Archived news and commentary: June 21 - 27, 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 27, 2004

News and commentary:

"Evidence of Niger uranium trade 'years before war'" (Mark Huband, Financial Times, 2004/06/27)
"However, European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq.
These intelligence officials now say the forged documents appear to have been part of a "scam", and the actual intelligence showing discussion of uranium supply has been ignored. ...
The FT has now learnt that three European intelligence services were aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001. Human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq.
This intelligence provided clues about plans by Libya and Iran to develop their undeclared nuclear programmes. Niger officials were also discussing sales to North Korea and China of uranium ore or the "yellow cake" refined from it: the raw materials that can be progressively enriched to make nuclear bombs.
The raw intelligence on the negotiations included indications that Libya was investing in Niger's uranium industry to prop it up at a time when demand had fallen, and that sales to Iraq were just a part of the clandestine export plan. These secret exports would allow countries with undeclared nuclear programmes to build up uranium stockpiles." (Hat tip: The Belgravia Dispatch. See also: "Intelligence backs claim Iraq tried to buy uranium" (Mark Huband, Financial Times/NYT, 2004/06/27))

"Arab TV Shows Tape of Marine Held Hostage" (Robert H. Reid, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/27)
"An Arab satellite TV network broadcast a videotape Sunday showing a blindfolded man in military fatigues and said he was a U.S. Marine taken hostage in Iraq.
There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military, but the video showed a card identifying the man by a Pakistani name and as an "active duty" Marine. The man had a trimmed moustache and his eyes were covered with a white blindfold.
The Al-Jazeera network said the group claimed it infiltrated a Marine outpost, lured the man outside and abducted him. The station said the group demanded the release of all Iraqis "in occupation jails" or the man would be killed."

"I kid you not" (Douglas, ¡No Pasarán!, 2004/06/27)
"Someone please get a word to the Turkish hostages being held in Iraq that the beheading they face is only "activism..."
Old news: while the AFP (not known for evenhandedness in dealing with the Middle East) freely uses the word "terrorist" in its news copy, Reuters news agency, the same one once sued by employees for racial discrimination, refuses to use the word because, as at least one editor thinks, "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." De gustibus non disputandum est....
It is news, to me at least, that Reuters would ever publish something like the following: "Three days away from the official transfer of sovereignty, the situation was still very tense in Iraq, where activists were threatenting to decapitate three Turkish hostages..."
Activists?" (See also: "Irak: nouvelles violences à 3 jours du transfert de souveraineté" (Andrew Marshall, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/27))

"Masked Iraq Gunmen Threaten to Behead Pakistani-TV" (Reuters, 2004/06/27)
"An unidentified group of gunmen in Iraq have kidnapped a Pakistani driver and are threatening to behead him within three days unless Iraqi prisoners are released, Arabiya television reported Sunday.
"This man was taken after an attack on a U.S. base in Balad," said one of the masked gunmen on a tape Arabiya said it had obtained.
"You must release our prisoners held near the U.S. base in Balad, in Dujail, in Yethrib, in Samarra and near Abu Ghraib. You have three days from the date of this recording and after that we will behead him. We have warned you."
The tape also showed the Pakistani man, who was wearing an identity card given to contractors linked to the U.S. military, urging Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to shut down his country's embassy in Iraq."

"Meet The New Jihad" (Michael Ware, TIME, 2004/06/27)
"But a Time investigation of the insurgency today — based on meetings with insurgents, tribal leaders, religious clerics and U.S. intelligence officials — reveals that the militants are turning the resistance into an international jihadist movement. Foreign fighters, once estranged from homegrown guerrilla groups, are now integrated as cells or complete units with Iraqis. Many of Saddam's former secret police and Republican Guard officers, who two years ago were drinking and whoring, no longer dare even smoke cigarettes. They are fighting for Allah, they say, and true jihadis reject such earthly indulgences.
Their goal now, say the militants interviewed, is broader than simply forcing the U.S. to leave. They want to transform Iraq into what Afghanistan was in the 1980s: a training ground for young jihadists who will form the next wave of recruits for al-Qaeda and like-minded groups. Nearly all the new jihadist groups claim to be receiving inspiration, if not commands, from Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the suspected al-Qaeda operative who the U.S. believes has masterminded the insurgency's embrace of terrorism. Al-Zarqawi's group kidnapped three Turkish workers last Saturday and threatened to behead them within 72 hours unless Turkish companies withdrew from Iraq. And now the conditions are ripening for the insurgents to turn their armed struggle into a political movement that aims to exploit the upheaval and turn parts of Iraq into Taliban-style fiefdoms."

"By the Time War Starts, It's Too Late" (Francis Fukuyama, Los Angeles Times, 2004/06/27)
"The real mistake regarding Iraq was the lack of a proper institutional context for decision-making on the part of the U.S. government. We simply did not have the ability or organization prior to the war to coordinate the enormously complex interagency effort required for reconstruction, although knowledge of how to do this had been painfully learned in earlier nation-building efforts — from Somalia and Haiti through the Balkans to Afghanistan.
But the bitter rivalry and distrust that developed between the Pentagon, on the one hand, and the State Department and the intelligence community, on the other, led the former to demand sole control over the reconstruction process. The Pentagon, we learned only later, didn't have the capacity to organize things and didn't know what it didn't know. ...
Of course, Americans will not be eager to jump quickly into another nation-building exercise in the wake of Iraq, but based on our experiences in the post-Cold War world, it's bound to happen. We've gotten involved in one new nation-building exercise every two years since the end of the Cold War, and there are plenty of countries like Pakistan and North Korea that have the potential to become dangerous, failed states overnight.
Right now, we need to do some nation-building in Washington itself, by creating a new set of institutions to deal with such failed states over the long term. Only in this way will we be able to learn from past mistakes and to make sure we do not have to perpetually reinvent the nation-building wheel."

"It's their future" (David Aaronovitch, The Observer, 2004/06/27)
"There seem to be plenty of people in Britain right now who are totally confident that the current attempt to build a democracy in Iraq will fail. One of my acquaintances, a lawyer, cannot remember whether he has bet me a grand that there will be a separate Shia theocracy, or whether the wager stipulated all-out civil war, but either way he is smilingly certain that he will collect.
Another chap told me on Friday night that the Arab mentality and culture ruled out any such thing as government by the people and of the people. The best they could hope for in the Middle East, he told me was a 'strong man'. And while some critics see this incompatibility as a problem with Arabs or Islam, others seem to see it as a problem with democracy itself, it being — they argue — a temporary and flawed product of late Western capitalism. Stupid buggers, this last lot. ...
I may have taken my friend's bet, but it was as much a matter of desperately wanting something to be the case, as it was of expecting it. What he wanted, I am not going to speculate; it is surely impossible that anyone would wish civil war on Iraq simply to feel vindicated over a series of dinner-party arguments about how bad America is. The truth, of course, is that I do not know what is going to happen. All I do know is that every liberal democrat in the world should want the Iraqi transition, as approved by the UN, to succeed."

"Despite all the troubles, Iraqis know their future is bright" (Con Coughlin, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/06/27)
"Certainly, if Allawi can stabilise Iraq's security, the nation's prospects are highly promising. Impressive progress has already been made in rebuilding its infrastructure. More than five million Iraqi primary school children have returned to the classroom. Teachers sacked by Saddam for political reasons have been rehired and are earning salaries that are 25 times higher than they were before liberation.
The coalition has spent $1 billion renovating and rebuilding hospitals and clinics so that most Iraqis are now benefiting from improved healthcare. The Iraqi dinar has risen in value by 25 per cent since introduction of the new currency was completed in January. ...
And all this is before the country has had a chance to rebuild its devastated oil industry. Despite the insurgents' constant attacks on pipelines, current production of 2.3 million barrels a day roughly matches pre-war production levels. Moreover, only 17 of Iraq's 80 known oilfields have been developed, and oil analysts believe it could match Saudi Arabia as the world's leading oil exporter if only its security concerns can be brought under control.
It is a big "if", but if Ayad Allawi is successful in that effort, the new Iraq has a far brighter future than it could ever have conceived under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and his sadistic sons."

"A New Beginning" (Ayad Allawi, The Washington Post, 2004/06/27)
"On Wednesday the sovereignty of Iraq will be restored, and the Iraqi people will take their first major steps toward a free and prosperous future, after more than three decades of tyrannical rule, repression, wars and sanctions. This will be an important milestone for Iraq, the region and indeed the whole world, endorsed by the unanimous approval of the U.N. Security Council in Resolution 1546 earlier this month. As Iraqis, we thank the coalition for the sacrifices made by its soldiers and its people for the liberation and rebuilding of Iraq, and for the contributions by all the countries, international organizations and nongovernmental organizations that have braved the risks to help Iraq in its time of need. ...
The challenges are great, and the stakes are high, both for Iraq and the world. We must not underestimate the magnitude of the task that lies ahead. Despite the hardships, we Iraqis are determined to work together and assume responsibility for the success of our country. But we will continue to need the support and commitment of the international community in order to realize our national aspirations. In particular, we are placing our trust in international commitments of reconstruction aid and debt forgiveness, as well as assistance with multinational military support until Iraq is ready and able to assume full responsibility for its own security. With these efforts, God willing, Iraq will take its rightful place among the free and prosperous nations of the world."

"A Correspondent in Iraq: Scenes of Hope and Dread" (Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, 2004/06/27)
"I drove across the Kuwaiti border and into Safwan on the first day of the invasion, March 21, 2003, lugging with me a concrete expectation that I would find cheering crowds and Iraqis throwing flowers. I had driven in a similar way with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan 16 months before, as the Afghans joyously threw off the shackles of Taliban rule: turbans went into the gutters, beards to the barber's floor and the volume on the television sets way, way up.
In Safwan, I encountered not so much a celebration as a lunatic asylum, an outpouring of more emotions than I could fathom: some people cheered, others cried. One woman, her son murdered by Saddam Hussein's henchmen, wept and cheered at once: lamenting her past, praising her deliverance, fearing her future.
"Should I be afraid?" the woman, 68-year-old Zahra Khafi asked, mumbling and wiping her eyes. "Is Saddam coming back?" ...
All the way to Baghdad, there were scenes like this: emotions more complicated than we were ready for, naked and on display. We did not know then, as we are only beginning to understand now, how badly damaged this country had been."

"In Sudan, Death and Denial: Officials Accused of Concealing Crisis as Thousands Starve" (Emily Wax, The Washington Post, 2004/06/27)
"A humanitarian situation": "Six hundred miles to the east in the capital, Khartoum, Mustafa Osman Ismail, the foreign minister of Sudan, stretched back in his plump leather chair in an air-conditioned office overlooking the Nile.
"In Darfur, there is no hunger. There is no malnutrition. There is no epidemic disease," he said in an interview. Yes, he conceded, there is "a humanitarian situation." But the hunger, he said, was "imagined" by the media. ...
Mornay is the largest refugee camp in the region. It is a labyrinth of suffering, where one child in five is acutely malnourished, aid workers say, where for six months 75,000 people have lived on less than half the food they need to survive, where six people die every day, mainly children and the elderly, from hunger and disease. ...
There are 129 such camps across Darfur, 31 of which are inaccessible because they are in areas held by the government or the rebels in the region, which stretches along the border of Chad. More than a million people live in the camps, many of which lack water, supplies and sanitation, and operate without any feeding centers." (See also: "Magboula's Brush With Genocide" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, 2004/06/23), "Sudan's Final Solution" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, 2004/06/19) and "Dare We Call It Genocide?" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times/truthout, 2004/06/16))

"Three Turks Held in Iraq; Blast Kills 40" (Tarek El-Tablawy, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/27)
"The just punishment of being beheaded": "The military said a pair of car bombs may have caused the explosion late Saturday in downtown Hillah, a largely Shiite Muslim city south of Baghdad. Forty people were killed and 22 wounded, a military official said Sunday on condition of anonymity. ...
The Arab television station Al-Jazeera aired a video issued by the kidnappers, showing the three Turks kneeling on the ground in front of two black-clothed gunmen and a black banner emblazoned with the name of al-Zarqawi's organization. The men held up Turkish passports.
In a written statement, the group demanded Turkish companies stop doing business with American forces in Iraq and called for "large demonstrations" in Turkey against the visit of "Bush the criminal."
It said that if Turkey refused their demands the hostages "will receive the just punishment of being beheaded."

"7 Militants Die in Israeli Raid in West Bank" (Greg Myre, The New York Times, 2004/06/27)
"Israeli troops killed seven Palestinian militants on Saturday, including two senior figures, when they raided a house and found the men in a hidden room in the West Bank city of Nablus, the military and Palestinians said. ...
The dead included Nayef Abu Sharkh, 45, the Nablus leader of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a faction loyal to the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, said Palestinian officials in the city. The West Bank leader of Islamic Jihad, a man known as Sheik Ibrahim, was also among those killed, the officials said.
Over all, four members of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, two from Islamic Jihad and one from Hamas were killed." (See also: "PA Confirms Terror Ties" (HonestReporting, 2004/06/21))

Added in archive:
"Were We Wrong?" (The New Republic, 2004/06/18)

Saturday, June 26, 2004

News and commentary:

"Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat lights a cauldron..."
(Lefteris Pitarakis, AP, 2004/06/26)
"Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat lights a cauldron with a torch during a lighting ceremony for a symbolic Olympic flame at his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Saturday June 26, 2004."

"Arafat announces 'Olympic Truce' with Israel" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2004/06/26)
The godfather of the Munich Massacre announces the "revival of the ancient and noble Greek tradition" of an Olympic Truce:
"Arafat issued the call at a lighting ceremony for a symbolic Olympic torch at his headquarters in Ramallah.
"On the occasion of lighting the Palestinian Olympic torch, I declare our respect and commitment for an Olympic Truce, which I signed in my besieged office," Arafat said.
"We hope that the revival of the ancient and noble Greek tradition will help in creating a world that enjoys peace, justice and security for the coming generations," he said.
A senior Israeli official dismissed Arafat's offer, accusing the Palestinian leader of being behind the killings of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics.
"Arafat's Olympic torch is a torch of death. There is a big difference between what Arafat says and what he does," the official said." (See also: "When The Terror Began" (Alexander Wolff, TIME, 2002/08/25))

"Al-Zarqawi Terror Group Kidnaps 3 Turks" (Fisnik Abrashi, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/26)
"Militants loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said Saturday they have kidnapped three Turkish workers and threatened to behead them in 72 hours, heightening tensions just ahead of a visit by President Bush to Turkey. ...
The Arab television station Al-Jazeera aired a video issued by the kidnappers, showing the three Turks identifying themselves in Turkish and telling their jobs in Iraq.
In a statement with the video, al-Zarqawi's group, Tawhid and Jihad, threatened to behead the men in 72 hours unless Turkish companies withdraw from Iraq, an Al-Jazeera anchor said."

"US and EU pledge support to Iraq" (BBC News, 2004/06/26)
"The US and the EU have pledged strong support to the new Iraqi government ahead of the 30 June transfer of power.
The leaders issued a joint statement at the end of a summit in Ireland saying Baghdad needed the world's backing if Iraq was to become a democratic nation.
The move shows that the US and European nations have put their disagreements on Iraq aside, correspondents say. ...
In their joint declaration on Iraq, the EU and US said they would:

• support the UN's role in rebuilding Iraq and holding elections no later than 31 January 2005
• pledge to reduce Iraq's $120bn foreign debt
• offer to help train Iraqi security forces to deal with the continuing violence

Mr Ahern said the summit reaffirmed the strength, depth and significance of the trans-Atlantic relationship, which he said was "based on common set of democratic values".
Earlier on Saturday, Mr Ahern, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, used bilateral talks with Mr Bush to express "abhorrence" at the recent abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US troops." (See also: "Europe's Commitment To Iraq" (Romano Prodi and Chris Patten, The Washington Post, 2004/06/26))

"Right Man's Burden: Why empire enthusiast Niall Ferguson won't change his mind" (Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The Washington Monthly, from the June 2004 issue)
"In early May, Niall Ferguson, the celebrity Scottish historian, looked out at a packed house seething with antagonism. He had come to Washington to deliver a talk at the Council on Foreign Relations defending his idea that the war in Iraq had not only been the right thing to do, but also ought to be the first step towards a wide-ranging American empire. ...
Within three minutes, he'd lost the liberals in the crowd, arguing, improbably that the problems in Iraq proved that America ought to be more of an empire, not less of one. A bald-headed scholar from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace asked him whether the United States ought to be morally willing to slay thousands of Iraqis to stabilize Iraq. Ferguson retorted, "Perhaps you would wish Saddam back in power; that's the implication of what you're saying." The liberal think-tankers around me started guffawing openly, and shooting each other is-this-guy-for-real smirks.
With one leg crossed over the other, his hands folded in his lap, his pale face issuing a dispassionate monotone, Ferguson pressed on. Not only were the problems in Iraq the direct fault of America's unwillingness to call itself an empire, he said, but they were also predictable. "In behaving the way they did," Ferguson said, "those soldiers and military policemen [at Abu Ghraib] were largely doing to their prisoners what routinely people in the American military do to new recruits."
This was too much for even the conservatives in the audience." (See also: "The End of Power: Without American hegemony the world would likely return to the dark ages" (Niall Ferguson, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/06/21))

"Bill Clinton Was Right: There was a Saddam-Osama connection and we're learning more every day" (Stephen F. Hayes, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/07/05 issue)
"Meanwhile the men at the top of the administration Rubin worked for — Bill Clinton and Al Gore — have come down with an even more striking case of political amnesia.
On June 24, Katie Couric interviewed President Clinton on NBC's Today Show. She asked, "What do you think about this connection that Cheney, that Vice President Cheney continues to assert between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda?" Clinton pleaded total ignorance. "All I can tell you is I never saw it, I never believed it based on the evidence I had."
The same day, former Vice President Al Gore went much further in a vitriolic speech at Georgetown University law school. 'President Bush is now intentionally misleading the American people by continuing to aggressively and brazenly assert a linkage between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. If he is not lying, if he genuinely believes that, that makes them unfit in battle against al Qaeda. If they believe these flimsy scraps, then who would want them in charge? Are they too dishonest or too gullible? Take your pick.'" (See also: "Clinton first linked al Qaeda to Saddam" (Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, 2004/06/25))

"Un-Moored from Reality: Fahrenheit 9/11 connects dots that aren't there" (Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/07/05 issue)
Moore II: "When Moore takes us to Iraq, on the eve of war, he shows placid scenes of an untroubled land on the brink of imperial annihilation. With all the leisurely strolling and kite-flying, it is unclear if Iraqis are living under a murderous dictatorship or in a Valtrex commercial. In Moore's telling of the invasion, the shock-and-awe is less high-value-target/smart-bombing, more Dresden/Hiroshima. According to the footage that ensues, our pilots seem to have hit nothing but women and children. If Moore's documentarian gig were to fall through, he could easily seek employment as an Al Jazeera cameraman.
This is, it nearly goes without saying, his downfall as a storyteller. In his unctuous morality tales, everyone is assigned black and white hats. The white hats mainly belong to the oppressed people of Iraq, subject to our soldiers' midnight raids under the jackboot of occupation, and to other victims of the administration, such as the poor, underemployed people of Flint, Michigan (Moore's obsessively referenced hometown), who serve as helpless recruiting chum for Bush's killing machine.
The black hats (administration types) seem to be motivated solely by world domination and the desire to steer no-bid contracts to Halliburton. There is no allowance for moral ambiguity, or what would've been even more interesting, misguided moral clarity — the possibility that Bush made a bad judgment call, but did so for the right reasons (security concerns, the elimination of a brutal despot, and the liberation of his people)." (See also: "Watching Michael Moore" (Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine, 2004/06/24) and "Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2004/06/21))

"All Hail Moore" (David Brooks, The New York Times, 2004/06/26)
Moore I: "So it is worth taking a moment to study the metaphysics of Michael Moore. For Moore is not only a filmmaker; he is a man of ideas, and his work is based on an actual worldview.
Like Hemingway, Moore does his boldest thinking while abroad. For example, it was during an interview with the British paper The Mirror that Moore unfurled what is perhaps the central insight of his oeuvre, that Americans are kind of crappy.
"They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet . . . in thrall to conniving, thieving smug [pieces of the human anatomy]," Moore intoned. "We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing." ...
Naturally, the people from the continent that brought us Descartes, Kant and Goethe are fascinated by these insights. Moore's books have sold faster there than at home. No American intellectual is taken so seriously in Europe, save perhaps the great Chomsky.
Before a delighted Cambridge crowd, Moore reflected on the tragedy of human existence: "You're stuck with being connected to this country of mine, which is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe." In Liverpool, he paused to contemplate the epicenters of evil in the modern world: 'It's all part of the same ball of wax, right? The oil companies, Israel, Halliburton.'"

"CIA Analyst Assails War on Terrorism" (Walter Pincus, The Washington Post, 2004/06/26)
"A new book by a senior CIA analyst who headed the agency's task force on Osama bin Laden sharply attacks the Bush administration's approach to Islamic terrorists, sternly criticizes the decision to invade Iraq and chides officials for trying to create a Western-style democracy in Afghanistan.
The author, who writes under the name "Anonymous," argues it is not dislike of freedom, democracy and Western culture that led bin Laden to wage war against America, but rather his disdain for U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world, particularly America's relationship with Israel. ...
"The focused and lethal threat posed to U.S. national security arises not from Muslims being offended by what America is, but rather from their plausible perception that the things they most love and value — God, Islam, their brethren and Muslim lands -- are being attacked by America," he writes in "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror," which was just published by Brassey's. ...
In a broader critique, he said, 'U.S. leaders refuse to accept the obvious: we are fighting a worldwide Islamic insurgency — not criminality or terrorism — and our policy and procedures have failed to make more than a modest dent in enemy forces.'" (See also: "America's greatest enemy keeps no secrets" (Faye Bowers, The Christian Science Monitor, 2003/05/29))

"9/11 Panel Links Al Qaeda, Iran" (Dan Eggen, The Washington Post, 2004/06/26)
"Al Qaeda, the commission determined, may even have played a "yet unknown role" in aiding Hezbollah militants in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia, an attack the United States has long blamed solely on Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors.
The notion that bin Laden may have had a hand in the Khobar bombing would mark a rare operational alliance between Sunni and Shiite Muslim groups that have historically been at odds. ...
In relation to Iran, commission investigators said intelligence "showed far greater potential for collaboration between Hezbollah and al Qaeda than many had previously thought." Iran is a primary sponsor of Hezbollah, or Party of God, the Lebanon-based anti-Israel group that has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States."

Added in Author index:
Aaronovitch, David
Applebaum, Anne
Hayes, Stephen F.

Friday, June 25, 2004

News and commentary:

"Back in the USSR" (Anne Applebaum, The New Republic, 2004/06/25)
"After September 11, I was certain that the Bush administration, packed with old cold warriors as it was, would also treat the war on terrorism as a moral and ideological battle, a struggle for hearts and minds, and not just an opportunity for the United States to show off its advanced weapons systems. ... What came next, however, was totally inexcusable: an arrogance so extreme that American politicians who had benefited for decades from international alliances and treaties began to treat them as an unnecessary frill. ...
Everything else followed from that attitude: Bush's (and Powell's) failure to sell the Iraq war in Europe; the rise of international anti-Americanism. Even the Abu Ghraib scandal was, in its way, the product of a new White House attitude toward Western values, a puffed-up feeling that Americans are so superior that they no longer require the rule of law that defines Western civilization. The Geneva Conventions — those were Old Rules. We needed New Rules. And so we got them.
Incredibly, given their backgrounds, top Bush officials still seem not to understand that, like communism, radical Islam cannot be defeated with military power alone. Like communism, radical Islam is an ideology — one that people will die for. To fight it, the United States needs not just to show off its firepower, but also to prove to Arabs that Western values, in some moderate Islamic form, will give them better lives. The war on terrorism cannot be a narrow American or American-Israeli military struggle, or we will lose it. Like the cold war, the war on terrorism will be over when moderate Muslims abandon the radicals and join us. ...
The truth, of course, is that, for all its talk of universal human rights, this is not an administration that actually perceives itself as a part of something greater than the United States. For all of its talk about spreading American values to benighted foreigners, this is not an administration that even likes foreigners. It never occurred to me that American troops would arrive in Baghdad and have absolutely no idea what to do next, or who was important, or who was on their side. But then, I hadn't realized that the Pentagon leadership had no interest in or knowledge of the Iraqi people. I thought these were cold warriors, whereas in fact they are narrow-minded American nationalists, isolationists turned inside out."

"Time to get moving on Iran" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/06/25)
"When we look at Iran's brazen defiance of all international norms of behavior — with its support of terrorists, acts of aggression on the high seas, and confrontational advancement of its nuclear weapons program — we must ask the question, what is the US waiting for?
In a statement on the Iranian nuclear program last April, Bush said, "It is intolerable for the peace and the stability in the Middle East if they [the Iranians] get a nuclear weapon, especially when their stated objective is the destruction of Israel." Yet, according to The Wall Street Journal, there have been "a disturbing number of quiet remarks in Washington and other Western capitals recently to the effect that the world will just have to 'get used to' the idea of the Iranians having nukes. ...
In light of the failure of any outside power to take a concerted stand on Iran, we must ask the question: Are our leaders, like their Western counterparts, quietly resigned to our nuclear annihilation as we quibble over strategic irrelevancies and lesser orders of threats?" (See also: "Coddling the Mullahs" (The Wall Street Journal, 2004/06/14))

"Year Three: Where do we stand in this disorienting war?" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2004/06/25)
"We are winning the military war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The terrorists are on the run. And slowly, even ineptly, we are achieving our political goals of democratic reform in once-awful places. Thirty years of genocide, vast forced transfers of whole peoples, the desecration of entire landscapes, a ruined infrastructure, and a brutalized and demoralized civilian psyche are being remedied, often under fire. All this and more has been achieved at the price of political turmoil, deep divisions in the West — here and abroad — and the emergence of a strong minority, led by mostly elites, who simply wish it all to fail.
Whether this influential, snarling minority — so prominent in the media, on campuses, in government, and in the arts — succeeds in turning victory into defeat is open to question. Right now the matter rests on the nerve of a half-dozen in Washington who are daily slandered (Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz), and with brilliant and courageous soldiers in the field. They are fighting desperately against the always-ticking clock of American impatience, and are forced to confront an Orwellian world in which their battle sacrifice is ignored or deprecated while killing a vicious enemy is tantamount to murder.
No, we — along with those brave Iraqis who have opted for freedom — could very easily still lose this war that our brave troops are somehow now winning."

"Tortured Arguments: How to interpret those Bush interrogation documents" (The Wall Street Journal, 2004/06/25)
Memos IV: "The good, if under-reported, news is that the pile of documents released by the Bush Administration this week effectively rebuts the charges of "torture" that have been flying around. While White House and Justice Department lawyers did explore the legal limits of permissible interrogation techniques — something it would have been irresponsible not to do after 9/11 — it turns out that none of the practices actually authorized even comes close to the abuses depicted in the photos from Abu Ghraib prison. ...
Far from fostering an anything-goes culture at Guantanamo, it turns out that in December 2002 Mr. Rumsfeld actually rejected a number of proposed techniques as too harsh. They included suggestions of imminent death or severe pain, and actions "to induce the misperception of suffocation." He did approve the removal of prisoners' clothing, only to rescind the approval the following month. That's a long way from authorizing the piles of naked prisoners photographed by one unit at Abu Ghraib.
The bottom line is that everything we've learned over the past month supports the assessment that the Abu Ghraib abuses were an aberration caused by a few bad apples and enabled by poor command leadership."

"'This is the only fun the kids get - shooting at the US sitting ducks'" (Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, The Guardian, 2004/06/25)
A fascinating report from Kerbala, Falluja and Sadr City, where Abdul-Ahad was embedded with the "front-line anti-American fighters":
"They take us to the shrine of Imam Abbas, and into a marble-clad room filled with big, ugly guys with thick beards and an arsenal of automatic weapons. These men are from the Shrine Protection Force, a militia loyal to the grand Shia Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and so loosely allied with the Americans.
"It is all because of journalists that all this is happening," says a guy dressed in black, sitting behind a big wooden table. He says that the Mahdi are manipulating the media. "They are thugs and assassins, they have paralysed the holy city of Kerbala, they have desecrated the shrines and shoot from behind them, trying to provoke a response.
"But, alhamdulillah [thank God], the Americans are very wise and respect the shrines. Our brothers, the Americans, are taking very good care of this thing, but as far as the Shias around the world and in Iraq are concerned, they hear that the Americans are fighting 'close to the shrines', and that Shias are being killed. They see the smoke on your films so they come en masse to fight and they are immediately brainwashed by Moqtada and his thugs."
If that's the case, I ask, why doesn't the Ayatollah come out publicly and denounce those people, and show his support for these "brothers"?
"Are you crazy? It's haram [forbidden by Islamic law] to support an infidel, even when he is right, against a brother Muslim."
"So what is your strategy?"
'We will pray for Allah to stop this.'" (See also: "Embedded With the Resistance: Iraqi 'Terrorists' Tell Their Story in Harper's" (Peter Carlson, The Washington Post, 2004/06/01))

"Clinton first linked al Qaeda to Saddam" (Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, 2004/06/25)
"In fact, during President Clinton's eight years in office, there were at least two official pronouncements of an alarming alliance between Baghdad and al Qaeda. One came from William S. Cohen, Mr. Clinton's defense secretary. He cited an al Qaeda-Baghdad link to justify the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.
Mr. Bush cited the linkage, in part, to justify invading Iraq and ousting Saddam. He said he could not take the risk of Iraq's weapons falling into bin Laden's hands.
The other pronouncement is contained in a Justice Department indictment on Nov. 4, 1998, charging bin Laden with murder in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
The indictment disclosed a close relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam's regime, which included specialists on chemical weapons and all types of bombs, including truck bombs, a favorite weapon of terrorists.
The 1998 indictment said: 'Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq.'"

"Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says" (Thom Shanker, The New York Times, 2004/06/25)
"Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990's were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq.
American officials described the document as an internal report by the Iraqi intelligence service detailing efforts to seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, including Mr. bin Laden's organization, before Al Qaeda had become a full-fledged terrorist organization. He was based in Sudan from 1992 to 1996, when that country forced him to leave and he took refuge in Afghanistan. ...
The document, which asserts that Mr. bin Laden "was approached by our side," states that Mr. bin Laden previously "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative," but was now willing to meet in Sudan, and that "presidential approval" was granted to the Iraqi security service to proceed.
At the meeting, Mr. bin Laden requested that sermons of an anti-Saudi cleric be rebroadcast in Iraq. That request, the document states, was approved by Baghdad.
Mr. bin Laden "also requested joint operations against foreign forces" based in Saudi Arabia, where the American presence has been a rallying cry for Islamic militants who oppose American troops in the land of the Muslim pilgrimage sites of Mecca and Medina."

"Attacks in 5 Iraqi Cities Leave More Than 100 Dead" (Jeffrey Gettleman, The New York Times, 2004/06/25)
"Fighting raged in five cities across Iraq on Thursday as insurgents unleashed a surge of apparently coordinated attacks that killed at least 105 people and wounded hundreds more.
Plumes of smoke boiled up from the streets of Falluja, Ramadi, Baquba, Mosul and Baghdad as masked insurgents battled American and Iraqi security forces in what several officials said could be the opening salvo in a violent push to derail the June 30 transfer of sovereignty.
"We were expecting such an escalation, and we will witness more in the next few weeks," said Iraq's prime minister, Iyad Allawi, whom terrorists have threatened to assassinate. "We will deal with it and crush it."
The heaviest carnage on Thursday was in Mosul, in northern Iraq, where a battery of car bombs leveled two police stations and ripped into a police academy and a hospital, killing at least 62 people, including an American soldier.
In Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, black-clad insurgents flooded into the streets after taking over police stations and killing two American soldiers. The insurgents, thought to be made up of allied Shiite and Sunni fighters, proclaimed their loyalty to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the suspected mastermind of dozens of suicide attacks in Iraq and two recent beheadings."

Added in archive:
"Our suicide mission" (Andrew Bolt, The Herald Sun, 2004/06/20)
"Conspiracy Theory: Meet Mike Ruppert, the man who discovered the "truth" behind September 11" (Matthew Continetti, The Weekly Standard, 2004/06/18)

Thursday, June 24, 2004

News and commentary:

"Watching Michael Moore" (Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine, 2004/06/24)
"The real problem with the film, the really offensive thing about it, is that in Fahrenheit 9/11, we — Americans from the President on down — are portrayed as the bad guys. If there's something wrong about bin Laden it's that his estranged family has ties with — cue the uh-oh music — the Bush family. Saddam? Nothing wrong with him. No mention of torture and terror and tyranny. Moore shows scenes of Baghdad before the invasion (read: liberation) and in his weltanschauung, it's a place filled with nothing but happy, smiling, giggly, overjoyed Baghdadis. No pain and suffering there. No rape, murder, gassing, imprisoning, silencing of the citizens in these scenes. When he exploits and lingers on the tears of a mother who lost her soldier-son in Iraq, and she wails, "Why did yo have to take him?" Moore does not cut to images of the murderers/terrorists (pardon me, "insurgents") in Iraq or killed him — or even to God; he cuts to George Bush. When the soldier's father says the young man died and "for what?", Moore doesn't show liberated Iraqis to reply, he cuts instead to an image of Halliburton.
He doesn't try, not for one second, to have a discussion, to show the other side — and then cut that other side down to size with facts and figures and the slightest effort at argument. No, he just shows the one side. ...
Michael Moore did not present bin Laden and the terrorists and religious fanatics (from other lands) as the enemy who did this. No, to him, our enemy is within. To him, our enemy is us. And that's worse than stupid and sad and it's most certainly not entertaining. It's disgusting." (See also: "Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2004/06/21))

"Incitement to Jihad on Saudi Government-Controlled TV" (Steven Stalinsky, MEMRI, 2004/06/24)
"Constant themes within Saudi television shows include: calls for the annihilation of Christians and Jews, rampant anti-Americanism and antisemitism, support for Jihad, incitement against U.S. troops in Iraq, and the coming Islamic conquest of the U.S. Segments from these TV shows can be found at www.memriTV.org. ...
Sheik Dr. Ahmad Abd Al-Latif, a professor at Um Al-Qura University, was asked the following question on Saudi channel TV1 on May 24: "Some imams and preachers call for Allah to annihilate the Jews and those who help them, and the Christians and those who support them… Is it permitted according to Islamic law?" Professor Al-Latif responded: "What made them curse the Jews is that the Jews are oppressors… The same goes for the Christians, because of their cruel aggression against Islamic countries … while the truth is that this is a crusading war whose goal is to harm Muslims. This is why a Muslim is allowed to curse the oppressors from among the Jews and Christians… Cursing the oppressing Jews and the oppressing and plundering Christians and the prayer that Allah will annihilate them is permitted." ...
On a May 20 episode of Iqraa TV's 'Mushkilat Min Al-Hayat' (Problems from Life), Saudi Sheik Abdallah Al-Muslih, chairman of the Commission on Scientific Signs in the Koran and Sunnah of the Muslim World League, used evidence from early Islam to support his claim that suicide bombings on enemy land are permitted according to Islamic law: "… Regarding a person who blows himself up, I know this issue is under disagreement among modern clerics and jurisprudents… There is nothing wrong with [martyrdom] if they cause great damage to the enemy. We can say that if it causes great damage to the enemy, this operation is a good thing. This is when we talk of Dar Al-Harb. But, if we speak of what happens in Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia … this is forbidden, brothers! This is the land of the Muslims. We must never do this in a Muslim country."

"An orange alert for the lefties" (Miranda Devine, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2004/06/24)
"In the minutes before he was beheaded in Iraq this week, Kim Sun-il is shown on videotape kneeling quietly in an orange jumpsuit, blindfolded with an orange cloth. ...
What will Richard Neville and his fellow conspiracy theorists say about this latest terrorist atrocity? Was it actually another plot by "high-level US Government operatives" to distract attention from their own evil deeds? ...
Conspiracy theorists are, of course, fringe dwellers, but they serve a purpose, pushing the boundaries of cynicism, feeding into the anti-West infotainment industry personified by the obese American filmmaker Michael Moore.
They need to raise wacky doubts to keep their world view intact, because every televised beheading is a setback for the left. It is a reminder of who the real enemy is (hint: not John Howard or George Bush) and who the intended victims are (Christians, Jews, moderate Muslims, anyone who gets in the way). It is a reminder that the war between the civilised West and fanatical Islamic terrorists is real, not a war against an abstract noun, and a lot more complex and intractable than the "Blood for Oil" and "Neo-Con Warmonger" slogans would have you believe.
The consensus in the media is that Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster, and a self-fulfilling liability for Howard and Bush in their upcoming elections. Every terrorist atrocity is somehow placed into the Iraq-is-a-disaster matrix, with blame apportioned accordingly, not to the terrorists but to the governments of the coalition, which should have left Saddam alone. Thus, when Islamic terrorists bombed commuter trains in Madrid in March, who was blamed but the Spanish government, which had joined the US coalition in Iraq and was voted out of office as punishment three days later.
In this matrix, the images of American soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib cancel out the images of the twin towers collapsing on September 11. The Republicans in the White House are more dangerous than al-Qaeda." (See also: "Private Dick" (Tim Blair, timblair.spleenville.com, 2004/05/29))

"To Saddam's prisoners, US abuse seems 'a joke'" (Gert Van Langendonk, The Daily Star, 2004/06/24)
An article on Ibrahim al-Idrissi, the president of the Association for Free Prisoners in Iraq:
"If Idrissi seems a bit callous about the fate of the Iraqis in US-run jails, he has probably earned the right to differ. He recalls a day in 1982, at the General Security prison in Baghdad:
"They called all the prisoners out to the courtyard for what they called a 'celebration.' We all knew what they meant by 'celebration.' All the prisoners were chained to a pipe that ran the length of the courtyard wall. One prisoner, Amer al-Tikriti, was called out. They said if he didn't tell them everything they wanted to know, they would show him torture like he had never seen. He merely told them he would show them patience like they had never seen."
"This is when they brought out his wife, who was five months pregnant. One of the guards said that if he refused to talk he would get 12 guards to rape his wife until she lost the baby. Amer said nothing. So they did. We were forced to watch. Whenever one of us cast down his eyes, they would beat us."
"Amer's wife didn't lose the baby. So the guard took a knife, cut her belly open and took the baby out with his hands. The woman and child died minutes later. Then the guard used the same knife to cut Amer's throat." There is a moment of silence. Then Idrissi says: 'What we have seen about the recent abuse at Abu Ghraib is a joke to us.'"

"Cheney Utters 'F-Word' in Senate - Aides" (Reuters/My Way, 2004/06/24)
"Vice President Dick Cheney blurted out the "F word" at Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont during a heated exchange on the Senate floor, congressional aides said on Thursday.
The incident occurred on Tuesday in a terse discussion between the two that touched on politics, religion and money, with Cheney finally telling Leahy to "f--- off" or "go f--- yourself," the aides said. ...
According to congressional aides, Leahy said hello to Cheney following the taking of the Senate group photo on the floor of the chamber.
Cheney, who is president of the Senate, then ripped into Leahy for the Democratic senator's criticism this week of alleged war profiteering in Iraq by Halliburton, the oil services company that Cheney once ran. ...
During their exchange, Leahy noted that Republicans had accused Democrats of being anti-Catholic because they are opposed to some of President Bush's anti-abortion judges, the aides said.
That's when Cheney unloaded with the "F-bomb," aides said."

"Demonstrators protest U.S. polices on AIDS" (Terry Leonard, AP/seattlepi.com, 2004/06/24)
How absurd can anti-Americanism get? South Africa's policy on AIDS has been truly scandalous, with President Thabo Mbeki believing that "the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is part of a conspiracy to promote the view that HIV causes Aids" and maintaining a "policy of not making anti-retroviral drugs available to HIV-positive pregnant women".
President Bush, on the other hand, has instigated the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a "five-year, $15 billion initiative to turn the tide in combating the global HIV/AIDS pandemic," part of which is a program announced last month, which will "speed the delivery of low-priced AIDS drugs to millions of people in Africa and the Caribbean".
Of course, it's a complex issue and other U.S. policies are open to criticism, but the fact remains that Bush's plan as a whole clearly must be seen as a step forward in the "war on AIDS" while Mbeki's policies are one of the worst current scandals in the world.
But never mind the facts:
"Hundreds of demonstrators marched Thursday to protest U.S. polices on AIDS, demanding that President Bush do more and stop undermining efforts to treat and prevent the disease. ...
In Johannesburg, about 500 angry AIDS activists, many wearing red and white T-shirts that said "HIV Positive," criticized Bush, saying he had hurt the global fight against AIDS by spending billions of dollars on war.
They also contended he undermined the global fight against AIDS by limiting access to condoms, reproductive choices and generic drugs.
"We promote choice, we don't dictate like George Bush. His policy is killing people, it is making the problem worse," said Mark Heywood, a leader the Treatment Action Campaign, an AIDS activist group in South Africa."

"N. Korea Considers Freezing Nuke Program" (Joe McDonald, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/24)
"North Korea presented a massive demand for energy aid Thursday at six-nation talks as Washington insisted that the North give up nuclear weapons development, Japanese news reports said.
The North wants the equivalent of 2 million kilowatts of power per year in exchange for freezing work on its nuclear program, the Kyodo News agency reported, citing diplomatic sources on the second day of talks in the Chinese capital.
It wasn't clear whether Washington would even discuss such a request, since the United States says the North must commit to dismantling the program, not just freezing development.
The United States offered its first detailed proposal for ending the dispute Wednesday, offering the North a step-by-step plan that would provide energy aid and security guarantees in exchange for the dismantling of the nuclear program." (See also: "U.S. Offers North Korea Aid if It Phases Out Nuclear Program" (Joseph Kahn, The New York Times, 2004/06/23))

"Iran Returns Detained British Sailors" (Ali Akbar Dareini, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/24)
"Eight British servicemen who were detained after their boats strayed into Iranian territorial waters have been turned over to British diplomats and were taken to the embassy in Tehran under tight security, officials said Thursday.
Protesters angry about the occupation of Iraq tried to approach the six Royal Marines and two sailors as they arrived at Tehran's airport accompanied by British consular officers, but they were kept away by police. ...
"I'm told that they are in very good spirits and were well cared for," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a brief statement."

"Rebel Attacks in Five Iraq Cities Kill 75" (Alistair Lyon, Reuters, 2004/06/24)
"Insurgents killed 75 people on Thursday in a wave of attacks across Iraq aimed at sabotaging the handover to Iraqi rule in six days' time.
Guerrillas struck in Baquba, Falluja, Ramadi, Mosul and Baghdad, wounding more than 250 people in an intensification of a bloody campaign by Iraqi rebels and foreign militants. Three U.S. soldiers were killed.
In Mosul, 240 miles north of Baghdad, multiple car bombings on police buildings rocked the city, killing at least 44 people and wounding 216, the Health Ministry said.
Fighting in Anbar province, which includes Falluja and Ramadi in the Sunni Muslim heartlands of central Iraq, killed at least nine people and wounded 27, the ministry said.
At least seven large explosions shook Mosul and local television ordered residents to stay at home. Police blocked all major roads and announced a dusk-to-dawn curfew." (See also: "Qaeda-Linked Group Claims Iraq Attacks - Web Site" (Reuters, 2004/06/24): A group headed by al Qaeda-linked operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for a wave of attacks across Iraq Thursday which killed 75 people. "Your brothers in Jama'at al-Tawhid and Jihad launched a wide assault in several governorates in the country which included strikes against the apostate police agents and spies, the Iraq army alongside their American brothers," said the Arabic-language statement posted on an Islamist Web site.")

"Blasts across Turkey kill three" (Ayla Jean Yackley, Reuters, 2004/06/24)
"At least three people have been killed and 10 injured when a bomb tore through an Istanbul bus two days before U.S. President George W. Bush visits Turkey for a NATO summit.
The blast followed a small bomb explosion earlier on Thursday outside the Hilton hotel in Ankara where Bush is due to stay on Saturday when he visits the capital before the Istanbul summit. A leftist group claimed responsibility for that attack.
Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said three people were killed and 10 injured in the bus blast, one seriously.
"The bus was not the target. The bomb was being carried from one place to another," Guler told reporters. 'We suspect a Marxist-Leninist group.'"

"BBC to launch Arabic TV channel" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2004/06/24)
Just what the Arab world needs. Even more anti-Israeli and anti-American reporting in Arabic: "The British Broadcasting Corp. said Thursday it is launching a 24-hour Arabic-language TV news channel to compete with the Qatar-based satellite station Al-Jazeera.
The channel, which will broadcast across the Middle East, will also be available to viewers in Britain and Europe.
The 28 million pounds (US$50 million) in annual costs will be covered by the Foreign Office, which also provides funding for the BBC World Service's radio network.
The BBC is hoping to rival Al-Jazeera, which has aired many of Osama bin Laden's speeches and been accused of anti-Western bias." (See also: "Living in a Bubble: The BBC’s very own Mideast foreign policy" (Tom Gross, National Review, 2004/06/18))

"Democrats and the Fahrenheit 9/11 Trap: Do they endorse Michael Moore’s kookiness?" (Byron Yorke, National Review, 2004/06/24)
I don't know what's most disturbing — that McAuliffe actually believes the conspiracy theory or the fact that he hasn't even heard of it before:
"Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe says he believes radical filmmaker Michael Moore's assertion that the United States went to war in Afghanistan not to avenge the terrorist attacks of September 11 but instead to assure that the Unocal Corporation could build a natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan for the financial benefit of Vice President Dick Cheney and former Enron chief Kenneth Lay.
McAuliffe and a number of other prominent Democrats attended a screening of Moore's new documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, at the Uptown Theatre in Washington Wednesday night. McAuliffe called the film "very powerful, much more powerful than I thought it would be." When asked by National Review Online if he believed Moore's account of the war in Afghanistan, McAuliffe said, "I believe it after seeing that." The DNC chairman added that he had not heard of the idea before seeing the movie, but said he would 'check it out myself and look at it, but there are a lot of interesting facts that he [Moore] brought out today that none of us knew about.'" (See also: "Pipe Dreams" (Seth Stevenson, Slate, 2001/12/06))

"Anti-totalitarianism as a Vocation: An Interview with Adam Michnik" (Thomas Cushman, Dissent, from the Spring 2004 issue)
"Adam Michnik, a leading force in the Solidarity trade union movement, and the founder and editor of the largest Polish daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, was an outspoken supporter of the war in Iraq. In this interview, which occurred in Warsaw on January 15, 2004, Michnik clarifies his position on the war and discusses the responses of other European intellectuals. ...
Adam Michnik: I look at the war in Iraq from three points of view. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a totalitarian state. It was a country where people were murdered and tortured. So I'm looking at this through the eyes of the political prisoner in Baghdad, and from this point of view I'm very grateful to those who opened the gates of the prison and who stopped the killing and the torture. Second, Iraq was a country that supported terrorist attacks in the Middle East and all over the world. I consider that 9/11 was the day when war was started against my own work and against myself. Even though we are not sure of the links, Iraq was one of the countries that did not lower its flags in mourning on 9/11. There are those who think this war could have been avoided by democratic and peaceful means. But I think that no negotiations with Saddam Hussein made sense, just as I believe that negotiations with Hitler did not make sense. And there is a third reason. Poland is an ally of the United States of America. It was our duty to show that we are a reliable, loyal, and predictable ally. America needed our help, and we had to give it. This was not only my position. It was also the position of Havel, Konrad, and others.
TC: Yes, you specifically mention that this is a view you share with Vaclav Havel and Gyorgy Konrad.
AM: We take this position because we know what dictatorship is. And in the conflict between totalitarian regimes and democracy you must not hesitate to declare which side you are on. Even if a dictatorship is not an ideal typical one, and even if the democratic countries are ruled by people whom you do not like. I think you can be an enemy of Saddam Hussein even if Donald Rumsfield is also an enemy of Saddam Hussein." (See also: "A View from the Left: We, the Traitors" (Adam Michnik, Gazeta Wyborcza/FrontPageMagazine, 2003/05/30))

"A Partial Disclosure" (The Washington Post, 2004/06/24)
Memos III: "The documents confirm that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved a number of harsh interrogation techniques for use in Guantanamo in December 2002, including hooding, requiring nudity, placing prisoners in stress positions and using dogs. After military lawyers objected that these violated international law, Mr. Rumsfeld suspended their use a month later. But all these techniques, as well as the restricted practices now approved for Guantanamo, appeared in an interrogation policy issued for Iraq by command of Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez in September 2003. Nearly word for word, the harsh methods detailed in memos signed by Mr. Rumsfeld — which even administration lawyers considered violations of the Geneva Conventions — were then distributed to interrogators at Abu Ghraib. The procedures in turn could be read to cover much of what is seen in the photographs that have scandalized the world. How did this spread of improper and illegal practices occur? The Bush administration has yet to offer a convincing answer — or hold anyone accountable for it."

"Danger money for expats as the Saudi exodus grows" (Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, 2004/06/24)
"The beheading last week of the US engineer Paul Johnson has had a profound impact on the expat community and has threatened to turn the stream of departures from Riyadh, Khobar, Dharan and Jeddah over the past few months into a flood.
In interviews with the Guardian, several workers in Riyadh and Jeddah suggested that the numbers who have already left or are planning to leave are much higher than has yet been reported.
One businessman in Riyadh who is planning to leave after almost 20 years said foreign residents had been "spooked" by Mr Johnson's kidnapping. Another Briton said occupancy in the 50 to 60 compounds in Riyadh favoured by westerners had dropped by between 5% and 15%.
A British businessman, a long-term resident of Riyadh, said he was sending his family home and brushing up his CV in the hope of leaving in the next three to four months. 'I don't know anyone who is thinking of staying. The kidnapping was astonishing. It was a gruesome death.'"

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

News and commentary:

"A TV grab taken from Al-Alam TV station..."
(Al-Alam/AFP, 2004/06/23)
"A TV grab taken from Al-Alam TV station, the Arabic-language satellite news channel run by Iran's state television network, shows British troops marching blindfold on the banks of the Shatt al-Arab waterway where they were detained 21 June 2004."

"Foreign fighters increase presence in Iraq" (P. Mitchell Prothero, UPI, 2004/06/23)
"Increasing numbers of foreign Islamic fighters entering Iraq have taken almost complete control of one Iraqi city, according to current and former U.S. intelligence sources, threatening to further destabilize the country in the lead-up to the June 30 handover of sovereignty.
Current U.S. intelligence sources have told United Press International that although the Syrian border continues to be a busy transit point for small groups of foreign fighters to enter Iraq to fight U.S. forces, Yemen and the Red Sea coast of Africa has become a major staging area and transit point for men and supplies to enter Iraq.
These concerns are confirmed as a variety of sources from both Iraqis and Western security experts operating in Iraq describe a major presence of foreign fighters from Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan in the restive Iraqi city of Fallujah. ...
According to residents, an entire neighborhood of Fallujah — called Golan — has become a haven for foreign fighters who control the city and operate without regard to the authority of either the Iraqi police or the American-formed Fallujah militia.
"Most of Fallujah hates the Americans, but we all ask why they came and killed so many people and (have) not finished the job," one resident told United Press International.
'People were terrified of the American's (siege). But now the mujihadeen (Islamic fighters) have better weapons and more power than the police. If you are one of these men, you can take any house or do anything you want.'"

"U.S. Offers North Korea Aid if It Phases Out Nuclear Program" (Joseph Kahn, The New York Times, 2004/06/23)
Doesn't this sound very much like the plan which led to the current situation in the first place?: "The United States today presented North Korea with a proposal for phasing out its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security guarantees, as senior Bush administration officials acknowledged softening their hard-line stance to jump-start negotiations with Pyongyang.
James A. Kelly, the chief American negotiator, presented a proposal to his North Korean counterparts on the opening day of six-nation nuclear talks in Beijing, a senior administration official said, adding that "it was time to start getting specific" in the so-far-inconclusive negotiations. ...
Under the American plan, North Korea would have to fully disclose its nuclear program, submit to inspections and pledge to begin eliminating the program after a "preparatory period" of three months.
In exchange, the reclusive regime of Kim Jong-Il, the North Korean leader, would receive shipments of heavy fuel oil to meet its energy needs, be granted a "provisional security guarantee" by the United States, and see the lifting of some sanctions."

"US war crimes immunity bid fails" (BBC News, 2004/06/23)
"The US has given up trying to win its soldiers immunity from prosecution at the new International Criminal Court.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan had warned the Security Council not to renew the measure, partly because of the prisoner abuse scandal.
Washington withdrew its resolution after it became clear it would not get the required support.
For the last two years it had secured special status for US troops, arguing they could face malicious prosecutions.
"The United States has decided not to proceed further with consideration and action on the draft at this time in order to avoid a prolonged and divisive debate," said the US deputy ambassador to the UN James Cunningham."

"Iran Postpones Talks on British Sailors" (AP/ABC News, 2004/06/23)
Iran II: "The release of eight British sailors has been postponed at least until Thursday, Iranian state television reported Wednesday, contradicting reports that the men were already freed.
There was no immediate clarification. Hours earlier, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told The Associated Press the eight Britons had been released. ...
Iran's Arabic-language TV channel Al-Alam broadcast an urgent evening report that said: "The second round of talks on the British detainees is postponed until tomorrow, Thursday."
There was no previous indication, however, that any talks had been under way. The station had earlier reported that the sailors' release could be delayed to Thursday."

"Iran orders release of UK sailors" (BBC News, 2004/06/23)
Iran I: "The eight crew members of three UK patrol boats seized by Iran near the border with Iraq are to be released, an Iranian armed forces spokesman says.
Ali Reza Afshar said "the order for the release of the vessels and their military crew was issued" after UK forces said they had "made a mistake".
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi was quoted on Wednesday as saying the British crew "will be freed today".
The men were detained on Monday in the southern Shatt al-Arab waterway.
Prime Minister Tony Blair's office said it had received confirmation from the Iranian government that the eight servicemen were being released."

"Why we’re in Iraq, part two" (Ernest F. Hollings, The State, 2004/06/23)
Senator Fritz Hollings (D., S.C.) thinks Americans have proven themselves "infidels":
"In the war against terrorism, we’ve given the terrorists a cause and created more terrorism. Even though Saddam is gone, the majority of the Iraqi people want us gone. We have proven ourselves “infidels.” ...
Unfortunately, the peoples of the world haven’t changed their minds. They are still against us. Heretofore, the world looked to the United States to do the right thing. No more. The United States has lost its moral authority." (Hat tip: Best of the Web Today.)

"Polio outbreak threatens Africa" (Sarah Boseley, The Guardian, 2004/06/23)
Islamic rule II: "The largest epidemic of polio in recent years has broken out in Nigeria and is spreading across central and western Africa, threatening 74 million children with the paralysing disease and jeopardising hopes of eradicating it from the world by the end of the year.
In the state of Kano in Nigeria, which is at the centre of the outbreak, doubt over vaccine safety has led to the suspension of immunisation, and 257 children have now been paralysed by the disease, the World Health Organisation said yesterday.
Polio is now being exported to neighbouring countries, including Sudan, where a child in Darfur has been infected by the Nigerian strain of the virus.
There are now 22 countries affected, 10 of which were free of polio last year. ...
In Kano, polio immunisation was suspended last year after religious leaders claimed that the vaccine would make women sterile and rumours spread that it was a western plot to reduce the number of Muslims." (See also:"Official Defends Polio Vaccine Boycott" (AP/ABC News, 2004/02/26), "Nigeria Boycotts Polio Vaccination Drive" (Glenn McKenzie, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/02/22), "Muslims' fears hinder fight on polio" (John Donnelly, The Boston Globe/miami.com, 2004/01/12) and "Polio and rumors spreading in Nigeria" (Glenn McKenzie, AP/The Seattle Times, 2003/10/25))

"Militant Vows to Assassinate Iraq Premier" (Robert H. Reid, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/23)
Islamic rule I: "A recording purportedly made by the mastermind of bombings and beheadings in Iraq threatened to assassinate Iraq's interim prime minister and fight the Americans "until Islamic rule is back on Earth."
The audio, found Wednesday on an Islamic Web site, is supposedly from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the same Jordanian-born terrorist whose group claimed responsibility for the beheading of of American hostage Nicholas Berg and Kim Sun-il, a South Korean whose decapitated body was found Tuesday evening between Baghdad and Fallujah. ...
In the audiotape, the speaker thought to be al-Zarqawi told Iraq's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, that "we will continue the game with you until the end." The speaker said "we will not get bored" until "we make you drink from the same glass" as Izzadine Saleem, the Iraqi governing Council president killed last month in a car-bombing claimed at al-Zarqawi's group.
"We will carry on our jihad against the Western infidel and the Arab apostate until Islamic rule is back on earth," the voice said."

"Magboula's Brush With Genocide" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, 2004/06/23)
"Ms. Bashir said that when the Janjaweed attacked her village, Kornei, she fled with her seven children. But when she and a few other mothers crept out to find food, the Janjaweed captured them and tied them on the ground, spread-eagled, then gang-raped them.
"They said, `You are black women, and you are our slaves,' and they also said other bad things that I cannot repeat," she said, crying softly. "One of the women cried, and they killed her. Then they told me, `If you cry, we will kill you, too.' " Other women from Kornei confirm her story and say that another woman who was gang-raped at that time had her ears partly cut off as an added humiliation.
One moment Ms. Bashir reviles the baby inside her. The next moment, she tearfully changes her mind. "I will not kill the baby," she said. "I will love it. This baby has no problem, except for his father."
Ms. Khattar, the orphans, Ms. Bashir and countless more like them have gone through hell in the last few months, as we have all turned our backs — and the rainy season is starting to make their lives even more miserable." (See also: "Sudan's Final Solution" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, 2004/06/19) and "Dare We Call It Genocide?" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times/truthout, 2004/06/16))

"Army unit claims victory over sheik" (Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, 2004/06/23)
"The Army's powerful 1st Armored Division is proclaiming victory over Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr's marauding militia that just a month ago seemed on the verge of conquering southern Iraq.
The Germany-based division defeated the militia with a mix of American firepower and money paid to informants. Officers today say "Operation Iron Saber" will go down in military history books as one of the most important battles in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. ...
Gen. Dempsey first needed the locations of Sheik al-Sadr's rifle-toting henchmen. Average Iraqis, fed up with the militia's kidnappings and thievery, quickly became spies, as did a few moderate clerics who publicly stayed neutral.
Once he had targets, Gen. Dempsey could then map a battle plan for entering four key cities — Karbala, Najaf, Kufa and Diwaniyah. This would be a counterinsurgency fought with 70-ton M-1 Abrams tanks and aerial gunships overhead. It would not be the lightning movements of clandestine commandos, but rather all the brute force the Army could muster, directed at narrowly defined targets. ...
Gen. Dempsey designed "Iron Saber" based on four pillars: massive combat power; information operations to discredit Sheik al-Sadr; rebuilding the Iraqi security forces that fled; and beginning civil affairs operations as quickly as possible, including paying Iraqis to repair damaged public buildings."

"Memo on Interrogation Tactics Is Disavowed" (Mike Allen and Susan Schmidt, The Washington Post, 2004/06/23)
Memos II: "As part of a public relations offensive, the administration also declassified and released hundreds of pages of internal documents that it said demonstrated that Bush had never authorized torture against detainees from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. ...
• A Feb. 7, 2002, memo signed by Bush saying that he believed he had "the authority under the Constitution" to deny protections of the Geneva Conventions to combatants picked up during the war in Afghanistan but that he would "decline to exercise that authority at this time."
"Our nation recognizes that this new paradigm — ushered in not by us, but by terrorists — requires new thinking in the law of war," Bush wrote.
The memo, which had not been scheduled to be declassified until 2012, settled a bitter dispute between the State and Justice departments over the issue. It outlined Bush's rationale — announced the day he signed it — that some of the Geneva Conventions would apply to fighters for Afghanistan's Taliban but not to members of the al Qaeda terrorist network. Bush added that "our values as a Nation . . . call for us to treat detainees humanely."
• New details on the range of severe interrogation techniques approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for use at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including stripping detainees to humiliate them, using dogs to scare them and forcing them to remain in stressful positions. Those measures were later curtailed after military lawyers in the field questioned their legality."

Added in archive:
"A View from the Eye of the Storm" (Haim Harari, USS Clueless, 2004/06/19)

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

News and commentary:

"Kim Jung-soo, sister of slain South Korean Kim Sun-il..."
(Lee Chong-kun, Hangyere News Paper/AP, 2004/06/23)
"Kim Jung-soo, sister of slain South Korean Kim Sun-il who was kidnapped in Iraq, cries after hearing that Kim had been killed in Iraq, at her home in Busan, southern South Korea, early Wednesday, June 23, 2004."

"Militants in Iraq Kill S. Korean Hostage" (Todd Pitman, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/22)
"An Iraqi militant group has beheaded its South Korean hostage, Al-Jazeera television reported Tuesday, just hours after a go-between said the execution had been delayed and there were negotiations for the man's release.
The South Korean foreign ministry issued a statement confirming that Kim Sun-il had been killed but did not say he was beheaded.
Kim's body was found by the U.S. military between Baghdad and Fallujah, 22 miles west of the capital, at 5:20 p.m. Iraq time, said South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Shin Bong-kil. ...
The videotape of Kim, apparently made shortly before his death, showed him kneeling, blindfolded and wearing an orange jumpsuit similar to those issued to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Five hooded men stood behind Kim, one reading a statement and gesturing with his right hand. Another captor had a big knife slipped in his belt.
One of the masked men said the message was intended for the Korean people. 'This is what your hands have committed. Your army has not come here for the sake of Iraqis, but for cursed America.'"

"Saddam’s Prison Letter" (Rod Nordland, Newsweek, 2004/06/22)
"Military censors have blacked out nine of the 14 lines. But in what remains of his letter, Saddam Hussein assures his family that “my spirit and my morale, they are high, thanks to greatness of God.”
The message — apparently the first and only letter the former Iraqi dictator has sent to his family since his capture last December — is on a standard “family message” form provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). ...
The letter begins, "In the name of God the Merciful," followed by six lines that are blacked out. Then it resumes "To my small family and my big family, salaam alekum." Then another three lines are blacked out, followed by "As for my spirit and my morale, they are high, thanks to greatness of God. And say hello to everyone." The signed letter is heavily censored by U.S. military authorities who are holding Saddam, so much so that the substance of it is almost entirely missing."

"White House Releases Documents Related to Prison Abuse" (David Stout, The Washington Post, 2004/06/22)
Memos I: "The White House this afternoon released a stack of internal documents on the treatment of war prisoners to back up President Bush's declaration hours earlier that torture is "not part of our soul."
Hoping to quell a public relations and political problem spawned by the revelation of mistreatment of captives at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the White House made public an early 2002 memo by Mr. Bush in which he reaffirms the United States' commitment to humane treatment. ...
The February 2002 memo by Mr. Bush seems to say in essence that, even though Taliban detainees seized in Afghanistan and their ilk are not legally entitled to treatment as spelled out at the Geneva Convention, the United States is morally committed to giving them such treatment anyhow.
"Our values as a nation, values that we share with many nations in the world, call for us to treat detainees humanely, including those who are not legally entitled to such treatment," Mr. Bush writes."

"Blindfolded British naval personnel..."
(Al-Alam TV/AFP, 2004/06/22)
"Blindfolded British naval personnel seized by Iran on the Shatt al-Arab waterway. Iran hinted it could soon release eight heavily-armed members of Britain's Royal Navy who strayed into Iranian waters on the border with Iraq, easing fears the incident could spiral into a crisis."

"Ready for $60-a-Barrel Oil?" (Michael Ledeen, National Review, 2004/06/22)
"It's not that hard to understand the mullahs once you learn to think as they do, and understand their hopes and fears.
What do they hope? That Bush will lose; that the Coalition will collapse; that they can dominate Iraq and create an Islamic republic in the Iranian image. That will expand their power in the region, totally demoralize the internal democratic opposition, and drive America from the Middle East, thereby permitting them to complete their nuclear-weapons program at their leisure. A dream come true.
What do they fear? Above all, their own people. (And a free, relatively stable Iraq would inspire the Iranian people to demand the same freedom for themselves, meaning the end of the mullahcracy). An aggressive American policy in support of democratic revolution in Iran, for the same reason. A collapse in oil prices. The reelection of George W. Bush.
So you see at once the bases of Iranian policy: Drive oil prices up and the Americans out of Iraq, whatever the cost. The Brits were in the way, blocking easy access for saboteurs to the Iraqi oil facilities. Ergo the "crazy" action. Which turns out to be not so crazy at all."

"Tehran May Prosecute British Crewmen" (Ali Akbar Dareini, AP/My Way, 2004/06/22)
"Iranian state TV showed eight British sailors blindfolded and seated on the ground Tuesday, as Tehran said it would prosecute them for illegally entering Iran's territorial waters.
The British government said the men were on a "routine mission" in the Shatt-al-Arab waterway that separates Iran and Iraq along their southern border. The Foreign Office summoned Iranian Ambassador Morteza Sarmadi to demand an explanation for the naval officers' arrest.
Also in London, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharrazi to ask for the sailors' release.
The eight were detained Monday as they were delivering a patrol boat for the new Iraqi Riverine Patrol Service.
Iran's Arabic language Al-Alam television showed the sailors blindfolded and sitting cross-legged on the ground. Earlier footage showed them sitting silently on chairs and a sofa. Three were in British military uniform; five others wore military trousers and civilian T-shirts.
"They will be prosecuted for illegally entering Iranian territorial waters," Al-Alam television said."

"Heavy Fighting Erupts in Russian Region Bordering Chechnya" (C.J. Chivers and Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times, 2004/06/22)
"Heavy fighting erupted late Monday night in a southern Russian region bordering Chechnya, as insurgents staged coordinated attacks on the police and other security buildings in at least three cities.
Residents said the fighting began after nightfall, when rebels attacked their objectives with assault rifles and grenade launchers. Several explosions were heard in the city of Nazran and in nearby Ordzhonikidzevskaya and Karabulak. ...
It was not immediately clear how successful the rebels had been. There were reports Tuesday morning that the insurgents controlled at least one road, but Murat M. Zyazikov, the president of Ingushetia, was quoted by a spokesman as saying he remained in control.
"He is in complete contro