Archived news and commentary: June 28 - July 4, 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, July 4, 2004

News and commentary:

"THE ENDURING SPIRIT OF FREEDOM"
(Mike Segar, Reuters, 2004/07/04)
"The inscription on the face of the cornerstone for the Freedom Tower as it sits in place after a being unveiled during a ceremony at the base of the ground zero site of the former World Trade center in New York, July 4, 2004. The cornerstone for the Freedom Tower, the 1,776 foot-tall building that will be built on the site, is made of 20 tons of Adirondack New York granite and is inscribed 'TO HONOR AND REMEMBER THOSE WHO LOST THEIR LIVES ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 AND AS A TRIBUTE TO THE ENDURING SPIRIT OF FREEDOM, JULY FOURTH 2004'"

"A Chilling Iraqi Terror Tape" (Michael Ware, TIME, 2004/07/04)
"Jihad leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist and the most wanted man in Iraq, this weekend released a telling window into his organization, Attawhid wal Jihad, or Unity and Jihad. In a slickly produced hour-long video Zarqawi lays bare the milieu of his suicide bombers, their safehouses, their rituals and their targeting guidelines. ...
The tape contains many chilling scenes. When the chairman of the U.S. appointed Iraqi Governing Council, Izzedine Salam, then the country's highest Iraqi official, was assassinated last month in a car bomb Zarqawi quickly claimed credit. Now he shows the act, in graphic footage shot from a parked car: A convoy of white SUVs disappears down a Baghdad street, followed a moment later by a ball of flame and explosion so intense the windscreen through which the cameraman films cracks before your eyes. ...
Each episode of this grim "Best Of" the militant group's attacks over the last year is accompanied by professional-style editing, graphics and camera work. Explanations are given of each operation, the names of the suicide bombers, and the targeting justification. ...
One thing the video makes clear is that foreign fighters have developed a sophisticated organization in Iraq. Interviews on the tape, and living wills made by suicide bombers, show how Muslim men have been brought to the country through well-defined and clearly funded channels. Appearances are made by Saudis, Algerians, Libyans, Jordanians and others; the video even claims that one bomber had lived in Italy and played hockey for a premier club."

"Dr Williams, beware of false prophets" (Will Cummins, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/07/04)
A devastating critique of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams:
"Can we discuss the fact that the Muslims here, all recent immigrants, enjoy rights — for instance to propagate their religion — that are unavailable to the Christians of the Muslim world? This is despite the fact that these Christians are the original inhabitants and rightful owners of almost every Muslim land, and behave with a humility quite unlike the menacing behaviour we have come to expect from the Muslims who have forced themselves on Christendom, a bullying ingratitude that culminates in a terrorist threat to their unconsulted hosts.
Dr Williams has nothing to say about this: but then, Christian passivity in the face of Muslim narcissism and aggression is nothing new. "The history we share" is that Mohammed enjoined his followers to spread Islam by the sword. After his death in 632, Muslim armies poured out of the Arabian peninsula (the only place to which Muslims are native, though even there Islam was imposed by force) and, unprovoked, attacked its neighbours.
Christian Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Anatolia, Spain, the Balkans, the Maghreb and Sicily, as well as Buddhist central Asia, Zoroastrian Iran and Hindu India, all became "Muslim" by virtue of naked imperialism. The indigenous non-Muslims were either exterminated (the fate of the Christians of North Africa), or reduced to the status of third-class citizens in their own countries, their fate to this day. ...
The "fruit" of Islam is all around us: we can draw our own conclusions. It is felt in the presence of the Muslims who have fled to a thriving Christendom from the failure and horror of the Muslim world. (Would Muslims show a similar hospitality? It seems unlikely when they rail against the five million Jews who have settled in Israel, while gloating over the fact that 20 million Muslims in less than 30 years have inundated Europe.) These immigrants seem not to realise that the need they feel to flee Islam negates everything they say in its favour, as well as rendering absurd their constant anti-Western diatribes. The Archbishop of Canterbury has no such excuse."

"The hawks have only themselves to blame for Michael Moore's success" (Matthew d'Ancona, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/07/04)
"But who can blame Michael Moore for seizing his chance? No war in modern history has been as badly sold to the public as this one. ...
This war may well, for a start, be longer than the great struggle of the second half of the last century. It is certainly more complex: the triple, interlocked threat of weapons of mass destruction, global terrorist groups and rogue states is much more difficult to explain than the monolithic danger which was represented by the Soviet bloc and its ideology. And, to be prosecuted successfully, the war on terror will require durable public faith in politicians and the intelligence services that inform them: the very trust which has taken such a terrible beating before, during and after the Iraqi conflict. The anti-war lobby has the slick movies of Michael Moore. And what do we hawks have? The sickening images of Abu Ghraib, that's what.
This is why it isn't enough to say that Moore manipulates the facts, or that he is a charlatan, or that his arguments are glib. The reality is that his methods are working, and working for a reason. He is the grizzled face of a culture in denial, the contrarian voice of the millions who would rather hate Dubya than confront the awesome threat that stalks our age. His success is an urgent warning to those who support the war, who grasp its importance, to raise their game, and fast. Nitpicking is not the answer. It's the big issues that count. And it's there that Michael Moore has no answers. If he is so visionary, why is his objective — to run Bush out of the White House — so parochial? What would he do about the new horrors of our time? Dude, where's your sense of history?"

"All the news that fakes" (Tim Blair, timblair.spleenville.com, 2004/07/04)
"Our beloved bird of legend finally makes it into the pages of the New York Times, courtesy of Richard L. Berke and the NYT's expert fact-checkers:

There are also the manufactured surprises, like Mr. Bush's cloak-and-dagger Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad, which drew praise even from Democrats. (The public relations bonanza fizzled after the press reported that Mr. Bush had posed with a mouth-watering — but fake — turkey.)

Will this bird fly all the way to next Thanksgiving?" (See also: "Why Political Surprises Rarely Surprise" (Richard L. Berke, The New York Times, 2004/07/04) and "Alan Ramsey, King Turkey" (Tim Blair, timblair.spleenville.com, 2003/12/13))

"Shrunk to Size, Hussein Faces His Reckoning" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2004/07/04)
"But if Mr. Hussein looked for much of his time in the courtroom like a shadow of the man he was, he towered compared with the others. ...
Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, Mr. Hussein's former bodyguard and secretary, listened intently to the rights available to all appearing before the tribunal — to a lawyer, paid for by the state if they are indigent, as well as to remain silent in court — and offered his congratulations. "These rights are excellent," he said, smiling broadly.
It was left to others to ponder whether Mr. Mahmud, accused of "crimes against the Iraqi people" in the brutal repression of a Shiite uprising in 1991 in which tens of thousands of people died, had considered what the absence of such rights had meant to Iraqis who fell victim to the old regime.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali for his alleged role in overseeing the Halabja attack, was also pleased, smiling broadly at the judge after the rights were read and saying, 'Thank you, thank you.'"

"New Iraq government accuses Iran and Syria of backing insurgents" (Damien McElroy, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/07/04)
"The new Iraqi government will publish damning evidence this week linking foreign powers, including Iran and Syria, to the Muslim extremists and loyalists of the former regime who launched a bloody rebellion after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister, told The Telegraph that the interim government had gathered intelligence detailing the support provided to insurgent groups by some neighbouring nations.
Although he did not name the countries, senior Iraqi officials indicated that Iran and Syria were the worst offenders. The accusation that governments in Teheran and Damascus have been aiding the insurgents could create an immediate diplomatic crisis for the Baghdad administration that assumed power only last week.
Insurgents had benefited from financial support, logistical assistance and training from neighbouring government agencies, said Mr Zebari. Baghdad also believed that up to 10,000 foreign spies and undercover agents had infiltrated the country since last year's war."

"Officials Detail a Detainee Deal by 3 Countries" (Don Van Natta Jr. and Tim Golden, The New York Times, 2004/07/04)
"American officials agreed to return five terrorism suspects to Saudi Arabia from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, last year as part of a secret three-way deal intended to satisfy important allies in the invasion of Iraq, according to senior American and British officials.
Under the arrangement, Saudi officials later released five Britons and two others who had been convicted of terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, the officials said. British diplomats said they believed that the men had been tortured by Saudi security police officers into confessing falsely.
Officials involved in the deliberations said the transfer of the Saudis from Guantánamo initially met with objections from officials at the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. Those officials questioned whether some detainees were too dangerous to send back and whether the United States could trust Saudi promises to keep the men imprisoned. ...
The Saudi prisoners were transferred to Riyadh, the capital, in May 2003. The five Britons and two others were freed three months later, in August." (See also: "William Sampson: Confession, torture and freedom - in his own words" (National Post/Watch, 2003/09/12))

Saturday, July 3, 2004

News and commentary:

"Iraq Militants Claim Marine Beheading" (Nadia Abou El-Magd, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/07/03)
"An Iraqi militant group claimed on a Web site Saturday that it had beheaded a captive U.S. Marine, in what would be the fourth decapitation of a foreign hostage in the region since May.
The group, called the Ansar al-Sunna Army, posted a written statement on an Islamic web site claiming that it had killed Lebanese-born Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun.
"We would like to inform you that the Marine of Lebanese descent has been killed, and you will soon see the movie with your own eyes," said the statement, signed in the name of the group's leader, Abu Abdullah al-Hassan bin Mahmoud."

"Iraq May Give Amnesty to Insurgents" (Jim Krane, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/07/03)
"Iraq's prime minister, less than a week after taking power, may offer amnesty to insurgents and could extend it to those who killed American troops in an apparent bid to lure Saddam Hussein loyalists from their campaign of violence.
A spokesman for Iyad Allawi went as far as to suggest attacks on U.S. troops over the past year were legitimate acts of resistance — a sign of the new government's desire to distance itself from the 14-month U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
"If he (a guerrilla) was in opposition against the Americans, that will be justified because it was an occupation force," the spokesman, Georges Sada, said Saturday. "We will give them freedom." ...
The amnesty plan is still in the works. A full pardon for insurgents who killed Americans is not a certainty, Sada told The Associated Press. Allawi's main goal is to "start everything from new" by giving a second chance to rebel fighters who hand in their weapons and throw their weight behind the new government."

"Gaddafi daughter to defend Saddam" (BBC News, 2004/07/03)
"The daughter of Libya's leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has joined Saddam Hussein's defence team.
Aisha Gaddafi, in her mid-20s, joins 20 to 30 lawyers involved in the ousted Iraqi leader's defence, lawyer Mohammed al-Rashdan told BBC News Online.
Mr Rashdan said it had not been decided what role the law graduate would play. ...
Mr Rashdan, a Jordanian, said as many as 1,500 lawyers had expressed an interest in defending "President Saddam Hussein".
But, he said, 20 to 30 were actively involved at the moment — from France, the UK, the US and Belgium, as well as Arab countries like Lebanon and Libya."

"Where's the Arab Media's Sense of Outrage?" (Mamoun Fandy, The Washington Post Outlook, 2004/07/04)
"But the lack of condemnation of the beheadings, despite their barbarism, is a direct result of a broad and dangerous trend in Arab media and in Arab culture broadly. The Arab world today swims in a sea of linguistic violence that justifies terrorism and makes it acceptable, especially to the young. ...
Last month I traveled to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Lebanon and saw for myself the effect on the young of the Arab media's tendency, particularly on satellite television, to portray terrorists as resistance fighters and to broadcast in their entirety the videotaped messages of al Qaeda.
One Egyptian student told me the Americans "deserve [killing] for their support to Israel and their occupation of Iraq." A Kuwaiti who recently graduated from a Pennsylvania university said of Americans, "Don't believe them when they say it is al Qaeda that is slaying Americans. It is Americans who are killing Americans to justify their presence in the Arab world and to control Arab oil."
In each country, I was struck that al Qaeda and its ideas are no longer perceived as extreme. Indeed, al Qaeda has become mainstream and being part of the movement is "cool" in the eyes of young people."

"Al Jazeera: Out-Foxing Fox" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, 2004/07/03)
Kristof should perhaps stick to covering Darfur, because he has a tendency to sink down in a morass of moral equivalence when writing on other subjects.
Now, I'm not a big fan of Fox News, but it's hardly an American version of Al Jazeera. And the problem with Al Jazeera is not that it "tends to be emotional", but rather that it tends to cooperate with terrorists:
"The gulf between the American and Arab realities is the subject of "Control Room," a powerful documentary by Jehane Noujaim, an Egyptian-American. She looks at Al Jazeera's coverage of the war, offering a sobering reminder that there are multiple ways of perceiving the same events.
President Bush's narrative for the war was: "Altruistic Americans risk their lives to topple evil dictator and establish democracy and human rights." The Arab narrative was: "The same Yankees who pay for Israelis to blow up Palestinians are now seizing Iraqi oil fields and maiming Iraqi women and children."
I'm not a big fan of Al Jazeera, which tends to be emotional and nationalistic. As U.S. Lt. Josh Rushing astutely notes in "Control Room," Al Jazeera is the Arab version of the Fox News Channel: 'It benefits Al Jazeera to play to Arab nationalism because that's their audience, just like Fox plays to American patriotism, for the exact same reason — American nationalism — because that's their demographic audience and that's what they want to see.'" (Note: For more on "Control Room", see also: "Interview With 'Control Room' Director Jehane Noujaim" (FOX News, 2004/05/23) and "'Control Room' gripping look at Al-Jazeera" (Jocelyn Noveck, AP/MSNBC, 2004/05/21))

"Sudan pledges to disarm militias" (BBC News, 2004/07/03)
"Sudan says it will begin disarming Arab militias who have forced tens of thousands of people from their homes in the western Darfur region.
The pledge was made in a joint statement with the UN, following a visit by Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Mr Annan has just ended a tour of the region in which he visited refugees camps in Chad, neighbouring Darfur.
Earlier, a spokeswoman for Human Rights Watch warned that Sudan's government "rarely ever" honoured its promises.
"Their track record is very poor. They prefer to promise... and later go to do whatever they set out to do to begin with," Jemera Rone told the BBC's World Today programme."

"Car Bomb Production Site Discovered in Iraq" (Matthew Green, Reuters/The Washington Post, 2004/07/03)
"U.S. soldiers discovered a car bomb production site and detained 51 people for questioning during a two-day search for illegal weapons in Baghdad, the military said on Saturday.
Soldiers found four vehicles, which were apparently being modified for use in bomb attacks, at one site, while searches elsewhere netted rocket-propelled grenade launchers, explosives and bombs designed to be used in roadside attacks."

Friday, July 2, 2004

News and commentary:

"Palestinian guerilla fighters prepare a homemade bomb..."
(Mohammed Abed, AFP, 2004/07/01)
"Palestinian guerilla fighters prepare a homemade bomb in Rafah refugee camp south of the Gaza Strip." Via Charles Johnson, who has a much better caption: "Terrorists casually assemble a bomb in Rafah while Palestinian photographer Mohammed Abed stands a few feet away and takes pictures for Agence France Presse."

"Fahrenheit 9/11: The temperature at which Michael Moore's pants burn" (Brendan Nyhan, Spinsanity, 2004/07/02)
"Michael Moore's career as a rabble-rousing populist has been marked by a frequent pattern of dissembling and factual inaccuracy....
With his new documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which won the prestigious Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was #1 at the US box office last week, Moore has surged to new prominence -- and come under increasing scrutiny. His staff has made much of elaborate fact-checking that was reportedly conducted on the film. And fortunately, it appears to be free of the silly and obvious errors that have plagued Moore's past work, such as the claim in Stupid White Men that the Pentagon planned to spend $250 billion on the Joint Strike Fighter in 2001, a sum that represented over 80 percent of the total defense budget request for the year.
However, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is filled with a series of deceptive half-truths and carefully phrased insinuations that Moore does not adequately back up. As Washington Monthly blogger Kevin Drum and others have noted, the irony is that these are the same tactics frequently used by the target of the film, George W. Bush. Moore and his chief antagonist have more in common than viewers might think." (See also: "More Distortions From Michael Moore" (Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, 2004/06/30))

"Fantasyland" (Victor Davis Hanson, victorhanson.com, 2004/07/02)
"We are in dangerous times, because beyond the normal Democratic/Republican, Left/Right natural give-and- take, there is now a growing and very crazy New, New Left. It has transcended both the old Marxism of the 1930s and the counterculture of the 1960s, and transmogrified into a strange sort of aristocratic, boutique damnation of Main Street, USA.
These furious critics of America are heiresses, work at trendy foundations, and include movie stars, upscale academics like a Chomsky, or global currency gougers such as George Soros. Al Gore’s recent bouts of insanity are a metaphor of the scary era we are in. ...
Let us face it: the Left in this country has gone absolutely crazy. Without worries of rebuke or censure, the dinosaurs of the 1960s really do wish us to give one final gift of their wisdom and humanity — and so does its best to bring us a repeat of American choppers fleeing the embassy roof, circa 1975, with millions left behind awaiting death, reeducation camps, and exile."

"Goebbels grotto" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2004/07/02)
"The good news is that Michael Moore's Farragoheit 9/11 is so bad that even Simon Jenkins, the obsessional anti-war commentator on the Times, thinks it's rubbish. The bad news is that this is because Jenkins thinks the real story behind the Iraq war is something Moore didn't mention: that it was all cooked up by the great world Jewish conspiracy. Yup, even on the op-ed page of the Times, even from its leading, most prestigious commentator, the ancient libel of sinister Jewish power is now openly rearing its head. ...

Their Iraq war is not about oil but about the agenda of a small group of Washington ideologues, whom they hold as traitors to the American conservative tradition. This group’s seizure of Washington (and London) after 9/11 makes a fascinating study in power. Known colloquially as the Vulcans, they embraced Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the Pentagon architect of the Iraq occupation, Douglas Feith. Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush were their front men. Their first commitment was to the defence of Israel. ...

Actually, I wouldn't call this antisemitism, a word invented by an antisemite. I'd call this straightforward Jew-hatred. Alas, its open expression is now a commonplace. Only this week, I was told by a prominent and distinguished opponent of the war in Iraq that he had been stopped from writing about it in sections of the British press by 'the Jewish lobby in America', and that Bush had gone to war in Iraq because 'he had Ariel Sharon's hand up his back'.
But then, of course, any protest at such loathsome attitudes is held up as triumphant proof of the Jewish lobby at its sinister work. Well, to hell with that. This abomination must be called by its proper name, and fought wherever it rears its ugly head."

"In the Dock" (Gregory Djerejian, The Belgravia Dispatch, 2004/07/02)

"Bags beneath his eyes, beard greying, finger-jabbing with anger, Saddam was still the same fox, alert, cynical, defiant, abusive, proud. Yet history must record that the new "independent" government in Baghdad yesterday gave Saddam Hussein an initial trial hearing that was worthy of the brutal old dictator.

— Robert Fisk in today's Independent.

Funny, I didn't know Saddam informed defendants of their right to counsel back in the day.
Note the above quoted text represented the full front cover of the Independent (along with an accompanying picture of Saddam).
Don't miss this beaut later on:

But then, watching that face with its expressive mouth and bright crooked teeth, the eyes glimmering, a dreadful thought occurred. Could it be this awful man — albeit given less chance to be heard than the Nazis at the first Nuremberg hearings — actually knew less than we thought? Could it be that his apparatchiks and grovelling generals, even his own sons, kept from this man the iniquities of his regime? Might it just be possible the price of power was ignorance, the cost of guilt a mere suggestion here and there that the laws of Iraq — so immutable according to Saddam — were not adhered to as fairly as they might have been?

You couldn't make this stuff up, could you?"

"Polish Troops Discover Iraq Bio-Weapons" (Monika Scislowska, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/07/02)
"Terrorists may have been close to obtaining munitions containing the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin that Polish soldiers recovered last month in Iraq, the head of Poland's military intelligence said Friday.
Polish troops had been searching for munitions as part of their regular mission in south-central Iraq when they were told by an informant in May that terrorists had made a bid to buy the chemical weapons, which date back to Saddam Hussein's war with Iran in the 1980s, Gen. Marek Dukaczewski told reporters in Warsaw.
"We were mortified by the information that terrorists were looking for these warheads and offered $5,000 apiece," Dukaczewski said. "An attack with such weapons would be hard to imagine. All of our activity was accelerated at appropriating these warheads."
Dukaczewski refused to give any further details about the terrorists or the sellers of the munitions, saying only that his troops thwarted terrorists by purchasing the 17 rockets for a Soviet-era launcher and two mortar rounds containing the nerve agent for an undisclosed sum June 23."

"Palestinian terrorists kill alleged collaborator" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2004/07/02)
"Cheered on by hundreds of onlookers, Palestinian gunmen on Friday killed a man for allegedly collaborating with Israel and sexually abusing his two young daughters.
Hamad Rafiq Abdel Razek, 42, of the West Bank town of Qabatyia, was gunned down in a public square by terrorists from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a group affiliated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
Jamal Abu al-Rob, a local Al-Aqsa leader in the village, said Abdel Razek had been abducted by the group from a nearby hospital. ...
Abdel Razek was paraded into a public square early Friday. The terrorists announced the charges against him and then asked the crowd of some 500 people what they should do.
"Kill him immediately," the crowd chanted.
The terrorists then riddled his body with automatic gunfire.
"I feel honor for me and my people," said al Rob. 'People like this belong below the ground, not above it.'"

"Qaeda group targets Europe for attacks" (Ghaida Ghantous, Reuters, 2004/07/02)
"An al Qaeda-linked group has vowed to renew attacks on Europe and has urged Muslims to flee once Osama bin Laden's three-month truce ends on July 15, two Arabic-language newspapers have reported.
"To the European people ... you only have a few more days to accept bin Laden's truce or you will only have yourselves to blame," said the statement purported to be from the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades which claimed responsibility for the March 11 train bombings in Spain.
Al Qaeda leader bin Laden, in an audiotape on April 15, extended a truce to Europeans if they withdrew troops from Muslim nations. He said the offer not to attack Europe would last three months. ...
Muslims in the West should depart to Muslim states if they can," the letter said. ...
"Those who cannot should take precautions and live in Muslim areas, have enough food to last a month, find ways to protect themselves and their families, leave enough money in the house to last one month or longer and to pray a lot and put their fate in God's hands," it added. ...
The group said those involved in "dialogue of civilisations" had little time to convince Europe to accept the truce.
'The race now is between you, time and European governments which refused to stop their attacks against Muslims. So do not blame us for what will happen, and we apologise to you in advance if you are among those killed.'" (See also: "Osama Bin Laden Speech Offers Peace Treaty with Europe, Says Al-Qa'ida 'Will Persist in Fighting' the U.S" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 695, 2004/04/15))

"Beyond Munich – The Spirit of Eurabia" (Bat Ye'or, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/07/02)
A presentation delivered at a "seminar in the French Senate in Paris three weeks ago":
"Those who resist the jihad, like the Israelis and the Americans, are the guilty ones, rather than those who wage it. It is this policy that has inculcated in us, the Europeans, the spirit of dhimmitude that blinds us, that instills in us a hatred for our own values, and the wish to destroy our own origins and our own history. “The greatest intellectual swindle would be to allow Europe to continue to believe that it derives from a Judeo-Christian tradition. That is a complete lie,” Tariq Ramadan has stated. ...
The well-known scholar of Islam, William Montgomery Watt, described the disappearance of the Christian world from the countries which had been Islamized, in his book The Majesty that was Islam (1974): “There was nothing dramatic about what happened; it was a gentle death, a phasing out.” But Montgomery Watt was wrong; in fact, the long death-throes of Christianity under Islam were extremely painful and tragic, as can be seen even in the 20th century, with the genocide of the Armenians, and the Lebanese Christians’ resistance in the 1970s-1980s, and for the last decades the genocide in the Sudan, and finally the relentless Arab jihad against Israel, which is only one of the examples of the age-old struggle by people devoted to fighting for freedom against dhimmitude, for the dignity of man against the slavery of oppression and hate. But that observation by Montgomery Watt — about the “gentle death, the phasing out” applies perfectly to Europe today."

"U.N.'s Telltale Ripoff" (New York Post, 2004/07/02)
"When the head of the U.N.'s Oil-for- Food program got a copy of a let ter in October 2002 suggesting that a bribe had been paid to Saddam Hussein's cronies as part of the program, what do you think was the first thing he did?
If you guessed "informed the authorities, particularly his employers at the Security Council" — guess again.
According to a report Monday on Fox News Channel (a Post sister company), the program's director, Benon Sevan, took the letter and went directly to . . . Saddam.
"I am duty-bound to bring the matter to the attention of the Security Council," Sevan wrote the Baghdad Butcher's U.N. envoy, Mohammed Aldouri.
Apparently, duty could wait:
"Prior to doing so . . . I should like to receive most urgently the views and comments of the government of Iraq."
Why would Sevan, who himself has been alleged to have taken some $3.5 million in Oil-for-Food bribes, want to inform Saddam & Co. about evidence of an illegal kickback before telling his U.N. bosses?
One obvious possibility: To give the Iraqis a "heads-up" — that incriminating questions might soon be asked, that steps might soon be taken.
Remember — the General Accounting Office estimates that Saddam pinched some $10 billion from the program through kickbacks and oil-smuggling.
Sevan himself, of course, simply isn't talking." (See also: "U.N. Lesson: Follow the Oil-for-Food Money" (Claudia Rosett, FOX News, 2004/07/01))

"The secret history of Anonymous" (Jason Vest, The Boston Phoenix, 2004/07/02)
"The author of Imperial Hubris is unmasked and says he fears for his job at the CIA, not for his life at the hands of Al Qaeda":
"Nearly a dozen intelligence-community sources, however, say Anonymous is Michael Scheuer — and that his forced anonymity is both unprecedented and telling in the context of CIA history and modern politics.
"The requirement that someone publish anonymously is rare, almost unheard-of, particularly if the person is not in a covert position," says Jonathan Turley, a national-security-law expert at George Washington University Law School. "It seems pretty obvious that the requirement he remain anonymous is motivated solely by political concerns, and ones that have more to do with the CIA." ...
According to Scheuer, the manuscript was at first denied release because the board took issue with the book’s brief favorable discussion of Samuel Huntington’s "clash of civilizations" theory, which posits that antagonism between Western and Islamic cultures (among others) will drive world conflict in the coming years.
"They wrote back saying our Arab friends would be upset, and ‘his views of Huntington’s paradigm bring into question his ability to perform official duties,’" Scheuer says. "That came back, and I thought it was beyond the pale, so I appealed directly to the seventh floor [higher-ups]. And it took the better part of a year to get permission to submit it for publication. I believe it was because of 9/11 that they suddenly became less concerned with what they first considered ‘areas of sensitivity.’ But the condition was that I remain anonymous and that there be no mention of my employer on the cover or anywhere else." (See also: "CIA Analyst Assails War on Terrorism" (Walter Pincus, The Washington Post, 2004/06/26)

"Jordan ready to send Iraq troops" (BBC News, 2004/07/02)
"Jordan would consider sending troops to Iraq if the new interim government asked, King Abdullah has told the BBC.
"If the Iraqis ask us for help directly it will be very difficult for us to say no," he told the Newsnight programme.
"If they fail, then we will pay the price," King Abdullah said, adding he did not think Jordanian were "the right people" for the job, however.
The king is the first Arab leader to consider sending troops to Iraq and the move is likely to please the US. ...
"My message to the president and prime minister is 'tell us what you want, tell us how we can help and we have 110% support for this," he said." (See also: "Yemen Would Send Troops to Iraq With U.N. Backing" (William Branigin, The Washington Post , 2004/07/02): "Yemen today announced its willingness — under certain conditions — to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq, joining Jordan as the only two Arab countries so far to offer soldiers to help stabilize the new Iraqi interim government.")

"Bremer labels Zarqawi cells hard to crack" (Rowan Scarborough and Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2004/07/02)
"Mr. Bremer said Zarqawi's terrorists were mostly trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. They arrive in Iraq not as undisciplined jihadists, but as professionally trained killers.
Zarqawi himself has moved in and out of Fallujah, Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.
"He is actively involved in selecting targets," Mr. Bremer said. "He's quite careful with his operational security. Sooner or later, he'll make a mistake and we'll get him."
His network is "in the low hundreds in Iraq, if that many," Mr. Bremer said. Zarqawi cells are so hard to penetrate that he will likely be active and trying to kill people in Iraq well after the coalition has defeated other militant groups, the former administrator said.
"They are non-Iraqis," Mr. Bremer said of the Zarqawi group. 'They tend to be from Yemen. Or Sudan. Some Saudis. We haven't captured a lot of them. We captured some. So we have some insight into the organization. It's a professional terrorists organization. It's well done. They have cellular structure, so information doesn't flow very widely. Makes it difficult to penetrate. Even if you penetrate, you don't get much information beyond the cell you've penetrated. It's a very professional operation. Very dangerous. They are clearly responsible for almost all, if not all, the suicide attacks.'"

"Hussein, in Jail, Reportedly Said Little of Value" (Neil A. Lewis and David Johnston, The New York Times, 2004/07/02)
"In the nearly seven months that he was held captive by American forces, Saddam Hussein revealed little of what his interrogators most wanted to know, about his weapons programs and the insurgency in postwar Iraq, senior officials involved in his custody said in a series of recent interviews.
But Mr. Hussein would occasionally provide startling comments and observations, they said, as when he spoke about his reasons for invading Kuwait in 1990, and precipitated the first gulf war.
Mr. Hussein told his interrogator on one occasion that a principal reason for invading was his belief that he needed to keep his army occupied. ...
The official said Mr. Hussein had willingly discussed the roots of the Baath Party in the 1970's but became uncooperative when the questions turned to illegal weapons or links to Al Qaeda.
"I never saw anything useful," the official said."

Thursday, July 1, 2004

News and commentary:

"Saddam Hussein rejected charges of war crimes..."
(APTN/AP, 2004/07/01)
"Saddam Hussein rejected charges of war crimes and genocide against him in an courtroom at a U.S. base at an undisclosed location Thursday, July 1, 2004. Image from video."

"Fear Then Abuse as Iraqis Watch Saddam in Court" (Michael Georgy, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/07/01)
"For a moment they were startled into silence. Then instinctive fear gave way to fury among Iraqis in a Baghdad tea lounge as Saddam Hussein appeared on television — not in a presidential palace but in court.
"Look — the pimp is speaking," said janitor Muhammad Ali, one of the Shi'ite majority that was oppressed under the former president, using one of the harshest Iraqi insults. ...
When the image of a Saddam who had clearly lost weight but still projected confidence appeared on an Arab satellite channel, the friends sat up in silence for about 30 seconds. One of them whistled in disbelief. ...
Arkan Hinmis looked closely and noticed that Saddam was not wearing handcuffs and was sitting in a clean courtroom, unlike the grim chambers that ordered summary executions during his rule.
"This is no good. Why are his hands free? The court is nice. He looks comfortable. They call this punishment of a dictator?" the unemployed Iraqi asked."

"Saddam in court: 'The real criminal is Bush'" (CNN.com, 2004/07/01)
"Saddam Hussein stepped into an Iraqi court on Thursday and entered a new chapter in the country's history, facing accusations that included the invasion of Kuwait and the gassing of Kurds.
Appearing before a judge in a 30-minute hearing, Saddam looked thin and downcast.
When he was ushered into the court, the judge asked him his name and twice he said, "I am Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq."
The judge asked whether he understood his rights and could afford counsel. Saddam pointed his finger at the judge, asking whose jurisdiction the court was under. ...
"This is all a theater, the real criminal is Bush," Saddam said, during one outburst, referring to the U.S. president." (See also: "Saddam mocks accusers in court" (BBC News, 2004/07/01))

"Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 911" (Dave Kopel, davekopel.com, 2004/07/01)
The mother of all "Fahrenheit 9/11" critiques: "First, notwithstanding the specific falsehoods, isn't the film as a whole filled with many important truths?
Not really. We can divide the film into three major parts. The first part (Bush, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan) is so permeated with lies that most of the scenes amount to lies. The second, shorter part involves domestic issues and the Patriot Act. So far, I've identified only one clear falsehood in this segment (Rep. Porter Goss's toll-free number). So this part, at least arguably, presents useful information. The third part, on Iraq has several outright falsehoods — such as the Saddam regime's murder of Americans, and the regime's connection with al Qaeda. Other scenes in the third part — such as Iraqi casualties, interviews with American soldiers, and the material on bereaved mother Lila Lipscomb — are not blatant lies; but the information presented is so extremely one-sided (the only Iraqi casualties are innocents, nobody in Iraq is grateful for liberation, all the American soldiers are disillusioned, except for the sadists) that the overall picture of the Iraq War is false."

"Now it’s up to the Iraqis" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2004/07/03 issue)
"In the autumn of 2001, Jacob Weisberg, now editor of Slate, wrote a column bemoaning what he regarded as a silly post-9/11 trend. The Weekly Standard, the New Republic and other publications had begun giving ‘Susan Sontag Awards’ and similarly facetious honours for notably stupid anti-war commentary. Early winners included Oliver Stone, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Michael Moore, etc. Weisberg thought this unworthy of serious news magazines: ‘Stone and Moore are well-known cranks, regarded with considerable distaste even on the Left,’ he wrote. The idea that ‘these comments represent a significant body of anti-war opinion’ was preposterous... ... Those policing the debate are dropping the rhetorical equivalent of daisy cutters on a few malnourished left-wing stragglers.’
Well, something’s changed in the last couple of years, and those left-wing stragglers are a lot less malnourished. Last weekend Michael Moore, the ‘well-known crank’ regarded with ‘considerable distaste’, had the Number One movie in North America. ...
Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa urged all Americans to see the film. Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, praised the film for raising ‘a lot of issues that Americans are talking about’ — i.e., is Bush in league with the bin Laden family?
As those Iranian photographers remind us, this war can only be won abroad. And, as the rise of Michael Moore emphasises, it can only be lost at home." (See also: "Left Behind" (Jacob Weisberg, Slate, 2001/12/04) and "U.S. Expels Iranians Accused of Filming Sites" (Warren Hoge, The New York Times, 2004/06/29))

"Three-nation alliance trampled by 'rogue elephant' Chirac" (Stephen Castle and Andrew Grice, Independent, 2004/07/01)
"Britain has concluded that its three-nation alliance with France and Germany is in effect over after a series of rows between Tony Blair and the French President, Jacques Chirac.
Ministers believe President Chirac has become impossible to work with, and one government source described him as a "rogue elephant". The strategy of "trilateralism" has now given way to limited ad hoc co-operation on specific issues.
Asked if the three-way approach was dead, one Blair aide replied, "yes". The Prime Minister's change of tack emerged as he accused France and Germany of watering down moves to ensure stability in Iraq and Afghanistan and warned that this week's Nato summit had not faced up to the threat of global terrorism. ...
At the Nato summit in Istanbul, M. Chirac watered down plans to increase Nato's presence in Iraq, criticised President George Bush over his support for Turkish membership of the EU, and objected to plans to deploy a Nato rapid reaction force to Afghanistan." (See also: "French-U.S. Tussles Reopen NATO Wounds" (Gareth Jones, Reuters, 2004/06/29))

"Zarqawi targets female soldiers" (Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, 2004/07/01)
"Terrorists in the Abu Musab Zarqawi network in Iraq are specifically trying to kidnap an American female service member to further horrify the U.S. public.
Two senior defense sources said the word is being passed within the network on the importance of taking one or more women hostage.
"We have heard through intelligence channels that several extremist organizations are attempting to capture coalition servicemen and women," said a senior military officer in Iraq. "We have instituted additional force protection methods to thwart these attempts."
Another defense source said there is an "edict, either on paper or as an order," within terrorist networks to capture an American female service member."

"Powell warns of Sudan genocide" (David Blair, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/07/01)
"Colin Powell stood at the epicentre of Africa's worst humanitarian disaster yesterday and said it was "moving towards a genocidal conclusion".
The US secretary of state's words marked by far the strongest statement yet from the West over the Darfur crisis in western Sudan. Tens of thousands have been killed and a million left homeless by Arab janjaweed militias. ...
Mr Powell then told President Omar al-Bashir to disarm the militias who are blamed for the terror campaign, or face United Nations Security Council action.
A draft American resolution emerged last night offering the UN the option of imposing arms and travel sanctions on the militias."

Wednesday, June 30, 2004

News and commentary:

"More Distortions From Michael Moore" (Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, 2004/06/30)
"In his new movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” film-maker Michael Moore makes the eye-popping claim that Saudi Arabian interests “have given” $1.4 billion to firms connected to the family and friends of President George W. Bush. This, Moore suggests, helps explain one of the principal themes of the film: that the Bush White House has shown remarkable solicitude to the Saudi royals, even to the point of compromising the war on terror. When you and your associates get money like that, Moore says at one point in the movie, “who you gonna like? Who’s your Daddy?”
But a cursory examination of the claim reveals some flaws in Moore’s arithmetic — not to mention his logic. Moore derives the $1.4 billion figure from journalist Craig Unger’s book, “House of Bush, House of Saud.” Nearly 90 percent of that amount, $1.18 billion, comes from just one source: contracts in the early to mid-1990’s that the Saudi Arabian government awarded to a U.S. defense contractor, BDM, for training the country’s military and National Guard. What’s the significance of BDM? The firm at the time was owned by the Carlyle Group, the powerhouse private-equity firm whose Asian-affiliate advisory board has included the president’s father, George H.W. Bush.
Leave aside the tenuous six-degrees-of-separation nature of this “connection.” The main problem with this figure, according to Carlyle spokesman Chris Ullman, is that former president Bush didn’t join the Carlyle advisory board until April, 1998 — five months after Carlyle had already sold BDM to another defense firm." (See also: "Under the Hot Lights" (Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, from the 2004/06/28 issue))

"Al-Qaeda spells out Iraq attack strategy in handbook: report" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/30)
"Al-Qaeda reportedly planned to target Spain as the weakest link of the coalition in Iraq to force its troop pullout, according to a document from the terror network.
"We consider that the Spanish government cannot suffer more than two to three strikes before pulling out (of Iraq) under pressure from its own people," said the document obtained Wednesday by AFP from Raido France Internationale's regional office in Beirut.
"If these (Spanish) forces remain after the strikes, the victory of the socialist party would be near-guaranteed and the pullout of Spanish forces from Iraq would be on its agenda," said the document, distributed ahead of the March 11 attacks in Madrid.
Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, elected after the train bombings in Madrid which left 191 people dead in Spain's worst ever terrorist attack, withdrew Spanish troops from the troubled country in May. ...
"It will not take long for pawns to fall, but the headpiece (US) still has to be knocked down," it said."

"Poll: over 40% of Canadian teens think America is 'evil'" (Arthur Weinreb, Toronto Free Press, 2004/06/30)
"Can West News Services, owners of several Canadian newspapers including the National Post as well as the Global Television Network commissioned a series of polls to determine how young people feel about the issues that were facing the country’s voters. ...
In one telephone poll of teens between the ages of 14 and 18, over 40 per cent of the respondents described the United States as being "evil". That number rose to 64 per cent for French Canadian youth.
This being Canada, the amount of anti-Americanism that was found is not surprising. What is significant is the high number of teens who used the word "evil" to describe our southern neighbour. As Misty Harris pointed out in her column in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, evil is usually associated with serial killers and "kids who tear the legs off baby spiders." These teens appear to equate George W. Bush and Americans with Osama bin Laden and Hitler, although it is unknown if the teens polled would describe the latter two as being evil." (Hat tip: Drudge Report.)

"UK servicemen 'forced' into Iran" (BBC News, 2004/06/30)
"Eight British servicemen taken captive by Iran were "forcibly escorted into Iranian territorial waters", the Ministry of Defence has said.
Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said the six Royal Marines and two Royal Navy sailors maintained they had been operating in Iraqi territorial waters. ...
Iran said the vessels had entered its waters without prior permission.
But Mr Hoon said: 'In a recent debriefing the crews have said that they were operating inside the Iraqi border and were forcibly escorted into Iranian territorial waters.'"

"Thousands of Refugees Greet Powell in Sudan" (Christopher Marquis, The New York Times, 2004/06/30)
"Thousands of refugees from recent violence swept like water across a sandy plain to meet the convoy of jeeps and S.U.V.'s carrying the Powell entourage to a camp of 40,000 displaced people from the western Darfur region.
Youths eager for a glimpse of Mr. Powell climbed atop pallets of American-donated wheat and vegetable oil for a better vantage, only to be shooed off by a soldier flailing a whip. Women draped in veils herded wide-eyed children chasing after the spectacle.
Young men — survivors in an ethnic war that has unleashed the power of the mostly Arab government and their allies against black African rebels and their people — sidled up to American reporters to confide their fear. Mr. Powell's visit seemed to offer a momentary shield from government intimidation.
"We want this government out," whispered one man, who said he had lost 14 relatives to the violence. "They kill our families." He disappeared as quickly as he had surfaced. "They watch me," he said, before melting into the crowd."

"Saddam's trial to be televised" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2004/06/30)
Saddam III: "The trial of Saddam Hussein will be fair, broadcast live on television and radio and be the "trial of the century," Iraq's new national security adviser said Wednesday.
Mouwafak al-Rubaie said the Iraqi Special Tribunal would be able to impose the death penalty. He said Saddam would not be allowed to turn the trial into a political game, by calling witnesses such as U.S. President George W. Bush or British Prime Minister Tony Blair. ...
"As an Iraqi interim government we promise our people and the Arab world and the outside world that Saddam will stand a fair trial," he said. "This is going to be the trial of the century."
The former dictator is to make his first court appearance Thursday."

"'I am Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq,' says ousted dictator" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/30)
Saddam II: "'I am Saddam Hussein al-Majid, president of the Republic of Iraq,' the jailed dictator said haughtily as he greeted the head of an Iraqi tribunal, who talked him through his upcoming hearing.
Saddam wore his trademark moustache, a grey "dishdash," or traditional Arab dress, and appeared to have lost a lot of weight, an assistant to the tribunal's head, Salem Chalabi, told AFP.
The former strongman greeted Chalabi and his colleagues who visited him Wednesday morning at a high-security jail in Baghdad with a "cold hello," the assistant said.
"And then he asked: 'Are you going to question me today?'"
Showing his disdain for his visitors during the five-minute meeting, Saddam remained seated as everyone around him stood, according to the assistant."

"Iraqis Given Legal Custody of Saddam" (Fisnik Abrashi, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/30)
Saddam I: "The United States turned Saddam Hussein and 11 of his deputies over to Iraqi legal custody on Wednesday, an official said, the first step toward trying the former dictator on charges expected to include the massacre of Kurds in 1988 and the invasion of Kuwait two years later.
Saddam will remain in an American-controlled jail guarded by Americans until the Iraqis are ready to take physical custody of him. That is expected to take a long time, and a trial isn't likely for several months.
The defendants were informed individually of their rights, an international official said on condition of anonymity. An Iraqi judge witnessed the proceedings. ...
"The first step has happened," Salem Chalabi, the director of the Iraqi Special Tribunal that will try Saddam, told The Associated Press. He refused to elaborate. "I met with him (Saddam) earlier today to explain his rights and what will happen," Chalabi said."

"'Please Vote' keynote image"
(www.pleasevote.com, 2004/06/09)
Via Andrew Sullivan: "It seems to me that the far left could help win this election for Bush. Here's the latest obscenity. It was an ad on the back-page of the Nation this week. Do they have no shame?" (See also: "'What's wrong .... You never seen a politician kissing babies before?" (Dave Brown, Independent, 2003/01/27))

"Textbook Jihad in Egypt" (Andrew G. Bostom, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/06/30)
"But little fanfare, let alone outrage, has accompanied the release of a detailed study of Egyptian children's textbooks, whose inculcation of anti-infidel hatred is potentially far more damaging. For example, explicit sanctioning for jihad-related beheadings is provided in a seemingly pedestrian manner,
'Studies in Theology: Tradition and Morals, Grade 11, (2001) pp. 291-92 ...This noble [Qur'anic] Surah [Surat Muhammad]... deals with questions of which the most important are as follows: 'Encouraging the faithful to perform jihad in God's cause, to behead the infidels, take them prisoner, break their power, and make their souls humble — all that in a style which contains the highest examples of urging to fight.' ...
Commentary on the Surahs of Muhammad, Al-Fath, Al-Hujurat and Qaf, Grade 11, (2002) p. 9 …When you meet them in order to fight [them], do not be seized by compassion [towards them] but strike the[ir] necks powerfully.... Striking the neck means fighting, because killing a person is often done by striking off his head. Thus, it has become an expression for killing even if the fighter strikes him elsewhere. This expression contains a harshness and emphasis that are not found in the word "kill", because it describes killing in the ugliest manner, i.e., cutting the neck and making the organ — the head of the body — fly off [the body].'" (See also: "Jews, Christians, war and peace in Egyptian school textbooks" (CMIP, 2004/03/22))

"All in the Family: Domestic hell at U.N. headquarters" (Claudia Rosett, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/06/30)
Rosett on the "U.N. family manor": "Take a stroll down the Middle East wing, with its terrorist nurseries. There you can find the fascist clerics of Iran playing nuclear peek-a-boo with the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency. Visit the Syria salon, where President Bashar Assad treasures his countries democratic dissidents so much that he insists on keeping them under lock and key. If you peer a little further into Mr. Assad's quarters, you may also notice a foot poking out from that body wrapped up in a rug. It belongs to what was once the sovereign state of Lebanon.
It's hardly necessary to visit the Saudis, of course. Just plunk yourself down anywhere, and they'll send their Wahhabi preachers to visit you. ...
If you have more time, you might also want to look in on Sudan, though do not be too much disturbed if you see people dying there by the hundreds of thousands. No less a patriarch than Mr. Annan himself has assured us it is not genocide." (See also: "Darfur: Docs call it genocide" (news24.com, 2004/06/24): "UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he wasn't ready to describe the situation in Darfur "as genocide or ethnic cleansing yet," but he called it 'a tragic humanitarian situation.'")

"Powell Heads for Darfur, Annan Arrives in Sudan" (Saul Hudson, Reuters, 2004/06/30)
"Secretary of State Colin Powell left for Sudan's troubled Darfur region on Wednesday on a trip aid agencies said could save lives by putting the pressure on Khartoum to curb Arab militias and streamline relief work.
As Powell took off from the Sudanese capital, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived in Khartoum on a similar mission, demonstrating the high-level international interest in the plight of some two million Darfuris affected by conflict. ...
Powell is under pressure in Congress to do more. On Tuesday, he told Sudanese leaders to crack down on the militias whose actions he said verged on genocide against black residents.
A senior U.S. official said up to a million people could die this year in camps because the government-backed Janjaweed have razed villages, burned crops and destroyed water sources."

"'We Want to Make a Light Baby'" (Emily Wax, The Washington Post, 2004/06/30)
"At first light on Sunday, three young women walked into a scrubby field just outside their refugee camp in West Darfur. They had gone out to collect straw for their family's donkeys. They recalled thinking that the Arab militiamen who were attacking African tribes at night would still be asleep. But six men grabbed them, yelling Arabic slurs such as "zurga" and "abid," meaning "black" and "slave." Then the men raped them, beat them and left them on the ground, they said.
"They grabbed my donkey and my straw and said, 'Black girl, you are too dark. You are like a dog. We want to make a light baby,' " said Sawela Suliman, 22, showing slashes from where a whip had struck her thighs as her father held up a police and health report with details of the attack. ...
"It's systematic," the aid worker said. "Everyone knows how the father carries the lineage in the culture. They want more Arab babies to take the land. The scary thing is that I don't think we realize the extent of how widespread this is yet."
Another international aid worker, a high-ranking official, said: "These rapes are built on tribal tensions and orchestrated to create a dynamic where the African tribal groups are destroyed. It's hard to believe that they tell them they want to make Arab babies, but it's true. It's systematic, and these cases are what made me believe that it is part of ethnic cleansing and that they are doing it in a massive way." (See also: "Sudan: Darfur Atrocities Spill Into Chad" (Human Rights Watch, 2004/06/22), "Sudanese Refugees Told to Stay Silent On Government, Militia Abuses" (Emily Wax, The Washington Post, 2004/06/28) and "In Sudan, Death and Denial: Officials Accused of Concealing Crisis as Thousands Starve" (Emily Wax, The Washington Post, 2004/06/27))

"Attack Iran, US chief ordered British" (Michael Smith, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/06/30)
"The incident began last July when Revolutionary Guards pushed about a kilometre into Iraq to the north and east of Basra in an apparent attempt to reoccupy territory which they claimed belonged to Iran.
Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez then ordered the British to prepare to send in several thousand troops to attack the Revolutionary Guard positions.
The Revolutionary Guard Corps has 125,000 soldiers, making it 25 per cent larger than the entire British Army, and is equipped with 500 tanks, 600 armoured personnel carriers and 360 artillery weapons.
The incident is reminiscent of the exchange during the Kosovo conflict between the American general, Wesley Clark, the supreme allied commander Europe, and Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the British commander.
When Gen Clark told Gen Jackson to send British troops into Pristina airport to prevent Russian troops from taking control Gen Jackson refused. He was reported to have said: "I am not going to start World War Three for you."
The Iran-Iraq incident lasted around a week and was resolved by a telephone conversation between Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Kamal Kharrazi, his Iranian counterpart, British officials said."

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

News and commentary:

"Small party and great hopes" (Ali, Iraq the Model, 2004/06/29)
Iraqi reactions III: "Then suddenly Mr. Bremer appeared on TV reading his last speech before he left Iraq. I approached the TV to listen carefully to the speech, as I expected it to be difficult in the midst of all that noise. To my surprise everyone stopped what they were doing and started watching as attentively as I was.
The speech was impressive and you could hear the sound of a needle if one had dropped it at that time. ...
Then he finished his speech by saying in Arabic, "A’ash Al-Iraq, A’ash Al-Iraq, A’ash Al-Iraq"! (Long live Iraq, Long live Iraq, long live Iraq).
I was deeply moved by this great man’s words but I couldn’t prevent myself from watching the effect of his words on my friends who some of them were anti-Americans and some were skeptic, although some of them have always shared my optimism. I found that they were touched even more deeply than I was. I turned to one friend who was a committed She’at and who distrusted America all the way. He looked as if he was bewitched, and I asked him, “So, what do you think of this man? Do you still consider him an invader?” My friend smiled, still touched and said, “Absolutely not! He brought tears to my eyes. God bless him.”
Another friend approached me. This one was not religious but he was one of the conspiracy theory believers. He put his hands on my shoulders and said smiling, 'I must admit that I’m beginning to believe in what you’ve been telling us for months and I’m beginning to have faith in America. I never thought that they will hand us sovereignty in time. These people have shown that they keep their promises.'"

"Yasmin rides again" (Norman Geras, normblog, 2004/06/29)
"You may remember Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: she of the 'moral trauma' of having to wonder 'what kind of a human being' she is. Well, she's at it again in today's London Evening Standard. The piece (which is not online) is entitled 'My shame at savouring American failure in Iraq':

A dogged campaigner against the blighted war in Iraq, I am now wrestling with the demons of callous triumphalism. The anti-war protestors have been proved horribly right. The allies who marched with the US into this ugly adventure should feel mortified. It is a fearful and turbulent country the new Western Imperialists hand over to the Iraqis. The past months have been challenging for us in the anti-war camp. I am ashamed to admit that there have been times when I wanted more chaos, more shocks, more disorder to teach our side a lesson. On Monday I found myself again hoping that this handover proves a failure because it has been orchestrated by the Americans. The decent people of Iraq need optimism now, not my distasteful ill-wishes for the only hope they have for a future.

In Alibhai-Brown's case it's a thought that's stupid enough to speak its name: more chaos, more shocks, more disorder. Just think about some of the human detail lying behind those three nouns. But the impulse she's ashamed of admitting to here hasn't been unique to her within the anti-war camp. It has infected wide sections of the Western media and left-liberal opinion. Not a moral trauma, just a moral disgrace."

"Allawi: Saddam connected to al-Qaida" (Tom Brokaw, NBC News, 2004/06/29)
An interview with new Iraqi prime minister: "Brokaw: I know that you and others like you are grateful for the liberation of Iraq. But can’t you understand why many Americans feel that so many young men and women have died here for purposes other than protecting the United States?
Allawi: We know that this is an extension to what has happened in New York. And — the war have been taken out to Iraq by the same terrorists. Saddam was a potential friend and partner and natural ally of terrorism.
Brokaw: Prime minister, I’m surprised that you would make the connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq. The 9/11 commission in America says there is no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and those terrorists of al-Qaida.
Allawi: No. I believe very strongly that Saddam had relations with al-Qaida. And these relations started in Sudan. We know Saddam had relationships with a lot of terrorists and international terrorism. Now, whether he is directly connected to the September — atrocities or not, I can’t — vouch for this. But definitely I know he has connections with extremism and terrorists."

"U.S. Expels Iranians Accused of Filming Sites" (Warren Hoge, The New York Times, 2004/06/29)
"The United States has expelled two security guards at Iran's United Nations mission after they were observed filming and photographing New York landmark buildings and parts of the city's transportation system, American officials said today.
"They were asked to leave because we were very concerned about their activities, which weren't compatible with their stated duties," said Richard A. Grenell, the spokesman for the United States mission.
The language is common diplomatic language for cases of espionage.
The two men were ordered out this past weekend after Iranian guards were seen for the third time in two years videotaping bridges, tunnels, the Statue of Liberty and other landmark buildings, according to an American diplomat who asked not to be identified.
He said the pair were not the same two men who had been seen in earlier incidents in June 2002 and November 2003. The expelled men, who were not identified, left Saturday night, the official said."

"Amnesty International: Syria torturing children" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2004/06/29)
"The rights watchdog Amnesty International has accused the Syrian authorities of torturing more than 20 children who have been detained since Kurdish riots in March. ...
Amnesty said it was "gravely concerned" about reports that Kurdish children arrested during clashes in March have been tortured and held incommunicado for months.
"The organization has received the names of more than 20 children, aged between 14 and 17 years, who have reportedly been subjected to various types of torture, leaving scars on their bodies and leading to serious injuries, including broken noses, perforated ear drums and infected wounds," Amnesty said in a statement sent by e-mail to The Associated Press in Beirut.
There was no comment from the Syrian government, which almost invariably ignores questions about security matters.
Amnesty said more than 20 children are still in detention." (See also: "Syria: Unfair trial of Kurdish prisoners of conscience and torture of children is totally unacceptable" (Amnesty International, 2004/06/29): "Among the torture techniques reportedly applied against the children were:
• Applying electric shocks on hands and feet and sensitive parts of the body;
• Extraction of toe nails;
• Holding the heads of children and banging them violently against each other causing injuries and bleeding from the nose. One of the children continues to suffer nose bleeds after being released;
• Beating with electric cables and rifle butts;
• Ordering the children to strip almost naked while counting from one to three, then beating them if they do not complete the stripping while counting.")

"French-U.S. Tussles Reopen NATO Wounds" (Gareth Jones, Reuters, 2004/06/29)
"Chirac, a fierce critic of the Iraq war, said a deal agreed Monday on training Iraqi security forces did not entail sending NATO troops there. He said this would be "dangerous, counter-productive and misunderstood by the Iraqi people."
U.S. officials insist that the accord, agreed on the day U.S. occupying forces formally handed power to an interim Iraqi government, does mean NATO will send a mission to Iraq.
"Every ally agreed to a collective single mission," said a senior NATO official. "There was a lot that went into that line, hours of negotiation." ...
Chirac also vetoed a U.S. proposal to deploy NATO's new strike force for the Afghan elections, a move one U.S. official said had infuriated Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai had pressed NATO to rush troops to his country to secure the September polls, embarrassing allies reluctant to provide forces for the mission. ...
"Just one country opposed using elements of the force," the NATO official said, referring to France." (See also: "Chirac leads resistance as Bush courts Nato allies" (Ian Black and Michael White, The Guardian, 2004/06/28))

"Iraq to Get Legal Custody of Hussein Wed" (Nadia Abou El-Magd, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/06/29)
"Saddam Hussein will be transferred to Iraqi legal custody and face charges in an Iraqi court this week — but he won't go on trial for months and he will stay in a U.S.-run jail because the country doesn't have a suitable prison, the prime minister said Tuesday.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi promised an open proceeding when Saddam faces war crimes charges, including genocide.
Eleven other "high-value detainees" also are expected to face justice, he said at his first news conference since the U.S.-led coalition handed over sovereignty to his government Monday.
"I know I speak for my fellow countrymen when I say I look forward to the day former regime leaders face justice," he said.
Saddam will be transferred to Iraqi legal custody Wednesday and face arraignment before an Iraqi judge Thursday, Allawi said."

"Be Like Mike" (Andrew Sullivan, The New Republic, 2004/06/29)
"Here's a column by William Raspberry from yesterday's Washington Post, which indicates, I think, the ethical bankruptcy of some of Moore's supporters. ...

But why did the mostly liberal crowd at last week's Washington premiere — people who like to think of themselves as thoughtful and fair-minded — applaud so unrestrainedly?
They applauded, I suspect, for much the same reason so many members of the black Christian middle-class applaud the harangues of Black Muslim minister Louis Farrakhan. Some of his facts may be wrong and some of his connections strained, but his attitude is right. What's more, he'll say in plain language what nice, educated people cannot bring themselves to say: The man is a devil.

This is an astonishing assertion. What matters is not veracity, good faith, cinematic excellence, but attitude. And Raspberry even invokes anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan as the model! And who exactly is the "devil" in Farrakhan's "discourse"? The Jews! And this, according to Raspberry, is a valid model for Michael Moore to follow. Hello?
And notice the point of this attitude: not that Bush has been wrong in his judgments; not that he has botched a war; not that he has ruined the economy; not that he has pursued any particular policy with which a reasonable person might disagree. The point is that Bush "is a devil." A devil? Like, er, Satan? And this is what nice, educated people believe but "cannot bring themselves to say"? This is not an argument. It's literal demonization — a defense of losing one's sense of fairness and rationality." (See also: "Fiery Hatchet Job" (William Raspberry, The Washington Post, 2004/06/28))

"Preparing for Attack" (John Keegan, National Review, 2004/06/29)
The second in a five-part series of excerpts from "The Iraq War":
"The plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom began to be drawn up as early as 1995, when Saddam's combination of deviousness and intransigence persuaded Washington that it might not be possible to avoid a military confrontation if his determination to develop and deploy weapons of mass destruction were to be quashed. The original problem was to choose a point of departure. Iraq is a difficult country to attack. Though it was, under Saddam, on bad terms with all its neighbours — Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Kuwait — all might have reasons for wishing to deny Western governments basing or transit rights. ...
By a process of elimination, therefore, only three points of entry remained. One was Iraq's own sea coast, a short, constricted and swampy stretch of shoreline at the head of the Gulf; a second was across the Iraqi-Turkish border; and third, the territory of Kuwait. Kuwait, the weakest of all Arab states, was the most likely provider of basing and transit facilities." (See also: "The American Triumph" (John Keegan, National Review, 2004/06/28))

"Political Paradoxes" (Peter Berkowitz, New York Sun, 2004/06/29)
"So how did it happen that a conservative president staked his presidency on a foreign policy rich with progressive implications that nevertheless most progressives have roundly condemned?
As for the progressive critics, their strange reversal was fortified by the appeal to sound arguments, grounded in a more conservative emphasis on the dependence of democracy on culture and morals, for believing that we lack the know-how to democratize a large, far-away country whose language we do not speak, whose traditions differ dramatically from our own, and whose politics is riven by ethnic and religious sectarianism.
But many progressives critics might not have come to these conclusions had they not found themselves in the awkward position of opposing policies that reflect, to a degree that the critics have not grappled with, the latent progressive impulse in both neoconservatism and Mr. Bush’s Christian faith. ...
Who will prove right about Iraq remains to be seen. In the meantime, to find progressivism in the foreign policy of the conservative party, and conservative reservations about that policy coming from the progressive party, is a useful reminder at this bitterly polarized moment of the complexity of our partisan perspectives and the common ground that is still available."

"What Iraq Needs Now: Elections, ASAP" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2004/06/29)
"Iraq can and must hold elections, fast.
There is no reason to prolong this dangerous hiatus and give the terrorists six more months to pretend they're fighting on behalf of the nation. Elections are needed to bring the mass of the Iraqi people into the picture and make them face their responsibilities.
Today, the Iraqi majority are spectators in a struggle for power between the transition government, backed by the Coalition, and the terrorist groups supported by the Islamist international and some of Iraq's neighbors. ...
This deadly balance of terror and counter-terror can be broken only if the force of the Iraqi people is mobilized and deployed against the terrorists. That cannot be done as long as most Iraqis, although prepared to give al-Allawi and al-Yawar the benefit of the doubt, do not regard them as their own.
For the terrorists, it is easy to fight a U.S.-appointed leadership even though the transition government consists of patriots. But once we have a government freely chosen by the Iraqi people, the terrorists would find themselves at war against a whole nation.
Why shouldn't the Iraqis have their elections at the same time as the Afghans, that is to say in September?
The Saddamites and the Islamists fear elections as much as Nosferatu feared daylight."

"The nation-building lessons Washington has to learn" (John Keegan, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/06/29)
"The anti-war coalition, which now includes the whole of the media, the American Democrats and most European political parties, as well as the well-intentioned public from Anchorage to Ankara, no doubt anticipates a worsening of the situation in Iraq. The media, at any rate, will wallow in any bad news. Jon Snow, of Channel 4 News, self-appointed scourge of the Anglo-American peacemakers in Iraq, now visibly shakes with glee at every report of car bombing and assassination or, God pardon him, the death of coalition soldiers. ...
Whatever the purity of their political motives, the American occupiers should not have dissolved the Iraqi army or police or civil administration, whatever the number of Ba'ath Party members they contain. Iyad Allawi has now to rebuild Iraq's military and civilian services from exactly the same group of individuals who the neo-conservatives rejected at the outset. Let us hope that the neo-conservatives and their Democrat equivalents have learnt a lesson, since it is unlikely that this is the last time the United States will have to undertake an exercise in nation-building. Next time Washington should take as its target the preservation of as much as possible. Looking back, better a Ba'athist Iraq than an Islamic one. Let us hope that it is not too late."

"Iraq's New History" (Fouad Ajami, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/06/29)
"What shall stick of America's truth on the soil of Iraq is an open, unknowable question. But the leaders who waged this war — those "architects" of it who have been thrown on the defensive by its difficulties and surprises — should be forgiven the sense that things broke their way during that five-minute surprise ceremony yesterday morning. They haven't created a "new" Iraq, and sure enough, they have not tackled the malignancies of the Arab world which lay at the roots, and the very origins, of this war. America isn't acquitted yet of its burdens in Mesopotamia. Our heartbreaking losses are a daily affair, and our soldiers there remain in harm's way.
But we now stay under new terms — a power that vacated sovereignty 48 hours ahead of schedule, and an Iraqi population that can glimpse, just a horizon away, the possibility of a society free from both native tyranny and foreign control. There is nervousness in Iraq: the nervousness of a people soon to be put to the test by the promise — and the hazards — of freedom."

"Iranian Government Media Reports: 'Iranian Woman Gives Birth to Frog;' 'Americans Are Behind Beheadings;' and 'Jewish Involvement in 9/11'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 735, 2004/06/29)
"The editor of the Iranian conservative daily Kayhan, Hossein Shari'atmadari, who is close to Iranian Leader Ali Khamenei, wrote in an editorial that the true perpetrators of the decapitations of foreign hostages are none other than the Americans themselves. The following are excerpts from his article on June 24: ...
'Why did the Americans slaughter their citizens and the citizens of America's allies [so] horrifyingly and terribly…? [Why] do they construct ridiculous scenery and attribute the slaughter of the hostages to Muslims when their ugly and repulsive faces are exposed as a result of the crimes they committed and the massacre of innocent civilians and the barbaric tortures of the detainees and captives?
The answer to this question is too clear for us to explain and analyze in depth… With these terrible crimes, the Americans aspire to attain the following goals:
1. To present a hate-inspiring image of Islam and of the Muslims and to justify barbaric military attacks on them — that is, exactly the same goals as when they established the Taliban and the Al-Qa'ida group…'"

"A Novel's Plot Against the President: Character Fantasizes Bush Assassination" (Linton Weeks, Washington Post, 2004/06/29)
"In Nicholson Baker's new novella, "Checkpoint," a man sits in a Washington hotel room with a friend and talks about assassinating President Bush.
It's a work of the imagination and no attempts on the president's life are actually made, but the novel is likely to be incendiary, as with Michael Moore's documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11." ...
In the book, two men -- Ben and Jay -- meet at the fictional Adele Hotel and Suites in Washington. It is midday. They eat a bag of bagel chips and order lunch from room service. They talk into a tape recorder.
Ben: Obviously you have something on your mind.
Jay: That's true.
Ben: You could begin with that.
Jay: Okay. Uh. I'm going to -- okay. I'll just say it. Um.
Ben: What is it?
Jay: I'm going to assassinate the president.
Though it is against the law to threaten the president in real life, a work of fiction is usually protected by the First Amendment. ...
In "Checkpoint," the main character, Jay, rants and rages against Bush. He says he hasn't felt so much hostility against any other president -- not Nixon, not Reagan.
Of Bush, Jay says: "He is beyond the beyond. What he's done with this war. The murder of the innocent. And now the prisons. It's too much. It makes me so angry. And it's a new kind of anger, too." ...
Jay calls Bush an "unelected [expletive] drunken OILMAN" who is "squatting" in the White House and 'muttering over his prayer book every morning.'"

"With a little help from his enemies" (Phillip Adams, The Australian, 2004/06/29)
"In objective terms, September 11 was infinitesimal." Via Tim Blair, who notes that according to Adams the greatest tragedy of September 11 was that it helped George W. Bush:
"What was bin Laden's thinking? ... Clearly al-Qa'ida wanted to create fear and chaos more than anything else. Certainly the destruction of the WTC was spectacular — and powerfully symbolic. Which is why the same building had been subjected to a less successful terrorist attack eight years earlier. In objective terms, September 11 was infinitesimal. For the mighty US to lose a couple of large skyscrapers in a nation with cities as full of these perpendicularities as a jungle is of trees, would hardly destroy its prospects. What it did do was get the President off the golf links and back into Washington — and give him a new lease of political life."

Monday, June 28, 2004

News and commentary:

"Let Freedom Reign!"
(The White House, 2004/06/28)
"President George W. Bush receives confirmation of Iraqi sovereignty, then wrote, “Let Freedom Reign!,” during the opening session of the NATO Summit in Istanbul, Turkey, Monday, June 28, 2004."

"Al Jazeera TV & the Terrorists" (Sam, Hammorabi, 2004/06/28)
"Al Sharq Awsat newspaper (27/6 2004) has published the story of the Saudi