Archived
news and commentary: October 18 - 24, 2004
2004/11/01 - 2004/11/07
2004/10/25 - 2004/10/31
2004/10/18 - 2004/10/24
2004/10/11 - 2004/10/17
2004/10/04 - 2004/10/10
2004/09/27 - 2004/10/03
Sunday,
October 24, 2004
News and
commentary:
"Zarqawi Claims Killing of Iraqi Army Recruits" (Faris al-Mahdawi, Reuters, 2004/10/24)
"Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility on Sunday for the killing of nearly 50 unarmed Iraqi army recruits in one of the bloodiest attacks on the country's fledgling security forces. ...
Zarqawi's newly renamed group, the Al Qaeda Organization for Holy War in Iraq, said in a statement posted on a Web site often used by militants that it killed 48 "apostates" in the attack. Iraqi authorities said 49 men were killed. ...
Authorities said guerrillas disguised as police had set up a checkpoint on a road northeast of Baghdad and stopped three minibuses carrying the recruits, forcing them to leave the vehicles and lie face down on the tarmac before shooting them. ...
A senior security official, declining to be named, said most of the soldiers were from poor families in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim cities of Basra, Amara and Nassiriya in southern Iraq.""Insurgents Kill 50 Iraq Troops in Ambush" (Robert H. Reid, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/24)
"In one of their boldest and most brutal attacks yet, insurgents waylaid three minibuses carrying U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers heading home on leave and massacred about 50 of them — many of them shot in the head execution-style, officials said Sunday. ...
The unarmed Iraqi soldiers were killed on their way home after completing a training course at the Kirkush military camp northeast of Baghdad when their buses were stopped Saturday evening by rebels near the Iranian border about 95 miles east of Baghdad, Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul-Rahman said. ...
Abdul-Rahman said 37 bodies were found Sunday on the ground with their hands behind their backs, shot in the head execution-style. Twelve others were found in a burned bus, he said. Some officials quoted witnesses as saying insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at one bus.""The Faces of Denial" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2004/10/24)
"It wasn't the United States that didn't "get" 9/11. It was the Europeans, anxious that their comfortable slumber not be disturbed. They insist that terrorism remains a law-enforcement problem, refusing even to consider that we might face a broad, complex, psychotic threat spawned by a failed civilization.
Europe will pay. And the price in the coming years will be much higher than any paid by the United States. Europe, not North America, is the vulnerable continent. Our homeland-security efforts, unfairly derided at home and abroad, are making our country markedly safer. Yes, we will be struck again. But "Old Europe" is going to be hit again, and again, and again. ...
As the United States becomes ever harder to strike — and as we respond so fiercely to those attacks that succeed — soft Europe, with its proximity to the Muslim world, its indigestible Muslim communities and its moral fecklessness, is likely to become the key Western battleground in the Islamic extremists' war against civilization. ...
In many ways, the civilizations of North America and Europe are diverging. Europe has a crisis of values behind its failure of will. Their anxiety to tell everyone else what to do reflects their own uncertainty. Corrupt, selfish and cowardly, old Europe has fallen to moral lows not seen since 1945.""Karl Rove: America's Mullah" (Neal Gabler, Los Angeles Times, 2004/10/24)
A perfect illustration of "the Left's fevered obsession with Rove" as described by Steyn below (it's also, of course, yet another example of the tired art of moral equivalence, likening the Bush administration to "jihadis" setting up an "ironfisted theocracy"):
"This election is about Rovism — the insinuation of Rove's electoral tactics into the conduct of the presidency and the fabric of the government. It's not an overstatement to say that on Nov. 2, the fate of traditional American democracy will hang in the balance. ...
Boiled down, Rovism is government by jihadis in the grip of unshakable self-righteousness — ironically the force the administration says it is fighting. It imposes rather than proposes. ...
The idea of the United States as an ironfisted theocracy is terrifying, and it should give everyone pause. This time, it's not about policy. This time, for the first time, it's about the nature of American government.
We all have reason to be very, very afraid.""The President's brain" (Mark Steyn, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/10/24)
A profile of Karl Rove: "But so advanced is the Left's fevered obsession with Rove that it's increasingly difficult to parody. Every presidency has a sinister power behind the throne, and the fact that in this case the guy on the throne is the world's biggest moron naturally enhances the prestige of the power behind it. Indeed, the more furiously the Left maintains that Bush is a dummy the more extravagantly they talk up his shadowy Machiavel.
A couple of weeks ago, CBS News went bananas over an exclusive they had, based on some old documents, that Bush had skipped a physical in the National Guard 30 years ago. Nobody cared anyway, but the scoop blew up in their face when it turned out the authentic 1972 typewritten memos were, in fact, obvious hoaxes created on a computer using Microsoft Word.
Instead of just letting it go, the Democrats' Terry McAuliffe twice declared that Rove must have been the guy who suckered CBS with the fake memos. McAuliffe is the chairman of the Democratic National Committee but, like any fringe nutter on the wilder shores of the American Left, he subscribes to the view that everything from gloomy polls to Florida hurricanes is the dark handiwork of Rove.""Jews, Israel and America" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2004/10/24)
"Now you find a steadily rising perception across the Arab-Muslim world that the great enemy of Islam is JIA - "Jews, Israel and America," all lumped together in a single threat.":
"I was speaking the other day with Scott Pelley of CBS News's "60 Minutes" about the mood in Iraq. He had just returned from filming a piece there and he told me something disturbing. Scott had gone around and asked Iraqis on the streets what they called American troops - wondering if they had nicknames for us in the way we used to call the Nazis "Krauts" or the Vietcong "Charlie." And what did he find? "Many Iraqis have so much distrust for U.S. forces we found they've come up with a nickname for our troops," Scott said. 'They call American soldiers 'The Jews,' as in, 'Don't go down that street, the Jews set up a roadblock.''""Annan faces questions on oil-for-food" (Robert Winnett, The Sunday Times, 2004/10/24)
Oil-for-food II: "The role of Kofi Annan in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal is to be investigated after it emerged that the United Nations secretary-general was in charge of some of the most controversial aspects of the discredited humanitarian programme.
Annan, 66, the Ghanaian-born head of the UN and Nobel peace prize winner who is due to retire in 2006, is “co-operating” with the independent commission set up to look into the scandal. He has agreed to waive his diplomatic immunity and face legal action if any wrongdoing is uncovered.
Annan played a key role in the design and operation of the scheme.
Although there is no suggestion that he personally benefited from the programme, his actions may have helped others, including Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader, to defraud the oil-for-food scheme. ...
The man Annan hired to run the programme, Benon Sevan,who reported directly to him, is now also under investigation for allegedly making more than $1m from selling Iraqi oil. He denies the accusations.""Saddam's business deals surface" (AP/The Washington Times, 2004/10/24)
Oil-for-food I: "Interviews with dozens of former and current Iraqi officials by congressional investigators have produced new evidence that Saddam Hussein micromanaged business deals under the United Nations' oil-for-food program to maximize political influence with important foreign governments.
The Iraqi officials provided a list of foreign companies favored by Saddam and his top lieutenants for import contracts under the U.N. program. They also revealed a parallel blacklist of companies that the then-Iraqi leader disqualified from getting deals.
No French, Chinese or American companies are on the list, but more than 280 Russian and 100 Saudi companies account for more than half of the companies on the list.""Iran Rejects EU Nuclear Proposal" (Parisa Hafezi, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/24)
"Iran on Sunday rejected a European Union proposal that it stop enriching uranium in return for nuclear technology, increasing the likelihood that it will be reported to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
Diplomats had said if Iran rejected the proposal drafted by Britain, Germany and France, most EU countries would back a U.S. demand that Tehran be reported to the Security Council when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meets on Nov. 25.
The EU trio want Iran to halt uranium enrichment since it can be used to make nuclear bomb material. Iran insists it only wants to make the fuel for nuclear power stations.
"The EU proposal is unbalanced ... an indefinite uranium suspension is unacceptable for Iran," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a news conference.""N. Korea threatens more nukes" (Sang-hun Choe, AP/The Washington Times, 2004/10/24)
"North Korea, which says it has several atom bombs and insists it needs nuclear weapons to deter a U.S. invasion, said yesterday that talks can recommence only when Washington drops its "hostile policy" and promises a "reward for freeze" on its nuclear activities.
"If the U.S. persistently pursues its confrontational, hostile policy toward the DPRK from the viewpoint of escapism, it will only compel the DPRK to double its deterrent force, much less any solution to the nuclear issue," Pyongyang's official Rodong newspaper said, using the acronym for Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name."
Saturday,
October 23, 2004
News and
commentary:
"Dumb show" (Charlie Brooker, The Guardian, 2004/10/23)
Charlie Brooker calls for the assassination of President Bush:
"Throughout the debate, John Kerry, for his part, looks and sounds a bit like a haunted tree. But at least he's not a lying, sniggering, drink-driving, selfish, reckless, ignorant, dangerous, backward, drooling, twitching, blinking, mouse-faced little cheat. And besides, in a fight between a tree and a bush, I know who I'd favour.
On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?" (Hat tip: Drudge. UPDATE 2004/10/24: The Guardian has replaced the column with a correction/apology: "Charlie Brooker apologises for any offence caused by his comments relating to President Bush in his TV column, Screen Burn. The views expressed in this column are not those of the Guardian. Although flippant and tasteless, his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action - an intention he believed regular readers of his humorous column would understand. He deplores violence of any kind."
A cached copy of the article can be found here.)"What Would Lindbergh Do?" (The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/11/01 issue)
"The Presbyterian Church (USA) currently has a 24-person delegation touring the Middle East. And one stop they made on October 17 has already caused a bit of controversy: The group visited a prison run by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and then held a joint press conference with one Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, that terrorist organization's regional capo. Nasrallah used his time before the cameras to denounce President Bush. Presbyterian Elder Ronald Stone then thanked him for it.
"We treasure the precious words of Hezbollah and your expression of goodwill towards the American people," Stone said, referring, remember, to an outfit responsible for the 1983 murder of 241 U.S. Marines in their Beirut barracks. "Also," Stone went on, "we praise your initiative for dialogue and mutual understanding." And "we cherish these statements that bring us closer to you." And — here comes the kicker — "as an elder of our church, I'd like to say that according to my recent experience, relations and conversations with Islamic leaders are a lot easier than dealings and dialogue with Jewish leaders."
Got that? Mr. Stone thinks the head of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon is a more reasonable man than any of those "Jewish leaders" he's previously met." (See also: "Church group meets Hizbullah, loses meeting here" (Herb Keinon, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/10/21))"If Bush loses, the winner won't be Kerry: it will be Zarqawi" (Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/10/23)
Moore on BBC's new documentary series, "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear":
"One of the criticisms thrown at George W Bush is that he is a menace because he believes that God is telling him what to do. A moral equivalence is set up, in which Osama bin Laden and Bush are presented as two sides of a fundamentalist coin. On Wednesday, a television programme tried to equate the Muslim Brotherhood, which advocates the violent destruction of all societies that do not conform to sharia law, with the American neo-conservative intellectuals who taught that people should revive their interest in Plato and the civilisation of the ancient Greeks. This is about as accurate as saying that the Nazi party and the Labour Party are the same, because both arose from the discontents of the working classes.
It is the critics themselves who are suffering from pseudo-religious certainty and superstition. Isn't there something self-righteous, slightly crazed, about directing such overwhelming anger at the man whose job it is to pick up the pieces of September 11 on behalf of the free world?" (See also: "The Power of Bad Television" (Clive Davis, National Review, 2004/10/21), "Al-Qaida is no dark illusion" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2004/10/19) and "The making of the terror myth" (Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 2004/10/15). Also: "Without a Doubt" (Ron Suskind, The New York Times Magazine, 2004/10/17))"Officials Fear Iraq's Lure for Muslims in Europe" (Craig S. Smith and Don Van Natta Jr., The New York Times, 2004/10/23)
Jihadists = "idealistic young men": "Intelligence officials fear that for a new generation of disaffected European Muslims, Iraq could become what Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya were for European Islamic militants in past decades: a galvanizing cause that sends idealistic young men abroad, trains them and puts them in touch with a more radical global network of terrorists. In the past, many young Europeans who fought in those wars came back to Europe to plot terrorist attacks at home. ...
Hundreds of young militant Muslim men have left Europe to fight in Iraq, according to senior counterterrorism officials in four European countries. They have been recruited through mosques, Muslim centers and militant Web sites by several groups, including Ansar al-Islam, the Kurdish terrorist group once based in northern Iraq. ...
One senior European intelligence official said there was evidence that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born militant believed to be operating in Falluja, has established a sophisticated network that has helped recruit nearly 1,000 young men from the Middle East and Europe." (See also: "Police identify French Islamist killed in Fallujah" (AFP/Expatica, 2004/10/22))"US claims capture of senior Zarqawi member in Iraq" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/23)
"The US military said it captured a top member of Islamic militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network, along with five other rebels, during a pre-dawn raid in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.
The raid took place at 1:30 am (2230 GMT) in the south of Fallujah, which has become the target of near nightly US air strikes in the hunt for Iraq's most wanted man and his followers.
"Due to a surge in the number of Zarqawi associates who have been captured or killed by multinational strikes and other operations, the member had moved up to take a critical position as a Zarqawi senior leader," the military said in a statement.
Citing "intelligence" sources, it claimed that Zarqawi followers had started to move out of central Fallujah to the outlying areas due to the relentless barrage of air strikes in recent weeks."Added in archive:
"Militant, freed from Guantanamo Bay, is now holding hostages in Pakistan" (USA Today, 2004/10/13)
"I Cretini" (Tony, Across the Bay, 2004/10/06)
"Are the Jihadists Losing the War? Gilles Kepel Thinks So" (UCLA International Institute, 2004/10/05)
"Portrait of the week" (The Copenhagen Post, 2004/09/30)
"Former prisoner to become holy warrior" (DR Nyheder, 2004/09/30)
"Guantanamo Dane: PM is legitimate target" (The Copenhagen Post, 2004/09/27)
"Is Ba'thism Secular?" (Joshua Landis, Syria Comment, 2004/07/14)Note: I just stumbled upon Across the Bay, via Lee Smith's article below. It's a brilliant blog which focuses on Islamism, Arab nationalism etc. The man behind it is Tony, who is a "Ph.D. candidate in Ancient Near Eastern Studies with focus on Semitic Linguistics, Ancient Levantine history, religion, and ethnicity studies." Highly recommended.
Friday,
October 22, 2004
News and
commentary:
"Margaret Hassan, the kidnapped director of CARE..."
(Al-Jazeera/AP, 2004/10/22)
"Margaret Hassan, the kidnapped director of CARE International in Iraq, appears in this image made from television in a videotape aired by the Arabic television station Al-Jazeera, Friday, Oct. 22, 2004.""Video: Abducted Aid Worker Pleads for Life" (Robert H. Reid, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/22)
"Margaret Hassan, the kidnapped director of CARE International in Iraq, wept and pleaded for Britain to act to save her life in a video aired Friday. "Please help me. This might be my last hours," the gaunt Hassan begged, shaking with fear and burying her face in a tissue. ...
In the video, aired on Al-Jazeera television, Hassan stood alone in front of a bare wall, visible from the shoulders up, her eyes baggy and her face haggard.
"Please help me. Please help me," Hassan said, trembling. "This might be my last hours. Please help me. Please, the British people, ask Mr. Blair to take the troops out of Iraq, and not to bring them here to Baghdad. That's why people like Mr. Bigley and myself are being caught. And maybe we will die like Mr. Bigley."
"Please, please, I beg of you," she said, then broke into tears and wept into the tissue.""The Swedish Way" (Steve Harrigan, FOX News, 2004/10/22)
"I'm working on a series on Muslims in Europe and just returned from Malmo, Sweden, a city with a large population of immigrants. During interviews the Swedes would not say anything negative. Doctors, police chiefs, and teachers were all extremely diplomatic in their choice of words. It was only after a long while that they would start to say what they thought, that the city could not handle such rapid immigration, that it was not able to absorb or integrate the immigrants. I interviewed one nurse, then talked with her for a while off-camera, where she said that she was actually afraid to come to work because sometimes people in the emergency room would yell and become physically abusive in their demands for rapid treatment. Her eyes got wide. She said "it is not the Swedish way" to behave like that. So I got the cameraman Barnaby and interviewed her again. Police and firefighters have also gotten attacked while trying to do their jobs in certain sections of the city.
We drove around Malmo in a rented Volvo and asked a lot of Swedes for directions. When you call to a Swede on the street, they will stop, politely come over, and patiently explain where to go, usually in excellent English. Pedestrians do not cross against the light, even when there are no cars coming." (Also: "Where the Buses Won't Go" (Steve Harrigan, FOX News, 2004/10/22): "Now in Malmo, Sweden, a city where a quarter of the population is Muslim, there are some parts of the city where buses refuse to go for fear of safety. Fireman, policemen, and ambulance drivers have been attacked in certain sections when trying to do their job. Swedes, though, are not an easy soundbite, perhaps because they are so thoughtful. They try to see things from every side. We went out with a policeman on patrol and spoke to him while he was walking around in the dangerous part of town. At one point I stopped him and said, "How does it feel to you, personally, when you come here trying to do your job, trying to help someone, and people throw rocks at you?" His response was that it was "a little annoying." Annoying. I imagined what kind of a colorful response I could have gotten from a New York policeman.")"Vancouver mosque leader preached killing Jews" (CBC News, 2004/10/22)
"The leader of the Vancouver mosque, attended by the Canadian killed recently in Chechnya, has been found to be preaching about killing Jews.
Mosque leader Younus Kathradra made the speech in in response to the death of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas. He was killed last spring in an Israeli helicopter attack.
A recording was posted on the mosque's web site. In it Kathradra says " ... we are dealing with a people ... the brothers of the monkeys and the swine ... who's treachery is well known. We should all remember ... that these are people who will never keep their word."
His preachings repeatedly talk of killing Jews. ...
The mosque is the same one that Rudwan Khalil Abubaker attended.
Abubaker was one of four men killed by Russian troops in Chechnya earlier this month.""Police identify French Islamist killed in Fallujah" (AFP/Expatica, 2004/10/22)
"Intelligence agents have identified the first French national known to have been killed fighting with the insurgency against US forces in Iraq, officials said Friday.
The 19-year-old, named as Redouane El Hakim, is believed to have travelled to Iraq via Syria at the start of the year and been killed in a US bombardment on Fallujah in July.
Officials close to the case, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Hakim was one of several French citizens of Muslim background who have gone to Iraq to fight along insurgents there.
"It's difficult to estimate their number, but there mustn't be more than around 10 or so," one official said.""It's an Arab Nationalist Thing" (Lee Smith, Slate, 2004/10/22)
"Osama's Islamism and Saddam's Baathism are more alike than you think":
"Many analysts and journalists claim it was preposterous for the Bush administration to suggest that there could ever be any connection between an Arab nationalist and Islamic fundamentalist. After all, as one is secular and the other religious, they are natural enemies. A cobra would sooner consort with a mongoose than a stalwart jihadist like Bin Laden collaborate with a dyed-in-the-wool Baathist like Saddam ...
In short, Baathism and Islamism are more similar than dissimilar. Sure, there are differences — the former draws its influences more specifically from Western modes of thought, the latter from patently Muslim contexts — but, as Landis writes, "like the Salafis, the early Ba'thists argued that to revive the eternal spirit of the Arab world, Arabs had to return to their roots, which 'Aflaq insisted was an Arab Islamic message." ...
Of course, just because Baathism and Islamism are very similar phenomena doesn't mean that invading Iraq was the only strategic choice available to the White House, or those like Berman who seem to agree with Washington's decision. ... Regardless of the historical connections between Islamism and Arab nationalism, it's possible to make a very good argument against the administration's conduct of the war on terror — but it's hard to see the virtue of making one based on a faulty understanding." (See also: "Is Ba'thism Secular?" (Joshua Landis, Syria Comment, 2004/07/14))"Tariq Ramadan, Non-Violent Man of Peace" (John Rosenthal, Transatlantic Intelligencer, 2004/10/22)
A methodical fisking of a New York Times article on Tariq Ramadan:
"The NYTimes article notes that "Mr. Ramadan is the grandson of Hasan al-Banna, one of the most important Islamist figures of the 20th century, and for many of his detractors that alone makes him suspect." ...
Ramadan's, to say the least, indulgence towards Banna is indeed much in evidence in the Times profile, which quotes him to the effect that his grandfather has been "misremembered": "For instance, although the history of the Muslim Brotherhood is dotted with violence, and the group gave rise to more militant organizations, Mr. Banna himself was not personally violent, nor did he legitimize violence, Mr. Ramadan said. His empathy for the poor was admirable, Mr. Ramadan said, and his thinking was more nuanced than many followers and critics understand." ...
Caroline Fourest notes that the assertion that Banna was non-violent forms a standard part of Ramadan's angelic depiction of him. As she puts it, "This sends chills down one's spine when one knows the extent to which Banna was a fanatic, that he gave birth to a movement out of which the worst Jihadis... have emerged."
The German political scientist Matthias Küntzel has indeed found Banna and his organization to be at the very origins of the notion of "belligerent jihad". In his article “Islamic Anti-Semitism and its Nazi Roots”, Küntzel points in particular to a 1938 essay by Banna entitled "The industry of Death”, in which Banna writes, 'To a nation that perfects the industry of death and which knows how to die nobly, God gives proud life in this world and eternal grace in the life to come.'" (See also: "Mystery of the Islamic Scholar Who Was Barred by the U.S." (Deborah Sontag, The New York Times/Campus Watch, 2004/10/06) and "Islamic Antisemitism And Its Nazi Roots" (Matthias Küntzel, matthiaskuentzel.de, April 2003))"Havel, his memories and the world" (Judy Dempsey, International Herald Tribune, 2004/10/22)
An interview with Vaclav Havel: "Never one to hold his tongue, Havel said that whoever wins the race to the White House next month should consider shifting his attitude.
"I think that the more powerful the U.S. is and the more responsibility it feels, rightfully, for the future of the world, the more careful and cautious it should be in exercising that power, because sometimes, inadvertently, Americans may act in ways that are seen as arrogant and bullying." ...
Still, Havel's criticism of the United States was tempered by a kind of gratitude for what Washington did for Europe during the past century.
'You see in places where Americans helped the most, it is there where the most frequent expressions of anti-Americanism have occurred. There exists something like the phenomenon of the hatred by the saved towards the savior. We can see this very well in Europe, where twice in its recent history, the U.S. had to come in and save Europe, and again, in a nonmilitary way, during the cold war. Maybe this anti-Americanism in Europe is a part of this hatred of the saved towards its savior.'""The Levin 'Report'" (Stephen F. Hayes, The Weekly Standard, 2004/10/22)
"Senator Carl Levin, the Senate's fiercest and most partisan critic of the Bush administration, released a "report" Thursday challenging the administration's claim that Iraq had a relationship with al Qaeda. The report was produced by the Democratic staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee, with no input from the panel's Republicans. Its release comes 13 days before the presidential election.
If those facts alone don't suggest a transparently political maneuver, the contents of the report do. The 45-page Levin report is third-rate partisan hack-work. Its anonymous authors and its namesake should be deeply embarrassed. I say this not only because I disagree strongly with its inherently subjective conclusions.
Basic facts are wrong. Congressional testimony is misdated. Quotes are erroneously sourced. Context is nonexistent.""Absolute Enemies" (Denis Boyles, National Review, 2004/10/22)
"After pummeling George W. Bush for four years or so, a bunch of mostly left-wing newspapers in France, Spain, the UK, Mexico, Canada, South Korea, Russia, Israel, Australia, and Japan all got together last week and published the results of a multinational poll — summarized here by the UK's participating paper, the Guardian — to see whether their readers have been paying attention.
The survey, which enjoyed thick and heavy coverage when the results were unveiled in Europe and the U.K., provided no startling insights. It seems that except in Israel and Russia, where responding to terrorism means more than just stammering a scared apology in Spanish, George W. Bush is not very well liked. That is not exactly a scoop. In France, the revelation was made with smug, take-that satisfaction by Le Monde, which wanted to make sure we all understood that it isn't America the French hate, it's the American president. This is of course patently absurd — like saying you love bears but hate what they do in the woods. ...
The poll details aren't very remarkable at first glance. Only 16 percent of all responding Frenchies like Bush. Since the press and TV coverage are relentlessly shrill in their coverage of W., this is the same as saying 16 percent of the French are deaf illiterates." (See also: "International poll: World opposes Bush, except Israel" (Haaretz, 2004/10/15))"Sacrificing Israel" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2004/10/22)
"John Kerry says he wants to "rejoin the community of nations." There is no issue on which the United States more consistently fails the global test of international consensus than Israel. In July, the U.N. General Assembly declared Israel's defensive fence illegal by a vote of 150 to 6. In defending Israel, America stood almost alone.
You want to appease the "international community"? Sacrifice Israel. Gradually, of course, and always under the guise of "peace." Apply relentless pressure on Israel to make concessions to a Palestinian leadership that has proved (at Camp David in 2000) it will never make peace.
The allies will appreciate that. Then turn around and say to them: We're doing our part (against Israel), now you do yours (in Iraq). If Kerry is elected, the pressure on Israel will begin on day one.""Guardian calls it quits in Clark County fiasco" (David Rennie, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/10/22)
"There had been mounting evidence that urging foreigners to send anti-Bush letters to Clark County - an isolated slice of the rural mid-West - was only hurting Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate.
One senior local politician, speaking off the record to avoid offending his neighbours, said: "They picked the wrong county for many reasons. One is, we're very parochial. When people talk about The Guardian of London, they think you mean London, Ohio, which is in the next-door county. Another is, we have some issues with literacy round here."
Mr Katz acknowledged that an ever-growing number of Democrats, among them Sharon Manitta, the spokesman in Britain for Democrats Abroad, tried warning The Guardian: "This will certainly garner more votes for George Bush."
Mr Katz wrote yesterday that the paper had considered the possibility, but "we didn't believe it". He insisted: "Folks in Clark County itself have best recognised the spirit of the enterprise. Local media coverage has been consistently fair and good humoured."
"Good-humoured" headlines in the local newspaper, the Springfield News-Sun have included "Butt Out Brits, voters say" and "Trashing letter campaign" - a reference to the fact that the first woman to receive a letter from a Guardian reader, Beverly Coale, threw it away, fearing it was from a terrorist." (See also: "Dear Limey assholes" (The Guardian, 2004/10/18), "Operation Guardian Latest" (Tim Blair, timblair.spleenville.com, 2004/10/16) and "Dear Clark County voter, Give us back the America we loved. Yours sincerely, John Le Carré" (The Guardian, 2004/10/13))"Israel May Have Iran in Its Sights" (Laura King, Los Angeles Times/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/22)
"Increasingly concerned about Iran's nuclear program, Israel is weighing its options and has not ruled out a military strike to prevent the Islamic Republic from gaining the capability to build atomic weapons, according to policymakers, military officials, analysts and diplomats.
Israel would much prefer a diplomatic agreement to shut down Iran's uranium enrichment program, but if it concluded that Tehran was approaching a "point of no return," it would not be deterred by the difficulty of a military operation, the prospect of retaliation or the international reaction, officials and analysts said.
Iran presents "a combination of factors that rise to the highest level of Israeli threat perception," said analyst Gerald Steinberg of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
"Nuclear weapons in a country with a fundamentalist regime, a government with which we have no diplomatic contact, a known sponsor of terrorist groups like Hezbollah and which wants to wipe Israel off the map — that makes stable deterrence extremely difficult, if not impossible," Steinberg said." (See also: "Iran Moving Methodically Toward Nuclear Capability" (Douglas Frantz, Los Angeles Times, 2004/10/21))"Released Detainees Rejoining The Fight" (John Mintz, The Washington Post, 2004/10/22)
"At least 10 detainees released from the Guantanamo Bay prison after U.S. officials concluded they posed little threat have been recaptured or killed fighting U.S. or coalition forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to Pentagon officials.
One of the repatriated prisoners is still at large after taking leadership of a militant faction in Pakistan and aligning himself with al Qaeda, Pakistani officials said. In telephone calls to Pakistani reporters, he has bragged that he tricked his U.S. interrogators into believing he was someone else. ...
One former detainee who has not yet been able to take up arms is Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, a Dane who also signed a promise to renounce violence. But in recent months he has told Danish media that he considers the written oath "toilet paper," stated his plans to join the war in Chechnya and said Denmark's prime minister is a valid target for terrorists." (See also: "Militant, freed from Guantanamo Bay, is now holding hostages in Pakistan" (USA Today, 2004/10/13), "Former prisoner to become holy warrior" (DR Nyheder, 2004/09/30) and "Guantanamo Dane: PM is legitimate target" (The Copenhagen Post, 2004/09/27))"Religious Leaders Ahead in Iraq Poll" (Robin Wright, The Washington Post, 2004/10/22)
"Leaders of Iraq's religious parties have emerged as the country's most popular politicians and would win the largest share of votes if an election were held today, while the U.S.-backed government of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is losing serious ground, according to a U.S.-financed poll by the International Republican Institute.
More than 45 percent of Iraqis also believe that their country is heading in the wrong direction, and 41 percent say it is moving in the right direction. ...
But in another blow, one out of three Iraqis blames the U.S.-led multinational force for Iraq's security problems, slightly more than the 32 percent who blame foreign terrorists, the poll shows. Only 8 percent blame members of the former government. ...
In positive news for the administration, the poll found that 85 percent of Iraqis want to vote in the January election.
Despite the current strife, about two-thirds of Iraqis do not believe civil war is imminent, the poll found. Asked if their households had been hurt by violence, injuries, death or monetary loss over the past year, only 22 percent of those questioned said yes — a figure that surprised pollsters and U.S. officials.""U.N. Aide Says Iraqi Elections Are on Target" (Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, 2004/10/22)
"With nationwide elections three months away, the senior United Nations official here says his office and the interim Iraqi government have assembled a list of nearly 14 million Iraqi voters, set up 550 voter registration sites around the country and hired 6,000 people to staff them. ...
Mr. Valenzuela [chief United Nations elections adviser here] and Iraqi election officials said these developments marked significant steps toward holding the elections by Jan. 31, the deadline imposed by the Iraqi interim constitution and endorsed by the Americans.
Mr. Valenzuela said he believed the elections could indeed be held at that time and that although the United Nations team of 14 advisors is small, the large numbers of Iraqis involved in the process were helping the enterprise meet its schedule.
"So far, so good," said Mr. Valenzuela, who has helped set up elections in such violence-torn places as Liberia, Cambodia and East Timor. 'There will be problems. It's always like this. But it is still possible to do it.'"Added in archive:
"'Conspiracy' Crises" (Amir Taheri, New York Post/Benador Associates, 2004/10/17)
"The Media War Continues" (Armand Laferrère, EURSOC, 2004/10/15)
Thursday,
October 21, 2004
News and
commentary:
"Why I'm (Slightly) for Bush" (Christopher Hitchens, The Nation, 2004/10/21)
Hitchens returns to The Nation with one last column: "One of the editors of this magazine asked me if I would also say something about my personal evolution. I took him to mean: How do you like your new right-wing friends? In the space I have, I can only return the question. I prefer them to Pat Buchanan and Vladimir Putin and the cretinized British Conservative Party, or to the degraded, mendacious populism of Michael Moore, who compares the psychopathic murderers of Iraqis to the Minutemen. I am glad to have seen the day when a British Tory leader is repudiated by the White House. An irony of history, in the positive sense, is when Republicans are willing to risk a dangerous confrontation with an untenable and indefensible status quo. I am proud of what little I have done to forward this revolutionary cause. In Kabul recently, I interviewed Dr. Masuda Jalal, a brave Afghan physician who was now able to run for the presidency. I asked her about her support for the intervention in Iraq. "For us," she said, "the battle against terrorism and against dictatorship are the same thing." I dare you to snicker at simple-mindedness like that." (Hat tip: Michael J. Totten. See also: "Taking Sides" (Christopher Hitchens, The Nation, 2002/09/26))"Egypt's underbelly" (Hassan Nafaa, Al-Ahram, 2004/10/21)
More conspiracy theories regarding the Taba attacks: "Those who suspect Mossad involvement point out that Al-Qaeda has no known history of targeting Israelis. The operation, they argue, could not have been successful without some form of inside help. And while Al-Zawahiri was once head of Egyptian Jihad, that organisation has been effectively neutralised.
Israeli insistence that Al-Qaeda was responsible has served simply to exacerbate the suspicions of some that the bombings were a covert operation mounted by Mossad, which deliberately left Al-Qaeda fingerprints. The aim of the operation, these analysts argue, is to portray Egypt as a hapless country, incapable of maintaining security over its own territories let alone in Gaza following Israel's planned disengagement.
If Al-Qaeda is seen to be attacking Egypt, the argument goes, then Cairo will be obliged to assist Israel and the US in their war against terror, perhaps even to the point of confronting those Palestinian resistance groups Israel and the US view as terrorist." (See also: "Conspiracy Theories in the Egyptian Media Concerning the Terrorist Attacks in Sinai" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 801, 2004/10/15), "The usual suspects?" (Omayma Abdel-Latif, Al-Ahram, 2004/10/14) and "Israel accused of masterminding attacks" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/10/10))"Israel kills top Hamas leader" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/21)
"Israel has killed a top leader of the Hamas militant group and another gunman in an airstrike on their car in Gaza, days before a key parliamentary vote on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza pullout plan.
Medics and witnesses said a missile from an Israeli drone slammed into the vehicle on Thursday and killed Adnan al-Ghoul, a senior Hamas leader and master bombmaker for the Islamic militant group who has been on Israel's most wanted list for over a decade. ...
Ghoul was Hamas's top engineer who manufactured explosive devices and weapons that were used in dozens of attacks against Israelis, Palestinian sources said.
The sources said he was known as "the father of the Qassam rocket", referring to the type of rocket Gaza militants have fired frequently into Israel during the past few months. Two Israeli toddlers were killed in such a rocket strike last month.""U.S. Soldier in Abu Ghraib Scandal Gets 8 Years in Jail" (Terence Neilan, The New York Times, 2004/10/21)
"The highest-ranking Army reservist accused in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was sentenced to eight years in prison at a court-martial in Baghdad today for sexually and physically abusing detainees. The judge, Col. James Pohl, also sentenced the reservist, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II, to a reduction in rank to private, to forfeiting his pay and to a dishonorable discharge from the Army. ...
Sergeant Frederick, a military police officer, is the third American soldier to be convicted for his part in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal. Five soldiers are still due to face courts-martial." (See also: "U.S. Soldier Pleads Guilty to Iraqi Prisoner Abuse" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/20))"The Power of Bad Television" (Clive Davis, National Review, 2004/10/21)
Davis on BBC's new documentary series, "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear":
"As Curtis explained in a magazine interview this week: "My original intention was to look at the neo-cons and then the radical Islamists. I was astonished to discover that they have the same philosophical roots. They both believe that the problem with modern society is that individuals question anything; by doing that they [those individuals] have already torn down God, that eventually they will tear down everything else and therefore they will have to be opposed."
This symbiotic relationship with Islamism will no doubt come as a surprise to the good folks at the American Enterprise Institute. It is a sign of how fevered political debate has become in Britain's media-land that such lurid, Michael Moore-ish notions are given a prime-time slot on the channel that once gave us Kenneth Clarke's Civilisation. ...
One of the most egregious examples is Curtis' portrayal of the Reagan-era arms build-up as the fruit of a devious "Team B" plot (supervised by Paul Wolfowitz and the eminent historian Richard Pipes) aimed at misleading the American public about the nuclear threat from the Soviet Union. ... Pipes tells NRO in response to it all: 'The allegations made by Ms. Cahn and others about Team B are so preposterous that I would be at a loss to answer them: they are similar to those made by the Holocaust deniers. They sort of leave you speechless.'" (See also: "Al-Qaida is no dark illusion" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2004/10/19) and "The making of the terror myth" (Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 2004/10/15))"Antiwar Ouija Boards" (Max Boot, Los Angeles Times, 2004/10/21)
"With all that's gone wrong in Iraq, critics of the war can take a certain grim satisfaction in being vindicated. Why on Earth didn't President Bush listen to their warnings, which now appear eerily prescient? Just recall what antiwar advocates said:
Sen. John Kerry: "I do not believe our nation is prepared for war. If we do go to war, for years people will ask why Congress gave in. They will ask why there was such a rush to so much death and destruction when it did not have to happen." ...
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy: "It'll be brutal and ugly. The 45,000 body bags the Pentagon has sent to the region are all the evidence we need of the high price in lives and blood that we will have to [bear]." ...
Actually there's a perfectly good reason why President George H.W. Bush didn't listen to these Cassandras: They were wrong. You see, all these gloomy predictions weren't made prior to the war of 2003. They were made before the war of 1991. ...
They serve as a timely reminder that many critics of the current conflict had no special insights into the dangers U.S. troops would face. They've been predicting disaster in virtually identical terms every time the United States has deployed forces anywhere since Vietnam. One could dredge up equally apocalyptic predictions about U.S. interventions in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan: All were supposed to be the 'next Vietnam.'""Liberation Online: A look at Iraq's bloggers" (Bruce Chapman, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/10/21)
An interview with Ali Fadhil, who has the blog Iraq the Model:
"'Maybe in a real sense, I am less safe than I was under Saddam. But then I never felt safe. We were always in fear of some bad surprise from the authorities. Now, the threat is different, but it is random (he is thinking of the car bombs). Personally I also feel safer because I am free.'
He is also better off, making about $200 a month instead of the $3 a month doctors earned under the Baathists. Ali is appalled by the terrorists, but not surprised. "We are at war and the enemy is fighting back, so why be surprised about that?" he asks. "Iran, some in Saudi Arabia, all the Islamist groups, and the former Baathists, of course, naturally are funding the fighting. They want to terrorize us before the elections, so things are going to get worse before then. But when terrorists see that the people demand democracy, they will feel they have lost. Many will leave."
Ali is more worried about the Americans, given John Kerry's talk of setting an announced timetable for the removal of U.S. troops, and he is dismayed by U.S. commentators and career bureaucrats who say that democracy in Iraq is impossible. 'What they really are saying is that we are barbarians. There is some racism in that. They despise Islam and think it cannot reform itself or lead to reform. They think we are so ignorant we need a dictator.'""Iran Moving Methodically Toward Nuclear Capability" (Douglas Frantz, Los Angeles Times, 2004/10/21)
"Iran has made steady progress toward producing nuclear fuel and could make significant quantities of enriched uranium in less than a year, according to new estimates by diplomats, scientists and intelligence officials.
Mastering enrichment will move Tehran a big step closer to being able to build an atomic bomb. ...
Iran has moved much faster than expected in manufacturing and assembling these centrifuges, diplomats said. The rapid progress means a pilot centrifuge plant near Natanz, in central Iran, could soon be equipped with enough machines to begin large-scale enrichment.
Two senior European diplomats said the pilot plant could be expanded from the existing 164 centrifuges to 1,000 within weeks and produce enough material in less than a year to fashion a crude nuclear device.
"They need to install more centrifuges and do preparatory work, and they could be in production in shorter than a year," said one diplomat, who, like most of the people interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition that his name and position be withheld.""Debate Lingering on Decision to Dissolve the Iraqi Military" (Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times, 2004/10/21)
"More than a year later, Mr. Bremer's disbanding of the Iraqi Army still casts a shadow over the occupation of Iraq. The American military had been counting on using Iraqi soldiers to help rebuild the country and impose order along its borders. Instead, as a violent insurgency convulsed the nation, United States forces found themselves deprived of a way to put an Iraqi face on the occupation. ...
"It was absolutely the wrong decision," said Col. Paul Hughes of the Army, who served as an aide to Jay Garner, a retired three-star general and the first civilian administrator of Iraq. "We changed from being a liberator to an occupier with that single decision,'' he said. 'By abolishing the army, we destroyed in the Iraqi mind the last symbol of sovereignty they could recognize and as a result created a significant part of the resistance.'" (See also: "Faulty Intelligence Misled Troops at War's Start" (Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times, 2004/10/20) and "The Strategy to Secure Iraq Did Not Foresee a 2nd War" (Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times, 2004/10/19))
Wednesday,
October 20, 2004
News and
commentary:
"Sucking Democracy Dry"
(The Village Voice/rogerlsimon.com, 2004/10/20)
See also: "Sucking Democracy Dry: The End of Democracy" (Rick Perlstein, The Village Voice, 2004/10/19)"Columbia Abuzz Over Underground Film" (Jacob Gershman, The New York Sun, 2004/10/20)
"At a history class, a professor mockingly tells a female Jewish student she cannot possibly have ancestral ties to Israel because her eyes are green.
During a lecture, a professor of Arab politics refuses to answer a question from an Israeli student and military veteran but instead asks the student, "How many Palestinians have you killed?"
At a student meeting on the topic of divestment from Israel, a Jewish student is singled out as responsible for death of Palestinian Arabs.
Those scenes are described by current and former students interviewed for an underground documentary that is causing a frisson of concern to ripple through the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University, where the incidents took place.
The film, about anti-Israel sentiment at the school, has not yet been released to the public, but it has been screened for a number of top officials of Columbia, and talk of its impact is spreading rapidly on a campus where some students have complained of anti-Israel bias among faculty members.""Fifth column" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2004/10/20)
"Simon Jenkins in the Times is at it again, suggesting that the war in Iraq was cooked up by a 'neo-con' conspiracy to demonise Islam and manufacture a bogus threat to terrify the public. But today he goes further in this truly asinine thinking by claiming that Al Qaeda has never existed. A programme is being screened tonight by the BBC (of course) which from all accounts appears to be a farrago of lies of Michael Moore-esqe proportions. Its thesis is apparently 'the paranoia of fundamentalism' — that is to say we, not the fundamentalists, are paranoid. And that's because there is apparently no threat from Islamic fundamentalism at all. Sinister politicians have conjured up a nightmare fantasy so that they can gain power by pretending to protect us. Al Qaeda is thus merely a figment of the imnagination of crazed neo-cons. Now this is staggeringly off-the-wall stuff. But so great is the madness now that Jenkins — who, let us pinch ourselves, is the leading commentator on the house journal of the British establishment — believes it all. He writes of the programme:'It traces the evolution of the Iraq occupation to the rise of the American neoconservatives in the 1980s. It sees in the demonising of Islam the neocons’ need for an enemy to replace communism in “binding together the American myth” . They found it in the fragmented Islamist revolutionaries. They supported various Mujahidin groups against the Russians in Afghanistan, then reinvented them as a fictitious “worldwide network of terror in 50 countries” in the aftermath of 9/11.'"
(See also: "Vote Bush: it's the quickest way to get American troops out of Iraq" (Simon Jenkins, The Times, 2004/10/20) and "The making of the terror myth" (Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 2004/10/15))
"Lying Liars and the Big, Fat Lies They Tell" (Clifford D. May, National Review, 2004/10/20)
"But the point is that Scheer is hardly alone on the left in accusing President Bush, Republicans, and conservatives not just of being misguided or wrong or even ignorant — but of being liars, people who intentionally say things they know to be untrue.
In fact, this has become a central theme of the Left. On Amazon.com you can find Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.
There's also Joe Conason's Big Lies: The Right-wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth.
And, of course, there's David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception.
And let us not forget ex-conservative Kevin Phillips's American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, and Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber. ...
I'd like to take this opportunity to propose to Scheer and my other friends on the left that they consider opening their minds to the possibility that those who disagree with them have come to their views honestly, that they see the world differently, that they have made alternative judgments based on sincere — if flawed, by the lights of the Left — interpretations of reality.""Nobel Savage" (Ruth Franklin, The New Republic, 2004/10/20)
Franklin on Elfriede Jelinek, this year's Nobel Prize for Literature laureate. Here on her latest play, Bambiland, which is a "strident attack" against the war in Iraq:
"In the end, she cannot resist the tired phallic implications of the weapons. The final portion of the monologue is delivered by a voice that might belong to the soldier, or to Bush, or possibly to God himself:I am speaking to you as your Lord. Listen to me! With this bunker-busting bomb I am taking the liberty of shelling the self-appointed lord of this people like a nut. I have an appointment decree from my father. ... It has a penetrator weighing 2.2 t. Fine. This is how it was intended by me because this man will never be my friend. I suck and suck his dick but nothing is coming out that I could keep swallowing, bugger that. Perhaps nothing is bound to come out and, quite on the contrary, perhaps something should thrust. These bombs are really modified canon [sic] barrels and I keep sucking them, oh dear, it's getting hotter, it's getting harder, something as hard as this you've never had in your mouth, guys, filled with 300 kg of highly explosive Tritonal. Yes, I filled this hard, sweet muzzle with the matching GBU-27 LGB kit, that is a laser-guided retrofit set. ... We know nothing, we experience nothing, we err, we start all over again, we deceive ourselves, we deceive others, and once deceived we are disappointed that we haven't won yet. But soon we will have won. ... That's it. That's it. That's it. He's shot his load at last. I thought he would never come.
These are the words of the world's new greatest writer." (See also: "Theatertexte: Bambiland (English)" (Elfriede Jelinek Homepage, 2004) and "Oops . . . They Did It Again" (Stephen Schwartz, The Weekly Standard, 2004/10/08))
"A mild sign of hope in the media?" (Tom Gross, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/10/20)
"Is the international "media intifada" against Israel, like the intifada on the ground, beginning to run out of steam?":
"In Paris on Saturday several journalists at Radio France International slammed the station's news director, Alain Menargues, for his "unacceptable" remarks during an interview concerning his book Sharon's Wall on Radio Courtoisie last week.
Menargues told listeners that we knew from the Book of Leviticus and from 2,000 years of history that Jews wished to separate themselves from "impure" non-Jews. He added that Jews had deliberately created the world's first ghetto in Venice "to separate themselves off from the rest."
And in London on Sunday fellow journalists publicly condemned the notorious Robert Fisk, The Independent's Mideast correspondent. The associate editor of the (London) Times said Fisk's coverage "masquerades as reporting but is, in fact, polemic."
Bill Newman, ombudsman for The Sun, Britain's most popular newspaper, said Fisk's coverage of Israel was so bad that he found it 'distasteful.'" (See also: "Jeningrad - What the British media said" (Tom Gross, National Review, 2002/05/13) and "New Prejudices for Old - The Euro press and the Intifada" (Tom Gross, National Review, 2001/11/01))"How to keep ahead" (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun, 2004/10/20)
Martinkus II: "An SBS producer, Mike Carey, confirmed on 3AW yesterday that Martinkus told the terrorists he sympathised with them — "as you would" to save your life. As I sure would, too. ...
Martinkus was in Iraq to film another documentary for SBS, which has run an undeclared jihad against the United States and the liberation of Iraq.
Not so undeclared, actually. Just before the war to topple Saddam Hussein, the then SBS deputy chairman, Neville Roach, publicly begged "journalists . . . in every article, every editorial, every report, (to) highlight the murder and mayhem that our nation is about to release". ...
But worse, in a Bulletin article Martinkus described even Ansar Al Sunna, an al-Qaida-linked terrorist group responsible for suicide bombings and on-video beheadings of both Iraqis and foreigners, as merely "one of Iraq's many resistance groups", breezily claiming its members were just "ordinary Iraqis frustrated and humiliated by the occupation".
Resistance? An al-Qaida ally that blows up scores of Iraqis and beheads even Nepalese cooks and Turkish drivers is a resistance, like those brave men and women who fought the Nazis?
Martinkus's captors would have loved that best of all. No wonder they let him go.""Internet search saved 'lucky' journo" (Annabelle McDonald and John Kerin, news.com.au, 2004/10/20)
Martinkus I: "Iraqi insurgents who took Australian journalist John Martinkus hostage carried out a Google search on the Internet to determine whether they should kill him.
When he turned out to be neither American nor CIA, but the author of a book about how the US is facing an uphill battle to beat the insurgents in Iraq, it almost certainly saved his life. ...
Mr Martinkus, 35, described his kidnapping as an "interesting" experience.
"These guys, they're not stupid. They are fighting a war but they are not savages — they're not actually killing people willy-nilly. There was no reason for them to kill me," he told reporters on his arrival at Sydney airport last night.
'There was a reason to kill (British hostage Kenneth) Bigley, there was a reason to kill the (two) Americans (kidnapped with Bigley). There was not a reason to kill me.'" (Hat tip: Tim Blair.)"U.S. Soldier Pleads Guilty to Iraqi Prisoner Abuse" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/20)
"U.S. soldier pleaded guilty on Wednesday before a court martial to abusing prisoners in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, including forcing one to masturbate and photographing naked prisoners.
Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick, a military policeman, told the hearing at a U.S. military base just outside the Iraqi capital he had been trying to humiliate the prisoners and set the scene for their interrogations.
Judge Col. James Pohl is expected to announce his verdict and the sentence Thursday.
Frederick, 38, pleaded guilty to five charges, including indecent acts, dereliction of duty and assault, but denied some of the details.
"I was wrong about what I did and I shouldn't have done it. I knew it was wrong at the time because I knew it was a form of abuse," Frederick told the court.""La République des Bananes" (Claudia Rosett, The Wall Street Journal, 2004/10/20)
"Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, finds it "inconceivable" that Russia, France or China might have been influenced in Security Council debates by Saddam Hussein's Oil for Food business and bribes. "These are very serious and important governments," Mr. Annan told Britain's ITV News Sunday. "You are not dealing with banana republics." ...
With the aim of shedding sanctions, Saddam, according to his regime's own records, was throwing billions in business and millions in bribes to France, Russia and, to a lesser extent, China, all veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council. As it happened, sanctions were indeed eroding, and these three nations opposed the decision of the U.S. and Britain that Saddam either had to shape up or be shipped out.
But in Mr. Annan's view, Saddam's oil money had nothing to do with it. Nobody buys the officials of France, Russia and China. They are serious and important. ...
Alas, such dignity may come as cold comfort to the French, given that Mr. Annan did not actually deny that the Chinese, Russians and French had taken big payoffs from Saddam. Mr. Annan merely disputed that the Chinese, Russians and French would have delivered anything in return for the bribes. In other words, they may be corrupt, but at least they weren't honest about it.""More than third of U.S. Muslims see war on Islam" (Jon Ward, The Washington Times, 2004/10/20)
"More than one-third of American Muslims believe that the U.S. war on terrorism is really a war on Islam, according to survey information released yesterday by researchers at Georgetown University.
Thirty-eight percent of American Muslims polled said they believe the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the tensions with Iran and Syria, reflect a foreign policy that is targeting Islamic countries and Muslims themselves.
An additional 33 percent of Muslims interviewed said they believe the United States is fighting a war on terrorism, and 29 percent said they were not sure.""Assessing the Afghan Election" (Carlotta Gall and David Rohde, The New York Times, 2004/10/20)
"The success of the Oct. 9 election, experts and officials said, stemmed from three things: an aggressive American-led security and reconstruction effort in Afghanistan in 2004, pressure on neighboring Pakistan to rein in Taliban remnants, and most important, a passionate desire among average Afghans to choose the country's leader through a peaceful, democratic election. ...
A sea change in Bush administration policy in Afghanistan was also credited with aiding the election. After being heavily criticized for paying too little attention to Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, the administration pumped $1.76 billion in reconstruction funds into the country in fiscal 2004. After blocking the expansion of an international peacekeeping force in 2002, Washington now advocates it. After initial leeriness toward nation building, the United States is deeply engaged in it. ...
Afghan officials and Western diplomats predict that the Taliban's failure to mount any major attack on or around election day will damage the movement in the eyes of supporters and recruits, and among the general public, since their threats proved mostly empty.""Faulty Intelligence Misled Troops at War's Start" (Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times, 2004/10/20)
"In early 2003, as the clock ticked down toward the war with Iraq, C.I.A. officials met with senior military commanders at Camp Doha, Kuwait, to discuss their latest ideas for upending Saddam Hussein's government.
Intelligence officials were convinced that American soldiers would be greeted warmly when they pushed into southern Iraq, so a C.I.A. operative suggested sneaking hundreds of small American flags into the country for grateful Iraqis to wave at their liberators. The agency would capture the spectacle on film and beam it throughout the Arab world. It would be the ultimate information operation.
Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of allied ground forces, quickly objected. To avoid being perceived as an occupying army, American forces had been instructed not to brandish the flag.
The idea was dropped, but the C.I.A.'s optimism remained." (See also: "The Strategy to Secure Iraq Did Not Foresee a 2nd War" (Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times, 2004/10/19))
Tuesday,
October 19, 2004
News and
commentary:
"11-3-04 7:38:35"
(Reuters, 2004/10/19)
"A video grab taken from security camera footage of a bomb exploding in Atocha railway station in Madrid on March 11, 2004.""Station Airs Footage of Spain Bombings" (Mar Roman, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/19)
Spain II: "A ball of fire erupts from a train car, smothering commuters with smoke and littering the platform with bodies and staining it with blood in a chilling security-camera videotape of the March 11 train bombings broadcast Tuesday by a Spanish station.
The video, taken at Madrid's Atocha station and aired by Telecinco, is believed to be the first public broadcast of images from the bombings that killed 191 people. ...
Telecinco also broadcast two other pieces of March 11 video that had not been broadcast publicly, although their existence was known.
One shows a gun-carrying, masked militant claiming responsibility for the attacks on behalf of al-Qaida. The video was found near a mosque on the eve of Spain's March 14 general election.
"We claim responsibility for the Madrid attacks, 2 1/2 years after the blessed conquests of New York and Washington," the Arabic-speaking man said, according to Telecinco's translation. He was referring to the Sept. 11 attacks.""Spain: Terror Suspects Targeted Court" (Mar Roman, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/19)
Spain I: "A radical Muslim cell broken up by Spanish police had been plotting to bomb the National Court, a hub of Spain's investigations of Islamic terrorism, the interior minister said Tuesday. ...
Seven terror suspects were arrested Monday in Madrid and southern Spain, and anoter was arrested Tuesday in the northern city of Pamplona, Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said. Most are Algerian, and some had contacts with militants elsewhere in Europe, the United States and Australia. ...
"They were talking about attacking the National Court, a judicial body. But the police do rule out any other kind of possibility," Alonso said, adding that no explosives were found during the arrests.
Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported the plan involved detonating a truck containing 1,100 pounds of explosives outside the courthouse, located on a busy avenue in downtown Madrid.""Saddam's Terrorist Ties" (Laurie Mylroie, The New York Sun/IMRA, 2004/10/19)
"Iraqi documents, dating from January to May 1993, suggest that Baghdad's training of terrorists goes back over a decade — at least to the period following Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. That training was interrupted by the 1991 war, but appears to have resumed not long afterwards. ...
This picture shows the substantial, longstanding involvement of Iraq's intelligence services in terrorist training and support operations, including collaboration with Islamic militants. Its activities were infinitely more sophisticated than anything that was taught to the mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. This underscores just how odd it is that our default explanation for terrorism has now become Al Qaida — which did not have a chemistry department, one of countless points that distinguishes that organization from the intelligence service of a major terrorist state. ...
Moreover, the matter of Baghdad's long-standing co-operation with Islamic militants is critical to understanding the current battles in Iraq. Who, exactly, is the enemy? Do the foreign terrorists there operate independently of the Baathists? Or do the attacks reflect an ongoing relationship, dating back to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, in which the Baathists worked with and hid behind Islamic militants? And what is the role of the Syrian Baath? It is striking that nowhere in these Iraqi documents can one find the least suggestion that Iraqi intelligence had any qualms about working with the Islamic militants." (See also: "Have War Critics Even Read the Duelfer Report?" (Richard O. Spertzel, Wall Street Journal/Benador Associates, 2004/10/14) and "Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties" (Scott Wheeler, CNSNews.com, 2004/10/04))"New Hostage Has Been Advocate for Iraqis" (Sue Leeman, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/19)
CARE II: "She's lived in Iraq for three decades and has been a passionate advocate for its people, arguing against the U.S.-led invasion, but humanitarian worker Margaret Hassan finds herself a pawn as the latest hostage in the conflict gripping her adopted homeland.
Director of CARE International's operations in Iraq since 1991, she headed a staff of 60 Iraqis running nutrition, health and water programs and stayed put during last year's war and the ensuing insurgency.
Described by friends as caring, tough and direct, Hassan campaigned against U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq after Saddam Hussein's regime occupied Kuwait in 1990. ...
A CARE statement said Hassan had done aid work in Iraq for more than 25 years. The group declined further comment, saying that might impede efforts to win her freedom.""Top aid official kidnapped in Iraq" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2004/10/19)
CARE I: "The British-born head of CARE International's Iraq operations, Margaret Hassan, was kidnapped in Iraq, the aid organisation said in London.
Hassan, who is married to an Iraqi and is a naturalized Iraqi citizen, has worked for CARE in Iraq since 1992 and has lived for more than 30 years in the country, a CARE spokeswoman told AFP.
The spokeswoman said a statement with further details would be issued later Tuesday.
CARE, a non-governmental organization with a presence in 72 countries, has been active in Iraq since 1991. Following the 2003 war it has focused efforts on providing emergency relief and medical aid, and restoring access to clean water.""Secretary-General of the Egyptian Labor Party: 'Those Who Bomb Fallujah Cannot Prevent Me from Bombing Los Angeles'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 802, 2004/10/19)
"Magdi Ahmad Hussein, the Secretary-General of the Egyptian Labor (Islamist) Party, recently appeared on Al-Jazeera TV, declaring that attacks against U.S. troops and civilians in Iraq are legitimate, and that hostage taking is permitted by Islam. He also called for clerics and fighters to go to fight in Iraq, defended the bombings in Taba, andargued that the American attack on Fallujah legitimizes a future terror attack in Los Angeles. ...
'We are the weak ones. They make demands on us that don't exist in international law. There must be reciprocity. If your city is being bombed… Those who bomb Fallujah cannot prevent me from bombing Los Angeles. Why Fallujah? Why do we always feel inferior to them? What is the meaning of this inferiority complex? If we had missiles we should have bombed Los Angeles or any other city until they stopped bombing Fallujah, Samarra, and Ramadi.'""Hamza accused of inciting murder" (Kate Holton, Reuters, 2004/10/19)
"Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri has been charged with 16 offences including encouraging the murder of non-believers, meaning a U.S. attempt to extradite him has been put on hold.
Abu Hamza, who lost an eye and both hands in Afghanistan fighting Soviet forces, is wanted by the United States over 11 alleged offences and a five-day extradition hearing had been due to start on Tuesday.
The British case, however, takes precedence and tight legal restrictions mean details of the U.S. charges could not be given.
The cleric, a former nightclub security guard who has preached in support of Osama bin Laden and the September 11 attacks, faces 10 charges of using public meetings to incite his followers to kill non-Muslims.
Four of the charges say he urged the killing of Jews.
He is also accused of using threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour with intent to stir up racial hatred, one charge of possessing threatening, abusive or insulting sound recordings and one charge of possessing a "terrorist" document."More on Abu Hamza al-Masri:
"Living next door to Abu Hamza" (Daniel Johnson, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/05/28)
"U.S.: Cleric Tried to Start Terror Camp" (Larry Neumeister, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/05/27)
"Don't expel Dr Hook" (Rod Liddle, The Spectator, from the 2003/03/15 issue)
"Mostafa's bride was guilty of a little window dressing" (Ian Cobain and Lewis Smith, The Times, 2003/01/30)
"Abu Hamza - The Lying Cleric" (Farrukh Dhondy, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/01/16)
"London Moslem fanatic" (BBC Newsnight, 2002/12/18)
"Hundreds rally at mosque to gloat over US suffering" (Sam Lister and Daniel McGrory, The Times, 2002/09/12)
"Islamist Leaders in London Interviewed" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 410, 2002/08/09)"Ordeal of a Lebanese hostage in Iraq" (Salah Takieddine, UPI, 2004/10/19)
An interview with former hostage Aram Nalbandian, who was kidnapped and held in Fallujah for 27 days [emphasis added]:
"On the first interrogation night, Nalbandian knew the name of the kidnappers' chief: "Abul Ghadab" (Father of Wrath in Arabic).
"You have the honor to be with me. Do you know who I am? I am Abul Ghadab: I was (deposed Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein's personal executioner," said Nalbandian, recalling his kidnapper's proper words. "He started to beat me and warned that every time I scream in pain I will be punished by three more lashes."
Such daily interrogation, which lasted for 10 days, usually started at 10 p.m. and stopped at 4:30 a.m. when kidnappers leave to perform the dawn's prayers.
"Every second, every minute, we were facing death," Nalbandian said, noting that he heard about the beheading of British hostage Kenneth Bigley from his own kidnappers." (See also: "A Former Hostage in Iraq Tells His Story" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 798, 2004/10/13))"In praise of premature war" (Spengler, Asia Times, 2004/10/19)
"The West should be thankful that it has in US President George W Bush a warrior who shoots first and tells the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to ask questions later. Rarely in its long history has the West suffered by going to war too soon. ...
In many cases, however, risk and reward are highly asymmetric; the cost of a short and nasty small war vanishes toward insignificance compared with the price of a grand war of attrition, particularly when nuclear weapons are concerned.
Many writers, to be sure, have offered apologies for war. Under the title "Give war a chance", Edward Luttwak wrote in the Summer 1999 edition of Foreign Affairs, "Since the establishment of the United Nations, great powers have rarely let small wars burn themselves out. ... This well-intentioned interference only intensifies and prolongs struggles in the long run. The unpleasant truth is that war does have one useful function: it brings peace. Let it."
I have no quibble with Luttwak, but propose to go further. He proposed to let small wars burn out; I propose to let major wars break out, the sooner the better. ...
Both World Wars of the 20th century, in my view, started too late, with catastrophic consequences for Western Europe. ...
That is why George W Bush has my moral support in the upcoming US presidential election. He may not fathom what he is doing, and he may have made a dog's breakfast of Iraq, but at least he is willing to go straight to war, no questions asked. That is precisely what the world needs.""Terrorism's Silent Partner at the U.N." (Joshua Muravchik, Los Angeles Times, 2004/10/19)
"For eight years now, a U.N. committee has labored to draft a "comprehensive convention on international terrorism." It has been stalled since Day 1 on the issue of "defining" terrorism. But what is the mystery? At bottom everyone understands what terrorism is: the deliberate targeting of civilians. The Islamic Conference, however, has insisted that terrorism must be defined not by the nature of the act but by its purpose. In this view, any act done in the cause of "national liberation," no matter how bestial or how random or defenseless the victims, cannot be considered terrorism.
This boils down to saying that terrorism on behalf of bad causes is bad, but terrorism on behalf of good causes is good. Obviously, anyone who takes such a position is not against terrorism at all — but only against bad causes. ...
As long as the Islamic states resist any blanket condemnation of terrorism, we will remain a long way from ridding the Earth of its scourge. And the U.N., in which they account for nearly one-third of the votes, will be helpless to bring us any closer.""Al-Qaida is no dark illusion" (David Aaronovitch, The Guardian, 2004/10/19)
Aaronovitch on the new BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear":
"I admire Curtis greatly, but this time his argument is as subtle as a house-brick. It is, essentially, that everything in American politics in the past 25 years from Reaganism, through Christian fundamentalism and anti-Clintonism, to the war on terror, has been got up by Dick Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and others that the programme identifies as conspiring neocons. They have created a "dark illusion" about Islamist terrorism, just as they earlier created one about that tin-pot, ramshackle, essentially harmless old flea-bitten bear, the Soviet Union. Curtis's is a one-stop conspiracy theory to stand alongside those fingering the Illuminati, the Bilderberg group and (vide the Da Vinci Code) Opus Dei." (See also: "The making of the terror myth" (Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 2004/10/15))"I bet the Guardian editor £50 he's wrong" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/10/19)
"The other day I received a letter from a very eminent British historian mocking me for my support of America, a country of 300 million cowering in fear because a statistically insignificant 3,000 people were killed and a couple of buildings demolished. Ha-ha.
I wonder how he felt watching a country of 60 million drowning in "mawkish sentimentality" (The Spectator) because just one man had been killed. I credit The Spectator with the phrase "mawkish sentimentality" but that was on Thursday.
By Friday, their editorial had been attacked as being insensitive to the great City of Liverpool, Michael Howard had (naturally) denounced it and, with a Scouse fatwa about to descend, Boris Johnson decided the previous day's robust words were no longer operative.
The Islamists have made a bet – that the West, in its twilight days, is too soft and decadent to muster the strength for this long struggle. Would you say the Britain on display to the world in the weeks before Mr Bigley's murder would have disabused them of that analysis or confirmed it?" (See also: "The Quality of Mersey" (Mark Steyn, Steyn Online, 2004/10/12))"Kim Jong Il's ex-chef lifts lid on ruler's fancy tastes" (James Brooke, The New York Times/IHT, 2004/10/19)
"In sleepy North Korea, where ox carts outnumber cars, the ruling Kim family dashes from villa to villa in high speed convoys of black Mercedes-Benzes. In a poor country where a prized possession is a used Japanese bicycle, the Kim clan enjoy the most expensive imported toys
