Archived news and commentary: April 26 - May 2, 2004

2004/06/28 - 2004/07/04
2004/06/21 - 2004/06/27
2004/06/14 - 2004/06/20
2004/06/07 - 2004/06/13
2004/05/31 - 2004/06/06
2004/05/24 - 2004/05/30
2004/05/17 - 2004/05/23
2004/05/10 - 2004/05/16
2004/05/03 - 2004/05/09
2004/04/26 - 2004/05/02
2004/04/19 - 2004/04/25
2004/04/12 - 2004/04/18
2004/04/05 - 2004/04/11
2004/03/29 - 2004/04/04

Sunday, May 2, 2004

News and commentary:

"The Uncelebrity: Pat Tillman, R.I.P." (Andrew Sullivan, The Sunday Times/andrewsullivan.com, 2004/05/02)
"The indictment of the West is that it is shamelessly materialist, soulless, obsessed with celebrity, entranced by superficiality, addicted to the spin of appearances, the cult of contemporaneity. Much of this is, of course, true. But it is only part of the truth. It is also true that another America and another West exists. An America that is now risking the lives of its youngest and brightest to protect others; an America that is spending billions to reconstruct a devastated country and is happy to do so through a barrage of hatred and resentment; an America where, beneath the glittering surface, real virtues — of sacrifice and honor and duty — actually do endure. "There is in Pat Tillman's example," senator John McCain said last week, "in his unexpected choice of duty to his country over the riches and other comforts of celebrity, and in his humility, such an inspiration to all of us to reclaim the essential public-spiritedness of Americans that many of us, in low moments, had worried was no longer our common distinguishing trait."
Well it is still a distinguishing trait. And when it emerges in the least obvious of places — in the celebrity glamor of pro football — it's worth taking a moment to place it alongside the images from Abu Ghraib. Without it, the world would be a far darker place. Without it, the freedom to criticize a war would be impossible. Pat Tillman is no nobler than any of the other hundreds of dead and thousands of wounded who are the victims — along with so many of the Afghan and Iraqi people — of the horror of war. But he saw two critical things: that we are at war and that each of us has a responsibility, in different ways, to fight back. Except he also added one more thing. He wouldn't want this or any column to be written about someone like him. Which is why, every now and again, it must be." (See also: "Former NFL Player Killed in Afghanistan" (John J. Lumpkin, AP/My Way, 2004/04/23))

"The End of American Jewry's Golden Era" (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs/danielpipes.org, 2004/05/02)
An interview with Daniel Pipes: "Pipes contends that the mega-events of the last few years may have ushered in a less favorable era for American Jewry: "The Jews' Golden Age in America began in 1950, when social restrictions were eased in universities, banks, businesses, clubs, etc. This period may now be ending with the growth of the American Muslim population. Within that community, there are significant elements that see American Jewry as their prime enemy; they perceive Jews as the cause of Islamic failure. ...
In this context, it is important to understand the motivations and world of thought of extremist Muslims. Pipes defines an Islamist as one who believes Islam is the solution to every problem. "In America, an Islamist would be somebody who wants to replace the constitution with the Qur'an. It is a totalitarian movement that has much in common with fascism and Marxism-Leninism." He estimates that about 10-15 percent of Muslims in the world are Islamists, which is tantamount to well over a hundred million people. Pipes adds that the percentage is probably in the same order of magnitude among U.S. Muslims.
He forecasts: 'There will be more attacks by Islamists on Americans. I can say this confidently because so many signs point in this direction. These assaults will awaken people. I expect it to be a one-way process of what I call education by murder. I do expect ever more Americans to worry; contrarily, I do not expect to hear many say, 'Well, I used to be worried about the threat of militant Islam, but no longer.' As time passes and more events occur, their assessment will become more realistic.'"

"Horror on the Streets of Industrial City" (Arab News, 2004/05/02)
"In a grim replay of scenes in Baghdad [sic] recently, gunmen bound one of the bodies hand-and-foot and attached it to the rear of a vehicle — big enough, an eye witness said, to allow four weapons to be brandished out one side and three out of the other. They then dragged the body through the residential area of the Royal Commission housing area, while shooting into the air and at selected buildings. They were heard to be shouting “jihad, jihad.”
The girls’ and boys’ high schools were hit in what locals see as a symbolic gesture, and the local McDonald’s restaurant was raked with fire. Plate glass windows were peppered with bullet holes, and an illuminated sign shot out. The body finally ended up in a gutter outside a bank in the residential area. An eyewitness who manages a local business told Arab News that: 'The body had all the clothes ripped away except for shreds of underwear and shoes. It was just lying in the gutter; it was horrible to see.'"

"Saudi vows to crush terror with iron fist after shooting rampage" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/02)
Note the outrageous choice of headline: "The body of one of five Westerners killed in a shooting rampage in the Saudi port of Yanbu was stripped naked and dragged behind the gunmen's getaway car, witnesses and press reports revealed. ...
"I saw three armed men pull (a victim) close to my school and shout 'Help your brothers in Fallujah (Iraq). Jihad! Jihad! God is great!" said a local student. Another witness added: "The American was mutilated."
The English-language Saudi Gazette reported on its website on Sunday that "a Westerner was kidnapped, stripped naked, tied to a vehicle, and dragged along the road as the attackers made their getaway".
It also ran a photograph of a mutilated body lying in a street before a crowd of onlookers.
"Black Saturday in Yanbu" was the headline on the website of another English-language newspaper the Arab News, quoting witnesses as saying the body was dragged for three kilometres (two miles). One Filipino witness said a teenage Saudi was standing on the passenger seat, firing into the air.
However, the official Saudi news agency SPA denied the reports.
Reports that "the bodies of two victims of the ugly attack in Yanbu, including one American, were mutilated and dragged through the streets... are totally unfounded," said an authorized source quoted by the agency." (See also: "Saudi Arabia blames "Zionists" for deadly attack" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2004/05/02))

"The harrowing escape of a US driver held captive in Iraq" (Peter Grier et al., Christian Science Monitor, 2004/05/03)
"Sunday morning at around 11:15 a wounded man came panting up to a New York National Guard unit near the Iraqi town of Belad, about 30 miles south of Tikrit.
The man said he was an American: Thomas Hamill, a contractor kidnapped last month after insurgents ambushed a convoy in which he'd been driving. He said he'd heard the US patrol pass the building in which he was being held, so he'd pried a door open and chased them half a mile up the road.
Other than an old gunshot wound to the arm, Mr. Hamill seemed fine, so the US troops hastily cordoned off the house where he'd been held prisoner, capturing two Iraqis and one AK-47 automatic rifle. Hamill was then evacuated to Baghdad — an emotional bit of good news after a month of record US casualties and increasing insurgent attacks. "I'm just so happy my daddy's going to be home," says his 11-year-old daughter, Tori." (See also: "Two US soldiers, several civilians missing in Iraq: Pentagon" (ABC News, 2004/04/10))

"Daily Mirror Stands by Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Photos" (Reuters/My Way , 2004/05/02)
"The Daily Mirror newspaper stood by its report that British soldiers beat an Iraqi detainee and published new allegations on Monday about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
A number of political and media commentators have questioned the integrity of five black and white photographs published in the newspaper on Saturday, apparently showing British soldiers abusing a hooded Iraqi detainee arrested for stealing.
"Despite the whispering campaign and dodgy briefings that went on yesterday, the Daily Mirror has no doubt that the allegations made by the two soldiers who came to us were true," the newspaper said in an editorial on Monday." (See also: "Doubt cast on Iraq torture photos" (BBC News, 2004/05/02))

"Sharon's Party Rejects His Gaza Plan, Polls Say" (Matt Spetalnick, Reuters, 2004/05/02)
"Israeli leader Ariel Sharon's party overwhelmingly rejected his Gaza pullout plan Sunday, exit polls showed, handing him an embarrassing defeat. ...
Television polls projected the prime minister losing the vote in his rightist Likud party roughly 60 to 40 percent despite President Bush's endorsement of his strategy of "disengagement" from the Palestinians.
The outcome of the referendum within the traditionally pro-settler Likud, if confirmed by the official ballot count, could jeopardize Sharon's plan and trigger a political crisis. ...
The Likud referendum was not binding and Sharon had vowed that even if he lost among the party's 193,000 voters he would ultimately present the plan to parliament where he would have a greater chance of winning approval."

"Pregnant mother, four daughters laid to rest" (Margot Dudkevitch, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/05/02)
"A pregnant mother and her four daughters were shot dead Sunday after two terrorists opened fire at Israeli cars traveling near the Kissufim Crossing at the entrance to the Gush Katif settlement bloc in the Gaza Strip.
The dead were identified as Tali Hatuel, 34, eight months pregnant and her daughters Hila, 11, Hadar, 9, Roni, 7, Merav, 2 all from the settlement of Katif. The five were laid to rest 6.30 pm on Sunday at the new cemetery in Ashkelon.
President Moshe Katsav attended the funeral.
Two soldiers and an Israeli civilian were also wounded in the attack and were evacuated to Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheba.
The IDF said that both of the gunmen, who arrived at the area by car, were killed in an ensuing firefight.
The Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and Popular Resistance Committees claimed joint responsibility for the attack, saying it was to avenge the assassinations of Hamas leaders Sheikh Yassin and Rantisi."

"'Terrorists' poisoned schoolgirls" (BBC News, 2004/05/02)
"The Afghan president has blamed "terrorist elements" for the poisoning of three schoolgirls in the eastern province of Khost.
Hamid Karzai said they were poisoned by people opposed to girls attending school, and described the perpetrators as inhuman.
"I will not call anyone an Afghan or a Muslim who poisons an eight-year-old... because she is school-going," he added.
He said the girls were in critical condition.
However, a local official told AP news agency that they had recovered.
The official said the incident happened five or six days ago outside the city of Khost's only girls' school.
"A woman gave poisoned fruit powder to the girls and told them to mix it with water and drink it," he said.
'After a couple of minutes, they were unconscious.'"

"Rough Justice in Iraq" (Rod Nordland and John Barry, Newsweek, from the 2004/05/10 issue)
"Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski is angry. She says she warned her superiors from the first about the ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners. As commander of the Army Reserve's 800th Military Police Brigade, she oversaw the guards at U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, including those at Saddam Hussein's former torture center at Abu Ghurayb. The trouble was, Karpinski says, she didn't have enough troops or resources to do the job right, and the men at the top ignored her complaints. "They just wanted it to go away," she told Newsweek last week. In the end, several of her soldiers apparently went out of control. The CBS News show "60 Minutes II" released snapshots last week of grinning guards at Abu Ghurayb forcing naked prisoners to pose in degrading positions. One picture showed a hooded prisoner perched on a box and holding a pair of wires; if he fell, his captors allegedly told him, he would be electrocuted. "There's no excuse for what these people did," says Karpinski. 'They're just bad people. But the guys involved in this were new to Abu Ghurayb. It got way out of hand.'"

"Lesser Evils" (Michael Ignatieff, The New York Times Magazine, 2004/05/02)
"So anyone who says ''Relax, more people are killed in road accidents than are killed in terrorist attacks'' is playing games. The conspiracy theorists who claim the government is manufacturing the threat in order to foist secret government upon us ought to wise up. Anyone who doesn't take seriously a second major attack on the United States just isn't being serious. In the Spanish elections in March, we may have had a portent of what's ahead: a terrorist gang trying to intimidate voters into altering the result of a democratic election. We can confidently expect that terrorists will attempt to tamper with our election in November. ...
Sticking too firmly to the rule of law simply allows terrorists too much leeway to exploit our freedoms. Abandoning the rule of law altogether betrays our most valued institutions. To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war. These are evils because each strays from national and international law and because they kill people or deprive them of freedom without due process. They can be justified only because they prevent the greater evil. The question is not whether we should be trafficking in lesser evils but whether we can keep lesser evils under the control of free institutions. If we can't, any victories we gain in the war on terror will be Pyrrhic ones."

"'Lowering Our Sights'" (Robert Kagan, The Washington Post, 2004/05/02)
"All but the most blindly devoted Bush supporters can see that Bush administration officials have no clue about what to do in Iraq tomorrow, much less a month from now. Consider Fallujah: One week they're setting deadlines and threatening offensives; the next week they're pulling back. The latest plan, naming one of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard generals to lead the pacification of the city, is the kind of bizarre idea that only desperate people can conjure. The Bush administration is evidently in a panic, and this panic is being conveyed to the American people. ...
The truth is, if the goal is stability, that the alternatives are no easier to carry out and no less costly in money and lives than the present attempt to create some form of democracy in Iraq. The real alternative to the present course is not stability at all but to abandon Iraq to whatever horrible fate awaits it: chaos, civil war, brutal tyranny, terrorism or more likely a combination of all of these — with all that entails for Iraqis, the Middle East and American interests.
That is what President Bush has been saying all along. But Bush himself is the great mystery in this mounting debacle. His commitment to stay the course in Iraq seems utterly genuine. Yet he continues to tolerate policymakers, military advisers and a dysfunctional policymaking apparatus that are making the achievement of his goals less and less likely. ... The tragedy may be that Bush will not understand until it is too late. In which case we will lose in Iraq, and the dire consequences that he has rightly warned of will be upon us."

"'We Won': Fallujah Rejoices in Withdrawal" (Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Naseer Nouri, The Washington Post, 2004/05/02)
"Covering their faces with checkered head scarves, militiamen loyal to a former Iraqi army general jubilantly took to the streets of this battle-scarred city Saturday to celebrate what they called a triumph over withdrawing U.S. Marines.
As the militiamen drove through Fallujah in trucks and congregated on deserted street corners, residents flashed V-for-victory signs and mosques broadcast celebratory messages proclaiming triumph over the Americans. ...
"We won," said one of the militiamen, a former soldier who gave his name only as Abu Abdullah, meaning the father of Abdullah. 'We didn't want the Americans to enter the city and we succeeded.'"

"Saudi Arabia blames "Zionists" for deadly attack" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2004/05/02)
Or perhaps it is skinheads?: "'Zionism is behind terrorist actions in the kingdom,' the Saudi Press Agency quoted Crown Prince Abdullah as telling a gathering of princes in Jiddah.
Zionism had misled "some of our sons," he said without elaborating.
Abdullah was speaking a day after four gunmen opened fire at an oil contractor's office in the industrial city of Yanbu, killing at least seven people — two Americans, two Britons, two Australians and a Saudi — and wounding 25 before leading police on a bloody chase, dragging the body of one victim behind their car.
Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah said "Zionists' hands" were behind Saturday's attacks.
"Saudi Arabia is being targeted by Zionists...we are 95 percent sure that Zionists' hands were behind what happened," he said." (See also: "Two Americans, Four Others Die in Saudi Attack" (AP/The Washington Post, 2004/05/01))

"Doubt cast on Iraq torture photos" (BBC News, 2004/05/02)
"Sources close to the army have questioned the authenticity of photographs appearing to show British soldiers torturing an Iraqi prisoner. ...
However the BBC's defence correspondent Paul Adams says sources close to The Queen's Lancashire Regiment believe many aspects of the photographs are suspicious.
He says they believe the pictures may not have even been taken in Iraq.
• They believe the rifle is an SA80 mk 1 — which was not issued to troops in Iraq.
• They say soldiers in Iraq wore berets or hard hats — and not floppy hats as in the photos.
• They also believe the wrong type of Bedford truck is shown in the background - a type never deployed in Iraq." (See also: "Shame Of Abuse By Brit Troops" (Paul Byrne, The Daily Mirror, 2004/05/01))

"Iraq oil-for-food kickbacks 'higher than suspected'" (Philip Sherwell, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/05/02)
"Kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein's regime on contracts signed under the United Nations' oil-for-food programme were far higher than the 10 per cent rake-off previously assumed to be the norm.
In one of the many deals funded by UN-supervised oil exports from Iraq, a delivery of cameras and audiovisual equipment for the culture ministry - sent as "humanitarian" items, under a loophole - was valued at 100 per cent above its true cost.
According to new documents recovered in Baghdad, multi-million pound deals with the public works ministry for sanitation and water filtration equipment were often marked up by as much as 30 per cent.
The discrepancy represents the kickbacks for leaders and regime officials who skimmed off billions of pounds from the scheme that was supposed to provide food, medicine and essential supplies for the Iraqi people.
Some went straight into the bank accounts of Saddam, his family and supporters, in addition to officials who negotiated the deals. The Iraqi dictator, however, is also alleged to have paid millions of pounds in cash and oil trading vouchers to foreign companies and individuals from the kickbacks."

"Diplomats failed to disclose their own Arab links" (Chris Hastings et al., The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/05/02)
"Some of the most prominent former diplomats who condemned Tony Blair's policies in the Middle East have business links with Arab governments, The Telegraph can reveal.
The letter failed to disclose, however, that several of the key signatories, including Oliver Miles, the former British ambassador to Libya who instigated the letter, are paid by pro-Arab organisations.
Some of the others hold positions in companies seeking lucrative Middle East contracts, while others have unpaid positions with pro-Arab organisations.
The disclosure last night prompted allegations - denied by the diplomats - that they were merely promoting the interests of their clients. Andrew Dismore, the Labour MP for Hendon, said: "If an MP had made statements like these without declaring an interest in the subject they would have been before the standards and privileges committee we would have had their guts for garters.
'This casts a very different light on what the former diplomats have said.'" (See also: "Ambassadors' letter to Blair" (BBC News, 2004/04/26))

Saturday, May 1, 2004

News and commentary:

"Fireworks explode over St. Vitus cathedral..."
(Jan Trestik, AP/CTK, 2004/05/01)
"Fireworks explode over St. Vitus cathedral at Prague Castle to mark the European Union's enlargement at midnight, Saturday, May 1, 2004, when the Czech Republic together with nine other countries, joined the EU."

"Two Americans, Four Others Die in Saudi Attack" (AP/The Washington Post, 2004/05/01)
"Gunmen entered the office of an oil contractor in Saudi Arabia and began shooting at random Saturday, killing at least six people — two American engineers, two Britons, an Australian and a Saudi — in what a Saudi official called an "indiscriminate evil rampage."
The fleeing gunmen led police on a chase through the northwest Saudi city of Yanbu, exchanging fire outside a Holiday Inn before police caught up with them in a downtown shootout, a witness said. The Interior Ministry said three attackers were killed and one was captured. ...
Two Americans were killed, the U.S. State Department said. ABB-Lummus, the energy arm of multinational engineering company ABB, said both were engineers for the company. A British ABB employee, a British contractor and an Australian employee were also killed, spokesman Bjorn Edlund said from Zurich, Switzerland.
Two American ABB-Lummus employees were wounded in the attack, one critically, he said. He wasn't sure how many others were wounded."

"Zapatero's Spain" (Christopher Caldwell, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/05/10 issue)
"The psychological strategy Spaniards have pursued since March 11 has become general across Europe, even in countries that (for now) still belong to the coalition. The strategy is to pretend that, just because an American-led invasion of Iraq seems to be the wrong solution, there is no problem.":
"But just before sunrise on Monday, April 19, something happened that raised the possibility that Madrid and Europe generally are center stage in the war on terror. Unknown intruders broke into the cemetery where the policeman Torronteras was interred. With a pick-axe, they pried open the crypt where his body lay, smashing the plaque on which memorial verses had been written by his family. They removed the coffin, wheeled it 500 meters away on a hand truck, opened it, chopped off the left hand, doused the corpse with gasoline, and lit it on fire.
As in the aftermath of March 11, the reaction of Spaniards to the event was as curious as the event itself. ... Police said the attack on the grave could have been committed by "hooligans." The country's most balanced and interesting newspaper, Barcelona-based La Vanguardia, hedged its bets:

As for the possibility it was an act of vengeance carried out by radical Islamists, police sources said that Muslims usually have great respect for religious ceremony, and their rites seem not to embrace either amputation or the burning of remains. The act of burning the corpse and the coffin could also have been intended to destroy the evidence of whoever carried out the desecration.

El País, the Socialist party paper, read by the country's intellectual elite, speculated that skinheads could be involved. The paper wrote: "Mistreating a cadaver is a pagan practice, totally alien to the Koran, explains an expert in Islam." And in the photos they ran of Torronteras's funeral, all the papers took care to pixelate the faces of his pallbearers. Presumably to avoid their being targeted by 'skinheads.'" (See also: "Tomb of Spanish agent killed by bombers desecrated" (Reuters, 2004/04/19))

"U.S. War Crimes: Torture of Iraqi Prisoners Exposed" (Tehran Times, 2004/05/01)
Tehran Times is of course having a field day: "At the same time, the fact that US soldiers are employing methods similar to those used by the Nazis in World War II is indicative of a deep-seated state of demoralization and degradation that the occupation has bred within the US military. Finding themselves in a hostile environment with the vast majority of Iraqis opposing the occupation, many American soldiers have come to see the country’s entire population as the enemy. Fed lies about the colonial intervention in Iraq being part of a global “war on terrorism,” some have also assumed a license to torture and humiliate their helpless captives.
Contrary to Kimmitt’s claims — slavishly echoed by the corporate media — this is the logic and modus operandi of imperialist conquest and colonial occupation. The pictures of torture, brutality and sexual sadism are representative of the entire criminal operation being conducted in Iraq." (Hat tip: Mudville Gazette.)

"An American Disaster; Prisoner Abuse In Iraq" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2004/05/01)
"The United States just experienced its first true disaster in Iraq. As news of the disgraceful mistreatment of prisoners by American soldiers sweeps the world, our enemies celebrate a major propaganda gift. Even our friends cannot defend the indefensible. ...
It's just possible that no soldiers in U.S. history have done more damage to our country's cause than the Gang of Six from the 800th Military Police Brigade. But it's not just about the soldiers directly involved. These crimes demonstrate an utter failure of the chain of command. All the way to the top. ...
The thugs of Abu Gharaib — the American thugs — just dealt the greatest blow to America's prestige since the fall of Saigon. In the Middle East, this story will morph into myth and outlast our lifetimes. It will haunt our every effort. And yes, it will recruit terrorists.
At least some of the accused enlisted soldiers are likely to spend time behind bars. Their leaders should, too. And not just those in uniform."

"Shame Of Abuse By Brit Troops" (Paul Byrne, The Daily Mirror, 2004/05/01)
"A hooded Iraqi captive is beaten by British soldiers before being thrown from a moving truck and left to die.
The prisoner, aged 18-20, begged for mercy as he was battered with rifle butts and batons in the head and groin, was kicked, stamped and urinated on, and had a gun barrel forced into his mouth.
After an EIGHT-HOUR ordeal, he was left barely conscious and close to death. Bleeding and vomiting and with a broken jaw and missing teeth, he was driven from a Basra camp and hurled off the truck. No one knows if he lived or died. ...
Army chiefs believe it was an isolated incident involving a few rogue troops. But, it is claimed, officers turned a blind eye. One of the soldiers said: "Basically this guy was dying as he couldn't take any more. An officer came down. It was 'Get rid of him - I haven't seen him'. The paperwork gets ripped. So they threw him out, still with a bag on his head."
Weeks after the pictures were taken, a captive was allegedly beaten to death in custody by men from the same Queen's Lancashire Regiment. It is also alleged a video was found of prisoners being thrown off a bridge."

"Iraq Prisoner Images Anger Arabs, Bush" (Nadia Abou El Magd, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/01)
"Arab outrage flashed across the Middle East on Friday as TV stations showed graphic images of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated by smiling U.S. military police. President Bush condemned the mistreatment, saying he shared "a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated."
The photographs, shown on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya and the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, included pictures of prisoners naked except for the hoods that covered their heads. ...
In Baghdad, military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the commander of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, was being sent to Iraq to take over the coalition detention facilities. ...
"They were ugly images. Is this the way the Americans treat prisoners?" asked Ahmad Taher, 24, a student at Baghdad's Mustansiriyah University. 'Americans claim that they respect freedom and democracy — but only in their country.'"

"Controversy Rages as TV Show Lists U.S. War Dead" (Reuters, 2004/05/01)
"Veteran U.S. journalist Ted Koppel devoted his "Nightline" program Friday to broadcasting the names and photographs of 721 American soldiers killed in Iraq, sparking outrage from conservatives who called it anti-war propaganda.
But Koppel said the ABC show, extended to 40 minutes from its normal half-hour to accommodate all the names, was a politically neutral way of honoring those who had died. ...
A media company whose executives have been strong supporters of President Bush, Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., barred its ABC-affiliated stations from airing the "Nightline" broadcast, calling it a political statement that failed to give all sides of the story.
Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican and Vietnam veteran, condemned Sinclair's decision "to deny your viewers an opportunity to be reminded of war's terrible costs." He called it a "gross disservice to the public" and the U.S. armed forces." (See also: "The Fallen" (ABC News, 2004/04/30))

Friday, April 30, 2004

News and commentary:

"A hooded and wired Iraqi prisoner..."
(The New Yorker, 2004/04/30)
From the gallery "Primary Sources" (The New Yorker, 2004/04/30): "A hooded and wired Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib prison who reportedly was told that he would be electrocuted if he fell off a box."

"Torture at Abu Ghraib" (Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, 2004/04/30)
"A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinski’s brigade headquarters.) Taguba’s report listed some of the wrongdoing:

Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee."

"US own goals" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2004/04/30)
"In truth, the Americans could hardly be doing more to lose the support even of those who understand and back what they are trying to do in Iraq. Those pictures of the tortured Iraqis are as sickening and appalling as they are catastrophic. Okay, this was — we are told — an isolated and wholly unrepresentative incident. And yes, a number of US soldiers are now facing criminal charges and courts-martial as a result. But that still doesn't lessen the shock and disgust that this can have happened at all. As if the torture wasn't bad enough, the images of the soldiers taunting those Iraqi captives and fooling about in front of them for the cameras bespeak a loss of simple humanity and civilised values here which is deeply, deeply disturbing. What kind of society produces such dehumanisation? It's not enough to be alarmed at the likely damaging effect such images will have on the Arab and Muslim world. We should be alarmed and deeply ashamed about what they say about western values."

"Bush feels 'disgust' over Iraq prisoner abuse" (Peter Spiegel, Financial Times, 2004/04/30)
"President George W. Bush on Friday expressed his "disgust" at the abuse of Iraqi detainees by US troops at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, as photographs of the incidents appeared in newspapers and on television around the world. ...
As US military officials announced that six US soldiers faced courts-martial, Arab TV stations broadcast the pictures showing images of US soldiers forcing prisoners to simulate sex with each other and to pose naked with American men and women in military uniforms.
A spokesman for Tony Blair said the British prime minister was "appalled" by the pictures which show treatment of prisoners in 'direct contravention of all policy under which the coalition operates.'" (See also: "Outrage At American Torture Of Iraqi Prisoners" (Anthony Harwood, The Daily Mirror, 2004/04/30) and "Abuse Of Iraqi POWs By GIs Probed" (CBS News, 2004/04/29))

"The Future of Humanitarianism" (Bernard Kouchner, Carnegie Council, April 2004)
The 23rd Annual Morgenthau lecture and remarks by Bernard Kouchner: "I have the reputation of being just one of the five persons in my country of 62 million to say, "Yes, we have to get rid of Saddam Hussein," because I had been advocating doing just that for thirty years. But, unfortunately, I now have the added reputation of having been Mr. Bush's only supporter in France.
I wrote an article that appeared on the front page of Le Monde entitled "No to the war, no to Saddam." I said that I agreed with getting rid of Saddam but not with the way we were doing it. I also said it was wrong of Mr. Chirac and Mr. Bush to have engaged in an arm-wrestling match over Iraq. A second lesson we have learned is that united, the international community is completely invincible, but when there is division between the United States and Europe, it is a mess.
Tragically, part of my Kosovo team was assassinated in Baghdad, in the suicide attack against UN headquarters on August 19, 2003. ...
I am a politician and I am a humanitarian. All my life I have been devoted to protecting people. For me there is no difference. When I organized a boat to rescue the boat people in the China Sea during the Vietnam War, it was absolutely illegal. My first rule is, be illegal if you have to -- in order to change the law. So we became outlaws. We were not allowed to organize a rescue, but we did it anyway."

"Rumsfeld’s War, Powell’s Occupation" (Barbara Lerner, National Review, 2004/04/30)
"The latest post-hoc conventional wisdom on Iraq is that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld won the war but lost the occupation. There are two problems with this analysis (which comes, most forcefully, from The Weekly Standard). First, it's not Rumsfeld's occupation; it's Colin Powell's and George Tenet's. ...
A Rumsfeld occupation would have been different, and still might be. Rumsfeld wanted to put an Iraqi face on everything at the outset — not just on the occupation of Iraq, but on its liberation too. That would have made a world of difference.
Rumsfeld's plan was to train and equip — and then transport to Iraq — some 10,000 Shia and Sunni freedom fighters led by Shia exile leader Ahmed Chalabi and his cohorts in the INC, the multi-ethnic anti-Saddam coalition he created. There, they would have joined with thousands of experienced Kurdish freedom fighters, ably led, politically and militarily, by Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani. Working with our special forces, this trio would have sprung into action at the start of the war, striking from the north, helping to drive Baathist thugs from power, and joining Coalition forces in the liberation of Baghdad. That would have put a proud, victorious, multi-ethnic Iraqi face on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and it would have given enormous prestige to three stubbornly independent and unashamedly pro-American Iraqi freedom fighters: Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani. ...
None of this happened, however, because State and CIA fought against Rumsfeld's plans every step of the way. Instead of bringing a liberating Shia and Sunni force of 10,000 to Iraq, the Pentagon was only allowed to fly in a few hundred INC men. General Garner was unceremoniously dumped after only three weeks on the job, and permission for our military to pursue infiltrators across the border into Syria was denied."

"A French gendarme inspects some of the 127 graves..."
(Vincent Kessler, Reuters, 2004/04/30)
"A French gendarme inspects some of the 127 graves desecrated by vandals with Nazi swastikas and anti-semitic slogans written in German in the Jewish cemetery of Herrlisheim close to the French border with Germany, April 30, 2004."

"The Real Mideast 'Poison'" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2004/04/30)
"Anti-Semitism, once just a European disease, has gone global. The outgoing prime minister of Malaysia gets a standing ovation from leaders of 57 Islamic countries when he calls upon them to rise up against the Jewish conspiracy to control the world. ...
It is in this kind of atmosphere that Israel offers unilateral withdrawal from Gaza — uprooting 7,000 Jews, turning over to the Palestinians 21 settlements with their extensive infrastructure intact and creating the first independent Palestinian territory in history — and is almost universally attacked.
Moreover, and much overlooked, Israel will also evacuate four small West Bank settlements, which creates extensive Palestinian territorial contiguity throughout the northern half of the West Bank.
The Arabs have variously denounced this as Israeli unilateralism, a departure from the "road map" and a ruse and a plot. The craven Europeans have duly followed suit. And when Tony Blair defied the mob by expressing support for the plan, he was rewarded with a letter from 52 Arabist ex-diplomats denouncing him.
This Nuremberg atmosphere has reached the point where, if Israel were to announce today that it intends to live for at least another year, the U.N. Security Council would convene to discuss a resolution denouncing Israeli arrogance and unilateralism, and the United States would have to veto it. Only Britain would have the decency to abstain."

"Macedonia admits staging raid, killing innocents" (CNN.com, 2004/04/30)
"Macedonian police gunned down seven innocent immigrants, then claimed they were terrorists, in a killing staged to show they were participating in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism, authorities said Friday.
Police spokeswoman Mirjana Konteska told reporters that six people, including three former police commanders, two special police officers and a businessman, have been charged by police with murder.
If convicted, they could be sentenced from 10 years to life in prison.
"That was an act of a sick mind," Konteska said after a two-year investigation. "They ... ordered the brutal murder of the seven Pakistani men."
She described a meticulous plan to promote Macedonia as a player in the fight against global terrorism that involved smuggling the Pakistanis into Macedonia from Bulgaria, housing them, and then coldly gunning them down." (See also: "Two killed in Macedonia identified as Pakistanis" (AFP/Dawn, 2002/03/05): "At least two of the seven men killed by Macedonian police in a weekend clash were Pakistani nationals who fought in Afghanistan, Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski said on Monday.
"We have hints that say the two came from Pakistan and fought in Afghanistan," Boskovski told journalists. "After their participation in Afghanistan, they were transferred to the Balkans, to countries neighbouring" Macedonia, he said.
On Saturday, Macedonian police shot dead in an ambush seven people who were thought to be part of an international terror network targeting US, British and German interests in the Balkan country.")

"Zamfara Government Orders Demolition of All Churches" (PM News/OSAC, 2004/04/30)
"Governor Ahmed Sani of Zamfara State [in Nigeria], has ordered the demolition of all churches in the state, as he launched the second phase of his Sharia project yesterday.
Speaking at the launch in Gusau, the state capital, Governor Sani disclosed that time was ripe for full implementation of the programme as enshrined in the Holy Quran.
He added that his government would soon embark on demolition of all places of worship of unbelievers in the state, in line with Islamic injunction to fight them wherever they are found." (Hat tip: The Corner.)

"Indonesian cleric faces Bali charge" (BBC News, 2004/04/30)
"Indonesian police have rearrested militant cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir on suspicion of terrorism, immediately after his release from a Jakarta jail.
Police said they had new evidence to show he was a senior leader of militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI), blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings.
Ba'asyir, who has served 18 months for immigration offences, denies being the group's spiritual leader.
Hundreds of his supporters clashed with police as he was detained.
Police were stoned and taunted with cries of "If you dare, arrest us" and chants of "Allahu Akbar!" (God is greatest). ...
Ansyaad Mbai, the top anti-terror official at Indonesia's security ministry, said police had enough evidence to prove Ba'asyir was a senior leader of JI, the group blamed for the Bali attack which killed 202 people.
"Abu Bakar Ba'asyir will be charged with all bombings committed by Jemaah Islamiah because he is the leader of the group," he said."

"Militant Mullah Meets Match in Comic at Norway Nightclub" (Craig S. Smith, The New York Times, 2004/04/30)
Lift a Mullah for peace: "How much weight does a bearded mullah carry in a freewheeling liberal society like Norway's?
The country's well-known Muslim comic, Shabana Rehman, decided to find out Tuesday when she lifted the founder of Iraq's Ansar al-Islam terrorist group off the ground before a startled audience.
"If a small woman like me can lift him up, he can't be dangerous," Ms. Rehman said Thursday by telephone from northern Norway.
The cleric, known as Mullah Krekar, did not find the stunt funny. He went up smiling but was sputtering with rage by the time Ms. Rehman set him back down.
"I do not have the right to carry her like that and she has no right to carry or touch me," he exclaimed into his microphone. He vowed to sue and demanded that photographs of the stunt be destroyed.
But the Norwegian television station TV2 broadcast a videotape of the 5-foot-4 Ms. Rehman hoisting the portly preacher, her arms around his thighs. The country's news media gave the story ample coverage." (See also: "Rehman's fundamental stunt" (Brita Skuland, document.no, 2004/04/28) and "Krekar furious after lift-up stunt" (Bjørn Stærk, bearstrong.net, 2004/04/29): "Who would have thought that Krekar's carefully manufactured image as a member of the Norwegian multicultural rainbow, a pious Muslim persecuted because he's different, would crack over his fear of being touched by a woman?")

"Iraqi Major General Jassim Mohammed Saleh..."
(Akram Saleh, Reuters, 2004/04/30)
"Iraqi Major General Jassim Mohammed Saleh (R) is saluted after arriving in Falluja 50 km west of Baghdad April 30, 2004. U.S. Marines handed control of Falluja over to Saleh in a bid to end a month-long siege that killed hundreds in the city and infuriated Iraqis."

"U.S. Marines Hand Falluja to Former Saddam General" (Fadel Badran and Michael Georgy, Reuters, 2004/04/30)
"U.S. Marines handed control in Falluja to a former general in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard on Friday but new violence showed that a month of fighting in the besieged Sunni Muslim city was not over.
In a reversal of Washington's previous policy of excluding senior members of Saddam's Baathist regime from power, Jasim Mohamed Saleh said his new force would help police bring order and relieve a month-long siege that has cost hundreds of lives. ...
"We have now begun forming a new emergency military force," he told Reuters, saying people in Falluja "rejected" U.S. troops. ...
But Saleh, cheered by crowds waving the Saddam-era Iraqi flag as he drove through his home town in his old uniform, said local people wanted Falluja to be run by Iraqi forces only." (See also: "U.S. Weighs Falluja Pullback, Leaving Patrols to Iraq Troops" (John Kifner and Ian Fisher, The New York Times, 2004/04/30))

"France Struggles to Curb Extremist Muslim Clerics" (Craig S. Smith, The New York Times, 2004/04/30)
"Then, in early April, a local publication, Lyon Mag, published an interview with Mr. Bouziane in which he spoke about his support for the Koran's teaching that adulterous women should be stoned and that it was a man's right to strike his wife if she was unfaithful.
"He shouldn't hit her in the face, but aim lower, the legs or stomach," he said in the interview, adding that a man can hit hard to instill fear in his wife.
France's national press picked up the article, and within days the Interior Ministry executed the expulsion order. Mr. Bouziane was put on a plane to Algiers, where he was apparently detained for questioning.
But the expulsion drew sharp criticism from many Muslims across France, who saw it as part of a broader attack on Muslims by the French state. The country has recently issued a law banning girls from wearing Muslim veils at school, for example.
In the housing projects near Mr. Bouziane's mosque, a young man with a closely cropped beard said he thought that the cleric had done nothing wrong. "If my wife cheats on me, I have the right to correct her," he said, 'and not just with a slap on the bottom, but with a gunshot.'" (See also: "France expels radical Muslim prayer leader" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2004/04/21))

"Bush and Cheney Tell 9/11 Panel of '01 Warnings" (Philip Shenon and David E. Sanger, The New York Times, 2004/04/30)
"President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were questioned in the Oval Office for more than three hours on Thursday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. They said intelligence warnings they received throughout 2001 suggested that Al Qaeda was poised to strike overseas, not on American soil, according to accounts of commission and administration officials.
After a meeting that both the White House and the commission had billed as historic, Mr. Bush appeared before reporters in the Rose Garden and described the question-and-answer session with the 10 members of the bipartisan commission as "very cordial." He said he 'answered every question that they asked.'"

"Outrage At American Torture Of Iraqi Prisoners" (Anthony Harwood, The Daily Mirror, 2004/04/30)
"Video footage of US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners of war horrified America yesterday.
The TV stills showed a hooded captive standing on a box with wires attached to his hands, and naked prisoners stacked in a human pyramid while jeering troopers look on laughing.
Six soldiers now face court martial and jail. One allegedly boasted that the captives "broke within hours". Seven others, including a general, are suspended from duty and may be disciplined. ...
TV network CBS said the prisoners were filmed late last year at notorious Abu Ghraib jail, Saddam's former torture HQ in western Baghdad, where the US is holding 4,400 detainees.
The prisoner standing on the box was told that if he fell off he would be electrocuted. One of the men in the "pyramid" had an Arab insult written in English on his skin.
Other captives were forced to pose in humiliating positions, some of them simulating sex acts, as soldiers gave the thumbs up." (See also: "Abuse Of Iraqi POWs By GIs Probed" (CBS News, 2004/04/29))

Note: I've posted a complete article by Khaled Abu Toameh, mentioned in In Context's interesting post on a speech by him:
"Anatomy of an execution" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post/Watch, 2002/08/08 [2004/04/30]))

Added in Author index:
Glucksmann, André
Rosett, Claudia

Added in archive:
"Slain Israeli Arab's father begs for sanity in PA" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/04/25)

Thursday, April 29, 2004

News and commentary:

"Abuse Of Iraqi POWs By GIs Probed" (CBS News, 2004/04/29)
"Last month, the U.S. Army announced 17 soldiers in Iraq, including a brigadier general, had been removed from duty after charges of mistreating Iraqi prisoners.
But the details of what happened have been kept secret, until now.
It turns out photographs surfaced showing American soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqis being held at a prison near Baghdad. The Army investigated, and issued a scathing report.
Now, an Army general and her command staff may face the end of long military careers. And six soldiers are facing court martial in Iraq — and possible prison time. ...
It was American soldiers serving as military police at Abu Ghraib who took these pictures. The investigation started when one soldier got them from a friend, and gave them to his commanders. 60 Minutes II has a dozen of these pictures, and there are many more — pictures that show Americans, men and women in military uniforms, posing with naked Iraqi prisoners.
There are shots of the prisoners stacked in a pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English.
In some, the male prisoners are positioned to simulate sex with each other. And in most of the pictures, the Americans are laughing, posing, pointing, or giving the camera a thumbs-up."

"Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003" (U.S. Department of State, 2004/04/29)
[See update below] As Barry Rubin notes, regarding Israeli counterterrorism: "Incidentally, it is strange to read everywhere in the West that Israel's policies, including the killing of Hamas leaders, have failed. Since figures show that the number of Israeli casualties in 2003 were half those in 2002 and that those so far in 2004 – ptui! ptui! – are half those in 2003, everyone should be discussing the success of Israel's counterterrorism effort.
But, unfortunately, we live in an age where political agendas often determine the analysis of events rather than the other way around."
Ditto for the global war on terror [emphasis added]:
"There were 190 acts of international terrorism in 2003, a slight decrease from the 198 attacks that occurred in 2002, and a drop of 45 percent from the level in 2001 of 346 attacks. The figure in 2003 represents the lowest annual total of international terrorist attacks since 1969.
A total of 307 persons were killed in the attacks of 2003, far fewer than the 725 killed during 2002. A total of 1,593 persons were wounded in the attacks that occurred in 2003, down from 2,013 persons wounded the year before.
In 2003, the highest number of attacks (70) and the highest casualty count (159 persons dead and 951 wounded) occurred in Asia.
There were 82 anti-US attacks in 2003, which is up slightly from the 77 attacks the previous year, and represents a 62-percent decrease from the 219 attacks recorded in 2001." (See also: "It sounds familiar" (Barry Rubin, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/04/27))
UPDATE 2004/05/17: As Alan B. Krueger and David Laitin have shown in a devastating article on the report, "a careful review of the report and underlying data supports the opposite conclusion. ... ...the number of terrorist events has risen each year since 2001, and in 2003 reached its highest level in more than 20 years." See also: "Faulty Terror Report Card" (Alan B. Krueger and David Laitin, The Washington Post, 2004/05/17))

"Father Strangles 14-Year-Old Daughter in Turkey's Latest "honor" Killing" (Suzan Fraser, AP/TBO.com, 2004/04/29)
"Ignoring the pleas of his 14-year-old daughter to spare her life, Mehmet Halitogullari pulled on a wire wrapped around her neck and strangled her - supposedly to restore the family's honor after she was kidnapped and raped.
Nuran Halitogullari, buried Thursday in a ceremony attended by women's rights advocates, is the latest victim in a long history of so-called "honor" killings, which Turkey's government is struggling to curb. ...
On Wednesday, authorities charged two brothers with murder after they shot their 22-year-old sister in the head in her hospital bed, where she was recovering from an earlier attack by them. The woman had had a child out of wedlock.
Last year, a pregnant woman was reportedly stoned to death by her family after having an affair and buried in a pauper's grave after her family refused to hold a funeral.
In the latest case, newspapers said Halitogullari was abducted in Istanbul on her way back from a trip to the supermarket and raped over six days. She was rescued by police and returned to her family.
The murder came to light this week but it was not clear when it took place.
In a rare confession, Mehmet Hatipogullari told police he and other relatives took the girl to an aunt's home where he strangled her, ignoring her pleas and her cries.
"I decided to kill her because our honor was dirtied," the newspaper Sabah quoted the father as saying. "I didn't listen to her pleas, I wrapped the wire around her neck and pulled at it until she died."
He said he buried her body beneath a chicken coop, which upset his other children, and later reburied her in a forest."

"Covering the 'Quagmire'" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2004/04/29)
"I continue to be amazed at the way in which so many liberals repeat the discredited mantra of the CIA to the effect that Saddam Hussein's regime was so "secular" that it not only did not collaborate, but axiomatically could not have collaborated with Islamists. If you can imagine a Hitler-Stalin pact (which, admittedly, a lot of American leftists still cannot), you can probably imagine collusion between discrepant factions with common interests.
In any case, the Saddam regime was not as "secular" as all that. The campaign of extermination waged in northern Iraq by Saddam's army was titled "Anfal" after a verse in the Quran that supposedly licenses total war. The words "Allahu Akbar" were placed on the Iraqi flag after the defeat in Kuwait. The Baath Party became the open patron of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine. The rhetoric of the Saddamist leadership was exclusively jihadist for the last decade, with special mosques built all over the country in honor of the regime. Now comes a document from the files of the Iraqi secret police, or Mukhabarat, dated March 28, 1992, and headed routinely, "In the Name of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate." It is a straightforward listing of contacts and "assets," quite unsensational until it comes to the "Saudi front," where we find the name "Osama bin Ladin/he is well-known Saudi businessman, founder of Saudi opposition in Afghanistan, had connection with Syrian division." Of course, this is not a smoking gun."

"How Islam has killed multiculturalism" (Rod Liddle, The Spectator, from the 2004/05/01 issue)
Multiculturalism II: "Do you have a core of Britishness within you? Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, is anxious for us all to have one, even if we are not quite sure what it is. Trevor reckons he has one, at any rate. Perhaps it was implanted along with his OBE back in 1999. ...
It is a quite astonishing volte-face, when you think about it. Trevor, chairman of the CRE, is effectively telling us that multiculturalism is finished, dead and buried. A discredited idea from two discredited decades. The rest of us might have suspected that multiculturalism was officially dead on 12 September 2001; but to hear multiculturalism disavowed, in public, by an organisation hitherto dedicated to its propagation is something else entirely. ...
Having argued for decades that immigrant communities be allowed to retain every aspect of their indigenous culture, the Left now believes that this was a mistake and that there are many aspects of those indigenous cultures which are simply not on. It is not just the shadow of 9/11; the soft Left knows that Islam is a socially conservative (if economically leftish) belief system opposed to almost everything it stands for in terms of education, the family, sexual promiscuity and so on. Islam, even ‘proper’ Islam, demands a distinctly illiberal social regimen — the very thing, in fact, that so exercised Ray Honeyford 18 years ago when he insisted that Muslim girls learn to swim — and for which he was denounced as a racist by, er, the Left."

"Call it fear" (Emanuele Ottolenghi, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/04/29)
Multiculturalism I: "Social cohesiveness rests on common values, which are in turn a product of shared memories. Multiculturalism and cultural relativism obliterate that shared patrimony in favor of political correctness. But a collective vision of the future cannot emerge from denial of the past. A people forgetting its history will forsake its collective future. ...
Because societies need shared values and because European societies are becoming increasingly diverse in cultural terms, real cultural clashes are likely when Europe tries to define its commonly shared background of moral values and shared memories on which a common civic identity must be based. Too much diversity may make this task impossible. ...
Across Europe, support for the extreme Right and anti-immigration parties is on the rise. These trends do not merely reflect thuggish, racist, right-wing extremist rage. The arrival of immigrants to thoroughly secularized and modern societies reawakens more ancient, deeper, more enduring cultural, religious, and ethnic identities.
Beneath the thin veneer of modernity, there lies a tumult of ancient, if irrational and often silenced, passions. Diversity reawakens them and pushes them to the breaking point. Europe's breaking point is near. Multiculturalism could soon fade, swept away by the gathering storm."

"America needs Australians' support on a most painful mission" (William Shawcross, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2004/04/29)
"The new Spanish government is quite, quite wrong. Withdrawal from the attempt to build a decent Iraq will not protect anyone. On the contrary, it will lead to disaster.
The only long-term hope, I think, lies in the transformation of the region. ...
Saddam's was the worst in the Arab world, but there are many others. Syria is governed by a corrupt and despotic family clique from a minority sect. Egypt has been ruled by emergency decree since 1981.
But there are signs of change. It is already possible to see good effects of the removal of Saddam in the region. First, and most dramatically, perhaps, Gaddafi handed over all his WMD programs in return for being allowed back into the international community.
In the last year civic movements demanding change have grown for the first time in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria. They were not created by George Bush, but they do say that Washington's new democratisation policy has given them a voice, an audience and a partial shield against oppression — three things they did not have a year ago.
Now reform is on the agenda throughout the Middle East. Who has put it there? Not the European Union, for sure. The US."

"Getting Iraq Right" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2004/04/29)
"It's appalling how we've blustered on about building a civil society and a rule-of-law democracy in Iraq, while letting the streets degenerate into a wilderness. ...
We never made more than a half-hearted effort to enforce order on Iraq's streets thereafter. Often, we made no effort at all — in terror-cities such as Fallujah, Ramadi or Samarra. Even when street thugs danced atop damaged U.S. vehicles in Baghdad, we treated them as if they were respectable citizens expressing their rights of free speech. ...
Whether among the confused people of Iraq or in the squalor of the greater Arab world, those images, repeated almost daily, of Iraqi gangstas jumping up and down on our burned-out combat vehicles created, then reinforced, the impression that American troops not only could be defeated, but were being defeated.
The truth was irrelevant. In the age of the satellite dish, the image trumps all. The greatest recruiting tool for our enemies in Iraq and beyond its borders has been those clips of Iraqis plundering disabled Humvees with impunity. ...
If we can't or won't bring order to that festering country's streets, we'll never see a lawful state emerge. I still believe that most Iraqis want democracy — in some adjusted form that gives them a voice in their country's affairs. But they want and need security even more. You can't build a legal economy or hold honest elections if you can't control the neighborhoods in broad daylight.
Law first, then democracy. Sorry, but it doesn't work the other way around."

"Islam's Interpreter" (Elizabeth Wasserman, The Atlantic, 2004/04/29)
An interview with Bernard Lewis: "In 1957, discussing what role the U.S. ought to play in Middle Eastern affairs, you recommended a policy of "masterly inactivity." You wrote: "We of the West can also do something to help on non-political levels but should beware of proposing solutions that, however good, are discredited by the very fact of our having suggested them." You seem to have changed your mind since then.
I don't think masterly inactivity is desirable at the present moment. With the way things have developed since, we cannot but involve ourselves. But I think our policy should still be, as far as possible, to let them do it their way. For example, I don't see our idea of imposing a constitution on Iraq as a good one at all. Let them work it out and let them take their time over it. Democracies cannot be created overnight.
Are you optimistic about the state of things there?
I'm cautiously optimistic about what's happening in Iraq. What bothers me is what's happening here in the United States.
Do you mean the controversy over the occupation? The pressure to pull out?
Yes, because the message that this is sending to people in that region is that the Americans are frightened, they want to get out. They'll abandon us the same as they did in '91. And you know what happened in '91."

"Poll: Iraqis out of patience" (Cesar G. Soriano and Steven Komarow, USA Today, 2004/04/29)
"Only a third of the Iraqi people now believe that the American-led occupation of their country is doing more good than harm, and a solid majority support an immediate military pullout even though they fear that could put them in greater danger, according to a new USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll. ...
The poll shows that most continue to say the hardships suffered to depose Saddam Hussein were worth it. Half say they and their families are better off than they were under Saddam. And a strong majority say they are more free to worship and to speak.
But while they acknowledge benefits from dumping Saddam a year ago, Iraqis no longer see the presence of the American-led military as a plus. Asked whether they view the U.S.-led coalition as "liberators" or "occupiers," 71% of all respondents say "occupiers."
That figure reaches 81% if the separatist, pro-U.S. Kurdish minority in northern Iraq is not included." (See also: "Key findings: Nationwide survey of 3,500 Iraqis" (Cesar G. Soriano and Steven Komarow, USA Today, 2004/04/29))

"U.N. oil papers vanish" (Niles Lathem, New York Post, 2004/04/29)
"The vast majority of the United Nations' oil-for-food contracts in Iraq have mysteriously vanished, crippling investigators trying to uncover fraud in the program, a government report charged yesterday.
The General Accounting Office report, presented at a congressional hearing into the scandal-plagued program, determined that 80 percent of U.N. records had not been turned over. ...
The GAO findings, which were aired at a hearing of the House International Relations Committee, raise new questions about corruption and mismanagement in the biggest-ever U.N. aid program - and what has been called the biggest financial scandal in history. An earlier GAO report said Saddam ripped off over $10 billion."

"Mystery group wage war on Sadr's militia" (Colin Freeman, The Scotsman, 2004/04/29)
"For every day that the United States army fails to act on its threat to crush them, the Shiite militiamen of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have grown in confidence in their stronghold in Najaf.
Now, however, a shadowy resistance movement within might be about to succeed where the 2,500 US marines outside the city have failed.
In a deadly expression of feelings that until now were kept quiet, a group representing local residents is said to have killed at least five militiamen in the last four days.
The murders are the first sign of organised Iraqi opposition to Sadr’s presence and come amid simmering discontent at the havoc their lawless presence has wreaked.
The group calls itself the Thulfiqar Army, after a twin-bladed sword said to be used by the Shiite martyr Imam Ali, to whom Najaf’s vast central mosque is dedicated."

"Hussein's Agents Are Behind Attacks in Iraq, Pentagon Finds" (Thom Shanker, The New York Times, 2004/04/29)
"A Pentagon intelligence report has concluded that many bombings against Americans and their allies in Iraq, and the more sophisticated of the guerrilla attacks in Falluja, are organized and often carried out by members of Saddam Hussein's secret service, who planned for the insurgency even before the fall of Baghdad.
The report states that Iraqi officers of the "Special Operations and Antiterrorism Branch," known within Mr. Hussein's government as M-14, are responsible for planning roadway improvised explosive devices and some of the larger car bombs that have killed Iraqis, Americans and other foreigners. The attacks have sown chaos and fear across Iraq.
In addition, suicide bombers have worn explosives-laden vests made before the war under the direction of of M-14 officers, according to the report, prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The report also cites evidence that one such suicide attack last April, which killed three Americans, was carried out by a pregnant woman who was an M-14 colonel."

"U.S. Warplane Fires on Fallujah Targets" (Jayson Keyser, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/04/29)
"U.S. warplanes pounded Fallujah with 500-pound laser-guided bombs Wednesday and Marines battled insurgents near a train station and in neighborhoods that had seemed to be quieting. American forces decided to delay potentially dangerous patrols into the besieged city. ...
Guerrilla attacks broke out in at least three neighborhoods of Fallujah that had been relatively quiet during the past three days. And the U.S. response intensified: when a Marine was wounded, warplanes dropped 10 laser-guided bombs — most of them 500-pound bombs but at least one 1,000 pound — on buildings that were the source of guerrilla fire, Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne said.
At least twice, AC-130 gunships opened up on guerrilla positions with their heavy cannons.
Throughout the day, the sound of each battle was heard — the rattle of gunfire and the thud of mortars — then came the noise that often marked Marine strikes to put an end to the fight: heavy explosions, raising flames and palls of smoke."

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

News and commentary:

"Bush is Stupid and Evil" (Mathias Döpfner, WELT/David Medienkritik, 2004/04/28)
Translated excerpts from an article in the German daily WELT:
"The worldview of the average German in 2004 in seven sentences: Bush is stupid and evil. Iraq is the new Vietnam. America is doing virtually everything wrong. Sharon has himself to blame for the Palestinian terror. Israel has gotten us into this whole quagmire. Germany has thank God stayed out of it. Now we just have to be careful that our nice democracy isn’t turned into a police state by unnecessary security fears. ...
We are the ones who think differently. Maybe we need more toughness and vigilance to secure our democracy. Maybe it is wrong that Germany has refused to join the coalition of the willing. Maybe Israel is one of our most important allies. Maybe we should help this ally and not give them advice. Maybe America is doing more right than we think. Maybe more people in Iraq are better off today than they were one year ago. Maybe George Bush is not as stupid and evil, maybe one day, looking back on the developments that have just begun – we might even be thankful to him because he was one of the few who acted in accordance with the maxim: These things must be nipped in the bud. (A phrase often used in Germany to refer to stopping the re-emergence of Nazism.)
And maybe we Germans need more than seven sentences for our worldview." (See also the German original: "Bush ist dumm und böse" (Mathias Döpfner, WELT, 2004/04/21))

"Dozens of UFO sightings excite Iran" (WorldNetDaily, 2004/04/28)
"The latest location on planet Earth to be hit with UFO fever is Iran, as dozens of sightings have been reported in recent days in the Islamic republic.
According to Reuters, state-run television today broadcast a sparkling white disc flying over the capital of Tehran, saying it was filmed last night.
People were reported rushing out into the streets in eight towns last night to watch a bright "extraterrestrial light dipping in and out of the clouds."
The Islamic Republic News Agency also reports colorful objects seen beaming out green, red, blue and purple rays over the northern cities of Tabriz and Ardebil and in the Caspian Sea province of Golestan.
And cartoons of alien spacecraft have been gracing the front pages of local newspapers this week."

"NRK fakes pro-Israel conspiracy" (Bjørn Stærk, bearstrong.net, 2004/04/28)
NRK [Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation] is Norway's major broadcasting institution: "The journalist was quite clear on the angle. He had begun to notice a strong anti-Israeli mood in Norway, bordering on hatred, had heard about Ester's criticism of NRK and other media, and wanted to give her a chance to present her case. Because of her involvement with the antisemitism meeting, they did some filming with other people in the project present. I didn't quite believe his story, but I have no reputation I care about losing, and didn't object to being filmed.
I didn't catch the interview, and NRK hasn't put it online, but it appears that when it aired on Saturday, the friendly angle had been replaced by a conspiracy theory in which the Israeli embassy supports a secret network of Christians, through which it hopes to manipulate Norwegian opinion. This is utterly false, pure invention. It's the kind of lie that demonstrates the inspiration of antisemitic ideas on modern anti-Israelism. People don't just spontaneously come together to contradict what everyone agrees to be common sense. No, they form secret networks, with nameless and influential members. And at the center of it all, pulling the strings, there's always a Jew.
Don't get my mood wrong. I'm not bitter. I'm a little surprised at the conspiratorial angle, but I did not "expect more" from NRK. I didn't expect anything. I knew this sort of thing happens all the time. Journalists show up for a "favorable" interview where a controversial person get to present "their side" of the story, trick the subject into saying what they want, then present them as Satan himself. Old news.
But this time it happened to someone I know, and I was there to see it happen. And it was not done in a good cause, to expose a scumbag, but to manufacture a conspiracy."

"The revolting camels" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2004/04/28)
"Stinging historical riposte to the revolting 52 ex-diplomat 'camels' by Andrew Roberts in the Times. He reminds us of how the world has benefited in the past from the unrivalled expertise of the Foreign Office in the Middle East:

'In 1948, the Foreign Office, with the same “long experience of the Middle East” that the co-signatories boasted of, advised the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin that the Israelis would lose the war of independence and be defeated by the (largely British-trained) Arabs. They estimated that the Arab-Israeli conflict “would be of relatively short duration and would eventually be checked somehow by the UN”. Bevin put the timing at a fortnight, but then, as the High Commissioner in Palestine said, Bevin was “completely surrounded by Arabists”. It is that group whose hands have finally, after half a century, been wrested from Middle East policy. The letter — signed by the former ambassadors to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Bahrain and the UAE — is merely a howl of rage at their present exclusion.'

Meanwhile, it is now clear that the real driver of the camels' letter was not so much concern over Iraq as their visceral hostility to Israel. The Guardian reports that it was an 'Arabists' revolt' cooked up from an internet cafe in Libya by Oliver Miles, former ambassador to that country, who imploded over the recent Israel/US rapprochement..." (See also: "How email became a diplomatic incident" (Ewen MacAskill and Michael White, The Guardian, 2004/04/28), "The moral bankruptcy of the British establishment" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2004/04/27) and "Ambassadors' letter to Blair" (BBC News, 2004/04/26))

"Madrid Suspect Indicted on 9/11 Charges" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/04/28)
"A Moroccan sought in connection with last month's Madrid train bombings was indicted Wednesday on charges of helping plan the Sept. 11 attacks.
Amer Azizi helped organize a meeting in northeast Spain in July 2001 that key plotters in the U.S. attacks, including suspect suicide pilot Mohamed Atta, used to finalize details, Judge Baltasar Garzon said.
Azizi was initially included in an indictment Garzon handed down in September against Osama bin Laden and 34 other terror suspects. Azizi was charged then with belonging to a terrorist organization.
The new indictment charges Azizi with actually helping plan the Sept. 11 attacks. Garzon accused Azizi of multiple counts of murder — "as many deaths and injuries as were committed" on Sept. 11.
The indictment was based on information provided by authorities in Britain, Turkey and the United States, Garzon said."

"112 die as rebels attack Thai police" (The Australian, 2004/04/29)
"Clashes between security forces and suspected Muslim rebels in southern Thailand left 112 people dead yesterday in the bloodiest day in the history of the troubled region, officials said.
Police and soldiers killed 75 suspected separatists who launched dawn attacks on 10 police stations and security checkpoints in the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Songkhla, near the Malaysian border.
Officials said the attackers were mostly teenagers armed with machetes and a few guns. Television footage showed the attackers' bodies being lifted from pools of blood and thrown into trucks. ...
Two army officers and three policemen were killed in the raids, officials said.
A siege at a mosque in Pattani province ended yesterday with the death of 32 Islamic militants, police said."

"Annan on defensive over fraud charges in UN Iraq oil scheme" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/04/28)
"UN Secretary General Kofi Annan hit back at the media over allegations of widespread fraud and corruption in the UN programme that oversaw Saddam Hussein's oil sales in Iraq.
With a brewing scandal enveloping the United Nations over the programme, a defensive Annan blamed "outrageous" press reports about the affair and also took a swipe at the United States and Britain.
"If you read the reports it looks as if the Saddam regime had nothing to do with it. They did nothing wrong, it was all the UN," he told reporters in some of his bluntest comments yet on the matter.
"Some of the comments that I have been read have been constructive and thoughtful. Others have been rather outrageous and exaggerated," he said."

"Robbers killed by suicide bomber" (The Scotsman, 2004/04/28)
"A Hamas suicide bomber blew up two armed Palestinians who tried to rob him in the Gaza Strip, it emerged yesterday.
Hamas claimed the "stick-up men" who tried to steal the explosives on Monday worked for Israeli intelligence, but Palestinian security forces said they were ordinary thieves.
Rather than give up his bomb, the Hamas member detonated it, killing himself and the two robbers near the border fence between Gaza and Israel.
Palestinian security officials said the gunmen were criminals involved in a car theft ring that brought stolen vehicles from Israel to Gaza.
Hamas said the bomber was on his way to try to infiltrate Israel, accompanied by another Hamas member and a guide, when they were stopped by the armed men.
A Hamas official added that whatever their intention, the two should be considered agents of Israel.
"Anyone who tries to stop a fighter from doing his work is a collaborator," he said."

"Many Died Saving Kims' Portraits in Blast?" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/04/28)
"Many North Koreans died a "heroic death" after last week's train explosion by running into burning buildings to rescue portraits of leader Kim Jong-il and his father, the North's official media reported on Wednesday.
Portraits of Kim and his late father, national founder Kim Il-sung, are mandatory fixtures in every home, office and factory in the hardline communist state of 23 million. All adults are required to wear lapel pins bearing images of one or both Kims.
Last Thursday's blast in the town of Ryongchon, near the Chinese border, killed at least 161 people and injured 1,300, according to international relief agencies. Many of the victims were children.
The dead also included workers and teachers who died clutching the portraits of the country's ruling family, said North Korea's official KCNA news agency.
"Many people of the county evacuated portraits before searching after their family members or saving their household goods," KCNA said in a report with a Ryongchon dateline."

"When Terror Comes Home" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2004/04/28)
Taheri on Islamist terrorism in Saudi Arabia: "The first thing to do is to understand that these al Qaeda-style terror groups do not exist in isolation. They are products of an entire society and must be studied in a broader context.
Think of a nesting set of Russian "matrushka" dolls.
The biggest doll represents Saudi society, which has become obsessed with religion in the past few decades. ...
The second doll, nested within the bigger one, represents the numerous institutions, always well-funded by oil money, that the kingdom has set up to make sure that citizens behave in as Islamic a way (whatever that means) as possible.
The third doll represents the many hundreds of charities, big and small, that have collected billions of dollars for Islamic causes that no one quite understands and/or controls.
The fourth doll represents the army of preachers, teachers, muezzins, muftis, mutawaa (enforcers) and "discerners of good and evil" who outnumber those who work in the vital oil industry.
The fifth doll represents the many thousands of Saudis — recruited, trained and financed by the state — dispatched to Afghanistan to wage jihad.
Finally, we have the smallest and deadliest doll: the terrorists and suicide-bombers who regard virtually all other Saudis as impious, if not downright heathen, and, thus, facing the choice between "reversion to Islam" and death.
They are the ultimate products of a society in which religion, rather than being regarded as part of life, has become an obsession that engulfs the entire nation's existence."

"How To Buy A French Veto" (Dick Morris, New York Post, 2004/04/28)
"Why did France and Russia oppose efforts to topple Saddam Hussein's regime? And why did they press constantly, throughout the '90s, for an expansion of Iraqi oil sales? Was it their empathy for the starving children of that impoverished nation? Their desire to stop the United States from arrogantly imposing its vision upon the Middle East?
It now looks like they it was simply because they were on the take. Saddam was their cash cow. If President Bush has suffered some discredit over his apparently false - but not disingenuous - claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the lapse is minor compared to the outright personal selfishness and criminality that appears to have motivated many of those who opposed his efforts to rid the world of one of its worst dictators."

"Oil-for-Terror" (Claudia Rosett, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/04/28)
"In Oil-for-Food, "Every contract tells a story," says John Fawcett, a financial investigator with the New York law firm of Kreindler & Kreindler LLP, which has sued the financial sponsors of Sept. 11 on behalf of the victims and their families. In an interview, Mr. Fawcett and his colleague, Christine Negroni, run down the lists of Oil-for-Food authorized oil buyers and relief suppliers, pointing out likely terrorist connections. One authorized oil buyer, they note, was a remnant of the defunct global criminal bank, BCCI. Another was close to the Taliban while Osama bin Laden was on the rise in Afghanistan; a third was linked to a bank in the Bahamas involved in al Qaeda's financial network; a fourth had a close connection to one of Saddam's would-be nuclear-bomb makers. ...
And although full information is hard to come by, partial lists leaked from the U.N. show that in 2000-2001 alone, Saddam's regime ordered up from Al Wasel and Babel more than $190 million in construction materials, trucks, cars and so on. Over Mr. Annan's and Mr. Sevan's protests, the U.S. and U.K. blocked some $45 million worth of those contracts; that still left the Saddam front company of Al Wasel & Babel with about $145 million of Oil-for-Food business for that two year period alone.
Basically, Oil-for-Food was Saddam — just slightly harder to spot, swaddled as he was in that blue U.N. flag."

"Burning with anger: Iraqis infuriated by new flag that was designed in London" (Patrick Cockburn and David Usborne, Independent, 2004/04/28)
"For many Iraqis it was the final insult. Again and again they expressed outrage yesterday that Iraq's United States-appointed and unelected leaders had, overnight, abolished the old Iraqi flag, seen by most Iraqis as the symbol of their nation, and chosen a new one.
"What gives these people the right to throw away our flag, to change the symbol of Iraq?" asked Salah, a building contractor of normally moderate political opinions. 'It makes me very angry because these people were appointed by the Americans. I will not regard the new flag as representing me but only traitors and collaborators.'"