Archived news and commentary: July 5 - 11, 2004

2004/09/27 - 2004/10/03
2004/09/20 - 2004/09/26
2004/09/13 - 2004/09/19
2004/09/06 - 2004/09/12
2004/08/30 - 2004/09/05
2004/08/23 - 2004/08/29
2004/08/16 - 2004/08/22
2004/08/09 - 2004/08/15
2004/08/02 - 2004/08/08
2004/07/26 - 2004/08/01
2004/07/19 - 2004/07/25
2004/07/12 - 2004/07/18
2004/07/05 - 2004/07/11
2004/06/28 - 2004/07/04

Sunday, July 11, 2004

News and commentary:

"Mother, baby attacked on Paris train after mistaken for Jews" (AFP/Haaretz, 2004/07/11)
Swastika I: "VERSAILLES, France - A young woman and her baby were attacked in a suburban train near Paris on Saturday by unidentified men who drew swastikas on her stomach with a pen in what police said was an anti-Semitic assault.
The six attackers who were armed with knives clipped the 23-year-old woman's hair, and cut her t-shirt and pants before drawing three swastikas on her body.
The men of North African origin also overturned the pram with her baby of 13 months.
In the attack they robbed her backpack which contained her identity papers, a bank card and 200 euros ($250).
Police said the attackers erroneously assumed the woman was Jewish because she was living in Paris' posh 16th district.
"Only Jews live in the 16th district," one of the men was quoted as having said."

"Tel Aviv bomb kills one" (Jonathan Saul, Reuters, 2004/07/11)
"A Palestinian bomb has killed a woman at a bus stop in Israel in an attack Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says proves the need to continue building a West Bank barrier declared illegal by the World Court.
Sharon said after the bombing at a bus stop in Tel Aviv during the morning rush hour that the construction of the 600-km (370-mile) barrier "is the most reasonable measure to take against this criminal terrorism".
Israeli hospital officials said a 19-year-old female soldier was killed and about 14 civilians were wounded in the blast, which occurred as a public bus pulled up to the stop.
"I heard a massive explosion and ran to the scene," said Hagit Cohen, who lives one block away from the bus stop. "I thought it was the end of the world."
It was the first such Palestinian attack in Israel since March and departed from a pattern of suicide bombings."

"Jadakiss Single Courts Controversy" (Rashaun Hall, Billboard/Yahoo! News, 2004/07/11)
The billion dollar sacrifice: "Musicians often voice political opinions in their songs, especially during an election year. Most hip-hop acts, however, have remained mum on the current political environment -- until now.
Ruff Ryders/Interscope artist Jadakiss — also a member of rap trio the Lox — is receiving a lot of attention for his single "Why?" The song questions President Bush 's involvement in the events of Sept. 11, 2001, with the lyric "Why did Bush knock down the Towers?" ...
As for the controversial line, the Yonkers, N.Y., rapper's view is unwavering. "I just felt had [sic] something to do with that," Jadakiss says, referring to the events of Sept. 11. "That's why I put it in there like that. A lot of my people felt that he had something to do with it." ...
Jadakiss' second album, "Kiss of Death," debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 last week, selling more than 246,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Meanwhile, "Why?," which features R&B singer Anthony Hamilton, continues to climb the charts. The second single from "Kiss of Death" debuted at No. 71 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart. The single is No. 16 this week. ...
"Somebody has to take the forefront and sacrifice," he adds. 'That's what I do — I sacrifice myself.'" (See also the video: "Why" (Jadakiss, LAUNCH))

"For love of liberty" (Charles Moore, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/07/11)
A review of Timothy Garton Ash's "Free World": "His book is the intellectual equivalent of one of those Eminent Persons Groups that are dispatched to war-torn regions. When they return, they invariably propose that there should be greater human rights, more dialogue, free and fair elections and an end to torture, female circumcision and ethnic cleansing. They're not wrong, you feel; it's just that you're not sure how much they're helping. ...
The great argument at present in the free world is about how to use power against our enemies. Unlike some Europeans, Garton Ash certainly believes that such enemies exist, but he does not like discussions of force. He admits that the EU "screwed up" over Bosnia; he admits that when people speak about the "international community" what they often mean, in practice, is America; he admits that Europeans will go on refusing to spend more on defence. But he does not seem to understand that all this leaves America with very little choice but to be "unilateralist" when it wants to get something dangerous done.
He agrees that the European Union is, among other things, a project to avoid war at all costs, but he does not see what a burden this throws upon America, Britain and, indeed, the free world which he loves." (Hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily.)

"We must be allowed to criticise Islam" (Will Cummins, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/07/11)
Cummins on David Blunkett's proposed law to "ban incitement to religious hatred":
"The problem is that a virulent hatred of Muslims can no more be racism than a virulent hatred of Marxists or Tories. Nobody is a member of a race by choice. Such groups are protected from attack because it is unfair to malign human beings for something they cannot help. However, nobody is a member of a community of belief except by choice, which is why those who have decided to enter or remain within one are never protected. Were such choices not open to the severest censure, we could no longer call our country a democracy. ...
All that divides a religion from a secular ideology is something whose existence - supernatural support - is disputed by adherents of the latter. To privilege supernatural belief-systems by law would be to impose the view of the faithful about this on everyone, the situation that prevailed in the Middle Ages. This time, it is Islam, not Christianity, that New Labour wants to impose on Christendom.
A society in which one cannot revile a religion and its members is one in which there are limits to the human spirit. The Islamic world was intellectually and economically wrecked by its decision to put religion beyond the reach of invective, which is simply an extreme form of debate. By so doing, it put science and art beyond the reach of experiment, too. Now, at the behest of Muslim foreigners who have forced themselves on us, New Labour wants to import the same catastrophe into our own society." (See also: "Dr Williams, beware of false prophets" (Will Cummins, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/07/04))

"Speech impediments" (Nick Cohen, The Observer, 2004/07/11)
Cohen on David Blunkett's proposed law to "ban incitement to religious hatred":
"The Islamic Council has good reason to feel abused. Muslims members of the audience at a seminar for Catch the Fire, an evangelical Christian group which prays for Australia (someone must), heard that Daniel Scot described Muslims as terrorists and rapists who sanctioned the abuse of women and deceit in dealings with unbelievers. On his own admission, another pastor with the mission had put mosques in a list of 'strongholds of Satan' alongside brothels, off-licences and casinos. Yasser Soliman, the president of the Islamic Council, said Catch the Fire was whipping up a backlash against Australian Muslims after the 11 September and the Bali atrocities.
But then it turned out that Scot was drawing on personal experience. He is a Pakistani Christian who trained to be a maths lecturer. There was pressure on him to convert to Islam because university authorities said it was wrong for a Christian to have authority over Muslims. He refused and was charged under blasphemy laws, which carry a death sentence. 'The next day more than 5,000 students with pistols and daggers were searching for me. I was hidden in a church.' He fled to Australia in the 1980s.
Scot claimed he wasn't vilifying Islam, merely repeating received doctrines." (See also: "Crucifying public debate: If we aren't free to 'incite religious hatred', we aren't free" (Josie Appleton, spiked online, 2004/07/07))

"Israel follows its own law, not bigoted Hague decision" (Alan Dershowitz, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/07/11)
Dershowitz on the "questionable status of the International Court of Justice in The Hague":
"No Israeli judge may serve on that court as a permanent member, while sworn enemies of Israel serve among its judges, several of whom represent countries that do not abide by the rule of law. Virtually every democracy voted against that court's taking jurisdiction over the fence case, while nearly every country that voted to take jurisdiction was a tyranny. Israel owes the International Court absolutely no deference. It is under neither a moral nor a legal obligation to give any weight to its predetermined decision.
The Supreme Court of Israel recognized the unquestionable reality that the security fence has saved numerous lives and promises to save more, but it also recognized that this benefit must be weighed against the material disadvantages to West Bank Palestinians. The International Court, on the other hand, discounted the saving of lives and focused only on the Palestinian interests. By showing its preference for Palestinian property rights over the lives of Jews, the International Court displayed its bigotry. ...
A judicial decision can have no legitimacy when rendered against a nation that is willfully excluded from the court's membership by bigotry.
Just as the world should have disregarded any decision against blacks rendered by a Mississippi court in the 1930s, so too should all decent people contemptuously disregard the bigoted decisions of the International Court of Justice when it comes to Israel. To give any credence to the decisions of that court is to legitimize bigotry." (See also: "World Court says Israel's barrier must go" (Emma Thomasson, Reuters, 2004/07/09))

"Spy chiefs 'withdrew' Saddam arms claim" (Gaby Hinsliff and Antony Barnett, The Observer, 2004/07/11)
"Tony Blair's claim that Saddam Hussein posed a 'current and serious' threat to Britain is challenged by dramatic new allegations today that Britain's spy chiefs have retracted the intelligence on which it was based.
The supposed proof that the Iraqi dictator was still trying, even in the run-up to war, to produce chemical and biological weapons became crucial to the Prime Minister's case for urgent military action rather than waiting for inspectors to finish their task.
Yet, according to a senior intelligence source interviewed by BBC1's Panorama tonight, MI6 has since taken the rare step of withdrawing the intelligence assessment that underpinned the claim that Saddam had continued to produce WMD - an admission that it was fundamentally unreliable.
The charge leaves Blair open to serious questions over why, if the nature of the proof had changed, he did not tell the public that the evidence of WMD was crumbling beneath him."

"Just Williams" (Roy Hattersley, The Observer, 2004/07/11)
According to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the removal of one of the worst dictatorships in the history of mankind was something so terrible that the guilty must answer it "at the Judgement Seat". This is not only a complete moral meltdown, but it also reminds me why I'm eternally grateful for the Enlightenment. Thank God for secularism:
"Rowan Williams had already spoken of the instigators of the war being 'called to account'. Unsure what that meant, I asked him to explain.
'Two levels. At the simplest level, the public — nations, electorates - watch for the results. Politicians take large risks. I think they know that and the Prime Minister acknowledged it. Anyone making decisions involving the lives and welfare of other people must answer to God.'
I asked, in the language of the Victorian Church, if the answer would be required 'at the Judgment Seat'. To my astonishment, the Archbishop of Canterbury replied — carefully enunciating each word — 'at the Judgement Seat'. That raised the question of what the penalty would be for an inadequate reply.
I understood that, in life, Tony Blair and George W Bush might have to live with the knowledge that the death and destruction in the Iraq war could not morally be justified. But was the Archbishop talking about punishment after death? The penalty for those 'found wanting' at the Judgment Seat is, or used to be, Eternal Damnation.
The Archbishop of Canterbury worships a more merciful and a more subtle God. 'Not damnation. But you know the scale of the mistakes you've made ...' ...
Putting aside the implication of that doctrine for the Prime Minister and the President, it seemed — in my atheist ignorance — astonishing that a man of such obvious intellectual sophistication should speak in such fundamentalist language."

Saturday, July 10, 2004

News and commentary:

"Ministers 'urged Blair to stay'" (BBC News, 2004/07/10)
"Four Cabinet ministers were last month so concerned Tony Blair was considering resignation that they personally urged him to stay on, the BBC has learned.
In separate meetings, John Reid, Tessa Jowell and Charles Clarke assured Mr Blair he had wide government support, while Patricia Hewitt wrote to the PM.
He had been "seriously reviewing his position", the BBC's Andrew Marr said.
The PM next week faces the publication of the Butler report into intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

"Palestinians celebrate 'historic victory' at ICJ" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/07/10)
"Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip hailed the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the security fence as a "major victory" and called on the international community to pressure Israel to heed the decision. ...
In Ramallah, PA Chairman Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei both welcomed the ICJ's opinion. Arafat described it as a "victory" for the Palestinian people, righteousness, law, and freedom movements around the world, while Qurei praised it as "historic." Speaking in his office shortly after the judges read out the decision, Arafat said the PA would consult with its friends in order to pursue the case in the UN General Assembly and Security Council. ...
A statement issued following the meeting said the ruling "exposes and refutes all the Israeli claims about the wall, especially that it was being built for security reasons. On the contrary, the decision reveals that the Apartheid Wall only jeopardizes stability, peace, and security all over the region." ...
Meanwhile, many Palestinians strongly criticized the US for continuing to support Israel's position on the fence. Palestinian editors and commentators said the fact that an American judge was the only one to oppose the ICJ opinion proved that the US has lost its credibility.
"The US is now subordinate to Israel and its destructive policies," said Hafez Barghouti, editor of the Ramallah-based daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. 'The degrading submissiveness by the US to Israel's racist policies proves that Washington has lost its credibility not only in the region, but in the entire world.'"

"Bush's State of the Union speech redeemed" (Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 2004/07/11)
"But last summer the Bush Lie Of The Week was all to do with Saddam trying to buy uranium from Niger. CNN and Co. replayed endlessly the critical 16 words from the president's 2003 State of the Union Address:
''The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Sixteen words that could break a presidency! Bush ''misled every one of us,'' huffed Sen. John Kerry. ''It's beginning to sound like Watergate,'' said Howard Dean. Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man the CIA sent to Africa to investigate, wrote a piece for the New York Times titled ''What I didn't find in Africa.''
Well, on Wednesday in London, Lord Butler will publish his report into the quality of the intelligence on which rested Britain's case for going to war with Iraq. The report is said to be critical of some of Tony Blair's claims, supportive of others. And, among the latter, he says that the statements about Iraq and Niger are justified and supported by the intelligence. In other words, the British Government did learn that Saddam Hussein did seek significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
As a gazillion e-mails a day shrieked from my in-box back then, ''BUSH LIED!!!!!!" So where exactly in that State of the Union observation is the lie?
Last summer, the comparatively minor matter of uranium from Niger was all over the front pages and the news shows. Do you think Butler's report will be? Do you think Terry McAuliffe and John Kerry and Howard Dean will be eating humble yellowcake?"

"Joe Wilson Lied, Reputations Died" (Glenn Reynolds, InstaPundit, 2004/07/10)

WASHINGTON - A Senate report criticizing false CIA claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the same time provides support for an assertion the White House repudiated: that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa.
A Friday report from the Senate Intelligence Committee offers new details supporting the claim.
French and British intelligence separately told the United States about possible Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in the African nation of Niger, the report said. The report from France is significant not only because Paris opposed the Iraq war but also because Niger is a former French colony and French companies control uranium production there.
Joseph Wilson, a retired U.S. diplomat the CIA sent to investigate the Niger story, also found evidence of Iraqi contacts with Nigerien officials, the report said.

Hmm. That's not what his Times oped said, is it? But wait, there's more:

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.

Read the whole thing, which also notes that Wilson's public statements about what he found don't match the record." (See also: "Senate Report Offers Backing for Claim Iraq Sought Uranium in Africa" (Matt Kelley, AP/TBO, 2004/07/09) and "Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission: Report Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, Wife's Role" (Susan Schmidt, The Washington Post, 2004/07/10))

"The Sorry State of the CIA" (Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/07/19 issue)
"Now, as in the days of Iran-contra, the CIA is front-page news. Odds are Tenet and his Agency will get hammered for all the wrong reasons. The report of the Senate Committee on Intelligence published on August 9 will probably be the first salvo in a barrage against Tenet over the Iraq war intelligence. However, Tenet's February 5, 2004, speech on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction will likely stand the test of time and prove a truer, more measured, historical document than the assessment of the Senate's intelligence committee. It is easily Tenet's finest speech and it is, amazingly, the only serious defense so far given by any Bush administration official against the charges of conspiracy, deceit, and incompetence surrounding the WMD issue. And once the Senate's unclassified and classified report become public knowledge, and outsiders can properly assess the historical knowledge of the staffers and senators who wrote it, Tenet could well ask for an apology." (See also: "Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction" (George J. Tenet, CIA, 2004/02/05))

"U.S. Firm Supplied Nuclear Black Market" (George Jahn, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/07/10)
"An investigation of the black market supplying nations wanting nuclear arms has spread to more than 20 firms — some of them North American — the chief of the U.N. atomic agency told The Associated Press Friday. A senior diplomat identified one of the firms as U.S. based.
Demanding anonymity, the diplomat also said the Syria and Saudi Arabia are also being investigated as possible buyer nations, beyond Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea — the countries known to have been in contact with Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan and members of his procurement network.
But the diplomat, who is familiar with the Vienna-based IAEA told The AP that beyond suspicions prompting a continuing investigation, "there has been no proof" on Syria and Saudi Arabia that would warrant them being reported to the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In separate comments to The Associated Press, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei avoided specifics on the locations of the firms supplying the nuclear black market beyond saying there were "over 20 countries, some of them in North America."
The diplomat said at least one of them was in the United States."

Friday, July 9, 2004

News and commentary:

"Judges gather to rule on the legality of Israel's West Bank barrier..."
(AFP, 2004/07/09)
"Judges gather to rule on the legality of Israel's West Bank barrier at the Peace Palace in The Hague, July 9, 2004. (L-R): Bruno Simma (Germany), Nabil Elaraby (Egypt), Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh (Jordan), Pieter Kooijmans (The Netherlands), Rosalyn Higgins (United Kingdom), Abdul Koroma (Sierra Leone), Vice-President Raymond Ranjeva (Madagascar), President Shi Jiuyong (China), Gilbert Guillaume (France), Vladen Vereshchetin (Russian Federation), Gonzalo Parra-Aranguren (Venezuela), Fransisco Rezek (Brazil), Thomas Buergerthal (USA), Hisashi Owada (Japan) and Peter Tomka (Slovakia)."

"World Court says Israel's barrier must go" (Emma Thomasson, Reuters, 2004/07/09)
As the security fence de facto has saved dozens, if not hundreds, of lives already, it certainly seems as if the World Court values Palestinian "hardship" caused by the fence over the lives of Israelis saved by it:
"The World Court says Israel's barrier in the West Bank should be torn down and called on the United Nations to stop a project it said had illegally imposed hardship on thousands of Palestinians.
In a non-binding opinion hailed by Palestinians and rejected by Israel, the court said on Friday the barrier violated international humanitarian law and could presage the annexation of territory occupied by the Jewish state in the 1967 Middle East war. ...
A senior adviser to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said "as of today Israel should be viewed as an outlaw state".
"The next step is to approach the U.N. General Assembly and Security Council to adopt resolutions that will isolate and punish Israel," Nabil Abu Rdainah told Reuters.
Israel dismissed the decision: "It fails to address the essence of the problem and the very reason for building the fence — Palestinian terror," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Yoni Peled. 'If there were no terror, there would be no fence.'" (See also: "Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory — Summary of the Advisory Opinion of 9 July 2004" (International Court of Justice, 2004/07/09). Also: "'In the last five months, we've had zero attacks'" (Matthew Gutman, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/06/01): "Instead of 600 terrorist incidents per year around here, in the last five months we've had zero.")

"Israel's Fence Defense: The Barrier Is Preventing Terrorism" (Julie Stahl, CNS News, 2004/07/09)
"Israel's security fence has been "highly successful" in stopping suicide bombers from carrying out attacks inside Israel and therefore saving Israeli lives, Israeli officials said this week. ...
"The security fence...is for security reasons," said Col. Tamir Heiman, commander of the Ephraim Brigade in the central part of Israel and the West Bank. ...
"In the last year the fence stopped 90 percent of attempts to send terror attacks into Israel and its effectiveness proves why we should have built it and why it's very important to the lives of the people in Israel," he said.
According to a report released by the Foreign Ministry this week, terror attacks emanating from the northern West Bank where the fence has been completed decreased from an average of 26 a year to three a year.
In the eleven months since construction started — from August 2003 until the end of June 2004 — only three suicide bombers sent by terrorist groups in the northern West Bank succeeded in carrying out attacks. Those attacks killed 26 Israelis and wounding 76 others.
Two of the suicide bombers infiltrated through areas where the fence had not yet been completed, while a third — a woman — crossed a checkpoint using a Jordanian passport and blew herself up in a Haifa restaurant.
By contrast, during the 34 months from the beginning of violence in September 2000 until the construction of the barrier began at the end of July 2003, terrorists based in the same area carried out 73 terror attacks, including suicide bombings, shootings and car bombings inside Israel and Jerusalem killing 293 Israelis and wounding 1,950 others."

"Sudan warns against Darfur sanctions" (Reuters, 2004/07/09)
Funny how the actual perpetrators never are guilty according to Arab historiography: "Sudan has warned the United States and Britain against imposing sanctions on Khartoum over violence in Darfur and landing the world in an Iraq-style quagmire, says the official SUNA news agency.
"The American and British voices that call for the imposition of sanctions on Sudan are those that dragged the world into the Iraq problem," Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail was quoted as saying on Friday.
"I hope that they will not drag the world into a new problem from which it will be difficult to extricate itself and that is the problem of Darfur," Ismail said. He did not elaborate. ...
"It appears that there is a conspiracy against Sudan and we must prepare for it and be cautious," Ismail said."

"Senate Report Blasts Intelligence Agencies' Flaws" (William Branigin, The Washington Post, 2004/07/09)
"In a hard-hitting report released today, the U.S. Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence described a massive intelligence failure by the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies in failing to accurately assess Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before last year's U.S. invasion.
The intelligence community's assessments of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's possession of prohibited weapons not only turned out to be "wrong" in hindsight, but they were "also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence" in the first place, said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the committee chairman, in summarizing the report.
Among other findings, he told a news conference, "the committee concluded that the intelligence community was suffering from . . . a collective group-think." He said this caused the intelligence community "to interpret ambiguous elements . . . as conclusive evidence of the existence of WMD programs." But the group-think also extended to U.S. allies, the United Nations and other countries, he said.
"This was a global intelligence failure," Roberts said.
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the committee's vice chairman, called the assessments of Iraq before the 2003 war 'one of the most devastating intelligence failures in the history of the nation.'" (See also the report: "Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001" (GPO Access, 2004/07/09))

"Cynthia McKinney's Arab and Islamist Donors" (Daniel Pipes, danielpipes.org, 2004/07/09)
McKinney II. Pipes adds lots of revealing links to the list of McKinney's contributors:
"We all knew that Cynthia McKinney would be drawing on Arab and Muslim supporters in her bid to return to Congress, but a listing of contributors (with information up through June 28) reveals to what an extraordinary extent this is the case, as shown by the names of her backers.
Of particular note is the who's who of radical organizations her donors are associated with:

Hani Y. Awadallah – president, Arab American Civic Organization, New Jersey.

Jesse Aweida – co-founder, American Task Force on Palestine.

Belal Dalati – a vice president of Arab-American Broadcasting Co. (Orange County Register, February 19, 2002) associated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations."

"Georgia's Hatemonger Returns" (Erick Stakelbeck, New York Post, 2004/07/09)
McKinney I: "Cynthia McKinney may be on her way back to Con gress: The fringe ideologue ousted from the House of Representatives by Democratic primary voters back in 2002 is now one of the leaders in the race for her old seat. ...
McKinney won a national reputation of sorts with her incendiary statements on everything from 9/11 (suggesting that the Bush administration knew of the attacks in advance) to the American Jewish lobby (which she blamed for her 2002 loss to Majette).
Plus, McKinney has long associated with militant Islamic groups whose members have openly supported terrorism. She has also taken donations from individuals suspected of terrorist ties. ...
McKinney has also accepted substantial donations from individuals linked to the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Benevolence International Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation — three Muslim "charitable" organizations now labeled Specially Designated Global Terrorist entities by the U.S. Treasury Department.
But McKinney hasn't just taken money from radical Islamists — she has taken to the floor of the House to defend them:
In a 2001 speech, McKinney called Rabih Haddad "a prominent community leader and religious cleric."
Haddad was deported to Lebanon from the United States in 2003. He's a co-founder of the aforementioned Global Relief Foundation, which the Treasury Department has said provided financial support to al Qaeda."

For more on Cynthia McKinney, see also:
"Moonbats: The Gathering" (Michele Catalano, A Small Victory, 2003/09/06)
"Sept 11 theorists to meet in Berlin" (DPA/Expatica, 2003/09/05)
"Academic Credentials" (Joe Sabia, CornellDailySun/FrontPageMagazine, 2003/08/28)
"What actually happened to Pfc. Jessica Lynch?" (Brendan Nyhan and Bryan Keefer, Spinsanity, 2003/05/28)
"The Face of Muslim 'Moderation'" (Zoli Simon, Insight on the News, 2002/09/23)
"Democrat Implies Sept. 11 Administration Plot" (Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post, 2002/04/12)
"Cynthia McKinney: Today's Hanoi Jane" (Debbie Schlussel, WorldNetDaily, 2001/10/19)

"Civilization vs. Trivia" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2004/07/09)
"For over a year now, we have witnessed a level of invective not seen since the summer of 1864 — much of it the result of a dying 60's generation's last gasps of lost self-importance. Instead of the "innocent" Rosenbergs and "framed" Alger Hiss we now get the whisk-the-bin-Laden-family-out-of-the-country conspiracy. Michael Moore is a poor substitute for the upfront buffoonery of Abbie Hoffman.
The oil pipeline in Afghanistan that we allegedly went to war over doesn't exist. Brave Americans died to rout al Qaeda, end the fascist Taliban, and free Afghanistan for a good and legitimate man like a Hamid Karzai to oversee elections. It was politically unwise and idealistic — not smart and cynical — for Mr. Bush to gamble his presidency on getting rid of fascists in Iraq. There really was a tie between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein — just as Mr. Gore and Mr. Clinton once believed and Mr. Putin and Mr. Allawi now remind us. The United States really did plan to put Iraqi oil under Iraqi democratic supervision for the first time in the country's history. And it did.
This war — like all wars — is a terrible thing; but far, far worse are the mass murder of 3,000 innocents and the explosion of a city block in Manhattan, a ghoulish Islamic fascism and unfettered global terrorism, and 30 years of unchecked Baathist mass murder. So for myself, I prefer to be on the side of people like the Kurds, Elie Wiesel, Hamid Karzai, and Iyad Allawi rather than the idiotocrats like Jacques Chirac, Ralph (the Israelis are "puppeteers") Nader, Michael Moore, and Billy Crystal.
Sometimes life's choices really are that simple."

"Our daily drivel" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/07/09)
"Sunday morning Shin Bet Director Avi Dichter made an incredible disclosure at the cabinet meeting. Dichter stated that Israel is the largest contributor to the Palestinian Authority's budget. Israel gives the PA one billion dollars a year. This comprises 45 percent of the PA's total budget. ...
In saying this, Dichter was making a clear and almost unprecedented indictment of the government. Our government is putting a billion dollars a year into a black hole controlled by one of the most active terror regimes in the world. And this terror regime is actively waging war against our country. ...
In any even semi-rational country, this disclosure would have been the story of the week – if not the year. After all, can anyone imagine the US media reaction to a disclosure by the head of the FBI that the US was funding the Taliban or the Ba'athist regime in Iraq after September 11? In any marginally sane society, there would be demonstrations launched, lawsuits filed, black headlines, and stuttering government spokesmen sent out to whimper excuses for the government's financing of the murder of its citizens by the sworn enemies of the state.
But, sadly, this story received four lines buried at the end of a story in the inside pages of Yediot Aharonot and barely a mention anywhere else."

"Saddam the Novelist" (Daniel Pipes, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/07/09)
"Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, a London-based Arabic paper, yesterday began the complete serialization of Saddam Hussein’s final novel written as a free man, Be Gone Demons! As though it were just any book, the newspaper posted a picture of the cover and of the author (appearing as a jailbird, however, not as absolute ruler).
The Associated Press’s Salah Nasrawi helpfully provides a summary of the plot, as related to him by Ali Abdel Amir, an Iraqi writer and critic who read the whole manuscript: The novel recounts a Zionist-Christian conspiracy against Arabs and Muslims that an Arab army eventually defeats by invading the Zionist-Christian land and toppling one of its monumental towers, an apparent reference to Sept. 11, 2001. ...
Saddam Hussein’s being consumed with a literary urge, even as his dictatorship was about to be destroyed by the greatest power on earth, points to both his hubris and his ignorance. It also goes far to explain how he could think there were nuclear weapons in the works when they did not exist by the time his political demise began in March 2003." (See also: "Newspaper serializes Hussein's 4th novel" (Salah Nasrawi, AP/Chicago Tribune, 2004/07/09))

"Coalition records its 1,000th death in Iraq" (CNN.com, 2004/07/09)
"A U.S. soldier has died of wounds he suffered in fighting in Baghdad late Thursday, a U.S. military spokesman said.
The death brings coalition deaths — both hostile and non-hostile — since the start of the war to 1,000. U.S. military deaths now total 880, with 657 of them by hostile fire. ...
On Thursday, a mortar attack killed five U.S. troops and an Iraqi National Guard member in the central Iraqi city of Samarra, according to a U.S. military spokesman in Tikrit.
Twenty soldiers and three Iraqis were wounded."

"Blixful Amnesia" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2004/07/09)
"Is Islamic radicalism in potential alliance with terrorist states that possess such weapons a threat to the very existence (hence: "existential") of the United States and of civilization itself?
On Sept. 12, 2001, and for many months after, that proposition was so self-evident that it commanded near unanimous support. With time — three years in which, contrary to every expectation and prediction, the second shoe never dropped — that consensus has evaporated.
The new idea, expressed by Blix representing the decadent European left, and recently amplified by Michael Moore representing the paranoid American left, is that this existential threat is vastly overblown. Indeed, deliberately overblown by a corrupt/clueless (take your pick) President Bush to justify American aggression for reasons of . . . and here is where the left gets a little fuzzy, not quite being able to decide whether American aggression is intended simply to enrich multinational corporations — or maybe just Halliburton alone — with fat war contracts, distract from alleged failure in Afghanistan, satisfy some primal masculine urge or boost poll ratings.
We have come a long way in three years."

"Bin Laden Is Said to Be Organizing for a U.S. Attack" (David Johnston and David Stout, The New York Times, 2004/07/09)
"'What we know about this most recent information is that it is being directed from the seniormost levels of the Al Qaeda organization,' said a senior official at a briefing for reporters. He added, "We know that this leadership continues to operate along the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan." ...
Another senior administration official said on Thursday that the intelligence reports — apparently drawn partly from interviews with captured Qaeda members and partly from other intelligence — referred to efforts "to inflict catastrophic effects" before the election." (See also: "Ridge Warns of 'Credible' al-Qaida Plot" (Katherine Pfleger Shrader, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/07/08))

Added in archive:
"The hawks have only themselves to blame for Michael Moore's success" (Matthew d'Ancona, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/07/04)

Note: Tom Veal's site Stromata was the first one to appreciate/link to Watch, way back in 2001, and I just discovered that he has started a brand new blog, named Stromata Blog. Check it out.

Thursday, July 8, 2004

News and commentary:

"Believing in Bush’s perfidy..." (James Lileks, The Bleat, 2004/07/08)
Lileks fiskes Moore: "Believing in Bush’s perfidy gives some people the same comfort and emotional nourishment others get from believing in Jesus. It validates them, cements their view of the world — venal, conspiratorial, run by capering chimps who are somehow ten times less intelligent than Usenet posters but somehow able to yank strings on a global scale. ...
Which brings us to Moore’s 4th of July piece for the LA Times. ...

For too long now we have abandoned our flag to those who see it as a symbol of war and dominance, as a way to crush dissent at home. Flags are flying from the back of SUVs, rising high above car dealerships, plastering the windows of businesses and adorning paper bags from fast-food restaurants. But these flags are intended to send a message: "You're either with us or you're against us," "Bring it on!" or "Watch what you say, watch what you do."

I knew a paranoid schizophrenic once. He believed that the New York Times was sending him personal messages through its front-page headlines. He might also have believed that car-dealership flags were telling him to watch what he said." (See also: "The Patriot's Act" (Michael Moore, Los Angeles Times, 2004/07/04))

"Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi in London to Establish 'The International Council of Muslim Clerics'" (Steven Stalinsky, MEMRI, 2004/07/08)
A report on Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi's "teachings on Jihad and martyrdom, September 11 and the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, Judaism and Jews, and wife beating":
"Following Al-Qaradhawi's arrival in England on July 7, 2004, BBC2 TV aired an interview in which he said that Islam justifies suicide bombings in Iraq against the U.S. military and in Israel against women and children. In a Friday sermon following the Al-Qa'ida attack in Bali on October 18, 2002, he explained, "Islam does agree to such acts." ...
As early as 2001, Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi expressed his support of the act of martyrdom (suicide) operations as an important aspect of Islam, and has often praised the terrorist organizations responsible for these attacks. For example, on October 18, 2002, in a sermon on Qatar Television, Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi called Hamas the mouthpiece of the Islamic nation, and said that it cannot be eliminated: 'Hamas and its counterparts cannot be wiped out, for they are the mouthpiece of the Islamic nation all over the world.'" (See also: "A Woman's Right To Choose" (Daniel Pipes, danielpipes.org, 2004/07/07) and "Controversial cleric visits UK" (BBC News, 2004/07/07))

"France opposes UN Sudan sanctions" (BBC News, 2004/07/08)
Non-Stop Weasel Watch: "France says it does not support US plans for international sanctions on Sudan if violence continues in Darfur. ...
"In Darfur, it would be better to help the Sudanese get over the crisis so their country is pacified rather than sanctions which would push them back to their misdeeds of old," junior Foreign Minister Renaud Muselier told French radio.
France led opposition to US moves at the UN over Iraq. As was the case in Iraq, it also has significant oil interests in Sudan.
Mr Muselier also dismissed claims of "ethnic cleansing" or genocide in Darfur.
"I firmly believe it is a civil war and as they are little villages of 30, 40, 50, there is nothing easier than for a few armed horsemen to burn things down, to kill the men and drive out the women," he said.
Human rights activists say the Janjaweed are conducting a genocide against Darfur's black African population."

"Iraq Insurgency Larger Than Thought" (Jim Krane, AP/My Way, 2004/07/08)
"The Iraq insurgency is far larger than the 5,000 guerrillas previously thought to be at its core, U.S. military officials say, and it's being led by well-armed Iraqi Sunnis angry at being pushed from power alongside Saddam Hussein.
Although U.S. military analysts disagree over the exact size, dozens of regional cells, often led by tribal sheiks and inspired by Sunni Muslim imams, can call upon part-time fighters to boost forces to as high as 20,000 - an estimate reflected in the insurgency's continued strength after U.S. forces killed as many as 4,000 in April alone."

"Ridge Warns of 'Credible' al-Qaida Plot" (Katherine Pfleger Shrader, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/07/08)
"The United States is tightening security in the face of a steady stream of intelligence indicating al-Qaida may seek to mount an attack aimed at disrupting elections, the White House said.
The Department of Homeland Security is addressing the threat and has efforts under way to "ramp up security," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Thursday.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said the Bush administration based its decision to bolster security on "credible" reports about al-Qaida's plans, coupled with the pre-election terror attack in Spain earlier this year and recent arrests in England, Jordan and Italy."

"An Ugly Anti-American" (Anders G. Lewis, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/07/08)
An essay on historian Gabriel Kolko, who "helped construct the intellectual edifice of modern academic anti-Americanism":
"In Kolko’s perspective, blame for September 11, lies not with al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but with the United States. American failures abroad, he writes, “led desperate men to crash planes into the symbols of American power on September 11.” “Suffice it to say, that the United States’ sponsorship…of state terrorism is one of the crucial reasons it now has to confront violence on its own soil. History has come full circle.” Indeed it has.
Just as Kolko dismisses the idea that Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China constituted threats to America, so he rejects the view that the Islamic perpetrators of 9/11 threaten the United States today. “Whether they are ‘terrorists’ or ‘freedom fighters’ depends wholly on one’s viewpoint,” Kolko argues, “because those seeking to attain political goals fight with what they have: hijacked airplanes and concealed bombs [rather than] B-52s and laser-guided rockets.” Of course, the United States doesn’t load airplanes with innocent hostages or deliberately fire rockets into crowded office buildings located in countries with which it is not at war or to whom it has not given a warning first. But real world considerations have no place in Kolko’s ideological creations."

"Pentagon Sets Hearings for 595 Detainees" (John Mintz, The Washington Post, 2004/07/08)
"The Pentagon announced last night it will quickly hold hearings for all 595 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison as it scrambles to respond to the Supreme Court ruling last week that the government was jailing terrorism suspects without due process.
The new hearings are designed to determine whether the 595 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, meet the definition of "enemy combatants," as President Bush and the U.S. military have said for more than two years."

Wednesday, July 7, 2004

News and commentary:

"Crucifying public debate: If we aren't free to 'incite religious hatred', we aren't free" (Josie Appleton, spiked online, 2004/07/07)
"Laws against religious hatred will grossly infringe on our right to free speech and our ability to criticise religions however we please.":
"'Religious and political extremists are a scourge of modern society who prey on the most vulnerable and insecure', lectured Blunkett today. Such extremist speech has to be reined in, believes Blunkett, in order to create 'a positive, inclusive sense of British identity and citizenship', so that people can 'settle their differences in ways that don't develop hate and where people feel free to be able to express sensible views and have sensible arguments'.
On BBC Radio Four's Today programme, Blunkett dismissed the concerns of what he called the 'Liberati', who get 'on my back for being against people being able to express themselves'. He's not saying that people can't criticise religion, after all, so long as they hold 'sensible views' and are not too 'extremist' about it. ...
But the whole point about free speech is that it is free - and that it's not up to Blunkett or anybody else to decide whether your opinion is reasonable or not. Unless we are able to be wrong, rude and offensive, about Allah, Jesus or even the home secretary, then the right to free speech exists only in theory rather than in practice.
Blunkett's vision for Britain is one in which people are 'able to express their identity within a common framework of rights and responsibilities'. So you can say what you want, so long as it isn't too fiery or offensive. This would lead to a society that is sterile and fractured rather than open and cohesive. We will have to tiptoe around one another, careful not to tread on the toes of any other ethnic/religious/political group." (See also the press release: "Sideline the extremists - Home Secretary" (David Blunkett, Home Office, 2004/07/07). Also: "Why I've changed my mind on vilification laws" (Amir Butler, The Age, 2004/06/04) and "The moral decay of Australia" (Peter Costello, The Age, 2004/06/01))

"Al-Jazeera broadcasts video tape of Filipino hostage" (Maamoun Youssef, AP/San Diego Union Tribune, 2004/07/07)
"Armed Iraq insurgents threatened to kill a Filipino hostage if his country does not withdraw from Iraq, according to a video that aired Wednesday. The Philippines responded by barring Filipino workers from traveling to Iraq.
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In the video broadcast by Pan-Arab Al-Jazeera television, three armed and masked men stood behind the seated hostage, threatening to kill him if the Philippines doesn't pull out within three days.
The group claimed to have already killed an Iraqi security guard who was accompanying the Filipino, the newscaster said. The statement gave no details of his capture. A banner on the wall behind the captors identified them as a previously unknown group called the Iraqi Islamic Army-Khaled bin al-Waleed Corps."

"How to deal with Saddam" (Hasan Abu Nimah, Jordan Times, 2004/07/07)
Saddam as a defiant victim. An outrageous and telling Op-Ed by the former Jordanian ambassador to the UN and BENELUX, found via IMRA:
"I was in Cairo attending an Arab League meeting when the news of his arrest started to break in. Until his capture was definitely confirmed, I argued that his capture alive was unlikely. Every comment on the news I heard at the time, from officials as well as ordinary people, was filled with anger, disbelief and disappointment. But the anger, disbelief or disappointment were not the result of love or any unawareness of how brutal Saddam was, despite the fact that many people saw Saddam as the only Arab leader who defied the injustice and the hypocrisy of the Western world and who courageously — even if madly — stood up to that injustice.
Of course, he was cruel, and his record was soaked with crime and atrocity; and for that he deserves what he is facing. But many people in this region, and probably elsewhere, did not see those who volunteered to punish him and punish his country and his people with him as being any better. They believed that he was targeted because he was an easy target and because he was an Arab. Otherwise, why not Israel, whose leaders have been committing worse crimes, and much more than Saddam? ...
The application of such double standards is one of many reasons which prompt people in this part of the world to see Saddam as a victim of Western hypocrisy and blatant injustice."

"Fantasy and 'Fahrenheit 9/11'" (Mark Steyn, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/07/07)
"Bin Laden and his colleagues in al-Qaida, their various subsidiaries and affiliates, the Wahhabi bankrollers in Saudi Arabia, and thousands of mullahs throughout the Muslim world believe they're engaged in a great crusade (whoops) against the Great Satan and the rest of the infidel world that will go on until they achieve final victory.
Michael Moore and his own fanatical worshipers, on the other hand, think it's all to do with Bush. Bush, Bush, Bush! ...
The message of Moore's film is: Get rid of Bush this November and all the bad stuff will go away. That's why its starting point is the 2000 election and the Florida recount. On the face of it, dimpled chads don't seem to have much to do with Afghanistan and Iraq. But, for Moore, this is where it all began, and this is where it will end: Topple Bush, and the world will once again be full of happy smiley people as it is in the slow-motion scenes of laughing children gaily flying their kites in idyllic Saddamite Iraq. ...
Americans, Moore told The Daily Mirror in London, are "the dumbest people on the planet. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing." Yet he's the one who's come up with the hickiest, most parochial thesis imaginable: that the horrors of the age are just some screwy distraction got up by a chad-wangling moron fratboy's creepy neocon viziers."

"July Surprise?" (John B. Judis et al., The New Republic, 2004/07/07)
"But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs [high-value targets] by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations — according to a recently departed intelligence official, "no timetable[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003 — but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. ...
A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed TNR that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July" — the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston." (See also: "This is TNR-Worthy?" (Gregory Djerejian, The Belgravia Dispatch, 2004/07/08): "Can anyone seriously, without blushing, buy this stuff?")

"On Mideast, Redgrave isn't a straight shooter" (Jay Bushinsky,Chicago Sun-Times, 2004/07/07)
"According to Vanessa Redgrave, the British actress and campaigner for human rights, especially on behalf of the Palestinians, Israel's troops practice wanton and deliberate infanticide. ...
No mother could possibly be accustomed to the fact that her little girl will go to school "and will sit with her classmates and an Israeli sniper will shoot at a classroom full of Palestinian children who are in their uniforms with their little scarves," she said. ...
"Any Palestinian mother or schoolchild knows that a schoolchild who is dressed in the uniform can be and is frequently shot in the head — not in the chest, not in the legs, in the head." ...
This is an astounding and highly provocative charge. It is verbal poison that conforms to the 2,000-year-old blood libel that Jews allegedly engage in the premeditated murder of non-Jewish children.
And it is astounding that the representatives of UNICEF (the U.N. International Children's Emergency Fund) and UNRWA who sat at the dais alongside Redgrave did not deign to disagree or correct her remarks."

"Inquiry will back intelligence that Iraq sought uranium" (Mark Huband, Financial Times, 2004/07/07)
"A UK government inquiry into the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq is expected to conclude that Britain's spies were correct to say that Saddam Hussein's regime sought to buy uranium from Niger.
The inquiry by Lord Butler, which was delivered to the printers on Wednesday and is expected to be released on July 14, has examined the intelligence that underpinned the UK government's claims about the threat from Iraq.
The report will say the claim that Mr Hussein could deploy chemical weapons within 45 minutes, seized on by UK prime minister Tony Blair to bolster the case for war with Iraq, was inadequately supported by the available intelligence, people familiar with its contents say.
But among Lord Butler's other areas of investigation was the issue of whether Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger. People with knowledge of the report said Lord Butler has concluded that this claim was reasonable and consistent with the intelligence." (See also: "Evidence of Niger uranium trade 'years before war'" (Mark Huband, Financial Times, 2004/06/27))

"Missing Marine mystery deepens" (Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News, 2004/07/07)
"Late Wednesday, FBI agents showed up at the Hassoun family home in West Jordan, Utah. And Pentagon officials tell NBC News that the Navy has now launched a criminal investigation into Hassoun's disappearance, and the possibility that his kidnapping may be part of an elaborate hoax.
Hassoun disappeared from his Marine unit on June 20. He showed up a week later in a hostage-style video, with a sword held over his head and his alleged captors threatening to kill him. Terrorist experts say, however, the group said to have held Hassoun is unknown.
"We don't know whether this group is simply an Internet address. ... We don't know if they were simply fabricated. We have no idea what's going on here," says terrorism expert Steve Emerson."

"U.S. Removes Two Tons of Uranium From Iraq" (AP/FOX News, 2004/07/07)
"In a secret operation, the United States last month removed from Iraq nearly two tons of uranium and hundreds of highly radioactive items that could have been used in a so-called dirty bomb, the Energy Department disclosed Tuesday.
The nuclear material was secured from Iraq's former nuclear research facility and airlifted out of the country to an undisclosed Energy Department laboratory for further analysis, the department said in a statement.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham described the previously undisclosed operation, which was concluded June 23, as "a major achievement" in an attempt to "keep potentially dangerous nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists." ...
The statement provided only scant details about the material taken from Iraq, but said it included "roughly 1,000 highly radioactive sources" that "could potentially be used in a radiological dispersal device," or dirty bomb.
Also ferried out of Iraq was 1.95 tons of low-enriched uranium, the department said."

"New Law in Iraq Gives Premier Martial Powers to Fight Uprising" (Edward Wong, The New York Times, 2004/07/07)
"Prime Minister Iyad Allawi on Tuesday signed into law broad martial powers that allow him to impose curfews anywhere in the country, ban groups he considers seditious and order the detentions of people suspected of being security risks.
Putting a law in place that permits him to establish emergency powers is one of the first official actions Dr. Allawi has taken against a tenacious insurgency and lays the groundwork for a forceful response to civil unrest. The law was written with the input of lawyers and the ministers of justice and of human rights, he said."

"Source: Missing Marine says he's safe" (CNN.com, 2004/07/07)
"Marine Cpl. Wassef Hassoun called his family Wednesday to tell them he is safe and in Lebanon, a source close to his family told CNN.
The source said Hassoun contacted the family in West Jordan, Utah, and Lebanon and told them that he had called the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and asked that he be picked up from an undisclosed location in Lebanon. The source said Hassoun sounded healthy and happy."

"In Praise of Attrition" (Ralph Peters, Parameters, from the Summer 2004 issue)
"Precision weapons unquestionably have value, but they are expensive and do not cause adequate destruction to impress a hardened enemy. The first time a guided bomb hits the deputy’s desk, it will get his chief’s attention, but if precision weaponry fails both to annihilate the enemy’s leadership and to somehow convince the army and population it has been defeated, it leaves the job to the soldier once again. Those who live in the technological clouds simply do not grasp the importance of graphic, extensive destruction in convincing an opponent of his defeat. ...
Consider our enemies in the War on Terror. Men who believe, literally, that they are on a mission from God to destroy your civilization and who regard death as a promotion are not impressed by elegant maneuvers. You must find them, no matter how long it takes, then kill them. If they surrender, you must accord them their rights under the laws of war and international conventions. But, as we have learned so painfully from all the mindless, left-wing nonsense spouted about the prisoners at Guantanamo, you are much better off killing them before they have a chance to surrender. ...
It isn’t a question of whether or not we want to fight a war of attrition against religion-fueled terrorists. We’re in a war of attrition with them. We have no realistic choice."

"A Woman's Right To Choose" (Daniel Pipes, danielpipes.org, 2004/07/07)
Londonistan II: "This slogan, made famous by pro-abortion activists in the United States, now has a new meaning, as in "Hijab: A Woman's Right To Choose."
That is the slogan for a conference coming up on July 12 in London, hosted by none other than the extreme left-wing mayor of that city, Ken Livingstone. The gradual takeover of the left by Islamists is something truly amazing to behold." (See also: "London Mayor To Host Hijab Conference" (Islam Online, 2004/07/07): "[Rajnaara Akhtar] said Head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research Sheikh Youssef Al-Qaradawi will be the special guest of honor. "Mr. Livingstone will host Sheikh Qaradawi on Wednesday night," she added.")

"Controversial cleric visits UK" (BBC News, 2004/07/07)
Londonistan I. A Muslim cleric who views suicide bombings as "one of the most praised acts of worship" is seen a "moderating voice":
"A controversial Muslim cleric who is banned from entering the US has been given permission to visit Britain.
Egyptian-born Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi has been accused of making anti-Semitic remarks and supporting suicide bombers.
Labour MP Louise Ellman said it would be "an outrage" to let him visit, and create "enormous security problems".
The Liverpool MP accused Dr Al-Qaradawi of encouraging women and children to be suicide bombers and seeking the destruction of Israel.
Mrs Ellman is calling for his speeches to be monitored.
But the Muslim Association of Britain, which is hosting Dr Al-Qaradawi, regards him as a moderating voice." (See also, for example: "Women may be terror suicide bombers, Muslim scholar rules" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/05/25))

"Blair admits WMD may never be found" (George Jones, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/07/07)
"Tony Blair accepted for the first time yesterday that weapons of mass destruction might never be found in Iraq, but he refused to apologise for going to war to remove Saddam Hussein.
Fifteen months after the Iraq war, he told the Commons liaison committee that Saddam's stockpile of chemical and biological weapons may have been "hidden, removed or destroyed". ...
Mr Blair acknowledged yesterday he had been very confident that they would be found. "I have to accept we haven't found them and that we may never find them," he said."

Tuesday, July 6, 2004

News and commentary:

"Why the French Act Isn't Funny Anymore" (Charles Krauthammer, TIME, 2004/07/06)
"Before Sept. 11, France's Gaullist anti-Americanism as a form of ostentatious self-aggrandizement was an irritant. With a war on — three, in fact: Afghanistan, Iraq and the larger war on terrorism — France's willful obstructionism becomes dangerous and deadly. ...
There is something far deeper going on here. Beyond the anti-Americanism is an attempt to court the Muslim and Arab world. For its own safety and strategic gain, France is seeking a "third way" between America and its enemies. Chirac's ultimate vision is a France that is mediator and bridge between America and Islam. ...
This is pure pandering but with an agenda. Chirac wants not only to make France the champion of the oppressed in general against the great American hegemon but also to make it in particular the champion of Arab aspirations against American imperialism. Even the left-leaning French newspaper Le Monde criticized Chirac for acting the "killjoy" in Istanbul. But Chirac's behavior was no mere outburst. It is a strategy for a French future. Chirac is charting a course — a collision course with America. Istanbul was just one accident scene. There are many more to come." (See also: "French-U.S. Tussles Reopen NATO Wounds" (Gareth Jones, Reuters, 2004/06/29) and "Chirac leads resistance as Bush courts Nato allies" (Ian Black and Michael White, The Guardian, 2004/06/28))

"Iranian Intel Officers Captured in Iraq" (FOX News, 2004/07/06)
"American and Iraqi joint patrols, along with U.S. Special Operations teams, captured two men with explosives in Baghdad on Monday who identified themselves as Iranian intelligence officers, FOX News has confirmed.
Senior officials said it was previously believed that Iran had officers inside Iraq stirring up violence, but this is the first time that self-proclaimed Iranian intelligence agents have been captured within the country."

"Iraqi Group Threatens to Kill Zarqawi" (AP/FOX News, 2004/07/06)
"A group of armed, masked Iraqi men threatened Tuesday to kill Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi if he did not immediately leave the country, accusing him of murdering innocent Iraqis and defiling the Muslim religion.
The threats revealed the deep anger many Iraqis, including insurgent groups, feel toward foreign fighters, whom many consider as illegitimate a presence here as the 160,000 U.S. and other coalition troops.
In a videotape sent to the al-Arabiya television station, a group calling itself the "Salvation Movement," questioned how al-Zarqawi could use Islam to justify the killing of innocent civilians, the targeting of government officials and the kidnapping and beheading of foreigners.
"He must leave Iraq immediately, he and his followers and everyone who gives shelter to him and his criminal actions," said a man on the video."

"Car Bomb in Iraqi Town Kills 14" (AP/The Washington Post, 2004/07/06)
"Insurgents denoted a car bomb on Tuesday that killed 14 Iraqis, underscoring their determination to carry out attacks a week after the U.S. transferred power to an interim government led by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
The car bomb in the town of Khalis tore through a tent packed with hundreds of Iraqis mourning a man killed in an assassination attempt of a local official by insurgents days earlier.
The blast left a yard-wide crater, set five cars on fire and burned the tent. Dismembered corpses lay on the floor. White plastic chairs where mourners had been sitting in orderly rows were broken and twisted."

"Iran got tough – Blair just crumpled" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/07/06)
As Caroline Glick noted: "In an earlier day, when diplomacy was used as an arm of a nation's interest, Straw would not have been thanking the Iranians for backing down after having committed an act of war, indeed of piracy, against Great Britain. He would have been issuing an ultimatum backed by a massing of British troops, already conveniently nestled along the border in Basra. But such are not our times.":
"A couple of years ago, there was a lively speech by Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president and now head of the Expediency Council, which sounds like a committee of EU foreign ministers but is actually Iran's highest religious body. Rafsanjani was looking forward to the big day when his side got nukes and settled the Zionist question for ever "since a single atomic bomb has the power to completely destroy Israel, while an Israeli counter-strike can only cause partial damage to the Islamic world."
I'm inclined to take these fellows at their word. Next to Mr Straw and his "complications", these dudes are admirably plain-spoken. But let's suppose Rafsanjani is more cunning, and he understands that perhaps he won't have to use his bomb — that the mere fact of it will enable the country to get its way, in the region and beyond. Wouldn't the events of recent days have confirmed this view? And, if this is what he can get away with now, what might he try to pull when Iran is the first nuclear theocracy?" (See also: "Time to get moving on Iran" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/06/25) and "Former Iranian President Rafsanjani on Using a Nuclear Bomb Against Israel" (Special Dispatch No. 325, MEMRI, 2002/01/03))

"Stop and search: a defining moment" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2004/07/06)
Aaronovitch on the annual Islamophobia Awards: "According to the commission chairman Massoud Shadjareh, we are in a period of demonisation of Muslims that is comparable to that "endured by the Jewish community before world war two". Endured where? Germany round the time of the Nuremberg Laws, perhaps? Or on Reichskristallnacht? He has no idea, does he? But a runner-up to Nick Griffin, Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford, was cited merely for "criticising the EU Monitoring Centre for issuing too many reports on Islamophobia and vigorously campaigning to ensure that the Jenin massacre was not described as such by the European parliament fact-finding delegation".
This does not amount, in my estimation, to "prejudice against Muslims", which is the definition of Islamophobia. And as for Polly, her crime is almost certainly her aggressive secularism. It is a bit like the Catholic Human Rights Commission awarding the title of Romanophobe of the Year to a critic of celibacy or clerical paedophilia. Are we not to be allowed any longer to argue against religion, or religious institutions? Bring on the Christophobe, the Mormonophobe, the Moonieophobe."

"Kidnapped marine 'safe after defecting' to Islamists" (Gary Younge, The Guardian, 2004/07/06)
"Kidnapped US marine Wassef Ali Hassoun has been taken to "a place of safety" after he pledged not to return to the US military, his captors told al-Jazeera television in a statement yesterday.
The Islamic Response Movement, the same group that last week admitted to kidnapping Corporal Hassoun and threatening to behead him, would not say where he was being kept.
It is the latest in a series of conflicting claims about the whereabouts, wellbeing and motivations of Cpl Hassoun, a 24-year-old Arabic translator who has been missing since he failed to report for duty at his base in Iraq."

Added in archive:
"Poll: over 40% of Canadian teens think America is 'evil'" (Arthur Weinreb, Toronto Free Press, 2004/06/30)

Monday, July 5, 2004

News and commentary:

"A World Without Power" (Niall Ferguson, Foreign Policy, from the July/August 2004 issue)
"Suppose, in a worst-case scenario, that U.S. neoconservative hubris is humbled in Iraq and that the Bush administration's project to democratize the Middle East at gunpoint ends in ignominious withdrawal, going from empire to decolonization in less than two years. Suppose also that no aspiring rival power shows interest in filling the resulting vacuums —not only in coping with Iraq but conceivably also Afghanistan, th e Balkans, and Haiti. What would an apolar future look like?
The answer is not easy, as there have been very few periods in world history with no contenders for the role of global, or at least regional, hegemon. The nearest approximation in modern times could be the 1920s, when the United States walked away from President Woodrow Wilson's project of global democracy and collective security centered on the League of Nations. ... One must go back much further in history to find a period of true and enduring apolarity; as far back, in fact, as the ninth and 10th centuries. ...
So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into fortified cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the world is much more populous — roughly 20 times more — so friction between the world's disparate “tribes” is bound to be more frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not merely on freshwater and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels that are known to be finite. Technology has upgraded destruction, too, so it is now possible not just to sack a city but to obliterate it." (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))

"Saddam Defense Lawyers Preparing Convoy to Baghdad" (Suleiman al-Khalidi, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/07/05)
"Saddam Hussein's Jordan-based defense team said on Monday a convoy of buses is being arranged to transport hundreds of legal experts to Baghdad in a show of support for the ousted Iraqi leader.
Issam Ghazawi, a prominent lawyer and one of the 21-strong defense team hired by Saddam's wife, told Reuters that among the large contingent of lawyers ready to defend Saddam are 700 non Arabs, including 400 Americans and Europeans.
Two hundred legal consultants from across the world have also pledged to help in the case, he said.
"More than half of the over 2,000 lawyers volunteering to defend President Saddam are expected to join the trip," Ghazawi said."

"The Iraqi 'resistance' offers only bloodshed and chaos" (Ann Clwyd, The Guardian, 2004/07/05)
"Seumas Milne, writing in the Guardian last week, believes that putting Saddam on trial is an attempt to retrieve "retrospective justification for last year's unprovoked invasion" and then argues that because of the torture of prisoners by US and British soldiers all moral authority has been drained from the coalition. This is surely a distortion.
It has become commonplace to argue that the new interim government "lacks legitimacy". The words "quislings" and "puppets" are widely used, while anti-coalition violence is said to represent the "real war of liberation". ...
Having known and worked with the opposition to Saddam for over two decades, I find the description of brave individuals as "puppets" deeply offensive. ...
The debate in Britain will be a reflection on us and on our values. Are we capable of the maturity displayed by the Iraqis who are working in the most difficult circumstances to build a new democracy? Or will we be represented by those who despise Bush and Blair so much that they are prepared to offer support and succour to the "resistance" which has no alternative or agenda other than more bloodshed and chaos?" (See also: "The resistance campaign is Iraq's real war of liberation" (Seumas Milne, The Guardian, 2004/07/01))

"NATO's 'Myth' in Afghanistan" (Jackson Diehl, The Washington Post, 2004/07/05)
"At best, NATO will have 8,400 troops under its command in Afghanistan by the fall, or about a fifth of the number it dispatched to tiny Kosovo in 1999. The United States has some 14,000 troops in the country, but none are under NATO's command.
It now looks possible that the Afghan elections will be postponed because of lack of security. If so, NATO will get much of the blame — and the consequences for the alliance's cohesion may be dire. "Afghanistan is the litmus test for NATO's new mission," says a European ambassador in Washington. "If we fail in Afghanistan we might as well fold up and go home, because no one will take us seriously after that." ...
Yet, even if the Europeans were more enthusiastic, they might have little to contribute. Germany, the largest country in the European Union, has 270,000 soldiers in its army — yet its commanders maintain that no more than about 10,000 can be deployed at any one time. No matter the politics, the German Parliament is unlikely to authorize an increase in the current ceiling of 2,300 troops for Afghanistan. And Germany is the largest contributor to the NATO operation — France, which has never liked the idea of NATO operations outside of Europe, has only 800 soldiers there."

"Running free after escaping iron rule of the Taliban" (Harry de Quetteville, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/07/05)
"Three years ago Robina Muqimyar had never heard of the Olympics, still less of Marion Jones, who was crowned the fastest woman in the world at the Sydney Games in 2000.
All she knew was authoritarian Taliban rule, under which she dared not set foot from the interior of the dusty house in Kabul she shared with 15 relatives.
Now she knows exactly what the Games are, because she will be competing in them as one of Afghanistan's first two female athletes.
Although her awareness of Jones is still a little hazy, she will line up beside her in the opening rounds of the women's 100 metres in front of 75,000 people next month.
Of all the transformations wreaked by terrorism and the wars that have followed, Robina's change from a barefoot, illiterate captive of a backward regime to a polyglot modern Olympian must count among the happiest."

"U.S. Aides Say Kin of Hussein Aid Insurgency" (Douglas Jehl, The New York Times, 2004/07/05)
"A network of Saddam Hussein's cousins, operating in part from Syria and Jordan, is actively involved in the smuggling of guns, people and money into Iraq to support the anti-American insurgency, say American government officials and a prominent Iraqi.
The operations involve at least three cousins from the Majid family who now live in Syria and in Europe, the American officials said. A leading figure among them is Fatiq Suleiman al-Majid, a cousin of Mr. Hussein's and a former officer in Iraq's Special Security Organization who fled from Iraq to Syria last spring and may still be living there."

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

Copyright © Watch 2001-2006.
Copyrights of quoted materials belong to their respective owners.

"When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label."

Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)

"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)

"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)

"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)

"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

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

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

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

"Ange