Archived news and commentary: September 6 - 12, 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, September 12, 2004

News and commentary:

"In the Name of the Other: Reflections on the Coming Anti-Semitism" (Alain Finkielkraut, Azure, from the Autumn 2004 issue)
"The Other is wholly innocent, and even if his intentions are revolting, even if he comports himself as a declared enemy, it is never anything other than a legitimate defense. If the Other commits reprehensible acts, it is only in reaction to the spirit of reaction — in response, for example, to the apartheid practices and the harsh security measures to which he has been unfairly subjected. If he is angry, it is because exploitation and exclusion have made him dream of opening fire on the crowd; it is because his rights have been violated in France and his brothers murdered in Palestine. If he is a fanatic, it is because of the degradation to which the Gaudins and the Zionists have condemned him.
Such people are conscious only of the Other’s disgrace: These penitent-judges beat their breasts; these symbols of the Self try to make things right; these born and bred French nurse their genealogical arrogance by taking stock of all the closets in which the skeletonsof national history are hidden. These natives of a single land strive, with all their hearts, for a glorious, universal redemption. These baptized children reject the church yet fight for the right to wear the Islamic veil in schools. Uncomfortable with their own inheritance, they detribalize, Europeanize, cosmopolitanize, and globalize, and cannot suffer the jingoistic, chauvinist, colonial, pious, collaborating past of which they are the guardians. All this is opposed to the “Zionists,” who defend the ethno-religious purity of Israel and everything that goes with it — which is to say Sharon, which is to say Hitler — and who thereby demonstrate their complete imperviousness to the maxims of universal morality." (Hat tip: Larry Allen.)

"NGOs Make War on Israel" (Gerald M. Steinberg, Middle East Quarterly, from the Summer 2004 issue)
"Major NGOs such as HRW, Amnesty, and Christian Aid, working closely with the media and groups such as the U.N. Human Rights Commission, have been instrumental in promoting the Palestinian political agenda, using the terminology of international law. In 2001, the NGO community set the political agenda and shaped the discussions of the U.N. World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (WARC, held in Durban, South Africa), a gathering that became an anti-Israeli rally.[2] NGOs also drove the U.N. General Assembly resolution that referred the Israeli separation barrier to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. These NGOs also have gained a great deal of influence in shaping the Middle East policies of the EU, both collectively and as expressed by individual governments, as well as in the U.S. State Department. ...
Until the public demands that they receive the same scrutiny as government and corporations, they will continue to make subjective and biased use of terms such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, disproportionate use of force, excessive response, indiscriminate killing, and arbitrary use of force. In doing so, they will continue to be central elements in the Palestinian strategy of isolating and delegitimizing both Israel and its policies." (See also: NGO Monitor.)

"CBS falls for Kerry campaign's fake memo" (Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 2004/09/12)
"On Friday morning, Paul Krugman, the New York Times' excitable economist, filed a column called, ''The Dishonesty Thing,'' and for one moment I thought he was about to upbraid CBS for rushing on air with their laughably fake memos. But no, he was droning on about how the National Guard story demonstrated George W. Bush's ''pattern of lies: his assertions that he fulfilled his obligations when he obviously didn't ..." ...
After the 2002 election, I wrote, ''Remind me never to complain about 'liberal media bias' again. Right now, liberal media bias is conspiring to assist the Democrats to sleepwalk over the cliff.''
The media and the Democrats sustain each other's make-believe land. Dan Rather tells his staff, ''Kerry's told me there's nothing to this Swiftvet thing.'' Kerry tells his, ''Rather's assured me this Swiftvet story's going nowhere.''
George W. Bush ought to wake up every morning and thank the Lord the media aren't on his side."

"Man with iron fist tightens his grip on Russia" (Ian Mather, The Scotsman, 2004/09/12)
Russian School Siege XLVIII: "All three major television networks are now run by the state, although they are offset somewhat by Russia’s newspapers and by lively internet channels.
Russian television was told to go easy on the grim footage from Beslan, while officials were understating the death toll and overstating the effectiveness of the special forces deployed to end the confrontation.
Soon after explosions and gunfire rocked the school, the main television channel shifted away from the scene of mayhem and broadcast a soap opera about Second World War spies. It was left to internet sites to offer fast-breaking first-hand accounts ...
Last week Raf Shakirov, the editor of Izvestia, was dismissed because his weekend edition ran a full front cover photograph of a man carrying a half-naked girl out of the school in Beslan. Inside the paper, the headline read: "The whole floor was strewn with the bodies of dead children."
The owner of the paper, the metals magnate Vladimir Potanin, prides himself on good relations with the Kremlin. Shakirov’s front page was at odds with official attempts to play down the horror at Beslan.
The dismissal is ominous because the Russian printed press has, until now, managed to maintain an element of freedom in its coverage, compared with the tightly controlled television."(See also: "Second journalist 'drugged' by Russians" (Claire Cozens, The Guardian, 2004/09/10), "How Putin silences the journalists who criticise his brutality in Chechnya" (Stephen Glover, The Spectator, from the 2004/09/11 issue), "Russia: Journalist Detentions Raise Suspicions Of Media Control" (Mark Baker, Radio Free Europe, 2004/09/08) and "Groups Worry About Russia's Press Freedom" (Beth Gardiner, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/07))

"Iran says it won't halt nuclear technology drive" (Reuters, 2004/09/12)
"Iran on Sunday rejected European demands it halt its pursuit of nuclear technology but reiterated its readiness to provide assurances it would not use that technology to build atomic weapons.
Western diplomats have said Britain, France and Germany are demanding that Tehran halt all parts of the atomic fuel cycle -- particularly uranium enrichment -- that can be used to make a bomb.
The European Union trio have proposed a draft resolution for a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna starting on Monday which gives Iran until November to dispel doubts about its atomic ambitions.
Tehran rejects accusations that it has a covert atom bomb programme. It says its nuclear facilities will be used only to generate electricity.
Asked about the EU trio's stance, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi reiterated that Iran had no intention of abandoning its efforts to master the entire nuclear fuel cycle."

"Reported Blast in N. Korea Fuels Arms Concerns" (Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, 2004/09/12)
"Concerns about North Korea's nuclear arms program were fueled over the weekend by reports of a mysterious explosion in the isolated northern reaches of the country, but officials here could not say immediately whether a cloud spotted by satellite was a weapons test or some other kind of fire.
The unexplained incident took place Sept. 9, an important holiday marking the 56th anniversary of the communist nation's founding.
"Last week, our seismic sensors detected some sort of explosion in the North. But our analysts don't think that it was linked to a nuclear test," a senior South Korean Foreign Ministry official told The Times.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted an unnamed diplomat in Seoul as saying, "We understand that a mushroom-shaped cloud about 3.5 to 4 kilometers [2.2 to 2.5 miles] in diameter was monitored during the explosion." The source added, 'It doesn't seem to be an ordinary explosion.'"

Saturday, September 11, 2004

News and commentary:

"Family members of Sept. 11 victims..."
(Nicole Bengiveno, AP, 2004/09/11)
"Family members of Sept. 11 victims during a moment of silence at the ceremony marking the third anniversary of the attacks, at the World Trade Center site in New York, Saturday, Sept. 11, 2004."

"President's Radio Address" (George W. Bush, The White House, 2004/09/11)
Three years VII: "The terrorist attacks on September the 11th were a turning point for our nation. We saw the goals of a determined enemy: to expand the scale of their murder, and force America to retreat from the world. And our nation accepted a mission: We will defeat this enemy. ...
The United States is determined to stay on the offensive, and to pursue the terrorists wherever they train, or sleep, or attempt to set down roots. We have conducted this campaign from the mountains of Afghanistan, to the heart of the Middle East, to the horn of Africa, to the islands of the Philippines, to hidden cells within our own country. ...
The United States is also determined to advance democracy in the broader Middle East, because freedom will bring the peace and security we all want. When the peoples of that region are given new hope and lives of dignity, they will let go of old hatreds and resentments, and the terrorists will find fewer recruits. And as governments of that region join in the fight against terror instead of harboring terrorists, America and the world will be more secure. Our present work in Iraq and Afghanistan is difficult. It is also historic and essential. By our commitment and sacrifice today, we will help transform the Middle East, and increase the safety of our children and grandchildren."

"WE LOVE USAMA
WE HATE BUSH"
(Mohsin Raza, Reuters, 2004/09/11)
"A supporter of hard-line Islamic alliance Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal chants slogans during a rally in Lahore September 11, 2004. The rally was part of the countrywide protests against U.S. actions in Afghanistan and Iraq following the 9/11 attacks in America."

"Somber Mood as U.S. Forces and Allies Mark 9/11" (David Brunnstrom, Reuters, 2004/09/11)
"Taliban official Mullah Mohammad Hassan Rehmani repeated its view that Sept. 11 was a pretext for the U.S. to invade the country, adding: "America has proved it is a terrorist by killing thousands of Afghans through barbaric bombing." ...
In Pakistan, pro-Taliban Islamic leader Fazal-ur-Rehman told an Islamabad rally attended by a few hundred people that the United States and President Bush had used the "sad" day of Sept. 11 in a "barbaric" way to wage war against Muslims around the world.
In Britain, a tiny Muslim group that hailed the Sept. 11 hijackers as heroes canceled plans for a celebration.
But Anjem Choudhury, a leader of the Muhajiroun group, called bin Laden "my Muslim brother."
"We believe he is on the right path. We believe he is struggling. We believe he is leading Muslims on the right path," Choudhury told a news conference in London."

"What Russia Knows Now" (Victor Erofeyev, The New York Times, 2004/09/11)
Three years VI: "Where does Mr. Basayev end and Al Qaeda begin? A separatist and a fundamentalist are two very different things. The first demands political separation; the second declares holy war against us. But the separatist Basayev no longer exists. A massacre of children worthy of Herod is not a coded invitation to peace negotiations. Mr. Basayev's message can no longer be reduced to vengeance, an idea that presumes we call it quits when all the scores have been settled.
The military dispute over Chechen sovereignty, morally impossible for Russia to win from the very beginning, has mutated, leaving none of the old certainties in place. Like Osama bin Laden's attack on the United States, Mr. Basayev's attack signifies the start here of the Third World War of which the whole of Western civilization is so rightly afraid, which it tries with all its might to postpone, which it even tries to ignore."

"Three years on, and we're bored to death with the war on terror" (Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/09/11)
Three years V: "The final effect of boredom is resentment at those leaders who keep telling us about the danger. The natural temperament of British people bored by fanatics is to take comfort in Chamberlain rather than listen to Churchill. People seem angrier with Blair and Bush than with the murderers they seek to combat. ...
In our Sussex village in May 1940, my grandfather met an elderly neighbour on the green. "I'm afraid the news from France is very bad, Mrs X," he said. "Oh, I never bother my head with that sort of thing," she answered. There was something reassuring about that remark: it emerged from a fundamentally peaceful and confident society.
That is the sort of society that one should defend to the death; but if one is not careful, death becomes the operative word. We were warned about that three years ago today, but already we are forgetting."

"We insubordinate people" (Sarah Honig, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/09/11)
Honig on Arun Gandhi, his grandfather and the Gandhi mystique:
"Jews have particular reason not to be bamboozled by the Gandhi mystique. ...
In 1938 (several days after Kristallnacht), the great guardian of human conscience found nothing better to do than publish an open letter to Europe's Jews in which he urged them to embrace the very passivity that would eventually lead six million to annihilation.
In Mahatma Gandhi's defense it should be stressed that he didn't single Jews out. He had equally inane advice for invaded Czechs and attacked Brits.
Indeed, if anyone had listened to him, this would be a very different world today. There would be no Jews to encroach on Arab bliss, and German would be the planet's lingua franca. Third World moralizers like Arun would be enslaved and silenced. Unbound by the niceties of the British Raj, the Third Reich wouldn't abide any civil disobedience. ...
In 1946, already after the unprecedented then-recent horrors became known, the righteous pacifist showed that he learned absolutely nothing. Worse yet, he didn't really care.
"The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife," he volunteered to his biographer Louis Fisher. Alternatively, "they should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs." Not quite believing his ears, Fisher tried to make sure and asked: "You mean the Jews should have committed collective suicide?"
Unmoved, Gandhi judged that "Yes, that would have been heroism."
After brief reflection, he added: 'The Jews had been killed anyway and might as well have died significantly.'" (See also: "Master of moral relativism" (Yaacov Lozowick, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/09/01) and "IHT and the Terror Strategy" (HonestReporting, 2004/08/31))

"Taking Flip-Flops Seriously" (Robert Kagan and William Kristol, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/09/20 issue)
"From the September 20, 2004 issue: on fundamental matters of war and peace, John Kerry will not or cannot hold to a position under pressure.

I said at the time I would have preferred if we had given diplomacy a greater opportunity, but I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him.
John F. Kerry, May 3, 2003

Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe that we are not safer with his capture, don't have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president.
December 16, 2003

Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it's the right authority for a president to have. But I would have used that authority as I have said throughout this campaign, effectively.
August 9, 2004

Iraq was "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time."
September 6, 2004"

(See also: "Kerry Slams 'Wrong War in the Wrong Place'" (Calvin Woodward, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/07))

"Rather Roundup" (Tim Blair, timblair.spleenville.com, 2004/09/11)
Off topic of the day. A roundup of news on the CBS forgery scandal:
"Dan Rather politely requests that you ignore the evidence and instead look at the sinister entities behind these malicious ... er ... truths:

CBS News anchor Dan Rather on Friday vigorously defended his "60 Minutes" story on President Bush's National Guard service, saying the 30-year-old memos he disclosed on the show this week "were and remain authentic" despite questions raised by some handwriting and document experts.
"Until someone shows me definitive proof that they are not, I don't see any reason to carry on a conversation with the professional rumor mill," Rather said. "My colleagues and I at '60 Minutes' made great efforts to authenticate these documents and to corroborate the story as best we could. ... I think the public is smart enough to see from whom some of this criticism is coming and draw judgments about what the motivations are."

Breathtaking." (See also: "Rather Defends CBS Over Memos on Bush" (Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post, 2004/09/11) and the CNN transcript "Rather Digs In: The Documents Are Authentic" (Drudge Report, 2004/09/10):
"DAN RATHER, CBS NEWS ANCHOR: I know that this story is true. I believe that the witnesses and the documents are authentic. We wouldn't have gone to air if they would not have been. There isn't going to be -- there's no -- what you're saying apology?
QUESTION: Apology or any kind of retraction or...
RATHER: Not even discussed, nor should it be.")

Added in archive:
"HIJAB IS BASIC HUMAN RIGHT OF MUSLIM WOMEN" (Faisal Mahmood, Reuters, 2004/09/04)
"I Can't Believe I Watched the Whole Thing: Gavel-to-gavel with C-SPAN" (Andrew Ferguson, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/09/13 issue)

Friday, September 10, 2004

News and commentary:

"The Whole World Is Watching" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2004/09/10)
Three years IV: "Much of the Islamic Middle East continues to blame others for its own induced catastrophe, apparently unaware — thanks to the lever of oil it didn't discover, doesn't know how to develop, and uses to intensify rather than alleviate its poverty — that its entire culture is becoming an international pariah. Islamic young men on European flights are looked at with distrust; they are not welcome in Russia. China wants none of them. They are wary of visiting India. Australia learned from Bali. The whole world is watching — in disgust. ...
How the Arab-Islamic world managed to unite over 3 billion nuclear Anglo Americans, Indians, Chinese, and Russians in their suspicions of it will be a case-study in imbecility for diplomatic historians for decades to come.
Only the Europeans, in their fear and impotence, still pray that obsequiousness might fend off Islamofascism, as if a Madrid is an aberration rather than a harbinger of worse to come. Only the elite radical American Left is either too timid or too morally bankrupt to condemn the new fascism in the Middle East or the Arab genocide in Sudan, preferring instead to whine about Bush's "lies" and all the other non-issues that the most secure and leisured people on the planet protest about for an hour or two before calling it a day."

"9/11 World: This Is the Way We Live Now" (Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/09/10)
Three years III: "That bloody carnage at a grade school in Beslan, Russia, last week made one thing clear: Now we are all living in 9/11 World.
9/11 World, defined by Islamic bombs that are designed to blow to pieces the bodies of civilians where they reside, work or go to school, now rings the world from New York to Moscow, Madrid to Jakarta, Jerusalem, Rome, Nepal and Fallujah. The rubble of New York looks like the rubble of Beslan.
This is 9/11 World, where tears flow constantly for the bleeding and burial of innocents. Three Septembers ago in America, children buried their fathers and mothers. This September in Russia, fathers and mothers bury their children. Even this universal ceremony of grief is desecrated by the designers of 9/11 World, for they leave little or nothing to bury. ...
The statements of resolve this week by the presidents of Russia and Indonesia are welcome. But absent active U.S. leadership, Islamic terrorism will come to be tolerated by other national leaders -- as was the Balkans, as is Darfur -- as inevitable and unfortunate phenomena, like hurricanes. France, Germany and Spain have proven that.
But one may assume that for most, if not all, Americans since September of 2001, 9/11 World is unacceptable. They won't live in a world where civil society must get used to having barbarism parked at the curb. In November they will decide which candidate and which party's attitude will lead them away from accepting a modus vivendi with hell."

"Risen and fallen angels - The Israel-hating Left" (Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/09/10)
"How can the Left treat with veneration a movement that, in basic respects, is the antithesis of the very values it claims to champion? Conversely, how can it view with venomous hatred the one country in the Middle East that attempts to live by those values? ...
Part of the answer, of course, is that the pacifist and progressive Left often has a secret fondness for violence and illiberality – remember the Red Brigades and the Weathermen. Part of the answer, too, is that the Western media has tended to magnify Israeli violence and minimize Palestinian violence, leading to a generally distorted picture of events. But these are not the deepest reasons.
Rather, the Palestinian cause has benefited from a certain kind of mirror-imaging or inverse correlation. To the extent that Israel is seen as powerful, the Palestinians are seen as powerless. To the extent that Israel is seen to be guilty, the Palestinians are seen to be innocent. To the extent that Israel is seen as having deliberately chosen its course, the Palestinians are seen as having been stripped of the ability to choose. And to the extent that Israel is seen to represent a unique kind of evil – the evil of the fallen angel – the Palestinians represent a unique kind of good – the good of the lost little puppy. ...
For the Israel-hating Left, Palestine has become a religious destination, not a political question; a world of fallen and risen angels, in which facts conform to molds and evidence yields to faith. At some point, however, it will become increasingly difficult to bridge the chasm between their faith and their values. If they're not careful, it is a chasm into which they will, eventually, fall."

"Egyptian heroes in Egypt's eye"
(Amr Nabil, AP, 2004/09/10)
"Egyptians pass Friday, Sept.10, 2004 a giant billboard in Cairo's Tahrir Square, showing Gamal Mubarak, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's son, right, with wrestling Olympic gold medalist Karam Ibrahim. The two are pictured when the Egyptian team returned from Athens Aug. 30 with its haul of five medals, including one gold, the country's highest medal count in 56 years. Arabic slogan reads as 'Egyptian heroes in Egypt's eye.'"

"Egypt Billboard May Portend Aspirations" (Donna Bryson, Associated Press/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/10)
"The visibility of the Egyptian president's son, seen by many here as his father's chosen political heir, has grown to Olympian dimensions: His photograph is on a four-story-tall billboard on Cairo's busiest square. ...
President Hosni Mubarak and Gamal Mubarak have repeatedly denied they plan a father-son succession. But Gamal Mubarak has indicated he would not turn down a nomination, presumably to run in one of the one-candidate affairs that have returned his father to power every six years for more than two decades. The next presidential vote is expected in 2005. ...
The new billboard is the first to give the son such prominence. He is pictured in a business suit on one panel greeting wrestling gold medalist Karam Ibrahim. Another panel shows Ibrahim in action on the mat, a third shows boxing silver medalist Mohamed Aly in the ring and the fourth shows all five medal winners."

"Second journalist 'drugged' by Russians" (Claire Cozens, The Guardian, 2004/09/10)
Russian School Siege XLVII: "A Georgian journalist detained by Russian authorities after reporting on the Beslan school massacre was drugged, according to medical experts, raising fresh concerns about press freedom in Russia.
She is the second journalist to claim she was poisoned while trying to cover the school siege in North Ossetia - earlier this week Anna Politkovskaya, one of President Vladimir Putin's most outspoken critics, said she had been drugged on a flight to a nearby airport.
Nana Lezhava of the independent Georgian broadcaster Rustavi-2 said she had slept for 24 hours while in the custody of the Russian authorities after being given coffee in her cell, and felt ill when she woke up.
Gela Lezhava of the Georgian drug research institute told reporters that urine samples taken from Lezhava after her release this week showed traces of tranquilisers, and that he suspected the journalist was drugged." (See also: "How Putin silences the journalists who criticise his brutality in Chechnya" (Stephen Glover, The Spectator, from the 2004/09/11 issue), "Russia: Journalist Detentions Raise Suspicions Of Media Control" (Mark Baker, Radio Free Europe, 2004/09/08) and "Groups Worry About Russia's Press Freedom" (Beth Gardiner, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/07))

"Iraqi kidnappers give Italy 24 hours to meet demands" (Xinhuanet, 2004/09/10)
"A group in Iraq that has claimed kidnapping two Italian female aid workers this week gave Italy 24 hours to meet its demands, local media reported Friday.
The report said that in a message posted on an Islamic website, the Ansar el Zawahri group demanded the unconditional release of Muslim prisoners from Iraqi jails.
If this does not take place, the group warned, "the Italian people will know nothing of the fate of the Italian hostages." ...
In its message, Ansar el Zawahri said that "the crusading, Zionist, criminal Italian government must free faithful Muslim prisoners from all crusading, Zionist, criminal jails on Iraqi territory." ...
In a message posted on the same website by the group, which claimed responsibility for the kidnappings, had said Pari and Torretta would not be released 'even if Italy goes down on its knees.'" (See also: "Italians shocked by kidnaps, seek united response" (Philip Pullella, Reuters, 2004/09/08) and "Gunmen Abduct Two Italian Aid Workers in Baghdad" (Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Tom Perry, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/07))

"Hamas: Left-Wing Encouraged Us to Attack" (Arutz Sheva, 2004/09/10)
"How many lives have left-wing statements cost Israel? In a damning condemnation of the Israeli left, a new book about the battles known as the Oslo War quotes Hamas leaders saying that the behavior of Israel's left-wing encourages them to continue their terrorist attacks.
The book, "The Seventh War," by journalists Avi Yisacharov of Voice of Israel Radio and Amos Harel of Haaretz, is based on comprehensive investigations and interviews with Hamas terrorist leaders in Gaza and Israeli prisons.
Yisacharov told Channel 1 Television yesterday that Hamas leaders had told him clearly: "It was the Israeli left and your peace camp that ultimately encouraged us to continue with our suicide attacks."
Yisacharov said he was told as follows:
'We tried, through our attacks, to create fragmentation and dissention within Israeli society, and the left-wing's reaction was proof that this was indeed the right approach. When we heard about the 'Pilots' Letter' [written and publicized last year by 27 Israel Air Force pilots who refused to take part in bombing missions against terrorist leaders in Arab towns], and the elite soldiers who refused to serve [in Judea, Samaria and Gaza], it strengthened those in our camp who promoted the idea of suicide bombers...'"

"U.N. nuclear agency asleep at the switch" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2004/09/09)
The third and last excerpt from "Treachery": "Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's new foreign minister, delivered a memorable address to the United Nations Security Council in New York on Dec. 16, 2003. ...
"The United Nations must not fail the Iraqi people again," he said.
It was clear to whom Zebari was referring: France, Germany, Russia and China, among others in the world body, fought U.S.-led efforts to end Saddam's bloody dictatorship.
But the organization's failure was far more significant than failing the Iraqi people. The United Nations had failed in its founding purpose: to preserve peace and international security.
It appeased Saddam for years before the United States called for decisive action.
And Saddam's Iraq is just one of many rogue regimes that the United Nations has failed to keep in check. Again and again, dangerous states have built up their militaries and weapons programs right under the world body's nose, despite sanctions and anti-proliferation agreements.
Three times, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency missed the covert nuclear-arms programs of rogue regimes, allowing those states to build deadly weapons capability under the guise of generating nuclear power.
Disclosures of the nuclear progress of North Korea, Libya and Iran came in rapid succession, within the space of about a year. If the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) did not detect these programs, one must wonder what purpose the U.N. branch serves." (See also: "Libyan sincerity on arms in doubt" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2004/09/09) and "French connection armed Saddam" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2004/09/08))

"So, dirty animals, what have you to say?" (Tim Blair, timblair.spleenville.com, 2004/09/10)
Tim Blair has of course lots of other updates on the Jakarta attack: "Brian Deegan is wrong:

Brian Deegan, whose son Joshua died in the 2002 Bali bombings, today said the Jakarta embassy bombing showed Australia must negotiate with the terrorist organisation, Jemaah Islamiah.
Mr Deegan said [Foreign Minister] Mr Downer should meet with the leaders of JI while he was in Indonesia.
"He is the Minister of Foreign Affairs, it's his portfolio. If we are at some kind of war, then we should negotiate," Mr Deegan said.
"He (Mr Downer) should speak to the head of JI and ask him: 'Why? What's the problem?'

We don’t need to ask. They’ve already told us what the problem is: we are dirty animals and insects that need to be wiped out, and regardless of whether we’re Australians, Americans, whatever, we are all white people.
You know, it might just be my reading of things, but these don’t sound like particularly promising opening points for negotiation. ...
Speaking of negotiation, check out the SMH’s latest online poll:

Should Australia try to negotiate?"

(Note: As of now a stunning 31% answers "Yes.")

Note: The CBS forgery scandal is a bit off-topic even by my loose standards, but it says of course a lot about the "media war" between Old Media and the Blogosphere. InstaPundit follows the story — which broke on Free Republic and Power Line — closely. James Lileks says it best as so often.
See also the original story: "New Questions On Bush Guard Duty" (CBS News, 2004/09/08).
InstaPundit also has this: "Just caught Jonathan Klein debating Stephen Hayes about the CBS forgery scandal. Klein says that 'Bloggers have no checks and balances . . . [it's] a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas.'" Brian Carnell has a partial transcript:

"KLEIN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and these loggers have no checks and balances and couldn't -- I agree. It's an important moment because you couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing..."

Added in archive:
"Local residents walk through debris..." (Sergei Karpukhin, Reuters, 2004/09/05)
"The Important News About Iraq That Has Gone Unreported" (Amir Taheri, Arab News, 2004/08/25)

Thursday, September 9, 2004

News and commentary:

"Smoke billows following a blast..."
(Adhiwardhana Widjajanto, AP, 2004/09/09)
"Smoke billows following a blast outside the Australian Embassy Thursday, Sept. 9, 2004, in Jakarta, Indonesia. A powerful car bomb exploded near the Australian embassy in Jakarta on Thursday, killing seven people and leaving nearly 100 wounded, witnesses and police said."

"Word ‘Terrorist’ Has Lost Its Meaning" (Mohammad T. Al-Rasheed, Arab News, 2004/09/09)
Russian School Siege XLVI: "The madness of theological elitism has caught up with us, and what we silently nurtured over the decades has tasted blood and will not cease until you put a stake through its heart.
There is a lady writer who had written about Jews drinking the blood of children. Now that we have visual proof of who is actually doing it, what would that venerable Hera have to offer in way of explanation? ...
These vipers have entwined themselves around a misconceived theological concept under our own eyes and with the blessing of the majority. They ruled the dunes before taking to the waves and now they are killing children in a Russian school. What for? A life of misery in the land of beard — or under the banner of sanctity? Or is it liberty from an enemy who exists in our hallucinations and darker egos? To kill a child is a crime beyond redemption and beyond explanation. ...
A one-time “terrorist” will one day sit at the negotiating table and conclude a peace of some sorts. Who would sit with these people? Who can fathom and call upon the providential patience needed to look them in the eye?
As they pop-up on the surface of this planet and wreak havoc and sow pain, a layer of our cosmetically formulated skin is shed. We are getting close to exposing the bone. We have allowed this cancer to grow. Those responsible will be held in guilt by God and history." (Note: The "lady writer" in question is in all probability Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma, infamous for her anti-Semitic blood libel column, which was published two years ago in the Saudi newspaper Al-Riyadh: "Saudi Government Daily: Jews Use Teenagers' Blood for 'Purim' Pastries" (Special Dispatch No. 354, MEMRI, 2002/03/13))

"9/11 Memorial Vandalized" (John Brown, johnnbrown.blogspot.com, 2004/09/09)
"As hard as it may be to believe, the 9/11 memorial placed on campus here at UT [University of Tennessee, Knoxville]Tuesday night has been vandalized.
Apparently, some cowardly and despicable individuals snuck onto the amphitheater Wednesday night and removed all 3,000 flags. They moved them to Humanities Plaza (about 100 yards away) and replanted them, spelling out "The World Suffers." They also chalked various antiwar and anti-Bush slogans on the buildings and on the pavement - in direct violation of University rules. ...
This is quite disturbing for many reasons. First of all, the memorial was a nonpartisan one - the College Democrats were invited to attend. People of all political persuasions were involved. It had nothing to do with the Iraq war. Yet apparently in this world of rabid antiwar sentiment, even a 9/11 memorial can be considered offensive by certain activists."

"Gore Slams Hillary's Religion" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2004/09/09)
Southern Baptist Al Gore equals Methodism with Islamofascism:
"We've got a flight later on, so we'll probably read David Remnick's apparently longsome profile of Al Gore in The New Yorker from 35,000 feet. But several readers wrote us to call attention to this passage:

Gore's mouth tightened. A Southern Baptist, he, too, had declared himself born again, but he clearly had disdain for Bush's public kind of faith. "It's a particular kind of religiosity," he said. "It's the American version of the same fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia, in Kashmir, in religions around the world: Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Muslim. They all have certain features in common. In a world of disconcerting change, when large and complex forces threaten familiar and comfortable guideposts, the natural impulse is to grab hold of the tree trunk that seems to have the deepest roots and hold on for dear life and never question the possibility that it's not going to be the source of your salvation. And the deepest roots are in philosophical and religious traditions that go way back. You don't hear very much from them about the Sermon on the Mount, you don't hear very much about the teachings of Jesus on giving to the poor, or the beatitudes. It's the vengeance, the brimstone."

Now, we don't pretend to be an expert on the various Christian denominations, but we do know that President Bush is a Methodist. (He was raised Episcopalian but switched when he married Laura.) Another prominent Methodist is New York's junior senator, Hillary Clinton, so Gore seems to be suggesting that Hillary's religion is similar to the "fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia," which of course produced Osama bin Laden. Shame on Gore for slandering Mrs. Clinton in this way." (See also: "The Wilderness Campaign" (Favid Remnick, The New Yorker, 2004/09/06))

"Bin Laden Deputy: U.S. Will Be Defeated" (Sarah El Deeb, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/09)
"Osama bin Laden's chief deputy proclaimed the United States will ultimately be defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan in a videotape broadcast Thursday that appeared to be a rallying call for al-Qaida ahead of the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"The defeat of America in Iraq and Afghanistan has become a matter of time, with God's help," Ayman al-Zawahri said on the tape, which was broadcast by the pan-Arab television station Al-Jazeera. "The Americans in both countries are between two fires, if they continue they bleed to death and if they withdraw they lose everything."
A bearded al-Zawahri, wearing eyeglasses, a white turban and a black vest over a white shirt, spoke looking into the camera. An assault weapon was leaning on the wall behind him. ...
"Southern and eastern Afghanistan have completely become an open field for the mujahedeen," or holy fighters, al-Zawahri said in excerpts of the tape aired by the Qatar-based station.
"The Americans are huddled in their trenches, refusing to come out to confront the holy warriors despite the holy warriors' provoking them by shelling, shooting and cutting the routes around them and their defense concentrates on strikes from the air which wastes America's money in kicking up dust," he added."

"UN members oppose tough U.S. proposal on Darfur" (Evelyn Leopold, Reuters, 2004/09/09)
"China, Pakistan and Algeria expressed opposition on Thursday to a tough U.S. draft resolution that would threaten Sudan with an oil embargo but supports a large African Union presence in the country's volatile Darfur region. ...
Asked about U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's statement in Washington on Thursday that genocide had taken place in Darfur, Algerian Ambassador Abdallah Baali said the African Union at its recent summit "said very clearly that there is no situation of genocide or ethnic cleansing."
He and Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram indicated they would oppose a section of the resolution which asks U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to set up a commission to determine if genocide had taken place. ...
"We abstained on the last resolution and this one goes even further. At the moment I don't see the need for the resolution," Akram added. ...
The resolution threatens to consider sanctions on oil exports as well as against individual Sudanese officials if atrocities continue. But it does not impose them or give a deadline." (See also: "African leaders play the fiddle while Sudan burns" (Patrick Van Rensberg, Mmegi, 2004/07/15))

"Powell Declares Genocide in Sudan in Bid to Raise Pressure" (Steven R. Weisman, The New York Times, 2004/09/09)
"Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, seeking to raise pressure on Sudan to stop the atrocities in Darfur, declared today for the first time that the killings, rapes and destruction that have forced 1.5 million people from their homes amounted to genocide and should be treated as such by the United Nations.
In toughly worded testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Powell said he had concluded that genocide had occurred after studying the findings of experts sent to the area in July to interview victims of violence in western Sudan, much of it carried out by the government-backed militia known as the Janjaweed.
"When we reviewed the evidence compiled by our team," Mr. Powell said, 'we concluded — I concluded — that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility, and that genocide may still be occurring.'" (See also: "The Crisis In Darfur" (Colin L. Powell, U.S. Department of State, 2004/09/09))

"We still don’t get it" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2004/09/11 issue)
Three years II: "Three years after September 11, the Islamist death cult is the love whose name no one dare speak. And, if you can’t even bring yourself to identify your enemy, are you likely to defeat him? Can you even know him? He seems to know us pretty well. He understands the pressures he can bring to bear on Spain, and the Philippines, and France, too. He’s come to appreciate the self-imposed constraints under which his enemy fights — the legalisms, the political correctness, the deference to ineffectual multilateralism. He’s revolted by the infidels’ decadence but he has to admit it’s enormously helpful: the useful idiots of the pro-gay, pro-feminist Left are far more idiotic and far more useful to him than they ever were to Stalin. ...
That’s really the heart of it: the failure of what Osama bin Laden saw as a soft pampered West to imagine that it can ever all come to an end. Three years ago, for the cover of our September 11 issue, Heath drew us a defiant Statue of Liberty, her torch held high above the headline ‘The West Must Fight Back.’ Nice idea, but it didn’t quite work out like that. 9/11 was not ‘the day that changed the world’ but instead the day that revealed how much the world had already changed. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, ‘the West’, for example, had lacked sufficient sense of common purpose to ‘fight back.’"

"How Putin silences the journalists who criticise his brutality in Chechnya" (Stephen Glover, The Spectator, from the 2004/09/11 issue)
Russian School Siege XLV: "When he became President four years ago, Russia had what approximated to an independent media. Now all television channels and nearly all newspapers are controlled directly or indirectly by the Kremlin. Putin nationalised the liberal NTV channel by putting it in the hands of Gazprom, a state-backed gas company. The country’s last independent television channel was shut down last year on the pretext of financial insolvency. A law passed last summer threatens newspapers with closure if, during an election period, they express any opinion about a politician’s policies, his campaign or his personality. ...
Izvestia published shocking pictures of the siege, and questioned the claim by officials that there had been only 350 hostages in the school. It also denounced the censored coverage of events on state-controlled television, though on one channel a commentator by the name of Sergei Brilyov was brave enough to call on the government to come clean about the ending of the siege. Another newspaper, Moskovsky Komsomolets, brazenly accused the authorities of ‘lying to us all the time’. The government reacted by securing the dismissal of the editor of Izvestia, Raf Shakirov." (See also: "Russia: Journalist Detentions Raise Suspicions Of Media Control" (Mark Baker, Radio Free Europe, 2004/09/08) and "Groups Worry About Russia's Press Freedom" (Beth Gardiner, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/07))

"Hating America" (Fareed Zakaria, Foreign Policy, from the September/October 2004 issue)
"On September 12, 2001, Jean-Marie Colombani, the editor of Le Monde, famously wrote, “Today we are all Americans.” Three years on, it seems that we are all anti-Americans. Hostility to the United States is deeper and broader than at any point in the last 50 years. The Western Europeans, it is often argued, oppose U.S. foreign policy because peace and prosperity have made them soft. But the United States faces almost identical levels of anti-Americanism in Turkey, India, and Pakistan, none of which are rich, postmodern, or pacifist. With the exception of Israel and Britain, no country today has a durable pro-American majority.
In this post-ideological age, anti-Americanism fills the void left by defunct belief systems. It has become a powerful trend in international politics today — and perhaps the most dangerous. ...
Imagine a world without the United States as the global leader. Even short of the imaginative and intelligent scenario of chaos that British historian Niall Ferguson outlined in this magazine (see “A World Without Power,” July/August 2004), it would certainly look grim. There are many issues on which the United States is the crucial organizer of collective goods. Someone has to be concerned about terrorism and nuclear and biological proliferation. Other countries might bristle at certain U.S. policies, but would someone else really be willing to bully, threaten, cajole, and bribe countries such as Libya to renounce terror and dismantle their WMD programs? On terror, trade, AIDs, nuclear proliferation, U.N. reform, and foreign aid, U.S. leadership is indispensable." (See also: "A World Without Power" (Niall Ferguson, Foreign Policy, from the July/August 2004 issue))

"Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?" (Terry Eagleton, New Statesman, 2004/09/09)
A review of "Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?" by Frank Furedi:
"We inherit the idea of the intellectual from the 18th-century Enlightenment, which valued truth, universality and objectivity - all highly suspect notions in a postmodern age. As Furedi points out, these ideas used to be savaged by the political right, as they undercut appeals to prejudice, hierarchy and custom. Nowadays, in a choice historical irony, they are under assault from the cultural left.
In the age of Sontag, Said, Williams and Chomsky, whole sectors of the left behave as though these men and women were no longer possible. ...
Now, knowledge is valuable only when it can be used as an instrument for something else: social cohesion, political control, economic production. In a brilliant insight, Furedi claims that this instrumental downgrading of knowledge is just the flip side of postmodern irrationalism. The mystical and the managerial are secretly in cahoots. ...
Furedi, interestingly, does not see market forces or the growth of professionalism as the chief villains in this sorry story. For him, the main factor is the politics of inclusion, which in his view belittles the capacities of the very people it purports to serve. It implies in its pessimistic way that excellence and popular participation are bound to be opposites. If Furedi's case is so forceful, it is not least because he is no cross-dressed version of Melanie Phillips. On the contrary, he is a radical democrat who rejects cultural pessimism, decries the idea of a golden age, and applauds the advances that contemporary culture has made. It is just that he objects to slighting people's potential for self-transformation under cover of flattering their current identities."

"Jakarta Embassy Blast Kills Eight, Wounds Scores" (Achmad Sukarsono and Tomi Soetjipto, Reuters, 2004/09/09)
"A car bomb exploded outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta on Thursday, killing at least eight people and wounding more than 130, in an attack police blamed on al Qaeda-linked militants.
The blast, which came days ahead of Indonesia's presidential election and exactly a month before Australia's general election, blew a large hole in the embassy's security fence and gate and left a deep crater in the road outside.
Charred debris, bodies and body parts, glass and the twisted wreckage of motorcycles, cars and a truck littered the road outside the embassy after the blast, which tore off the glass fronts of nearby office towers, wounding many office workers."

"Pakistan kills 50 in raid on Al-Qaeda training camp" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/09)
"Pakistani forces smashed a suspected Al-Qaeda training camp in a remote tribal area near the Afghan border, killing some 50 militant fighters, the military said.
"Around 50 people, 90 percent of them foreigners, were killed in the strike on the terrorist training camp," military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told the private ARYOne television channel.
Most of the victims were Uzbeks and Chechens with some Arabs among them, Sultan said.
A military statement said troops launched 'a precise strike on a foreign terrorist training camp... and successfully knocked it out.'"

"A Western strategy for Chechnya" (Anatol Lieven, International Herald Tribune, 2004/09/09)
Russian School Siege XLIV: "Nor can the West encourage any political process which could lead to these extremists once again gaining an ascendancy in Chechnya, as they did during the period of its de facto independence from 1996 to 1999.
After the Russian withdrawal in 1996, these radical forces revolted against the democratically elected government of President Aslan Maskhadov and turned Chechnya into a base for a monstrous wave of kidnapping and murder against Russians, Westerners and fello Caucasians.
In alliance with radical Arab Islamists linked to Al Qaeda, they launched a campaign to drive Russia from the whole of the Northern Caucasus and unite it with Chechnya in one Islamic republic. ...
Any thought of Chechen independence must therefore be deferred until a solid basis for Chechen statehood has been created. In return for Western support for Chechen democracy and their own amnesty and participation in the Chechen political process, Maskhadov and his followers must accept autonomy for Chechnya within the Russian Federation as a short-to-medium-term solution and promise to struggle for long-term independence by exclusively peaceful and political means.
They must also commit themselves not only to break absolutely with the terrorists, but to fight against them alongside Russian forces. If they fail to make this commitment, they should be treated by the West as terrorist supporters." (See also: "Give the Chechens a Land of Their Own" (Richard Pipes, The New York Times, 2004/09/09): "The Russians ought to learn from the French. France, too, was once involved in a bloody colonial war in which thousands fell victim of terrorist violence. The Algerian war began in 1954 and dragged on without an end in sight, until Charles de Gaulle courageously solved the conflict by granting Algeria independence in 1962. ...
Russia, the largest country on earth, can surely afford to let go of a tiny colonial dependency, and ought to do so without delay.")

"Libyan sincerity on arms in doubt" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2004/09/09)
The second in a three-part series of excerpts from "Treachery":
"Caught in the act, Libya was forced to publicly reveal it had worked secretly to build nuclear as well as chemical weapons.
Gadhafi, concerned about his legacy and an economy hit hard by sanctions, made a startling announcement two months later, in December 2003. The dictator said Libya would abandon its nuclear and chemical arms programs, limit the range of its missiles and comply with numerous international weapons treaties.
Libya ultimately admitted it had spent some $500 million since the late 1990s in developing nuclear weapons.
Gadhafi's announcement was widely hailed as a victory in the effort to stem the flow of nuclear-weapons technology to rogue states.
Feith, the U.S. undersecretary of defense, was more cautious. But he acknowledged that Libya's pledge to disarm could be an important step.
Feith suggested that Gadhafi adopted this approach after the sobering U.S.-led ousters of the Taliban from Afghanistan and Saddam from Iraq. ...
Still, the Libyans have continued to deny the existence of a biological-weapons program, even though numerous intelligence reports indicate they have such a program." (See also: "French connection armed Saddam" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2004/09/08))

"Russia Says Siege Leader Brutally Killed 3 Followers" (Peter Baker, The Washington Post, 2004/09/09)
Russian School Siege XLIII: "In interviews with hostages and the lone captured guerrilla, Ustinov said the group gathered in a forest, boarded a GAZ-66 military truck and two other vehicles, then headed for Beslan. Along the way, they picked up a police officer, he said. Ustinov did not say whether the officer was a willing accomplice.
After overtaking the school, the guerrillas began unloading guns and explosives, but some appeared to have second thoughts, Ustinov said. "They asked, 'Why are we seizing a school?'" the prosecutor said.
The captured guerrilla, identified as Nur-Pashi Kulayev, told interrogators that one of the group's leaders, known as "the Colonel," "killed one of his people to intimidate the others and said he would do it to everyone if they disobeyed," Ustinov said. The same day, he added, the Colonel used a remote control to trigger the explosives belts worn by the two women in the group to enforce obedience."

Wednesday, September 8, 2004

News and commentary:

"TIRER DANS LE TAS..."
(Le Monde, 2004/09/07)
"Bush: Just blast away, that's what I would have done.
Putin: That's what you did."

"French reaction to attacks by baby killers" (W, ¡No Pasarán!, 2004/09/07)
Aren't the French supposedly the masters of nuance? In reality, they embarrassingly often come off as the true masters of simplisme, depicting a black and white world in an apocalyptic fight between good and evil. W on the cartoon from Le Monde above:
"Blame it on the victims. Much like their German partners in the now melting down Zeropean core, the French lump Putin with Bush and put the blame on both of them."

"Three Years Later – The Arab and Iranian Media Commemorate 9/11" (MEMRI, Special Report - No. 33, 2004/09/08)
Three years I: "During this past year leading up to the third anniversary of the attacks, there has been a consistent stream of articles and TV programs in the region's government-controlled media continuing to focus on conspiracy theories surrounding the attacks":
"In Egypt, Former Dean of Humanities at 'Ein Shams University, Mustafa Shak'a, was interviewed by Iqra TV on June 16, 2004. Shak'a attributed the September 11 attacks to the U.S. and the Jews: "To this day, we don't know who attacked the U.S. on September 11. Why is the attack attributed to bin Laden although it has not been proven that he was involved in the operation? It is way above his capabilities. Those who created him have made him a legend. The operation was 100% American, and this is not the place to elaborate, but what proves the operation was a Jewish one is that five Jews climbed up a high building and filmed the first attack of the first plane…" ...
Another common conspiracy has been to state the Al-Qa'ida and Osama bin Laden are really puppets of the U.S., who orchestrated the attacks. Iraqi political analyst Kazem Al-Qurayshi spoke on the Iranian channel Sahar1 TV about September 11 and terrorism on July 18, 2004: 'Al-Zarqawi, bin-Laden, and Mullah Omar, and all the leaders of the Salafi movement, are tools created by the British Freemason movement 200 years ago. With these tools they wanted to create a new religion for us, to confront Islam. They filled this new religion with Jewish poison, the Masonic poison. Their religion is manifested by a long beard, a short garment, and killing Muslims.'"

"London report foresees civil war in Iraq after U.S. pullout" (WorldTribune.com, 2004/09/08)
Report II: "Iraq's failure to quell the Shi'ite and Sunni insurgencies will lead to a civil war with Iran's and Turkey's potential involvement, a London institute projected.
A new report said the failure by the interim government in Iraq to impose order in the country could lead to a civil war. The report by the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs said such a war would be likely if the United States withdraws its military from Iraq. ...
The report cited several scenarios over the next 18 months. The best-case scenario envisioned government participation by the majority Shi'ite community as well as the smaller Sunni and Kurdish sectors.
But another scenario envisioned a collapse of authority throughout the country. At that point, the report said, Iran would extend its control over Shi'ite communities in Iraq while Kurds in northern Iraq would separate from the rest of the country.
"If Iraq fragments, then the neighbors cannot but become involved," the report said. 'This would presage the potential unraveling of the state system that has been in place since the 1920s, and the U.S. intervention in Iraq would indeed have triggered a transformation of the region – albeit not the one hoped for under the U.S. democratization agenda.'" (See also the report [PDF]: "Iraq in Transition: Vortex or Catalyst" (Chatham House, September 2004))

"Iraq will not be a 'success' for a long time" (Spencer Ackerman, The New Republic, 2004/09/08)
Report I: "This morning, Rick Barton and Sheba Crocker of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released the long-awaited results of an ambitious research project aimed at synthesizing a trove of data on Iraq, titled "Progress Or Peril?: Measuring Iraq's Reconstruction." ...
The results are grim. "Iraq is not yet moving on a sustained positive trajectory toward the tipping point or end state in any sector," they write. When the survey's authors graph their findings from June 2003 to July 2004, the lines skew confusedly and double back to where they began: "In fact, in every sector we looked at, we saw backward movement in recent months." ...
Among CSIS's more interesting findings: ...
--The Sunni and Shia insurgencies have already overwhelmed the U.S. and the Allawi government. Now, CSIS warns, 'U.S. and Iraqi officials ignore the undercurrent of disaffection in the north at their peril. ... As recent violence in Mosul shows, that city is a ticking time bomb ... Kirkuk is a similar worry.'" (See also the report [PDF]: "Progress Or Peril?: Measuring Iraq's Reconstruction" (CSIS, September 2004))

"Russia: Journalist Detentions Raise Suspicions Of Media Control" (Mark Baker, Radio Free Europe, 2004/09/08)
Russian School Siege XLII: "Soria Blattman, of the media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders, recounts the story: "[Politkovskaya] tried from Moscow to go to Beslan, and she tried to take several flights. [The first flight] she couldn't [get on], the second [flight] she couldn't, and finally on the third flight she could get on the plane because someone recognized her at the entrance. She didn't want to eat anything, because she knows very well that there is always a risk [of being poisoned] from eating. She is used to having problems of this kind. She drank a cup of tea and after 10 minutes she felt really bad and lost consciousness. And then when she arrived in Rostov, she was taken to the hospital and there doctors told her that she had been intoxicated. It was very serious at the time and they said her health was in a critical situation."
It is the kind of story you expect in James Bond movies. Politkovskaya later recovered, and the whole incident might have been explained simply as a matter of bad airline tea were it not for a similarly strange tale of another well-known reporter, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent Andrei Babitsky.
Like Politkovskaya, Babitsky last week was hoping to travel to Beslan, but his plans were interrupted as he was passing through Vnukovo. Airport authorities detained Babitsky initially on suspicion of trying to carry explosives onboard the plane -- forcing him to miss the flight. When no explosives were found, Babitsky was released but then held again shortly afterward, when two men apparently tried to provoke him into a fight. The whole case was later dismissed in court, but the damage had been done. Babitsky never made it to Beslan." (See also: "Groups Worry About Russia's Press Freedom" (Beth Gardiner, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/07))

"Back Home, Safe, and Enlightened" (Austin Bay, StrategyPage, 2004/09/08)
Austin Bay is back from Iraq: "If there is one mistake I think we've made in fighting this war, it's been the way we've soft-pedaled the ideological dimensions. This really is a fight for the future, between our free, open political system and the unholy alliance of despots and Islamo-fascists whose very existence depends on denying liberty.
Iraq — long plundered by despotism — should be a wealthy country. It has water, an agricultural base, a source of capital (oil) and people willing to work. It is the best place to begin to reform the dysfunctional political systems that shackle and rob the vast the majority of Middle Easterners. The lesson of 9-11, three years on, is that liberty must sustain a focused offensive if it is to survive.
That's an enormous undertaking, and I've seen firsthand in Iraq just how complex and costly a task it is. Strategically, however, we must do it to protect our free and open society, and to provide our families with the security they dearly deserve."

"Italians shocked by kidnaps, seek united response" (Philip Pullella, Reuters, 2004/09/08)
"Shocked by the kidnapping in Iraq of two women aid workers dedicated to helping child victims of war, Italian leaders called for national unity on Wednesday to face what some of them called a war against the West. ...
The Corriere della Sera pointed out that one of the women, Simona Pari, had branded Italy's troops in Iraq as "occupying forces" on a recent television programme.
"This was not enough to save them from being abducted," the leading Italian newspaper said in a front-page editorial.
The newspaper said the kidnappers likely "knew perfectly well" what the women did and kidnapped them "to show they don't distinguish" between aid workers and soldiers.
"They wanted to show that we are the enemy, all of us, irrespective of whether we are pacifists or hawks, because theirs is a total war against the West," the paper said." (See also: "Gunmen Abduct Two Italian Aid Workers in Baghdad" (Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Tom Perry, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/07))

"Russia Ready to Strike Against 'Terror' Worldwide" (Elizabeth Piper, Reuters, 2004/09/08)
Russian School Siege XLI: "Russia's top general threatened Wednesday to attack "terrorist bases" anywhere in the world, as security services put a $10 million bounty on two Chechen rebels they blame for last week's school siege. ...
"As for launching pre-emptive strikes on terrorist bases, we will carry out all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world," said General Yuri Baluevsky, chief of Russia's general staff.
The FSB security service announced the $10 million reward for information leading to the "neutralization" of Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev, two Chechen separatist leaders who are household names in Russia after a decade of conflict in the mainly Muslim southern province."

"The Irrationality of Terror" (Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, 2004/09/08)
Russian School Siege XL: "Little is known about their stated aims, which allegedly included independence for the Russian republic of Chechnya, withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya, and an end to the nearly 10 years of brutal Russian-Chechen conflict in Chechnya. The only certainty is that they will achieve none of them.
On the contrary: Far from helping the Chechens resist Russian invasion, they have deeply damaged that resistance. ...
There may be an emotional explanation for the Beslan tragedy, as there may be for the young Palestinian girls who blow themselves up to kill Israeli girls: hatred, despair, the brutalization caused by many years of war, fanaticism and desire for revenge. Some of the Beslan survivors have said that they were told by their captors that "Russian soldiers are killing our children in Chechnya, so we are here to kill yours." But there is no moral justification, no intellectual line of reasoning, no political logic.
The hardest thing in the world is to resist injustice without hatred, or to resist brutality without brutality, or to fight any kind of war without losing your own humanity. By failing to do so, the Chechen terrorists may have just defeated their own stated cause."

"Turkey's Muslim millions threaten EU values, says commissioner" (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/09/08)
"A European commissioner set off a furious row yesterday after warning that Europe's Christian civilisation risked being overrun by Islam.
Fritz Bolkestein, the single market commissioner and a former leader of the Dutch liberals, said the European Union would "implode" in its current form if 70 million Turkish Muslims were allowed to join.
He predicted that Turkish accession would overwhelm the fragile system and finish off any lingering dreams of a fully-integrated European superstate.
In a speech at Leiden University, he compared the EU to the late Austrian-Hungarian empire, which took so many different peoples on board in such a haphazard fashion that it eventually became ungovernable.
Calling demography the "mother of politics", he said that while America had the youth and dynamism to remain the world's only superpower, and China was the rising economic power, Europe's destiny was to be "Islamised".
In comments designed to provoke fury in Ankara, he quoted the British author Bernard Lewis warning that Europe would become an extension of North Africa and the Middle East by the end of the century."

"French connection armed Saddam" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2004/09/08)
The first in a three-part series of excerpts from "Treachery":
"French aid to Iraq goes back decades and includes transfers of advanced conventional arms and components for weapons of mass destruction. ...
France's corrupt dealings with Saddam flourished throughout the 1990s, despite the strict arms embargo against Iraq imposed by the United Nations after the Persian Gulf war.
By 2000, France had become Iraq's largest supplier of military and dual-use equipment, according to a senior member of Congress who declined to be identified.
Saddam developed networks for illegal supplies to get around the U.N. arms embargo and achieve a military buildup in the years before U.S. forces launched a second assault on Iraq.
One spare-parts pipeline flowed from a French company to Al Tamoor Trading Co. in the United Arab Emirates. Tamoor then sent the parts by truck through Turkey, and into Iraq. The Iraqis obtained spare parts for their French-made Mirage F-1 jets and Gazelle attack helicopters through this pipeline.
U.S. intelligence would not discover the pipeline until the eve of war last year; sensitive intelligence indicated that parts had been smuggled to Iraq as recently as that January. ...
An initial accounting by the Pentagon in the months after the fall of Baghdad revealed that Saddam covertly acquired between 650,000 and 1 million tons of conventional weapons from foreign sources. The main suppliers were Russia, China and France."

"U.S. Conceding Rebels Control Regions of Iraq" (Eric Schmitt and Steven R. Weisman, The New York Times, 2004/09/08)
"As American military deaths in Iraq operations surpassed the 1,000 mark, top Pentagon officials said Tuesday that insurgents controlled important parts of central Iraq and that it was unclear when American and Iraqi forces would be able to secure those areas. ...
Rumsfeld said Iraqi officials understood they must regain control of the insurgent safe havens. "They get it, and will find a way over time to deal with it,'' he said.
But General Myers said the Iraqi forces would probably not be ready to confront insurgents in those areas until the end of this year. ...
The cities of greatest rebel control are Ramadi, Falluja, Baquba and Samarra, in the so-called Sunni triangle, west and north of Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein remains popular and many forces loyal to him have gathered strength."

Tuesday, September 7, 2004

News and commentary:

"A video grab image shows a militant with a child..."
(NTV/Reuters, 2004/09/07)
"A video grab image shows a militant with a child being held hostage in the gym of the school in Beslan, Russia, which was shot by the militants on the first day of the siege and released on September 7, 2004."

"Russian TV airs graphic footage from school" (Reuters/MSNBC, 2004/09/07)
Russian School Siege XXXIX: "Russia’s NTV television showed graphic footage shot by the militants who took more than a thousand hostages in a school in Beslan in the south of the country last week.
The pictures showed militants including a masked and heavily armed man and a woman in Arab-style black headdress, as well as hundreds of hostages sitting in the gymnasium which later became a battleground. At least 335 people, around a half of them children, died when Russian troops stormed the school.
Blood was smeared on the floor. Bombs hung from a basketball hoop and from a wire suspended across the room. Another lay on the floor in plastic container."

"The Teacher Chose Death" (Dimitri Prokopiev and Natasha Mozgobia, Yediot Aharonot/An Unsealed Room, 2004/09/07)
Russian School Siege XXXVIII: "Children who escaped from the school told of how they owed their lived to elderly Yanis (Ivan) Kanidis, age 74 – a man of Greek origin who worked as a gym teacher at the school. He was among the hundreds of teachers, students and parents taken hostage last week when Chechen rebels invaded the large school. ...
On Friday, when the children began to lose consciousness from the stuffy air and their thirst, Yanis went to the terrorists. “You have to give them something to drink, at least to the smallest children,” he insisted angrily. One of the terrorists hit him with the butt of his rifle, but the teacher continued to yell: “How dare you!? You claim you are people of the Kafkaz region, but here in the Kafkaz even a dog wouldn’t turn down the request of an old man!”
His efforts bore fruit. The terrorist allowed the teacher to wet one of the bibs of the children and pass it around to dampen the mouths of the little ones who were choking from thirst.
The hostages who escaped told how the teacher repeatedly risked his own life in order to save the children. He moved explosive devices that the terrorists had placed near the young students, and tried to prevent them from detonating others. When the first bomb exploded next to the windows of the school, parents and children began to run out. The terrorists, trying to prevent their escape, threw a grenade at them. The elderly teacher ran to the grenade to prevent it from exploding on the children. One of the terrorists shot at the teacher to try to stop him and Yanis was wounded in the shoulder – but didn’t give up. With the last of his strength, he continued to run, jumped on the grenade, covering it with his body. The grenade exploded, and the body of the teacher absorbed the explosion, protecting the children around him from injury."

"Groups Worry About Russia's Press Freedom" (Beth Gardiner, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/07)
Russian School Siege XXXVII: "The detention of several journalists traveling to and from the deadly school siege in Russia is raising new concern about press freedom in the country, media watchdogs said Tuesday.
There are also accusations that a prominent Russian journalist and critic of Moscow's campaign in Chechnya, Anna Politkovskaya, was victim of a deliberate case of food poisoning.
Politkovskaya fell critically ill last week with an acute intestinal infection and dehydration after drinking tea on a flight to Beslan, where militants seized a school in a standoff that left more than 350 people dead, many of them children. She has left intensive care but remains at home under medical supervision. ...
"Ten minutes after drinking it, she lost consciousness, having managed to call for the stewardess," Novaya Gazeta said, adding that she had eaten nothing else that day. ...
The detention of four reporters has also caused alarm.
Andrei Babitsky, a correspondent for the U.S.-funded Radio Liberty, was detained last week at a Moscow airport on suspicion of carrying explosives and prevented from flying to southern Russia, said Vladimir Baburin, an editor in the station's Moscow bureau.
No explosives were found in his bag but he was held again after two men provoked him into a fight, Baburin said. The men later identified themselves as airport security officers who had been ordered to create trouble for the reporter, Baburin said." (See also: "Editor of Russia's Izvestia Steps Down" (Maria Danilova, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/06))

"Kerry Slams 'Wrong War in the Wrong Place'" (Calvin Woodward, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/07)
"Democrat John Kerry accused President Bush on Monday of sending U.S. troops to the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" and said he'd try to bring them all home in four years. Bush rebuked him for taking "yet another new position" on the war. ...
Bush, campaigning in southeast Missouri, described Kerry's attack as the product of chronic equivocation combined with a shake up of his advisers.
"After voting for the war, but against funding it, after saying he would have voted for the war even knowing everything we know today, my opponent woke up this morning with new campaign advisers and yet another new position," Bush told Missouri voters."

"Here's an email..." (Glenn Reynolds, InstaPundit, 2004/09/07)
Casualties II. PAR-TAY for Daniel Burosh and his friends: "Here's an email I got from one Daniel Burosh, who opposes the war, in connection with a recent bombing in Iraq:

I Guess the baby soldier body parts flew just EVERYWHERE! Imagine the game:
"Look Abdul, I found an arm!"
"Here's a couple of ears!"
"Gee, Mustafa. I think a found a scrotum, and the ball are still inside!" ...
Hoo-ray! 985 and counting... When it hits 1000, my friends and I are going to PAR-TAY!

I get a steady flow of emails along these lines. Rooting for American soldiers to die strikes me as a poor strategy for the anti-Bush forces."

"U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq Pass 1,000" (Hamza Hendawi, AP/My Way, 2004/09/07)
Casualties I: "U.S. military deaths in the Iraq campaign passed the 1,000 milestone Tuesday, with more than 800 of them during the stubborn insurgency that flared after the Americans brought down Saddam Hussein and President Bush declared major combat over.
A spike in fighting with Sunni and Shiite insurgents killed seven Americans in the Baghdad area on Tuesday, pushing the count to 1,002. That number includes 999 U.S. troops and three civilians, two working for the U.S. Army and one for the Air Force. The tally was compiled by The Associated Press based on Pentagon records and AP reporting from Iraq."

"A photograph of Simona Pari..."
(Alessandro Bianchi, Reuters, 2004/09/07)
"A photograph of Simona Pari, is seen at her office in Rome September 7, 2004, a volunteer for the Italian aid organization 'Un Ponte Per Baghdad' (A Bridge for Baghdad). Pari and compatriot Simona Torretta, both 29, were taken hostage Tuesday while working in Baghdad."

"Gunmen Abduct Two Italian Aid Workers in Baghdad" (Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Tom Perry, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/07)
"Gunmen abducted two Italian aid workers and two Iraqis in central Baghdad Tuesday in a brazen attack that will alarm foreigners already on edge from widespread kidnappings.
Witnesses told Reuters about 20 men with AK-47 assault rifles and pistols with silencers stopped their vehicles in broad daylight in a busy commercial area of Baghdad and raided a building housing humanitarian organization Bridge to Baghdad.
They left with Italian staffers Simona Pari and Simona Torretta and two Iraqis, a woman who worked for another Italian organization Intersos and a male employee of Bridge to Baghdad.
"It appeared it was totally professional. It appeared they knew exactly who they wanted to abduct," said one witness, who declined to be named.
Gunmen dragged the Iraqi woman away by her hair. "She was screaming," a witness said."

"Dozens killed in Baghdad fighting" (BBC News, 2004/09/07)
"Fighting between US forces and Shia insurgents across Baghdad's Sadr City suburb has left at least 34 dead.
Clashes in the last 24 hours also injured at least 170 Iraqis, health officials said. One US soldier is among the dead and several were wounded.
The area is a bastion of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr, who recently called on followers to observe a ceasefire.
Also in Baghdad, the city's governor narrowly escaped an assassination attempt targeting his convoy."

"Murder by Any Other Name" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2004/09/07)
Hitchens on Naomi Klein's column in The Nation titled "Bring Najaf to New York":
"If you think this sounds suspiciously like an endorsement of Muqtada Sadr and his black-masked clerical bandits, you are not mistaken. The article, indeed, went somewhat further, and lower, than the headline did. ...
When I quit writing my column for The Nation a couple of years ago, I wrote semi-sarcastically that it had become an echo chamber for those who were more afraid of John Ashcroft than Osama Bin Laden. I honestly did not then expect to find it publishing actual endorsements of jihad. But, as Marxism taught me, the logic of history and politics is a pitiless one. The antiwar isolationist "left" started by being merely "status quo": opposing regime change and hinting at moral equivalence between Bush's "terrorism" and the other sort. This conservative position didn't take very long to metastasize into a flat-out reactionary one, with Michael Moore saying that the Iraqi "resistance" was the equivalent of the Revolutionary Minutemen, Tariq Ali calling for solidarity with the "insurgents," and now Ms. Klein, among many others, wanting to bring the war home because any kind of anti-Americanism is better than none at all. These fellow-travelers with fascism are also changing ships on a falling tide: Their applause for the holy warriors comes at a time when wide swathes of the Arab and Muslim world are sickening of the mindless blasphemy and the sectarian bigotry. It took an effort for American pseudo-radicals to be outflanked on the left by Ayatollah Sistani, but they managed it somehow." (See also: "Najaf to New York? Better: New York to Najaf" (Marc Cooper, marccooper.com, 2004/08/27) and "Bring Najaf to New York" (Naomi Klein, The Nation, 2004/08/26))

"Cult of Death" (David Brooks, The New York Times, 2004/09/07)
Russian School Siege XXXVI: "We should be used to this pathological mass movement by now. We should be able to talk about such things. Yet when you look at the Western reaction to the Beslan massacres, you see people quick to divert their attention away from the core horror of this act, as if to say: We don't want to stare into this abyss. We don't want to acknowledge those parts of human nature that were on display in Beslan. Something here, if thought about too deeply, undermines the categories we use to live our lives, undermines our faith in the essential goodness of human beings.
Three years after Sept. 11, too many people have become experts at averting their eyes. If you look at the editorials and public pronouncements made in response to Beslan, you see that they glide over the perpetrators of this act and search for more conventional, more easily comprehensible targets for their rage. ...
This death cult has no reason and is beyond negotiation. This is what makes it so frightening. This is what causes so many to engage in a sort of mental