Archived news and commentary: September 29 - October 5, 2003

2003/12/29 - 2004/01/04
2003/12/22 - 2003/12/28
2003/12/15 - 2003/12/21
2003/12/08 - 2003/12/14
2003/12/01 - 2003/12/07
2003/11/24 - 2003/11/30
2003/11/17 - 2003/11/23
2003/11/10 - 2003/11/16
2003/11/03 - 2003/11/09
2003/10/27 - 2003/11/02
2003/10/20 - 2003/10/26
2003/10/13 - 2003/10/19
2003/10/06 - 2003/10/12
2003/09/29 - 2003/10/05

Sunday, October 5, 2003

News and commentary:

"What happened to looted Iraqi nuclear material?" (Brett Wagner, USA Today, 2003/10/05)
"A great irony, however, seems to have gotten lost in that debate: As a direct result of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq without sufficient forces to secure and protect its nuclear research and storage facilities from rampant looting, enough radioactive material to build scores of dirty bombs now is missing and may be on its way to the international black market.
It didn't have to turn out this way. In the weeks before the invasion, the U.S. military repeatedly warned the White House that its war plans did not include sufficient ground forces, air and naval operations and logistical support to guarantee a successful mission. Those warnings were discounted — even mocked — by administration officials who professed to know more about war fighting than the war fighters themselves. ...
The looting, however, went on for more than two weeks before the U.S. took any action. When the site [Tuwaitha] was finally secured and U.S. authorities permitted a brief inspection by IAEA officials, the inspectors were inexplicably forbidden to check the status of highly radioactive materials that could be used in dirty bombs. Many of these materials are now unaccounted for. What the inspectors were allowed to verify is how much uranium is now missing: at least 22 pounds.
Other looted nuclear sites include the Baghdad Nuclear Research Center, where significant quantities of partially enriched uranium, cesium, strontium and cobalt were stored. U.S. survey teams have not been able to determine how many of those materials are missing."

"US death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal honorary citizen of Paris" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2003/10/05)
A convicted cop killer is made honorary citizen of Paris with an anti-American hatefest: "The city of Paris made an honorary citizen of celebrated US death row inmate and black activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, sentenced to die for the 1981 murder of a white Philadelphia policeman.
It is the first time Paris has bestowed the honor since Pablo Picasso was made honorary citizen in 1971, Socialist mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe told an audience of 200 people, taking the occasion to attack the "barbarity" of the death penalty.
Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther civil rights activist and journalist who has maintained his innocence, had his death sentence overturned in December of 2001 but that decision is currently on appeal.
In attacking the "barbarity called the death penalty," the mayor said "as long as there is a place on this planet where one can be killed in the name of the community, we haven't finished our work."
Raising his fist in a sign of solidarity, Delanoe then shouted "Mumia is a Parisian!" as the crowd of mostly-leftist activists cheered and applauded.
Black activist Angela Davis, a former member of the Black Panthers and the Communist Party, hailed the "profound sense of humanity" of Abu-Jamal, attacking American "unilateralism" and racist attacks against immigrants.
The movement to free Abu-Jamal "takes on a new sense in face of American unilateralism, the aggression against the Iraqi people and the racist attacks against immigrants which can only further gnaw away at the vestiges of democracy in the United States," Davis, a professor at the University of California in Santa Cruz, said."

"Pakistan's fundamentalists are on the rise - even at its top university" (Miranda Kennedy, The Boston Globe, 2003/10/05)
An interesting article on the creeping "Talibanization" of Pakistan: "In the frontier province bordering Afghanistan, the MMA-led government recently voted to impose Islamic law and is considering establishing a morality police modeled on the Taliban's Ministry for Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue. Across the country, the war in Iraq has only heightened the sense among many Pakistanis that the United States is waging a war on Islam - with the aid of their president and army. ...
The creeping "Talibanization" of Pakistan is evident even in its much-vaunted public universities. Sprawling across the cultural capital of Lahore, the state-run Punjab University is Pakistan's largest and oldest university, founded in 1882. Its 12,000 students are drawn from across economic and geographic backgrounds, thanks to fees that run at about $150 per year. But the university's academic reputation has been dulled by fundamentalism in the city that is also the home of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest party in the MMA alliance. ...
Many Pakistani academics believe Jamiat does more than that. They say the group controls the university according to its version of conservative Islam, with the collusion of the retired military officers who administer the institution. Departments and student groups must request permission from Jamiat to hold a function. Dance and life-drawing classes are forbidden. When a couple were discovered holding hands on campus several months ago, students beat them with wooden clubs. Since the MMA gained political power, student Islamists have been known to rove the streets of Pakistan's cities at night, smearing black paint on billboards showing women's faces." (Note: Thanks to Barry Kaplovitz for the pointer.)

"America's unheralded victory" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/10/05)
"The 3rd Infantry was the main combat force in Iraq from the March 19 invasion through the fall of Baghdad on April 9. After the city's fall, the 1st Brigade took control of neighborhoods on the eastern side of the city, where the bulk of the population lives.
"We relieved the 87th Marine Regiment of their sectors east of the Tigris River. When we arrived, we felt like we had entered the Wild West.
Buildings were burning, car-jackings and looting were rampant. We had Iraqi police officers wearing military uniforms armed with AK-47s who we assumed were Iraqi military forces," 1st Brigade Commander Col. William Grimsley explains. "We held the zones until June 5. During those two months we oversaw the transformation of the area from a chaotic environment to an ordered city."
From the soldiers' perspective, the main US failure in Iraq to date has little to do with the situation on the ground. The main failure is the inability to transmit the reality they experienced daily to the American people. ...
Yet in spite of the negative publicity, the international hostility, the meddling of neighbors and the work of saboteurs, US forces are quietly succeeding in their task. The men all noted that the day that Uday and Qusay Hussein were killed by US forces, the celebration on the streets of Baghdad put Independence Day fireworks to shame."

"Israel Bombs Deep Inside Syria" (John Ward Anderson, The Washington Post, 2003/10/05)
"In a letter to the United Nations, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara called the attack, which he said was on a civilian site, a "grave escalation" of tensions in the Middle East and demanded a meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the incident, Reuters news service reported from Damascus. The letter said that Syria was capable of deterring Israel but would exercise restraint, Reuters reported.
The Council was set to meet this afternoon.
The Arab League also scheduled an emergency session ...
In Cairo, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak condemned the Israeli strike, calling it an "aggression against a brotherly state." German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who was in Egypt on a state visit, said during a joint new conference with Mubarak that the raid was "not acceptable" because it violated Syrian sovereignty and would complicate Middle East peace efforts."

"Family 'proud' of suicide bomber" (AFP/The Age, 2003/10/06)
"The parents of a Palestinian suicide bomber who killed 19 people at a restaurant in northern Israel have spoken of their pride in their daughter, and said she had avenged the death of her brother at the hands of the Israeli army. ...
The unmarried woman had witnessed the death of her brother, Fadi Jaradat, and cousin, Saleh Jaradat, during an Israeli army operation in Jenin on June 12. Both were members of the radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad group.
"She saw the killing in the house of her brother and cousin three months ago," her mother, Umm Fadi, said. "She was deeply upset, as she was very close to her brother.
"I am happy with her because she has killed those who have killed my son. They kill us every day, and demolish our homes every day." ...
"She was very normal," said Umm Fadi. "But when I heard that there was an explosion in Haifa, I tried to call her. As a mother, I felt something might have happened. ...
Her father also spoke of his pride, as the Al-Jazeera Arab satellite channel played a video of his daughter shortly before she embarked on her suicide mission.
"I am very proud of what she has done," Tayssir Jaradat said.
'She is a very strong person. She would pray and read the Koran every day.'"

"Israel Says Hit Islamic Jihad Base in Syria" (Reuters, 2003/10/05)
"Israeli forces attacked a training camp for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group deep inside Syria on Sunday following a suicide bombing that killed 19 people in Israel, the army said.
The army declined to immediately release details on the attack, but a security source and radio stations said the facility was bombed by warplanes.
It was believed to be the first Israeli strike deep in Syrian territory for about two decades.
Palestinian sources in Beirut said Israeli warplanes raided a facility that belonged to an anti-Israel Palestinian group near the Syrian capital Damascus, injuring one man.
"The Israel Defense Forces operated last night deep inside Syrian territory and hit a training base used by terror groups, including Islamic Jihad," the army statement said."

"'I Met Bin Laden'" (Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, from the 2003/10/13 issue)
An interview with Mullah Krekar: "Between december 2001 and May of last year, Mullah Krekar was the leader in Iraq of Ansar Al-Islam. He served both as spiritual guide and warlord for the militant Islamist group, which controlled a small enclave in Iraqi-controlled Kurdistan. Now Krekar (whose real name is Najumuddin Faraj Ahmed) lives in a modest apartment near the central railway station in Oslo, where he spoke last week to Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball. ...
Do you think it’s legitimate for jihad fighters to go to Iraq now and fight the Americans?
It’s like any other occupation that happened in history. Everyone knows that Muslims must do jihad against occupation everywhere.
When was the last time you had any contact with anybody in Iraq?
I haven’t had any contact since 2002. Also I don’t want them to contact me. Because now I am in Norway, and Norway is a democratic country, they cannot arrest me without reason." (Note: Found via document.no, an excellent Norwegian blog which keep tracks on the Krekar story. See also: "Inside Al Ansar" (Babak Dehghanpisheh, Newsweek, from the 2003/10/13 issue) and "Norway's Terrorist Haven" (Michael Radu, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/09/18))

"After Shock" (Yasmine Bahrani, The Washington Post, 2003/10/05)
An interesting report on Bahrani's return to Iraq after a 20-year exile: "Americans are a mystery to many Iraqis, and Baghdad was awash in stories that reflected Iraqi ambivalence toward their new overlords. In Mansour, almost everyone thought the Americans had dropped a tactical nuclear bomb on the Saa restaurant in the effort to get Hussein. Why? Neighbors saw military trucks removing rubble from the huge crater near the restaurant, then watched other trucks refill the hole. To many Baghdadis, the real truth seemed obvious: The Americans weren't searching for Hussein's remains. The bomb had contained nuclear material, and the United States was removing the evidence. ...
Americans, too, I was told, have amazing devices, including X-ray binoculars that let them see through women's clothes. That rumor is rife in conservative Fallujah, west of Baghdad, where such a story can be dangerous. I heard about one U.S. soldier who handed his binoculars to a suspicious youth. The Falluji peeked through them. "Did you see through anyone's clothes?" asked the soldier. "No," the youth replied. "So you believe me now?" No, the boy said. No women had walked by, so naturally the X-ray powers had not kicked in. ...
It's hard to tell what the truth is in Baghdad. Ironically, the new press freedom has made things more confusing, because papers are now printing rumors. One paper hostile to Americans, Saa, printed an account of two girls who had been raped by 18 Americans. There were lots of details, including a date, a location, the girls' ages and their subsequent deaths. That report swept the country. Americans said the story was baseless, but many people believed it anyway. These are the kinds of tales of evil power that people once told about Hussein and his sons. Americans have now inherited some of them."

"Free after 50 years of tyranny" (Julie Flint, The Observer, 2003/10/05)
"But there is something disturbing, too, about the way that post-war Iraq has been portrayed. Visceral distrust of Bush/Blair has created a disregard both for fact and for the victims of Saddam. Arab commentators have had no shame in urging Iraqis, exhausted by three wars and more than a decade of sanctions, to launch a new war 'of liberation' against their liberators. Western commentators have luxuriated in the setbacks of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), as if wishing failure upon it - and by extension, the Iraqi people.
Disaster has been prophesied, self-servingly, at every turn: the war would be long (it wasn't, and most Iraqis had no direct experience of it); tens of thousands would die in the battle for Baghdad (they didn't); there would be a fully-fledged humanitarian disaster (there wasn't). Now, we are told, Iraqis fear the very real prospect of civil war. Not those I know. Not yet. Nor those polled in Baghdad last month by Gallup: 62 per cent thought getting rid of Saddam was worth the suffering they've endured; 67 per cent thought their lives will be better five years from now. ...
One line being peddled today is that there is growing popular support for a war of resistance against the CPA and Iraqis working with it. The number of violent deaths is unacceptable - among Americans and Iraqis alike - but this doesn't mean that there is a popular Iraqi resistance.
Iraq is not Vietnam. At the root of the current instability are the very people most Iraqis reject - the remnants of Saddam's Baath party, and extremists flooding in from neighbouring countries in hope of establishing religious rule. They, not the liberators/occupiers, are the real threat to peace in Iraq and stability in the wider region today."

"See Jane Run From the Zionist Intruders" (John Tierney, The New York Times, 2003/10/05)
Excerpts from a sampling of Iraqi textbooks: "Fifth graders learned about the Palestinian cause through writing exercises ("Write this sentence twice: Jerusalem is always in Mr. Hussein's sight") and in geography textbooks, which showed a map of the Arab nation stretching from Mauritania across northern Africa and through the Middle East to the borders of Turkey and Iran, with no trace of Israel. A high-school English textbook presented an essay by an Arab mother as a lesson in the use of the past continuous tense:
We were having supper when we suddenly heard loud beating on the door. Somebody was shouting, "Open the door," in an ugly voice. My two little sons looked at one another. As I was making for the door, the beating increased. The door was pushed and flung open. Four Zionist soldiers moved in. They were carrying guns, which they pointed at me.
"Where's your husband?"
"My husband? Why do you want him?"
By this time the soldiers were searching every corner in the house. They were turning things over, kicking everything and looking into every box or drawer. Evidently they were not only looking for my husband, but for guns, too. In a short time the house was a complete mess.
'Tell us where your husband is. If you don't speak we'll arrest the two boys instead.'"

"A Grim, Familiar Routine at Israeli Bombing Site" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2003/10/05)
"At the shattered restaurant, there was normality, too, or at least the pursuit of grim routine. After more than 100 suicide bombings in the past three years, including more than one previous attack in Haifa, police and ambulance crews and forensic teams have an unflustered pattern, carrying off the wounded, loading the bodies and body parts into bags, moving about among the pools of blood and the wreckage in their white overalls, their rubber gloves, their plastic yellow overshoes.
To the rear of the restaurant, beside railway tracks between it and the white ribbon of the beach, the emergency teams placed the bloodied head of the suicide bomber on a wooden table, her thick hair tied in a ponytail. Reporters accustomed to the bombings said that this, too, was routine, since the explosives-laden body belts commonly used in the attacks — and, the police said, used again this time — often leave little trace of the attacker's torso. Eventually, the head, too, was taken away, not long before the sun slipped in a crimson flame into the sea."

"Families devastated by Haifa bombing" (The Jerusalem Post, 2003/10/05)
"Five members of the Zer-Aviv family, all members of Kibbutz Yagur, were killed. Kibbutz members said they do not remember such a tragedy.
Bruria Zer-Aviv, 59, was spending Saturday afternoon with her son, Bezalel, 30, his wife Keren, 29, and their children, Liran, 4, and Noya, 14 months, at the beach-front Maxim restaurant in Haifa when the suicide bomber detonated her explosives."

Saturday, October 4, 2003

News and commentary:

"The carnage continues" (Melanie Philips, melaniephillips.com, 2003/10/04)
Melanie Philips has started a blog, which is a must-read from day one: "The Bush road map and the Europeans' approach constitute a strategy that is not merely mistaken. It has the catastrophic effect of encouraging yet more terror. This will only be addressed if Bush, Blair and European leaders finally tell the Palestinians that the game is up and that they will get no more money or support unless they stop both terror and its incitement.
But instead, victim and victimiser in the Middle East have been stood on their heads. Israel - whose settlement policy is wrong and morally corrupting, but that is not the fundamental issue here - has instead been demonised and dehumanised, and blamed for trying to prevent its citizens from being murdered, a defence which is represented as aggression; while the Palestinians' deliberate targeting of the innocents is said to be legitimate or understandable self-defence. It is this denial of truth, logic and history, this grotesque moral inversion, which is driving the violence in the Middle East - which, like all such terrorism, seeks to achieve precisely this kind of reversal in public opinion, in which the Europeans and Americans between them are so hideously complicit." (Note: Hat tip: Stephen Pollard. See also: Melanie Philips's Diary.)

"Hanadi Jaradat"
(AP Photo, 2003/10/04)
"This is an undated but recent handout picture of Palestinian Hanadi Jaradat, 27, made available by her family late Saturday Oct. 4, 2003 in the northern West Bank town of Jenin. Jaradat, an apprentice lawyer blew herself up in the Arab-owned Maxim beach restaurant in the northen Israeli port city of Haifa Saturday, killing at least 19 people, including three children, and wounding about 40 in one of the deadliest attacks in the past three years and raising the possibility Israel might take action against Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat."

"Israel: response will be harsh" (The Jerusalem Post, 2003/10/04)
"A female suicide bomber exploded in Haifa's 'Makom Maxim' restaurant at about 2:15pm Saturday killing nineteen people and injuring sixty.
Nine people were seriously injured, two were moderately injured and the rest lightly injured, a spokesman from Magen David Adom said. Four of the dead are children, and one of them is a one-week old baby girl. Three of the dead are members of one family. Three others are Arab-Israelis. ...
Jaradat, who had finished her legal studies in Jordan five years ago, was supposed to finish her required apprenticeship next week before qualifying as a lawyer, her family said.
They were shocked to hear she was responsible for the bombing, "but we are receiving congratulations from people," Thaher Jaradat, her younger brother said. "Why should we cry? It is like her wedding today, the happiest day for her," he said."

"Islamic Jihad says it behind Haifa suicide bombing" (Reuters, 2003/10/04)
"The militant group Islamic Jihad said it was behind a suicide bombing which killed at least 19 people in Israel on Saturday and named the bomber as a woman from the West Bank city of Jenin.
The group told Reuters by telephone that the woman was called Hanadi Tayseer Jaradat, a single woman who practised law in Jenin and had studied in Jordan.
It said she was 29, although it had earlier given her age as 19. It said the attack was in revenge for the deaths of her brother and cousin - Islamic Jihad members who were killed by Israeli troops."

"Suicide Bomber Kills 18 in Israeli Port" (Jason Keyser, AP/Yahoo! News!, 2003/10/04)
"A Palestinian attacker shot dead a security guard then blew himself up inside a packed beach restaurant Saturday, killing at least 18 people and wounding dozens, according to Israeli police. It was one of the bloodiest attacks in the past three years of fighting.
The deadliness of the attack — on the Sabbath before the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur — raised the possibility that Israel could take action against Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Following the last suicide attack, nearly a month ago, the Israeli Cabinet threatened to expel Arafat.
About two dozen people were wounded in the attack on the Maxim restaurant in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa on Saturday.
Police said a suicide bomber shot dead the security guard before entering the restaurant — a first in more than 100 suicide bombings in the past three years. In some past attacks, guards have succeeded in stopping suicide bombers or in preventing them from reaching crowded areas, limiting casualties from the explosions.
The bomber then entered the restaurant and detonated explosives strapped to his body. Police said 18 were killed, including the guard who was shot, and a television report said five of the dead were children." (See also: "Suicide bomber kills at least 18 in crowded Haifa restaurant" (David Ratner, Haaretz, 2003/10/04): "The attack took place in the "Maxim" restaurant, which was packed at the time of the blast. The restaurant is located on Ha'Haganah Boulevard at the southern entrance to the coastal city and is owned by Israeli Arabs.")

"Poland Apologizes for French Missiles Report" (Pawel Kozlowski and Marcin Grajewski, Reuters, 2003/10/04)
"Poland apologized to France on Saturday for saying its troops had found advanced French-made missiles in Iraq that had been produced this year.
The report sparked criticism from French President Jacques Chirac, who called it wrong and drawn up without proper checks.
But neither Polish nor French authorities denied that the Roland-type anti-aircraft weapons were found near the Iraqi town of Hilla in a zone controlled by the Polish-led military force." (See also: "Polish Troops Find New French Missiles in Iraq" (Pawel Kozlowski, Reuters, 2003/10/03))

"Our media jihadis" (Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/10/04)
A must-read piece on the "media jihadis": "But as we also know, that wasn't the end of the war, just the moment when Baathist unrepentants resorted to a death-by-one-thousand-cuts strategy. Ditto for the media unrepentants. They failed to stop the war and they failed to lose the war. But they haven't stopped trying to reverse the result, and it bids fair that they will yet do so. ...
For Dowd, Schell, Kamiya, Krugman and their colleagues in Britain, hatred of Bush is the premise, the first principle, the animating impulse shaping all arguments. It's not exactly that they want America to lose. On that score they are pretty much indifferent. But what is certain is that they want Bush to lose, and insofar as his political fortunes rise or fall on coalition success in Iraq, they are on the side of failure. ...
I don't really know if our media jihadis are honest fools or dissembling geniuses. In my experience, people who speak of themselves as "serious, intelligent and morally sensitive" tend to be frivolous, glib and morally callous. Above all, they are self-deceiving. They love to talk about how much they care for the indigent and oppressed, and they believe what they say. But when George W. Bush goes ahead and does something for the indigent and oppressed, that's a lie and an outrage and a sweetheart deal for the Halliburton and Bechtel Corporations.
And they really believe that, too.
One day, perhaps, we'll get a satisfactory explanation as to why a president whose chief sins seem to be that he was born to an influential family, isn't articulate, and piously believes in Christ should be treated as the Great Satan. In the meantime, we must bend every effort to prevent our media jihadis from doing to Western public perception what the Middle East's jihadis are trying to do to Iraqi infrastructure: Destroying the foundations upon which a more hopeful future may arise."

"Heard the Good News From Baghdad?" (Vivienne Walt, The Washington Post Outlook, from the 2003/10/05 issue)
A balanced report on the dichotomy of "two realities" in Baghdad — the "continuing war and a return to normality": "Wisam Karim stands ankle deep in glass two hours after his hotel has been bombed. He's bracing for a visit to the pregnant widow of the night porter, who was killed when 15 pounds of explosives deposited along the outside wall destroyed several rooms.
Considering this, Karim's assessment of Baghdad these days is not what you would expect. "Things have gotten much, much better recently," says the 42-year-old manager of the Aike Hotel in south Baghdad, which housed the NBC News bureau until the blast 10 days ago. ...
"Things have really changed since the end of July," says Yassin Tariq Al-Shimari, 42, who sells television sets and refrigerators from a tiny storefront in the shopping district of Karrada. Sitting on the sidewalk outside his store, Shimari says, "In July we saw three or four robberies and killings a day. I don't think I've seen one since July." ...
Most Baghdadis blame the U.S. military - at least as much as criminal gangs - for turning their city into a war zone. It is hard to find an Iraqi who has not witnessed jittery American soldiers, yelling curse-filled orders in English at befuddled civilians. While tension among Baghdad residents has eased, the thousands of U.S. soldiers in the capital remain garrisoned behind barbed wire and sandbags - ill at ease and ready for battle. ...
Perhaps that helps explain why Iraqis are suspending decades of bloodletting among themselves and focusing their anger on a common, highly visible enemy: the occupation soldiers. That enmity has grown, rather than dissipated, as normal life takes hold in Baghdad."

"Success story in Iraq" (Ken Dilanian, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 2003/10/04)
"Kirkuk, a multiethnic city of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Assyrians that is 150 miles north of the capital, may be the U.S. military's greatest Iraq success story. Attacks on soldiers are unusual, violent crime is low, and Iraqis have worked with Americans to restore basic services to prewar levels. ...
"They are dealing with people in a good way," said Fatah Mohammed, 47, an unemployed Arab.
"We love the Americans here," said Mustafa Adna, 18, a Turkmen fruit vendor. "They have done many good things. Kirkuk is a stable city." ...
Yet even as they were hunting enemies, commanders in Kirkuk also did something unheard of in most of the rest of Iraq: They assigned soldiers to live in houses in the city. Three rifle companies of paratroopers live in former Baathist-owned mansions.
The houses are fortified with sandbags and concertina wire, but they are within shouting distance of neighbors, who regularly bring meals. At C Company's house the other day, soldiers played soccer with an Iraqi police team (the Iraqis won, 1-0) and then hosted a barbecue."

"Israeli actions signal a change in strategy" (Charles A. Radin, The Boston Globe, 2003/10/04)
From "land for peace" to "peace for land": "By rejecting temporary cease-fires with Palestinian militants, pushing its controversial security barrier deep into the occupied territories, and expanding settlements, Israel is moving at full speed to reverse the primary principle it has applied to Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations for the past decade.
From the onset of the Oslo peace process in the early 1990s until Ariel Sharon's election as prime minister in 2001, Israel's basic principle in negotiating with its Palestinian adversaries could be summarized in three words: land for peace. In return for Israel ceding to the Palestinian Authority the predominantly Palestinian-populated lands taken from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War, the Palestinian Authority would end armed attacks on Israelis from those territories.
Sharon has retained the words but changed the order, recasting the principle as: peace for land. When Palestinian leadership begins to deliver peace, mostly by disarming the extremist groups that deny Israel's right to exist, Israel will be ready to talk about ceding land, Israel's leaders say." (Note: Thanks to Barry Kaplovitz for the pointer.)

"Opening a Window on North Korea's Horrors" (Doug Struck, The Washington Post, 2003/10/04)
"Lee Soon Ok, 56, told congressional committees last year in Washington that she was a high-ranking party member in a northern province who was sent to prison in 1987 as a scapegoat for dwindling government food rations. She was seized unexpectedly at work one day, beaten and thrown into a frigid, 5-foot-by-5-foot underground cell for 14 months. She said she was regularly tortured, denied sleep, doused with water and made to kneel naked on ice. She expected to die.
Her captivity "was not a human existence," she said in an interview in Seoul. "Finally, I was given a death sentence and sent to death row. That was the hardest part. You stay on death row for one month, and everybody knows the day they will die. Then - I still don't know the reason why - they decided to send me to a political prison camp."
At the camp, she said, she was given clerical tasks in an office where she overheard researchers discussing chemical and biological weapons experiments on prisoners. Groups of prisoners were taken behind a hill, she said, and she was told to mark their names off the prison rations list.
She learned that her husband and son, then a student at the party's elite university, had been thrown into prison because of her and that her husband had died there. "Finally, they brought me my son," she said. 'He had no shoes. His feet were bound with straw. His clothing was so raggedy, I thought he was a beggar.'"

"President Says Report on Arms Vindicates War" (David E. Sanger and James Risen, The New York Times, 2003/10/04)
"President Bush said Friday that the report by his chief weapons inspector in Iraq justified the American-led invasion of the country even though no actual weapons had been found.
Speaking emphatically on the South Lawn of the White House, Mr. Bush said the preliminary findings of active research projects in Iraq and efforts to obtain missiles proved that "Saddam Hussein was a danger to the world."
Some Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, seized on the report as evidence that Mr. Bush had exaggerated the Iraqi threat. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the failure to find weapons had called into question how prewar estimates by the administration and spy agencies "could have been so far off."
But Mr. Bush and top aides, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, tried throughout the day to reclaim the upper hand in that debate, portraying the report, by David Kay, who leads the Iraq Survey Group of weapons inspectors, as a vindication, not a setback. Mr. Powell said the findings had left the administration 'even more convinced with the Kay report that we did the right thing.'" (See also: "President Bush, Police Commissioner Kerik Discuss Police Force in Iraq" (George W. Bush, The White House, 2003/10/03) and "Read the report" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/10/03))

Friday, October 3, 2003

News and commentary:

"Classicist who captured the White House" (Giles Whittell, The Times/Watch, 2003/09/20 [2003/10/03])
An interview with Victor Davis Hanson, originally published in The Times: "The Hanson story takes a maverick Hellenist from the boondocks who also happens to be a registered Democrat, and in a few months transforms him into a darling of the Right. He is invited to the Bush and Cheney Christmas parties. He addresses the White House staff, dines with the Vice-President and ends up perhaps the most influential voice to have emerged from American academia since 9/11. ...
Other historians besides Hanson have emboldened this White House to wage war, pre-emptively if necessary. Eliot Cohen, author of Supreme Command, heard that his book had been read by Bush because of its praise for Clemenceau and Churchill, who knew when to overrule over-cautious generals and either fire them or send them into battle.
But nobody else has enjoyed Hanson's access to the Administration, and nobody else has delivered with such force and stamina two key messages: "We can do it" and 'We are right.'" (Note: Thanks to the eagle-eyed readers of Watch for pointing this one out and helping me to obtain it. See also: "How 'cherry-picking' militant Islam can win" (Spengler, Asia Times, 2003/10/03))

"What's It All About?" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2003/10/03)
"This war of tactics does not go on in a void. There is a larger strategic history and landscape to be considered as well. Our enemies fathom fully — if American pundits and professors cannot — the Western way of war, the lethality of which makes conventional opposition to an American military force on the field of battle tantamount to suicide. Thus the terrorists grant the success of U.S. efforts in a Panama, Serbia, Kuwait, and Iraq, but prefer to look instead to the messes of the last twenty years in Iran, Beirut, Mogadishu, and Haiti, concluding that there are still other ways to stifle the Americans. In other words, they see the war not in terms of power — ours is far greater — but of will, as a struggle in which we, for a variety of reasons, will not bring to bear all the resources that we can.
In all these wretched places, hostage-taking, assassination, suicide bombing, and general chaos wore down the American people, who quickly thought such commitments were too dirty, too humiliating, and light years away from the world of Starbucks and Moby. And out of such American disenchantment came withdrawal or subsequent appeasement. Thus arose the present emboldened strategy of Middle Eastern armed opposition to the West."

"America the Forgiven" (Reem Al-Faisal, Arab News, 2003/10/03)
According to Al-Faisal, who is granddaughter of the late Saudi King Faisal, America is uniquely evil: "If you take a quick look at American history, you will realize instantly that the atrocities committed by the Americans on their fellow man might be one of the worst in human history, and that’s saying much — one, because humanity has reached levels of evil that no other creature on earth can compete with, and two, because the very short history of the American nation makes its crimes even more shocking when compared with other, more ancient lands. ...
It is time for the American nation to acknowledge its crimes and apologize and ask forgiveness from the many people it has harmed. Beginning with the Native Americans, followed by the Africans and South Americans, right through to the Japanese, who have suffered such horror by being the only race to know the true meaning of weapons of mass destruction." (UPDATE: See also: "Saudi Princess Assails American History and Policy" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 585, 2003/10/08). Note: Found via Little Green Footballs.)

"Fool Me Twice" (Andrew Apostolou, National Review, 2003/10/03)
"On the face of it, Friday morning's crop of headlines looks pretty good for Saddam Hussein. If he could read them from his current residence, likely to be a sewer in Tikrit, he might think that he has again conned much of the American media with the same ease that he mislead Hans Blix. He would be thrilled to read that many have decided that the U.S. arms investigator, David Kay, who heads up the Iraq Survey Group, has drawn a blank in his search for Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD):
• New York Times: "No Illicit Arms Found in Iraq, U.S. Inspector Tells Congress"
• Washington Post: "Search in Iraq Finds No Banned Weapons"
• Los Angeles Times: "Inspectors Find Aims, Not Arms"
• Boston Globe: "US report finds no illicit arms"
• BBC: "US team finds no Iraq WMD"
Of course, Saddam knows better than the media — as does David Kay. Far from being a failure, Kay's interim report is an important breakthrough. Kay has validated the reason for going to war: Saddam's regime was not in compliance with its U.N. obligations." (See also: "Read the report" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/10/03))

"America Has A Brilliant Strategy For Iraq: Muddle Through" (Jonathan Rauch, National Journal, 2003/10/03)
"Never has the United States lost an engagement as quickly and decisively as it is now losing its campaign to pacify and rebuild Iraq. Never has an administration proceeded with so little competence and planning. Postwar Iraq is not just a disaster in the making. It is a disaster already made.
With Saddam toppled less than six months ago, defeatism today reflects badly not on Bush, but on his critics.
So one would have thought from many of the commentaries and press reports in August - a dismal month for the occupation, scarred by two devastating terrorist bombings - and on into September, when things went better. A quick online search produces a cascade of articles with headlines such as "A Nightmare in Iraq," "U.S. Sinking in Iraq Quagmire," "'Logic' of Occupation Points to More Trouble." All of which is mild compared to some of what I hear from friends and acquaintances, especially the Democrats. ...
After 30 years of Saddam, three wars, economic isolation, and now a foreign invasion and a guerrilla insurgency, normalcy in Iraq is abnormal. For a change, school buses really are bigger news than ambulances. Journalists, however, have not been able to reorient their vision. Most of the Western media are covering Baghdad as if it were Detroit, where crime is news and calm is not.
Their sin is not so much partisanship as lousy news judgment - which, under the circumstances, is probably harder to forgive. Conservative critics are (I hope) mostly wrong about the media's motives but mostly right about the result: bias that magnifies setbacks and overlooks accomplishments." (See also: "Back from Iraq: Eye-Opening Moments" (Michael E. O'Hanlon, The Brookings Institution, 2003/09/30))

"Polish Troops Find New French Missiles in Iraq" (Pawel Kozlowski, Reuters, 2003/10/03)
"Polish troops in Iraq have found four French-built advanced anti-aircraft missiles which were built this year, a Polish Defense Ministry spokesman told Reuters Friday.
France strongly denied having sold any such missiles to Iraq for nearly two decades, and said it was impossible that its newest missiles should turn up in Iraq.
"Polish troops discovered an ammunition depot on Sept. 29 near the region of Hilla and there were four French-made Roland-type missiles," Defense Ministry spokesman Eugeniusz Mleczak said.
"It is not the first time Polish troops found ammunition in Iraq but to our surprise these missiles were produced in 2003."

"Six Shiites Killed in Pakistan Bus Attack" (Afzal Nadeem, AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/10/03)
"Gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying Shiite Muslim employees of Pakistan's space agency in this southern port city on Friday, killing six and wounding at least six others, police said.
The attack occurred as about 20 workers were on their way to a mosque for Friday prayers, said Athar Rashid Butt, a senior police official. The gunmen were on motorcycles and fled after the shooting.
Butt said six people were killed. Two wounded people were listed at a hospital in critical condition, he said. ...
Nobody claimed responsibility, but suspicion fell immediately on one of several Sunni Muslim extremist groups that have killed hundreds of minority Shiite Muslims in recent years."

"U.N. Can't Confirm Weapons Smuggling" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/10/03)
"The U.N. weapons inspection agency said Friday it had no independent confirmation of a report that Kuwaiti security authorities foiled an attempt to smuggle $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads from Iraq to a European country.
The report, which appeared Wednesday in a Kuwaiti newspaper that is close to Kuwait's government, attributed the information to an unidentified security source.
"It sounds like an unusual story," said Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which was in charge of biological and chemical weapons inspections in Iraq. 'We don't have any independent confirmation, but would like to know more about it.'" (See also: "Kuwait foils smuggling of chemicals, bio warheads from Iraq" (AP/HindustanTimes.com, 2003/10/02))

"Our Instant Experts" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2003/10/03)
"What we came upon in Iraq was a country that had just emerged from terror and totalitarianism - largely physically intact (as a result of an unprecedented precision military campaign) but decaying because of the neglect and abuse of the gangsters who had run it for more than 30 years.
It was as if, when the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, we had somehow found ourselves in Moscow in charge of the place. The critics are complaining that we are six months into Iraq's reconstruction and it has not been reconstructed. The Russians are 12 years into their reconstruction and they still are not even close to success. ...
The media cover the sabotage of the oil pipelines. This is perfectly reasonable. It is news, and it produces dramatic pictures. But the undramatic story is that Iraq is producing more than 1.6 million barrels a day, more than three-quarters of 2002 production levels. Last week OPEC unexpectedly cut its production quotas - boosting oil prices and rattling world markets. Why? Because it sees Iraqi oil production coming on line and seriously threatening world prices. Pictures show the sabotage story; OPEC has already acted on the production story.
Losing the peace? No matter what anyone says now, that question will be answered only at the endpoint. If in a year or two we are able to leave behind a stable, friendly government, we will have succeeded. If not, we will have failed. And all the geniuses will be vindicated."

"U.S. General Says Iraqi Rebels Getting Stronger" (Tyler Marshall, Los Angeles Times, 2003/10/03)
"With 313 American soldiers dead in the conflict so far, more than half since President Bush declared major combat over May 1, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told reporters at a weekly news briefing here, "This is still wartime."
"There is still some intense fighting to be done, especially out in the west," he said. "We should not be surprised if one of these mornings we wake up and ... there has been a major firefight with some casualties or a significant terrorist attack that kills significant numbers of people."
Sanchez said the U.S.-led forces are engaging resistance groups 15 to 20 times a day, on average, with as many as 25 incidents on some days. Military spokesmen have cited lower figures in the past.
The general added that the resistance was showing signs of improved organization. Though most attacks against U.S. forces are being carried out by small, locally based groups apparently acting on their own, there are indications that the resistance is beginning to operate under a broader, more regional control, Sanchez said." (See also: "Coalition Military Deaths by Month"
(Dale Amon, Samizdata, 2003/10/01))

"Judge Rules Out a Death Penalty for 9/11 Suspect" (Philip Shenon, The New York Times, 2003/10/03)
"A federal judge ruled on Thursday that the government cannot seek the death penalty against Zacarias Moussaoui and barred prosecutors from attempting to link him to the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, because of their refusal to permit Mr. Moussaoui to interview captured terrorists whose testimony might aid in his defense.
The ruling by Judge Leonie M. Brinkema was a sharp rebuke to the Justice Department, which had previously attempted to portray Mr. Moussaoui as a central figure in the Sept. 11 conspiracy whose actions could have prevented the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon."

"Iraq Leaves U.N. In Confusion" (Stewart Stogel, NewsMax.com, 2003/10/03)
"The 2003 U.N. General Assembly ended its general debate in confusion on Thursday.
Ironically, the last of over 190 speakers to address the forum was Iraq.
Ahmad Chalabi, the former head of the exile Iraqi National Congress and now a member of the U.S. appointed Governing Council, gave the Iraqi address to the United Nations forum.
More than half of the General Assembly's members boycotted the Iraqi address, including most of the Arab states.
The U.S. was represented by its deputy U.N. ambassador James Cunningham.
Throughout the address (mostly delivered in Arabic), the English translator often stumbled. Many Arab diplomats quipped the "problem" was due to the fact that Chalabi's speech was originally written in English and then translated to Arabic, a reference to the belief that the address was written in Washington.
The speech, which ran slightly more than 10 minutes, chided many U.N. members for their past support of Saddam Hussein. It also invited many of the current critics of developments in Iraq to come and actually see what is going on." (See also Chalabi's speech: "Statement by Ahmad Chalabi, Head of the Iraqi Delegation, to the 58th UN General Assembly" (The United Nations, 2003/10/02))

"Vials: A total of 97 vials..."
(CIA, 2003/10/02)
"Vials: A total of 97 vials - including those with labels consistent with the al Hakam cover stories of single-cell protein and biopesticides, as well as strains that could be used to produce BW agents-were recovered from a scientist's residence."

"Read the report" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/10/03)
Sullivan summarizes David Kay's report on Iraqi WMDs: "Having read the report carefully, I'd say that the administration is vindicated in every single respect of that argument. This war wasn't just moral; it wasn't just prudent; it was justified on the very terms the administration laid out. And we don't know the half of it yet. ...
If you don't have time, here are my highlights. First off:

We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN.

Translation: Saddam was lying to the U.N. as late as 2002. He was required by the U.N. to fully cooperate. He didn't. The war was justified on those grounds alone. Case closed. Some of the physical evidence still remains, despite what was clearly a deliberate, coordinated and thorough attempt to destroy evidence before during and after the war. Among the discoveries:

* A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

* A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

* Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

* New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

* Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS). ...

* Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.

* Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles - probably the No Dong - 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.

Would you be happy, after 9/11, if the president had allowed such capabilities to remain at large, and be reinvigorated, with French and Russian help, after sanctions were removed? I wouldn't. But Howard Dean and Dominique de Villepin would have happily looked the other way rather than do anything real to enforce the very resolutions they claimed to support." (UPDATE: StrategyPage has also a useful summary: "What Weapons of Mass Destruction Evidence Have We Found In Iraq?" (Dan Masterson, StrategyPage, 2003/10/04). See also the report: "Statements by David Kay on the interim progress report on the activities of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG)" (CIA, 2003/10/02))

Thursday, October 2, 2003

News and commentary:

"Statement by Ahmad Chalabi, Head of the Iraqi Delegation, to the 58th UN General Assembly" (The United Nations, 2003/10/02)
"I stand in front of you today representing the voice of the Iraqi citizen who has long suffered from cruelty within and outside his homeland. Those within his country have inflicted on him the worst kinds of torture: they have attacked his honour, betrayed his family, humiliated him, enchained him and thrown him into miserable wars. His brothers and friends in the region not only maintained silence, ignorance and blindness toward his catastrophe, they also criticised him and shamed him the day he dared raise his voice. And throughout the world, those that stood to benefit scrambled to trade and work with his torturer.
Very few spoke the truth and embraced it. Very few turned to the catastrophe of this fellow human being and declared that he was a victim. To our calls we heard nothing. So the Iraqi remained lost and persecuted twice over, first from the injustice of the sword with which the dictatorial regime attacked him at home, and then from the injustice of the criticism, a more painful affliction, from those outside. ...
The first truth that I begin with is that Iraq's long dark night has been ended. The bitter experience of humiliation, pain and suffering that Iraqis have endured for more than three decades has ended. It ended with Saddam Hussein fleeing, along with his cronies and with the collapse of the symbols that they had erected in Baghdad and throughout Iraq.
As for the second truth, it is that the liberation of Iraq, and what happened is indeed liberation, could not have been achieved without the determination of President George W. Bush and the commitment of the Coalition. At the forefront are the United States of America and Great Britain."

"How 'cherry-picking' militant Islam can win" (Spengler, Asia Times, 2003/10/03)
Accusing opponents of "racism" is disturbingly popular and almost as outrageous as nazi slurs. In both cases it's almost exclusively used against Western leaders and intellectuals who have no actual records of racism at all, thus demonizing them and trivializing real racism and nazism at the same time. If anything, it seems to me, it is rather this post-colonialistic worldview which is inherently "racist", when it comes to judging Western culture. Personally, I think Victor Davis Hanson is an excellent choice as an adviser for the Bush administration:
"Do you wonder what President George W Bush reads at night? Westerns? Methodist sermons? His favorite, it seems, are popular military histories by Professor Victor Davis Hanson, who reads classics in the California state university system. Hanson now advises the Bush administration, reported the London Times on September 20.
Recently, Hanson dined with Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne, while his book Why the West Has Won has a place on the president's night-table.
Fine fellow that he is, Hanson is the wrong man for the job.
In the Times story, Hanson unintentionally explained to Times journalist Giles Whittell precisely how it is that radical Islam might destroy the West, namely, by "cherry-picking Western culture". He said, "If you're a Wahhabi mullah and you want American antibiotics for your daughter's strep throat, do you deny her them because that's the country that gives the world [television shock jock] Jerry Springer? If you're a Saudi sheikh and you want a heart bypass or Viagra, do you go without because it's contaminated with Western decadence? I don't think so. It's as if they don't realize that the whole supporting infrastructure ... is a product of a complex system of secularism, rationalism, tolerance, sexual equality, consensual government and free expression ... they've tried for 50 years to cherry-pick the West and it doesn't work well."
Despite himself, Hanson has put his finger on the reason militant Islam well might defeat the West. It can cherry-pick Western culture, eg weapons of mass destruction. But that is not the most dangerous adaptation of Western culture in the hands of militant Islam.
Hanson's examples (a Wahhabi mullah or a Saudi sheikh) betray the racism of which I accused the Western leaders immediately after September 11, 2001." (See also: "Classicist who captured the White House" (Giles Whittell, The Times/Watch, 2003/09/20 [2003/10/03]). For an interesting critique of Spengler, see also: "Spengler and Decline" (Armed Liberal, Winds of Change.NET, 2003/08/08))

"The Great "W" - Can the whining stop, please?" (Jonah Goldberg, National Review, 2003/10/02)
"Too many liberals have simply convinced themselves that they live in dangerous, scary times. Hopefully we will get to an age where we can look back rationally on left-wing hysteria. Unfortunately, as a culture, we can only mock "paranoid" right-wingers — left-wingers always have good reasons for wetting their pants. I truly believe any sane person looking back — say a century from now — would recognize how flimsy are the actual facts cited to support the nationwide bout of St. Vitus's Dance over the "fearful climate" we are allegedly living under. ...
"It is . . . clear how wrong the president was to sit back and let his political pals orchestrate a campaign to question the patriotism of those who urged a full national debate" on war with Iraq, Tom Oliphant of the Boston Globe wrote last year. New York Times entertainer Paul Krugman concurred. "The Bush administration," he wrote, is "always quick to question the patriotism of anyone who gets in its way."
But these guys never provide any examples of what they're talking about. It's as if they think everyone who reads them already agrees with them. And, come to think of it, that might be largely true. ...
And now we've come full circle. "No administration has the right to tell Americans that to dissent is disloyal, and to disagree is unpatriotic," booms newly minted presidential candidate Wesley Clark. Clark promises a "New American Patriotism" where dissenters aren't afraid to criticize the government.
Now a whole governing philosophy has been constructed around facts that do not exist in this space-time continuum — and liberals are eating it up."

"The anti-American obsession" (Jean-Francois Revel, The New Criterion, from the October 2003 issue)
Revel points out that cultural progress and diversity are products of acculturation in this brilliant essay on French obsession with Americanization:
"The fear of seeing cultural identities drowned in a kind of planetary standardization, which today is thought to be overwhelmingly American in coloration but in former times showed other hues, has no basis in historical fact or impartial observation of today’s reality. The commingling of cultures, with predominance going first to one and then to another, has always led — in antiquity, in the medieval period, and in the modern world — not to uniformity, but to diversity. ...
The real danger — conceivably a mortal one — for European culture is that anti-American and antiglobalist phobias might derail progress. Guy Sorman has shown the scientific and technological retreats this obscurantism has led to in his book Le Progrès et ses ennemis. And this isn't some "right-wing" or "left-wing" thesis; it is a rational one. It is defended alike by the liberal-democrat Sorman and by the socialist Claude Allègre. The latter wages war against the idea that Europe should abandon nuclear energy, genetic engineering and research using embryonic cells. Should the pressure groups that agitate against progress win the day, in twenty years the European states will regress, he writes, "to the level of the underdeveloped countries, in a world that will be dominated by the United States and China" (L'Express, February 7, 2002.) The anti-American fanatics will then have succeeded in making Europe even more dependant on the United States than it is today."

"For its intellectuals, France falters" (John Vinicur, International Herald Tribune, 2003/10/02)
A must-read article on French declinism: "The idea's novelty is not the issue itself. Rather it is that for the first time in a half century that the notion of a rapid descent in France's influence is receiving wide acknowledgment within the French establishment.
At its most hurtful and remarkable, and yet perhaps its most honest, there is the start of acceptance by segments of the French intellectual community that French leadership, as it is constituted now, is not something Europe wants - or France merits.
Several current books, three on the bestseller lists, have focused discussion on the country's incapacities, rigidities and its role, they say, in the context of the Iraq war, in dividing the Western community and fracturing notions of Europe's potential unity.
The books, with titles that translate to phrases like "France in Free Fall" or "French Arrogance," are merciless in their accusations of the fantasy-driven ineffectualness of French foreign policy and the extent of the country's economic breakdown. ...
In "Ouest contre Ouest," by Andre Glucksmann, one of the few leading French intellectuals to challenge the country's position on the Iraq war, France is described as a nation, with others in Europe, that fled the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on the United States in panic and attempted to set up a sterile biosphere away from the world's realities.
The book, also a bestseller, maintains that this flight from confronting trouble carried with it an attempt to create two opposing notions of the West: a serene Europe, sheltered from terrorist kamikazes, and a warlike, imperialist, autistic United States." (See also: "France's autumn blues" (The Economist, 2003/10/02))

"Spreading Saudi Fundamentalism in U.S." (Susan Schmidt, The Washington Post, 2003/10/02)
"On Aug. 20, 2001, Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman Hussayen, a man who would soon be named a minister of the Saudi government and put in charge of its two holy mosques, arrived in the United States to meet with some of this country's most influential fundamentalist Sunni Muslim leaders. ...
The most intriguing aspect of Hussayen's journey may be entirely coincidental: his brief proximity in a hotel near Dulles International Airport to three of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers the night before they crashed Flight 77 into the Pentagon. On the night of Sept. 10, Hani Hanjour, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi checked into the same hotel, a Marriott Residence Inn.
The FBI has examined hotel videotapes and interviewed employees, but has found no indication that Hussayen and the hijackers interacted, law enforcement sources said. After the attack, an FBI agent interviewed hotel guests, including Hussayen and his wife, but did not get very far.
According to court testimony from FBI agent Gneckow earlier this year, the interview was cut short when Hussayen "feigned a seizure, prompting the agents to take him to a hospital, where the attending physicians found nothing wrong with him."
The agent recommended that Hussayen "should not be allowed to leave until a follow-up interview could occur," Gneckow told the court. But "her recommendation, for whatever reason, was not complied with," he said.
On Sept. 19, the day air travel resumed, Hussayen and his wife took off for Saudi Arabia."

"Canada's Salman Rushdie" (Stephen Brown, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/10/02)
Brown on Irshad Manji, author of "The Trouble With Islam: A Wake-up Call for Honesty and Change": "Unfortunately, like Rushdie, Manji has also had to invest in extra security measures as insurance against the same kind of fanatics who threatened to kill him. She has installed bullet-proof glass in her house, has a bodyguard and has developed relations with the police. Mainstream Muslim organizations have also not received her book well, accusing her of self-hatred.
But unlike Rushdie, however, Manji told an interviewer the political left has disowned her, saying she is no longer one of them. In Rushdie's case, the left rallied to his cause, supporting his right to free expression and opposing Muslim death threats for his writing The Satanic Verses.
In turn, the Muslim refusenik said she is appalled by left's selectivity when it comes to problems in the Middle East, blaming the West more often than not.
"I'm stunned by the way the political tradition from which I come has abdicated responsibility for universal human rights," she told the interviewer. "They wax eloquent that Islamic societies have their own form of democracies. But please ask them how these places treat women, how they treat Jews? They love to dissect Israel - but to the exclusion of Saudi Arabia? How can they morally live with themselves?"
Besides the left, homosexual and Canadian women's rights organizations have also been conspicuously and hypocritically silent concerning the threats made against one of their lesbian sisters, who once hosted a gay television show." (See also: "Voices of Islam" (Daniel Pipes, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2003/09/23))

"The 'university of holy war'" (Haroon Rashid, BBC News, 2003/10/02)
"Its students and principal call it the University of Jihad (Holy War).
Last week the religious seminary of Darul Uloom Haqqania in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province turned out another class of young Pakistanis and Afghans ready to wage holy war against the enemies of their religion.
Among them was 15-year-old Afghan refugee, Javed Ullah.
"I wish to fight the infidels," he said as he left the seminary in Akora Khattak, 50 kilometres (31 miles) east of the provincial capital, Peshawar.
Javed is among 600 students who have completed studies in different fields over the past year.
Wearing white turbans and dress, all the new graduates looked satisfied and seemed to brim with hope for a bright future.
"I want to go back and fight the Americans," Javed said wearing a garland. "I can't wait anymore."
His Pakistani classmates had a similar desire.
"I will dedicate my whole life for jihad. It is compulsory for Muslims. I will kill enemies of Islam," said student Minhaj Uddin.
The whole convocation was full of slogans in support of Afghanistan's ousted Taleban regime, al-Qaeda's leader Osama Bin Laden and holy war."

"Saddam 'seen' five days ago" (Michael Howard, The Guardian, 2003/10/02)
"Saddam Hussein was reportedly seen in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk five days ago and is moving in increasingly smaller circles in order to evade capture, Jalal Talabani, a leading member of Iraq's governing council, said yesterday.
Mr Talabani, who also heads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main groups controlling the Kurdish north of the country, told the Guardian that he had received unconfirmed reports that the ousted Iraqi dictator had sheltered last weekend among a Sunni Arab community on the outskirts of Kirkuk.
He said: "Saddam has good relations with those Arabs whom he brought to Kirkuk to ethnically cleanse the city of Kurds and Turkomens."
Saddam had been moving between the Hawija area and the Kirkuk plain, sheltering among Sunni Arab tribespeople and Ba'ath loyalists who had gone to ground there after the collapse of the regime."

"Kuwait foils smuggling of chemicals, bio warheads from Iraq" (AP/HindustanTimes.com, 2003/10/02)
"Kuwaiti security authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads from Iraq to an unnamed European country, a Kuwaiti newspaper said on Wednesday.
The pro-Government Al-Siyassah, quoting an unnamed security source, said the suspects had been watched by security since they arrived in Kuwait and were arrested "in due time." It did not say when or how the smugglers entered Kuwait or when they were arrested.
The paper said the smugglers might have had accomplices inside Kuwait. It said Interior Minister Sheik Nawwaf Al Ahmed Al Sabah would hand over the smuggled weapons to an FBI agent at a news conference, but did not say when."

"North Korea making atom bombs" (AP/USA Today, 2003/10/02)
"North Korea said Thursday it has completed reprocessing its 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods and is using plutonium extracted from them to make atomic bombs.
"The (North) successfully finished the reprocessing of some 8,000 spent fuel rods," a spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the North's official news agency, KCNA.
Accusing the United States of taking a "hostile policy" toward the North, the statement said that North Korea 'made a switchover in the use of plutonium churned out by reprocessing spent fuel rods in the direction increasing its nuclear deterrent force.'"

Wednesday, October 1, 2003

News and commentary:

"U.S. Says New al-Qaida Chief in Gulf" (John J. Lumpkin, AP/Newsday.com, 2003/10/01)
"U.S. officials believe they have identified a young former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden as al-Qaida's new chief of terror operations in the Persian Gulf.
Abu Hazim al-Sha'ir, a 29-year-old Yemeni now believed to be living in Saudi Arabia, is one of a new crop of al-Qaida operatives who are trying to fill the roles of senior bin Laden lieutenants who have been captured or killed since Sept. 11, according to U.S. officials.
"Capable replacements appear to be emerging, many of whom have demonstrated their ability to see previously planned operations through to fruition," according to one U.S. intelligence report."

"Mad About You" (Jonathan Chait, The New Republic, from the 2003/09/29 issue)
Chait's classic and revealing example of Bush-hatred is available online for non-subscribers:
"I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history. And, while I'm tempted to leave it at that, the truth is that I hate him for less substantive reasons, too. ...
I hate the way he walks - shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo. I hate the way he talks - blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudo-populist twang. I even hate the things that everybody seems to like about him. I hate his lame nickname-bestowing-- a way to establish one's social superiority beneath a veneer of chumminess (does anybody give their boss a nickname without his consent?). And, while most people who meet Bush claim to like him, I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more.
There seem to be quite a few of us Bush haters. I have friends who have a viscerally hostile reaction to the sound of his voice or describe his existence as a constant oppressive force in their daily psyche." (Note: Found via James Taranto's must-read post "'Anger-Baiting'" (Best of the Web Today, 2003/10/01), in which he also cites "The Other Lies of George Bush" (David Corn, The Nation, 2003/09/25): "George W. Bush is a liar. He has lied large and small, directly and by omission. ... Lying has been one of the essential tools of his presidency. To call the forty-third President of the United States a prevaricator is not an exercise of opinion, not an inflammatory talk-radio device. Rather, it is backed up by an all-too-extensive record of self-serving falsifications.")

"'Muslim hostility toward America has reached shocking levels'" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2003/10/01)
"A panel commissioned by the Bush administration outlined on Wednesday an 18-point plan to overcome growing antagonism toward the United States in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
"Hostility toward America has reached shocking levels," the panel said in a report, which echoed a series of earlier studies about the dramatic decline in the U.S. image in these areas.
It noted that only 15 percent of Indonesians view the United States favorably, compared with 61 percent in 2002. It cited a Gallup poll showing that only 7 percent of Saudi Arabians had a positive view of the United States. ...
It called for a new White House office to manage strategic direction and government coordination of public diplomacy, defined as promoting the national interest by informing, engaging and influencing people around the world." (See also the report: "Changing Minds, Winning Peace" (Edward P. Djerejian, Baker Institute, 2003/10/01))

"Coalition Military Deaths by Month"
(Dale Amon, Samizdata, 2003/10/01)

"We are winning" (Dale Amon, Samizdata, 2003/10/01)
"The graph is rather striking in its clarity. There are three phases visible. March and April are quite obviously the period of major combat. The second is May; combat deaths plummet to almost nothing while the accident rates skyrocket. The third period is one of minor combat. Accident rates fall drastically but combat deaths climb to a minor peak before tailing off slowly. At present the combat death rate is running an almost insignificant amount over the accident rate.
My interpretation of the graph is:

1. March and April are clearly the period of major combat.
2. May is a postcombat month. Remnants of the regime are dispersed and disorganized. There are a lot of dangerous ordinance laying about. Soldiers are tired, ease up slightly and have more accidents because of it.
3. June through the present is a period of low intensity conflict. One can read the state of the opposing forces in the short-lived secondary peak followed by a long tail off. That tail-off is their journey into oblivion.

It will be interesting to see if the end comes with a bang or a whimper. One could imagine a last desperate and suicidal offensive by the remaining Saddamites. Alternatively, if Saddam is calling the shots and is taken out of the picture the remnants might just quit and go elsewhere. The most likely scenario - in my opinion - is an exponential tail-off in as the remnant forces are killed or captured."

"The CIA leak" (Robert Novak, Town Hall, 2003/10/01)
"I had thought I never again would write about retired diplomat Joseph Wilson's CIA-employee wife, but feel constrained to do so now that repercussions of my July 14 column have reached the front pages of major newspapers and led off network news broadcasts. My role and the role of the Bush White House have been distorted and need explanation.
The leak now under Justice Department investigation is described by former Ambassador Wilson and critics of President Bush's Iraq policy as a reprehensible effort to silence them. To protect my own integrity and credibility, I would like to stress three points. First, I did not receive a planned leak. Second, the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson's wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else. Third, it was not much of a secret." (See also: "Mission to Niger" (Robert Novak, Town Hall, 2003/07/14))

"Iraqi Schools Expelling 'Beloved Saddam'" (John Tierney, The New York Times, 2003/10/01)
An article on the de-Baathification of Iraqi school books: "The first-grade equivalents of Dick and Jane are Hassan and Amal, shown in one reader happily holding a portrait of Mr. Hussein. Their dialogue begins with Amal saying, "Come, Hassan, let us chant for the homeland and use our pens to write, 'Our beloved Saddam.'"
Hassan replies: "I came, Amal. I came in a hurry to chant, 'Oh, Saddam, our courageous president, we are all soldiers defending the borders for you, carrying weapons and marching to success.'"
Duly inspired, Amal exclaims, "Let us start our work without delay." ...
Saddam Hussein's touch was heaviest in history (students learn that Iraq's wars were all just and ended victoriously) and in a class called Patriotic Education, which has been eliminated.
But nothing escaped his influence. The educator, Dr. Hussein, said the Iraqis who reviewed the 560 textbooks recommended changes in every single one. ...
The typical school day used to begin with chants against America for killing Iraqi children and burning Iraqi trees.
In gym classes, students would exercise while chanting, "Bush, Bush, listen clearly: We all love Saddam."
In music classes, they learned new lyrics for traditional melodies. The beginning of one popular children's song was changed from "The daughter of the merchant has almond eyes" to 'We are the Baathists. We have heavy weapons.'"

"Arrested Muslim activist helped pick chaplains for U.S. military" (Jerry Seper, The Washington Times, 2003/10/01)
"A leading Muslim activist arrested for reportedly violating U.S. sanctions against Libya once helped select and train Islamic military chaplains as part of a Pentagon-approved process being investigated by the Defense Department and Congress.
Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi, founder of the American Muslim Council and the American Muslim Foundation, was involved with the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council and the Islamic Society of North America, two groups that selected and trained Muslim clerics for the U.S. military, authorities said."

Note: Check out Front Line Voices, which is officially launched today. The site's mission is to "get out the full story by posting first-hand accounts as written by men and women who have actually been to Iraq and Afghanistan."

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

News and commentary:

"Back from Iraq: Eye-Opening Moments" (Michael E. O'Hanlon, The Brookings Institution, 2003/09/30)
O'Hanlon reports on a short visit to Iraq: "I was not nervous, hardly out of bravery so much as a sense that we were being well protected and that overall violence rates in Iraq are rather low statistically.
But our minders took every precaution. For example, we took off in our airplane one evening with all the lights off so as to reduce our visibility to would-be attackers. And American troops certainly were under clear directions to be prepared, armed, and vigilant at all times; one sign in a cafeteria in Baghdad admonished them with the words, "no weapon, no food."
In fact, most of Iraq really is at peace. We flew low over villages, even in Sunni areas, without worrying much about staying away from inhabited zones; we drove through Mosul and Hilla and other towns in vehicles without armored protection and without flak jackets or helmets. Things are not quite so good in places such as Baghdad and Tikrit, but even there they aren't so bad. ...
But the Iraqis we met were nonetheless grateful for the defeat of Saddam and passionate about their country's future. Their enthusiasm, and their desire to work together with U.S. and other coalition forces, warmed the heart of this former Peace Corps volunteer. Maybe that is why, on balance, I couldn't help but leave the country with a real, if guarded and cautious, feeling of optimism." (Note: Thanks to Charles T. Mathewes for the pointer. See also: "Assessing Progress in Iraq" (Michael E. O'Hanlon, The Brookings Institution, 2003/09/29))

"Political Science Targets Suicide Terrorism. Bystanders: Take Cover!" (Martin Kramer, Sandstorm, 2003/09/30)
Kramer on Robert A. Pape's "The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism": "Pape's thesis is really quite simple: suicide terrorism is not irrational or an expression of religious fanaticism. It is part of a strategy deliberately adopted by the groups that sponsor it. ...
Reading his analysis, you would think that the conclusion would be to raise the costs for terrorist leaders who choose suicide bombings, from Afghanistan to Gaza — to mark such attacks as crimes against humanity and war crimes, to find the masterminds, and to put their heads on pikes for all to see.
Yet Pape does a last-minute twist, arguing that the most effective response would be an American disengagement from the Middle East and Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories. The United States and Israel should stand back and hunker down behind defensive perimeters. Why? This would diminish the incentives (read: grievances) behind strategic suicide bombing. I find this conclusion completely at odds with the analysis. Wouldn't this be the ultimate concession to the suicide strategy — and be celebrated as such by its planners? Wouldn't this inspire yet more mutations of the method, and the expansion of the terrorists' strategic goals?" (See also: "The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" (Robert A. Pape, American Political Science Review, August 2003) and "It's all about laaaaand" (Tim Blair, timblair.spleenville.com, 2003/09/23))

"FBI Opens Probe of Bush Staff on CIA Leak" (Terence Hunt, AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/30)
"The FBI began a full-scale criminal investigation Tuesday into whether White House officials illegally leaked the identity of an undercover CIA officer, and President Bush ordered his staff to cooperate with the first major probe of his administration.
Democrats demanded the appointment of a special outside counsel but Bush resisted. "I'm absolutely confident that the Justice Department can do a good job," he said on a re-election fund-raising stop in Chicago.
"If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it and we'll take the appropriate action," Bush said. "And this investigation is a good thing." ...
The investigation is aimed at finding who leaked the name of the CIA operative, possibly in an attempt to punish the officer's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who had accused the administration of manipulating intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq." (See also: "Mission to Niger" (Robert Novak, Town Hall, 2003/07/14))

"Al Qaeda Bomb Plotter Convicted in Belgium" (Constant Brand, The AP/Washington Post, 2003/09/30)
"A former professional soccer player who joined the al Qaeda terrorist network was convicted today of plotting two years ago to bomb a NATO base that is widely believed to contain nuclear weapons.
Nizar Trabelsi of Tunisia received the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison from a court that also convicted 17 other men and acquitted five in the largest terrorism trial in Belgium's history.
Trabelsi, who once played professional soccer in Germany, admitted planning to drive a car containing a bomb into the canteen of the Kleine Brogel air base, a Belgian military post that is used by NATO and hosts U.S. troops. Trabelsi testified that he intended to kill American soldiers, not to detonate the nuclear warheads that many people believe are stored at the base."

"Ten from Algeria held in Britain under anti-terrorism laws" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2003/09/30)
"Ten men, believed to be Algerians, were being held under Britain's anti-terrorism laws following dawn raids in London and Manchester, a Metropolitan Police spokeswoman told AFP.
Six of the men were arrested at residences in north, east and southeast London, while the others were taken into custody in northwestern Manchester, she said Tuesday. ...
All 10 were being detained under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000 "which refers to alleged involvement in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism," she said."

"Translator in Custody" (ABC News, 2003/09/30)
"A civilian translator who worked at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp has been arrested, suspected of taking classified information from the camp where hundreds of suspects in the war on terror are being held.
It is the third case of its type to have surfaced in the last week, and adds urgency to the already serious questions being raised about security at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The latest arrest occurred Monday, after Ahmed Mehalba arrived at Boston's Logan International Airport on a flight from Cairo, Egypt. ...
Upon further examination, the officers found compact discs in Mehalba's baggage, and at least one of them contained information that appeared to be classified, according to the Department of Homeland Security. One disc, labeled in black handwriting "Backup #3 for MO's Profile" — referred to as "the suspect disc" in the affidavit — contained a file called "SECRET," which officials say contained aliases of detainees at Guantanamo Bay."

"Palestinian NGOs Refuse Anti-Terror Agreement" (Middle East Newsline, 2003/09/30)
"Palestinian non-government organizations have refused to sign a U.S.-sponsored commitment that they will not transfer funds to individuals or groups that engage in attacks against Israeli civilians.
Palestinian sources said social welfare groups within the Palestinian Authority as well as independent NGOs have organized a campaign against signing a so-called anti-terror clause. The sources said the United States has demanded that Palestinian social welfare groups sign a commitment that they will not transfer money to those deemed terrorists.
So far, the sources said, about 30 NGOs have declared that they would not sign the anti-terror commitment. Many of the groups obtain funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development and American philanthropies.
Earlier this month, representatives of 29 NGOs in the area of the West Bank city of Bethlehem met and issued a statement that they would not cooperate with a U.S. AID demand not to transfer funding to any individual or group deemed terrorist. The meeting was attended by PA security and intelligence officials. The Interior Ministry regulates NGOs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip." (Note: Found via Little Green Footballs.)