Archived news and commentary: September 13 - 19, 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 19, 2004

News and commentary:

"Iran Rejects UN Call for Uranium Enrichment Freeze" (Parisa Hafezi , Reuters, 2004/09/19)
"Iran rejected Sunday a U.N. resolution calling on it to freeze uranium enrichment activities and threatened to stop snap checks of its atomic facilities if its case were sent to the U.N. Security Council.
It said that if the Security Council went as far as punishing Tehran with sanctions, Iran might follow North Korea and pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty altogether. ...
"Iran will not accept any obligation regarding the suspension of uranium enrichment," chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani told a news conference Sunday. "No international body can force Iran to do so." ...
Rohani predicted a rough ride in the run-up to the next IAEA board of governors meeting on November 25.
"This is a war, we may win or we may lose," said the mid-ranking cleric, who is secretary-general of Iran's Supreme National Security Council." (See also: "UN Calls on Iran to Freeze Nuclear Enrichment" (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, 2004/09/18))

"Iraq Group Shows Tape of Beheading of Three Kurds" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/19)
"An Iraqi Islamist group said on Sunday it killed three members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which cooperates with the Iraqi government, and posted a video tape on its Web site of the apparent beheadings.
The tape from the Army of Ansar al-Sunna appeared to show the heads of three young men being severed and placed on top of their bodies. The three men were shown introducing themselves as KDP members and showing their identification papers.
The militant group said in a statement the bodies of the three "agents" were left near Mosul to serve as an "example."
"The puppet Kurdish groups...have pledged allegiance to the crusaders and continue to fight Islam and its people," said the statement signed by the group and dated Sunday."

"Blair calls on international community to defeat terrorism in Iraq" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/19)
"British Prime Minister Tony Blair called on the international community to forget past disagreements over the war to oust Saddam Hussein and unite to fight terrorism engulfing Iraq.
"Whatever the disagreements about the first conflict in Iraq to remove Saddam, in this conflict now taking place in Iraq this is the crucible in which the future of this global terrorism will be determined," Blair told a press conference after talks with Iraqi counterpart Iyad Allawi.
"And either it will succeed and this terrorism will grow, or we will succeed, the Iraqi people will succeed and this global terrorism will be delivered a huge defeat," Blair said Sunday.
'Now is not the time for the international community to divide or disagree but to come together behind what is happening in Iraq, realise that the struggle of this prime minister and the Iraqi people for liberty and democracy and stability is actually our struggle too.'"

"All the good things they never tell you about today's Iraq" (Mark Steyn, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/09/19)
"After the predictions of hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and a mass refugee crisis and a humanitarian catastrophe and wall-to-wall cholera and dysentery all failed to pan out, the naysayers fell back on predictions of imminent civil war. But the civil war's as mythical as the universal dysentery. ...
In two-thirds of the country, municipal government has been rebuilt, business is good, restaurants are open, life is as jolly as it has been in living memory. This summer the Shia province of Dhi Qar, south-east of Baghdad, held the first free elections in its history, electing secular independents and non-religious parties to its town councils.
The Kurdish North, which would be agitating for secession if real civil war were looming, is for the moment content to be Scotland. The Sunni Triangle, meanwhile, looks like being the fledgling Iraqi federation's Northern Ireland for a while to come."

"Darfur women 'kept as sex slaves after kidnap by the Sudanese army'" (Benjamin Joffe-Wal, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/09/19)
"'Each of us was raped by between three and six men,' said Bokur. "One woman refused to have sex with them, so they split her head into pieces with an axe in front of us."
The soldiers tried to bundle her into a truck, she said. "I refused, so one of them hit me with a cane, broke my rib, then threw me in. They took 43 of us in Land Cruisers and drove for two days without food or water."
She looked down at the ground and spoke more slowly. "In the middle of the night we reached a place with lights and they put us directly on a huge aeroplane. I thought they'd kill me.
There were girls from other villages, I knew about 10." On the plane, as the escorting soldiers gloated at the number of girls they had taken, their captives sat in fearful silence.
"When we arrived at a base in Khartoum, the soldiers were each given money," Bokur said.
A commander inspected the women, she said.
'Each woman was given to a soldier, now I don't know where any of them are. I was given to an Arab soldier, taken to his house and locked inside. Every night he used me like a wife. For two months I did not see the outside.'"

"Baghdad's Strong Man Struggles to Keep His Grip" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2004/09/19)
"Even his opponents would not contest that Dr. Allawi is brave. He flies aboard American helicopters to the most dangerous cities in Iraq: Najaf, last month, at the height of the insurrection there; Samarra, more recently, to negotiate with tribal chiefs.
Yet it is increasingly hard to see how he can avoid becoming an Iraqi Kerensky, an interim figure fated to be overwhelmed by forces that seem, increasingly, to be beyond the power of any reasoned effort to contain them. Much of his effort is now dedicated to creating the conditions for elections in January to choose an assembly that will frame a permanent constitution. ...
In post-occupation Iraq, the Americans now advising Dr. Allawi have begun speaking not of insisting on a Jeffersonian democracy but of creating a "working democracy" that excludes rabble-rousers like Mr. Sadr, of building Iraqi forces who can help crush the cleric and other enemies, and of getting out."

"For Hussein, a Spartan Life at His Former Palace" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2004/09/19)
"Nine months after American troops pulled him disheveled and disoriented from an underground bunker near his hometown, Tikrit, Saddam Hussein is living in an air-conditioned 10-by-13 foot cell on the grounds of one of his former palaces outside Baghdad, tending plants, proclaiming himself Iraq's lawful ruler, and reading the Koran and books about past Arab glory. ...
More than 80 other "high-value detainees" at the same prison - including more than 40 who were on the Pentagon's "pack of cards" of Iraq's most-wanted fugitives — are kept away from Mr. Hussein, said Bakhtiar Amin, the Iraqi human rights minister. ... But the strict protocol favored by authoritarian governments still rules. "They call each other by their old titles, Mr. Minister of this, Mr. Minister of that," Mr. Amin said. "It is as if nothing has changed." ...
In the courtyard by his cell, Mr. Hussein has placed white-painted stones around the plants he tends, a fact that struck Mr. Amin, the human rights minister, as bizarre. "It's an irony of history," he said. "This is a man who committed some of the biggest acts of ecocide in history, when he drained the marshes in southern Iraq, used chemical weapons against 250 Kurdish villages, and shipped whole palm tree plantations to the charlatan leaders of the Arab world who were his shoeshine boys.
'And now he's a gardener.'"

Saturday, September 18, 2004

News and commentary:

"Facing up to unholy terror" (Fouad Ajami, USNews.com, from the 2004/09/20 issue)
"The Russians now claim a 9/11 of their own; Spain had been given a signal day of mourning six months earlier, when commuter trains were blown apart by bombs assembled by Arab drifters and jihadists. In truth, Israel had been the first battleground in this ongoing war between civilized life and terror: It was there that pizzerias and buses and discotheques became targets of terror. It was there that the cultists of death cut their teeth and developed their rituals of mass murder — the videotapes, the boys (and then the young women) with headbands proclaiming their zeal for "martyrdom," the posters lionizing mass killers. And it was there, too, that religious preachers bent the faith to their will. In distant lands, it was said that the ferocity of these attacks derived from Palestinian "grievances," that this conflict was sui generis. But the ruin soon spread to other lands. ...
In our innocence, we think that a battle ought to be waged for Muslim hearts and minds, that perhaps if we refined or amplified our message, this hate would be driven away. It is in this spirit that the 9/11 commission recently recommended the launching of a campaign of public diplomacy in the Muslim world. But this is illusion. For at heart, this war for Islam is one for Muslims to fight. It is for them to recover their faith from the purveyors of terror."

"Doing It The Hard Way" (Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Review of Books, from the Fall 2004 issue)
"Were Americans (and sooner or later Europeans) really to enforce their undoubted right under international law to eliminate incitement to violence against themselves from Arab regimes, were they to make war against the "efficient causes" of terrorism and anyone who stands with them, were they to revoke their grant of property rights over oil to regimes that misuse them, they would have to make war on many states that are fellow members of the United Nations, decapitate them and enforce standards of international behavior for successor regimes. ...
To do any of this, Americans would have to abjure a century's conventional wisdom. Understandably, the U.S. government — a fortiori European ones — would prefer not to. Today, rhetoric aside, Americans as well as Europeans have resigned themselves to tolerating the current level of terror. Neither the U.S. nor anyone else has done anything serious to stop the incitement to terror, to cut off the money that fuels it, or to eliminate its organizers. But the hope that we may limit the enemy's war by limiting our own is unreasonable. Hence, Arab terrorists, not Americans, are setting the level of terror. Because terror is proving more effective than ever, no one should be surprised if more Arabs find fulfillment in it, and the level of terror rises. At some level, that increase will compel Americans to face Archidamus' question: 'What will be our war?'" (See also: "No Victory, No Peace" (Angelo M. Codevilla, The Claremont Review of Books, from the Winter 2003 issue), "War At Last?" (Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Review of Books, from the Winter 2002 issue), "What War?" (Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Review of Books, from the Spring 2002 issue) and "Victory: What it Will Take to Win" (Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Review of Books, from the Fall 2001 issue))

"Let Us Count the Ways" (Mark Helprin, Claremont Review of Books, from the Fall 2004 issue)
"When the consequences are as grave as the potential for nuclear and biological warfare has made them, the slightest support, tolerance, or sympathy for terrorism directed at the United States should qualify the state manifesting them for open operations, its government for replacement, and its military as a target. ...
These regimes live to hold power, and one and all they have seized and maintained it by violence. They are quite capable of eliminating the terrorist infrastructures within their territories and will jump to do so rather than face their own destruction. And if they refuse to cooperate, or they go down trying, then the regime that replaces them can be offered the same choice.
To coerce and punish governments that support terrorism, until they eradicate it wherever they exercise authority. To open for operations any territory in which the terrorist enemy functions. ... These should be our aims in this war.
They are neither modest, nor without risk, nor certain to succeed — by their very nature they cannot be. But they are a model of discipline and restraint when compared to the infinitely open-ended notion of changing the nature of the Middle East, changing the nature of the Arabs, changing the nature of Islam, and changing the nature of man. No army can do that. No army ever could."

"This is an image made from a web site..."
(AP, 2004/09/18)
"This is an image made from a web site shows men apparently taken hostage on in Iraq, who identified themselves as Briton Kenneth Bigley and Americans Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley."

"Militants Threaten to Kill U.S., UK Hostages in Iraq" (Andrew Marshall, Reuters, 2004/09/18)
"Insurgents threatened on Saturday to cut the throats of two Americans and a Briton seized in Baghdad, and launched a suicide car bomb attack on Iraqi security forces in Kirkuk that killed at least 23 people.
In Internet video footage the three hostages were shown kneeling blindfolded on the ground, with a hooded gunman aiming his weapon at the head of one of the captives.
The gunman said the Tawhid and Jihad group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would kill the men unless female Iraqi prisoners were freed from two Iraqi jails within 48 hours.
"Tawhid and Jihad sets a 48-hour deadline for the release of all our Muslim sisters in Abu Ghraib and Umm Qasr prisons or else, by God, these three hostages will have their throats slit to set an example," the militant said.
The U.S. military said no women were held at either jail."

"At Least 19 Killed, Scores Injured in Iraq Bombing" (Edward Wong, The New York Times, 2004/09/18)
"A suicide car bomb exploded Saturday in the northern oil city of Kirkuk after the car plowed into a crowd of men seeking jobs with the Iraqi National Guard, killing 19 people and wounding 67 others, the Health Ministry said.
The bomb was the third one this week aimed at Iraqi security forces and continued a bloody campaign waged by insurgents to cripple the nascent institutions of the interim government.
Television images showed the charred and smoking hulk of a car sitting near a concrete wall surrounding the National Guard headquarters. Iraqi policemen and firefighters milled around the wreckage. Rubble and glass lay scattered across the street."

"UN Calls on Iran to Freeze Nuclear Enrichment" (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, 2004/09/18)
"The U.N. nuclear watchdog called on Iran on Saturday to immediately halt activities related to uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to make atomic weapons.
The resolution called on Iran to suspend all "enrichment-related activities" and said the agency's governing board regretted Iran's suspension of enrichment as promised last year had fallen far short of what had been expected.
France, Britain and Germany formally submitted a toughly worded draft resolution to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Friday which called on Tehran to immediately freeze its uranium enrichment program.
The United States fully endorsed the draft resolution which was passed unanimously by the IAEA board of governors."

"Rewriting the Koran" (Stephen Schwartz, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/09/27 issue)
"The most obvious window into the theology taught at Ibn-Saud Islamic University is the Wahhabi Koran, an edition of the Islamic scripture, with commentary, printed in every major European, Asian, and African language in paperback editions that are distributed free or at low cost throughout the world (and are available on the web at www.kuran.gen.tr/html/english3). ...
The four final lines of Fatiha read, in a normal rendition of the Arabic original (such as this translation by N.J. Dawood, published by Penguin Books): Guide us to the straight path, / The path of those whom You have favored, / Not of those who have incurred Your wrath, / Nor of those who have gone astray.
The Wahhabi Koran renders these lines: Guide us to the Straight Way. / The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who have earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians). The Wahhabi Koran prints this translation alongside the Arabic text, which contains no reference to either Jews or Christians. ...
Distortions of the text stating or implying that God has condemned the Jews and Christians are scattered throughout the Wahhabi Koran."

"Testing, testing..." (Umberto Eco, The Guardian, 2004/09/18)
Fallibilism vs. fundamentalism: "Modern science does not hold that what is new is always right. On the contrary, it is based on the principle of "fallibilism" (enunciated by the American philosopher Charles Peirce, elaborated upon by Popper and many other theorists, and put into practice by scientists themselves) according to which science progresses by continually correcting itself, falsifying its hypotheses by trial and error, admitting its own mistakes — and by considering that an experiment that doesn't work out is not a failure but is worth as much as a successful one because it proves that a certain line of research was mistaken and it is necessary either to change direction or even to start over from scratch.
And this is what was proposed centuries ago in Italy by an institute of learning known as the Accademia del Cimento, whose motto was "provando e riprovando". This would normally translate into English as "to try and try again", but here there is a subtle distinction. Whereas in Italian "riprovare" normally means to try again, here it means to "reprove" or "reject" that which cannot be maintained in the light of reason and experience.
This way of thinking is opposed, as I said before, to all forms of fundamentalism, to all literal interpretations of holy writ — which are also open to continuous reinterpretation — and to all dogmatic certainty in one's own ideas. This is that good "philosophy," in the everyday and Socratic sense of the term, which ought to be taught in schools."

"Secret papers show Blair was warned of Iraq chaos" (Michael Smith, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/09/18)
"Tony Blair was warned a year before invading Iraq that a stable post-war government would be impossible without keeping large numbers of troops there for "many years", secret government papers reveal.
The documents, seen by The Telegraph, show more clearly than ever the grave reservations expressed by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, over the consequences of a second Gulf war and how prescient his Foreign Office officials were in predicting the ensuing chaos. ...
Mr Straw predicted in March 2002 that post-war Iraq would cause major problems, telling Mr Blair in a letter marked "Secret and personal" that no one had a clear idea of what would happen afterwards. 'There seems to be a larger hole in this than anything.'"

"Chechen Rebel Grimly Vows More Attacks" (C.J. Chivers, The New York Times, 2004/09/18)
"In a lengthy letter posted early Friday morning, Mr. Basayev said his group, the Riyadus-Salakhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs, "had carried out a number of successful combat operations on the territory of Russia."
Mr. Basayev's statement was defiant and mostly unrepentant, describing in detail elements of the planning for the terror acts, rebutting portions of official accounts and vowing that violence would continue, no matter the impression that Chechens leave on the world.
He briefly expressed regret at the deaths of children - "We are sorry for what happened," the statement said at one point - but insisted his followers had not shot children or used them for cover. And rather than blame the captors who held children at gunpoint amid a network of bombs, he placed fault for the ensuing death toll on Russian forces, which he accused of staging a botched assault." (See also: "Chechen Rebel Basayev Says He Was Behind School Siege" (Reuters, 2004/09/17))

Friday, September 17, 2004

News and commentary:

"At The Front: No Doom And Gloom Here" (Captain's Quarters, 2004/09/17)
A letter from a "Major in the USMC on the Multi-National Corps staff in Baghdad":
"The naysayers will point to the recent battles in Najaf and draw parallels between that and what happened in Fallujah in April. They aren’t even close. The bad guys did us a HUGE favor by gathering together in one place and trying to make a stand. It allowed us to focus on them and defeat them. Make no mistake, Al Sadr’s troops were thoroughly smashed. The estimated enemy killed in action is huge. Before the battles, the residents of the city were afraid to walk the streets. Al Sadr’s enforcers would seize people and bring them to his Islamic court where sentence was passed for religious or other violations. Long before the battles people were looking for their lost loved ones who had been taken to “court” and never seen again. Now Najafians can and do walk their streets in safety. Commerce has returned and the city is being rebuilt. Iraqi security forces and US troops are welcomed and smiled upon. That city was liberated again. It was not like Fallujah – the bad guys lost and are in hiding or dead.
You may not have even heard about the city of Samarra. Two weeks ago, that Sunni Triangle city was a “No-go” area for US troops. But guess what? The locals got sick of living in fear from the insurgents and foreign fighters that were there and let them know they weren’t welcome. They stopped hosting them in their houses and the mayor of the town brokered a deal with the US commander to return Iraqi government sovereignty to the city without a fight. The people saw what was on the horizon and decided they didn’t want their city looking like Fallujah in April or Najaf in August."

"Possible Saddam-Al Qaeda Link Seen in U.N. Oil-for-Food Program" (Claudia Rosett and George Russell, FOX News, 2004/09/17)
"Registered here [in Lugano, Switzerland] 20 years ago as a society to promote business between the Gulf States and Asia, Europe and Africa, MIGA is a company that the United Nations and the U.S. government says has served as a hub of Al Qaeda finance: A terrorist chamber of commerce. ...
But in looking for patterns that beg for further investigation — especially by authorities with access to detailed U.N. records and information on MIGA accounts — some items here stand out.
Most simply, there is the question of why HSA was among those companies favored by Saddam for such a fat slice of business. ...
For reasons still unknown, Saddam clearly smiled upon the HSA Group. Not only does HSA account for the bulk of all Saddam's business with Yemen, but dozens of deals that appear in the United Nation's generic public records to originate elsewhere were in fact signed with HSA companies in countries such as Egypt, Malaysia and Indonesia.
According to U.S. officials and the United Nations itself, MIGA is less an "empty box" than a container of Al Qaeda-related mysteries. One of those mysteries appears to be Abdul Rahman Hayel Saeed, with his charter MIGA membership and his prominent part in a Yemen conglomerate doing hundreds of millions worth of business with Saddam.
Unraveling the mystery requires much greater access to Oil-for-Food records than the United Nations currently allows."

"Germany to deny visas for Islamic conference" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2004/09/17)
"Germany will deny visas to participants of a planned Islamic conference in Berlin next month that security officials say appears to be justifying terrorism, the Foreign Ministry said Friday.
Organizers of the Oct. 1-3 event call on the meeting's Web site for "the liberation of all the occupied territories and countries in struggle against the American-Zionist hegemony and occupation." ...
Germany's top security official, Interior Minister Otto Schily, said this week that the conference "seems to fall under the heading of justifying terrorist acts." ...
Organizers say the conference is legal.
A Berlin-based spokesman, Gabriel Daher, told The Associated Press this week that the conference was meant to "send a message of solidarity to people under occupation in Palestine and Iraq" and highlight 'discrimination of Muslims and Arabs in Europe.'" (See also the website of the conference: "The First Arab, Islamic Congress in Europe" (anamoqawem.org). Also: "Schily Pushes Ban on Islamic Conference" (Deutsche Welle, 2004/09/16))

"See Ya, Iraq?" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2004/09/17)
"Finally, for all the media-inspired pessimism, progress continues in Iraq. Despite all the killing, a logic of freedom persists, one that is slowly becoming a way of life for millions and that cannot be derailed by media-savvy murderers. Scheduled elections are on track. A culture of personal liberty is sprouting up, from Internet cafes to secular schools. Kurdistan is emerging as a federated republic. Indeed, Kurdish good will is proof that America wants no one's oil, promotes democracy, and is becoming once again a dependable friend. ...
It is true that parts of Iraq are unsafe and that terrorists are flowing into the country; but there is no doubt that the removal of Saddam Hussein is bringing matters to a head. Islamic fascists are now fighting openly and losing battles, and are increasingly desperate as they realize the democratization process slowly grinds ahead leaving them and what they have to offer by the wayside. Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and others must send aid to the terrorists and stealthy warriors into Iraq, for the battle is not just for Baghdad but for their futures as well. The world's attention is turning to Syria's occupation of Lebanon and Iran's nukes, a new scrutiny predicated on American initiatives and persistence, and easily evaporated by a withdrawal from Iraq. So by taking the fight to the heart of darkness in Saddam's realm, we have opened the climactic phase of the war, and thereupon can either win or lose far more than Iraq."

"The Muddle in Iraq" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2004/09/17)
"October is going to be a bloody month — it may appear to prove the pessimists right. But Iraq's future isn't tied to a 24/7 news cycle. The key event is going to be the election. Not our election, but the Iraqi vote scheduled for January.
Nobody else in the Middle East wants that election to take place. The U.N. is warning that security conditions may prevent voting — giving the terrorists hope. But the Iraqi interim government is staying the course.
Fallujah is the military test of our resolve to secure the future of Iraq. But the January election is the strategic test. We must not let ourselves become discouraged. Those ballots are worth fighting for. No matter how bloody and flawed, an Iraqi vote held on schedule would be a tremendous victory for freedom.
Our enemies and fair-weather friends alike will try to disrupt the voting. Our response may decide the future of the entire Middle East."

Atefeh Rajabi
(FrontPageMagazine, 2004/09/17)

"Symposium: Why the Mullahs Murdered Atefeh Rajabi" (Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/09/17)
A symposium on the execution of the 16 year old girl Atefeh Rajabi in Iran. Here's Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, "a native of Iran who is an activist and writer based in New York", on why "the male get lashes and the girl gets executed":
"Well, according to the Islamic Republic of Iran's interpretation of the Shari'a (I don't know how it's interpreted or done in Arab countries) a woman is automatically the seductress, however young and innocent. According to them, a man, no matter how old and promiscuous, is considered to be a "victim." ...
The other thing that I read last week in the latest news coming out of Iran that is infuriating (the Iran I grew up in was not like this) is that the Mullahs have now taken to designing specific underwear for women, they are clamping down on the color of the overcoats and scarves women are wearing and they do check, if they feel like it, to see whether you're properly dressed. Also they are designing men's robes for comfortable stone throwing during stoning of women! This is not a new phenomenon though because frankly this has been happening since the beginning of the revolution and Dr. Hughes is absolutely correct in saying that it IS in fact due to Khomeini´s psychotic rulings that all this has come about." (See also: "Death and the maiden in Iran" (Alasdair Palmer, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/08/29), "IRAN: Amnesty International outraged at reported execution of a 16 year old girl" (Amnesty International, 2004/08/23) and "The Heartbreaking And Enraging Story of a 16 Year Old Girl’s Execution Past Sunday in the Town of Neka, Iran" (ActivistChat, 2004/08/19))

"Nowhere Left to Flop" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2004/09/17)
"How did Kerry get to this point of total meltdown? He started out his political career voting his conscience on national security issues. During the 1980s he was a consistent, dovish liberal Democrat: pro-nuclear freeze, anti-Star Wars, against the Reagan defense buildup, against the war in Nicaragua. And then he joined the overwhelming majority of his party in voting against the Persian Gulf War.
That turned out to be a mistake. And Kerry suffered for it. The very next year he had to watch as Al Gore, who got the Gulf War right, was chosen for the 1992 Democratic ticket, a spot for which Kerry had been on the short list.
Kerry learned his political lesson. Or thought he did. So when the Iraq war came around, he did not want to be caught on the wrong side of another success. He voted yes.
But then things went wrong both for the war and for him. What did he do? With Howard Dean rocketing toward the Democratic nomination, Kerry played to his deeply antiwar party by voting against the $87 billion to fund the occupation.
Two months later, with Saddam Hussein caught and the war looking better, Kerry maneuvered again, slamming Dean with: "Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe today that we are not safer with his capture, don't have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president."
Kerry is now back to the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," a line lifted from Dean himself. So we are not better off with Hussein deposed after all." (See also: "Taking Flip-Flops Seriously" (Robert Kagan and William Kristol, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/09/20 issue))

"Texan has a history of attacks on Bush" (Michael Hedges, Houston Chronicle, 2004/09/17)
"Bill Burkett, who has emerged as a possible CBS source for disputed memos about President Bush's Guard service, has a long history of making charges against Bush and the Texas National Guard.
But Burkett's allegations have changed over the years, and have been dismissed as baseless by former Guard colleagues, state legislators and others.
Even Burkett has admitted some of his allegations are false.
Burkett wrote a long indictment against Bush for a Web site in 2003 in which he said he personally was ordered to "alter personnel records of George W. Bush." In that article, Burkett said that when he refused he was sent to Panama as punishment, where he contracted a disabling disease.
But when asked about that charge by the Houston Chronicle in February, Burkett said, "That statement was not accurate, that is overstated." ...
If Burkett does prove to be the source of the documents, CBS got them from a man with a well-established history of Bush loathing.
In an article Burkett wrote for the Internet last year he compared Bush to Hitler and Napoleon as one of "the three small men" who sought to rule through tyranny. "Three small men who wanted to conquer and vanquish," Burkett wrote. Burkett confirmed authorship of that article in the February Chronicle interview."

"Chechen Rebel Basayev Says He Was Behind School Siege" (Reuters, 2004/09/17)
"Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, in a statement issued on Friday, claimed responsibility for the Beslan school siege in which more than 320 hostages were killed, half of them children, according to a Chechen rebel Web site.
In the statement, Basayev, Russia's most wanted man, said brigades of the group Riyadus-Salikhin which he heads carried out the Beslan attack as well as bomb attacks that downed two passenger planes and attacks in Moscow, the Web site www.kavkazcenter.com said.
"The operation ... in the town of Beslan (was carried out by) the second battalion of martyrs under the command of Colonel Orstkhoyev," said the statement, signed by Basayev under his war name of Abdallah Shamil. ...
In the statement, Basayev blamed President Vladimir Putin for the tragedy which he said had been brought about by Russian special forces storming the school after two days on September 3 in an operation that had been planned from the beginning.
He said the group, who held more than 1,100 people hostage inside the school, had been demanding the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya and, in the absence of this, the resignation of Putin.
Basayev said the group had told intermediaries who came to the school that the hostages would be given food and water and the youngest children released if the Russian side began to meet their demands." (See also: "Chechen Warlord Threatens More Attacks After Beslan" (Richard Balmforth, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/17): "Basayev, Russia's most wanted man, expressed regret for the bloody outcome in Beslan, which he blamed on the Kremlin. But he made clear there would be no let-up in rebel attacks in the future in the campaign for an independent Chechnya. "We are not bound by any circumstances, or to anybody, and we will continue to fight as is convenient and advantageous to us, and by our rules," he said in an unrepentant statement published on a rebel Web site.")

"U.S. Weapons Inspector: Iraq Had No WMD" (Katherine Pfleger Shrader, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/17)
"Fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but left signs that he had idle programs he someday hoped to revive, the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq concludes in a draft report due out soon.
According to people familiar with the 1,500-page report, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, will find that Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons.
Duelfer also says Iraq only had small research and development programs for chemical and biological weapons.
As Duelfer puts the finishing touches on his report, he concludes Saddam had intentions of restarting weapons programs at some point, after suspicion and inspections from the international community waned.
After a year and a half in Iraq, however, the United States has found no weapons of mass destruction — its chief argument for going to war and overthrowing the regime."

Added in archive:
"Death and the maiden in Iran" (Alasdair Palmer, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/08/29)
"Millionaire Mullahs" (Paul Klebnikov, Forbes, 2003/07/21)

Thursday, September 16, 2004

News and commentary:

"'Europe Will Be Islamic by the End of the Century'" (Robert Spencer, Human Events Online, 2004/09/16)
Sad Situation in Sweden III: "How quickly is Europe being Islamized? So quickly that even historian Bernard Lewis, who has continued throughout his honor-laden career to be strangely disingenuous about certain realities of Islamic radicalism and terrorism, told the German newspaper Die Welt forthrightly that "Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century."
Or maybe sooner. Consider some indicators from Scandinavia this past week:
• Sweden's third-largest city, Malmø, according to the Swedish Aftonbladet, has become an outpost of the Middle East in Scandinavia: 'The police now publicly admit what many Scandinavians have known for a long time: They no longer control the situation in the nations's third largest city. It is effectively ruled by violent gangs of Muslim immigrants. Some of the Muslims have lived in the area of Rosengård, Malmø, for twenty years, and still don't know how to read or write Swedish. Ambulance personnel are attacked by stones or weapons, and refuse to help anybody in the area without police escort. The immigrants also spit at them when they come to help. Recently, an Albanian youth was stabbed by an Arab, and was left bleeding to death on the ground while the ambulance waited for the police to arrive. The police themselves hesitate to enter parts of their own city unless they have several patrols, and need to have guards to watch their cars, otherwise they will be vandalized.'"

"The real 'root cause' of global terror" (Evelyn Gordon, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/09/16)
"Most of the tactics now being used by Iraqis and Chechens were invented by the Palestinians. It was the PLO that invented airline terrorism, with a wave of hijackings in the 1970s; it was Hamas that turned suicide bombings into standard practice; even the grisly Chechen takeover of a school in Beslan this month aped the PLO's takeover of a school in Ma'alot in 1974. But such acts, far from discrediting either the perpetrators or their cause, turned Palestinian statehood into an international cause celebre. ...
Forty years later, a Palestinian state in every inch of the West Bank and Gaza has become an international consensus. And this achievement was not in spite of Palestinian terror but because of it: Many peoples with equal or better claims to statehood, from Tibetans to Iraqi Kurds, have sought independence without resorting to terror; yet their aspirations at best elicit lip-service support from the world, and often outright opposition. The Palestinians' success lay in persuading the international community that peace depends on meeting their demands. ...
Iraqi and Chechen terrorists both have clear political aims: The Chechens want Russia out so they can establish an Islamic dictatorship in Chechnya; the Iraqis want America out so they can establish either a Ba'athist or Islamic (there are two competing groups) dictatorship in Iraq. And in an age of global communications, neither Iraqis nor Chechens can help noticing that each new round of Palestinian terror has led to greater international pressure on Israel to accede to Palestinian demands. The conclusion is obvious: To succeed, they should adopt Palestinian tactics."

"Reporters, Officials Are Targets in Iraq" (Hamza Hendawi, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/16)
"MAHMOUDIYAH, Iraq - A 15-mile stretch of road south of Baghdad has become the most dreaded in Iraq after a series of high-profile kidnappings and deadly ambushes targeting foreign journalists and prominent politicians.
Heat and boredom aren't the worst aspect of being trapped in the gridlock that unfolds every day in the street running through Mahmoudiyah's main food market.
Around here, all an assassin needs for cover is a traffic jam.
"Anyone can walk up to someone and shoot him dead now," says Adnan Fahd al-Ghiriri, a tribal leader from Mahmoudiyah. "Everyone will be too scared to do anything about it and the killer will walk away." ...
The new government is also up against a close network of tribes and families sharing the religious belief that the Americans in Iraq are invaders and that every Muslim has a duty to fight them.
"Things have gone too far for middle ground now," said Sheik Faisal Jalab, a tribal chief from Youssifiyah. "Our religion obliges us to stand behind those defending the faith." ...
His son, Ahmed Faisal, chimed in: "How can you blame me for hating the Americans after they killed so many innocent Iraqis and forced their way into our homes?
'You cannot even blame me if I become a suicide bomber.'"

"A Democratic World Is No Neocon Folly" (Max Boot, Los Angeles Times, 2004/09/16)
"'The world must be made safe for democracy,' Woodrow Wilson declared in 1917. Ever since (and arguably before), that imperative has occupied a central place in U.S. foreign policy. Democratic and Republican presidents alike have seen the need to spread liberty abroad to protect liberty at home.
Yet, because of the difficulties we are encountering in Iraq, the democratization imperative is under attack today from both left and right. From Pat Buchanan to Paul Krugman, the cry has gone up that the stress on exporting American ideals is a plot by nefarious "neoconservatives." ...
Krueger and Maleckova write: "Apart from population — larger countries tend to have more terrorists — the only variable that was consistently associated with the number of terrorists was the Freedom House index of political rights and civil liberties. Countries with more freedom were less likely to be the birthplace of international terrorists. Poverty and literacy were unrelated to the number of terrorists from a country. Think of a country like Saudi Arabia: It is wealthy but has few political and civil freedoms. Perhaps it is no coincidence that so many of the Sept. 11 terrorists — and Osama bin Laden himself — came from there."
Paul Wolfowitz couldn't have said it better. Of course, even admitting that democracy promotion is in U.S. interests, there will be differences over how to go about it. Anyone not on the administration's payroll would concede that its performance has been far from flawless. But President Bush is on the right track because he recognizes the democracy imperative that too many of his critics unfairly dismiss as neocon nuttiness."

"Who seized Simona Torretta?" (Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill, The Guardian, 2004/09/16)
Who stands to benefit from this article? Naomi Klein seems to have lost it completely. In August she wanted to "bring Najaf to New York". Now she co-pens an article which reads like any of the countless articles in Arab media built on conspiracy theories blaming specific Arab and Islamist atrocities on CIA and Mossad. Only this time, of course, it's true:
"Meanwhile, a growing number of Islamic leaders are hinting that the raid on A Bridge to Baghdad was not the work of mujahideen, but of foreign intelligence agencies out to discredit the resistance. ...
Only blocks from the heavily patrolled Green Zone, the whole operation went off with no interference from Iraqi police or US military - although Newsweek reported that "about 15 minutes afterwards, an American Humvee convoy passed hardly a block away". ...
Who could have pulled off such a coordinated operation - and who stands to benefit from an attack on this anti-war NGO? ...
Sheikh Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, from Iraq's leading Sunni cleric organisation, told reporters in Baghdad that he received a visit from Torretta and Pari the day before the kidnap. "They were scared," the cleric said. "They told me that someone threatened them." Asked who was behind the threats, al-Kubaisi replied: "We suspect some foreign intelligence."
Blaming unpopular resistance attacks on CIA or Mossad conspiracies is idle chatter in Baghdad, but coming from Kubaisi, the claim carries unusual weight; he has ties with a range of resistance groups and has brokered the release of several hostages. Kubaisi's allegations have been widely reported in Arab media, as well as in Italy, but have been absent from the English-language press."

"Sweden's Solidarity with Terrorists" (Lisa Abramowicz and David Frankfurter, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/09/16)
Sad Situation in Sweden II: "The “Palestinian Solidarity Conference," was held in the Gothenburg municipality Culture House starting September 7, culminated in a celebratory party on the night of September 11 – while the rest of the world finds other more sober ways of marking the anniversary of this turning point in the impact of terrorism.
One of the main conference agenda items was action to remove the PFLP, Hamas and other terrorist organisations from the EU’s terror list, so that these organizations can resume collecting money in Sweden and other European countries. ...
So, what else is new? There are plenty extremists around. They hold conferences and demonstrate for all kinds of outrageous causes - all part of a democratic, open society.
True, but not every public outburst is deserving of government support. In fact, supporting these EU blacklisted terrorist organisations is illegal – something even recognised by the conference agenda. Notwithstanding this, the conference was subsidized by the Swedish International Development Aid Agency, SIDA — which donated over 5,000 Euro in support. SIDA has also given 16,000 Euro to conference co-organizer Proletären FF. When challenged, SIDA chose to ignore information about the conference objectives published by the organizers at www.rku.nu, and claimed that it was a 'get-together for youth to be able to discuss Human Rights issues.'" (See also: "Terrorspeaker invited with taxfunding" (Ingvar Hedlund, Expressen, 2004/09/02))

"Reality Check" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2004/09/16)
"The Green Zone in Baghdad is no longer completely secure. Money quote:

US military officers in Baghdad have warned they cannot guarantee the security of the perimeter around the Green Zone, the headquarters of the Iraqi government and home to the US and British embassies, according to security company employees.
At a briefing earlier this month, a high-ranking US officer in charge of the zone's perimeter said he had insufficient soldiers to prevent intruders penetrating the compound's defences.
The US major said it was possible weapons or explosives had already been stashed in the zone, and warned people to move in pairs for their own safety. The Green Zone, in Baghdad's centre, is one of the most fortified US installations in Iraq. Until now, militants have not been able to penetrate it.

(My italics). The president has no excuse for not knowing the disaster that his conduct of the war has unleashed, as his own internal assessment has been bleak. But he refuses to acknowledge reality — perhaps the most dangerous characteristic in a war-president. At this rate, it won't matter that John Kerry seems unable to make the case against the president. The shambles that this president has created in Iraq war will do it for him." (See also: "Green Zone is ‘no longer totally secure’" (James Drummond and Steve Negus, Financial Times, 2004/09/15) and "U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq's Future" (Douglas Jehl, The New York Times, 2004/09/16). Also: "How to lose a war" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2004/09/13))

"Two Americans and a Briton Abducted in Baghdad" (AP/The New York Times, 2004/09/16)
"Gunmen kidnapped two Americans and a Briton from a house in the heart of the Iraqi capital Thursday, the Interior Ministry and witnesses said.
The three were seized from a two-story house surrounded by a wall in Baghdad's al-Mansour neighborhood at dawn, said Col. Adnan Abdel-Rahman, a ministry official. Rahman had initially said the three were all British nationals.
He said they were employed by Gulf Services Company, a Middle East-based construction firm."

"Iraq war illegal, says Annan" (BBC News, 2004/09/16)
"The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.
He said the decision to take action in Iraq should have been made by the Security Council, not unilaterally.
The UK government responded by saying the attorney-general made the "legal basis... clear at the time". ...
When pressed on whether he viewed the invasion of Iraq as illegal, he said: 'Yes, if you wish. I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal.'" (See also: "Iraq war allies rebuff UN chief" (BBC News, 2004/09/16): "But authorities in the UK, Australia, Poland, Bulgaria and Japan said the war was backed by international law. Australian Prime Minister John Howard described the UN as a "paralysed" body. And a former Bush administration aide, Randy Scheunemann, branded Mr Annan's comments "outrageous.'")

"U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq's Future" (Douglas Jehl, The New York Times, 2004/09/16)
"A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday.
The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.
"There's a significant amount of pessimism," said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages."

"U.S. Says Saudis Repress Religion" (Glenn Kessler and Alan Cooperman, The Washington Post, 2004/09/16)
"The United States for the first time named Saudi Arabia yesterday as a country that severely violates religious freedom, potentially subjecting the close U.S. ally to sanctions.
"Freedom of religion does not exist" in Saudi Arabia, the State Department said in its annual report on international religious freedom. "Freedom of religion is not recognized or protected under the country's laws and basic religious freedoms are denied to all but those who adhere to the state-sanctioned version of Sunni Islam," the report said, adding that "non-Muslim worshippers risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation and sometimes torture." ...
Admonishing Saudi Arabia was a switch for the administration, which had resisted calls from human rights groups and key lawmakers that the State Department cite the desert kingdom, a key oil supplier and partner in the war against terrorism, in its annual report. U.S. officials have said they preferred to handle such concerns privately even as they acknowledged that for all practical purposes Saudi Arabia has one of the world's most repressive regimes." (See also the report: "International Religious Freedom Report 2004: Saudi Arabia" (U.S. Department of State, 2004/09/15))

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

News and commentary:

"Parchin, Iran"
(DigitalGlobe, 2004/09/13)

"Armed and Dangerous?" (Jacqueline Shire and Jonathan Karl, ABC News, 2004/09/15)
"The U.S. government and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have questions about a military site in Iran with suspected ties to the country's nuclear program, ABC News has learned.
Iran's Parchin complex — covering approximately 15 square miles and located about 19 miles southeast of Tehran — is known as a center for the production of conventional ammunition and explosives. A State Department official has confirmed the United States suspects nuclear activity at some of its facilities. The suspicions focus on possible testing of high explosives. ...
Images of Parchin, obtained exclusively by ABC News, show a building within the facility's high-explosive test area that could permit the testing of especially large explosions, including those relevant to the development of a nuclear weapon." (See also satellite imagery: "Nuclear Weapons Work at Parchin" (GlobalSecurity.org, 2004/09/13))

"Syria tested chemical arms on civilians in Darfur region: press" (AFP/Channelnewsasia.com, 2004/09/15)
"Syria tested chemical weapons on civilians in Sudan's troubled western Darfur region in June and killed dozens of people.
The German daily Die Welt newspaper, in an advance release of its Wednesday edition, citing unnamed western security sources, said that injuries apparently caused by chemical arms were found on the bodies of the victims.
It said that witnesses quoted by an Arabic news website called ILAF in an article on August 2 had said that several frozen bodies arrived suddenly at the "Al-Fashr Hospital" in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in June.
Die Welt said the sources had indicated that the weapons tests were undertaken following a military exercise between Syria and Sudan.
Syrian officers were reported to have met in May with Sudanese military leaders in a Khartoum suburb to discuss the possibility of improving cooperation between their armies.
According to Die Welt, the Syrians had suggested close cooperation on developing chemical weapons, and it was proposed that the arms be tested on the rebel SPLA, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, in the south.
But given that the rebels were involved in peace talks, the newspaper continued, the Sudanese government proposed testing the arms on people in Darfur." (Hat tip: The Corner. See also the German original: "Syrien testet chemische Waffen an Sudanern" (Jacques Schuster, Die Welt, 2004/09/15). Also: "Die Welt: Syria used chem weapons in Sudan" (UPI/The Washington Times, 2004/09/15): "At least five planes from the Syrian civil airline Syrian Arab Airlines flew Syrian chemical weapons experts into Sudan to carry out the attack.")

"US blasts Saudi 'religious curbs'" (BBC News, 2004/09/15)
"The US has accused Saudi Arabia of severely violating religious freedom.
In an unusual public rebuke, the US State Department put its key Arab ally on a list of states causing particular concern over freedom to worship.
According to its annual report, freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia does not exist either in practice or in law. ...
The US report said that "freedom of religion does not exist" in Saudi Arabia, where an austere form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism is the official religion.
Christianity and all its symbols - including crosses and Christmas trees - are strictly banned, as are all places of worship except mosques.
The report said those groups who did not adhere to the officially sanctioned strain of Islam were facing "severe repercussions" at the hands of the religious police in the desert kingdom." (See also: "International Religious Freedom Report 2004: Saudi Arabia" (U.S. Department of State, September 2004))

"Al-Zarqawi's Message to the Fighters of Jihad in Iraq on September 11, 2004" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 785, 2004/09/15)
"On September 12, 2004, an audiotape of a September 11 speech by Al-Qa'ida leader in Iraq Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi was broadcast by several Islamist websites. A transcript of this speech was posted the following day on those sites. The person who posted the transcript called himself the "Glimmer of the Swords" and referred to Al-Zarqawi as "The Sheikh and Commander of Slaughterers." ...
He says that America was defeated and humiliated by the Muslim warriors, who are "the brotherhood of Jihad, both Muhajireen and Ansar [i.e., both foreign volunteers and native Iraqis]."
'They are the ones who made the international coalition drink the draught of humiliation, and they have struck them blows that will not quickly be forgotten, and they have taught them lessons which are still seared on their skin, and they are still convulsing from the pains of these lessons - lessons which lowered their flags to half-mast and shook their feet and confused their thoughts until fright wormed its way into their joints, and the worm of despair bored into their bones. It could not be otherwise, for our heroes massacred them, to the point where they saw the cowardice of the American soldier.
O young Islamic man in Iraq and in all Muslim countries, you who are perplexed and seeking life, you who yearn to come to the aid of the religion of Allah, you who offer your life to your Lord, here is guidance to the right path, here is wisdom and probity, here is the ecstasy of self-sacrifice and the pleasure of Jihad …'" (See also: "Text from Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi Letter" (Coalition Provisional Authority, 2004/02/12))

"Duke's Platform for Terror" (Lee Kaplan, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/09/15)
"On October 15-17th, Duke University is scheduled to host the Fourth Annual Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement. This year’s event was originally slated for the West Coast (last year’s was at Ohio State), but the organizers had to look elsewhere because of reports in FrontPageMagazine and elsewhere that chants of “Kill the Jews” were heard during the proceedings of the first conference at UC-Berkeley. The same chants were repeated at the University of Michigan conference the following year, where the guest of honor was Sami al-Arian, the U.S. head of the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. ...
Duke University’s website attempts to whitewash the reports of anti-Semitic outbursts at previous Solidarity conferences by claiming that there is no evidence that such outbursts occurred (of course, if cameras and recorders had been allowed this would not be a problem). Yet a simple Google search turned up a signed legal affidavit as well as an eyewitness who testified that such chants were heard at the Michigan conference in both Arabic and English. Such activities in the past were even reported in the Ohio State campus newspaper, the Lantern and confirmed genuine by the New York Post and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. When proof was shown to Burness’s office, the university website was changed to the effect that “some” people “claim” to have heard such epithets in Arabic." (See also: "Campus Rally for Terror" (Lee Kaplan, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/11/26))

"Fahrenheit 9/11" (I. Adnan, Iraq the Model, 2004/09/15)
Fahrenheit 9/11 in Iraq: "Well the best part goes when he suspected that the war against Taliban was to build a pipeline through Afghanistan!! With this level of assessment I won't be surprised if future wars will happen for building a bridge or maybe paving a road!! And I really was shocked when he pictured Iraq like peaceful country where children play and people laugh happily, guess what Mr. Moore you are wrong coz I live in Iraq and children weren't playing they were working to live and people weren’t smiling they were either afraid of getting killed or arrested for no reason or just because they don’t like Saddam and they dared to say so.
I really don’t know why you have to cheat to make the people believe you coz the whole world knew how the Iraqi people suffered from Saddam and you try to show that they were happy with him! In the same superficial manner you used to show that Iraq was a happy place, one could use the pictures of children singing around Stalin celebrating his birthday to show that people loved Stalin and they were happy. ...
Still I have too many things to say but I think the article will be too long to read so last to say to Mr. Moore being a writer doesn't mean that you write lies and being a producer doesn't mean that you cheat people for their money and being a director doesn't mean that you have to be silly and for the best of all please find another job!!" (Hat tip: Erik.)

"'Fahrenheit 9/11' gets 'axis of evil' premiere" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/15)
Fahrenheit 9/11 in Iran: "Cinemagoers in the Iranian capital were given their first glimpse of 'Fahrenheit 9/11' this week, but appeared to enjoy more the rare chance to watch an American movie than its assault on their regime's arch foe George W. Bush. ...
"The authorities obviously gave the film the green light for political reasons, in that anything against the United States must be good," quipped one of the hundreds of mainly young people who flocked to Tuesday night's opening screening. ...
"They are showing this film to erase from our minds the idea that America is the great saviour," said Hirad Harandian, another cinemagoer at the uptown Farhang cinema. ...
"It was just too political. I was bored from the middle, and I wished we had gone to see "Kill Bill" instead," said one young man, referring to the trendy Quentin Tarantino flick also being shown. ...
"It sure is a great country, where someone like Moore trashes the president and gets away with it -- and makes so much money!" he laughed."

"An important part of my identity" (Thomas L. Friedman, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/09/15)
One of eleven excerpts from "I am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl" (The Jerusalem Post, 2004/09/15):
"Danny, I suspect, was also a multidimensional person, who found himself caught up in a one-dimensional world, a world where the only identity that mattered was religious identity. In that sense, if "I am Jewish" were indeed Danny Pearl's last words, they said so much more about his murderers than they did about him. For Danny too, religion was just one part of his rich identity, a proud and important part, no doubt, but just one part of who he was. But for his captors it was everything. Because they were men full of hate, full of intolerance, full of bile, for whom religious identity was all-defining—the key to explaining friend and foe, good and bad, who shall live and who shall die. They were barren, impoverished, one-dimensional people. They had to torture Danny to reduce him to their one-dimensional level. They had to squeeze every other bit of identity out of him. So when they got him to say "I am Jewish" as his last words, in truth they got him to reveal only a little bit about himself, but everything about themselves."

"Chinese Muslims forge isolated path" (Louisa Lim, BBC News, 2004/09/15)
"In the past, rebellions brewed in Ningxia province, as Muslims chafed against the yoke of central control.
Mindful of that, China's communist rulers keep careful control over their flock.
But Muslims in the province are pushing forward the barriers of faith - with unique results.
Jin Meihua is at the forefront of those changes. Her head covered with a lilac scarf, she teaches passages from the Koran to other women.
The 40-year-old wife and mother is one of a handful of Chinese female imams. ...
Beijing's tight control over religious practice means Chinese Muslims have been isolated from trends sweeping through the rest of the Islamic world.
According to Dr Khaled Abou el Fadl from the University of California in Los Angeles, that means that ancient traditions like female jurists - which have been stamped out elsewhere - have been able to continue in China.
"The Wahhabi and Salafis have not been able to penetrate areas like China and establish their puritanical creed there," said Dr Khaled Abou el Fadl.
'That's a good thing, as it means that perhaps from the margins of Islam the great tradition of women jurists might be rekindled.'" (Note: For the history of the Hui Muslims in Ningxia, see also "The Hui: China's most loyal Muslims" (Andrew Forbes, The Wall Street Journal/CPA, 2001/11/09))

"All the News That's Fake but Accurate" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2004/09/15)
Off topic of the day: "Today's New York Times has an update on the scandal over Dan Rather's use of fraudulent documents in last week's hit piece on President Bush. Oddly, the Times piece lacks a byline, but it has what may be the greatest headline ever:

Fake but accurate! If this is the New York Times' new standard of journalism, does it apply to all stories, or only the ones that seek to make President Bush look bad?" (See also: "Memos on Bush Are Fake but Accurate, Typist Says" (The New York Times, 2004/09/15))

"Briton shot dead in Saudi capital" (Reuters, 2004/09/15)
"Suspected Muslim militants have gunned down a Briton in the Saudi capital Riyadh, security sources and diplomats say.
They said the gunmen shot the man twice in the chest and twice in the head in a suburb east of the city near a shopping complex on Wednesday.
The Saudi Interior Ministry said the man was a British resident of Riyadh and that he was killed in the shopping complex parking lot. The British embassy could not confirm his nationality."

"Three decapitated 'foreigners' found in Iraq" (The Guardian, 2004/09/15)
"Iraqi national guardsmen today found the decapitated bodies of three people, believed to be foreigners, dumped in nylon sacks north of Baghdad.
The Reuters news agency reported that Iraqi police had initially said the three had tattoos that appeared to be written in Arabic and Turkish. However, they later said two of the bodies had tattoos written in the Roman alphabet, one saying HECER and the other a letter H.
The third body had tattoos written in Arabic script, but the words were not Arabic. The US military said initial reports indicated that the men were Arabs.
Reports said the national guardsmen found the corpses on a roadside near the town of Dujail, 38 miles north of Baghdad, this morning. Their heads were strapped to the backs of their bodies."

"Chechen Solidarity at the New York Times" (Phyllis Chesler, FrontPageMagazine, 2004/09/15)
By the way, did those Chechen children ever collaborate with Hitler? Chesler has a point in her criticism of Richard Pipes' somewhat naïve op-ed "Give the Chechens a Land of Their Own." For one thing, Russia's pull-out of Chechnya in 1996 led not to peace but to the arrival of the Wahhabis who "plunged Chechnya back into a nightmare of kidnappings, murders, suicide terrorism, and similar incidents, which has yet to end."
But Chesler veers off the edge and into the abyss when she rants about "the nature of the centuries-old criminality of the Chechen population." Perhaps it's only me, but accusing entire populations of centuries-old criminality is simply beyond the pale in its own right and perhaps especially in this case as it is exactly the same reasoning which Stalin used to rationalize the enforced exile of the entire Chechen population (and also, of course, the same kind of reasoning Islamist terrorists use to justify their attacks):
"Pipes explains that the Chechen terrorists are not like al-Qaeda's terrorists because the Chechen goal is not world-wide domination; they only seek the "limited objective of independence." If Russia would simply appease them by granting them a sovereign Muslim state, all will be well. He writes: "The Russians ought to learn from the French (in Algeria)" and, similarly, grant Chechnya independence.
Excuse me: Does Pipes really believe that the French "solution " to Algeria is an unmitigated success story? Tell that to the thousands of Algerian Muslim girls and women whom paramilitary Algerian Islamists have kidnapped off the streets, turned into sex and domestic slaves, then killed, often be-headed, when they become pregnant or tried to escape. Tell that to the journalists, intellectuals, and feminists whom Algerian Islamists have silenced, tortured, exiled, and murdered. ...
But, the greater the Islamist horror, the more certain Western intellectuals, Pipes included, want to reason with it, understand it, appease it. True, the Islamists committed beastly acts of terror against civilians but it was understandable: they were "occupied," "colonized," "humiliated," "unemployed."
By the way, did those Russian children ever "occupy" Chechnya?" (Also: "Pipes also minimizes the nature of the centuries-old criminality of the Chechen population, a group which, even he admits, did side with Hitler against Russia."
In his answer, Pipes points out that "I nowhere "admit" that the Chechens sided "with Hitler against Russia." I merely say that Stalin accused them of collaboration and had them exiled en masse -- including children and aged people."
See also: "Give the Chechens a Land of Their Own" (Richard Pipes, The New York Times, 2004/09/09))

"Getting out of the gutter" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/09/15)
"The gutter culture of Israeli politics that was instigated and nurtured by the Left has now spread to the Right":
"Today we have a 28-year-old Israeli woman by the name of Tali Fahima in administrative detention. Her association with Fatah terrorist commander Zakariya Zubeidi, still at large in Jenin, led to her initial arrest on suspicion of involvement in terror attacks against Israel. Left-wing protesters calling for Fahima's release from jail hold signs which say "Sharon has murdered more than Zubeidi."
What we see in the left-wing radicalism is a definition of the rules of the political game in which no safeguard of Israeli security, democracy or social unity is sacred. Teenagers are urged to refuse to serve in the IDF. IDF officers come under personal threat for carrying out lawful operations aimed at protecting Israeli citizens from murder. Our leaders are demonized as murderers and Israelis on the other side of the political divide are criminalized rather than engaged in constructive debate. Israeli traitors are defended as "peace activists" and their terror minders are forgiven for killing the protesters' countrymen. ...
Disturbingly, today in the now fully engaged political battle surrounding Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to forcibly remove some 8,500 Israelis from their communities in Gaza and in Northern Samaria, we see images from the Right that bear a striking resemblance to their political and ideological adversaries on the Left."

"Stand Up to Putin" (Robert Kagan, The Washington Post, 2004/09/15)
"Putin's decision on Monday to end the system of direct popular election of Russia's governors, and to have the Russian parliament elected on the basis of slates chosen by national party leaders he mostly controls, is an unambiguous step toward tyranny in Russia. It cannot be justified as part of the war on terrorism. Putin has had these plans ready for months. He is cynically using the horrific terrorist attack in Beslan as his excuse. ...
Fighting the war on terrorism should not and cannot mean relegating other elements of U.S. strategy and interests to the sidelines. A dictatorial Russia is at least as dangerous to U.S. interests as a dictatorial Iraq. If hopes for democratic reform in Russia are snuffed out, Russia's neighbors in Eastern and Central Europe will be rightly alarmed and will look to the United States for defense.
And there is an even more fundamental reality that the president must face: A Russian dictatorship can never be a reliable ally of the United States. A Russian dictator will always regard the United States with suspicion, because America's very existence, its power, its global influence, its democratic example will threaten his hold on power." (See also: "Putin Moves to Increase Power, Citing Effort to Fight Terror" (Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times, 2004/09/13))

"From Those Putin Would Weaken, Praise" (Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times, 2004/09/15)
"On Monday, President Vladimir V. Putin announced he would strip Russia's 89 regions of much of their authority and electoral legitimacy. On Tuesday, not one of the leaders of those regions said a public word of protest.
On the contrary, there were words of praise.
"It is constructive and productive," Murat M. Zyazikov, the president of Ingushetia, said in a telephone interview, embracing a proposal that would leave him serving at the will not of his impoverished electorate in southern Russia, but of the president in faraway Moscow. ...
A headline in the newspaper Izvestia called it the "September Revolution," equating Mr. Putin's consolidation of power to this country's most famous October, almost 87 years ago. And yet the second day of the revolution passed with barely a murmur of protest, even among those affected most." (See also: "Putin Moves to Increase Power, Citing Effort to Fight Terror" (Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times, 2004/09/13))

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

News and commentary:

"Why Americans love George W Bush" (Spengler, Asia Times, 2004/09/14)
"Two World Wars taught Europeans that there is no good or evil, only the insidious jealousies of contending peoples. God therefore is on no one's side, and the alternative to mutual butchery is negotiated compromise. Senator Kerry and the US coastal elite believe the same thing, namely that enlightened specialists can interrupt the tragic destiny of peoples and save the world from itself.
That is an alien intrusion upon the American world view, which began, almost biblically, by separating good and evil. The oppressive English monarchy was evil, while the self-governing English colonies were good; slavery was evil, while the system of free labor was good; what immigrants left behind in the old country was evil, and what they found on American shores was good. Nazism was evil, democracy was good; the Soviet Union was evil, while America was good.
Attacking President Bush for his failure to win European support for his Iraq venture may be the stupidest idea ever advanced by a major-party presidential candidate in a US election. ...
Once attacked, Americans want to fight back. George W Bush may have attacked the wrong country (which I do not believe), and he may have mistaken the US mission after the initial fighting was over (which I do believe), but Americans are quite willing to forgive him. They understand that it is hard to track down and destroy a shadowy enemy, and do not mind much if the United States has to trounce a few countries before finding the right ones."

"On his knees before terror" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2004/09/14)
Phillips on the speech commemorating 9/11 held at Al Azhar University in Cairo by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams:
"Alas, his address revealed an Archbishop on his knees before terror. For cant, humbug and moral spinelessness, this took some beating. ...

'We may rightly want to defend ourselves and one another – our people, our families, the weak and vulnerable among us. But we are not forced to act in revengeful ways, holding up a mirror to the terrible acts done to us. If we do act in the same way as our enemies, we imprison ourselves in their anger, their evil. And we fail to show our belief in the living God who always requires of us justice and goodness. So whenever a Muslim, a Christian or a Jew refuses to act in violent revenge, creating terror and threatening or killing the innocent, that person bears witness to the true God. They have stepped outside the way the faithless world thinks. A person without faith, hope and love may say, If I do not use indiscriminate violence and terror, there is no safety for me. The believer says, My safety is with God, whose justice can never be defeated. If I defend myself, I seek to do so only in a way that honours God and God’s image in others, and that does not offend against God’s justice. To seek to find reconciliation, to refuse revenge and the killing of the innocent, this is a form of adoration towards the One Living and Almighty God.'

This is a quite remarkable doctrine. Ostensibly preaching moral even-handedness, it is actually guilty of a quite grotesque moral inversion. Christians and Jews do not murder Muslims; it is Muslims who are murdering Christians and Jews; any attacks on Muslims by Jews, Christians or others in, for example, Israel or America are conducted solely in self-defence and in an attempt to prevent further acts of mass murder. To equate such acts of self-defence with truly indiscriminate acts of barbarism is disgusting. The fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury appears not to understand the difference suggests a staggering moral illiteracy." (See also: "Address at al-Azhar al-Sharif, Cairo" (Archbishop of Canterbury, 2004/09/11). Also: "Terrorists can have serious moral goals, says Williams" (Jonathan Petre, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/10/15), "Clergy protest against war on Iraq" (BBC News, 2002/08/06) and "Tales of Canterbury's Future?" (Peter Mullen, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/07/12))

"Attacks on Iraqi Police Kill at Least 59" (Sameer N. Yacoub, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/14)
"Mahdi Mohammed, 30, was standing outside his barber shop when the explosion went off.
"It was a horrific scene. Seconds earlier people were drinking tea or eating sandwiches and then I could see their remains hanging from trees," he said. "I could see burning people running in all directions."
"This is a crime committed against innocent people who needed to find work to feed their hungry children," said Alaa Khamas, a falafel vendor. He said he saw a man who had just bought a falafel from him killed by a flying car wheel.
Angry crowds of young men pumped their fists in the air and denounced President Bush and interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, saying they had failed to protect Iraqis. "Bush is a dog," they chanted. ...
Others, however, directed their anger at the militants.
"Such acts cannot be considered part of the resistance (against American forces). This is not a jihad, they are not mujahedeen," said Amir Abdel Hassan, a 41-year-old teacher. "Iraq is not a country, it's a big graveyard," he said."

"Blast in Baghdad Rebel District Kills at Least 47" (Mariam Karouny and Luke Baker, Reuters, 2004/09/14)
"A huge car bomb blast has torn through a crowded market close to a Baghdad police headquarters building, killing at least 47 people in the deadliest single attack in the Iraqi capital in six months.
An Internet statement in the name of the Tawhid and Jihad group led by Jordanian al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for Tuesday's blast, which it said was carried out by a suicide attacker. Washington says Zarqawi is its top enemy in Iraq and has put a $25 million (13.9 million pound) price on his head.
"With the grace of God, a lion from our martyrdom brigades was successful in striking a centre for apostate police volunteers," said the statement, which could not be verified." ...
At the blast site, rescuers pulled bodies from mangled market stalls. The area was littered with shoes, clothes and body parts, as well as fruit and vegetables from the market.
Bloodstained corpses lay on pavements strewn with chairs, glass and rubble from blown-out shopfronts. Dazed bystanders vainly checked bodies for signs of life."

"Israeli city says barrier is 'working'" (James Reynolds, BBC News, 2004/09/14)
"Svid Sacks, from Netanya's city council, says: "In 2001, we had about six attacks here in Netanya.
"In 2002, we had four attacks in Netanya. In 2003, we had one attack in Netanya and in 2004 we had no suicide or no bomb in Netanya."
For him, these figures mean something very clear: Israel's barrier is working.
He and his colleagues have watched as the barrier has been built and suicide attacks in their city have stopped. ...
The central promenade here on the coast in Netanya used to be a pretty terrifying place for most Israelis.
This is the place that Palestinian suicide bombers often tried and succeeded in attacking.
But now Israel's built its barrier and this central promenade has come back to life.
There are dozens of cafes all around me with plenty of people sitting outside and enjoying the sun.
What you really notice is that there are very few security guards around and that there are no fences stopping you from getting into the cafes.
In Jerusalem at the moment, when you try to go to an outdoor cafe, you have got to get past a fence, past plenty of security guards, having your bags checked and so on.
But here everything is open and it wasn't like this before the barrier was built." (See also: "Israel's Fence Defense: The Barrier Is Preventing Terrorism" (Julie Stahl, CNS News, 2004/07/09))

"Foreigners Taken Hostage in Iraq Top 100" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/14)
A list of held, killed, escaped, freed or rescued foreign hostages in Iraq:
"HOSTAGES KILLED
— Durmus Kumdereli, Turkish truck driver. Apparently beheaded in a video made public Sept. 13 but digitally dated Aug. 17. Video was posted on a Web site known for carrying statements from Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group, Tawhid and Jihad.
— Twelve Nepalese workers. One beheaded and 11 shot in the head and killed in a video posted on an Islamic Web site Aug. 31. The men worked for a Jordan-based construction company.
— Enzo Baldoni, Italian journalist. Reported killed Aug. 26 by militants.
— Murat Yuce, of Turkey. Shot and killed in video made public Aug. 2. Worked for Turkish company Bilintur.
— Raja Azad, 49, engineer, and Sajad Naeem, 29, driver, both Pakistani, working for Kuwaiti-based firm. Slain July 28. Group calling itself Islamic Army in Iraq said they were killed because Pakistan considering sending troops to Iraq.
— Georgi Lazov, 30, and Ivaylo Kepov, 32, Bulgarian truck drivers. Militants loyal to Jordanian terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are suspected of decapitating both men.
— U.S. Army Spc. Keith M. Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio. Disappeared April 9. Arab television reported June 29 that he was killed; the U.S. military could not confirm that.
— Kim Sun-il, 33, South Korea translator. Beheaded June 22 by al-Qaida-linked group.
— Hussein Ali Alyan, 26, Lebanese construction worker. Found shot to death June 12. Lebanese Foreign Ministry says killers sought ransom, not political goal.
— Fabrizio Quattrocchi, 35, Italian security guard. Killed April 14. Previously unknown group, the Green Battalion, claimed responsibility.
— Nicholas Berg, 26, American businessman. Beheaded by al-Qaida-linked group after being kidnapped in April." (Note: The list of foreign hostages must probably and sadly be updated with the first Swede. Abbas Ridha, an Iraqi political refugee who returned to Iraq after the liberation, was abducted by unknown men who forced him into their car's trunk in front of his wife last Friday and drove away, not to be heard from since. Article in Swedish: "Svensk-irakier tros ha kidnappats i södra Irak" (Staffan Kihlström, Dagens Nyheter, 2004/09/14))

"Sad Situation in Sweden" (HonestReporting, 2004/09/14)
True enough. And a pretty good title for a lousy country and western ballad at that:
"HR subscriber Robert Skole is a reporter and author who has lived for many years in Sweden, where the media is, he says, 'viciously anti-Israel.' ...

Day after day, week after week, year after year, the Swedish media run a constant stream of news stories, editorials, photographs, letters and cartoons attacking the State of Israel. In the Swedish media, Israel is portrayed as the aggressor, an occupying force that violates human rights and international law, and should get out of 'Palestine.' .