Archived news and commentary: February 23 - 29, 2004

2004/03/29 - 2004/04/04
2004/03/22 - 2004/03/28
2004/03/15 - 2004/03/21
2004/03/08 - 2004/03/14
2004/03/01 - 2004/03/07
2004/02/23 - 2004/02/29
2004/02/16 - 2004/02/22
2004/02/09 - 2004/02/15
2004/02/02 - 2004/02/08
2004/01/26 - 2004/02/01
2004/01/19 - 2004/01/25
2004/01/12 - 2004/01/18
2004/01/05 - 2004/01/11
2003/12/29 - 2004/01/04

Sunday, February 29, 2004

News and commentary:

"French schoolchildren know the Statue of Liberty..."
(Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2004/02/29)
"French schoolchildren know the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France. Romain Gueraud's drawing shows what he imagines is Lady Liberty's current state."

"Seattle is closer to France than to Texas" (David Horsey, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2004/02/29)
"In January, a cartoon festival was held in the town of Carquefou, just outside of Nantes in the northwest corner of France. Students of all ages competed in a contest to illustrate their vision of the United States. They drew obese Americans devouring Coca-Cola and McDonald's hamburgers. They drew the Statue of Liberty with fangs or in chains or being run over by a wicked Uncle Sam on a motorcycle. And they drew George W. Bush: Bush riding a tank to war; Bush taking over the world; Bush as a liar; Bush as a monster. ...
One cartoon summed up American villainy with a series of three hands. The first was a fist representing Stalin's Russia. The second was a saluting palm, representing Hitler's Germany. The third was another fist clutching a cross, representing Bush's America.
Stalin, Hitler and Bush — one French student's axis of evil."

"A Frenchman or a Jew?" (Fernanda Eberstadt, The New York Times Magazine, 2004/02/29)
"Since the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000 and the subsequent rise of Ariel Sharon to the premiership of Israel, France has suffered what is widely considered the worst epidemic of anti-Jewish violence since the end of the Second World War, much of it at the hands of young Muslims. According to S.O.S. Vérité-Sécurité, an anti-Semitism watchdog organization, 147 Jewish institutions — schools, synagogues, community centers, businesses — have been attacked. There have been reported instances of rabbis being assaulted. Secondary schoolteachers, under pressure from Muslim students, have canceled classes on the Holocaust. On the last Saturday of January, during a concert attended by the wife of President Jacques Chirac, a Jewish singer called Shirel was heckled by a group of French North African youths, who shouted: ''Filthy Jew! Death to the Jews!'' ...
Like many of the country's secular Jews, Stora finds herself reconsidering the venerable French assumption that she and her family must be French first and Jewish second. For a thoroughly assimilated Frenchwoman (her husband is a deputy mayor of Paris), it is no small turnabout in her self-conception.
'I've always loved our neighborhood, its mix of African, Arab, working-class French,'' she said. ''For years, we lived in what I now realize was an illusion of solidarity. In kindergarten, my son learned to cook African dishes; my daughter was taught Arabic calligraphy. Now that's finished. The young mothers picking up their children from preschool wear head scarves; teenagers born in France speak Arabic in the streets — before, never. Their spirit of rejection is absolute.'''

"Israel nabs Palestinian boys planning suicide attacks" (Margot Dudkevitch, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/02/29)
"Samaria district police report the arrest Thursday of 3 youngsters age 14 to 16 from the West Bank village of Tubas.
The three had in their possession makeshift firearms, and admitted their intent to perpetrate a shooting attack in Afula. ...
The three planned to carry out a suicide attack out of anger over Israel's West Bank barrier, relatives told Associated Press Sunday.
They are among the youngest ever arrested for planning suicide attacks. Parents of one of the boys expressed outraged that militant groups had taken to drafting young boys to carry out suicide attacks.
Tarek's parents were outraged and criticized Islamic Jihad for conscripting such young boys to their ranks."

"Stop this witchhunt, senior staff warn BBC governors" (Con Coughlin, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/02/29)
"Leading figures, including Jeremy Paxman, the Newsnight presenter, Andrew Marr the BBC's political editor, John Humphrys, the Radio 4 Today programme presenter, and John Simpson, the world affairs editor, are furious that the BBC has decided to begin an investigation into the conduct of several of their colleagues that could lead to disciplinary action.
They have likened the investigation, which is being conducted by Caroline Thompson, the BBC's director of public policy, and Stephen Dando, the head of human resources, to the "medieval Star Chamber" and have accused the corporation of running a highly damaging witchhunt. ...
Among those expected to be called to go before the BBC committee are Richard Sambrook, the head of news, Kevin Marsh, the editor of the Today programme, George Entwistle, the Newsnight editor, and Stephen Mitchell, the head of radio news. They will be asked to detail their involvement in Gilligan's infamous 6.07 am broadcast, which triggered the events leading to David Kelly's death and the Hutton inquiry. They will also be asked to explain why they continued to defend the story. They could be sacked or moved to other posts, depending on the inquiry's findings."

"Iran poised for terror campaign against Gaddafi" (Con Coughlin, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/02/29)
"Iran is trying to prevent Libya from disclosing incriminating details of Teheran's top-secret nuclear weapons programme, by threatening to unleash Islamic fundamentalist groups opposed to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
Western intelligence specialists have learned from interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects, captured close to Afghanistan's border with Iran, that a militant group of Libyan extremists is being protected and trained by terrorism experts from Iran's Revolutionary Guards. ...
After the war in Afghanistan in 2001 the Libyan group was given a safe haven in Iran, together with other North African terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda. Now the Iranians have agreed to provide the Libyan dissidents with expert training to enable them to attack Libyan targets and intensify their campaign to overthrow Gaddafi.
The Iranians have told Libya of the group's presence in Iran, but promised to restrict its activities to al-Qaeda operations elsewhere so long as Gaddafi does not reveal details of Iran's secret nuclear activity."

"Hussein's Regime Skimmed Billions From Aid Program" (Susan Sachs, The New York Times, 2004/02/29)
"In its final years in power, Saddam Hussein's government systematically extracted billions of dollars in kickbacks from companies doing business with Iraq, funneling most of the illicit funds through a network of foreign bank accounts in violation of United Nations sanctions.
Millions of Iraqis were struggling to survive on rations of food and medicine. Yet the government's hidden slush funds were being fed by suppliers and oil traders from around the world who sometimes lugged suitcases full of cash to ministry offices, said Iraqi officials who supervised the skimming operation. ...
Perhaps the best measure of the corruption comes from a review of the $8.7 billion in outstanding oil-for-food contracts by the provisional Iraqi government with United Nations help. It found that 70 percent of the suppliers had inflated their prices and agreed to pay a 10 percent kickback, in cash or by transfer to accounts in Jordanian, Lebanese and Syrian banks.
At that rate, Iraq would have collected as much as $2.3 billion of the $32.6 billion worth of contracts it signed since mid-2000, when the kickback system began. And some companies were willing to pay even more than the standard 10 percent, according to Trade and Oil Ministry employees."

Saturday, February 28, 2004

News and commentary:

"A Kashmiri Shia Muslim girl..."
(Fayaz Kabli, Reuters, 2004/02/28)
"A Kashmiri Shia Muslim girl watches a Moharram procession in Srinagar, February 28, 2004."

"A Kashmiri Shia Muslim boy..."
(Fayaz Kabli, Reuters, 2004/02/28)
"A Kashmiri Shia Muslim boy with his face smeared with blood rests in an ambulance during a Moharram procession in Srinagar February 28, 2004. Moharram is the mourning month for Shia Muslims, to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Hazrat Imam Hussain, the grandson of Prophet Mohammad, killed along with his 72 companions more than 13 centuries ago in a battle in Iraq."

"He sells nuclear technology" (Johan Wallqvist, Expressen/Watch, 2004/02/19 [2004/02/28])
The Swedish Connection II. Translation of a Swedish article pointed out by Stefan Sharkansky in the post below:
"Expressen can reveal today that a Swedish company has sold advanced nuclear equipment to Syria. ...
It's the Gothenburg based company MEAB Metallextraktion AB which has sold the equipment to Syria. ...
But the equipment can also be used to extract uranium for civilian use as nuclear fuel - or for nuclear weapons.
"The company has no permission to export double use technology. The preliminary investigation will show if the company is involved in smuggling or not, says the custom officer Bertil Weingarten. ...
Has the plant anything to do with nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons?
"Not at all," says Hans Reinhardt, doctor in nuclear chemistry and specialist in uranium extraction.
But later on he admits:
'The technology and equipment we have sold to Syria is quite clearly applicable also for the recycling of nuclear fuel and to make uranium.'" (See also: "I Skövde lärde sig syrierna utvinna uran" (Johan Wallqvist, Expressen, 2004/02/20), in which it is disclosed that Syrian nuclear scientists learned how to extract uranium in Sweden: "In the autumn of 1997 the head of Syria's atomic energy commission arrived to Ranstad with five Syrian nuclear chemists. They studied the extraction of uranium on three occassions in 1998 and 1999, says Bengt Lillhja, the owner of Ranstad Mineral.")

"SAEC plant in Homs, Syria"
(MEAB)

"Syria's Swedish Nukes?" (Stefan Sharkansky, Shark Blog, 2004/02/28)
The Swedish Connection I: "Der Spiegel reports that Swedish authorities and the CIA are investigating the possibility that a Swedish technology company has been secretly and illegally supplying nuclear capabilities to Syria.
Between 1999 and 2002, a now closed Swedish nuclear facility, "Randstad Mineral" had been importing radioactive waste from a German nuclear plant. Syrian technicians were working on site on a project to extract usable uranium from the radioactive waste. During this period, a few grams of plutonium that originated from the German plant mysteriously disappeared from the Randstad Mineral's inventory.
Meanwhile, the Swedish company "Meab" has built a plant in the Syrian city of Homs, publicly described as a "fertilizer factory", but which is suspected by western intelligence of being a center of WMD development. One red-flag: the "fertilizer factory" is operated by the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission, (SAEC). Another red flag: the "fertilizer factory" is said to be similar in construction to the Randstad Mineral uranium extraction facility.
Meab's chief executive, Dr. Hans Reinhardt, claims his company's only connection to Syria really does involve fertilizer and that he doesn't know what "SAEC" stands for." (See also: "MEAB - Turnkey: SAEC plant in Homs, Syria" (MEAB))

"Iranian Radio Reports Bin Laden Captured" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/02/28)
"Iran's state radio, quoting an unnamed source, said Saturday that Osama bin Laden was captured in Pakistan "a long time ago." A Pakistan army spokesman denied he was captured.
The report said that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's visit to the region this week was in connection with the arrest.
The state radio said a reporter for its Pushtun service in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar "confirmed the news" that bin Laden had been captured in a tribal region in Pakistan. He said the news was from "a very reliable source in Peshawar, Pakistan," but the source was not identified.
Pakistani Army spokesman Gen. Shaukat Sultan told The Associated Press that the report is completely untrue. "That information is wrong," he said.
A Pakistani military operation has been under way in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan and a Pakistani official said previously that members of al-Qaida are being sought there, although bin Laden was not a specific target.
Iranian state radio quoted its reporter as saying the arrest happened a long time ago.
"Osama bin Laden has been arrested a long time ago, but Bush is intending to use it for propaganda maneuvering in the presidential election," he said."

"Going Soft on Iran" (Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/03/08 issue)
Iran II: "Khamenei and especially Rafsanjani have nurtured Iran's nuclear program from its infancy. More than anyone else, they are the will and mind behind this program. It is not unreasonable to conjecture that their very identity — who they are as leaders, clerics, and Muslims — is wrapped up in Iran's bomb program. And they are supposed to give it away to Americans, who don't threaten them over al Qaeda, and to Europeans, who keep offering the Iranians more time after the clergy has blatantly lied to them? If you were a "pragmatic" mullah who had beaten the shah, survived the American-aided legions of Saddam Hussein, and eaten alive your revolutionary colleagues-turned-enemies, would you be intimidated by such folks? ...
The realist vision of Iranian politics and U.S.-Iranian relations has zero chance of providing a solution to the WMD conundrum. The Bush administration needs to hang tough and be guided by the golden rule of Iranian clerical politics: Do unto them before they have a chance to do unto you. Give the Europeans a chance — several chances — to prove themselves serious. Let the French ruin the Non-Proliferation Treaty. And then decide whether you want Rafsanjani and Khamenei to have the bomb. In the end, only democracy in Iran will finally solve the nuclear and terrorist problems. Ditto for the rest of the Middle East. Whether the Bush administration understands this come June is, of course, a different matter."

"Europe's Iran Wimpout" (The Wall Street Journal, 2004/02/28)
Iran I: "Anyone who still believes the "international community" had the will to contain Saddam Hussein through inspections need only look at the non-functional non-proliferation process now taking place in neighboring Iran.
This week's report from the International Atomic Energy Agency is as close as could be expected to smoking-gun proof that Tehran's hardliners are building an atomic bomb. The country has been shown to be running multiple uranium-enrichment programs — all of which it originally failed to declare to the U.N. inspectors, and the more sophisticated of which it kept hiding even when given a chance to come clean in an international agreement last October. ...
Yet barely had the ink dried on their pro forma denunciation of last Friday's rigged Iranian elections when European Union foreign ministers offered Iran another chance to deceive. ...
More than a decade ago Margaret Thatcher almost certainly saved the world from a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein by delivering her famous "Don't go wobbly" message to George H.W. Bush. Now's the time for the current occupant of the White House to return the favor by delivering a similar message of resolve to his British counterpart.
Prime Minister Blair may think he's defending the international non-proliferation system by drawing out negotiations with Iran, but the truth is he risks permanently discrediting it. If Iran's repeated deceptions are not cause for referral to the Security Council, then nothing is. And if Iran goes nuclear on the IAEA's watch, then the agency might as well cease to exist."

"No booze, no bathroom cameras, and absolutely no sex. Welcome to Bahrain's Big Brother house" (Madeleine Holt, Independent, 2004/02/28)
An article on the first Arab Big Brother show: "The show, which has a $100,000 (£54,000) first prize, has provoked a predictable outcry from Islamic fundamentalists in Bahrain, who have a parliamentary majority. Their spokesman, Shaikh Adel Al Maawada, said: "I have never seen Big Brother ... But I think it does not suit our society at all ... The idea is against our religion and our traditions."
Islamists are concerned about unmarried men and women living under one roof, and worse still, by the prospect that a couple will fall in love. Mr Al Maawada said: "If they want to succeed they have to fall in love. What really pulls people to the programme is love and what goes on ... The more they will practise it the more they will succeed. And the more some people will get angry, and other people will be very happy."
Conservatives will have plenty of material to fuel their anger. On the opening night, a week ago, contestants greeted each other by kissing their cheeks. The Saudi representative rushed around the house waving his arms above his headscarf: 'I am the only one who has been able to get into the women's quarter. Yes!'"

Friday, February 27, 2004

News and commentary:

"Surrealism vs Reality" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/02/27)
"The events of this week, which opened with eight Israeli terror victims being buried at the same time as Israel was placed on trial at The Hague for trying to defend itself from terror, have about as much in common with reality as a painting by Salvador Dali.
There is something surreal in the spectacle of thousands of Israelis and our supporters marching through the streets of a Dutch city holding pictures of our terror victims as Israel is libeled in a show trial produced and directed by our murderers.
How have we arrived at this point? How is it that after three and a half years of absorbing massacre after massacre that Israel now finds itself on trial?
The answer to this question is found in part in the latest State Department Human Rights Report. Released Wednesday, the report finds both Israel and the Palestinian Authority guilty of countless human rights abuses. Of course, it is balanced. ...
The report very sensitively gives the names of a dozen or so Palestinian children who died during Israeli assaults against Palestinian terrorists who used these children for cover.
Yet, grotesquely, while the names of Palestinian children are listed, the report provides not one name of any Israeli victim of Palestinian terrorism. Not the Ohayon children, not 14-year-old Abigail Litle who was murdered on a bus on her way home from school and not the names of hundreds of other Israeli men, women and children who were murdered last year.
By naming Palestinian victims while not giving names of Israeli victims, the State Department report follows in the path of the general climate that has gripped us for the past 40 months. This general climate is characterized by the dehumanization of Israelis and Jews by the international community." (See also the report: "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" (U.S. Department of State, 2004/02/25). Also: "The battle over Israel's West Bank barrier moves to The Hague" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/02/22) and "Eight killed in Jerusalem bus bombing" (Etgar Lefovitz, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/02/22))

"Words that Don't Matter" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2004/02/27)
Hanson dissects the usage of preemption, unilateralism and multilateralism:
"The Left's problem is not our embrace of the concept of "unilateralism" per se — or it would have attacked Clinton's U.N.-be-damned use of force in Iraq, Kosovo, and Haiti. No, the rub is something altogether different. A Christian, southern-accented, conservative Republican president, coming off a disputed election, has chosen to preempt. And when you hit first in a therapeutic America, you are at least supposed to bite your lip and squeeze Hillary's hand on national television. You do not dare say, "Bring 'em on" and "Smoke 'em out" — much less fly a jet out to an aircraft carrier. ...
So like preemption, in today's super-charged political climate, unilateralism and multilateralism no longer convey any meaning. Those words too have now become little more than coded nomenclature to denigrate the present American administration's efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is perhaps a rule of American politics that Democrats can preempt and intervene pretty much wherever they want and be called "sober" and "reluctant" — given their protestations of pacifism and lip-service to "multilateral frameworks." And to be fair, Republicans can raise deficits that would tar liberals as "tax-and-spend" and "big-government" naifs — and get away with it as purported advocates of "supply side" and "growth."
But whereas President Bush is receiving criticism from both left and right for his fiscal policies, he is not getting praise for his courageous attempt at ending the political and cultural climate that led to September 11. The present bastardization of our language proves it."

"The UN and the Jews" (Anne Bayefsky, Commentary, from the February 2004 issue)
Bayefsky on the UN and anti-Semitism: "And what of today, as we experience the world's most virulent outbreak of anti-Semitic deeds and speech in over a half-century? Concern over this phenomenon did make an appearance, however fleetingly, in two reports issued in 2003 by the UN special investigator on racism, Doudou Diéne. In one of them, his comment consisted of a short, vague reference to the controversy surrounding the recent broadcast on Egyptian television of a series based on the infamous czarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Unnamed "authorities of the countries concerned," Diéne wrote, were in the process of sending him further information on this "allegation" of anti-Semitism.
In a second report published last year, this one addressed to the General Assembly itself, Diéne offered a seemingly new approach, promising to turn his attention to the "clear resurgence of anti-Semitism." But his only action to date has been to take note of the obvious fact that attacks on Jews are "on the rise in Europe, Central Asia, and North America." Entirely absent from his statements has been any mention of the boiling cauldron of Middle Eastern anti-Semitism — a silence all the more remarkable in light of the multiple examples of "Islamophobia" that he has documented with alarm. In this connection, it is worth noting that, though Diéne is now required to produce annual reports "on discrimination against Muslims and Arab peoples in various parts of the world," no report dedicated to the problem of anti-Semitism has ever been produced by any organ of the UN." (Note: The article can also be found here.)

"Relentless PA Hate Incitement against the US and the West" (Itamar Marcus, PMW/IMRA, 2004/02/27)
"The following are selections from articles that incite hatred and violence against the US and the West that have appeared in recent weeks in the PA media.
1. Bush is "Fuhrer of the globalization era"
"The world stands today at the edge of a dangerous slope which threatens the destiny of all humanity. The President of the most powerful nation in the world suffers from megalomania and thinks he's a prophet. He uses military force to rearrange the world as he likes. ... And while the German Fuhrer's adventure ended with tens of millions of dead and wounded, and partial destruction of several countries this adventure of the new Fuhrer [Bush] will return the world to the Stone Age." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 16, 2004] ...
3. The Palestinians will "shake the earth under the feet of the blood and oil sucking neo- imperialists" - the "American European Russian alliance"
"...The right wing lobby, [which] controls Washington and runs a dirty war against all that is Arab and Muslim. It is a Fascist right that formed an alliance with the Fascist Israeli Colonialists. The American European Russian alliance is acting to empty the International institutions, both the UN and the High Court of Justice, of their content. It may be that the Europeans think that the submission of the Arab regimes turned the Arab land to wasteland and that the subdued nations won't act against the neo-imperialism, but they are wrong. This is because the torch of struggle, which accompanies our nation for nearly a century against all types of imperialism, will not be extinguished, but [the Palestinian nation] will continue to lead the Arab nation and will continue to awaken the Arab nation to shake the earth under the feet of the blood and oil sucking neo-imperialists, the thieves of natural resources and murderers of nations." [Editor in Chief, Hafez Al-Barghouti, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 6, 2004]"

"Pakistan May Have Aided North Korea A-Test" (David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, The New York Times, 2004/02/27)
"The revelations about the international nuclear trading of the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan have rekindled a debate inside the American intelligence community over an unresolved but crucial strategic question from the last decade: did Pakistan conduct a secret nuclear weapons test in partnership with North Korea?
Startling clues were detected after underground tests that Pakistan carried out in May 1998, when it proved to the world that its own efforts to build nuclear weapons had succeeded. According to former and current American intelligence officials, an American military jet sent to sample the air after the final test in the wastelands of the Baluchistan desert picked up traces of plutonium.
That surprised experts at the Los Alamos national laboratory, because Pakistan said openly that all of its bombs were fueled by highly enriched uranium, produced at Dr. Khan's laboratories.
Among the possible explanations hotly debated after the tests was that North Korea — perhaps in return for the help from Dr. Khan — might have given Pakistan some of its precious supply of plutonium to conduct a joint test of an atomic weapon."

Thursday, February 26, 2004

News and commentary:

"Official Defends Polio Vaccine Boycott" (AP/ABC News, 2004/02/26)
"A Nigerian state governor defended a boycott of a polio immunization campaign, asserting a spreading outbreak of the disease was a "lesser of two evils" than rendering women infertile with vaccines that some Islamic leaders have deemed a U.S. plot against Muslims.
Kano state governor Ibrahim Shekarau told The Associated Press Wednesday that he "regrets reports" that delaying vaccinations is worsening a polio epidemic that U.N. officials say is spreading across Nigeria's borders and threatening the goal of eradicating the disease by 2005. ...
Door-to-door vaccinations have been banned in Kano, Zamfara and Niger — three predominantly Islamic states in northern Nigeria — since last October, with critics calling the immunization campaign a U.S. plot to spread AIDS or infertility among Muslims.
Shekarau said he believes 'it is a lesser of two evils to sacrifice two, three, four, five, even ten children (to polio) than allow hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of girl-children likely to be rendered infertile.'" (See also: "Nigeria Boycotts Polio Vaccination Drive" (Glenn McKenzie, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/02/22), "Muslims' fears hinder fight on polio" (John Donnelly, The Boston Globe/miami.com, 2004/01/12) and "Polio and rumors spreading in Nigeria" (Glenn McKenzie, AP/The Seattle Times, 2003/10/25))

"The war for human rights" (Saul Singer, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/02/26)
Singer on the silence surrounding the newly released report on mass graves in Iraq:
"It is remarkable enough that there is no news interest in this report, not even of the sneering political kind (such as "Administration spotlights evils of former regime"). What is even more striking is that there is no similar report by a non-governmental agency, such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. ...
To human rights groups, the war against terrorism seems to be mainly a source of abuses, by either the unintentional killing of civilians, the abuse of the civil rights of suspected terrorists in Guantanamo, or because some brutal regimes have used it as an excuse for their own crackdowns.
Many, or even all, of these criticisms might have substantial validity. But to focus only on such derivative matters is to ignore what these same people like to call the "root causes" of the problem.
The world will debate forever whether it was necessary to carpet bomb Dresden or use atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet no one could argue, from a humanitarian perspective, of all things, that the cause of defeating Nazism and fascism was not just. ...
We can argue about means, but we are, in fact, in the greatest human rights struggle since the 1930s.
The war in Iraq, in both a local and a global context, was a super-humanitarian intervention. Terrorism and those behind it are the greatest threats to human rights - the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The fight against terrorism does not compete with the struggle for human rights. It is that struggle." (See also: "Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves" (USAID, February 2004))

"It's the war, stupid" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2004/02/28 issue)
"If Gore or Kerry had been in the White House on September 11, I'm certain the Taleban would still be in power, and Afghanistan would still be a playground of terror camps. Oh, to be sure, there'd have been sanctions and Security Council resolutions and some arrests of associates in the US, but the broad context of 9/11 would have been different: it would have been a 'tragedy', not an act of war; mounds of teddy bears, not regime change. For that critical, liberating distinction we have to thank Don Rumsfeld and George W. Bush. According to Rowan Scarborough's new book Rumsfeld’s War, at one o'clock that afternoon, as the Pentagon still burned and after he'd helped with the injured, the Defence Secretary told the President, 'This is not a criminal action. This is war.'
November's election is a referendum on Rumsfeld's judgment that day. After Pearl Harbor, Admiral Yamamoto said that he feared all he'd done was wake a sleeping giant. But it's been two years now. If you figure it's time the sleeping giant resumed his slumbers, Kerry's your man." (See also: "'This is war,' Rumsfeld told Bush" (The Washington Times, 2004/02/23))

"UK 'spied on UN's Kofi Annan'" (BBC News, 2004/02/26)
"British spies listened in to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's office in the run up to the Iraq war, former UK cabinet minister Clare Short says.
Ms Short said she had read transcripts of some of Mr Annan's conversations.
She said she recalled thinking, as she talked to Mr Annan: "Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he and I are saying."
Tony Blair said the claims were "deeply irresponsible" and appeared to cast doubt on her future as a Labour MP.
UN officials said they did not know whether the allegations were true or not, but say such actions would have been illegal."

"Israelis, in Raid on Arab Banks, Seize Reputed Terrorist Funds" (James Bennet, The New York Times, 2004/02/26)
"Israeli forces raided Arab banks on Wednesday in Ramallah, on the West Bank, seizing millions of dollars representing hundreds of institutional and personal accounts that Israel said were financing Palestinian terrorism.
It was by far the largest such seizure during more than three years of conflict. Witnesses said soldiers covered the banks' security cameras with black plastic bags and herded all the employees together before ordering workers with keys to open the vaults. ...
A senior Israeli security official said the money, in various currencies, was still being counted. He said that the total was probably between $6.7 million and $9 million, and that the amount taken from the vaults equaled the sums held in what Israeli intelligence had identified as suspect accounts."

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

News and commentary:

"48 Dead in Nigeria Religious Clash" (Dulue Mbachu, AP/My Way, 2004/02/25)
"Suspected Muslim militants armed with guns and bows and arrows killed at least 48 people in an attack on a farming village in central Nigeria. Most of the victims died as they sought refuge in a church, police said Wednesday.
The latest bout of Muslim-Christian violence in the region occurred Tuesday night in Yelwa, a mainly Christian town in Nigeria's Plateau State, police commissioner Innocent Ilozuoke said. ...
For decades, the majority Christian inhabitants of Plateau and the minority Muslim population - mostly Hausa and Fulani tribespeople with origins farther north - had lived in harmony.
But tensions between the two communities heightened in the past four years as 12 majority Muslim states in the north adopted the strict Sharia, or Islamic, legal codes, perceived by Christians as an expansionist threat.
Since 1999, ethnic and religious violence has killed more than 10,000 people in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country." (Hat tip: Little Green Footballs.)

"Seeds of Revolution" (Avishai Margalit and Ian Buruma, The New York Review of Books, from the 2004/03/11 issue)
"The question, then, is how to protect the legitimate idea of the West, that is to say, the world's liberal democracies, against its enemies. And the West, in this sense, includes such fragile Asian democracies as Indonesia and the Philippines. Quite aside from military tactics or international diplomacy, the question is what to think, how to conceive the problem. It is perhaps easier to conclude what not to think.
Although Christian fundamentalists speak of a crusade, the West is not at war with Islam. Indeed, the fiercest battles will be fought inside the Muslim world, not strictly between religionists and secularists, but between those who favor civil liberties and freedom of thought and those who wish to impose a theocracy. The religious revolution will have to be halted preferably not by outside intervention but by Muslims themselves. In fact, Western intervention often makes things harder for non-Western liberals, who will be seen as traitors slavishly following Western ways. There is indeed a worldwide clash going on, but the fault lines do not coincide with national, ethnic, or religious borders. Moderate Muslims in Indonesia and Pakistan are as much the targets of Islamist zealotry as Westerners. It is indeed the Westernizers in their midst who provoke the greatest rage among the religious revolutionaries of the Middle East and beyond. The war of ideas is in some respects the same as the one that was fought several generations ago, against various versions of fascism and state socialism. This is not to say the military war is the same, or that all the ideas overlap. In the 1940s, the war was only between states. Now it is also against a disparate, worldwide, loosely organized, mostly underground revolutionary movement." (Hat tip: Angus Cook. See also: "The Origins of Occidentalism" (Ian Buruma, The Chronicle Review, from the 2004/02/06 issue) and "Occidentalism" (Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, The New York Review of Books, from the 2002/01/17 issue))

"Saddam's Ambassador to al Qaeda" (Jonathan Schanzer, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/03/01 issue)
An interview with Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, "who served in Saddam's secret police, the Mukhabarat, from 1997 to 2002, and is currently sitting in a Kurdish prison. Al-Shamari says that he worked for a man who was Saddam's envoy to al Qaeda.":
"In addition to weapons, al-Shamari said, the Mukhabarat also helped finance Ansar al Islam. "On one occasion we gave them ten million Swiss dinars [$700,000]," al-Shamari said, referring to the pre-1990 Iraqi currency. On other occasions, the Mukhabarat provided more than that. The assistance, he added, was furnished "every month or two months." ...
Al-Shamari also told me that the links between Saddam's regime and the al Qaeda network went beyond Ansar al Islam. He explained in considerable detail that Saddam actually ordered Abu Wael to organize foreign fighters from outside Iraq to join Ansar. Al-Shamari estimated that some 150 foreign fighters were imported from al Qaeda clusters in Jordan, Turkey, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, and Lebanon to fight with Ansar al Islam's Kurdish fighters. ...
Al-Shamari said that there was also contact with the Egyptian "Gamaat al-Jihad," which is now seen as the core of al Qaeda's leadership, as well as with the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which bin Laden helped create in 1998 as an alternative to Algeria's Armed Islamic Group (GIA). Al-Shamari talked of Abu Wael's links with Turkey's "Jamaa al-Khilafa" — likely the group also known as the "Union of Islamic Communities" (UIC) or the "Organization of Caliphate State."

"Al Qaeda Builds a Euro Army" (DEBKAfile, 2004/02/25)
"Even more disquietingly, al Qaeda is discovered to be recruiting manpower in Europe at a brisk pace in a push into the continent personally advocated by Osama bin Laden. The Saudi-born terrorist has thus gained the upper hand in a debate within his organization’s top leadership over its next focal arena. Bin Laden urged fostering the war on the "far enemy" (Europe) as against concentrating the movement’s fury on the "near enemy" (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, South Asia).
The European arena, often neglected by American counter-terrorism agencies, is showing a dangerous dynamism. Data assembled for a preliminary assessment show al Qaeda in the process of evolving from terrorist networks and cells into a professional fighting force with military features.
According to French counter-intelligence, al Qaeda has recruited in France alone between 35,000 and 45,000 men and is organizing them into military-style units. They meet regularly for training in the use of weapons and explosives, combat tactics and indoctrination and are controlled from local and district command centers under the organization’s national French command.
In Germany, Al Qaeda has recruited 25,000 to 30,000 men. The British domestic intelligence agency MI5 estimates 10,000 faithful have joined up in Britain, providing Blunkett with more than ample cause for concern."

"Human rights the court missed" (Anne Bayefsky, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/02/25)
Bayefsky points out that the UN report on the security barrier "does not describe a single terrorist act against Israelis.":
"A process that attempted to consider competing human rights claims would look very different.
On the one hand, suicide-bombings violate numerous rights derived from international treaties ratified by Israel: the right to life, the right not to be subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, the right to equality and freedom from persecution, security of the person, the right to health and well-being, the right to safe working conditions, the right to work, freedom from incitement to violence or war, freedom of religion, the right to the protection of the family, the right to the protection of the child, the right to education, freedom of movement, the right to vote, freedom of association, the right to an adequate standard of living and the right of self-determination. ...
The language of human rights is one of the most powerful political currencies of our times. That is why terrorists attempt to use it to their own ends, claiming victimhood for violations for which they are responsible.
The International Court of Justice is at a crucial juncture in its history: to become another weapon in the terrorists' arsenal, or to reject the gross abuse of the rule of law and the attempt to deny the equal value of the human rights of Israelis."

"The Left's Anti-Semitic Chic" (George F. Will, The Washington Post, 2004/02/25)
"The appallingly brief eclipse of anti-Semitism after Auschwitz demonstrates how beguiling is the simplicity of pure stupidity. All of the left's prescriptions for curing what ails society — socialism, communism, psychoanalysis, "progressive" education, etc. — have been discarded, so now the left is reduced to adapting that hardy perennial of the right, anti-Semitism. This is a new twist to the left's recipe for salvation through elimination: All will be well if we eliminate capitalists, or private property, or the ruling class, or "special interests," or neuroses, or inhibitions. Now, let's try eliminating a people, starting with their nation, which is obnoxiously pro-American and insufferably Spartan.
Europe's susceptibility to political lunacy, and the Arab world's addiction to it, is not news. And the paranoid style is a political constant. Those who believe a conspiracy assassinated President Kennedy say: Proof of the conspiracy's diabolical subtlety is that no evidence of it remains. Today's anti-Semites say: Proof of the Jews' potent menace is that there are so few of them — just 13 million of the planet's 6 billion people — yet they cause so many political, economic and cultural ills. Gosh. Imagine if they were, say, 1 percent of Earth's population: 63 million."

"A New Job for Kay - Let him investigate the U.N. Oil-for-Food scam" (Claudia Rosett, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/02/25)
Rosett thinks David Kay should investigate the U.N.-supplied numbers on Oil-for-Food's operations: "It's a little hard to know whether oil sales were actually $65 billion or $70 billion, whether there were five or six banks or just one, whether at least that one bank, BNP, ever paid significant interest on balances that toward the end of the program totaled $20 billion or $15 billion or $9 billion or $12 billion, and whether humanitarian import contracts were funded to the tune of $39.2 billion or $46 billion. Mr. Annan assures us the program has been audited many times, even if it was done in confidence, in-house, backed up by member nations that may have had their own interests to consider, such as one of Saddam's favorite trading partners, France.
If you want to get fancy, you can factor in the allegations that Saddam underbilled for oil and overpaid for goods via the U.N. contracts, in order to piggyback bribes and kickbacks atop the Oil-for-Food program. If true, then the two things we can bank on are that Saddam took in more than the U.N. reported, and the goods the Iraqi people received were worth less.
Which brings us back to Mr. Kay, who in reference to Oil-for-Food noted recently that "a lot of people took part in what was clearly a scam." I start to wonder whether Mr. Kay, given full powers to investigate, might return to report that whatever the U.N. may be reporting, we still don't have a clue about the real numbers."

"Right Way to Farm the Classics" (Rone Tempest, Los Angeles Times, 2004/02/25)
A profile of Victor Davis Hanson: "It's not hard to understand how Hanson has become an intellectual bulwark of administration foreign policy, given his conviction that nothing less than the future of Western civilization depends on our cleareyed recognition of the menace posed by militant Islamic forces.
"We haven't had enemies this antithetical to the United States in a long, long time," Hanson said several days later over coffee in San Francisco, where he was a guest speaker at the Commonwealth Club. "Take your pick of the Western agenda. Women's rights? They want to go back to the Dark Ages. Homosexual rights? They want to kill them. Democracy? They don't believe in it. Religious tolerance? You're dead if you're not a Muslim. Technology? They don't like it." ...
At a White House Christmas gathering, Bush approached him, asking, "How'm I doing?" Before the flustered Hanson could fully respond, he said, the president had assured him, "I'm not finished yet," and walked on to other guests. This pleased Hanson, whose historical heroes are decisive men ranging from the Athenian leader Pericles to Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, whose tactical brilliance at the Battle of Shiloh and brutal "March to the Sea" helped break the back of the Confederacy."

"Number of Asylum Seekers Drops to a Six-Year Low, the U.N. Says" (Fiona Fleck, The New York Times, 2004/02/25)
Good news indeed, but don't expect much gratitude towards a certain superpower, without which it wouldn't be: "The number of asylum seekers across the world dropped by one- fifth, to 471,00 last year — the lowest figure since 1997 — compared with 587,000 the previous year. Almost all of those arrived in 36 industrialized countries, the report said. ...
The Geneva-based agency said the drop in asylum seekers globally had been caused in part by the increasing security in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and the former Yugoslavia, which both facilitates refugees' return and lessens the motivation to leave."

Added in archive:
"He Meant What He Said .... The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf" (Omer Bartov, The New Republic/Free Republic, 2004/01/23)

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

News and commentary:

"An Iraqi holding the name of a victim..."
(USAID, February 2004)
From the harrowing report on "Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves" (USAID, February 2004): "An Iraqi holding the name of a victim on a scrap of paper, searches a list of victims."

"Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves" (USAID, February 2004)
Since the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown in May, 270 mass graves have been reported. In November 2003 the remains of 400,000 people had been discovered. "If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.":
"Ali's group was the next to be pulled from the bus. In his group was a blind man, three brothers, a woman, and her five year old son. The group was led to the front of the bus where the headlights were directly on them.
They were pushed to the ground and then were pulled up one at a time to be executed. They were pushed a couple of feet to the edge of the swamp and shot. Most would fall before being shot because they were over-come with fear. Ali does not remember any words being spoken — except the plea of the three brothers who begged that at least one be spared. They were executed one at a time. Next, the woman was shot in front of her five-year-old child. The child lunged at the legs of the executioner and was kicked away and shot in the face. The blind man was then executed and his chest exploded on Ali. There were three executioners. They took turns shooting and reloading. Ali was last in the group to be shot, and the soldier who was to execute Ali shot between his legs. The soldier was then shot dead by another soldier. During this commotion, Ali turned to the swamp, jumped over bodies, and ran through the water."

"Outing the Jewish 'Cabal'" (Michael J. Totten, michaeltotten.com, 2004/02/24)
Totten fiskes Kalle Lasn, editor of Adbusters Magazine, two days in a row:
"The title says it all: Why won't anyone say they are Jewish?
Let's just pause a moment before wading into it.
It hardly matters who he means by "they" in the title. "They" are a group of people who, for whatever reason, Mr. Lasn thinks need to be "outed." Here he is posing as the brave writer bucking the tyranny of political correctness to tell the truth that others dare not say. "They" are Jews. As if this means something important. Aha! he expects his readers to think. They're Jews. That explains it.
"They," by the way, are neoconservative intellectuals. Or, I should say, "they" are half the people on his list of neoconservatives. He has a tidy list of 50 people he labels as neocons. He penciled in a little dot next to all the Jewish names. At least he didn't use a yellow star. ...
Kalle Lasn isn't left with much of an excuse for his list of Jews. He says he's not anti-Semitic, and he very well may not be, at least not consciously. The thing is, he doesn't need to be. Whether or not he's the type of guy who lays awake in the middle of the night fretting about Joooooooos, or whether he's just a left-wing hack with a kooky axe to grind, the fact remains that he's repeating the ZOG propaganda of white supremacists. And he's doing it in a left-wing magazine with the expectation that his readers will eat it up." (Hat tip: InstaPundit. See also: "Why won't anyone say they are Jewish?" (Kalle Lasn, Adbusters Magazine, from the March/April 2004 issue) and "The Decline and Fall of Adbusters Magazine" (Michael J. Totten, michaeltotten.com, 2004/02/23))

"Culturally enlightened French writers show simplistic Americans what justice is all about" (Merde in France, 2004/02/24)
"Where were you on 9-11? Alain Soral, French writer and OBL worshipper (like MANY French) who calls for American civilian deaths in his writings, remembers ...

"I was in my home office writing a pen-named freelance psy-sex piece for a womens' magazine in order to put some food on the table, the phone rang and it was an old friend who I had a falling out with a few years ago, an old friend who was doing the same debilitating work under a pen-name for a different magazine. He screamed into the telephone: "switch on your TV, this is great!". I turned the TV on and it was so beautful that we put our differences aside. I then called an other friend who I had had a falling out with over some political nonsense. He had gone to Spain. On the backdrop of the same images we experienced the same communion and we buried the hatchet as well... Guys the world over who share the same feelings with those who are humilated, felt the same sense of euphoria while watching these biblical images of justice and punishment! For me, 9-11 represents the reconciliation, concerning most subjects, with all those that this mediocre life has forced me to hate because of insignificant differences... Truthfully, it was a beautiful moment of love. That should tell you how much I remember it!"

Soral has published several books, is on prime time talk shows fairly often, and has screenwritten at least one film. Soral is mass market over here, not at all fringe stuff. Never forgive, never forget. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever."

"Bin Laden Deputy Warns of More Attacks on the U.S." (Andrew Hammond, Reuters, 2004/02/23)
"By turning on France in an audiotape broadcast on Dubai-based Al Arabiya television, Zawahri — identifiable by his voice and rhetorical style — went beyond now familiar tirades against the United States, Britain, Gulf Arab states and other supporters of last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
"France is the country of freedom which defends freedom to show the body and to be immoral and depraved. In France you're free to show yourself but not to dress modestly," he said in reference to the headscarf ban newly approved by parliament.
"This is a new sign of the Crusader hatred which Westerners harbor against Muslims while they boast of freedom, democracy and human rights," said the voice on the tape. ...
"Bush alleged that his troops have spread freedom in the world, that Iraq had achieved democracy thanks to his coalition forces, that his government has crushed more than two-thirds of al Qaeda and that...Afghanistan is secure," he said.
"The leader of the most powerful country on earth is not embarrassed to say these deceptions and lies. It's gotten to the stage that he can ridicule his listeners to this degree," he said."

"Another Nuclear Program Found in Iran" (Karl Vick, The Washington Post, 2004/02/23)
"International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have discovered that Iran produced and experimented with polonium, an element useful in initiating the chain reaction that produces a nuclear explosion, according to two people familiar with a report the inspectors will submit to the United Nations this week. ...
Polonium is a radioactive, silvery-gray or black metallic element. The most common natural isotope is polonium-210. It has some industrial purposes, but can also be utilized, in combination with beryllium, to make sure that the chain reaction leading to a nuclear explosion is initiated at precisely the right moment.
"It does heighten suspicions because polonium-210 is so linked to a certain type of neutron-initiator," said David Albright, an expert on nuclear proliferation at the Institute for Science and International Security. 'But it's not an ideal neutron-initiator. It doesn't last long, so you've got to keep producing it.'"

Monday, February 23, 2004

News and commentary:

"The Great Iranian Election Fiasco" (Michael Ledeen, National Review, 2004/02/23)
"For those interested in exposing hypocrisy, it is hard to find a better example than all those noble souls who denounced Operation Iraqi Freedom as a callous operation to gain control over Iraqi oil, but who remain silent as country after country, from Europe to Japan, appeases the Iranian tyrants precisely in order to win oil concessions.
Meanwhile, the only Western leader who consistently speaks the truth about Iran is President George W. Bush, and the phony intellectuals of the West continue to call him a fool and a fascist. Meanwhile, his most likely Democrat opponent, Senator John Kerry, sends an e-mail to Tehran Times, Iran's official English-language newspaper, promising that relations between the United States and Iran would improve enormously if Kerry were to be elected next November.
Finally, perhaps our enterprising journalists could ask the administration how it can be, three years after inauguration, that we still have no Iran policy. Yes, Virginia, there is still no National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) on Iran, even though Iran is the world's leading sponsor of terrorism, and we claim to be in a war against the terror masters.
Faster, please."

"Solidarity With Iran" (Michael McFaul and Abbas Milani, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/02/23)
"Iran occupies the same place in its neighborhood as Poland did in communist Europe in the 1980s. Like Poland then, Iranian society is organized, hostile to the regime, pro-democratic and pro-American, while Iran's rulers — like their Polish counterparts 20 years ago — have no legitimacy, are deeply corrupt, and seem ready to use any means necessary to survive. At the risk of stretching the analogy, last Friday's "coup" in Iran is the equivalent of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski's crackdown against Solidarity. Just as in Poland after December 1981, inside Iran the era of compromise and negotiation is now over.
However, the coup in Iran today and the one in Poland are different in one critical respect: the West's reaction. In contrast to the concerted efforts in the '80s to aid Solidarity, few in the West — including the Bush administration — have shown much solidarity with Iran's democrats. This policy, or the lack of one, needs to change. ...
The future of Iran, and of its potential democracy, must be determined inside Iran. But the U.S. can play a crucial role by making clear that democracy is the paramount foreign policy goal in Iran. Arms control negotiations with the mullahs may serve American short-term interests, but at the expense of more lasting gains. If Iran becomes a liberal democracy, surely the Iranian nuclear threat to the U.S. will disappear definitively. After all, did not Poland's Solidarity ultimately do more to end the Cold War than any Soviet-American arms control agreement?"

"Few hurrahs for Al-Hurra" (Arnaud de Borchgrave, The Washington Times, 2004/02/23)
"Intelligence analysts, it now turns out, were fed dynamite corroboration about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction from Iraqi army defectors who, in turn, had been coached to lie about their firsthand knowledge of such weapons. The coaches, in this instance, were London-based Iraqi exile leaders, gnawed by naked ambition to oust Saddam and become Iraq's new top bananas. All this is bound to come out in the wash — but not until March 2005 — when President Bush's appointed commissioners tell him what happened on his watch. ...
What was John Doe the analyst to make of Vice President Dick Cheney on Aug. 26, 2002, when he signaled in a major speech the administration's intention to wage war because "there is no doubt" Saddam "has weapons of mass destruction" and is preparing to use them against the United States? Not only did Saddam have chem-bio WMDs, explained Mr. Cheney to gazillion listeners around the world, but he had "resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." ...
We all owe an apology to Hans Blix and his merry band of U.N. inspectors. They got it right. Bill O'Reilly of the highest-rated "O'Reilly Factor" on Fox, angered he had been so badly misled, turned against President Bush — on the air, live. While the buck stops on the president's desk, he is hardly the one to blame. Garbage-in-garbage-out was the problem."

"'This is war,' Rumsfeld told Bush" (The Washington Times, 2004/02/23)
An excerpt from Rowan Scarborough's new book "Rumsfeld's War":
"Donald H. Rumsfeld sat in a vault-like room studded with video screens and talked with President Bush as the Pentagon burned.
"This is not a criminal action," the secretary of defense told Bush over a secure line. "This is war."
The word "war" meant more than going after the al Qaeda terrorist network in Afghanistan, the fault line of terrorism. Bush said he wanted retaliation.
The setting was the Pentagon's Executive Support Center, where Rumsfeld held secure video teleconferences with the White House across the Potomac or with ground commanders 10,000 miles away. ...
Rumsfeld's instant declaration of war, previously unreported, took America from the Clinton administration's view that terrorism was a criminal matter to the Bush administration's view that terrorism was a global enemy to be destroyed.
"That was really a breakthrough strategically and intellectually," recalls Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy. "Viewing the 9/11 attacks as a war that required a war strategy was a very big thought, and a lot flowed from that."

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

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Articles of the week

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)

"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)

"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)

"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)

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