Archived news and commentary: June 14 - 20, 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, June 20, 2004

News and commentary:

"Our suicide mission" (Andrew Bolt, The Herald Sun, 2004/06/20)
"What a way to lose a war. Two stories this week prove we'd rather shoot our own leaders than admit we have enemies who would, literally, cut our throats.
As they've done to one Australian already.
Scary how little understanding there is of the great evil we face. It's as if we — the media in particular — don't want to know. For instance, has anyone given you this latest insight into our enemy?
Al-Qaida and its friends issue demands — such as ransom for the life of the now-beheaded American hostage Paul Johnson — through their Internet site, Sawt al-Jihad.
It is on Sawt al-Jihad that a graphic interview has run with the chief of the al-Qaida killers who last month attacked in Saudi Arabia, killing 22 people, including Magnus Johansson, a Swedish resident of Australia.
But al-Nashami's bragging is exactly what al-Qaida wants its friends to admire and its enemies to fear. This is its "truth".
Al-Nashami says he and his "brothers" shot their way into an oil company compound, where, as police confirm, they killed a British worker and tied his body to their car.
He says they drove on until "the infidel's clothing was torn to shreds and he was naked in the street . . . and everyone watched the infidel being dragged, praise and gratitude be to Allah." ...
They then found an Italian hiding on the stairs.
"We . . . decided that he should call al-Jazeera (the Muslim cable network) and talk to his people and send them a warning about the war of Islam and its people . . .
"He spoke (to al-Jazeera) for several minutes. I asked the broadcaster, 'Did you record that?' He said, 'Yes', and then the hero Nimr cut (the Italian's) throat."
These are terrorists of a movement that some commentators say has reasonable grievances we must discuss." (See also: "Commander of the Khobar Terrorist Squad Tells the Story of the Operation" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 731, 2004/06/15))

"Report: Saudi Police Assisted Abduction" (Salah Nasrawi, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/20)
"Al-Qaida militants disguised in police uniforms and cars provided by sympathizers in the Saudi security forces set up a fake checkpoint to snare the American engineer they later beheaded, according to an account of the operation posted on an Islamic extremist Web site Sunday.
The account of Paul M. Johnson Jr's abduction highlighted fears that some diplomats and Westerners in the kingom have expressed, that militants have infiltrated Saudi security forces, a possibility Saudi officials have denied. ...
The article said militants wearing police uniforms and using police cars set up a fake checkpoint June 12 on al-Khadma Road, leading to the airport, near Imam Mohammed bin Saud University.
"A number of the cooperators who are sincere to their religion in the security apparatus donated those clothes and the police cars. We ask God to reward them and that they use their energy to serve Islam and the mujahedeen," the article read.
When Johnson's car approached the checkpoint, the militants stopped his car, detained him, anesthetized him and carried him to another car, the article said. Earlier Saudi newspaper reports had also said Johnson was drugged during the kidnapping."

"Algeria Kills Head of Group Allied to Al Qaeda" (Paul de Bendern, Reuters, 2004/06/20)
"The Algerian military has killed the leader of an Islamic rebel organization with ties to al Qaeda, the army said on Sunday, dealing a significant blow to north Africa's top militant group.
"Units of the People's National Army, engaged in a vast anti-terrorist operation...have killed a number of criminals, including Nabil Sahraoui, alias Mustapha Abou Ibrahim, chief of the terrorist group known as the GSPC, as well as his (three) main aides," the army said in a statement obtained by Reuters.
It said the militants died in a military operation still going on in the province of Bejaia, some 200 km (120 miles) east of the capital Algiers. They were believed slain on Friday.
The death of Sahraoui, who established links with al Qaeda after taking over the leadership a year ago, was expected to significantly weaken the GSPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat) — the only remaining major rebel organization still fighting Algeria's secular authorities."

"Iraqi Official Says Most Killed in Airstrike Were Foreign Terrorists" (Fooad Al Sheikhly and Jeffrey Gettleman, The New York Times, 2004/06/20)
"A day after an American airstrike destroyed six homes in this flashpoint city, a senior Iraqi official said today that 23 of 26 people killed in the attack were foreign terrorists, including men from Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. ...
The Iraqi official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that three Iraqis were among those killed and that two Iraqis were injured, but did not provide further details.
He said it was not clear if Mr. Zarqawi himself was inside the small concrete-block homes when they were smashed to rubble by three 500-pound bombs dropped from an American warplane. But he said that American intelligence was accurate and the homes did not house civilians but terrorists.
"The Americans had very good information," the official said. 'It was like trying to catch a sparrow. They had a small moment to catch the fighters in those houses and they did.'"

"Senior officer of Fallujah Brigade disputes U.S. airstrike target" (AP/USA Today, 2004/06/20)
"A senior officer of the U.S.-backed Fallujah Brigade on Sunday disputed U.S. claims that an American airstrike had hit a safehouse of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network.
The Health Ministry said at least 16 people were killed in the attack Saturday; witnesses put the number of dead at least 20, including women and children.
Col. Mohammed Awad said members of the Fallujah Brigade had investigated the site and "affirmed to us that the inhabitants of the houses were ordinary families including women, children and elders."
"There was no sign that foreigners have lived in the house," Awad said."

"The Religious Sources of Islamic Terrorism" (Shmuel Bar, Policy Review, from the June 2004 issue)
"It is a tendency in politically oriented Western society to assume that there is a rational pragmatic cause for acts of terrorism and that if the political grievance is addressed properly, the phenomenon will fade. However, when the roots are not political, it is naïve to expect political gestures to change the hearts of radicals. Attempts to deal with the terrorist threat as if it were divorced from its intellectual, cultural, and religious fountainheads are doomed to failure. Counterterrorism begins on the religious-ideological level and must adopt appropriate methods. The cultural and religious sources of radical Islamic ideology must be addressed in order to develop a long-range strategy for coping with the terrorist threat to which they give birth. ...
Taking into account the above, is it possible — within the bounds of Western democratic values — to implement a comprehensive strategy to combat Islamic terrorism at its ideological roots? First, such a strategy must be based on an acceptance of the fact that for the first time since the Crusades, Western civilization finds itself involved in a religious war; the conflict has been defined by the attacking side as such with the eschatological goal of the destruction of Western civilization. The goal of the West cannot be defense alone or military offense or democratization of the Middle East as a panacea. It must include a religious-ideological dimension: active pressure for religious reform in the Muslim world and pressure on the orthodox Islamic establishment in the West and the Middle East not only to disengage itself clearly from any justification of violence, but also to pit itself against the radical camp in a clear demarcation of boundaries."

"The Saudi Trap" (Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, from the 2004/06/28 issue)
"The depth of this created culture of extremism is most evident regarding tolerance for non-Muslims — a crucial matter for the outside world. The Saudi religious establishment has until recently almost always referred to almost all non-Wahhabis (including the Shia, Sufis and all other Muslim sects) in derogatory terms. Non-Muslims are, of course, rank infidels. Saudi Arabia does not allow any churches, temples or synagogues and has no plans to allow any — despite having 6 million foreign workers in the country. Even last week, as the regime was issuing fatwas against the killing of Paul Johnson, one could see forces that fueled his execution. A prominent cleric, Sheik Saleh bin Abdullah al-Humaid, explained that "killing a soul without justification is one of the gravest sins under Islam; it is as bad as polytheism." So polytheism is akin to murder? Is it any wonder that the leader of the recent terrorism in Khobar explained his killing of Westerners and Indians thusly: 'We purged Muhammad's land of many Christians and polytheists'?"

"Fatal illusions" (David Aaronovitch, The Observer, 2004/06/20)
"According to the NYT's reporter Douglas Jehl, writing last Friday: 'Far from a bolt from the blue, the commission has demonstrated over the last 19 months that the 11 September attacks were foreseen, at least in general terms, and might well have been prevented, had it not been for misjudgments, mistakes and glitches, some within the White House.'
This is very heavy stuff. Jehl's reading of the 9/11 commission is that had the Bushites and the agencies not been so useless, then there would have been a good chance that 11 September would have been forestalled. ...
Given that, as of 10 September, anything was possible, what would a far more activist policy towards possible large-scale terrorist attacks have consisted of? Obviously the arrest and detention of many more people, in America (and, clandestinely, abroad) who might be suspected of links with terrorists. A far more aggressive attitude to al-Qaeda and others, including possibly a pre-emptive invasion of parts of Afghanistan. And, allowing the mere possibility of hijacked aircraft being flown into targets, a more robust shoot-down protocol, permitting more lethal discretion to lower-tier authorities in receipt of information about hijackings.
These would all have gone down well. Similarly, suppose that you believed and were being told that a country had WMD, that it had links with al-Qaeda and — apparently corroborated by foreign intelligence agencies — that this country was interested in launching attacks the USA. What would it be prudent, especially after 11 September, for you to do?" (See also: "Questioning Nearly Every Aspect of the Responses to Sept. 11" (Douglas Jehl, The New York Times, 2004/06/18))

"There was a link between Saddam and al-Qa'eda" (Melanie Phillips, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/06/20)
"Clearly, the credibility of intelligence reports is a minefield. Given the cloud over the CIA, there are obviously suspicions that Iraqi sources may have told it what it wanted to hear. But these reports go back to the Clinton administration, well before Iraq became such a political inferno. And their volume and detail are impressive. Hayes quotes an intelligence summary about one informant which said "the information and level of detail is so specific that this source's reports read almost like a diary". ...
Bill Clinton's administration was absolutely certain that Saddam was in cahoots with al-Qa'eda. It was a given. That is surely why, after September 11, Pentagon officials were obsessed with Iraq. Whether Saddam was personally involved in 9/11 was irrelevant; if he was aiding al-Qa'eda's terror, he had to be stopped. But this has been obliterated from the collective memory in order to place the most malign interpretation possible on the motives of the Bush administration.
Of course, one should be wary of intelligence. But the volume and specificity of these claims surely mean they should be addressed. Yet journalists for whom such nuggets would normally trigger a feeding frenzy astonishingly fail to report them and mislead the public instead. That is because the only story in town is that George W Bush and Tony Blair lied — a blinding certainty that cannot be disturbed by anything so inconvenient as the facts."

Saturday, June 19, 2004

News and commentary:

"A View from the Eye of the Storm" (Haim Harari, USS Clueless, 2004/06/19)
"There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is called “the military wing”, the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called “the political wing” and the head of the operation is called the 'spiritual leader'". From a speech "delivered by Haim Harari at a meeting of the International Advisory Board of a large multi-national corporation, April, 2004":
"The civilized world believes in democracy, the rule of law, including international law, human rights, free speech and free press, among other liberties. ... Never in history, not even in the Nazi period, was there such total disregard of all of the above as we observe now. ...
Do you raid a mosque, which serves as a terrorist ammunition storage? Do you return fire, if you are attacked from a hospital? Do you storm a church taken over by terrorists who took the priests hostages? Do you search every ambulance after a few suicide murderers use ambulances to reach their targets? Do you strip every woman because one pretended to be pregnant and carried a suicide bomb on her belly? Do you shoot back at someone trying to kill you, standing deliberately behind a group of children? Do you raid terrorist headquarters, hidden in a mental hospital? Do you shoot an arch-murderer who deliberately moves from one location to another, always surrounded by children? All of these happen daily in Iraq and in the Palestinian areas. What do you do? Well, you do not want to face the dilemma. But it cannot be avoided.
Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that someone would openly stay in a well-known address in Teheran, hosted by the Iranian Government and financed by it, executing one atrocity after another in Spain or in France, killing hundreds of innocent people, accepting responsibility for the crimes, promising in public TV interviews to do more of the same, while the Government of Iran issues public condemnations of his acts but continues to host him, invite him to official functions and treat him as a great dignitary. I leave it to you as homework to figure out what Spain or France would have done, in such a situation."

"U.S. Attacks Al-Zarqawi Hideout, Kills 16" (Jim Krane, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/19)
"The U.S. military stepped up its campaign against militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, launching an airstrike Saturday that pulverised a suspected hideout in Fallujah. At least 16 people were killed and several houses in the residential neighborhood were wrecked.
Brig Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the military's deputy operations chief, said multiple intelligence sources suggested that "a significant number of people in the Zarqawi network" were in the house at the time of the attack.
U.S. officials said they didn't know if al-Zarqawi himself was there. ...
The surprise breakfast-hour strike was the first significant U.S. military move in Fallujah since April when Marines backed away from a bloody three-week siege against insurgents holed up there. Since the U.S. forces left, residents have said extremist influence in the Sunni Muslim city, west of Baghdad, has only grown."

"Indy Morning Herald" (Tim Blair, timblair.spleenville.com, 2004/06/19)
"The Sydney Morning Herald’s Paul McGeough drags his newspaper ever closer to Indymedia:

Would Americans ordinarily tolerate a president who lies and exaggerates? A leader who uses fear to manipulate his people to his own ends? A president whose staff blow the deep cover of a CIA agent as political payback? A president whose Administration channels billions of dollars to crony corporations on false pretexts? A president who deems torture acceptable?
Would they accept a president who seems to agree with his advisers that he is above the law?
The commentator William Rivers Pitt poses them all before concluding: "The time has come, bluntly, to get over September 11; to move beyond it; to extract ourselves from this bunker mentality which blinds us while placing us in moral peril. It happened and it will never be forgotten, but we have reached a place where fear and obeisance can no longer be tolerated."

Yeah. Let’s get over it. That'll fix everything. And in the SMH’s sister publication, former Monty Python fifth-wheel Terry Jones writes:

I currently have a lot of my son's friends locked up in the garage, and I'm applying electrical charges to their genitals and sexually humiliating them in order to get them to tell me where my son goes after choir practice ... After all, I'll only be doing what the US Administration has been condoning since September 11.

Words fail." (See also: "The strange, sad death of the American way" (Paul McGeough, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2004/06/18), "Nine Eleven" (William Rivers Pitt, Scoop, 2004/06/17) and "And now for something completely different..." (Terry Jones, The Age, 2004/06/19))

"Sudan's Final Solution" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, 2004/06/19)
"Officially, Sudan had agreed to a cease-fire in Darfur. But at the end of May, a Sudanese military plane spotted the villagers' hideout, and soon after, the Janjaweed attacked.
"Ali had told me: `If the Janjaweed attack, don't try to save me. You can't help. Don't get angry. Just keep the children and run away to Bahai [in Chad]. Don't shout or say anything,' " Ms. Khattar said. So she hid in a hollow with the children, peeking out occasionally. She saw the Janjaweed round up all the villagers, including her husband and his three young brothers: Moussa, 8, Mochtar, 6, and Muhammad, 4. "Even the boys," she remembers. "They tied their hands like this" — she motioned with her arms in front of her — "and then forced them to lie on the ground." Then, she says, the males were all shot to death, while women were taken away to be raped.
There were 45 corpses, all killed because of the color of their skin, part of an officially sanctioned drive by Sudan's Arab government to purge the western Sudanese countryside of black-skinned non-Arabs.
The Sudanese authorities, much like the Turks in 1915 and the Nazis in the 1930's, apparently calculated that genocide offered considerable domestic benefits — like the long-term stability to be achieved by a "final solution" of conflicts between Arabs and non-Arabs — and that the world would not really care very much. It looks as if the Sudanese bet correctly." (See also: "Dare We Call It Genocide?" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times/truthout, 2004/06/16))

"Web Posting Denies al-Qaida Death" (Salah Nasrawi, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/19)
"An al-Qaida cell fulfilled its threat to kill an American hostage, beheading him and showing the grisly photos on the Internet. Hours later, Saudi officials claimed they gunned down the militant who allegedly masterminded Paul M. Johnson's kidnapping.
But a Web posting that appeared Saturday denied Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, the reputed leader of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia, was killed. Officials had said he was slain in a firefight after police tracked down the car that dumped Johnson's body just outside Riyadh Friday.
"Some satellite networks and news agencies have been propagating the false news that Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, God preserve him, has been killed," the statement said, using a different spelling of his name. 'We would like to say that such claims, unleashed by the tyrants of Saudi Arabia, are aimed at dissuading the holy warriors and crushing their spirits.'"

"Islamic Radicals Behead American In Saudi Arabia" (Craig Whitlock, The Washington Post, 2004/06/19)
Sometimes I get the feeling that Islamism basically is tribalism gone global and that Islamic terrorism is best understood as a blood feud spanning continents and centuries.
According to this logic, if someone in tribe X kills someone in tribe Y, any member of tribe X is considered as a "fair" target. Or as the al-Qa'ida spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith concluded: "We have the right to kill 4 million Americans — 2 million of them children — and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands.":
"Johnson worked on Apache attack helicopter systems for the Saudi government. His kidnappers said he was singled out for that reason. "Let him taste something of what Muslims have long tasted from Apache helicopter fire and missiles," they said in a statement posted on the site. "The infidel got his fair treatment."
"To the Americans and whoever is their ally in the infidel and criminal world and their allies in the war against Islam, this action is punishment to them and a lesson for them to know that whoever steps foot in our country, this decisive action will be his fate," the statement said." (See also: "'Why We Fight America': Al-Qa'ida Spokesman Explains September 11 and Declares Intentions to Kill 4 Million Americans with Weapons of Mass Destruction" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 388, 2002/06/12))

Friday, June 18, 2004

News and commentary:

"The front porch light remains on during the day..."
(Daniel Hulshizer, AP, 2004/06/17)
"The front porch light remains on during the day, behind a yellow ribbon tied to the railing in support of Paul M. Johnson at his sister's home in Little Egg Harbor, N.J., Thursday, June 17, 2004."

"al-Qaida Leader Killed in Saudi Raid" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/18)
"The leader of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia was believed killed in a raid in the capital Friday, hours after his group claimed the beheading of an American engineer, Saudi security officials said.
A U.S. official confirmed that al-Moqrin has been killed. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.
To establish identities, one Saudi official said forensic tests would be conducted on three bodies of militants killed in a shootout in a downtown neighborhood shortly after the discovery of Paul M. Johnson Jr.'s body.
The killing of Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, 31, would be a coup for the Saudi goverment, which has been under intense pressure to halt a wave of attacks against Westerners in the kingdom."

"Al Qaeda beheads U.S. hostage" (Ghaida Ghantous, Reuters, 2004/06/18)
"Al Qaeda militants have beheaded U.S. engineer Paul Johnson after the Saudi government failed to meet a deadline for it to free jailed militants.
The group loyal to Saudi-born Osama bin Laden displayed his severed head in pictures posted on its Islamist Web site Sawt al-Jihad. A Saudi Web site, al Wifaq, said Marshall's body was found in the Mowansiyah area, east of the capital Riyadh.
The U.S. embassy condemned it as an "inhumane crime". The victim's full name was Paul Marshall Johnson.
"As we promised, the mujahideen, we have beheaded the American hostage Paul Marshall after the deadline that the mujahideen gave to the tyrannical Saudi government passed," the Falluja Brigade of the Organisation of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said on their Web site, Sawt al-Jihad on Friday.
The Web site showed three pictures of what appeared to be Johnson's severed head — one showed the bloodied head propped up on the back of a body in an orange jumpsuit with a knife leaning on the face.
A second picture showed a hand lifting up the head and a third showed the body and the head from a different angle." (See also the pictures: "Al Qaeda Says It Beheads U.S. Hostage in Saudi" (Drudge Report, 2004/06/18))

"McDowdification" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2004/06/18)
"For an example of just how dishonest the partisan press prepared to be in its effort to discredit President Bush's wartime leadership, look at this passage from yesterday's USA Today:

Bush and Cheney also have sought to tie Iraq specifically to the 9/11 attacks. In a letter to Congress on March 19, 2003 — the day the war in Iraq began — Bush said that the war was permitted under legislation authorizing force against those who "planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."

Here's what the letter, a prerequisite for the commencement of military action under the bipartisan Iraq war resolution, actually said:

Acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

That is, the president's letter did not claim, as USA Today implies, that Iraq was culpable for the Sept. 11 attacks, only that Iraq's liberation was consistent with the effort to fight terrorists, including those who were behind 9/11." (See also: "Panel says Saddam didn't help al-Qaeda Link used as justification for war; Bush officials stand by statements" (Mimi Hall, USA Today, 2004/06/17) and "Presidential Letter" (George W. Bush, The White House, 2004/06/17))

"Living in a Bubble: The BBC’s very own Mideast foreign policy" (Tom Gross, National Review, 2004/06/18)
"Using lavish public funding (courtesy of the British taxpayer) and an unprecedented worldwide news reach (its radio service alone, broadcasting in 43 languages, attracts over 150 million listeners daily), it is — in blatant breach of its own charter — virtually conducting its own anti-American and anti-Israeli foreign policy. Anyone who doesn't agree with its policies (Tony Blair, for example) finds himself at the mercy of BBC news coverage. ...
Some of the foreign BBC staff are quite open about their sympathies for Hamas. The senior BBC Arabic Service correspondent in the Gaza Strip, Fayad Abu Shamala, told a Hamas rally on May 6, 2001, (attended by the then Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin) that journalists and media organizations in Gaza, including the BBC, are "waging the campaign [of resistance/terror against Israel] shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people." ...
Recently, Ibrahim Helal, editor in chief of the much-criticized al Jazeera TV network was hired by the BBC World Service Trust. The job the BBC wanted him for? To advise on balance in Middle East coverage, and head "media training projects," i.e. to train BBC (and perhaps other journalists) into 'understanding the Middle East better.'"

"Let Europe be Europe" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2004/06/18)
"The continent is now the repository of Western heritage — a beautiful museum or amusement park, if you will, of caretakers and custodians. Unless that changes, we should no more expect Europeans to participate in the slogging in Iraq or Afghanistan than we should count on Disneyland guides venturing into nearby South Central to adjudicate gang violence, or Smithsonian docents to keep the piece in D.C. neighborhoods. Barring a 9/11-like event at the Parthenon or Louvre, one cannot — and should not — ask people to do what they simply cannot and will not do. ...
I fear that we should expect over the next 50 years some pretty scary things coming out of Europe as its impossible postmodern utopian dreams turn undemocratic and then ugly — once its statism and entitlement economy falter; Jews leave as Arabs stream in; its shaky German-French axis unravels; its next vision of an EU mare nostrum encompassing North Africa and Turkey begins to terrify Old Europe; and its pacifism brings it real humiliation from the likes of an Iran or China. Indeed, despite Europe's noble efforts to incorporate the former Warsaw Pact, we are already seeing such tensions in the most recent EU elections.
We all like the Europeans and wish them well in their efforts to create heaven on earth. But in the end I still think we Americans are on the right side of history in Iraq — while they are on no side at all."

"Were We Wrong?" (The New Republic, 2004/06/18)
"This magazine supported the Iraq war for two reasons, one primarily strategic, one primarily moral. The strategic reason was simple: We considered war the only way to ensure that Saddam Hussein never acquired a nuclear weapon. ...
In October 2002, the National Intelligence Estimate, the combined assessment of America's various intelligence agencies, stated that "all intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons." We know now that some experts didn't agree, but few outside the administration thought so at the time. Indeed, even most opponents of the war assumed Iraq was trying to build a bomb. We feel regret — but no shame.
But, if our strategic rationale for war has collapsed, our moral one has not. ...
In the year since Saddam's statue fell, those hopes have suffered some devastating setbacks. Iraqis, who we hoped (and still hope) will become a model for their region, have proved more susceptible to its pathologies than we expected. Fanatical Islam, America-hatred, and a penchant for conspiracy theories — all forces we hoped a free Iraq would undermine — have instead undermined our efforts to build liberal institutions. And, in our inability to provide democracy's fundamental prerequisite — security — we have undermined ourselves. ...
Could this embryonic freedom be extinguished? Of course. Given the militias roaming the country, Iraq's political future could well be decided by guns rather than ballots. If another dictator murders his way to power, or the country dissolves into violent fiefdoms, the war will have proved not just a strategic failure, but a moral one as well."

"Conspiracy Theory: Meet Mike Ruppert, the man who discovered the "truth" behind September 11" (Matthew Continetti, The Weekly Standard, 2004/06/18)
Continetti on Mike Ruppert's conspiracy theory regarding 9/11:
"The trail of evidence linking the United States government to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, is, as one might imagine, labyrinthine. It is also allusive, almost poetic, a revelatory vision seen through some sort of gauze or cheesecloth. Both John Foster Dulles and Zbigniew Brzezinski are involved, as is Richard Grasso, the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. And Ken Lay, too, as well as the company he once ran, Enron, because the SEC was investigating Enron, and "most of the SEC's investigative records were stored in the World Trade Center," and . . . well, you can figure out the rest. Then there is a lot of talk about market capitalization, Jack Welch, orange juice, and a woman named Rhonda.
A basic treatment of Ruppert's theme is: Because the United States is "on the brink of economic collapse," war was required in 2001. That's because the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan endangered the drug trade, which is the foundation of U.S. economic growth. The Taliban, we are told, were committed to eliminating heroin production in their country. To keep production going, as well as to establish an imperium in Central Asia, the government contracted out bin Laden's al Qaeda, who Ruppert argues had a longstanding relationship with the CIA and the Bush family. While Iraq does not figure into the conspiracy, Colombia does, since it 'is on the list of countries that this administration is targeting for war because they have oil there too.'" (See also: "The September 11 X-Files" (David Corn, The Nation, 2002/05/30))

"Middle East Studies on Trial" (Daniel Pipes and Teri Blumenfeld, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/06/18)
Remember Scott Alexander, who infamously defended Fawaz Damra last week with this Orwellian line: "...when Palestinians refer to Jews as 'descended from apes and swine' or encourage support for those who 'kill Jews,' they do so with the reasonably justifiable self-image of victim and persecuted, not of victimizer and persecutor."? Here's an update:
"On the eve of the trial, Alexander made a stunning about-turn. He told the court he would not provide expert testimony for Damra. And then, rather than slink quietly away, he took the surprising step of writing a letter to the press in which he openly condemned the very statements by Damra that he previously had so vigorously defended. His letter stated: “Mr. Damra did indeed promote violence and hatred. I unreservedly condemn the speeches and actions of Mr. Damra in the early 1990s when he was advocating and helping to raise money for movements that perpetrate violent attacks on Israeli citizens.”
No less astonishing, during research for the case, Ms. Blumenfeld discovered that Dahan’s sworn testimony was plagiarized from two sources, one taken completely out of context concerning Finnish perceptions of the media and the other a definition of Discourse Analysis in a textbook. Dahan had quoted verbatim substantial portions of the original text in his testimony. More incriminating yet, his bibliography exposed him, for Dahan inadvertently copied from his source a reference to a book that he did not cite." (See also: "Bin Laden cannot be named in Damra trial" (John Caniglia, The Plain Dealer, 2004/06/15) and "What Would Victims Do Without Experts?" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2004/06/09))

"Exporting Saddam's WMDs" (Ben Johnson; FrontPageMagazine, 2004/06/18)
"Jordan has been the recipient of Iraqi WMDs in the past. Most recently, Jordan seized 20 tons of chemical weapons while foiling an al-Qaeda plot to kill 80,000 people. The stockpile they uncovered contained 70 different kinds of chemical agents, including Sarin and VX gas. (Remember, last month Iraqi insurgents lobbed two chemical weapons at U.S. troops armed with Sarin and mustard gas.)
On April 17, Jordanian King Abdallah claimed these poisons came from Syria – but experts say Syria only has the capacity to produce small amounts of these weapons, not the 20 tons al-Qaeda possessed. Significantly, David Kay and others have said Syria acted as a depository for Saddam’s WMDs. Former Justice Department official John Loftus has made a compelling case that even more WMDs are presently buried in Syria. And these are merely the latest in a long line of WMD discoveries, inside Iraq and out. ...
The discovery of banned WMD engines should forever silence those who believe Saddam had no stockpile of weapons, or that all such stockpiles were destroyed before the war. Saddam gassed his own people. He had WMDs that miraculously ended up in the hands of Jordanian al-Qaeda terrorists. And now we find his pre-war armory of chemical and biological weapons, including anthrax agents, is being shipped around the world." (See also: "UN inspectors: Saddam shipped out WMD before war and after" (World Tribune.com, 2004/06/11))

"Israel's Intifada Victory" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2004/06/18)
"At the height of the intifada, there were nine suicide attacks in Israel killing 85 Israelis in just one month (March 2002). In the past three months there have been none.
The overall level of violence has been reduced by more than 70 percent. How did Israel do it? By ignoring its critics and launching a two-pronged campaign of self-defense.
First, Israel targeted terrorist leaders — attacks so hypocritically denounced by Westerners who, at the same time, cheer the hunt for, and demand the head of, Osama bin Laden. The top echelon of Hamas and other terrorist groups has been either arrested, killed or driven underground. ...
Second, the fence. Only about a quarter of the separation fence has been built, but its effect is unmistakable. The northern part is already complete, and attacks in northern Israel have dwindled to almost nothing. ...
These new strategic realities are not just creating a new equilibrium, they are creating the first hope for peace since Arafat officially tore up the Oslo accords four years ago. Once Israel has withdrawn from Gaza and has completed the fence, terrorism as a strategic option will be effectively dead."

"Cheney versus the NYT" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2004/06/18)
Links IV: "The vice-president's direct attack on the New York Times' portrayal of the 9/11 Commission report was a zinger. On balance, i think Cheney is right. The links between al Qaeda and Saddam may not have amounted to a formal alliance, but they existed all right, as the Commission conceded. The NYT itself reported that "The report said that despite evidence of repeated contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda in the 90's, 'they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship.'" But if there were "repeated contacts" between al Qaeda and Iraq, how can it be true that, as the headline put it, that "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie"? Headlines truncate things, of course. But Cheney is dead-on in describing this headline as misleading. Here's Tom Kean, the chairman of the Commision: "What we have found is, were there contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq? Yes. Some of them were shadowy - but they were there." Here's Lee Hamilton:

"I must say I have trouble understanding the flack over this. The Vice President is saying, I think, that there were connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. We don't disagree with that. What we have said is what the governor just said, we don't have any evidence of a cooperative, or a corroborative relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and these al Qaeda operatives with regard to the attacks on the United States. So it seems to me the sharp differences that the press has drawn, the media has drawn, are not that apparent to me."

The NYT had the gall to demand that Bush and Cheney apologize. In fact, it's the NYT that needs to apologize." (See also: "Cheney: Clear links between Saddam, Al-Qaeda; calls NY Times article 'outrageous'" (Drudge Report, 2004/06/17) and "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie; Describes a Wider Plot for 9/11" (Philip Shenon and Christopher Marquis, The New York Times, 2004/06/17))

"The Timetable: To the Minute, Panel Paints a Grim Portrait of Day's Terror" (Eric Schmitt and Eric Lichtblau, The New York Times, 2004/06/18)
"Confirmation came at 8:24. The plane had already changed its route when a chilling voice - believed to be that of Mohamed Atta, the lead plotter - was heard to say: "We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you'll be O.K. We are returning to the airport."
Aviation officials in Boston began sending word to supervisors in Herndon, Va., that Flight 11 had been hijacked and was heading to New York City. But it was not until 8:37 that Norad officials in Rome, N.Y., responsible for defending the Northeast, were notified.
"We need someone to scramble some F-16's or something up there," an F.A.A. manager said.
"Is this real-world or exercise?" a military official asked.
"No, this is not an exercise, not a test," came the response.
Two F-15 jets at Otis Air Force Base, some 150 miles from New York City, were airborne at 8:53. But Flight 11 had crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center six minutes earlier."

"Putin Says Russia Warned U.S. on Saddam" (Raushan Nurshayeva, Reuters, 2004/06/18)
"Russian President Vladimir Putin, in comments sure to help President Bush, declared Friday that Russia knew Iraq's Saddam Hussein had planned terror attacks on U.S. soil and had warned Washington.
Putin said Russian intelligence had been told on several occasions that Saddam's special forces were preparing to attack U.S. targets inside and outside the United States.
"After the events of September 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services several times received information that the official services of the Saddam regime were preparing 'terrorist acts' on the United States and beyond its borders," he told reporters.
"This information was passed on to our American colleagues," he said. He added, however, that Russian intelligence had no proof that Saddam's agents had been involved in any particular attack. ...
Putin's remarks were all the more unusual since Russia had diplomatic relations with Saddam's Iraq and sided with France and Germany in opposing the invasion."

Added in archive:
"Confronting Europe is a presidential tradition" (John Vinocur, International Herald Tribune, 2004/06/15)
"The black-red alliance" (Amir Taheri, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/06/10)

Thursday, June 17, 2004

News and commentary:

"Silence and Cruelty" (Paul Berman, The New Republic, 2004/06/17)
"In the twentieth century, crimes on the hugest scale took place in the open, yet somehow, through the alchemies of political ideology, the crimes were rendered invisible and thus were allowed to continue unimpeded. This has been Iraq's experience precisely. Saddam launched his slaughters 25 years ago, and, in the Western countries, everyone knew, yet most people managed not to see, and no one ever succeeded in organizing a truly mass protest.
A truly large and powerful protest movement took to the streets all over the Western world only in February 2003--and this was not to denounce the terrible dictatorship, but to prevent an invasion from overthrowing the terrible dictatorship. Those were the largest mass protests in the history of the world. ...
And so, during this last year we have learned that people who smirk at putting the words "liberal democracy" and "Iraq" into a single sentence ought to reduce their smirk by 20 percent, in proportion to Iraq's Kurdish population. We have learned that, in Kurdistan, the democratic left has turned out to be especially strong. And we have learned that, in some of the world's liberal democracies, other democratic leftists couldn't care less. "They shall not pass" was the slogan of the left in the Spanish Civil War. "Yes, they will," is the slogan of Spanish socialism today. Iraqi success, as much as Iraqi suffering, turns out to be invisible in the modern world."

"Jewish soccer players attacked" (Kjell Nilsson, Dagens Nyheter, 2004/06/17)
"Death to the Jews!" chanted just around the corner. Translated excerpt from a Swedish article:
"The Jewish sports club IK Makkabi's soccer team of 15 year olds was harassed with anti-Semitic calls and attacked with blows and pushes in connection with a match against Iftin KoIF in S:t Erikscupen [the "world's largest youth cup" in which "4,914 teams with appr. 75,000 youths between 8 and 18 years play soccer or floorball"]. Representants for IK Makkabi have made a report to the police for agitation against a national or ethnic group.
IK Makkabi is demanding that Stockholms Fotbollsförbund [Stockholms Soccer Association] excludes and bars Iftin KoIF from further participation in arrangements by Stockholms Fotbollsförbund.
The members of Iftin KoIF in Spånga [a suburb of Stockholm] are mainly Muslim Somalians.
According to witness accounts players from Iftin KoIF chanted phrases as "death to the Jews", "free Palestine" and "crush Zionism". The captain of Iftin thanked for the match with the words "we thank the Jews and their referee". After which several of the Iftin players attacked and a general fight broke out between the players.
The referee has confirmed the invectives shouted by Iftin KoIF:s players in his match report." (See also: "To be a Jew in Sweden" (Stefan Meisel, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/06/08) and "Silence surrounds Muslim Jew-hatred" (Sverker Oredsson and Mikael Tossavainen, Dagens Nyheter/Watch, 2003/10/20))

"Fahrenheit 9/11 gets help offer from Hezbollah" (Samantha Ellis, The Guardian, 2004/06/17)
Personally I'd take active support of my views by a fanatical anti-Semitic terrorist group as kind of a warning sign:
"Meanwhile, in the United Arab Emirates, the film is being offered the kind of support it doesn't need. According to Screen International, the UAE-based distributor Front Row Entertainment has been contacted by organisations related to the Hezbollah in Lebanon with offers of help. All in all, Tony Blair must be relieved that Moore is not going to make a film about him; Moore rebuffed the rumour in a message on his website headlined: "Sorry to scare you, Tony. Michael Moore was just kidding."

"Car Bomb Blast Kills 35 People in Iraq" (Sameer N. Yacoub, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/17)
"A sport-utility vehicle packed with artillery shells blew up Thursday in a crowd of people waiting to volunteer for the Iraqi military, killing at least 35 and wounding 138.
The explosion in Baghdad, the deadliest attack since a bombing outside another recruiting center in February, was the latest in a surge of attacks on U.S. coalition forces and their Iraqi allies ahead of the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30.
The blast scattered bodies and debris across a four-lane highway outside Baghdad's Muthanna airport, which is used as a base by both the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and the U.S. military. The explosion could be heard for miles and sent a cloud of smoke over the city.
No American or Iraqi troops were injured, U.S. Army Col. Mike Murray said.
Many of the victims had just gotten off a bus at about 9 a.m., Murray said. About 100 volunteers were trying to enter the recruiting center when the sport-utility vehicle crashed into the crowd, said Capt. Hani Hussein of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps."

"Bush's Team Needs a Coach" (Max Boot, Los Angeles Times/CFR, 2004/06/17)
Boot on the faulty report on Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003:
"This risible mishap will provide further fodder for those on the left who believe that the administration lies routinely. I don't think that's the case. A report like this would not fool an intelligent 10-year-old. If the State Department were really bent on deception, it would not have appended a handy index of "significant" terrorist events, allowing anyone to check its calculations and find them in error.
This is evidence not of duplicity but of incompetence. Again. ...
When President Bush's foreign policy players came into office, the widespread assumption was that they would be cautious but competent. Sort of like the last Bush administration. Instead they've been great at enunciating bold policies — such as preempting terrorism — and terrible at executing them.
Look at the hash the administration made of diplomacy before the invasion of Iraq. It couldn't even bring the Turks on board. Nothing better exposed its ham-handedness than the speech Vice President Dick Cheney made in August 2002 declaring there was no need to send U.N. weapons inspectors back to Iraq. When just a few weeks later Bush asked for the inspectors to be dispatched, his sincerity was widely questioned." (See also: "Faulty Terror Report Card" (Alan B. Krueger and David Laitin, The Washington Post, 2004/05/17) and "Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003" (U.S. Department of State, 2004/04/29))

"Iraq & al Qaeda: The 9/11 Commission raises more questions than it answers" (Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 2004/06/17)
Links III: "Since the staff is purporting to provide a comprehensive explanation of the 9/11 plot — the origins of which it traces back to 1999 — what is their explanation for what Atta was doing in Prague in 2000? Why, when the staff went into minute detail about the travels of other hijackers (even when it conceded it did not know the relevance of those trips), was Atta's trip to Prague not worthy of even a passing mention? Why was it so important for Atta to be in Prague on May 30, 2000 that he couldn't delay for one day, until May 31, when his visa would have been ready? Why was it so important for him to be in Prague on May 30 that he opted to go despite the fact that, without a visa, he could not leave the airport terminal? How did he happen to find the spot in the terminal where surveillance cameras would not capture him for nearly six hours? Why did he go back again on June 2? Was he meeting with al-Ani? If so, why would it be important for him to see al-Ani right before entering the United States in June 2000? And jumping ahead to 2001, if Atta wasn't using cash to travel anonymously, what did he do with the $8000 he suddenly withdrew before disappearing on April 4? If his cell phone was used in Florida between April 4 and April 11, what follow-up investigation has been done about that by the 9/11 Commission? By the FBI? By anybody? Whom was the cell phone used to call? Do any of those people remember speaking to Atta at that time? Perhaps someone would remember speaking with the ringleader of the most infamous attack in the history of the United States if he had called to chat, no?"

"The big lie (ctd)" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2004/06/17)
Links II: "What the devil is going on? Has the world gone stark, staring mad? The splash headline in the virulently anti-war Independent was exultant:
‘Official verdict: White House misled world over Saddam’. ...
The cause of the excitement was an interim report by the staff of the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks, which said it had found no conclusive evidence of any links between Iraq and al Qaeda in attacking the US. This has immediately been spun by the anti-war lobby to claim falsely that a) there were no links between Iraq and al Qaeda — official — and that President Bush lied to the world by saying Iraq was involved in 9/11.
But both of these statements are outright lies. ...
But whatever is going on in Washington — which appears to be having a collective nervous breakdown — that is preventing any of this even being discussed by an official committee expressly charged to discuss it, what is clear is that the mainstream media, both in the US and in Britain, is now simply incapable of applying proper journalistic criteria to the subject of the war in Iraq. Whether through venomous ideology or sheer incompetence and laziness, it is not prepared or able to do the spade-work and actually read what is in the public domain, let alone try to excavate more material. Instead it seizes upon an obviously vacuous and inconsistent paragraph, and because a lazy and slippery reading gives it a couple of soundbites with which to tell more lies about the war, proceeds to do so."

"More Lies about the Saddam-Osama Connection" (Joel Mowbray, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/06/17)
Links I: "As newspaper headlines are sure to scream in page one, above-the-fold stories, the 9/11 commission found "no credible evidence" that Saddam played a role in the terrorist attack. ...
But did the administration try to pin 9/11 on Saddam? No.
Yet the casual reader probably couldn't glean that from the initial media reaction to the commission's interim report.
Nor could the casual reader discern that the "news" on Iraq was but one paragraph in a 12-page document.
Reuters newswire, the outlet where al Qaeda is merely an "extremist network," pronounced in its headline, "Panel says no signs on Iraq, Qaeda link." The headline writer, though, must have missed the second paragraph, which acknowledged that the commission found that bin Laden himself had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in 1994.
The Associated Press was no better, and in fact, played a more overtly political hand. Its lead sentence stated that the commission's report was "[b]luntly contradicting the Bush administration." Except that it wasn't." (See also: "No Evidence Connecting Iraq to Al Qaeda, 9/11 Panel Says" (Dan Eggen, The Washington Post, 2004/06/16))

"In Detail: How bin Laden Set Plan in Motion in '99" (Douglas Jehl and David Johnston, The New York Times, 2004/06/17)
"In early 1999, Osama bin Laden summoned Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to his well-guarded compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan, to confide to the lieutenant that his long-discussed proposal to use aircraft as terror weapons against the United States had the full support of Al Qaeda. ...
Mr. Mohammed, the American-educated Kuwaiti from Pakistan who emerges in the commission's account as a main partner of Mr. bin Laden, at one point planned an attack involving 10 planes. Mr. Mohammed wanted to hijack the last plane himself, then kill every man on board and land to deliver an anti-American diatribe. Another version, scrapped in 2000, envisioned near-simultaneous attacks involving aircraft in Southeast Asia and the United States. Still another, discarded only in the summer of 2001, conceived of a second wave of strikes, after those in Washington and New York, that would target skyscrapers in California and Washington State."

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

News and commentary:

"No Evidence Connecting Iraq to Al Qaeda, 9/11 Panel Says" (Dan Eggen, The Washington Post, 2004/06/16)
"There is "no credible evidence" that Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq collaborated with the al Qaeda terrorist network on any attacks on the United States, according to a new staff report released this morning by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. ...
The report on al Qaeda's history said the government of Sudan, which gave sanctuary to al Qaeda from 1991 to 1996, persuaded bin Laden to cease supporting anti-Hussein forces and "arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda." But the contacts did not result in any cooperation, the panel said.
"There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan [in 1996], but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," the report says. 'Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.'"

"2 Palestinian girls nabbed on way to suicide attack" (David Rudge, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/06/16)
"Two 15-year-old girls were arrested overnight Wednesday in the West Bank city of Nablus for allegedly planning to carry out a suicide attack together with their fathers, Army Radio reported.
According to the report, the four were recruited by an Al-Aksa activist. IDF sources told the radio that the same activist recruited Husam Abdu, 16, of Nablus to carry out a suicide bombing at the Huwara checkpoint south of the West Bank city.
The two teenage girls were identified as members of the Fatah organization, Majda Kohon and Assil al-Hindi.
They were arrested in Nablus and taken into custody along with their fathers. Israel radio reported that after questioning it transpired that one of the girls had recruited the other to carry out a suicide bombing attack."

"Renowned Egyptian Producer Yousef Shaheen: 'Bush - Terrorist, Crazy, Idiot'; The American Collapse is Inevitable; 'The [Egyptian] Regime - One Big Lie'; The Jews 'Blackmailed the World ... With the [Holocaust]'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 732, 2004/06/16)
"The Egyptian Nasserite weekly Al-Arabi featured an interview with Egyptian producer Yousef Shaheen, in honor of the screening of his new film 'Alexandria-New York' at the May 2004 Cannes Film Festival. The following are excerpts from the interview: ...
'What are the Americans and Zionists doing to people, and what do they want? I know from history that any robber, however tyrannical and barbaric, cannot in any way eradicate an entire people. Hitler, with all that is said about him, did not succeed in annihilating the Jews. They [the Jews] extorted the world and extracted [funds] from it everywhere, because of this tale [of the Holocaust], to the point where what they extracted from Germany only made all the Jews millionaires. They also held a conference against antisemitism in Berlin. ...
The Americans and the Zionists want to annihilate the Muslims as much as possible. Even [in the beginning of his term], and particularly after September 11, Bush began to talk of a Crusader war. He is crazy, and an idiot. First of all, because history does not repeat itself, and second, because we Arabs and Muslims acquired experience following the Crusader wars.
After the Arabs triumphed and vanquished [the Crusaders], they reached a degree of understanding and tolerance in Andalusia, and achieved great things in science and philosophy, that today the West exploits better than we do…'"

"Iraqi Cleric Signals End to Shi'ite Revolt" (Khaled Farhan, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/16)
"Radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr sent his fighters home on Wednesday in what may mark the end of a 10-week revolt against U.S.-led forces that once engulfed southern Iraq and Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines.
With the formal end of U.S.-led occupation just two weeks away, Sadr issued a statement from his base in Najaf calling on his Mehdi Army militiamen to go home.
"Each of the individuals of the Mehdi Army, the loyalists who made sacrifices...should return to their governorates to do their duty," the statement said."

"'Under God'" (Samuel P. Huntington, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/06/16)
"Americans have always been extremely religious and overwhelmingly Christian. The 17th-century settlers founded their communities in America in large part for religious reasons. Eighteenth-century Americans saw their Revolution in religious and largely biblical terms. ...
Today, overwhelming majorities of Americans affirm religious beliefs. When asked in 2003 simply whether they believed in God or not, 92% said yes. In a series of 2002-03 polls, 57% to 65% of Americans said religion was very important in their lives, 23% to 27% said fairly important, and 12% to 18% said not very important. Large proportions of Americans also appear to be active in the practice of their religion. In 2002 and 2003, an average of 65% claimed membership in a church or synagogue. About 40% said they had attended church or synagogue in the previous seven days, and roughly 33% said they went to church at least once a week. ...
Over the course of American history, fluctuations did occur in levels of American religious commitment and religious involvement. There has not, however, been an overall downward trend in American religiosity. At the start of the 21st century, Americans are no less committed, and are quite possibly more committed, to their religious beliefs and their Christian identity than at any time in their history."

"So Torture Is Legal?" (Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, 2004/06/16)
"As I say, connect the dots: They lead from the White House to the Pentagon to Abu Ghraib, and from Abu Ghraib back to military intelligence and thus to the Pentagon and the White House. They don't, it is true, make a complete picture. They don't actually reveal whether direct White House and Pentagon orders set off a chain of events leading to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, prisoner deaths in Afghanistan or other uses of torture we haven't learned about yet.
But who will fill in the blanks? Here is the tragedy: Despite the easy availability of evidence, almost nobody has an interest in pushing the investigation as far as it should go. ...
Indeed, if the voters can't move the politicians, and the politicians aren't courageous enough to act alone, we may wake up one morning and discover that torture has always been legal after all. Edmund Burke, a conservative philosopher, wrote, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." It looks as if he was right."

"Dare We Call It Genocide?" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times/truthout, 2004/06/16)
A report from the Chad-Sudan Border: "The Bush administration says it is exploring whether to describe the mass murder and rape in the Darfur region of Sudan as "genocide." I suggest that President Bush invite to the White House a real expert, Magboula Muhammad Khattar, a 24-year-old widow huddled under a tree here. ...
By most accounts, about 100 people were massacred that day in Ab-Layha, and a particular effort was made to exterminate all men and boys, even the very young. Women and girls were sometimes allowed to flee, but the prettiest were kidnapped.
Most of those raped don't want to talk about it. But Zahra Abdel Karim, a 30-year-old woman, told me how in the same attack on Ab-Layha, the Janjaweed shot to death her husband, Adam, and 7-year-old son, Rahshid, as well as three of her brothers. Then they grabbed her 4-year-old son, Rasheed, from her arms and cut his throat.
The Janjaweed took her and her two sisters away on horses and gang-raped them, she said. The troops shot one sister, Kuttuma, and cut the throat of the other, Fatima, and they discussed how to mutilate her. (Sexual humiliation has been part of the Sudanese strategy to drive out the African tribespeople. The Janjaweed routinely add to the stigma by branding or scarring the women they rape.)
"One Janjaweed said: 'You belong to me. You are a slave to the Arabs, and this is the sign of a slave,'" she recalled. He slashed her leg with a sword before letting her hobble away, stark naked. Other villagers confirmed that they had found her naked and bleeding, and she showed me the scar on her leg."

"Iran's mushrooming threat" (The Washington Times, 2004/06/16)
"Unfortunately, there is little evidence thus far that either the United States or the EU 3 will move decisively to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. While Britain and France seem to be inching toward a somewhat tougher approach, they have shown little interest in putting any kind of a deadline on Tehran. While Washington has done a commendable job of articulating the problem that would be posed by nuclear weapons in the hands of rogue governments like the one in Iran, it has shown little stomach for confronting the regime anytime this year. While the West delays taking action, congressional investigators reported yesterday that Beijing is sending nuclear technology to Iran in exchange for oil.
In short, while we pass resolutions at the IAEA, the situation grows more dangerous. It is looking more and more like 2005 will be the critical year when the West will decide whether it is prepared to live with an Iranian atomic bomb, or take decisive action to prevent one from being developed. We understand that the United States and Europe are exhausted by Iraq, but we don't have the luxury of being exhausted. The truth is that the world will become a much more dangerous place if Iran — ruled by a violent, paranoid cabal that routinely employs terrorism as an instrument of state policy — is allowed to acquire a nuclear capacity. That would be intolerable." (See also: "Coddling the Mullahs" (The Wall Street Journal, 2004/06/14))

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

News and commentary:

"This image taken from video posted on an Islamic website..."
(APTN/AP, 2004/06/15)
"This image taken from video posted on an Islamic website, Tuesday June 15, 2004, shows a video frame of a blindfolded American hostage being held in Saudi Arabia."

"Islamic Group Shows Tape of U.S. Hostage" (Jasper Mortimer, AP/My Way, 2004/06/15)
"An Islamic Web site showed videotape Tuesday of a blindfolded American hostage in Saudi Arabia and of abductors threatening to kill him unless Saudi authorities free al-Qaida prisoners within three days.
Paul Johnson, 49, of Stafford Township, N.J., was abducted Saturday by a group calling itself al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. The organization is believed to be headed by al-Qaida's chief in the Saudi kingdom, Abdullah-aziz al-Moqrin, who is identified as speaking on the tape.
"My name is Paul Marshall Johnson, Jr.," the hostage says in the tape, seated and with an elaborate tattoo showing on his left shoulder. "I am an American. ... I work on Apache helicopters." ...
His statement was similar to a printed message on the Web site that carried the name of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. It said the group gave Saudi authorities 72 hours - by Friday - to release "mujahadeen" militants or it would kill the hostage."

"How America can win the intelligence war" (Spengler, Asia Times, 2004/06/15)
"A number of Washington's critics, for example Dr Daniel Pipes, observe that it is senseless to speak of a "war on terrorism", for terrorism is a tactic, a mere method to achieve a strategic goal. ...
Pipes and others propose instead to declare war upon "radical Islam", a formulation that leads to just as much confusion. No one, least of all the vast majority of the world's Muslims, can say with any clarity what distinguishes radical Islam from "moderate Islam". ...
Islam's encounter with the West leaves room for nothing but radical jihadists on the one hand, or radical reformers. Islam is expansionist by construction and political by its original design. It is a fact of history that jihad, by which I mean specifically the propagation of the faith by violence, is a mainstream tradition. ...
The problem actually is quite simple. To advocate jihad today is the hallmark of the radical Islamist, and it is there that the West must draw a line in the sand. But to repudiate jihad in turn implies radical revision of the religion's mainstream, and that is the hallmark of the radical reformer.
Like other religions, Islam has reached a point in world history — or rather world history has caught up with Islam — such that it must undergo a fundamental change. ...
The issue is not whether Middle Eastern governments will adopt democratic reforms — that is not within the power of the West to dictate — but whether Muslims will employ violence in the service of territorial irredentism in the Kashmir or Palestine."

"Confronting Europe is a presidential tradition" (John Vinocur, International Herald Tribune, 2004/06/15)
"Very much unreassuringly for Europe, Reagan took credit for concepts like the Evil Empire to characterize the Soviet Union, and the space-based missile defense called Star Wars. Sounding well over the top, he even shouted seemingly loony stuff at Mikhail Gorbachev from a rostrum at the edge of the Iron Curtain in Berlin, like: Mr. G, tear down this wall.
Reagan was frontally, irredeemably American entering the White House in 1981, a time when Western Europe's economy and social fabric looked the sounder of the two continents' and when many Germans were convinced they had invented a magical massage of cash and euphemism that would soothe the Soviets into letting democracy tiptoe to their door. Projected against this European mind-set (which, modified to fit current circumstances, applies again to Bush), Reagan was a dummy, a cowboy, and a voodoo economist creating McDo jobs. The clod actually used words that fit what he meant. The man said that if NATO's European members didn't militarily face down the Soviets' SS-20 missiles targeted on them by agreeing to deploy the cruises and Pershings, the Russians would win.
That was confrontation. And since much of the American press had amplified a vision of Reagan as a Master of Simplism, the Europeans jacked up those decibels in his first years and made Reagan out to be a dangerous fool. Demonstrations against the American missiles — Reagan-as-cowboy posters were their mark of ultimate disdain — rolled across Europe in numbers that made the anti-Iraq marching of 2003 seem weedy."

"Grim Numbers" (Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, 2004/06/15)
"The first survey of Iraqis sponsored by the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal shows that most say they would feel safer if Coalition forces left immediately, without even waiting for elections scheduled for next year. An overwhelming majority, about 80 percent, also say they have “no confidence” in either the U.S. civilian authorities or coalition forces.
Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed also said they believed violent attacks have increased around the country because “people have lost faith in the coalition forces.” ...
Taken from May 14 to May 23, the survey also shows a sharp rise in the popularity of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, with 81 percent saying they had either a better or much better or better opinion of him than they did three months earlier. Sadr’s Al Mahdi Army has been engaged in a bloody standoff with U.S. forces in the cities of Kufa and Najaf for more than two months. His popularity among leading Iraqi public figures is exceeded only by that of another Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who was “strongly supported” by 51 percent of Iraqis and “somewhat supported” by another 19 percent."

"Commander of the Khobar Terrorist Squad Tells the Story of the Operation" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 731, 2004/06/15)
Translated excerpts from an interview with Fawwaz bin Muhammad Al-Nashami, "commander of the Al-Quds Brigade that took responsibility for the May 29 attack at Khobar, Saudi Arabia, in which 22 people were killed": ...
"We entered one of the companies' [offices], and found there an American infidel who looked like a director of one of the companies. I went into his office and called him. When he turned to me, I shot him in the head, and his head exploded. We entered another office and found one infidel from South Africa, and our brother Hussein slit his throat. We asked Allah to accept [these acts of devotion] from us, and from him. This was the South African infidel. ...
We went to one of the buildings. Brother Nimr, may Allah's mercy be upon him, shoved the door until it opened. We entered and in front of us stood many people. We asked them their religion, and for identification documents. We used this time for Da'wa [preaching Islam], and for enlightening the people about our goal. We spoke with many of them.
At the same time, we found a Swedish infidel. Brother Nimr cut off his head, and put it at the gate [of the building] so that it would be seen by all those entering and exiting.
We continued in the search for the infidels, and we slit the throats of those we found among them. At the same time, we heard the sound of the patrols and the gathering [of the security personnel] outside. These cowards did not dare to enter. About 45 minutes or an hour had passed since the beginning of the operation.
We began to comb the site looking for infidels. We foundFilipino Christians. We cut their throats and dedicated them to our brothers the Mujahideen in the Philippines. [Likewise], we found Hindu engineers and we cut their throats too, Allah be praised. That same day, we purged Muhammad's land of many Christians and polytheists."

"It’s Those Jews Again!: Was the Nicholas Berg murder a Zionist setup?" (Steven Stalinsky, National Review, 2004/06/15)
Stalinsky on conspiracy theorizing regarding the beheading of Nicholas Berg:
"Fares.net, one of the first Arabic Internet sites, concluded that the videotape was a fabrication. Translations of the Arab bloggers' statements include: The bodies of the killers looked husky, unlike the thin and agile bodies of Iraqis; the killers' hands looked very white; their motions looked like those of Westerners; in the videotape a Western voice was heard saying, "thy will be done," which is an expression that even an Arab well versed in English would not use; and the chair on which Berg was sitting is the same kind that Lynndie England was photographed sitting in, and is the same kind as the chairs seen in Abu Ghraib.
Other questions brought up by the Arab bloggers include: Was Berg used to carry out the bombings that Al-Zarqawi was accused of? Did the U.S. set the killing up to save Bush's standing in the upcoming elections? One person wrote, "If you thought that the Americans could not possibly go that far...remember the black history of the CIA...and remember who killed the president of the U.S. John Kennedy?" Another wrote, "Since Berg visited several countries in the world, he could have been a Mossad agent, and the Mossad wanted to get rid of him..." ...
Like many other conspiracy theories circulated in the Middle East, this one will, sadly, also likely gain acceptance as time goes by."

"In the Line of Fire" (Sage Stossel, The Atlantic, 2004/06/15)
An interview with Robert D. Kaplan, who was embedded with U.S. Marines as they stormed Fallujah:
"In "A Post-Saddam Scenario," your article in the November, 2002, Atlantic, you expressed optimism that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could change the dynamics of the region for the better — perhaps chastening Iran and Syria into more moderate stances. "The real question," you wrote, "is not whether the American military can topple Saddam's regime but whether the American public has the stomach for imperial involvement of a kind we have not known since the United States occupied Germany and Japan." ...
In that article I also warned against any evangelical lust to impose democracy in a society with little tradition of it. Indeed, Iraq is being held together not by any Western-imported democratic governing councils, but by the blood ties of tribe and clan. Given the chaotic situation, the public's stomach for continued involvement will be crucial, so that when the troops do leave Iraq, they can leave behind a functioning governing structure. With a supportive home front in America, countries like Iran may kick and scream at our ruthlessness and staying power, but privately they will seek deals with the United States. At the moment I'm pessimistic less about the public than because the President — despite his May 24 speech on the subject — has yet to articulate a coherent way out of the anarchy that's plaguing significant parts of Iraq." (See also: "A Post-Saddam Scenario" (Robert D. Kaplan, The Atlantic, from the November 2002 issue))

"Iraq abuse 'ordered from the top'" (BBC News, 2004/06/15)
"The US commander at the centre of the Iraqi prisoner scandal says she was told to treat detainees like dogs.
Brig Gen Janis Karpinski told the BBC she was being made a "convenient scapegoat" for abuse ordered by others.
Top US commander for Iraq, Gen Ricardo Sanchez, should be asked what he knew about the abuse, she told BBC Radio 4's On The Ropes programme. ...
She said current Iraqi prisons chief Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller — who was in charge at Guantanamo Bay — visited her in Baghdad and said: "At Guantanamo Bay we learned that the prisoners have to earn every single thing that they have."
'He said they are like dogs and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you've lost control of them.'"

"Torture" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2004/06/15)
"Well, we're getting closer to understanding what's been going on. Here's a nugget from Newsweek:

White House officials told reporters that such abstract legal reasoning was insignificant and did not reflect the president's orders. But NEWSWEEK has learned that Yoo's August 2002 memo was prompted by CIA questions about what to do with a top Qaeda captive, Abu Zubaydah, who had turned uncooperative. And it was drafted after White House meetings convened by George W. Bush's chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Department general counsel William Haynes and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's counsel, who discussed specific interrogation techniques, says a source familiar with the discussions. Among the methods they found acceptable: "water-boarding," or dripping water into a wet cloth over a suspect's face, which can feel like drowning; and threatening to bring in more-brutal interrogators from other nations.

This kind of tactic was designed specifically for a few top al Qaeda captives; but it was apparently transferred to Abu Ghraib as well. That last transition is murky. How did those new relaxed rules get moved from Guanatanamo against high-profile Qaeda terrorists to people dragged in off the street in Baghdad? We don't yet know. But we do know that the administration debated various methods of torture — because Rumsfeld signed off on some and then had a change of heart and restricted some of the more horrifying methods. It's also clear that there was considerable internal debate about the new regulations. The CIA won out against the FBI most of the time. The reason I'm concerned about this is not simply because it is horrifying that the United States now uses forms of torture on captives. I'm concerned because, as Hitch has written, we are about to find out much more about Abu Ghraib, where rape and murder of inmates occurred." (See also: "A Tortured Debate" (Michael Hirsh et al., Newsweek, from the 2004/06/21 issue) and "A Moral Chernobyl: Prepare for the worst of Abu Ghraib" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2004/06/14))

"Taking stock in Stockholm" (Barry Rubin, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/06/15)
Rubin rightly points out double standards in the Swedish view of the Middle East conflict, but his description of Sweden is wrong-headed when it comes to the situation of immigrants, which makes his main point — "Enjoying fine living standards and believing themselves to be highly humanitarian people, Swedes salve their consciences by expressing sympathy for a distant underdog even as they mistreat Third World immigrants at home." — dubious at best and highly misleading as a general description. Here's Rubin on the new Swedish Foreign Minister, Leila Freivalds:

How she obtained her job is both ironic and revealing. Freivalds' predecessor, Anna Lind, was a 1960s-style leftist who, for example, blasted the United States for daring to suggest that Yasser Arafat might be a terrorist. Lind was murdered last September by a Muslim immigrant bitter about his family's mistreatment in Sweden.

This sounds indeed ironic, but is it true? I'm very surprised by seeing Mijailo Mijailovic described as a "Muslim immigrant". Perhaps I've missed something, but a search on Google gives no hint of this being the case either. In fact, almost everything in the last sentence seems to be wrong:

• Mijailovic was born in Sweden (i.e. not an immigrant) of Serb immigrant parents, his father being described as adhering to "fervent Serb nationalism". Muslim Serb nationalists would seem to be a rare species, so until I find some corroboration on Rubin's claim I'll consider it more likely that the Mijailovic family is Christian.
• Of course, Mijailovic has a history of psychiatric problems and claimed he was following "voices in his head" when murdering Lindh, but if there was a primary "rational" motive it can hardly be said to be bitterness about "his family's mistreatment in Sweden," which is a claim I haven't seen anywhere else before either, but rather that he allegedly "hated the Swedish foreign minister for backing the Nato air strikes against Belgrade during the 1999 Kosovo war".
• The murdered minister is named Anna Lindh by the way.

As for Rubin's main point, Sweden has had a liberal refugee policy for decades, reflected in the fact that the percentage of Swedes having a foreign background has doubled from 10% in 1970 to more than 20% today (and being prognosed at 28% in 2020). Combine this with an economical slide for decades and you have a recipe for the very same problems Western Europe faces as a whole, including segregation and racism, but as a generalization I would go so far as to say that Swedes really are a highly humanitarian people and probably amongst the least racist in history. Which of course doesn't mean we are immune to bigotry and racism, but to generally describe Swedes as "mistreating" immigrants is really the opposite of the truth. Yes, there are voices condemning the "institutionalized racism" in the Swedish society, but then there are highly popular, female party leaders comparing Swedish men to the Taleban in a country which probably is the most emancipated in world history, where even the Prime Minister is a professed feminist.

"Democratic Revolution?" (Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/06/15)
"It is hard not to be pessimistic when looking at Iraq. Critical areas of the country — Baghdad, the Shiite holy towns of Najaf and Karbala, the northern city of Mosul, the major highways, the oil pipelines, the national electrical grid — all lack elemental security. ...
There is no easy answer to this. Ultimately, the Kurds have to weigh the risks and gains of independence. Washington ought not to abandon them. But it should encourage them to seek political compromises and constitutional protections that circumscribe but do not nullify the principle of one-man, one-vote. The Kurds are unlikely to find a more thoughtful Shiite Arab counterpart than Ayatollah Sistani, who in the history of Shiism can only be called a democratic revolutionary.
Which brings us again to why, despite all of the bad news and troublesome history, we should have real hope. Since 1921, Iraqis have known violence more devastatingly than any other people in the Middle East. Psychologically, Shiites and the Kurds are indeed defined by slaughter and defeat. The mosques plastered with the pictures of thousands of lost loved ones, the mass graves, great religious schools nearly destroyed by spies — extreme tyranny has done awful things to Iraq. But it has also given the Iraqi people — and especially the Shiite clergy — terrifying memories that have encouraged a profound interest in modern political theory and practice. Though Ambassador Bremer might disagree, Iraqis probably don't need to be tutored as much as Westerners might think on the virtues, responsibilities and sacrifices necessary to sustain democracy. They may well fail, but an enormous number of Iraqis now want representative government. We will soon know whether they are going to be able to see this through, or whether the dark side of their history will resurface. George Bush has put their fate, as well as his own, in their hands.

"'Demonising Israel is tragic for all'" (Daniel Johnson, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/06/15)
An interview with Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi in Britain:
"Is the Holocaust being relativised, leading the gentile world to ignore the enduring threat to Jews posed by anti-Semitism? "It's much more serious than that," he replies. 'The Holocaust is not being relativised, it is being abused. Political use is being made of words like 'genocide', 'ethnic cleansing' in contexts where they have no conceivable meaning.
If, for instance, Israel takes defensive action against an organiser of suicide bombings, that is called 'genocide'. Now, if we have learnt two things from the Holocaust, they are, one, that bad things are preceded by demonisation — and right now Israel is being demonised — and, two, the early warning sign in a culture is when words lose their meaning.
What is happening in certain circles, not in Britain, but around the world, is that the most vicious revenge is being taken on Jews. As somebody once said, nobody will ever forgive the Jews for the Holocaust. Today, Israel is being branded 'the new Nazis'. That sets off every conceivable warning signal in my mind. There is an anti-Zionism which goes with a profound anti-Americanism, which is fraught with danger. When civilisations clash, Jews die. That is the great danger facing Israel in the 21st century.'"

"Bush foreign policy under attack" (BBC News, 2004/06/14)
Diplomats and Military Commanders Against Change: "A group of senior former US government officials will release a statement later this week condemning President George W Bush's foreign policy.
The group call themselves Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change.
They say Mr Bush's policies have made the US more isolated and less safe, and damaged its standing in the world. ...
They include William Crowe, who as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, was America's top military officer and Admiral Stansfield Turner, a former director of the CIA. ...
Phyllis Oakley, the former deputy state department spokesperson under President Reagan, told the BBC World Service's World Today programme that Mr Bush's Iraq policy had played a big part in their decision to publicise their concerns.
"But it goes beyond that to the whole thrust of his posture for the US and the world — to move away from the international structures that have been painstakingly built up over the years, away from our work with allies," she said."

Monday, June 14, 2004

News and commentary:

"Springtime for Realism" (Lawrence F. Kaplan, The New Republic, 2004/06/14)
Kaplan on realists vs. idealists: "Ultimately, however, democracy offers the best — perhaps the only — way to ensure stability. Now that Iraqis have been granted some degree of freedom, what Shia