Archived news and commentary: September 27 - October 3, 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, October 3, 2004

News and commentary:

"The singer called n.A.T.o."
(MosNews, 2004/09/09)

"n.A.T.o. - a pop singer dressed as a suicide-bomber - causes outrage" (Elizabeth Day, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/10/03)
"A self-styled "suicide bomber" musician who sings in Arabic and performs in a full-length burqa is planning a "terror concert" in Britain.
The Russian teenage singer, known only as n.A.T.o, performs with her face covered by a veil in front of screens broadcasting images from al-Jazeera, the Arab television station, interspersed with flashing words such as "al-Qaeda", "Iraq" and "Nasdaq".
Her manager, Ivan Shapovalov, who last year launched the controversial lesbian pop duo t.A.T.u, plans to give a concert in Britain in November after successfully organising a similar event in Moscow on September 11.
The Moscow "terror concert", timed to coincide with the anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, included invitations designed like aeroplane tickets." (See also: "TATU Producer Angers Russia With Suicide Bomber Singer" (MosNews, 2004/09/09))

"The din of democracy is driving out the silence of the imams" (John Simpson, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/10/03)
A report from Kabul: "The fact is that even if the streets of the city erupt with explosions this coming week, it will be too late. Barring the worst of disasters, the presidential election now seems unstoppable. The process of voter registration has been a remarkable success: so good, it may be that at least a million voters have registered more than once. ...
But could the Taliban ever come back, I asked Mr Noori as I sat in his dark shop, surrounded by piles of carpets and drinking green tea. I have always found his political judgment very shrewd. "Never," he says. "They only succeeded because so many people helped them."
Everyone else I have spoken to here agrees. The Taliban captured Kabul because in the mid-1990s they looked like winners, and large numbers of warlords went over to them even though they found the Taliban's religious extremism distasteful.
But when the Northern Alliance, with the help of the US Air Force and American special forces soldiers, threw the Taliban out of Kabul in November 2001, they looked like winners no longer. They have been harried and hunted ever since; and the only weapon they can use now is the car bomb.
This is not Baghdad. The Americans and their allies are not unpopular here - except in the east and south of the country, where there has been fighting - and they are regarded as guarantors of Afghanistan's stability. The West is seen as essentially benign."

"How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence" (David Barstow, The New York Times, 2004/10/03)
"The White House, though, embraced the disputed theory that the tubes were for nuclear centrifuges, an idea first championed in April 2001 by a junior analyst at the C.I.A. Senior nuclear scientists considered that notion implausible, yet in the months after 9/11, as the administration built a case for confronting Iraq, the centrifuge theory gained currency as it rose to the top of the government.
Senior administration officials repeatedly failed to fully disclose the contrary views of America's leading nuclear scientists, an examination by The New York Times has found. They sometimes overstated even the most dire intelligence assessments of the tubes, yet minimized or rejected the strong doubts of nuclear experts. They worried privately that the nuclear case was weak, but expressed sober certitude in public.
One result was a largely one-sided presentation to the public that did not convey the depth of evidence and argument against the administration's most tangible proof of a revived nuclear weapons program in Iraq."

"London mosque link to Beslan" (Jason Burke, The Observer, 2004/10/03)
"A member of the group responsible for the Beslan school massacre last month is a British citizen who attended the infamous Finsbury Park mosque in north London, The Observer can reveal.
Two other members of the group, loyal to Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, are also believed to have been active in the UK until less than three years ago. They are suspected of taking part in the raid on the school in which 300 people, half of them children, died.
Russian security sources described Kamel Rabat Bouralha, 46 years old and the oldest of the three, as a 'key aide' of Basayev, who has a £5.5 million price on his head. Basayev has boasted of training the men who took control of the school and wired it with explosives. Investigators believe that the three men, all Algerian-born, travelled to Chechnya from London to take part in fighting there in 2001."

"Militant Cleric Considers Entry Into Iraqi Politics" (Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, 2004/10/03)
"The Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has begun laying the groundwork to enter Iraq's nascent democratic process, telling Iraqi leaders that he is planning to disband his militia and possibly field candidates for office.
After weeks of watching his militia wither before American military attacks, Mr. Sadr has sent emissaries to some of Iraq's major political parties and religious groups to discuss the possibility of involving himself in the campaign for nationwide elections, according to a senior aide to Mr. Sadr and several Iraqi leaders who have met with him.
According to those Iraqis, Mr. Sadr says he intends to disband his militia, the Mahdi Army, and endorse the holding of elections."

"U.S., Iraqi Forces Control Samarra" (Karl Vick, The Washington Post, 2004/10/03)
"U.S. and Iraqi forces took control of the central Iraqi city of Samarra on Saturday but engaged in sporadic clashes with insurgents who had dispersed into the narrowest of its closely packed streets to continue fighting in small bands.
Iraqi officials used the apparent victory as an opportunity to warn resistance fighters who control or frequently destabilize other cities in central and northern Iraq and harass U.S. and Iraqi patrols on the roads between them.
"This is the first step in operations to take back lawless areas," Interior Minister Falah Naqib, a native of Samarra, told reporters at city hall, which was recaptured by U.S. and Iraqi troops, news services reported."

"Saddam ‘bought UN allies’ with oil" (Robert Winnett, The Sunday Times, 2004/10/03)
"A leaked report has exposed the extent of alleged corruption in the United Nations’ oil-for-food scheme in Iraq, identifying up to 200 individuals and companies that made profits running into hundreds of millions of pounds from it.
The report largely implicates France and Russia, whom Saddam Hussein targeted as he sought support on the UN Security Council before the Iraq war. Both countries were influential voices against UN-backed action.
A senior UN official responsible for the scheme is identified as a major beneficiary. The report, marked “highly confidential”, also finds that the private office of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, profited from the cheap oil. Saddam’s regime awarded this oil during the run-up to the war when military action was being discussed at the UN.
The report was drawn up on behalf of the interim Iraqi government in preparation for a possible legal action against those who may have illicitly profited under Saddam. The Iraqis hired the London-based accountants KPMG and lawyers Freshfields to advise on future action.
It details a catalogue of alleged bribery and corruption perpetrated by Saddam under the UN programme, revealing how the regime lined its pockets and those of influential politicians, journalists and UN officials." (See also: "3 Nations Reportedly Slowed Probe of Oil Sales" (Judith Miller, The New York Times, 2004/10/02))

Saturday, October 2, 2004

News and commentary:

"Hating Bush, cultural relativism and the war against the terrorists" (Victor Davis Hanson, Private Papers, 2004/10/02)
The Perfect Storm of Hating Bush Part 4: "We all know also that various manifestations of postmodernism are now embedded within the larger culture — everything from situational ethics, moral equivalence, utopian pacifism, and multiculturalism that share a common belief that absolute standards of judgment are a myth. But whereas in the past, arguments might have been waged over the validity of standardized tests, affirmative action, or the Western literary and artistic canon, they now have been superimposed onto critical issues of national security, if not our very survival in a time of war. And we are seeing the terrible results in the furious invective of an Al Gore, the mainstream acceptance of a Michael Moore, or the pass given to those who talk of killing the President.
So the current conflict against terror is the perfect postmodern storm, drawing into its whirl all the pathologies of the last thirty years to unleash a vehemence not experienced in recent political memory." (See also: "The wages of postmodernism, or when facts do not exist, we can invent our own reality" (Victor Davis Hanson, Private Papers, 2004/10/01), "Why the new hysterical hatred?" (Victor Davis Hanson, Private Papers, 2004/09/30) and "The new candor about killing George Bush" (Victor Davis Hanson, Private Papers, 2004/09/29))

"Italians Divided After Return of 'Simonas'" (Daniel Williams, The Washington Post, 2004/10/02)
The war against moderate foreign intelligence agencies? According to Simona Torretta their captors were "moderate", because they "prayed frequently". But at the same time they were "very religious and very political".
Oh, well. Whatever happened to Naomi Klein's assertion that they were from "foreign intelligence agencies" (i.e. CIA and Mossad)?:
"The criticism began almost immediately upon the arrival of Pari and Torretta in Rome on Tuesday. The pair expressed thanks to a variety of people and groups, including Arab moderates and Muslims. But they failed to single out the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. ...
Torretta called the interim Iraqi government of Ayad Allawi a "puppet" and said people "have to distinguish between terrorism and resistance." The women worked for A Bridge to Baghdad, a group that has labored in Iraq since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
"The guerrilla war is justified, but I am against the kidnapping of civilians," Torretta added. The pair concluded that their captors were "exponents of moderate Islam" because they "prayed frequently," she said." (See also: "Former hostage says guerrilla war justified" (Chicago Tribune, 2004/10/02): "Torretta, who had worked in Iraq since 1997, repeated her call for Italy to pull its 3,000 troops from Iraq, and said neither the election called for January nor the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi was legitimate. ...
She added, 'This was a very religious and very political group, and at the end it was convinced that we were not enemies.'")

"From a Virtual Shadow, Messages of Terror" (Ariana Eunjung Cha, The Washington Post, 2004/10/02)
"He calls himself Abu Maysara al Iraqi, or father of Maysara the Iraqi, and he's a master at being everywhere and nowhere in the virtual world, constantly switching his online accounts and taking advantage of new technologies to issue his communiqués to the world.
American Internet sleuths know next to nothing about him, whether Abu Maysara is his real name, whether he's an Iraqi or even whether he's in Iraq. What is clear is that he is one of the most important sources of information from the country's insurgency, getting his message out through the Internet, and U.S. authorities are trying to silence him.
His updates, terse and businesslike, are released several times a week on radical Islamic Web sites. Acting as a spokesman for Abu Musab Zarqawi, the most wanted guerrilla leader in Iraq, he variously reports attacks on U.S. soldiers and killings of hostages. His words and images reach millions of people when they open their newspapers, turn on their TVs or go online in search of news.
"There's no way of stopping it anymore," said Evan F. Kohlmann, a counterterrorism consultant. 'It's extremely frustrating. They can send out quality videos to millions of people uncensored.'"

"3 Nations Reportedly Slowed Probe of Oil Sales" (Judith Miller, The New York Times, 2004/10/02)
"Congressional investigators say that France, Russia and China systematically sabotaged the former United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq by preventing the United States and Britain from investigating whether Saddam Hussein was diverting billions of dollars.
In a briefing paper given yesterday to members of the House subcommittee investigating the program, the investigators said their review of the minutes of a United Nations Security Council subcommittee meeting showed that the three nations "continually refused to support the U.S. and U.K. efforts to maintain the integrity" of the program. ...
The paper suggests that France, Russia and China blocked inquiries into Iraq's manipulation of the program because their companies "had much to gain from maintaining'' the status quo. "Their businesses made billions of dollars through their involvement with the Hussein regime and O.F.F.P.," the document states, using the initials for the program. No officials of the three governments could be reached for comment."

Friday, October 1, 2004

News and commentary:

"George W. Bush..."
(Stephen Jaffe, AFP, 2004/10/01)
"George W. Bush, seen here, needs to get rid of the grimaces and smirks, John Kerry is still struggling to put on a natural smile, experts said after the first presidential debate between the two rivals."

"The wages of postmodernism, or when facts do not exist, we can invent our own reality" (Victor Davis Hanson, Private Papers, 2004/10/01)
The Perfect Storm of Hating Bush Part 3: "The common cultural tie that binds the screeching Howard Dean, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, or John Kerry is not personal knowledge of the cruelty and misery inflicted by Dick Cheney’s corporate America, but precisely its dividends of prep school and lots of family money. The attack dog of Enron Terry McAuliffe is $20 million richer only as a result of questionable mega-stock transactions during the eleventh-hour collapse of Global Crossing. The epitomes of American hypercapitalism—a Donald Trump, Warren Buffet, or Bill Gates—are welcomed into the Democratic crusade against George Bush’s betrayal of average America.
Limousine liberals are not new. But the hyper-rich’s support for candidates who decry the unfairness of corporate capitalism is. Equally strange are the angry liberals at the forefront of the Democratic Party who are the elite beneficiates of capitalism—whether we see the Kerrys flying on a private Gulfstream to environmental conferences, a Barbra Streisand faxing position papers to the Democratic leadership from Malibu, or the Heinz corporation’s multinational wealth subsidizing lectures on the evils of outsourcing jobs abroad." (See also: "Why the new hysterical hatred?" (Victor Davis Hanson, Private Papers, 2004/09/30) and "The new candor about killing George Bush" (Victor Davis Hanson, Private Papers, 2004/09/29))

"Voice seems to be al Qaeda leader calling for uprising" (CNN.com, 2004/10/01)
"The Arabic language TV news network Al-Jazeera on Friday aired what it claims is a new audiotape from al Qaeda's No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri. CNN has not authenticated the tape. CNN's Senior Editor for Arab Affairs Octavia Nasr translated the its message.
Voice purporting to be AL-ZAWAHIRI:
We shouldn't wait for the American, English, French, Jewish, Hungarian, Polish and South Korean forces to invade Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen and Algeria and then start the resistance after the occupier had already invaded us. We should start now.
The interests of America, Britain, Australia, France, Norway, Poland, South Korea and Japan are everywhere. All of them participated in the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya, they also facilitated a raison d'etre for Israel.
We should not wait anymore than we have already or else we will be devoured one country at a time as they have occupied us in the last two centuries. The Islamic world has entered the period of occupation and division. The resistance foiled the crusaders' and Jews' plans and put them in an embarrassing defensive and they're looking for a way out. ...
Oh young men of Islam, here is our message to you, if we are killed or captured, you should carry on the fight."

"Eustatic racism in Eurabia?" (Arnold Beichman, The Washington Times, 2004/10/01)
Sad Situation in Sweden IV: "There's a new word circulating around in the old Europe, "Eurabia." The neologism describes with grim humor what some Europeans regard as the growing Islamic influence in countries like Sweden thanks to immigration and the high birthrate of the immigrant population.
How serious is the concern? ...
There is no better answer than a look at Sweden today, a country slightly smaller than California with a population of some 9 million. Sweden has the second-largest percentage Muslim population in Western Europe. France has the highest Muslim population percentage — 7 percent.
Sweden today is a major center of Europe's anti-Semitism and especially the city of Malmo, commercial center of southern Sweden with 265,000 residents. An estimated 18,000 Jews live in all Sweden, 1,200 in Malmo. And into Malmo's Islamist enclave the police, it is reported, rarely dare enter.
Anders Carlberg, president of the Jewish community of Goteborg, told an interviewer: "The fear of being attacked is the primary concern of Jews in Sweden today." That fear was well grounded. On the day after the interview with Mr. Carlberg, his son and three of the son's friends were attacked in a Malmo restaurant by a gang of Muslim youths, but were rescued by police without injury." (See also: "'Europe Will Be Islamic by the End of the Century'" (Robert Spencer, Human Events Online, 2004/09/16))

"Bomb carnage at Pakistan mosque" (BBC News, 2004/10/01)
"At least 25 people have been killed and dozens injured in a suspected suicide bombing at a mosque in the eastern Pakistani city of Sialkot, police say.
Hundreds of worshippers of the Muslim Shia minority were packed into the mosque attending Friday prayers.
There have been angry protests in Sialkot and Karachi. A second bomb at the scene did not explode, police said.
About 100 Shias have been killed in sectarian violence in Pakistan this year alone. ...
The blast took place in the centre of the prayer hall, causing chaos.
Police said the bomb left a two-foot deep crater with the dead and wounded strewn across the floor."

"U.S. in major Samarra offensive" (CNN.com, 2004/10/01)
"U.S. and Iraqi forces are conducting a major offensive to root out insurgents in the central Iraqi city of Samarra.
In the largest operation seen in the city in several months, an estimated 3,000 U.S. troops moved into the Sunni triangle city of Samarra late Thursday in response to what the United States called "repeated and unprovoked attacks by anti-Iraqi forces."
"This, they say, is the definitive battle for Samarra," CNN Correspondent Jane Arraf said, amid heavy fire Friday morning as she traveled with the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division.
Several hundred insurgents and 65 foreign fighters have managed to seize control of the city north of Baghdad.
Troops using tanks, backed up with air support, were going through the city sector by sector, clearing buildings and mosques, reaching the center early Friday, Arraf said.
Gunfire, explosions and the fire of rocket-propelled grenades could be heard, and power was being cut to parts of the still-dark city."

"Children's Curiosity Proved All Too Deadly This Time" (Edmund Sanders and Raheem Salman, Los Angeles Times, 2004/10/01)
"BAGHDAD — For many Iraqi children, a car bombing or mortar strike isn't a tragedy. It's the biggest excitement of the week. ...
So it was Thursday when scores of children rushed to the site of a suicide car bombing in the working-class Amal district of Baghdad. They marveled at the crater left by the bomb, practiced their English on troops and rode bicycles around the American tanks. They accepted candy from a soldier.
Then a second suicide bomber barreled down the street toward the U.S. and Iraqi forces — and the children who surrounded them. And then a third. The children were no longer observers of the attack, but its victims.
"I saw dead bodies scattered like sheep," said Rashid Salih, 67, describing the scene where his grandson was killed.
Children's shoes, clothing and crumpled red bicycles decorated with feathers littered the street. ...
A man whose nephew was killed by shrapnel sat slumped on the curb, his head in his hands, weeping uncontrollably.
"They are killing scores of innocent Iraqis in order to kill one or two Americans. What sort of jihad is this?" asked Salih, the 67-year-old grandfather.
'What sort of religion allows such bad people to commit such hideous, horrible crimes?'" (See also: "Baghdad Bombings Kill 35 Children" (Alexandra Zavis, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/30))

"Iraq Takes Center Stage in Debate" (Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei, The Washington Post, 2004/10/01)
"In their first face-to-face encounter, the two presidential candidates repeatedly returned to the themes that have dominated the campaign. The Massachusetts senator accused the president of "misleading" the nation as he went to war, while Bush said nine times that Kerry's "mixed messages" and "mixed signals" mean he does not have the steadiness to be an effective commander in chief.
"The president has made, I regret to say, a colossal error of judgment, and judgment is what we look for in the president of the United States of America," Kerry said of the war. "I would not take my eye off of the goal: Osama bin Laden."
Bush countered that Kerry's criticism of the war in Iraq would make it impossible for him to lead allies to victory there. "What's the message going to be: -- Please join us in Iraq for a 'grand diversion'?" Bush asked. Allies, he said, 'are not going to follow somebody who says this is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time. They're not going to follow somebody whose core convictions keep changing because of politics in America.'" (See also: "Transcript: First Presidential Debate" (The Washington Post, 2004/09/30))

Thursday, September 30, 2004

News and commentary:

"Portrait of the week" (The Copenhagen Post, 2004/09/30)
Denmark II: "According to Islamic law expert Shahid 'Barking Mad' Mehdi, a woman who steps outside her home without wearing a headscarf is asking to be raped. Affectionately nicknamed Barking Mad, because to put it bluntly, that's what he is, mufti Mehdi expressed his interesting point-of-view during a nationwide TV religious debate on Tuesday evening. He was discussing the Koran. 'Under the law of Allah, it is impossible to respect a woman who flaunts herself in the streets improperly dressed,' the mad mufti explained, his fierce little eyes glittering lasciviously at the thought. 'By parading around without a headscarf she is inviting the men she meets to-' here Barking paused to pass the tip of a slug-like tongue across his bulging lower lip, '- violate or rape her!'
The overfed Mehdi, who looks like a massive sack of decomposing sheep's tripe, lives in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen and occupies himself on a daily basis - or so we were told by the debate show host - teaching the Muslim faith to teenagers."

"Former prisoner to become holy warrior" (DR Nyheder, 2004/09/30)
Denmark I: "A Danish-born former Guantanamo prisoner might go to prison after he said on Wednesday that he intended to go to Chechnya to fight the Russians there.
Slimane Abderahmane has signed a contract with the American administration in which he promises not to engage in holy war.
But on Wednesday he told the Danish Broadcasting Corporation that he did not intend to honour the contract, which was signed in order to secure his release from the U.S. Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba." (See also: "Guantanamo Dane: PM is legitimate target" (The Copenhagen Post, 2004/09/27))

"Exhibition Killing" (Amir Taheri, The Wall Street Journal/Benador Associates, 2004/09/30)
"Who are we allowed to seize as hostage? Who are we allowed to kill?
For the past few weeks these questions have prompted much debate throughout the Muslim world. The emerging answer to both questions is: Anyone you like!
Triggered by the tragedy at a school in Beslan, southern Russia, last month, the debate has been further fuelled by kidnappings and "exhibition killings" in Iraq. Non-Muslims may find it strange that such practices are debated rather than condemned as despicable crimes. But the fact is that the seizure of hostages and "exhibition killing" go back to the early stages of Islamic history. ...
A survey of Muslim views over the past weeks shows overwhelming, though not unanimous, condemnation of the Beslan massacre. But in all cases the reasons given for the condemnation are political rather than religious. Muslim commentators assert that Russia, having supported "the Palestinian cause," did not deserve such treatment. ...
By refusing to come out with a categorical rejection of terrorism, Muslim leaders and opinion-makers are helping perpetuate a situation in which no one is safe. The 9/11 attacks against the United States were based on the claim, made by al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, that all citizens of democratic countries could be murdered because, being actual or potential voters, they have a share of responsibility for the policies of their governments."

"Why the new hysterical hatred?" (Victor Davis Hanson, Private Papers, 2004/09/30)
The Perfect Storm of Hating Bush Part 2: "There are a variety of ways to account for this unhinged hatred detailed in “The new candor about killing George Bush. ...
In addition, Democrats other than Howard Dean were mostly silent after the three-week victory in Iraq. Yet the subsequent rocky occupation and reconstruction have re-ignited the old anti-war protest mantras of the 1960s, bringing back the likes of a Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Ralph Nader, and Robert Scheer to castigate Iraq as the new Vietnam, and George Bush as another Richard Nixon. Much of the venomous opposition to George Bush’s Iraq war, then, is not that it is inherently immoral in the manner that ANSWER or Not in Our Name alleged in their initial opposition; but that, unlike a year ago, it appears not to be going as well as promised and therefore offers the potential to galvanize grassroots opposition." (See also: "The new candor about killing George Bush" (Victor Davis Hanson, Private Papers, 2004/09/29))

"Baghdad Bombings Kill 35 Children" (Alexandra Zavis, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/30)
"Three bombs exploded at a neighborhood celebration Thursday in western Baghdad, killing 35 children and seven adults, officials said. Hours earlier, a suicide car bomb killed a U.S. soldier and two Iraqis on the capital's outskirts.
The bombs in Baghdad's al-Amel neighborhood caused the largest death toll of children in any insurgent attack since the conflict in Iraq began 17 months ago. The children, who were still on school vacation, said they had been drawn to the scene by American soldiers handing out candy.
The blasts — at least two of which an Iraqi official said were suicide car bombs — went off in swift succession about 1 p.m., killing 42 people and wounding 141 others, including 10 U.S. soldiers. The bombs targeted a ceremony in which residents were celebrating the opening of a new sewage system, and a U.S. convoy was passing by at the same time, said Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman."

"24 Palestinians, 3 Israelis Die in Gaza Fighting" (Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters, 2004/09/30)
"Twenty-four Palestinians and three Israelis were killed Thursday, Gaza's bloodiest day for more than two years, as Israel's army struck back after a rocket attack killed two Israeli children in a border town.
In the deadliest incident of the spiraling violence, an Israeli tank shell killed seven Palestinians near a school in Jabalya, Gaza's largest refugee camp, as Israeli forces thrust deep into the militant stronghold for the first time. ...
Earlier Thursday, gunmen shot and killed two Israeli soldiers and a woman out jogging, and Israeli troops raiding northern Gaza killed 17 people, including militants and bystanders. Medics said about 150 Palestinians were wounded." (See also: "Palestinian Rocket Attack Kills 2 Israeli Children" (Reuters, 2004/09/29))

"Euro Socialist politician beats up Jihadist ax-man!" (Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, 2004/09/30)
Update on the Algerian ax-man who attacked pilots on a flight in Norway yesterday: "The media here are careful not to mention the word "terrorism," and claim that the Arab man was "mentally unbalanced." What they are quiet about is the fact that he served as an imam for the local congregation. ...
However, according to this article from Norway's largest newspaper, the man was not yet an imam, but was trying to become one. He is described as a "very religious Muslim" that campaigned to open a mosque in the local municipality." (See also: "Pilots attacked with axe" (Aftenposten, 2004/09/29))

"Footage Shows 10 New Hostages in Iraq" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/30)
"The Arab news network Al-Jazeera showed video Thursday of 10 new hostages seized in Iraq by militants.
Al-Jazeera said the 10 — six Iraqis, two Lebanese and two Indonesian women — were taken by The Islamic Army in Iraq. The group has claimed responsibility for seizing two French journalists last month.
The video showed three of the hostages, who were not identified, and two masked gunmen pointing weapons at them. There was no mention of demands by the militants or when or where the hostages were captured.
The network said the 10 were employees of the Jib electricity company."

"The Green Zone" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2004/09/30)
"Another report details growing anarchy in the protected "Green Zone" in Baghdad. And this WSJ reporter cites chaos and terror throughout the country:

Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When asked 'how are things?' they reply: 'the situation is very bad.' What they mean by 'situation' is this: the Iraqi government doesn't control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health -- which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers -- has now stopped disclosing them.

Is this reporter biased? Perhaps. Is it that bad? I sincerely hope not. But are they making all this up? I seriously doubt it." (See also: "Baghdad's Green Zone 'island' prepares for rough seas" (Howard LaFranchi, The Christian Science Monitor, 2004/09/29) and "WSJ reporter Fassihi's e-mail to friends" (Farnaz Fassihi, Poynter Online, 2004/09/29))

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

News and commentary:

"A grab taken from a video tape broadcast by Al-Jazeera..."
(Reuters, 2004/09/29)
"A grab taken from a video tape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television September 29, 2004, shows British hostage Kenneth Bigley inside a metal cage speaking to camera."

"Caged British Hostage in Iraq Appeals to Blair" (Ghaida Ghantous, Reuters, 2004/09/29)
"A British hostage in Iraq made an impassioned plea to Prime Minister Tony Blair to help free him in a videotape aired on Wednesday that left relatives relieved to see him alive but appalled at his caged conditions.
Chained, squatting behind iron bars and looking distraught, Kenneth Bigley accused Blair of lying over the hostage crisis and urged the prime minister to meet his captors' demands to release Iraqi women from jail.
"Tony Blair is lying, he is lying when he said he's negotiated. He has not negotiated. My life is cheap. He doesn't care about me," Bigley said in a videotape broadcast by Arabic television station Al Jazeera.
"Tony Blair, I am begging you for my life, I am begging you for my life. Have some compassion please," said Bigley, his voice cracking under the strain.
The broadcast showed Bigley dressed in an orange jumpsuit of the kind associated with Muslims held by U.S. troops at Guantanamo Bay."

"To be a Jew in Baghdad" (Orly Halperin, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/09/29)
"No one heard Emad Levy's Rosh Hashana prayers last week and that's how he wanted it. Standing in the living room of his rundown home off a main street in central Baghdad, the last Hebrew-reading Iraqi Jew prayed alone. ...
Today, being identifiably Jewish in the power vacuum of post-Saddam Iraq is practically suicidal.
With roots that go back to 597 BCE, the once large and thriving Iraqi Jewish community has been reduced to a bunch of bachelors and elderly people living in fear for their lives. ...
Last March, four bodyguards of the US-based Blackwater Security Consulting Company were attacked while driving through Fallujah, a hotbed town filled with foreign Arab and local insurgents. Gruesome video footage showed that the bodies of two of the men were mutilated, dragged through the streets, then hung from the town's bridge and burned while crowds cheered.
Rumors filtered back to Baghdad that the security guards had dual citizenship: American and Israeli. One source with contacts in the rebellious province says that this was partially true. Israeli passports were found on two of the security professionals, he says, those whose bodies were mutilated and hung. The Israelis, he said, had their appendages cut off and their bodies cut up while they were still alive. Then fuel was poured over them and they were lit ablaze."

"The new candor about killing George Bush" (Victor Davis Hanson, Private Papers, 2004/09/29)
The Perfect Storm of Hating Bush Part 1: "The American Left has become increasingly hysterical since September 11th. The symptoms of a new, disturbing extremism are manifest in a variety of forums that transcend legitimate political opposition to the war or grassroots politicking to vote out an incumbent party. Last year the comedian Rick Hall played to full houses abroad, performing his newest composition, “Let's Get Together And Kill George Bush.” As the Republicans assembled for their August national convention in New York, a pacifist group known as “United For Peace and Justice,” nevertheless announced its sponsorship of a rather violent-sounding, off-Broadway “guerilla comedy” entitled, “I’m Gonna Kill the President.”
The 2002 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Nicholson Baker, just published Checkpoint. It is an extended dialogue about killing (in a variety of strange ways) George Bush. Jay, the protagonist of the novel, characterizes the potential targeted President as a “drunken oilman.” Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld are portrayed as “bog creatures” with “grubs scurrying out of their noses.” Such venom filters down. Sue Niederer, the mother of a soldier recently killed in Iraq, recently scoffed in an interview: 'I think if I had him in front of me I would shoot him in the groined area. Let him suffer. And just continue shooting him there.'" (See also: "A Novel's Plot Against the President: Character Fantasizes Bush Assassination" (Linton Weeks, Washington Post, 2004/06/29))

"Pilots attacked with axe" (Aftenposten, 2004/09/29)
"Two pilots were injured when a passenger went amok with an axe on a flight from Narvik to Bodø in the north of Norway. A passenger was also injured in the attack. The assailant, an asylum seeker from Algeria, was arrested at Bodø airport around 11 a.m. on Wednesday.
"Two pilots and a passenger are injured. They were injured with an axe," Margrete Torseter, duty lawyer at Salten police district, told Aftenposten's Internet edition. "There is nothing to indicate that the alleged perpetrator used an axe that he had taken on board," Torseter said. ...
"The man has been living in recent weeks at an asylum center in northern Norway," Westgaard said, and added that terrorism was not an aspect of the attack. The man's application for asylum had been rejected.
The three injured have been taken to hospital but are not said to have life-threatening injuries." (See also: "Axe was smuggled on board" (Aftenposten, 2004/09/29): "The 30-year-old man who attacked two pilots with an axe on a Kato Air flight from Narvik to Bodø on Wednesday smuggled the weapon on board, police said at an afternoon press conference. ... Vangen said the plane nearly crashed during its approach to Bodø.
"We can be happy that it went as well as it did," Vangen said. The plane went into a spin during the attack and the wounded pilots only regained control over the aircraft 30 meters above the ground.")

"Palestinian Rocket Attack Kills 2 Israeli Children" (Reuters, 2004/09/29)
"A rocket attack from the Gaza Strip killed two Israeli children at a southern town on Wednesday, the first such deadly Palestinian missile strike for three months, medics said.
The director of the Barzilai hospital, Emile Hai, told Reuters a baby and a young boy were declared dead on arrival from the town of Sderot, which has borne the brunt of rocket attacks. Israel Radio said the boy was four years old.
Hamas militants claimed responsibility for firing the Qassam missiles and said the attack was in defiance of a big Israeli military raid into northern Gaza designed to stop rocket launching."

"Preaching Violence" (Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, 2004/09/29)
"In a further sign of the dramatic erosion of U.S. support in the Arab world, a prominent Islamic cleric who once forcefully condemned the September 11 attacks is now openly counseling his followers to resist the U.S. military in Iraq and to provide weapons and funds to the insurgents. ...
“We believe that all Iraqis should stand together in one rank to resist the occupation,” Qaradawi said in an interview last week on Al-Jazeera, the Arab-language television network that is widely watched throughout the Middle East.
The popular cleric called resistance to the United States “a religious duty.” He also sanctioned attacks on Iraqi civilians who commit “the crime” of assisting “the enemy,” and urged Muslims around the world to refuse to work for any companies that serve 'the occupier.'" (See also: "Cleric Says It's Right to Fight U.S. Civilians in Iraq" (Reuters, 2004/09/02))

"Islamic Europe?" (Christopher Caldwell, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/10/04 issue)
"But on July 28, Princeton historian Bernard Lewis told the conservative Hamburg-based daily Die Welt that Europe would be Islamic by the end of this century "at the very latest," and continental politics has not been the same since.
Days before the third anniversary of 9/11, Frits Bolkestein of the Netherlands, the outgoing European Union competition commissioner, caused an uproar when he mentioned Lewis's remark in the course of an address at the opening of courses at the University of Leiden. Bolkestein warned that the E.U. will "implode" if it expands too quickly. It was a timely topic. ...
It was this part of his speech — in which he referred to Lewis's projections — that made headlines around the world: "Current trends allow only one conclusion," Bolkestein said. "The USA will remain the only superpower. China is becoming an economic giant. Europe is being Islamicized." ...
Bolkestein said he did not know whether things would turn out as Lewis predicted. ("But if he is right," Bolkestein added, "the liberation of Vienna [from Turkish armies] in 1683 will have been in vain.") Bassam Tibi, a Syrian immigrant who is the most prominent moderate Muslim in Germany, seemed to agree with Lewis's diagnosis, even while rejecting his emphasis. "Either Islam gets Europeanized, or Europe gets Islamized," Tibi wrote in Welt am Sonntag. Having spent much of the past decade arguing for the construction of sensible Islamic institutions in Europe, Tibi seemed to warn that Europe did not have the ability to reject Islam, or the opportunity to steer it. "The problem is not whether the majority of Europeans is Islamic," he added, 'but rather which Islam — sharia Islam or Euro-Islam — is to dominate in Europe.'" (See also: "'Europa wird am Ende des Jahrhunderts islamisch sein'" (Wolfgang Schwanitz, Die Welt, 2004/07/28). Also: "Trying to put Islam on Europe's agenda" (John Vinocur, International Herald Tribune, 2004/09/21) and "Turkey's Muslim millions threaten EU values, says commissioner" (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/09/08))

"The Real Struggle For Iraq" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2004/09/29)
"So the "insurgency" in Iraq is going nowhere fast. It will be as roundly defeated as were its predecessors in so many other countries. The danger for Iraq's future lies elsewhere.
It comes, in part, from Americans who want Iraq to fail because they want President Bush to fail. Some 81 books paint the president as the devil incarnate; Bush-bashing is also the theme of three "documentaries" plus half a dozen Hollywood feature films. Never before in any mature democracy has a political leader aroused so much hatred from his domestic opponents.
Others want Iraq to fail because they want America to fail, with or without Bush. The bitter tone of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan when he declared the liberation of Iraq "illegal" shows that it is not the future of Iraq but the vilification of the United States that interests him.
Add to this the recent bizarre phrase from French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. The head of the Figaro press group went to see him about the kidnapping of two French journalists in Iraq; Raffarin assured him they would soon be freed, reportedly saying, "The Iraqi insurgents are our best allies."
In plain language, this means that, in the struggle in Iraq, Raffarin does not see France on the side of its NATO allies — the U.S., Britain, Italy and Denmark among others — but on the side of the 'insurgents.'"

"Sentenced to Be Raped" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, 2004/09/29)
"So although I did not find Osama, I did encounter a much more ubiquitous form of evil and terror: a culture, stretching across about half the globe, that chews up women and spits them out." A report from Meerwala, Pakistan:
"The village's tribal council determined that the suitable punishment for the supposed affair was for high-status men to rape one of the boy's sisters, so the council sentenced Ms. Mukhtaran to be gang-raped.
As members of the high-status tribe danced in joy, four men stripped her naked and took turns raping her. Then they forced her to walk home naked in front of 300 villagers. ...
A girl in the next village was gang-raped a week after Ms. Mukhtaran, and she took the traditional route: she swallowed a bottle of pesticide and dropped dead.
But instead of killing herself, Ms. Mukhtaran testified against her attackers and propounded the shocking idea that the shame lies in raping, rather than in being raped. The rapists are now on death row, and President Pervez Musharraf presented Ms. Mukhtaran with the equivalent of $8,300 and ordered round-the-clock police protection for her. ...
Meanwhile, villagers say that relatives of the rapists are waiting for the police to leave and then will put Ms. Mukhtaran in her place by slaughtering her and her entire family. I walked to the area where the high-status tribesmen live. They denied planning to kill Ms. Mukhtaran, but were unapologetic about her rape.
"Mukhtaran is totally disgraced," Taj Bibi, a matriarch in a high-status family, said with satisfaction. 'She has no respect in society.'"

"Italy 'paid $1m to free hostages'" (BBC News, 2004/09/29)
"A senior Italian politician says he believes that a ransom of $1m or more was paid for the release of two female Italian aid workers kidnapped in Iraq.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has said no money was paid.
But Gustavo Selva, head of the Italian parliament's foreign affairs committee, said the denial was purely "official".
The BBC's Guto Harri in Rome says Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has fuelled the rumours by talking of "a difficult choice which had to be made".
"The young women's life was the most important thing," Mr Selva, a member of the Northern League, one of the parties in Italy's governing coalition, told French RTL radio.
'In principle, one should not give in to blackmail, but this time I think we had to give in - even though this opens a dangerous path because it is obvious that both for political or criminal reasons, this path can make others want to take others hostage to make some money.'"

"Growing Pessimism on Iraq" (Dana Priest and Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2004/09/29)
"People at the CIA "are mad at the policy in Iraq because it's a disaster, and they're digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper," said one former intelligence officer who maintains contact with CIA officials. "There's no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments."
"Things are definitely not improving," said one U.S. government official who reads the intelligence analyses on Iraq.
"It is getting worse," agreed an Army staff officer who served in Iraq and stays in touch with comrades in Baghdad through e-mail. "It just seems there is a lot of pessimism flowing out of theater now. There are things going on that are unbelievable to me. They have infiltrators conducting attacks in the Green Zone. That was not the case a year ago." ...
Reports from Iraq have made one Army staff officer question whether adequate progress is being made there.
"They keep telling us that Iraqi security forces are the exit strategy, but what I hear from the ground is that they aren't working," he said. "There's a feeling that Iraqi security forces are in cahoots with the insurgents and the general public to get the occupiers out."
He added: 'I hope I'm wrong.'"

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

News and commentary:

"Simona Torretta (R), and Simona Pari..."
(Vincenzo Pinto, AFP, 2004/09/28)
"Simona Torretta (R), and Simona Pari, volunteers for the Italian aid organization 'Un Ponte Per Baghdad' (A Bridge for Baghdad) are pictured on their arrival at Rome's Ciampino military airport."

"Italy's 'Two Simonas' Return to Joyous Welcome" (Crispian Balmer and Massimiliano di Giorgio, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/28)
"News of their release sparked scenes of joy across the country, while Italian and world leaders breathed a sigh of relief that the crisis had ended without bloodshed.
Italian television showed live pictures of the jet carrying the two Simonas, as they are affectionately known in Italy, touch down at Ciampino airport at 11:15 p.m. (5:15 p.m. EDT).
Minutes later the two women, smiling broadly and dressed in long white robes, stepped out under the glare of bright television lights and walked hand-in-hand to the airport terminal surrounded by their families.
"We are well," the two said to reporters before they were taken away for questioning by anti-terror magistrates looking into their kidnapping." (See also: "Two Simonas freed 'for $1m ransom'" (Jack Fairweather and Bruce Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/09/29): "Newspapers in Kuwait, where negotiators were based, reported that the kidnappers had demanded, and received, $1 million for the release of the two Simonas, volunteers who worked for the charity A Bridge to Baghdad on school and water projects.")

"Italian, Egyptian Hostages in Iraq Released" (Luke Baker and Ed Cropley, Reuters, 2004/09/28)
"Two female Italian hostages seized in Baghdad three weeks ago along with two Iraqi colleagues were released on Tuesday and are safe and well, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said.
Within minutes of their release, an Egyptian telephone company said four of six of its engineers snatched last week had also been set free, raising hopes for the other foreigners still being held hostage in Iraq.
"I gave the families the news a short while ago," Berlusconi said in a brief statement shown live on Italian state television. "They are well."
The two aid workers, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both aged 29, were taken at gunpoint from their central Baghdad offices on Sept. 7, in a brazen kidnapping which caused jitters among the thousands of foreigners working in Iraq."

"France seeking to put pullout on agenda" (Brian Knowlton, International Herald Tribune, 2004/09/28)
Weasel Watch: "France said Monday that it would take part in a proposed international conference on Iraq only if the agenda included a possible U.S. troop withdrawal, thus complicating the planning for a meeting that has drawn mixed reactions.
Paris also wants representatives of Iraq's insurgent groups to be invited to a conference in October or November, a call that would seem difficult for the Bush administration to accept." (See also: "Iraq Conference Must Include Resistance: France" (IslamOnline, 2004/09/27): "Describing the situation in Iraq as a "black hole," French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, whose country opposed the US-led invasion, hinted that France could make discussion of the withdrawal of foreign forces a condition for agreeing to the conference, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). ...
Barnier said that any conference should include 'different communities and countries of the region as well as all (Iraqi) political groups, including those that have chosen the path of armed resistance.'")

"Gaza Kidnappers Free CNN Producer" (Reuters, 2004/09/28)
"Palestinian gunmen on Tuesday released an Israeli Arab producer for CNN television kidnapped a day earlier in the Gaza Strip.
Police officials told Reuters that Riad Ali was turned over to them in Gaza City. CNN confirmed Ali's release.
Israel Radio quoted Ali's father as saying he had spoken by telephone to his son who told him that he felt fine and was waiting to return home.
There was no claim of responsibility for Ali's abduction and no word on a possible motive. Israel Radio said he was snatched by members of Islamist militant movement Hamas, which denied any role in the incident." (See also: "CNN Producer Seized by Armed Men in Gaza" (Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters, 2004/09/27))

"The Heart of Darkness" (Ramin Parham, National Review, 2004/09/28)
Parham on "the International Moral Court [which] was held in the French capital September 23-25 to expose the crimes of the theocracy in Tehran":
"Following the administrative procedures a film was shown; smuggled out of Iran, it pictured scenes of despicable horror. We all watched the unwatchable: a man lay on a stretcher while another, bearded and looking like an official, read what seemed to be a court sentence. Then a man dressed in white comes in — presumably a physician — bends over the lying man and applies the sentence.
There is only one word to describe the horror of what I saw: horror. There is other word for the act of tearing out a living man's eyes; there is no adjective to describe it. The whole assembly was plunged into a macabre silence. In the next scene, another man, lying alive and awake on a stretcher, watched his physician-torturer cut his fingers with a hand-mower. Next, a third man, or woman — there is no way of distinguishing the gender of someone wrapped up like a mummy — is buried, alive and awake, up to his chest, before being stoned to death. It barely takes a minute or two before the chest and head of the living mummy start circling around in a dance of death. What magnifies to near-infinite the evil of these scenes of barbarity is the unbearable accompanying cry, "Allah Akbar!" — 'God is Great!'"

"Squeegee men and suicide bombers" (Spengler, Asia Times, 2004/09/28)
"American policy has changed radically since the first days following September 11, 2001, when the head of the American Muslim Council prayed in public with President George W Bush, and last summer, when he confessed to a federal charge of terror-related activities. Rather than court Muslim opinion, Washington has given Muslim communities an ultimatum of sorts.
Islamist terrorists hide behind a civilian screen wherever possible, and draw occasional support from sympathizers within governments in Muslim countries or Islamic communities abroad. Police have charged leaders of ostensibly mainstream Islamic organizations in Europe and the United States with terrorist links, in some cases with abundant evidence. Most striking, as noted, was the recent confession of Abdurahman Alamoudi, founder and head of the American Muslim Council, to laundering Libyan contributions to American Muslim organizations. When arrested, Alamoudi had contact information for seven men whom the US Justice Department sought as alleged terrorists. This is a man who had met both presidents Bill Clinton and Bush, and received accolades from the Federal Bureau of Investigation as an exemplar of "mainstream" Islam. ...
A bitter choice has been forced on the Muslim communities of Europe and the United States, namely, to cooperate with anti-terror investigations of prominent citizens among them or to fall under general suspicion. For individual Muslims residing in the West, this may become rather unpleasant."

"We must stop bolstering the beheaders" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2004/09/28)
"Instead, I am told, we have British journalists among others, monitoring the executional websites round the clock so that they can be the first with the news and the pictures. The severing of heads is then much demanded on the internet, the images of Zarqawi and his demands are given full play on stations like al-Jazeera, truncated versions appearing on British TV stations, and still images on newspaper front pages. If there is such a thing as the oxygen of publicity, then we are giving it, to this and other butchers by the tank-full.
I think we should stop. If we don't exercise some self-censorship then the escalating kidnapping and killing of journalists will make our jobs impossible in any case. We will trade the ability to print the pictures of the men in masks for the ability to report from anywhere where such people may be operating. My proposal is that we should not broadcast images, appeals and statements that clearly vindicate the Nazi-like criminality of men like Zarqawi. Just the bald facts of the case and nothing more. We must stop being naive accomplices to exhibition killings." (See also: "Know Thine Enemy: The beheadings are about them, not us" (Michael Ledeen, National Review, 2004/09/27) and "The hostage crisis and the media" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2004/09/24))

"Losing Faith in the Intifada" (Laura King, Los Angeles Times, 2004/09/28)
"As uprising enters fifth year, some Palestinians call it a political and economic disaster":
"When Abu Fahdi joined a Palestinian militant group and took up arms against Israel, he thought he was serving his people. Now he believes he did them only harm.
"We achieved nothing in all this time, and we lost so much," said the baby-faced 29-year-old, who, because of his status as a fugitive, insisted on being identified by a nickname meaning "father of Fahdi." "People hate us for that and wish we were dead."
The young militant, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, is not alone in such thinking. Among Palestinians from all walks of life, there is a quiet but growing sentiment that their intifada, or uprising — which broke out four years ago today — has largely failed as an armed struggle, and lost its character as a popular resistance movement. ...
One day last week, Abu Fahdi was speaking to a journalist as reports of a suicide bombing flashed on the television screen. He shook his head.
"I used to think that attacks like this would hasten our victory," he said. 'Now I only think that attacks like this will hasten my arrest or my death.'"

Monday, September 27, 2004

News and commentary:

"Guantanamo Dane: PM is legitimate target" (The Copenhagen Post, 2004/09/27)
"Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, the Danish citizen recently released from a two-year stint at the Guantanamo prison camp, sparked a political outcry this weekend after stating that the Prime Minister, Defence Minister and Foreign Minister are all legitimate targets for Islamic warriors opposed to Danish engagement in Iraq.
"If a nation's soldiers wage war against Muslims, and you ask me whether the leader of that nation is a legitimate target, then my answer is yes," Abderrahmane told TV2 News on Saturday.
"It is a consequence of the decision to invade or aid in the invasion of an Islamic country," he added.
The 31-year-old Dane was apprehended by US forces in Afghanistan two years ago, but has claimed since his release that he only received training in guerilla warfare in Afghanistan, and planned to move on to Chechnya to aid armed Muslim resistance groups in the Caucasus.
Defense Minister Søren Gade spoke with TV2 after Abderrahmane's interview was aired, and said he was "appalled" by the former Guantanamo detainee's remarks.
"The Danish government did everything in its power to bring that individual home, and worked to ensure that he was one of the first Europeans released. I think it's a trifle disheartening to hear him turn around and threaten us," Gade told the network."

"The Next Iraqi War" (George Packer, The New Yorker, 2004/09/27)
"What Kirkuk’s struggle to reverse Saddam’s ethnic cleansing signals for the future of Iraq":
"Since the American invasion, Kirkuk has become the stage of an ethnic power struggle. Some observers say that the city could be a model for national unity or could trigger a civil war; Kirkuk is compared to New York and, more often, to Sarajevo. How the new Iraq corrects the historical injustices recorded in Dawood’s files will reveal much about the kind of country that Iraqis choose to live in — or if it will remain a country at all. ...
The weakest idea in Iraq may be the idea of Iraq itself. As Barham Salih told me, “There is no Iraqi identity that I can push my people to today. I want to have an Iraqi identity, but it does not exist.” Samir Shakir Sumaidaie said, “To get away from what Saddam did, where ethnic identity is what mattered most, to a society where citizenship is what matters — that transition is not an easy transition. We have to make it, though.”
The obsession with ethnic identity may be the ultimate legacy of Saddam’s rule, his diabolical revenge on his countrymen. Nowhere can this be more strongly felt than in Kirkuk. “Saddam is gone, but we’re not through with him,” an Arab there said. 'Even if he’s not here, it’s like he planted problems for the future.'"

"Flirting With Disaster" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2004/09/27)
"There it was at the tail end of Brian Faler's "Politics" roundup column in last Saturday's Washington Post. It was headed, simply, "Quotable":

"I wouldn't be surprised if he appeared in the next month." Teresa Heinz Kerry to the Phoenix Business Journal, referring to a possible capture of Osama bin Laden before Election Day.

As well as being "quotable" (and I wish it had been more widely reported, and I hope that someone will ask the Kerry campaign or the nominee himself to disown it), this is also many other words ending in "-able." Deplorable, detestable, unforgivable. …
The plain implication is that the Bush administration is stashing Bin Laden somewhere, or somehow keeping his arrest in reserve, for an "October surprise." This innuendo would appear, on the face of it, to go a little further than "impugning the patriotism" of the president. It argues, after all, for something like collusion on his part with a man who has murdered thousands of Americans as well as hundreds of Muslim civilians in other countries. ...
How can the Democrats possibly have gotten themselves into a position where they even suspect that a victory for the Zarqawi or Bin Laden forces would in some way be welcome to them? Or that the capture or killing of Bin Laden would not be something to celebrate with a whole heart?" (See also: "October surprise?" (Greg Pierce, The Washington Times, 2004/09/24))

"Know Thine Enemy: The beheadings are about them, not us" (Michael Ledeen, National Review, 2004/09/27)
"They see us, quite explicitly, as animals who deserve slaughter. The terrorists' recent response to Tony Blair's statement that he would not negotiate with them was eloquent: We are not interested in negotiations, they said. Either the British withdraw or we will slaughter the hostage.
Do not think for a moment that the beheadings are a unique form of viciousness aimed only against Americans or American allies. Beheading has been a common form of execution of Islamic (and Christian, and Bahai, and Zoroastrian) enemies, and I have no doubt the jihadists have beheaded more of "their own" than of ours. It is not about us, it's about them.
Our debate, however, is not about them; it's about us. Should we permit the horrible videos to be broadcast? ...
This is all nonsense. We cannot wage an effective war unless we understand the nature of our enemy. If we do not grasp that the terrorists' ranks are full of people who are there precisely because they are thrilled by the prospect of beheading human beings, we will fail to see the war through to its necessary conclusion. The beheadings are about them, not us. They show us very important things we need to know: What they are, what they want, what they will do if we do not stop them." (See also: "The hostage crisis and the media" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2004/09/24))

"CNN Producer Seized by Armed Men in Gaza" (Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters, 2004/09/27)
"Armed Palestinians seized an Israeli Arab producer for the CNN television network from a car in Gaza City on Monday after asking for him by name.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. A CNN correspondent who was in the vehicle with the producer, Riyad Ali, said the gunmen gave no clue why they were taking his colleague away.
"We were going up a main street and a white Peugeot drove in front of us. A young man got out of his car, pulled a gun out of trousers and said ... 'Which one of you is Riyad,"' the correspondent, Ben Wedemen said in a CNN broadcast from Gaza.
"He said, 'I am Riyad,' and they said, 'Get out of the car."'
Such incidents involving journalists have been rare in Gaza and in the West Bank during the past four years of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
"There were several men who got out of this car. Some of them had AK-47 assault rifles, others, pistols," Wedemen said."

"Beslan militants 'called Middle East'" (Nick Paton, The Guardian, 2004/09/27)
"Two of the militants who took part in the Beslan school hostage siege phoned the Middle East during the drama, a senior source from the Russian security services has said.
The official said two calls were made from Beslan in Arabic, and that "one call was to Saudi Arabia by one of the Arabs who was there".
He declined to give further details or say where the second call was placed to, but said one of the calls was made on the second day of the siege, and that the investigation had established there were only two Arabs in the group - not 10 as was first suggested."

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Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

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

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

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

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

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

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

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

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

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

"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)

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