau. "But the U.N. is not pulling out of Iraq. We are committed to the work we are doing here."
But how "committed" is the U.N.? Not very, Reuters says: "U.N. sources said Secretary-General Kofi Annan's security aides had advocated a total withdrawal but Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed concern about the impact such a move would have on Iraq. The outcome was a compromise."
America's staying power may be in some doubt too, at least until the political season is over next November. About the U.N.'s fecklessness, however, there can be no doubt." (See also: "Blow for U.S. as UN Staff Quit, Iraqi Leader Mourned" (Fiona O'Brien and Rosalind Russell, Reuters, 2003/09/26) and "Iraq Pullout, Middle East Gloom Cloud UN Assembly" (Paul Taylor, Reuters, 2003/09/25))

"Palestinian Kills Two Israelis on Jewish New Year" (Boaz Paldi, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/26)
"A Palestinian gunman shot dead a two-month-old baby girl and a man who opened the door to him at a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Friday as Israelis celebrated the Jewish New Year.
The gunman was later shot dead. He also wounded the baby's mother and father in the attack, launched as Israelis held traditional family meals marking Rosh Hashanah, or New Year. ...
A military spokesman said the man was a New Year guest who unwittingly opened the door to the attacker when he knocked at a house at nine p.m. local time after infiltrating the settlement.
The military spokesman said it was the 15th attack launched by Palestinians on a Friday evening, the Jewish Sabbath, or a Jewish holiday since the uprising began."

"9 Killed in Mortar Attack on Iraq Market" (Robert H. Reid, AP/The Washington Post, 2003/09/26)
"A mortar blast tore through a market north of Baghdad, killing nine civilians and injuring more than a dozen others, Iraqi police said Friday. Townspeople suspected American soldiers stationed nearby may have been the target. ...
The mortar round exploded about 9 p.m. Thursday at a market in this Sunni Muslim city [Baqouba] about 30 miles north of Baghdad. Police Gen. Waleed Khalid said nine civilians died and 15 were wounded. U.S. officials put the injured figure at 18.
Khalid described the attack as a "criminal act aimed at hurting Iraqi civilians." However, several townspeople, who spoke on condition they not be identified, said they believed the target was a government building about 250 yards away, where U.S. soldiers stay."

"On the Right Side of History" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2003/09/26)
"At the end of this summer of our discontent, an array of Democratic presidential hopefuls, along with a number of restless pundits, are seeking to reclaim credibility after their mistaken prognoses about the Afghan and Iraqi wars. These critics now claim that we are in a Vietnam-style quagmire in Iraq and have become estranged from the rest of the world on a variety of fronts from the West Bank to the United Nations.
Nothing could be further from the truth, which is immune to spin from both ends of the political spectrum. The facts themselves will not go away, and thus it is more likely that critics (quietly and without fanfare) will soon come over to the U.S. position, rather than vice versa — albeit on the cheap and at the eleventh hour. ...
These are difficult days with constant sniping at Americans, both metaphoric and literal, in Iraq, billions in expenditures, and a hysteria that has infected both our politics
and media. But as long as we keep on the right side of history, we will not go wrong. After September 11, seeking to recover our national security by removing aggressive terrorist and fascist regimes is both moral and noble; so is implanting consensual governments, not military dictatorships, in their places. Supporting a democratic Israel in its efforts to withstand suicide murdering by organized killer gangs is never a mistake, whatever the politics of oil, money, terror, or geopolitical strategy of the day."

"Ready for the truth? Iraq is getting better" (Julie Flint, The Daily Star, 2003/09/26)
"In mid-summer, I spent over a month in Iraq. What I found there did not correspond to what was being reported ­ most crucially, that the liberators were widely perceived as occupiers. That simply wasn’t true. In Baghdad, where US forces had permitted widespread looting (although not as much as reported) and where security and services were virtually nonexistent, attitudes toward the Americans were mixed. But even in Baghdad, even with Saddam and his sons still lurking in the shadows, the sense of relief at the toppling of the regime was palpable.
A university lecturer showed me the bakery below her apartment where educators who fell foul of the ousted dictator were burned alive and said: "We could smell it. Iraq was a prison above ground and a mass grave beneath it. I feel as if I have been born again." Outside Baghdad, in the Shiite south, the mood was overwhelmingly upbeat. In Basra, ordinary people gave the thumbs-up at the mere sight of a Briton. In Najaf, a waiter blew kisses (from behind the backs of visiting Iranian mullahs). In Amara, streets were buzzing well after midnight. ...
It is worth stating the obvious, so momentous is it: For the first time in almost half a century, Iraq has no executions, no political prisoners, no torture and no limits on freedom of expression. Having a satellite dish no longer means going to jail or being executed. There are over 167 newspapers and magazines that need no police permit and suffer no censorship, over 70 political parties and dozens of NGOs. Old professional associations have held elections and new associations have sprung up. People can demonstrate freely ­ and do." (Note: Found via Tim Blair.)

"Symposium: What About Syria?" (Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/09/26)
A somewhat odd but very telling symposium about Syria, in which Bassam Haddad, "an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and Editor of the Arab Studies Journal", manages to focus almost solely on Israel ("the most violent and only existing expansionist Apartheid state") and Iraq ("much worse than ... Vietnam"):
"Haddad: Jamie, before even responding to the comments of the other panelists, I have to say that the premise of your question is patently false, according to known facts and the overwhelming majority of humanity unless one is ready to make explicit distinctions between humans based on race, ethnicity, or some other genetic difference. This type of not-so-subtle prejudice leads to concerns with Syria working on Weapons of Mass Destruction while ignoring the most violent and only existing expansionist Apartheid state, Israel, which has more than 200 nuclear heads. When will we learn that racism and/or ignorance do not pay, and will only deepen the pain and suffering all around? ...
Alexiev: ... I do, however, want to address Mr. Haddad's not so subtle accusation of racism as being behind the U.S. concern of WMDs in the hands of regimes like the Syrian, while disregarding Israel's possession of nuclear weapons. Evidently, Mr. Haddad's own prejudices have blinded him to the logic behind this attitude. Whether Israel has 200 or 2000 nuclear weapons is irrelevant and of no concern to most Americans, because they know that Israel is a democracy and extremely unlikely to use these weapons against them, while even a single WMD in the hands of unsavory regimes with a proven record of support for terrorism like the Syrian one is and should be a major cause for concern. For the same reason, we are not very worried because France and Great Britain, and, for that matter, India, have nuclear weapons and have ceased to be concerned about Russia's huge arsenal once that country dumped its totalitarian system. To allow the likes of Saddam, Osama bin Laden and, yes, Bashar Al-Assad, to acquire WMD, on the other hand, is to guarantee a tragedy much greater than 9/11. No responsible American leader will allow that." (See also: Bassam Haddad Homepage (Georgetown University) and "They didn't rise" (Bassam Haddad, Al-Ahram, from the 10 -16 April 2003 issue): "In order to take Baghdad, the coalition forces may well have to destroy Baghdad, again, but on a far larger scale this time. Destroying Baghdad and killing thousands in that city in particular, is like igniting a global volcano. ...
When will we understand that aggression, occupation, colonisation, and mass murder is not going to work?")

"Conspiracy Theory Deja Vu" (Michael Tremoglie, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/09/26)
"Senator Kennedy's recent rant that the president lied about the reasons to invade Iraq indicates his lack of originality if nothing else. His claim that President Bush and a secret cabal planned this war in advance has been made before – about another president and another war.
In his book The New Dealers' War, author Thomas Fleming repeats the contemporaneous claim that FDR lied to get America involved in WWII. He claims that FDR made plans to invade Europe well before Pearl Harbor. In fact, this book states that the December 4, 1941, edition of the Chicago Tribune published details of FDR’s war plans to invade Europe. This is of course very similar to Kennedy's statement that the Iraq war was planned in Texas well before the World Trade Center was destroyed. ...
The similarities between today’s conspiracy theories and the conspiracy theories of World War II are nearly identical. In the 1940's Roosevelt was accused of leading the U.S. into World War II because Jews influenced Roosevelt's foreign policies. This is the direct antecedent of the Neocon, Zionist conspiracy theory of today. Then, FDR’s alleged Jewish Svengalis included Bernard Baruch, Henry Morgenthau, and Felix Frankfurter. Now, Bush's supposed Jewish cabal consists of Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and William Kristol. Then, Charles Lindbergh, Father Coughlin and Gerald L.K. Smith were among the chief advocates of the Jewish cabal theory; now, Pat Buchanan, Georgie Anne Geyer, and Ted Kennedy are its principle proponents."

"Ted Kennedy, Losing It" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2003/09/26)

"'There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud.'
- Sen. Edward Kennedy on Iraq, Sept. 18

The Democrats have long been unhinged by this president. They could bear his (Florida-induced) illegitimacy as long as he was weak and seemingly transitional. But when post-9/11 he became a consequential president - reinventing American foreign policy and dominating the political scene - they lost it.
Kennedy's statement marks a new stage in losing it: transition to derangement. ...
To accuse Bush of going to war for political advantage is not just disgraceful. It so flies in the face of the facts that it can only be said to be unhinged from reality. Kennedy's rant reflects the Democrats' blinding Bush-hatred, and marks its passage from partisanship to pathology."

"Where to Find Good News" (Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/09/26)
"Let us turn to a recent, underpublicized report from the U.S. National Democratic Institute, which sent an assessment mission to Iraq this summer (www.ndi.org). NDI's chairman is Madeleine Albright and its advisory committee includes Richard ("miserable failure") Gephardt.
The report's first sentence: "NDI's overwhelming finding--in the north, south, Baghdad and among secular, religious, Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish groups in both urban and rural areas--is a grateful welcoming of the demise of Saddam's regime and a sense that this is a pivotal moment in Iraq's history."
Touring the southern cities of Basra, Nassiriya and Aamara, NDI found, "Despite all of the obstacles, virtually every individual and group NDI met with in southern Iraq perceived this as a time of opportunity. . . . Iraqi citizens in the south demonstrated a hunger for information about the functioning of democracy." In the Kurdish-controlled north, NDI saw "clear evidence of a developing economy, relative security and prosperity and an active civil society and culture. . . . Local municipal councils are active and appear to be working."
The institute's advance delegation called Iraq "fertile ground for democracy promotion initiatives on a scale not seen since the heady days of the fall of the Berlin Wall." Sounds like a good story." (See also: "NDI Assessment Mission to Iraq: June 23 to July 6, 2003" (NDI, 2003/07/25))

"In Najaf: A Success Story" (Eric Knapp, New York Post, 2003/09/26)
First Lt. Eric Knapp is stationed with the 1st Marine Division in Iraq: "My friends and family back in the states are frustrated because every time Najaf - the city in southern Iraq where my unit has been stationed - is in the news, the reports are of conflict between the U.S. forces and armed militias. To hear the media tell it, America has done nothing to improve the infrastructure or security, and the Iraqi public is volatile and seeking revenge.
This is not the Najaf I know. Here's the story lived by those who have worked hand-in-hand with the locals since the end of combat operations: the U.S. Marines.
Governed by 1/7 battalion commanders Lt. Col. Chris Conlin and (after Aug. 26) Lt. Col. Chris Woodbridge, Najaf quickly recovered from the war. It began repairing infrastructure that Saddam Hussein had neglected for decades.
Major projects for the unit included bringing the power plant up to optimal performance, ensuring local law enforcement was trained and equipped, repairing and reopening many schools and providing supplies and desks for the eager students.
None of that made the news back home. ...
Naturally, the attack on Iraq's holiest site, and the horrible murder of one of their leaders, greatly disturbed the locals: The 1/7 Marines did a survey a few days after the tragedy, and found that only 43 percent of those surveyed felt safe and secure in Najaf.
But in a survey just a week later, 72 percent felt safe and secure, while 86 percent felt that Najaf was doing better than neighboring provinces.
The surveys also gauged our performance: In the earlier one, only 53 percent thought the coalition was doing a good job in Najaf. But in the later one, 61 percent felt the coalition was doing a good job and 75 percent believed it was doing all it could to make things better."

"Legends of the War" (Jonathan Foreman, New York Post, 2003/09/26)
"Much of the discourse on Iraq continues to be dominated by myths - provable falsehoods that happen to confirm the prejudices of the antiwar crowd and/or those disposed to think our mission is failing now.
The mythos now culminates in the notion that a patriotic Iraqi "resistance" is slowly gaining ground against a hated occupation. But the distortions go back much farther. ...
Underlying the whole mythology is the media's grotesque prewar failure: the bizarre underplaying of the viciousness and unpopularity of the old regime. Happily, this is the subject of a devasting recent critique by John Burns, a senior foreign correspondent of The New York Times. ...
He writes, "This place was a lot more terrible than even people like me had thought. There is such a thing as absolute evil."
Burns' insistence on this point, if he is heard, must explode the mythology: Iraqis are not much worse off now than before the war because of a breakdown in law and order.
Life under Saddam was hell for vast numbers of Iraqis. Reportorial nostalgia for the orderly days of the former dictator is analagous to the old lament that "at least under Mussolini, the trains ran on time" - and it is just as morally reprehensible.
The Iraq war was an astonishing military success. The current troubles, while real, are being grossly misrepresented. This matters. But understanding the situation is going to be much harder if reporters collude in constructing myths that reflect their own political prejudices.
So: All honor to John Burns." (See also: "John Burns: 'There Is Corruption in Our Business'" (Editor & Publisher, 2003/09/15))

"Morocco crosses its Rubicon" (Daniel Ben Simon, Haaretz, 2003/09/26)
An interesting article on the threat of Islamism in Morocco: "At first no one believed the rumors. It was whispered that the police had caught two young girls who were planning to carry out suicide bombings in the Parliament building and at a large mall in the capital city of Rabat. At the beginning of this month, however, the rumors were confirmed. Moroccans were shocked to hear about the 13-year-old twin sisters, both members of Salafia Jihadia, the most fearful Islamic terrorist organization in the country. During their interrogation, the two girls admitted that they had planned to blow themselves up in the Parliament and at the mall. ...
After the news of them had spread, the impoverished neighborhood in the suburbs of Rabat became a site of pilgrimage. Journalists, tourists and merely curious people streamed into the area to see firsthand the desperate conditions in which the two would-be suicide bombers had grown up. The visitors lost their way in the dark alleys and the narrow streets. Blind alleys, unnamed streets, unnumbered apartments, faceless people. All the men there wear head coverings, and their faces are covered with thick black beards; the women are covered up from head to foot. Their faces are hidden by veils through which suspicious eyes peer out.
While her daughters were being detained in the interrogation cellars, their mother turned to the media in a desperate attempt to refute the suspicions against them. She said that during their early years the girls had struggled with poverty and hunger, until one day they discovered the soothing aura of religion. Imams and clerics visited the miserable neighborhood and gathered boys and girls who were idly roaming the alleyways." (See also: "Blasts Kill at Least 24 in Casablanca" (Keith B. Richburg, The Washington Post, 2003/05/17))

"Enriched uranium found in Iran" (David R. Sands, The Washington Times, 2003/09/26)
"International inspectors have found traces of enriched uranium at a second site in Iran, sharply raising fears that Tehran is secretly trying to build a nuclear bomb.
Diplomats with the U.N.'s Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told reporters yesterday that the find was made at Kalaye Electric Co., a facility south of the capital, during a visit in August. Iranian officials had blocked IAEA officials from the site for two months before finally permitting the inspection."

Thursday, September 25, 2003

News and commentary:

"Iraq Pullout, Middle East Gloom Cloud UN Assembly" (Paul Taylor, Reuters, 2003/09/25)
"The United Nations ordered a further pullout of staff from Iraq on Thursday after two suicide bombings in five weeks, in a setback to U.S.-led efforts to stabilize and rebuild the country.
The withdrawal of dozens of U.N. staff to Jordan over the next few days added to gloom at the General Assembly over the Middle East, with Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts in tatters and a crisis looming over Iran's nuclear program.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard called the decision by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, after a meeting with top security advisers, "a temporary redeployment of international staff in Iraq."
He said 42 international staff were left in Baghdad and 44 in northern Iraq, and "these numbers can be expected to shrink further in the coming days."
But Annan stopped short of the total withdrawal demanded by the U.N. Staff Union after an Aug. 19 truck bomb attack on the world body's Baghdad headquarters killed special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other staff, and a car bomb on Monday killed an Iraqi policeman and wounded 19."

"Edward Said, Leading Advocate of Palestinians, Dies at 67" (Richard Bernstein, The New York Times, 2003/09/25)
"Edward Said, a polymath scholar and literary critic at Columbia University who was the most prominent advocate in the United States of the cause of Palestinian independence, died in New York City today. He was 67.
The cause of death was leukemia, which Mr. Said had been battling for several years. ...
"Orientalism" established Mr. Said as a figure of enormous influence in American and European universities, a hero to many, especially younger faculty and graduate students on the left for whom "Orientalism" was a kind of intellectual credo, the founding document of the field that came to be called post-colonial studies.
Central to Mr. Said's argument was the notion that there was in essence no objective, neutral scholarship on Asia and especially on the Arab world. The very Western study of the East, in his view, was bound up in the systematic prejudices about the non-Western world that turned it into a set of clichés. Since the Enlightenment, Mr. Said wrote, 'Every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.'" (See also, for example, the chapter on Said in Martin Kramer's "Ivory Towers on Sand": "Said's Splash" (martinkramer.org, 2001))

"Inside the Islamic Mafia" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2003/09/25)
Hitchens on Bernard-Henri Lévy's "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?":
"I remember laughing out loud, in what was admittedly a mirthless fashion, when Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, one of Osama Bin Laden's most heavy-duty deputies, was arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Straining to think of an apt comparison, I fail badly. But what if, say, the Unabomber had been found hiding out in the environs of West Point or Fort Bragg? Rawalpindi is to the Pakistani military elite what Sandhurst is to the British, or St Cyr used to be to the French. It's not some boiling slum: It's the manicured and well-patrolled suburb of the officer class, very handy for the capital city of Islamabad if you want to mount a coup, and the site of Flashman's Hotel if you are one of those who enjoys the incomparable imperial adventure-stories of George MacDonald Fraser. Who, seeking to evade capture, would find a safe house in such a citadel?
Yet, in the general relief at the arrest of this outstanding thug, that aspect of the matter drew insufficient attention. Many words of praise were uttered, in official American circles, for the exemplary cooperation displayed by our gallant Pakistani allies. But what else do these allies have to trade, except al-Qaida and Taliban suspects, in return for the enormous stipend they receive from the U.S. treasury? Could it be that, every now and then, a small trade is made in order to keep the larger trade going?"

"The Iraq - Al Qaeda Connections" (Richard Miniter, Tech Central Station, 2003/09/25)
A useful roundup of connections between Saddamn Hussein's Iraq and Al Qaeda: "Indeed, many of those sniping at U.S. troops are al Qaeda terrorists operating inside Iraq. And many of bin Laden's men were in Iraq prior to the liberation. A wealth of evidence on the public record - from government reports and congressional testimony to news accounts from major newspapers - attests to longstanding ties between bin Laden and Saddam going back to 1994. ...
So a common enemy, a shared goal and powerful need for cash seem to have forged an alliance between Saddam and bin Laden. CIA Director George Tenet recently told the Senate Intelligence Committee: "Iraq has in the past provided training in document forgery and bomb making to al Qaeda. It also provided training in poisons and gasses to two al Qaeda associates; one of these [al Qaeda] associates characterized the relationship as successful. Mr. Chairman, this information is based on a solid foundation of intelligence. It comes to us from credible and reliable sources. Much of it is corroborated by multiple sources."
The Iraqis, who had the Third World's largest poison-gas operations prior to the Gulf War I, have perfected the technique of making hydrogen-cyanide gas, which the Nazis called Zyklon-B. In the hands of al Qaeda, this would be a fearsome weapon in an enclosed space - like a suburban mall or subway station."

"Nigerian Woman Avoids Stoning Death" (AP/ABC News, 2003/09/25)
"A single mother facing death by stoning for adultery had her sentence overturned by an Islamic appeals court Thursday in a case that has sparked international outrage.
A five-judge panel rejected the sentence against 32-year-old Amina Lawal, saying she was not caught in the act of adultery and she was not given "ample opportunity to defend herself." ...
Lawal, wrapped in a light orange veil, sat on a stone bench, eyes downcast, cradling her nearly 2-year-old daughter as the ruling was announced at the Katsina State Shariah Court of Appeals under heavy security.
The judges read their verdict, which is final, inside a tiny blue-walled courtroom equipped with ceiling fans to ease the sweltering heat." (See also: "Nigerian stoning appeal heard" (CNN.com, 2003/08/27))

"Iraq Council Member Dies 5 Days After Shooting" (AP/The New York Times, 2003/09/25)
"Aquila al-Hashimi, one of three women on Iraq's American-picked Governing Council, died Thursday, five days after she was shot by assailants, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority reported.
She died about 11:30 a.m., said Gary Thatcher, coalition director of strategic communications.
Six men in a pickup trick ambushed al-Hashimi as she drove near her home in western Baghdad Saturday, shooting her in the abdomen. She was preparing to attend the United Nations General Assembly, which opened in New York on Tuesday."

"Beyond 'Nation-Building'" (Donald H. Rumsfeld, The Washington Post, 2003/09/25)
"Why did some predict failure in the first weeks of the war? One reason, I suspect, is that Gen. Franks's plan was different and unfamiliar -- in short, not what was expected. And because it didn't fit into the template of general expectations, many assumed at the first setback that the underlying strategy had to be flawed. It wasn't. Setbacks were expected, and the plan was designed to be flexible so our forces could deal with surprise. The coalition forces did so exceedingly well.
I believe the same will be true of the effort in Iraq today. Once again, what the coalition is doing is unfamiliar and different from many past "nation-building" efforts. So, when the coalition faces the inevitable surprises and setbacks, the assumption is that the underlying strategy is failing. I do not believe that is the case. To the contrary, despite real dangers, I believe that the new approach being taken by Gen. John Abizaid and Ambassador L. Paul Bremer will succeed and that success will have an important impact, not just on the future of Iraq but also on future international efforts to help struggling nations recover from war and regain self-reliance."

"Blackout on progress in Iraq?" (Jack Kelly, The Washington Times, 2003/09/25)
"Iraq is a dangerous place. Saddam Hussein is still at large, as are thousands of his diehard supporters. They've been joined by hundreds, perhaps thousands of foreign terrorists. Though these "insurgents" cannot challenge the U.S. military for control of any part of the country, they'll be able to conduct remote ambushes and terror bombings for months to come.
But viewed in historical perspective, things in Iraq are pretty good, and getting better. The insurgents are a tiny — and dwindling — minority. Most of the country is at peace. Nobody is starving. Signs of reviving economic activity are everywhere. In no country in the Arab world are Americans as popular as they are in Iraq.
Contrast this with Germany in November 1945: "Six months after VE Day, the New York Times reported that Germany was awash in unrest and lawlessness," Saunders wrote. "More than a million displaced persons roamed the country, many of them subsisting on criminal activities."
Iraq hasn't been transformed into Switzerland in less than six months. No reasonable person ever expected that it could be. But an unrealizable ideal should not obscure the significant progress that has been made."

"Seeing the facts converts a critic" (Donald E. Walter, New York Post, 2003/09/25)
"Despite my initial opposition to the war, I am now convinced that, whether we find any weapons of mass destruction or prove Saddam Hussein sheltered and financed terrorists, we absolutely should have overthrown the Ba'athists - indeed, we should have done it sooner.
What changed my mind?
When we left in mid June, 57 mass graves had been found, one with the bodies of 1,200 children. There have been credible reports of murder, brutality and torture of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iraqi citizens. There is poverty on a monumental scale and fear on a larger one. That fear is still palpable. I have seen the machines and places of torture.
Terrible things happened with the knowledge, indeed with the participation, of Saddam, his family and the Ba'athist regime. Thousands suffered while we were messing about with France and Russia and Germany and the United Nations. Every one of them knew what was going on there, but France and the United Nations were making millions administering the Food-for-Oil program."

"Guantanamo espionage probe grows" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2003/09/25)
"Defense and intelligence officials expect to make more arrests in the expanding espionage probe at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and are investigating a third serviceman who they suspect provided Syria information about terror suspects being detained there.
The officials said yesterday the third serviceman is a sailor, who has not been identified or arrested. The probe has already led to espionage charges against an Air Force translator and an Islamic Army chaplain at the base.
One intelligence official said the compromise of information to Syrian intelligence is likely, but that there are no signs of a connection between Syrian intelligence and al Qaeda in the case."

"Saddam minister granted immunity" (BBC News, 2003/09/25)
"Former Iraqi Defence Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed has been granted immunity from prosecution following his surrender to US forces.
Mr Ahmed - number 27 on the Americans' list of most wanted former Iraqi officials - gave himself up in the northern city of Mosul last Friday.
White House officials say they have high hopes he will provide significant information on Iraq's alleged weapons programmes."

"The hunt for weapons of mass destruction yields - nothing" (Julian Borger and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, 2003/09/25)
"An intensive six-month search of Iraq for weapons of mass destruction has failed to discover a single trace of an illegal arsenal, according to accounts of a report circulating in Washington and London.
The interim report, compiled by the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group (ISG) of 1,400 weapons experts and support staff, will instead focus on Saddam Hussein's capacity and intentions to build banned weapons.
A draft of the report has been sent to the White House, the Pentagon and Downing Street, a US intelligence source said. It has caused such disappointment that there is now a debate over whether it should be released to Congress over the next fortnight, as had been widely expected.
"It will mainly be an accounting of programmes and dual-use technologies," said one US intelligence source. "It demonstrates that the main judgments of the national intelligence estimate (NIE) in October 2002, that Saddam had hundreds of tonnes of chemical and biological agents ready, are false."
A BBC report yesterday said that the survey group, which includes British and Australian investigators, had come across no banned weapons, or delivery systems, or laboratories involved in developing such weapons."

Added in archive:
"The August of Our Discontent" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, from the 2003/09/15 issue)
"Garofalo on Bush: 'It Is...a Conspiracy of the 43rd Reich'" (Media Research Center, 2003/08/21)

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

News and commentary:

"Brussels to give E200m to rebuild Iraq" (Judy Dempsey and Edward Alden, Financial Times, 2003/09/24)
Callous cynicism II: "The European Commission is expected to commit only €200m to the rebuilding of Iraq, a tiny fraction of what the US needs and much smaller than the European Union contribution to the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
The small sum, which the commission is expected to pledge at next month's donors conference, illustrates the poor response to president to President George W. Bush's call for more international military and financial support."

"Bush, Schroeder Bury Iraq Dispute, Troops Elusive" (Paul Taylor, Reuters, 2003/09/24)
"Bush and Schroeder met on the sidelines of a U.N. General Assembly session dominated by the Iraq issue and told reporters their past differences were over. Schroeder made outspoken opposition to military action against Iraq the centerpiece of his re-election campaign last year, infuriating Washington.
The German leader pledged economic assistance for reconstruction and training for Iraqi police and soldiers in Germany, but not peacekeepers on the ground, saying German forces were fully stretched in the Balkans and Afghanistan.
"I have told the president how very much we would like to come in and help with the resources that we do have," he told reporters. ...
Chirac, Schroeder and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who united earlier this year to oppose U.N. blessing for the war, met again on Wednesday in an effort to coordinate policies.
Chirac told reporters they had agreed to work together on a new U.N. resolution "in a positive and constructive spirit."
Asked whether the Schroeder-Bush rapprochement left France isolated, he said: 'There is not the slightest shadow or a difference between the French and German positions. That is absolutely clear and incontestable.'"

"The Rat of Baghdad" (Jack Schafer, Slate, 2003/09/24)
Indeed: "If the interview New York Times reporter John F. Burns gave to the editors of Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq is completely on the level — and I have no reason to think it isn't — the Times is sitting on a daisy-cutter of a scoop about perfidy and malfeasance by a member of the Baghdad press corps. And it's not just the Times holding back. Few in the mainstream press seem interested in identifying the reporter Burns says ratted him out to the Iraqi ministry of information. ...
The Burns accusation places under a cloud every journalist who reported for a "major American newspaper" from Baghdad at the same time Burns did. The Burns accusation says to readers: An unscrupulous reporter for a major American paper sought official favor from a Stalinist regime by unfairly denigrating the work of a much-esteemed Times reporter and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize so that he could write softer pieces than Burns. ...
I'm certain that the accused reporter's readers would like to know his identity, and I'm fairly certain his editors would, too. I stop short of accusing Burns' colleagues of silent complicity in a cover-up, but not by much." (See also: "John Burns: 'There Is Corruption in Our Business'" (Editor & Publisher, 2003/09/15))

"'No neutral ground'" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2003/09/24)
"But the president's speech to the U.N. General Assembly fell short in one regard: It ignored one of America's ugliest enemies, France.
Shortly after our president spoke, President Jacques Chirac - a moral pygmy whose lack of scruples is, fortunately, balanced by a lack of courage and power - deplored America's leadership, arguing disingenuously that "multilateralism is the key" to addressing the world's problems.
Oh, yeah?
Stick it where the bum hid his money, Jackie-boy. It was you and your frog princes who ruthlessly destroyed the possibility of a multilateral approach to dealing with Saddam by refusing to cooperate in any serious efforts to call the regime in Baghdad to account. It was you and your political pimps who split the Security Council in two, with France nobly defending the rights of dictators to die of old age on the Riviera. ...
France had every right to disagree with us, but working actively to undercut our efforts to eliminate a bloodstained dictator and liberate the people of Iraq crossed the red line. France should be made to suffer, strategically and financially. The French stabbed us in the back. In response, we should skin them alive.
If today's America is the new Rome, France is a garbage-dump Carthage. And Carthage needs to be broken. We should fight to replace France on the U.N. Security Council with India and Brazil, far more deserving states.
And we should pursue every possible avenue to reduce American purchases of any goods produced by the French.
Perfidy must be punished. The French, who would be eating sauerkraut for breakfast, lunch and dinner if we hadn't liberated them, need to have their treachery shoved down their throats.
First Baghdad, then Paris." (See also:"Our War With France" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2003/09/18) and "Today Baghdad... Tomorrow Paris!" (Strategy Page, April 2003))

"Bad Day for CAIR" (Evan McCormick, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/09/24)
"September 10th, 2003 will forever be remembered as a grim day for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). On that day, the eve of the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, CAIR faced up to its own terrorist connections. It ran away from testifying before an influential Senate panel that heard a barrage of incriminating evidence about the group and its connections. It saw one of its former officials plead guilty to terrorist-related crimes in Federal Court. ...
Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat who has been steadfast in his efforts to uncover the nexus of Hamas front groups in the U.S., was ruthless in his portrayal of CAIR as part of an international terror network. In his opening remarks, Senator Schumer stated that prominent members of CAIR—referring specifically to Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmed—have "intimate links with Hamas." Later, he remarked that "we know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism." ...
As luck would have it, just hours before the hearing, news services reported that former CAIR official Bassem K. Khafagi had pleaded guilty to charges of visa and bank fraud in federal court in Detroit. The charges were brought against Khafagi for his role with the Islamic Assembly of North America, a group that has advocated violence against the United States and is believed to have funneled money to organizations with terrorist connections. At the time of his arrest, Khafagi was Community Affairs director with CAIR."

"Democracy, Closer Every Day" (Noah Feldman, The New York Times, 2003/09/24)
"To see the path to a legitimate, functional Iraqi government one must consider the remarkable and unexpected progress being made on the political track. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in May, the Iraqis participating in organized politics have shown a maturity and unity of purpose that prewar critics would scarcely have credited.
The two most important Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, have subordinated their historical rivalry and have acted in concert, casting a steadying light over the rest of the political scene and often taking the lead in coordinating policy among the Iraqi Governing Council. ...
More important to the future of democracy in Muslim Iraq, the senior Shiite religious leaders, and the political parties loosely associated with them, have consistently eschewed divisive rhetoric in favor of calls for Sunni-Shiite unity. Most have repeatedly asserted their desire for democratic government respectful of Islamic values, rather than government by mullahs on the failed Iranian model. ...
If the Iraqis, with international help, can keep the peace, they will achieve democracy. Otherwise, America's pragmatic and moral duty to help Iraq become a free nation will be almost impossible to fulfill."

"Belgium war crimes cases dismissed" (AP/CNN.com, 2003/09/24)
AP Wishful thinking, via Little Green Footballs: "Belgium's highest court dismissed war crimes complaints Wednesday against former U.S. President George W. Bush, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, ruling the country no longer has a legal basis to charge them."

"Translator Accused of Spying" (Steve Vogel and John Mintz, The Washington Post, 2003/09/24)
"A U.S. Air Force translator who worked with al Qaeda and Taliban detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison has been charged with spying for Syria, the second member of the U.S. military to fall under suspicion of revealing secrets about the Navy jail for terrorism suspects, officials said yesterday.
In court papers, military authorities allege that Senior Airman Ahmad I. Halabi, 24, attempted to deliver sensitive information to Syria, including more than 180 notes from prisoners, a map of the installation, the movement of military aircraft to and from the base, intelligence documents and the names and cellblock numbers of captives at the prison in Cuba."

"In a Poll, Baghdad Residents Call Freedom Worth the Price" (Patrick E. Tyler, The New York Times, 2003/09/24)
"After five months of foreign military occupation and the ouster of Saddam Hussein, nearly two-thirds of Baghdad residents believe that the removal of the Iraqi dictator has been worth the hardships they have been forced to endure, a new Gallup poll shows.
Despite the systemic collapse of government and civic institutions, a wave of looting and violence, and shortages of water and electricity, 67 percent of 1,178 Iraqis told a Gallup survey team that within five years, their lives would be better than before the American and British invasion.
Only 8 percent of those queried said they believed that their lives would be worse off as a result of the military campaign to remove Mr. Hussein and his Baath Party leadership from power."

"Audience Unmoved During Bush's Address at the U.N." (Steven R. Weisman, The New York Times, 2003/09/24)
Callous cynicism in the corridors at the U.N. To "oppose the United States on Iraq" at this point is the same thing as working for the Coalition to fail in their endevour to normalize and democratize Iraq. To factor in Bush's domestic approval ratings in this callous approach to the plight of the Iraqi people is just doubly cynical:
"The audience of world leaders seemed to perceive an American president weakened by plunging approval ratings at home, facing a tough security situation in Iraq where American soldiers are dying every week, and confronted by the beginnings of a revolt against the American timetable for self-rule by several Iraqi leaders installed by the United States.
Nor did they seem eager to help. If anything, they appeared more skeptical than ever of Mr. Bush's assertions, including his promise to "reveal the full extent" of illegal weapons programs he says exist in Iraq, and unforthcoming, at least for now, in their response to his appeal for help with the Iraq occupation and reconstruction. ...
In the corridors all day, diplomats were intensely discussing the recent decline in Mr. Bush's popularity at home and wondering if his troubles would make it easier for countries around the world to oppose the United States on Iraq."

"A Vague Pitch Leaves Mostly Puzzlement" (Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post, 2003/09/24)
In a sane world Bush would be met with standing ovations when meeting world leaders after ridding the world of one of the worst totalitarian regimes in history and instigating a gigantic effort aimed at helping the Iraqi people.
But in the surreal world of the U.N. these historical accomplishments are met with a compact and hostile silence:
"But in two speeches that bracketed the president's address, Annan and French President Jacques Chirac suggested that it is the administration's doctrine of "preemption" - the promise to strike against emerging threats - that threatens to spread chaos across the globe. Both men bluntly said that the Bush administration is undermining the collective security arrangements that have governed the world since World War II.
"The United Nations has just weathered one of its most serious trials in its history: respect for the [U.N.] Charter, the use of force, were at the heart of the debate," Chirac said. "The war, which was started without the authorization of the Security Council, has shaken the multilateral system." ...
The enthusiastic reaction to those speeches in the General Assembly hall, compared to the tepid, almost perfunctory applause for Bush's presentation, underscored the difficult task ahead for the administration as it tries to build support for the nascent Iraqi government." (See also: "French President Speaks to the U.N. General Assembly" (The Washington Post, 2003/09/24))

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

News and commentary:

"Iraq to bar key Arabic news channels" (P. Mitchell Prothero, UPI , 2003/09/23)
"The Iraqi Governing Council announced Tuesday it would suspend two prominent Arabic-language satellite news stations for what it said was supporting recent attacks on council members and U.S. occupation forces.
The decision to temporarily suspend al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya came after a week of criticism by Iraqi supporters of the U.S.-appointed council who said the channels incited both anti-occupation violence and ethnic and sectarian tensions. ...
The INC spokesman said the suspensions were a result of what the two channels broadcast.
"They are being suspended for inciting sectarian violence and attacks on governing council officials," the spokesman said. 'They have also shown videos of terrorists promising attacks on coalition forces.'"

"Airman at Gitmo Charged With Espionage" (FOX News, 2003/09/23)
"An Air Force airman who worked at the U.S. prison camp for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base has been charged with espionage and aiding the enemy, a military spokesman said Tuesday.
Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi worked as an Arabic language translator at the prison camp for Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects, spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers said. The Air Force enlisted man knew the Muslim chaplain at the prison arrested earlier this month, but it's unclear if the two arrests are linked, Shavers said. ...
Earlier Tuesday, senior military officials told Fox News that a member of the Navy was also in custody, under suspicion of espionage and possible improper communications with the camp's detainees. The Navy member's role at the camp has not been disclosed.
Fox News has learned al-Halabi and the Navy member both were detained roughly two weeks before Islamic military chaplain James Yee was arrested." (See also: "Islamic chaplain is charged as spy" (Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, 2003/09/20))

"President Addresses UN General Assembly" (George W. Bush, The White House, 2003/09/23)
"Iraq now has a Governing Council, the first truly representative institution in that country. Iraq's new leaders are showing the openness and tolerance that democracy requires, and they're also showing courage. Yet every young democracy needs the help of friends. Now the nation of Iraq needs and deserves our aid, and all nations of goodwill should step forward and provide that support.
The success of a free Iraq will be watched and noted throughout the region. Millions will see that freedom, equality, and material progress are possible at the heart of the Middle East. Leaders in the region will face the clearest evidence that free institutions and open societies are the only path to long-term national success and dignity. And a transformed Middle East would benefit the entire world, by undermining the ideologies that export violence to other lands.
Iraq as a dictatorship had great power to destabilize the Middle East; Iraq as a democracy will have great power to inspire the Middle East. The advance of democratic institutions in Iraq is setting an example that others, including the Palestinian people, would be wise to follow. The Palestinian cause is betrayed by leaders who cling to power by feeding old hatreds and destroying the good work of others. The Palestinian people deserve their own state, and they will gain that state by embracing new leaders committed to reform, to fighting terror, and to building peace."

"Annan Opens U.N. Assembly by Blasting U.S." (Stewart Stogel, NewsMax, 2003/09/23)
"U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan opened the 2003 General Assembly blasting the Bush administration and sending warnings to the world body's 191 members.
Commenting on the White House policy of preemptive strikes to combat terrorism, Annan told the forum:
"This logic represents a fundamental challenge to the principles on which, however imperfectly, world peace and stability have rested for the last fifty-eight years."
Annan did not mention the U.S. directly, but it was obvious about which nation he spoke. The U.N. chief continued:
"My concern is that if it (a policy of preemptive action) were to be adopted, it could set precedents that would result in a proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force, with or without credible justification."
Annan also took a turn to lash out at the French and German governments for hampering Security Council action on Iraq:
'It is not enough to denounce unilteralism, unless we also face up squarely to the concerns that make some states feel uniquely vulnerable and thus drive them to take unilateral action. We must show that these concerns can and will be addressed effectively through collective action.'" (See also: "The Secretary-General
Address to the General Assembly" (Kofi Annan, United Nations, 2003/09/23))

"The Gauls' Gaul" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2003/09/23)
"The French position is that the U.S.-U.K. text could be accepted with some amendments. Some of these were spelled out by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin in an article he published in the Parisian evening newspaper Le Monde earlier this month. They include:

* The text should not use the word "liberation" to describe the U.S.-U.K. action in Iraq. (That would be legitimizing a war that France maintains was illegal and illegitimate.) The resolution should deal with measures needed to end "the occupation of Iraq."

* Iraq would be placed under a U.N. mandate for one year, during which the political process to create an elected government in Baghdad will be completed.

* The current administration, headed by Paul Bremer, should immediately hand over all power to an interim Iraqi government before the end of the year. Until then, the existing Governing Council could represent Iraqi sovereignty.

* The new interim Iraqi government should be widely representative, including some elements of the former ruling Ba'ath Party.

* All foreign military forces in Iraq will be put under U.N. command. The commander-in-chief could be an American, acting under the authority of the U.N. administrator.

* To head the U.N. mandate, France will nominate one of its own senior politicians. The name mentioned is that of former Defense Minister Francois Leotard, who had a similar position in Kosovo. Failing that, Paris would accept a senior U.N. official such as Lakhdar Brahimi.

* The permanent members of the Security Council will meet once a month to review the situation and take all measures needed to improve the lives of Iraqis and speed up the creation of an elected government.

* U.S. forces in Iraq will stay out of urban areas to concentrate on guarding the borders and fighting the remnants of the Saddamite regime. The task of policing the cities will be handed over to a new Iraqi army and police force, backed by peacekeepers from France and a number of other European and Asian countries.

* All the contracts already granted by the Bremer administration will be subjected to review by the new Iraqi transition government, which will remain in power until after next year's general election.

* The former regime's leaders now in U.S. custody will be handed over to a U.N. force until they are transferred to a new Iraqi authority after next year's election.

Paris believes that even if the U.S.-U.K. resolution is passed by the Security Council later this month, the issue of Iraq is likely to have a negative impact on Bush's re-election prospects. Some French politicians, possibly including Chirac himself, believe that Bush will lose his re-election bid. And, when that happens, the French plan might appear as the only way out for the United States under a new Democrat president."

"Voices of Islam" (Daniel Pipes, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2003/09/23)
Pipes on Anti-Islamist Muslims: "'You will sooner or later pay for your pack of lies,' read one threatening message last week. It went to the author of "The Trouble with Islam: A Wake-up Call for Honesty and Change."
In that book, just released in Canada, Irshad Manji, 34, explores such usually taboo themes as anti-Semitism, slavery and the inferior treatment of women with what she calls an "utmost honesty."
"Grow up!" she scolds Muslims. "And take responsibility for our role in what ails Islam."
Although a TV journalist and personality, Manji - a practicing Muslim - brings real insight to her subject.
"I appreciate that every faith has its share of literalists. Christians have their Evangelicals. Jews have the ultra-Orthodox. For God's sake, even Buddhists have fundamentalists. But what this book hammers home is that only in Islam is literalism mainstream."
For her efforts, Manji has been called "self-hating," "irrelevant," "a Muslim sellout" and a "blasphemer." She is accused of both "denigrating Islam" and dehumanizing Muslims.
This outpouring of hostility prompted Manji to hire a guard and install bullet proof glass in her house. The Toronto police acknowledge "a very high level of awareness" about her security."

"War in Iraq is hell on headlines and perspective Reporters contrast what they see with what viewers see at home" (Peter Johnson, USA Today, 2003/09/23)
"Although some paint a picture of recovery, with U.S. armed forces making progress in getting the country going again, others sketch a bleaker scene, in which bombings, ambushes and looting are the rule, not the exception.
Reporters agree on this much: Bad news - not good - sells.
''It's the nature of the business,'' Time's Brian Bennett says. ''What gets in the headlines is the American soldier getting shot, not the American soldiers rebuilding a school or digging a well.'' ...
When Bennett visited the USA a few weeks ago, he realized that, five months after the U.S. invasion, the Iraq he lives in doesn't mesh with the bleak picture that friends here are getting from the media.
''I'm not saying all is hunky-dory,'' Bennett says. ''But in the States, people have a misperception of what's going on.'' ...
CNN correspondent Nic Robertson has a much different take and describes the U.S.-led coalition as tight-lipped. If anything, he says, the picture is bleaker than reported by the coalition, and there is widespread resistance to the United States and its allies. ...
And after any war, ''it's usually chaotic for a year or two,'' MSNBC's Bob Arnot says. 'I contrast some of the infectious enthusiasm I see here with what I see on TV, and I say, 'Oh, my God, am I in the same country?''"

"It's all about laaaaand" (Tim Blair, timblair.spleenville.com, 2003/09/23)
"Chicago academic Robert A. Pape argues that suicide terrorism is nothing to do with Islamic fundamentalism:

I have spent a year compiling a database of every suicide bombing and attack around the globe from 1980 to 2001 — 188 in all. The data show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any religion for that matter. In fact, the leading instigator of suicide attacks is the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion (they have have committed 75 of the 188 incidents).

But what about the suicide attacks committed by Islamic fundamentalists? Is it possible that suicide attacks committed by Islamic fundamentalists are evidence somehow of a link between Islamic fundamentalism and suicide attacks?

Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist campaigns have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel liberal democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.

Which leads us, eventually ... to Pape's solution:

In the end, the best approach for the states under fire is probably to focus on their own domestic security while doing what they can to see that the least militant forces on the terrorists' side build a viable state on their own.

Well, it might work, so long as you can trust the sort of people who blow themselves up over real estate disputes to remain within the areas they “consider to be their homeland”. And so long as you can find non-militant terrorists with whom to negotiate. And so long as you have the gigantic military preparedness to deal with every aggrieved group on earth who would take this as a signal to launch their own suicide attacks over their own particular issues, having seen such tactics triumph in Israel, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Iraq." (See also: "Dying to Kill Us" (Robert A. Pape, The New York Times, 2003/09/22))

"U.S. and France Find Making Up Is Hard to Do" (Peter Slevin, The Washington Post, 2003/09/23)
"The Iraq war was coming and relations between France and the Bush administration were growing colder on Feb. 17, a federal holiday, when French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte made his way through the snow to Vice President Cheney's house.
Levitte is a close adviser to President Jacques Chirac, who was lobbying hard to prevent the U.N. Security Council from authorizing the United States to use force against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration felt betrayed, but Levitte was unprepared for what Cheney asked him.
"Is France an ally or an adversary of the United States?" Cheney demanded to know, according to U.S. officials.
It was an extraordinary question to direct at a putative partner in the transatlantic alliance, a government that dispatched troops in support of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and the Balkans, and a reliable participant in the anti-terrorism war. Levitte, who protested that France was indeed a partner, was stunned by Cheney's directness."

"Iraq Council Head Shifts to Position at Odds With U.S." (Patrick E. Tyler and Felicity Barringer, The New York Times, 2003/09/23)
"An interview with Ahmad Chalabi, the president of Iraq's interim government: "I am fighting to keep Americans in Iraq," Mr. Chalabi said before leaving Baghdad. "We are afraid that they will lose their resolve and go home if the current situation continues."
Yet Mr. Chalabi's arrival in New York with a delegation determined to advance the clock on sovereignty puts him and the interim government he heads in direct confrontation with Mr. Bush.
"We want to claim Iraq's seat at the United Nations," Mr. Chalabi said today.
He also declared that "we are not at cross purposes" with the Americans, but his words seemed so.
The United States is seeking a new United Nations resolution that would help bring foreign troops into Iraq in a newly constituted multinational force. At least one major potential troop donor, Pakistan, says it wants an invitation from the Governing Council first.
"We cannot be expected to solicit foreign troops in Iraq," Mr. Chalabi said. "We cannot be expected to do that."
He said some aspects of governance should be handed over immediately.
"They can start by putting Iraqis to be in joint control, with the coalition, of Iraqi finances," he said. "All of these are measures that would demonstrate increasing sovereignty in Iraq." Asked when, he replied, "Right away."
He also sought an immediate role in commanding security forces, saying, 'We think that internal security in Iraq cannot be maintained unless Iraqis are far more involved than they are now.'"

Monday, September 22, 2003

News and commentary:

"War and Wishful Thinking" (Lee Harris, Tech Central Station, 2003/09/22)
"This process of wishful thinking began on 9/11, and it began the moment someone first called 9/11 an act of war.
Clearly, those who called 9/11 by this label intended it as a way of indicating their justifiable horror and outrage at the act; but in choosing this particular label to apply to the event, they were, without noticing it, invoking a whole hidden array of metaphoric associations, all of which revolved around the traditional concept of war - associations that unconsciously seduced our nation down a path that would inevitably generate a whole gamut of misleading analogies, distorted perspectives, and false hopes - not to mention Monday morning quarterbacking that fails to notice the radically different rules of the game that emerged that September Tuesday over two years ago. On that day traditional war became obsolete - not because an epoch of perpetual peace had arrived, but because a new form of anarchy had been unleashed. ...
No war has ever been waged where the combatants had no way of deciding in advance what would count as victory, or what it would look like when it came, or even who it would be victory over. No war has ever been waged where there was no one to negotiate with, and no demands that could be met, or quid pro quo's that could be worked. No war has ever been waged where surrender was impossible, simply because we would not know to whom to surrender, or even what surrender would mean.
Everything about the present crisis is new. Historical analogy drawn from the period prior to 9/11 more often misleads than illuminates. We are in a brave new world, and the sooner we recognize the unreliability of all our prior categories and metaphors to guide us, the sooner we will free ourselves from the wishful thinking that perhaps an even greater threat to our survival than the terrorists themselves."

"The KGB's Man" (Ion Mihai Pacepa, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/09/22)
"The Israeli government has vowed to expel Yasser Arafat, calling him an "obstacle" to peace. But the 72-year-old Palestinian leader is much more than that; he is a career terrorist, trained, armed and bankrolled by the Soviet Union and its satellites for decades.
Before I defected to America from Romania, leaving my post as chief of Romanian intelligence, I was responsible for giving Arafat about $200,000 in laundered cash every month throughout the 1970s. I also sent two cargo planes to Beirut a week, stuffed with uniforms and supplies. Other Soviet bloc states did much the same. Terrorism has been extremely profitable for Arafat. According to Forbes magazine, he is today the sixth wealthiest among the world's "kings, queens & despots," with more than $300 million stashed in Swiss bank accounts.
"I invented the hijackings [of passenger planes]," Arafat bragged when I first met him at his PLO headquarters in Beirut in the early 1970s. He gestured toward the little red flags pinned on a wall map of the world that labeled Israel as "Palestine." "There they all are!" he told me, proudly. The dubious honor of inventing hijacking actually goes to the KGB, which first hijacked a U.S. passenger plane in 1960 to Communist Cuba. Arafat's innovation was the suicide bomber, a terror concept that would come to full flower on 9/11."

"Bush-hatred Watch" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/09/22)
"'The recent 9/11 anniversary, with its replays of those devil-driven jets, careening at top speed into the World Trade Towers, made me think again of what those passengers must have endured. It is such a heart-searing image that the mind cannot linger on it for long.
But at times I feel a similar helplessness, as if our whole country is hurtling toward disaster, the cockpit commandeered by a proud and zealous crew that won't listen and won't change course.
Like the passengers in three of those four jets, we're frozen in our seats, obeying the unwritten protocols of captivity.
But then I remember the passengers in the fourth jet, the one thought to have been headed for Washington, D.C. They didn't stay strapped in their seats. They had the onerous advantage of learning by cell phone what had happened to the towers and to the Pentagon, and they had the time - and the courage - to act. They stormed the cockpit and lost their lives, but undoubtedly saved hundreds of others, and probably the symbolic heart of the nation.' - Susan Lenfesty, comparing the Bush administration to the mass murderers of 9/11." (See also: "Bush team is squandering economy, goodwill and lives, with no end in sight" (Susan Lenfestey, startribune.com, 2003/09/21))

"Raines Award Nominee" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/09/22)
"This one is revealing. It's from Eric Schmitt's account of Paul Wolfowitz's appearance at the New School. Here's the passage:

When pressed by Mr. Goldberg and audience members, some of these justifications seemed less certain. "Iraq did have contacts with Al Qaeda," Mr. Wolfowitz insisted, momentarily silencing the audience with an accusation even President Bush now says is unsubstantiated. He added, "We don't know how clear they were."

Notice the condescension. Now notice the inaccuracy. President Bush has never said that Saddam had no ties to al Qaeda. This is the new anti-war shibboleth, loyally parroted by Schmitt as if it were true. (It's the same as the notion that the president once claimed that the threat from Iraq was imminent. He didn't. But in the anti-war mind, he must have.) All the president conceded was that there was no hard evidence of Saddam's connection to 9/11. (There is, of course, much hard evidence that Saddam was involved in the first WTC attack.) Even the BBC has conceded as much. Nothing Wolfowitz is reported to have said conflicted with this. Now: an interesting test of Keller's New York Times. Will they run a correction of their reporter's egregious anti-war bias?" (See also: "Wolfowitz Stands Fast Amid the Antiwarriors" (Eric Schmitt, The New York Times, 2003/09/22))

"Bushitler Watch" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/09/22)
"'Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief (director of communications, in the current parlance), once said that if you are going to lie, you should tell a big lie. That may be good advice, but the question remains: What happens when people begin to doubt the big lie? Herr Goebbels never lived to find out. Some members of the Bush administration may be in the process of discovering that, given time, the big lie turns on itself.' - Andrew Greeley, Chicago Sun-Times." (See also: "Big lie on Iraq comes full circle" (Andrew Greeley, Chicago Sun-Times, 2003/09/23))

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

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