Archived news and commentary: October 17 - 23, 2005

2005/10/17 - 2005/10/23
2005/10/10 - 2005/10/16
2005/10/03 - 2005/10/09
2005/09/26 - 2005/10/02
2005/09/19 - 2005/09/25
2005/09/12 - 2005/09/18

› From 2001/09/11 -

Sunday, October 23, 2005

News and commentary:

"Muslim radicals threaten to kill Pope Shenouda III" (The Free Copts, 2005/01/23)
"Egyptian newspaper published threats made by Muslim radicals against the Pope of Alexandria. According to the newspaper, Muslim radicals publicly announced their threats through small mosques in the outskirts of the city of Alexandria and regarded the bloodshed of H.H. Pope Shenouda III as Halal (permissible) in revenge for what they considered an insult to Islam's prophet. ...
On the other hand, the "Mother of All Radicals" or the so called "Muslim Brotherhood" group has been giving out flyers inciting the Muslims to revenge the honor of their prophet
It is worthy to note that some European governments regard this group as moderate!!!" (Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch. See also: "15000 Muslims Surround a Coptic Church in Alexandria" (The Free Copts, 2005/10/21), "Egyptians protest, say church play against Islam" (Reuters, 2005/10/21) and "Man stabs nun in Egyptian church" (Reuters, 2005/10/19))

"Journalist Convicted of Blasphemy in Afghanistan" (Abdul Waheed Wafa and Carlotta Gall, The New York Times, 2005/10/23)
"KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 23 - For the first time since the fall of the Taliban's Islamic government four years ago, a journalist has been convicted by a Kabul court under the country's blasphemy laws.
Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, the editor of "Women's Rights," a monthly magazine for women, was sentenced on Saturday to two years in prison by Kabul's primary court. The sentence will automatically be reviewed on appeal.
The sentencing came after a strenuous battle between Kabul's conservative judges, led by members of the Supreme Court, and the liberal Minister of Information and Culture, Sayed Makhdum Raheen, and reveals the strains between moderates and conservatives in the government of President Hamid Karzai.
The prosecutor called for the maximum sentence of death, accusing the editor of apostasy, so the two-year sentence appears to have been a compromise. ...
The prosecution contended that the magazine had run two articles in its latest issue about apostasy that violated the law by saying that while apostasy was taboo, it was not a crime under Islam. The authorities apparently ordered the issue removed from newsstands."

"God save the heretic" (Christopher Hart, The Sunday Times, 2005/10/23)
"Jonathan Swift observed that the problem with religion was that there wasn’t enough of it around: “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” Three centuries on there is even less of it around and we still hate each other.
The difficulty, at least for the scientifically educated but spiritually malnourished, is not the idea of religion itself, meaning some system of ritualised worship that helps us to make sense, if only symbolically, of the human, natural and supernatural worlds. The difficulty is rather that all the religions on offer are so patently preposterous, if not downright unpleasant. ...
This confirms one’s sense that whatever the truth about God, all religions without exception are fallible human creations, in parts beautiful and profound and in parts ridiculous and repellent. To protect them from criticism is bad for our society and, even more importantly, bad for our souls.
Enter new Labour with shining morning face, like some eager perfectibilian schoolboy, believing that with a few waves of its legislative wand it can banish cultural frictions and religious disagreements from the earth. Under the proposed Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, before the Lords this week, anyone found guilty of being “insulting or abusive” about any religion could face a prison sentence of up to seven years.
If the bill is passed then the kind of things I have written at the start of this article — to my mind, perfectly reasonable, evidentiary and legitimately discomforting things — could well land me in Wormwood Scrubs. It is astonishing that any modern democratic government should be even considering such a law." (See also: Blasphemy - News and commentary on free speech cases and blasphemy law apologetics.)

"When Harriet met Hizb" (Nick Cohen, The Observer, 2005/10/23)
"A few weeks ago, Harriet Harman was holding a surgery for her Peckham constituents. As always, it was an open house, and every variety of south Londoner was coming to her office. She had dealt with the usual run of complaints and appeals when the door opened and for the first time in her life Harman confronted authentic anti-democrats.
If she had been less startled, she might have seen the funny side. The members of Hizb ut-Tahrir hated democracy and all that went with it - secularism, the separation of church and state, the emancipation of women. It's not just that they would establish a dictatorship if they came to power, the successor parties to the communists and the fascists would do that. The Islamists regarded it as sinful to stand in elections or even vote.
Yet here were totalitarians and misogynists going to a woman democratic politician and begging her to persuade Tony Blair not to take authoritarian measures against their authoritarian sect. The scene could have been bettered only if Harman had been a Jewish lesbian.
In fact, she is a courteous and patient politician. She listened politely to what they had to say and the more she heard the more despairing she became. As they were leaving, she said, 'you're British citizens. Shouldn't you try to play a part in British society?'
'We're not a part of British society,' they told her. 'We stay here like guests in a hotel.'"

"Prime-time for democracy" (Jack Kelly, post-gazette.com, 2005/10/23)
"Saddam's lawyers portray the trial as a vendetta by revenge-minded Shiites and Kurds, a view with which The New York Times sympathized in an editorial Wednesday.
"What we have is a narrow sectarian government, still struggling to come up with a nationally inclusive constitution, that is conducting what looks like a show trial," the Times said.
The Washington Post account of the opening of the trial begins with five paragraphs describing a defiant Saddam. A mention of the crime of which he is accused was relegated to a single sentence deep in the story.
Last week was a good week for Iraq, but you'd have had a hard time telling that from what you read in the papers.
By a large margin in a big turnout, Iraqis apparently approved their draft constitution. This is a watershed event, but many in the media cast doubt on its validity.
On Tuesday, the Post-Gazette ran on the front page an AP story under the headline: "'High' Iraq Vote Questioned." You had to read deep into the story to learn the recount the Electoral Commission was doing in these provinces would have no impact on the outcome."

"Secret MoD poll: Iraqis support attacks on British troops" (Sean Rayment, The Sunday Telegraph, 2005/10/23)
"Millions of Iraqis believe that suicide attacks against British troops are justified, a secret military poll commissioned by senior officers has revealed.
The poll, undertaken for the Ministry of Defence and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, shows that up to 65 per cent of Iraqi citizens support attacks and fewer than one per cent think Allied military involvement is helping to improve security in their country.
It demonstrates for the first time the true strength of anti-Western feeling in Iraq after more than two and a half years of bloody occupation. ...
The survey was conducted by an Iraqi university research team that, for security reasons, was not told the data it compiled would be used by coalition forces. It reveals:
• Forty-five per cent of Iraqis believe attacks against British and American troops are justified - rising to 65 per cent in the British-controlled Maysan province;
• 82 per cent are "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops;
• less than one per cent of the population believes coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security;
• 67 per cent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation;
• 43 per cent of Iraqis believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened;
• 72 per cent do not have confidence in the multi-national forces."

"Islamists and Mujahedeen Secure Victory in Afghan Vote" (Carlotta Gall, The New York Times, 2005/10/23)
"More than a month after the elections, nearly all provisional results have finally been released for Afghanistan's Parliament and provincial assemblies, cementing a victory for Islamic conservatives and the jihad fighters involved in the wars of the past two decades.
At least half of the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga, or lower house of Parliament, will be made up of religious figures or former fighters, including four former Taliban commanders. About 50 of the men elected fall into a broad category of independents, or educated professionals, and 11 are former Communists. Women have taken 68 seats - slightly more than the 25 percent representation guaranteed under the new electoral system.
It is far from clear how voting blocs will form, because the election system sidelined political parties, and most candidates ran as independents. But political analysts predict a deeply divided and confrontational body. Women may have a moderating influence but are also likely to be divided by region and ethnicity, the analysts said.
Even with such a Parliament, President Hamid Karzai is likely to be able to push through most bills and appointments. He can rely to some degree on support from his fellow Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in the country, who will control more than 100 seats. With backing from educated professionals and some other independents, that may prove to be enough support for all but the most controversial issues."

Saturday, October 22, 2005

News and commentary:

"And the truth shall set you free"
(Michael J. Totten, michaeltotten.com, 2005/10/22)
From Michael J. Totten's photoblogging of todays anti-Syrian rally in Beirut.

"Born in Bradford" (Kenan Malik, Prospect/kenanmalik.com, from the October 2005 issue)
Malik on multiculturalism and the left: "For me personally, the Rushdie affair was a turning point in another way. It made me question my own relationship to the left and to the antiracist movement. The transformation of Hassan [from leftwing activist to Islamic militant] mirrored a wider transformation that was taking place on the left itself, a transformation from a belief in secular universalism to the defence of ethnic particularism and group rights. Once the left had been a champion of Enlightenment rationalism and humanism. It had believed in the ideas of a common humanity and universal rights, argued that everyone should be treated equally despite their racial, ethnic, religious or cultural differences and looked to social progress as a means of overcoming cultural differences. Today many on the left decry the Enlightenment as a Eurocentric project. They promote the idea of multiculturalism and of group rights, argue that different people should be treated differently because of their racial, ethnic, religious and cultural differences and worry that social progress is undermining cultural authenticity. 'You have to treat people differently to treat them equally', Lee Jasper, race adviser to London Mayor Ken Livingstone told me when I interviewed him for a Channel 4 documentary. Or as Labour MP Keith Vaz has put it, 'Britishness cannot be imposed on people of different races, cultures and religions.' ...
Multiculturalism did not create militant Islam, but it helped create a space for it within British Muslim communities that had not existed before. It fostered a more tribal nation, undermined progressive trends within the Muslim communities and strengthened the hand of conservative religious leaders - all in the name of antiracism." (Hat tip: Harry's Place.)

"US troops fighting losing battle for Sunni triangle" (Adrian Blomfield, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/10/22)
"The mob grew more frenzied as the gunmen dragged the two surviving Americans from the cab of their bullet-ridden lorry and forced them to kneel on the street.
Killing one of the men with a rifle round fired into the back of his head, they doused the other with petrol and set him alight. Barefoot children, yelping in delight, piled straw on to the screaming man's body to stoke the flames.
It had taken just one wrong turn for disaster to unfold. Less than a mile from the base it was heading to, the convoy turned left instead of right and lumbered down one of the most anti-American streets in Iraq, a narrow bottleneck in Duluiya town, on a peninsular jutting into the Tigris river named after the Jibouri tribe that lives there.
As the lorries desperately tried to reverse out, dozens of Sunni Arab insurgents wielding rocket launchers and automatic rifles emerged from their homes. ...
Within minutes, four American contractors, all employees of the Halliburton subsidiary Kellog, Brown & Root, were dead. The jubilant crowd dragged their corpses through the street, chanting anti-US slogans. An investigation has been launched into why the contractors were not better protected."

"Syria Feels Heat Over U.N. Report" (Anthony Shadid, The Washington Post, 2005/10/22)
The Hariri Report III: "DAMASCUS, Syria, Oct. 21 -- A day after its release, a U.N. report that implicated senior Syrian officials in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri escalated pressure on the already beleaguered government here and ignited renewed demands that Lebanon's pro-Syrian president step down.
The publication of the report on the deaths of Hariri and 22 other people in a car bombing in Beirut on Feb. 14 unleashed a reaction seldom seen in the Middle East. The 54-page document was read in its entirety on al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite television network; other stations broadcast hours of coverage Friday on the report and its fallout. To many people here, its publication marked a turning point in Middle East politics, signaling a looming confrontation with an uncertain outcome. ...
The most immediate fallout was growing pressure in Lebanon for the resignation of the country's pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud. The president rebuffed demands that he step down in August after four Lebanese generals were arrested on suspicion of participating in the assassination.
The U.N. investigation, led by the German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, found that Lahoud received a phone call minutes before the blast from the brother of a prominent member of a pro-Syrian group, who in turn called one of the country's generals. Lahoud's office said it categorically denied receiving such a call."

"'We are going to send him on a trip. Bye, bye Hariri. Rot in hell'" (Richard Beeston and Nick Blanford, The Times, 2005/10/22)
The Hariri Report II: "The report is littered with stunning disclosures and damning details from forensic evidence to intercepted telephone conversations and eyewitness testimony.
The vehicle used in the attack, a white Mitsubishi Canter stolen in Japan, was driven into Lebanon from Syria by a Syrian Army officer days before the assassination. It was concealed at the Hammana Syrian military base where it was loaded with 1,000 kg of explosives.
Intercepted telephone conversations give some measure of the mood among Syrians and their Lebanese allies as they plotted Hariri’s downfall and eventual removal.
“We are going to send him on a trip. Bye, bye Hariri,” said Mustafa Hamdan, the former head of Lebanon’s Presidential Guard, who was arrested earlier this year. Another, identified as “X” says: “May he (Hariri) rot in hell.”
Various witnesses report that Mr al-Assad threatened to “break Lebanon over Hariri’s head” in an angry encounter before the decision was taken to assassinate him. By far the most serious implications in the report are allegations by a former Syrian intelligence agent that General Assef Shawkat, the head of Syrian military intelligence and the President’s brother-in-law, and Colonel Maher al-Assad, the President’s brother and commander of the elite presidential guard brigade conspired directly in the assassination."

"UN office doctored report on murder of Hariri" (James Bone and Nicholas Blanford, The Times, 2005/10/22)
The Hariri Report I: "The United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged yesterday.
The names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and other members of his inner circle, were dropped from the report that was sent to the Security Council.
The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes. ...
Mr Annan had pledged repeatedly through his chief spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, that he would not change a word of the report by Detlev Mehlis, a German prosecutor. But computer tracking showed that the final edit began at about 11.38am on Thursday — a minute after Herr Mehlis began a meeting with Mr Annan to present his report. The names of Maher al-Assad, General Shawkat and the others were apparently removed at 11.55am, after the meeting ended." (See also the unexpurgated report, with the doctored parts highlighted: "Mehlis Report on the Hariri assassination" (MidEast Web, 2005/10/21))

Friday, October 21, 2005

News and commentary:

"Some 4,000 Egyptians march on the Saint Girgis church..."
(Adel al-Masri, AFP, 2005/10/21)
"Some 4,000 Egyptians march on the Saint Girgis church in the city of Alexandria after weekly Muslim prayers to protest against the DVD release of a play produced by the Church and considered anti-Muslim. Police used tear gas and batons to disperse the crowd."

"15000 Muslims Surround a Coptic Church in Alexandria" (The Free Copts, 2005/10/21)
Alexandria II: "Thousands of angry Muslims are currently surrounding St George Coptic Orthodox Church in Muharam Bek, Alexandria, Egypt.
Muslims are protesting what they considered an "offensive" play that took place 2 years ago !!! Church officials denied these allegations and adhered to their position of refusing to provide an apology, as the Muslim radicals demanded.
Muslim mob burned two police vehicles and a fire truck in addition to injuring many police officers by hurling rocks at them in an attempt to raid the church and burn it.
What is happening in Egypt is a form of intellectual terrorism against Copts that radical Muslims are imposing on everyone that dares to criticize their agenda of having Islam dominate the world.
"Feeling their psychological defeat against Israel, the majority of Muslims in the region are trying to let their frustration out on the Christian minority" said a Coptic activist who wished to remain anonymous.
Copts form about 15% of the Egyptian Population as the church estimates place their number a little over 10 Millions inside Egypt." (Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch.)

"Egyptians protest, say church play against Islam" (Reuters, 2005/10/21)
Alexandria I: "Three demonstrators were killed when thousands of people protested on Friday near a church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria over the staging of a play they said was offensive to Islam, security sources said.
The demonstrators were killed during clashes between police and the more than 5,000-strong crowd which had gathered near St. George's Coptic church in the Mediterranean port city after Muslim prayers, the sources said.
Police used teargas to try to disperse the crowd, which had pelted police with stones and which regrouped on several occasions after prayer times through the day and evening, the sources said. They said protests continued late into the night.
Police formed a cordon to prevent the crowd approaching St. George's church, prompting some of the demonstrators to try to storm another church nearby, the sources said, adding that dozens of police and protesters were injured in the clashes.
Coptic Bishop Armia denied accusations the play insulted Islam, Egypt's official MENA news agency reported, as monitored by the BBC.
"Copts would never tolerate anyone insulting Islam," Bishop Armia was quoted as saying." (See also: "Man stabs nun in Egyptian church" (Reuters, 2005/10/19))

"Make war no more?" (Kevin Drum, The Washington Monthly, 2005/10/21)
"In the American Prospect this month, Sam Rosenfeld and Matt Yglesias chastise liberal hawks who have defended their past support of the Iraq war by claiming that the only reason it's failed is because George Bush has prosecuted it incompetently. Instead, they argue, liberal hawks should admit that it was just a bad idea, full stop. It's simply not possible to impose democracy by force, and it wouldn't have worked no matter who was in charge.":
"Here is Josh Marshall describing the neocon grand plan back in April 2003:

In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East.
....In short, the administration is trying to roll the table — to use U.S. military force, or the threat of it, to reform or topple virtually every regime in the region, from foes like Syria to friends like Egypt, on the theory that it is the undemocratic nature of these regimes that ultimately breeds terrorism....Each crisis will draw U.S. forces further into the region and each countermove in turn will create problems that can only be fixed by still further American involvement, until democratic governments — or, failing that, U.S. troops — rule the entire Middle East.

In other words, democracy is nice — eventually — but the bigger issue is kicking over the status quo in the Middle East and forcing change. And the hawks would argue that this is happening. Slowly and fitfully, to be sure, but let's count up the successes so far: Iraq and Afghanistan are better off than before, Libya has given up its nuke program, Lebanon's Cedar Revolution is a sign of progress, Egypt has held a more open election than any before it, and the Syrian regime is under considerable pressure.
Did the invasion of Iraq precipitate these changes? I think the hawks considerably overstate their case, but at the same time they do have a case. Even if Iraq is a mess, it might all be worthwhile if it eventually produces progress toward a more open, more liberal Middle East. At the very least, it's an argument that needs to be engaged." (See also: "The Incompetence Dodge" (Sam Rosenfeld and Matthew Yglesias, The American Prospect, 2005/10/20) and "Practice to Deceive" (Joshua Micah Marshall, The Washington Monthly, April 2003))

"Stench Prompted U.S. Troops to Burn Corpses" (TIME, 2005/10/21)
"There simply wasn't enough room on the rocky hilltop above Gonbaz village in southern Afghanistan for the U.S. platoon and the corpses of the two Taliban fighters. The Taliban men had been killed in a firefight 24 hours earlier, and in the 90 degree heat, their bodies had become an unbearable presence, soldiers who were present have told TIME. Nor was the U.S. Army unit about to leave — the hilltop commanded a strategic view of the village below where other Taliban were suspected to be hiding.
Earlier, Lt. Eric Nelson, the leader of B Company, I-508 platoon leader had sent word down to Gonbaz asking the villagers to pick up the bodies and bury them according to Muslim ritual. But the villagers refused — probably because the dead fighters weren't locals but Pakistanis, surmised one U.S. army officer.
It was then that Lt. Nelson took the decision that could jeopardize his service career. "We decided to burn the bodies," one soldier recounts, "because they were bloated and they stank." News of this cremation may have remained on these scorching hills of southern Afghanistan, had the gruesome act not been recorded on film by an Australian photojournalist, Stephen Dupont. Instead, when the footage aired on Australian TV on Wednesday, it unleashed world outrage." (See also: "US probe into 'Taleban burnings'" (BBC News, 2005/10/19))

"US wants action against Syria in Lebanese killing" (Evelyn Leopold, Reuters, 2005/10/21)
The Hariri Report II: "U.S. President George W. Bush called on the United Nations on Friday to quickly meet and consider a response to an investigation that implicated Syrian officials in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.
Hariri and 20 others were killed last February 14 by a bomb blast in Beirut that U.N. investigators reported "could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials," colluding with counterparts in Lebanon.
"The report is deeply disturbing," Bush said, adding that he had asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to request that the United Nations "convene a session as quickly as possible" to discuss the report.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the Security Council would consider sanctions but he did not elaborate."

"Saddam Trial Defense Lawyer Found Dead" (Thomas Wagner, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/10/21)
"A defense lawyer in Saddam Hussein's mass murder trial has been found dead, his body dumped near a Baghdad mosque with two gunshots to the head, police and a top lawyers union official said Friday.
Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi was abducted from his office Thursday evening, a day after he attended the first session of the trial, acting as the lawyer of one Saddam's seven co-defendants.
His body was found hours later on a sidewalk near Fardous Mosque in the eastern neighborhood of Ur, near the site of his office, said police Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi. His identity was confirmed Friday, al-Mohammedawi said.
Diaa al-Saadi, a senior official in the lawyers syndicate, said al-Janabi's family confirmed to him al-Janabi was dead. "This will have grave repercussions. This will hinder lawyers from defending those held for political reasons," al-Saadi warned.
The killing was the first setback for a tribunal that has been held under tight security."

"A history lesson" (David Gelernter, Los Angeles Times, 2005/10/21)
"This week should have been a time of rejoicing in America. On Wednesday, Saddam Hussein went on trial — the ex-master butcher of Iraq, reeking of blood. And last Saturday, the newly freed Iraqi people pulled off a referendum right under the noses of terrorists whose hearts' desire is to blow democracy to bits. The United States — the armed forces especially, and the Bush administration's leadership — is largely responsible for both these amazing developments. Obviously Iraq is still in deadly danger. But if these two events don't call for congratulations, what kind of world events would?
Yet up on Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been called before a Senate committee. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) was one of those who questioned her. Boxer was obnoxious and frightening. ...
The administration, Boxer noted (correctly), has changed focus on Iraq. We went to war mainly on account of weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism, she said. But WMD turned out to be a hoax on the whole world, and nowadays we are told that our Iraq mission is gigantic. We plan for a freed Iraq to inspire and stabilize the entire Middle East and to promote democracy everywhere. What kind of bait-and-switch is the administration playing with the American people? ...
Democracies rarely declare war to improve the world, as Rice could have explained had she had the chance. They fight to protect themselves, sometimes to fulfill treaty obligations. But once a war is underway, free peoples tend to think things over deeply. Casualties concentrate the mind. We refuse to let our soldiers die for too little. America at war has lifted its sights again and again from danger, self-interest and self-defense to a larger, nobler goal. Same story, war after war. Iraq fits perfectly."

"U.N. Report Sees Syrian Involvement in Hariri's Death" (Robin Wright and Colum Lynch, The Washington Post, 2005/10/21)
The Hariri Report I: "A U.N. investigation has implicated senior Syrian and Lebanese officials in the assassination of Lebanon's leading reformer in a move that U.S. and European officials expect will generate new international pressure on the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad.
In blunt language, the report by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis concluded that the Valentine's Day bombing of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others "could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials and could not have been further organized without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security forces."
The report faulted Damascus for failing to fully cooperate with the probe and cited several officials, including Foreign Minister Farouk Charaa for attempting to mislead the investigation by providing false or inaccurate statements. Nevertheless, Mehlis said many leads now point directly to Syrian security officials. ...
The report listed several officials who witnesses alleged knew about or played an advance role in the assassination. They included Gen. Jamil Sayyed, Gen. Mustapha Hamdan, Gen. Raymond Azar -- senior Lebanese officials who have been arrested -- and Gen. Rustum Ghazali, Syria's most recent intelligence chief in Lebanon. The day before the assassination, the report said, witnesses allege that Ghazali met with the head of Hariri's protection detail, emerging "badly shaken."
Another witness said Hamdan had accused Hariri of being pro-Israeli and had said, "We are going to send him on a trip, bye, bye Hariri." After Hariri's assassination, the witness was "strongly reminded not to discuss the conversation with anyone," the report said." (See also the report: "Report of the International Independent Investigation Commission established pursuant to Security Council" (United Nations, 2005/10/21))

Added in archive:
"These two men are experts on rendition: one invented it, the other has seen its full horrors" (Neil Mackay, Sunday Herald, 2005/10/16)

Thursday, October 20, 2005

News and commentary:

"death will visit Denmark"
(infovlad.net, 2005/10/15)

"Holy war against newspaper" (The Copenhagen Post, 2005/10/20)
Denmark II: "Internet collages threatening Denmark and daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten with death and retribution have begun circulating on the internet after the newspaper published caricatures of Muslim prophet Mohammed.
Bombs exploding over pictures of Danish daily Jyllands-Posten and blood flowing over the national flag and a map of Denmark are among the images circulating on the internet after the newspaper printed twelve cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed last month.
Daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende reported that the internet collages, posted in the name of an unknown organisation calling itself 'The Glory Brigades in Northern Europe', showed pictures of various tourist attractions in Denmark and stated that 'The Mujahedeen have numerous targets in Denmark - very soon you all will regret this', amongst other things.
Another picture showed soldiers, armed with bombs, over a map of Denmark, with blood spattered over parts of the country.
The front page of Jyllands-Posten featured prominently on many of the four collages. The newspaper has been criticised by Muslims for printing the cartoons, and was forced to hire security guards after receiving hate mail and death threats over the telephone."

"Muslim anger at Danish cartoons" (BBC News, 2005/10/20)
Denmark I: "The ambassadors of 10 Muslim countries have complained to the Danish prime minister about a major newspaper's cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
A letter from the ambassadors said the cartoons published in Jyllands-Posten last month showed the Prophet as a stereotypical fundamentalist.
Pictorial depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are forbidden in Islam. ...
On Thursday, the Jyllands-Posten reported that two illustrators who produced the cartoons had received death threats.
The daily published the series of cartoons, after a writer complained that nobody dared illustrate his book about Muhammad.
"We must quietly point out here that the drawings illustrated an article on the self-censorship which rules large parts of the Western world", the paper said.
"Our right to say, write, photograph and draw what we want to within the framework of the law exists and must endure - unconditionally!"
The ambassadors who signed the letter to the prime minister included a number of Arab countries, Pakistan, Iran, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Indonesia." (See also: "Youth reported held in Denmark for death threats over Mohammed cartoons" (Middle East Times, 2005/10/17), "Imam demands apology for Mohammed cartoons" (The Copenhagen Post, 2005/10/06), "Image of Muhammad" (Kurt Westergaard, Fjordman, 2005/10/05) and "Fear Pervades Danish Art Community" (Patrick, Dhimmi Watch, 2005/09/18))

"Dead Jews aren’t news" (Tom Gross, The Spectator, from the 2005/10/22 issue)
"Rachel Thaler, aged 16, was blown up at a pizzeria in an Israeli shopping mall. She died after an 11-day struggle for life following a suicide bomb attack on a crowd of teenagers on 16 February 2002.
Even though Thaler was a British citizen, born in London, where her grandparents still live, her death has never been mentioned in a British newspaper.
Rachel Corrie, on the other hand, an American radical who died in 2003 while acting as a human shield during an Israeli anti-terror operation in Gaza, has been widely featured in the British press. According to the Guardian website, she has been written about or referred to on 57 separate occasions in the Guardian alone, including three articles the Saturday before last.
The cult of Rachel Corrie doesn’t stop there. Last week the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, reopened at the larger downstairs auditorium at the Royal Court Theatre (a venue which the New York Times recently described as ‘the most important theatre in Europe’). It previously played to sold-out audiences at the upstairs theatre when it opened in April. (It is very rare to revive a play so quickly.) ...
Only one critic (Clive Davis in the Times) saw the play for the propaganda it is. At one point Corrie declares, ‘The vast majority of Palestinians right now, as far as I can tell, are engaging in Gandhian non-violent resistance.’ As Davis notes, ‘Even the late Yasser Arafat might have blushed at that one.’
But ultimately the play, and many of the articles about Corrie that have appeared, are not really about the young American activist who died in such tragic circumstances. They are about promoting a hate-filled and glaringly one-sided view of Israel."

"The Incompetence Dodge" (Sam Rosenfeld and Matthew Yglesias, The American Prospect, 2005/10/20)
"The liberal hawks now say the idea of the war wasn’t bad, just its execution. This saves face -- and serves a more dangerous function.":
"Victory, as John F. Kennedy observed, has a thousand fathers, while defeat is an orphan. Abandoning the orphan that is the Iraq War has clearly been a protracted, painful process for the liberal hawks, those intellectuals and pundits so celebrated back in 2003 for their courage in coming forward to smash liberal expectations and support the war. Long criticized by fellow liberals for failing, amid much hand-wringing and navel-gazing, to express clear regret over their original support for the war, these hawks have started to become a bit more vocal about their second thoughts.
The nature of their regret, however, is noteworthy -- and has tremendous significance for the debate over U.S. foreign policy after Iraq. Most liberal hawks are willing to admit only that they made a mistake in trusting the president and his team to administer the invasion and occupation competently. ...
The corollary of these complaints is that the invasion and occupation could have been successful had they been planned and administered by different people. This position may have its own internal logical coherence, but in the real world, it’s wrong. Though defending the competence of the Bush administration is a fool’s endeavor, administrative bungling is simply not the root source of America’s failure in Iraq. The alternative scenarios liberal hawks retrospectively envision for a successful administration of the war reflect blithe assumptions -- about the capabilities of the U.S. military and the prospects for nation building in polities wracked by civil conflict -- that would be shattered by a few minutes of Googling.
The incompetence critique is, in short, a dodge -- a way for liberal hawks to acknowledge the obviously grim reality of the war without rethinking any of the premises that led them to support it in the first place."

"Head of Arab League Condemns Attacks" (Lee Kaeth, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/10/20)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - The head of the Arab League issued a strong condemnation of insurgent violence in Iraq on Thursday, trying to overcome suspicion of the pan-Arab body from the country's Shiite and Kurdish leaders on his first visit since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein.
Still, Iraqi leaders did not commit to a reconciliation conference between Iraq's sharply divided Shiites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs that league Secretary-General Amr Moussa is trying to organize, the first major intervention by the Arab League in the country's relentless bloodshed.
Moussa has faced reluctance from the Shiite and Kurdish leaders who lead the government, who have complained that the league has taken too long to seek a role, resent the league's past support for Saddam and are suspicious the body is biased toward Iraq's Sunni Arab minority.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari questioned who would participate in a conference and suggested Iraqi politicians can address the issues of moderate Sunni Arabs on their own, while anyone connected to insurgents should be barred from participating.
"I don't believe we have a problem with certain parties or groups. Our political process is open and inclusive," he said after meeting Moussa. "We will not have any meeting with those who are involved in killings and the senior members of former regime. But other Baathists we are dealing with them as ordinary people in the state."
He also chided Moussa at a joint press conference, saying an Arab League 'stance supporting our political process was late. We say this so we can build for the future. We hope from this visit to mark a new step in Iraqi-Arab relations through the league.'"

"Muslim woman in hijab legal fight" (Anthony Browne, The Times, 2005/10/20)
"Samira Haddad, 32, a Dutch Muslim woman, is taking legal action against The Islamic College in Amsterdam after it refused to employ her because she did not want to cover her head.
Her insistence on her legal right not to wear a headscarf, or hijab, is a contrast to the campaign fought by Muslim groups across Europe for the right to wear one.
The case comes at a time when the Dutch Government is proposing a partial ban on the burka, including in state schools. The city of Utrecht has recently begun withdrawing unemployment benefits from Muslim women who cannot get jobs because they wear burkas to job interviews.
In a hearing this week, Ms Haddad said that she was told in an interview for a job as an Arabic teacher that because she was a Muslim she had to wear a headscarf if she wanted to work at the school. She explained that she was from Tunisia, where the wearing of hijabs is banned, and she would not feel comfortable doing so.
The Islamic College insists that the Koran requires all Muslim women to wear the hijab." (See also: "Holland fears killings over ban on burqa" (Matthew Campbell, The Sunday Times, 2005/10/16) and "Dutch unveil the toughest face in Europe with a ban on the burka" (Anthony Browne, The Times, 2005/10/13))

"Saddam Co-Defendant's Lawyer Kidnapped" (Omar Sinan, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/10/20)
The Trial III: "BAGHDAD, Iraq - Ten masked gunmen kidnapped the lawyer for one of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants Thursday, police said.
Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi, who was in the courtroom for Wednesday's opening session of the trial, is one of two lawyers for Awad Hamed al-Bandar, one of seven Baath Party officials being tried with Saddam.
The gunmen pulled up outside al-Janabi's office in Baghdad's eastern Shaab district in the evening, broke into the building and dragged him out, said Police Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi of the Interior Ministry.
Al-Janabi was one of 13 defense lawyers in Wednesday's session, seated at desks along the side of the courtroom. Some of the lawyers were shown in the television broadcast of the trial, but it was not immediately known if al-Janabi appeared. ...
Saddam and his co-defendants are on trial for murder, torture, forced expulsion and illegal imprisonment for an 1982 massacre of Shiites in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad. They could face the death sentence if convicted.
The kidnapped lawyer's client, al-Bandar, was the head of Saddam's Revolutionary Court at the time of the massacre and is accused of issuing execution orders against 148 Dujail residents."

"Against Chomsky" (Oliver Kamm, Prospect, from the November 2005 issue)
A Study of Mindrot. This summer Karl Marx won Radio 4's competition on the best philosopher in history. As if that wasn't enough, Noam Chomsky is now considered the top public intellectual, according to a poll in the new issue of Prospect:
"In his book Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline, Richard Posner noted that "a successful academic may be able to use his success to reach the general public on matters about which he is an idiot." Judging by caustic remarks elsewhere in the book, he was thinking of Noam Chomsky. He was not wrong. ...
In A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West (2000), Chomsky wryly challenged advocates of Nato intervention in Kosovo to urge also the bombing of Jakarta, Washington and London in protest at Indonesia's subjugation of East Timor. If necessary, citizens should be encouraged to do the bombing themselves, "perhaps joining the Bin Laden network." Shortly after 9/11, the political theorist Jeffrey Isaac wrote of this thought experiment that, while it was intended metaphorically, "One wonders if Chomsky ever considered the possibility that someone lacking in his own logical rigour might read his book and carelessly draw the conclusion that the bombing of Washington is required." ...
If Chomsky's political writings expressed merely an idée fixe, they would be a footnote in his career as a public intellectual. But Chomsky has a dedicated following among those of university education, and especially of university age, for judgements that have the veneer of scholarship and reason yet verge on the pathological. He once described the task of the media as "to select the facts, or to invent them, in such a way as to render the required conclusions not too transparently absurd—at least for properly disciplined minds." There could scarcely be a nicer encapsulation of his own practice." (Hat tip: Harry's Place. See also: "The Prospect/FP Global public intellectuals poll — result" (Prospect, from the November 2005 issue) and "Let’s have Marxist Love Island" (Rod Liddle, The Sunday Times, 2005/07/17))

"Syria's Opposition Unites Behind a Call for Democratic Changes" (Katherine Zoepf, The New York Times, 2005/10/20)
"As international pressure on Syria rises, the country's historically quarrelsome and divided opposition groups have issued a broad call for democratic change in the form of a statement that is being called the "Damascus declaration."
The Damascus declaration, which was issued on Oct. 16, calls for an end to Syria's emergency laws and other forms of political repression, and for a national conference on democratic change.
The statement comes at a particularly tense time for Syria, which is being pressed by the United States and other Western nations to stop foreign fighters from crossing its eastern border into Iraq and to end its suspected interference in Lebanese and Palestinian affairs. ...
Marwan Kabalan, a Damascus University political scientist, said the declaration was a response to these pressures, an effort on the part of Syrian opposition groups to put aside their differences and to demonstrate to the world that a coherent alternative to the Assad regime is emerging inside Syria.
"This is a huge development for the opposition within Syria," Dr. Kabalan said. "For the first time we're seeing a blueprint for reconstituting Syria's political process."
The announcement was backed by an unusually diverse collection of politicians and activists, including human rights campaigners, Communists, Kurdish nationalists, overseas Syrian exiles, the imprisoned Parliament member Riad Seif and the London-based Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned in Syria for more than two decades but is believed to enjoy continuing popular support."

"Saddam deserves the fate of the Nazis" (John Keegan, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/10/20)
The Trial II: "In a way, Saddam has a strong case, since he will be able to plead reason of state in many cases. That is to say, if and when accused of murder or cruelty against political opponents who raised rebellion against him, he will be able to counter-claim that, as head of state, he had a duty to maintain law and order and that if any deaths occurred they were regrettable secondary effects.
Only if the prosecution is able to demonstrate that deaths were inflicted without the justification of resistance or is able to show proof of the death of the demonstrably innocent or death through outright cruelty will Saddam lack the defence of duty of head of state. ...
There has been no head of state like Saddam in the world since the death of Hitler, in his combination of tyranny of his own people, aggression against his neighbours and defiance of international order.
In that respect, he is a second Hitler and deserves the fate the Allies of 1945 had prepared for the Nazi dictator but were cheated of carrying out by his taking his own life. Academic international lawyers have always had their doubts about the strict legality of the Nuremberg process. Fortunately, it has always been accepted in popular opinion - the judgment of the man in the street - that Hitler's minions got what they deserved. The important thing now is to ensure that today's street returns the same verdict on Saddam."

"In Iraq, Two Views: Hero or Villain" (Ellen Knickmeyer and Bassam Sebti, The Washington Post, 2005/10/20)
The Trial I: "Bursting into applause at Saddam Hussein's resolve, Sunni Arab customers in a north Baghdad barbershop on Wednesday welcomed the undaunted reappearance of their fallen leader.
"I swear he is a hero," Mohammed Yousif cried, as men around him cheered televised images of Hussein refusing to identify himself to the tribunal convened to try him. "Look at his brave and strong look!"
"You know me," Hussein, unbowed two years after disappearing into American custody, told the trial when it opened Wednesday. Rejecting a judge's repeated request to state his name for the record, he declared: "If you are Iraqi, you know me."
And Iraqis did, in wildly disparate ways. ...
In Dujail, the Shiite village north of Baghdad that lost 143 men to Hussein's executioners -- the killings that form the basis of the charge he faces -- small groups of men ringed a television outside the mayor's office. As light rain fell, the men strained to hear the patchy audio from the courtroom. ...
"Death to Saddam!" men in Dujail cried Wednesday, waving faded black-and-white photos of brothers, sons and fathers, as women in black abayas held other portraits to their breasts, in a haze of fog and sandstorm. 'We want him executed.'"

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

News and commentary:

"Saddam Hussein listens..."
(Bob Strong, Reuters, 2005/10/19)
"Saddam Hussein listens to the presiding Judge Rizgur Ameen Hana Al-Saedi as his trial begins in a heavily fortified courthouse in Baghdad's Green Zone October 19, 2005."

"Let justice be served" (Mohammed, Iraq the Model, 2005/10/19)
The Trial V: "While Baghdad’s streets were nearly empty, most Iraqis were glued to the TV and I bet many Arabs were as well.
Our place was full of full of friends today as we decided we would watch the trial together just like we lived what led to this day together; the first thing we noticed was that electricity was much better today and I don’t know if that was an exceptions made to allow more people to watch the awaited show but anyway we already prepared for outages and stored enough fuel for the generator.
We all sat in front of the TV; there were 8 of us hushing each other as we didn’t want to miss a single word of the conversations and we wanted to catch every small detail of the trial just like we suffered every small detail of the disasters brought upon us by the hateful tyrant. ...
We were watching an example of justice in the new Iraq, a place where no one should be denied his rights, not even Saddam. ...
We’re drawing the outlines of a change not only for Iraq but also for the entire region and I can feel that today we have presented a unique model of justice because in spite of the cruelty of the criminal tyrant and in spite of the size of the atrocities committed against the Iraqi people, we still want to build a state of law that looks nothing like the one the tyrant wanted to create."

"Saddam Pleads Innocent, Gets Into Scuffle" (Hamza Hendawi, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/10/19)
The Trial IV: "A defiant Saddam Hussein pleaded innocent to charges of murder and torture as his long-awaited trial began Wednesday with the one-time dictator arguing about the legitimacy of the court and scuffling with guards. ...
After presiding judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, a Kurd, read the defendants their rights and the charges against them — which also include forced expulsions and illegal imprisonment — he asked each for their plea. He started with the 68-year-old ousted dictator, saying "Mr. Saddam, go ahead. Are you guilty or innocent?"
Saddam — holding a copy of the Quran he brought with him into the session and held throughout — replied quietly, "I said what I said. I am not guilty," referring to his arguments earlier in the session.
Amin read out the plea, "Innocent." ...
Many Iraqis and others across the Middle East were glued to their television sets to watch the first-ever criminal trial of an Arab leader. ...
Earlier, at the opening of the trial, the ousted Iraqi leader _ looking thin with a salt-and-pepper beard in a dark gray suit and open-collared white shirt _ stood and asked the presiding judge: "Who are you? I want to know who you are."
"I do not respond to this so-called court, with all due respect to its people, and I retain my constitutional right as the president of Iraq," he said, brushing off the judge's attempts to interrupt him. 'Neither do I recognize the body that has designated and authorized you, nor the aggression because all that has been built on false basis is false.'"

"An Egyptian Coptic nun lies on the ground..."
(AP, 2005/10/19)
"An Egyptian Coptic nun lies on the ground in this Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2005 file photo, after a Muslim student stabbed and slightly wounded her at the St. George's church in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, Egypt, amidst tensions that led to rioting over a theater performance considered offensive by Muslims, according to police official. Many feel the cause of the rioting goes far deeper, rooted in the growing enmity between Egypt's Muslims and Christians."

"Man stabs nun in Egyptian church" (Reuters, 2005/10/19)
"CAIRO, Oct 19 (Reuters) - A young man stabbed a nun and a man in a church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria on Wednesday, police sources in the city said.
The man shouted "God is great" when he burst into St. George's Coptic church in the city on Egypt's northern coast.
Some 1,000 Muslims last week held a protest outside the church because they said it had put on a play which was offensive to Islam.
The police arrested the attacker and said the injuries he had caused were not serious.
More than 90 percent of Egypt's 70 million people are Muslim, with Christians the second biggest denomination." (Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch.)

"US probe into 'Taleban burnings'" (BBC News, 2005/10/19)
"The US military has launched a criminal investigation into alleged misconduct by its troops in Afghanistan, including the burning of Taleban corpses.
The move came after an Australian TV station ran footage of what it says was US soldiers burning the remains.
The footage shows other troops apparently taunting residents of a nearby village, which they believed to be harbouring the Taleban.
The act of burning corpses is regarded as a sacrilege in Islam. ...
The SBS television footage begins with a warning of disturbing scenes, particularly for Muslim viewers.
It opens with what the programme describes as shots of an American PsyOps unit using loud pop music to try to flush out the Taleban - who banned music when they ruled the country.
Some footage shows what the programme describes as the corpses of two Taleban fighters laid out facing Mecca and then being burned in what the reporter, John Martinkus, describes as a "deliberate desecration of Muslim beliefs". ...
Later footage shows two US soldiers reading from a notebook messages which they said had already been broadcast to villagers.
"Attention Taleban you are cowardly dogs," the message reads. "You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing West and burnt.
'You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be.'"

"Get it together, Baghdad" (Amir Taheri, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/10/19)
"Thirty months after the fall of Saddam Hussein there are signs that the intense interest Iraq had aroused at the time may be waning. Opinion polls in the United States, Britain and Italy, the three members of the US-led coalition that account for 90 per cent of the troops present in Iraq, show that more than half of the population desire disengagement from an enterprise that seems to them to be going nowhere.
It is no use telling the Americans and their allies that history is not made at the rhythm set by evening television news bulletins and that transforming a despotic system into a democracy takes time. We live in an age of quick results, of instant coffee and speedy gratification. The average attention span of international opinion on almost any issue does not exceed six months. Even the most pressing issues, including some supposed to threaten the very existence of the human species, do not succeed in holding the headlines for long. ...
Iraq needs two or three more free and fair elections before its new democracy is fully institutionalized. That means that some level of international commitment, including a military contribution may be needed for another 10 to 12 years. There is little doubt that as long as President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair are in power, the US and the UK will remain committed to Iraq. But the US and the UK are democracies in which, like all other democracies, the electorate can prove more fickle than any autocrat."

"Don't hurry over Saddam. The whole Arab world needs to watch this trial" (Amir Taheri, The Times, 2005/10/19)
The Trial III: "According to Khalil al-Dulaimi, who heads Saddam’s team of Arab lawyers, the fallen despot intends to cast himself in the role of “the defender of pan-Arab values”. This should be welcomed by the judges, for it would allow the exercise to assume a greater role: putting on trial the military-security model of statehood that has been the most popular in the Arab world since the Egyptian coup d’état of 1952. Far from being an aberration, Saddam Hussein was an archetypal figure of the modern Arab despotic regimes based on the military and the security services. His kind of despotism was imposed on a dozen Arab nations at different times and is still in power in Libya, Syria and Sudan. In its 50 years of existence, this form of government has provoked ten large wars, including the longest of the last century: the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 that stole more than a million lives. ...
Saddam’s trial should also expose the foreign powers that helped to set up and sustain his murderous regime, and the banquet of corruption at which scores of politicians, diplomats, intellectuals and businessmen, some from Europe and the United States, supped with the devil. An Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations has resigned after being charged with receiving illegal kickbacks from Saddam. One of France’s most senior diplomats is in prison on a similar charge. A former French Home Secretary, several members of the Russian parliament and a dozen Arab media figures have also been exposed. ...
Saddam is enjoying what he denied his victims: a public trial with defence lawyers of his choice and the rule of evidence taking into account the principle of reasonable doubt. Here a new Iraq, based on the rule of law, will be trying the old Iraq of cruelty and corruption. The Arabs will watch and decide which they would rather live under. The rest of the world should also watch to decide which side to support in the struggle for Iraq’s future."

"Justice in Baghdad" (Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, 2005/10/19)
The Trial II: "Because it is taking place during an insurgency, and because it is run by Iraqis, not outsiders, the Iraqi Special Tribunal that will try Hussein and his henchmen is potentially weaker, and more easily manipulated, than the Nuremberg court. ...
Partly because of all that, and partly because they didn't much like the invasion of Iraq in the first place, the international human rights groups that are normally enthusiastic about trials of dictators are squeamish about this one. Human Rights Watch has said that the tribunal has an "inappropriate standard of proof," and it worries that the accused will not have adequate defense. The International Center for Transitional Justice complains of the "legal, administrative and procedural" issues that have not been resolved, quite apart from the political issues. There is a lot of high-minded grumbling about the death penalty that will, presumably, be the end result.
And yet -- if the court is able to compile a true record of events, if the judges are able to present authentic witnesses, and if tribunal spokesmen are able to communicate their findings to the Iraqi and international press, none of that matters. ...
In the end, it is by the quality of that evidence, and the clarity with which it is conveyed, that this trial should be judged. The result is irrelevant: Quite frankly, it doesn't matter whether Saddam Hussein is drawn and quartered, exiled to Pyongyang, or left to rot in a Baghdad prison. No punishment could make up for the thousands he killed, or for the terror he inflicted on his country.
But if his Sunni countrymen learn what he did to Shiites and Kurds, if the Shiites and Kurds learn what he did to Sunnis, if Iraqis come to realize that his system of totalitarian terror damaged them all, and if others in the Middle East learn that dictatorships can be overthrown, then the trial will have served its purpose. That, and not an arbitrary standard of international law, is how the success of this unusual tribunal should be measured."

"Hussein Faces Tribunal Today In First Trial for Actions in Iraq" (Jackie Spinner, The Washington Post, 2005/10/19)
The Trial I: "Almost two years after U.S. forces captured a disheveled Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in the ground on a farm near his home town of Tikrit, the former Iraqi president will appear Wednesday before a five-member panel of his countrymen in the first criminal case brought against him and seven Baath Party associates.
Iraqis blame Hussein for the deaths and torture of hundreds of thousands of citizens during nearly three decades in power. But he will face charges concerning a single incident, the execution of 143 men and boys from the predominantly Shiite Muslim town of Dujail, 35 miles north of the capital. ...
Unlike Balkan leaders who have faced war crimes charges in a U.N. court in The Hague, Hussein will appear before the Iraqi Special Tribunal, a body established in December 2003 by U.S.-led occupation authorities. It will use a mixture of international law and Iraqi criminal law in conducting the trial.
The transitional Iraqi parliament, elected in January, has put its stamp on the court process. It approved minor revisions to the law that created the tribunal, but those changes will not go into effect until they are published in an official paper of record."

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

News and commentary:

"Stop Coddling Iraq's Sunnis" (David Frum, National Post/AEI, 2005/10/18)
Iraq V: "...Half a century of war and violence throughout the Middle East can be traced to the adamant refusal of local Sunni Arab elites to accept the right of non-Sunni, non-Arab communities to exercise power even when they form a local majority: not in Lebanon, not in Israel, not in Kurdistan, and -- now -- not in Iraq.
Western governments and political elites have acceded to this presumption dangerously often. They are doing it again in Iraq.
After the end of apartheid in South Africa, nobody dared suggest that the country's new constitution institutionalize special protections for the white minority. The South African constitution did not attempt to mollify whites by declaring South Africa part of a "global community of white nations." Nor did anyone say that the new post-apartheid regime would be legitimate only if whites accepted it. The constitution protected property rights, civil rights, freedom of speech and religion -- but did so equally for everybody. And if South African whites had responded to this new equality by launching a campaign of terrorist murder against the black majority, they would have found zero sympathy. Nobody would have called them "insurgents" or demanded endless rounds of new concessions to them.
But this is just the situation in Iraq."

"Iraqi vote victory" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2005/10/18)
Iraq IV: "Never before in the Arab world have a country's citizens been permitted to vote on the laws that would govern them. Even had the draft constitution been rejected, this would have been a historic moment in the Middle East and beyond.
Our media's response? The vote doesn't matter. The constitution's flawed. Iraq's Sunni Arabs will resort to civil war. Enormous problems remain. ...
The greatest tragedy imaginable for our "mainstream media" would be to have to admit that President Bush was right about Iraq.
A startling number of editors and opinion columnists have been wrong about every development in Iraq (and Afghanistan). First, they predicted a bloody, protracted war against Saddam's military. Then they predicted civil war. They insisted that Iraq's first elections would fail amid a bloodbath. Then they declared that Iraq's elected delegates would not be able to agree on a draft constitution. Next, they thundered that Iraq's Sunni Arabs wouldn't vote.
Most recently, the sages of the opinion pages declared that the proposed constitution would be defeated at the polls by the Sunni Arabs. All along they've displayed a breathtaking empathy with the Islamist terrorists who slaughter the innocent, giving Abu Musab al-Zarqawi a pass while attacking our president and mocking the achievements of our troops.
A herd mentality has taken over the editorial boards. Ignoring all evidence to the contrary, columnists write about our inevitable "retreat" from Iraq, declaring that "everyone knows" our policies have no chance of success.
That isn't journalism. It's wishful thinking on the part of those who need Iraq to fail to preserve their credibility."

"Sometimes it is worth going to war" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/10/18)
Iraq III. Steyn on Unicef's bomb the Smurfs video:
"Well, I thought, say what you like about the UN, but any organisation that wants to bomb the Smurfs can't be all bad. Instead of those wimps at Dudley council banning Piglet like a bunch of nancy boys, why couldn't they make some blockbuster video nuking the Hundred-Acre Wood and leaving Pooh to die in a radioactive Heffalump pit? ...
Why would Unicef show such an implausible form of Smurficide? Well, whether intentionally or not, they are evoking the war that most of their audience - in Belgium and beyond - is opposed to: the Iraq war, where the invader did indeed have an air force. That's how the average Western "progressive" still conceives of warfare, as something the big bullying Pentagon does to weak victims.
But this week is a week to remember that there are worse things than war that "affect the lives of children". If I were Papa Smurf, I wouldn't want Baby Smurf to grow up in Saddam's Iraq. I don't mean just because we'd be the beleaguered minority of Smurfistan, to be gassed and shovelled into mass graves.
Even if we were part of Saddam's own approved class living in the Smurfi Triangle, it's still a life permanently fixed between terror and resignation, in which all a parent's hopes for his children are subordinate to the whims of a psycho state.
That Iraq is gone now - not because of Unicef and the other transnational institutions that confer respectability on dictatorships, but because America, Britain and a few others were prepared to go to war." (See also: "Unicef bombs the Smurfs in fund-raising campaign for ex-child soldiers" (David Rennie, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/10/08))

"With Freedom Comes Politics" (Michael Rubin, The Wall Street Journal, 2005/10/18)
Iraq II: "The referendum result again demonstrates that American policy- and opinion-makers are more pessimistic than are Iraqis. Part of the problem is that Pentagon officials and journalists alike chart Iraq's success through misguided metrics. Counting car bombs does not demonstrate progress or lack thereof in Iraq. Objective indicators show that Iraqis have confidence that did not exist prior to liberation.
According to an Aug. 16, 2002, commentary in the Guardian -- a British newspaper that often opposes U.S. foreign policy -- one in six Iraqis had fled their country under Saddam. Millions left because of war, dictatorship and sanctions. Today, several hundred thousand have returned; only the Christians still leave. If Iraq were as chaotic as the media implies, it would export refugees, not resettle them.
Other indicators suggest Iraqis have confidence in their future. The Iraqi dinar, freely traded in international currency markets, is stable. ...
Cameras and reporters do not lie, but they do not always give a full perspective. Political brinkmanship devoid of context breeds panic. Beheadings and blood sell copy, but do not accurately reflect Iraq. Political milestones give a glimpse of the often-unreported determination that Iraqis and longtime visitors see daily. Bombings and body bags are tragic. But they do not reflect failure. Rather, they represent the sacrifice that both Iraqis and Americans have made for security and democracy. The referendum, refugee return, real estate and investment show much more accurately -- and objectively -- Iraq's slow but steady progress."

"Monitors in Iraq Review Votes Where 'Yes' Ballots Hit 90%" (Dexter Filkins and Robert F. Worth, The New York Times, 2005/10/18)
Iraq I: "Iraqi election officials said Monday that they were investigating "unusually high" vote totals in 12 Shiite and Kurdish provinces, where as many as 99 percent of the voters were reported to have cast ballots in favor of Iraq's new constitution. The investigation raised the possibility that the results of the referendum could be called into question.
In a statement on Monday evening, the Independent Election Commission of Iraq said the results of the referendum on Saturday would have to be delayed "a few days" because the apparently high number of "yes" votes required election workers to "recheck, compare and audit" the results.
The statement made no mention of the possibility of fraud, but said results were being re-examined to comply with internationally accepted standards. Election officials say that under those standards, voting procedures should be re-examined anytime a candidate or a ballot question got more than 90 percent of the vote.
Members of the commission declined to give any details. But one official with knowledge of the balloting said the 12 provinces where the "yes" votes exceeded 90 percent all had populations that were majority Shiite or Kurdish. Leaders from those communities strongly endorsed the proposed constitution.
Some of the provinces, the official said, reported that 99 percent of the ballots counted were cast in favor of the constitution."

Monday, October 17, 2005

News and commentary:

"In egalitarian Europe, a not-so-hidden world of squalor" (Katrin Bennhold, International Herald Tribune, 2005/10/17)
"Across a Continent that prides itself on egalitarian values and generous welfare outlays, the poorest in society, many of them immigrants, live in conditions that a large swath of the population finds hard to imagine until fatal accidents catapult them into the headlines.
In Paris, a string of deadly fires this year that killed 48 West African immigrants stunned France by revealing dangerously decrepit buildings, sometimes without running water and with hazardous electrical wiring, in the heart of the City of Light.
In Britain, the deaths last year of 23 Chinese workers, who drowned while picking cockles in precarious conditions in Lancashire, shocked a public that had been largely unaware of the use of poorly housed illegal workers by "gang masters" who exploit them for low wages.
Sprawling Roma encampments around Milan and shantytowns outside Lisbon also have exposed the vulnerability of Europe's growing legal and illegal immigrant population, as have arson attacks on refugee homes in Belgium and Germany. ...
The net inflow of legal immigrants into the 25 countries that make up the European Union today has more than doubled over the last decade, rising from 826,000 in 1993 to 2.1 million in 2003, according to the latest Eurostat figures. The desperate ambition of those in poverty-stricken developing countries to come to Europe has been powerfully illustrated in recent weeks when hundreds of Africans tried to climb razor-wire fences separating Morocco from two Spanish enclaves, and more than a dozen were killed in the process."

"Tribal Ignorance" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2005/10/17)
"When it comes to Iraq, one of the most boring and philistine habits of our media is the insistence on using partitionist and segregationist language that most journalists would (I hope) scorn to employ if they were discussing a society they actually knew. It is the same mistake that disfigured the coverage of the Bosnian war, where every consumer of news was made to understand that there was fighting between Serbs, Croats, and "Muslims." ...
To be a Sunni or a Shiite is to follow one or another Muslim obedience, but to be a Kurd is to be a member of a large non-Arab ethnicity as well as to be, in the vast majority of cases, a Sunni. Thus, by any measure of accuracy, the "Sunni" turnout in the weekend's referendum on the constitution was impressively large, very well-organized, and quite strongly in favor of a "yes" vote. Is that the way you remember it being reported? I thought not. Well, then, learn to think for yourself. ...
This same tribal habit of mind — tribal on our part, I mean, not on the part of the Iraqis — allows some people to make the lazy assumption that the liberation of Iraq has created these differences, or intensified them, rather than sought to compose and heal them. The Saddam Hussein regime was based on a minority of a minority — a Mafia clique based in and around the city of Tikrit —a nd it stayed in power not by being "secular" or multiethnic but by being sectarian and by playing the card of divide and rule. It treated all the inhabitants of the country as its personal property, and it made lifelong enemies among all communities and all confessional groups. The differences between these groups are now specified in a constitution, perhaps a bit more than I would like, but are at least specified in order that no group is to be left out, or classified as second-class."

"Iraqi Victory, American Achievement" (Walid Phares, World Defense Review, 2005/10/17)
Iraq III: "On October 15, 2005, an historic Iraqi victory was registered in the 6,235 polling centers across the country. Millions of Iraqis cast their ballot for a "yes" or a "no" to the new constitution. ...
Jihadi terrorism is most likely destined to strike again and continue to do so, but the defenses of Iraq and democracy are growing stronger. In this decades-long conflict, that has witnessed bloodshed and destruction on U.S. shores, the success of the referendum in Iraq is as valuable as a Normandy-like victory for U.S. and coalition forces.
The war is long from being won, but one of America's most important allies has grown bolder and stronger. The United States sacrificed 2,000 of its best young soldiers to remove a dictator, fight al Qaida in Iraq and protect the rise of a civil society. In return, a new republic was formed, and millions of citizens have been able to take their destinies in their hands. In the middle of the War on Terror, October 15 was a great achievement of the United States, but above all an Iraqi victory. If we divide the number of US soldiers who died in the conflict till October 15, we'd realize that for each fallen hero, 4,500 Iraqi voters were given the right to vote against Terror. In the global conflict with Jihadism, U.S. efforts and sacrifices are triggering greater resources against the empire projected by Ayman Thawahiri and Usama Bin Laden.
The most difficult times may still be ahead in this conflict waged by the Jihadists, but somewhere in the Middle East, some people have spoken against democracy's enemies: and that is one victory." (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

"Democracy triumphs" (The Times, 2005/10/17)
Iraq II: "Three years ago to the day, millions of Iraqis voted. There was only one name on the ballot paper. Saddam Hussein had summoned his subjects under pressure from the build-up of allied forces on his border. After the ballots were “counted”, Saddam claimed 100 per cent of the vote and awarded himself a new seven-year presidential term. That was the last time Iraqis voted in a referendum. Until Saturday.
The vote on Iraq’s draft constitution was a triumph on many levels. Men and women dressed in best suits and neatly pressed veils, and accompanied by their children, defied the bombers’ warnings to stay away. There were no suicide attacks and little disruption. Six people died, fewer than the number killed on British roads over an average weekend. The figure is also less than the 40 killed in more than 100 attacks when Iraqis elected the current national parliament in January. Turnout was comfortably higher than the 61 per cent who voted in this year’s British general election.
The voting was not perfect. In an ideal world voters would not have to pass through three rings of concrete and razor wire security to reach the ballot box. Allied troops would not have to maintain a discreet but unambiguous show of strength near by. But the raised, ink-stained index finger is developing from a badge of courage and pride into a democratic habit. The prophets of doom who predicted bloody catastrophe ahead of January’s vote, political meltdown after it, and more country-wide carnage on Saturday have been proved hopelessly and wonderfully wrong. They seriously, and in some cases patronisingly, underestimated the courage and will of the Iraqi people to grasp their future." (Hat tip: Harry's Place. See also: "Saddam 'wins 100% of vote'" (BBC News, 2002/10/16))

"Youth reported held in Denmark for death threats over Mohammed cartoons" (Middle East Times, 2005/10/17)
"COPENHAGEN -- A 17-year-old boy has been arrested in Denmark in connection with death threats sent to two newspaper cartoonists for their depiction of Muslim Prophet Mohammed, Danish media reported on Sunday.
The youth, who was not named, was arrested in the western town of Aarhus on Saturday suspected of sending death threats to two cartoonists with Denmark's largest circulation daily, Jyllands-Posten, last week for their depictions of Prophet Mohammed, the paper reported.
The 17-year-old was waving a knife when he was arrested and is considered by police to be "psychologically unbalanced", the paper said.
The 12 drawings, which appeared in the paper on September 30, have drawn criticism from across the Muslim community in Denmark, with religious leaders insisting that they are an insult to the Prophet and calling for an official apology.
On Friday up to 5,000 Muslims demonstrated in Copenhagen against the paper and the drawings, which depicted Prophet Mohammed in different settings. In one of the drawings he appeared with a turban shaped like a bomb strapped to his head.
Politicians and Denmark's media community have come out in support of Jyllands-Posten and the cartoonists." (See also: "Imam demands apology for Mohammed cartoons" (The Copenhagen Post, 2005/10/06), "Image of Muhammad" (Kurt Westergaard, Fjordman, 2005/10/05) and "Fear Pervades Danish Art Community" (Patrick, Dhimmi Watch, 2005/09/18))

"Sunnis Appear to Fall Short in Iraq Vote" (Lee Keath, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/10/17)
Iraq I: "Iraq's landmark constitution seemed assured of passage Sunday after initial results showed minority Sunni Arabs had fallen short in an effort to veto it at the polls. The apparent acceptance was a major step in the attempt to establish a democratic government that could lead to the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Opponents failed to secure the necessary two-thirds "no" vote in any three of Iraqi's 18 provinces, according to counts that local officials provided to The Associated Press. In the crucial central provinces with mixed ethnic and religious populations, enough Shiites and Kurds voted to stymie the Sunni bid to reject the constitution. ...
President Bush congratulated Iraqis on the referendum, which across the country saw few attacks and no deaths of voters in violence.
"The vote today in Iraq is in stark contrast to the attitude, the philosophy and strategy of al-Qaida, their terrorist friends and killers," Bush said. ...
Provinces in the south, where most of Iraq's Shiite majority are concentrated, racked up big "yes" numbers — over 90 percent in favor in most places. Results were not yet available from Kurdistan, but the Kurdish community strongly supports the charter. ...
The Sunni "no" campaign appeared to have made the two-thirds threshold in Anbar province, the vast western Sunni heartland; and Salahuddin, where Sunnis hold a large majority and as many as 90 percent of voters cast ballots.
But in two other provinces where Sunni Arabs have only slim majorities — Ninevah and Diyala — the "yes" vote won out."

Added in archive:
"Syrian minister errs during eulogy" (UPI, 2005/10/14)

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

Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

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

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

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

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

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

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

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

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

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

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

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