March 2003 Archives

Boston Globe Online / Editorials | Opinions / Palestinians' premier is no moderate

Battlefield Europe


Walter Russell Mead gives us his usual cogent analysis of the situation in Europe. Worth reading the whole thing, but here's the money metaphor:

NYPOST.COM Post Opinion: Oped Columnists: TRAGEDY OF THE ARABS By RALPH PETERS (Via Internet Haganah)

Winds of Change has some commentary and a link to Jed Babbin's piece over at NRO speculating that the two explosions that killed civilians in Baghdad recently quite likely weren't ours - they were the Iraqi's. Certainly possible, even likely, but right now we'll need more of an investigation to know and there just isn't enough info available. We certainly know how it's being handled in the Arab press, of course...


Tim Blair has some interesting analysis. Could it have been a HARM missile? That might account for the small crater...

Fox was just playing pieces of the interview Peter Arnett did on Iraqi TV today. I only managed to catch snippets, but I'm for sure going to keep an eye out for more.


LGF is already on it with a couple of links.


What I'm seeing goes way over the line. He just went from being journalisticly "neutral" (an illusory label in my opinion) to becoming part of the story, and that's over the line. Sort of like when a lawyer winds up on the stand in a case they're handling - that's it for them in that case. So it should be for Arnett. He commentary concerning the course of the war, what the various broadcasts (his broadcasts) of the deaths of civilians, etc...could only give heart to the enemy. If that's not giving "aid and comfort" I don't know what is.


Arnett should have had the sense to stay the hell off Iraqi TV. There's a theory that, given the circumstances and that there are a couple of Newsday reporters missing at the moment, he may have been coerced into giving the interview but it sure didn't look like it. He'd have to be a hell of an actor to be that relaxed. Another theory is that he's buttering them up in the hopes of getting an interview with Saddam. If true, unless he's planning on blowing himself up with a swallowed explosive device when he gets in the bastard's company, he's got no excuse.


I'm keeping an eye on this one.


Update: Here's a transcript.


Also, after first making excuses last evening, NBC and National Geographic have both fired Arnett. Do you think they received some complaints?

USS Clueless has a couple of terrific posts on the issue of AI and HRW's (Human Rights Watch) nonsensical double-standard vis-a-vis the Coalition and Iraq. Read!


Here and then here.


If you were as incredulous as I was at hearing AI and HRW's maudlin ravings over the Coalition's targeting of TV Iraq, you must read this for some perspective.

From Beijing, stern words for an uneasy ally - China seen toughening stance against N. Korea nuclear development (Via Instapundit)


It seems China may actually be changing from its frustratingly silent stance on North Korea, to actually applying a little behind-the-scenes pressure to Kim's regime. The Bush adminisitration has been looking to China to start putting some of its diplomatic clout with the DPRK to get it to stop the nuclear sabre-rattling. So far, China has made it clear that it felt it was none of its business. That may be changing, as this article, worth reading in full, notes.

BEIJING - For three straight days in recent weeks, something remarkable happened to the oil pipeline running through northeast China to North Korea - the oil stopped flowing, according to diplomatic sources, temporarily cutting off a vital lifeline for North Korea.


The pipeline shutdown, officially ascribed to a technical problem, followed an unusually blunt message delivered by China to its longtime ally in a high-level meeting in Beijing last month, the sources said. Stop your provocations about the possible development of nuclear weapons, China warned its neighbor, or face Chinese support for economic sanctions against the regime.[...]

Perceptions: Where Al-Jazeera & Co. Are Coming From (washingtonpost.com) (Via LGF)


This is an interesting op-ed written by an Arab reporter on the viewpoint emanating from Arab media like Al-Jazeera, and where it comes from. A free press might hold some promise for the Arab world, but it has a ways to go.

[...]The tone of many reporters in Baghdad is much the same. For example, an al-Jazeera reporter in the Iraqi capital falsely told his viewers on the first day of the air campaign, "Here in Baghdad, a city accused of hiding weapons of mass destruction is being hit by weapons of mass destruction." This kind of repetition is the stuff that has made Arabic poetry so justly admired. Here, the rhythm and sonority of the language act to encourage audience disregard for the true definitions of the words being used.


With few exceptions, ethical constraints are rarely discussed in the Arab media, where the notion of editorial judgment sounds to many like censorship. Several have said it reminds them of what they had to do while they were working for state-owned broadcasters. Reporters and producers know what their viewers want to see: images of empowerment and resistance because of past defeats. They also want to see what Hussein's information minister, Muhammed Said al-Sahaf, calls teaching the Americans a lesson. "We are no less than the Vietnamese. Just make it costly in body bags and the Americans will run," said a general who comments regularly on al-Jazeera. Some Arab journalists say they have little choice but to go along. "The cost of speaking out now -- even to simply say that Saddam is partially responsible for what is taking place -- is very high. It could cost you your job and could even cause you physical harm," said one.[...]

Aaron's Rantblog is running this little piece of pay-back. I don't own any guns (yet), and I've always been sort of an "agnostic" on the gun issue, but what the hell? Maybe it's time to pick a side and Michael Moore is just the guy to help me on my path. I don't exactly have the scratch to blow on a firearm right at the moment (and if I did, I'd probably rather spend it on a cheap laptop so I could blog from the couch!), but if I did...boy, I'd buy the biggest, meanest gun there was!


Anyway, stop on over to Aaron's place and show him some love...preferably of the 9mm variety.

The Rottweiler points us over to some local New England folks making good.


Misha says:

Thanks to Loyal Citizen Tiff, here's a look inside what the lucky ones that escaped Noam Chimpski's beloved regime of Pol Pot have to say about the President of the United States.[...]

LOWELL Chang Tan didn't mince words when asked for her views on America's war with Iraq.


"He is good. Bush very good man," she said, giving a thumbs-up while eating lunch at the Khemara Restaurant in Cupples Square.


"She is happy," said cashier Volak Nuon, who interprets Tan's Khmer, "because she thinks Bush will be successful removing Saddam Hussein from power."


Like many Cambodians living in Lowell, Tan's family was decimated by the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s. Tan, 59, escaped, but her mother, brother and sister were all killed by Pol Pot's army.[...]

Winds of Change.NET: Saddam's Penal Troops


Never forget that Saddam is a student of Stalin.

Anyone who has studied the Russian front of WW2, or has seen the first 15 minutes of the movie ENEMIES AT THE GATE, knows what "penal troops" are and how they are used. For those who don't, Stalin used "condemned" men in suicide attacks against the Germans. His NKVD henchmen armed penal troops just before battle, under their eye and massed machine guns. These troops were driven to attack and if they fell back, they were machine gunned for their troubles.[...]

"When this war is over," Joseph Farah says, "we must remember who supported us and who opposed us."


"Earlier this week, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, one of the most active suicide terrorist groups in the Middle East, called on Muslims throughout the world to attack British, American and Israeli targets in response to the war in Iraq.[...]"


And don't miss Eric Leskly's piece at National Review, 'Terrorists at the Gate? - War in Iraq and the escalating Palestinian rhetoric toward the U.S.'

How long will the war last? Who knows, but here's a guess. - Austin Bay's Iraq War Diary


Read it. Quite interesting. He relates to some of what Sensing says below about the Japanese, as well:

[...]The Pacific island campaigns in WWII provide a historical example. Once organized Japanese resistance ceased and the allies had an island’s airfields and ports operating, the brass would declare the place "secure." Infantry regiments would withdraw to refit for the next amphibious assault. The "major operation" was over– but tell that to the Navy SeaBees on the "secure island" who would scrap with snipers for months after the front had officially moved forward.[...]

Donald Sensing compares and contrasts the Japanese soldier during WW2 and the Islamists of today's war.

The Japanese soldier was impelled by a religious faith, too: extreme devotion to the emperor. But there was no promise of reward in the afterlife to the Japanese. In Eastern religions generally, life after death is not envisioned as in either Christianity or Islam, both of which teach the prosperity of the individual's soul. Life after death in both those faiths is life after death as you, as me. But not in WW 2 Japanese bushido militarism. Life after death was thought of as existence of one's spirit in a great chain of ancestor spiritism. Heroic death was intended to honor not oneself, as it does for Islamists, but the emperor first of all, and one's family after that. The reward of such a death to a Japanese soldier was that one's ancestors would not be shamed, and that future generations would ritually honor him along with all the other ancestors. But the honoring was collective, not individual.

(Via Internet Haganah) de Atkine | Why Arabs Lose Wars


A very interesting and concise essay on the reasons modern Arab armies don't seem to have fared well. Well worth a read.

ARABIC-SPEAKING ARMIES have been generally ineffective in the modern era. Egyptian regular forces did poorly against Yemeni irregulars in the 1960s. Syrians could only impose their will in Lebanon during the mid-1970s by the use of overwhelming weaponry and numbers. Iraqis showed ineptness against an Iranian military ripped apart by revolutionary turmoil in the 1980s and could not win a three-decades-long war against the Kurds. The Arab military performance on both sides of the 1990 Kuwait war was mediocre. And the Arabs have done poorly in nearly all the military confrontations with Israel. Why this unimpressive record? There are many factors — economic, ideological, technical — but perhaps the most important has to do with culture and certain societal attributes which inhibit Arabs from producing an effective military force.[...]

Jerusalem Post - Most Palestinians say they want to stop the violence - poll


I'm not exactly sure the text matches the headline, but it does show that:

[...]Asked about suicide bombings in Israel, 43.0% of respondents said they want these attacks to stop, while 51.6% said they would like the intifada to end.


In the January poll, only 25.7% said they are opposed to the suicide attacks, and only 40.9% called for halting the intifada.[...]

If true, quite...dope.


(Via LGF) Wu-Tang Clan to tour Israel - NME.COM (in full)

Despite the War Iraq and the volatile situation in the Middle East, WU-TANG CLAN, one of the world's biggest rap groups, are heading out to tour Israel.


Wu-Tang members Cappadonna and Remedy are have announced plans to perform in Tel Aviv, Beersheva, Haifa, Eilat, and Jerusalem in May.


"As Americans and hip-hop artists, we want to show solidarity with the people of Israel," Cappadonna told Launch music. "No one thinks that a Hebrew-speaking country has anything to do with hip-hop, but hip-hop is alive in Israel and we are going there to foster the new generations’ way of communicating."


The news comes after comedy-rockers Tenacious D and Destiny's Child member Kelly Rowland cancelled their European tours and promotion when war broke out.


Wu-Tang tour dates and venues will be released in the coming weeks.

The Spectator.co.uk - War is purgatory - Iraq is going well, with few casualties: Mark Steyn hails American ingenuity and moral superiority


Steyn is worth reading in full, as usual. I liked this part: "So Harold ‘Poems R Us’ Pinter may think the Yanks are itching to massacre thousands of innocents, but the behaviour of the Baathist nutters suggests they know better: they assume Western decency."

WorldNetDaily: Report: Al-Qaida fighting alongside Saddam's forces

Captured Iraqi soldiers have told British military interrogators that members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network are fighting alongside Saddam Hussein's forces against U.S. and British troops near Basra.


Specifically, the Iraqi POWs claim that about a dozen al-Qaida members are in the town of Az Zubayr, coordinating grenade and other attacks on coalition positions, according to a Scotsman report carried in several papers, including London's Financial Times.


"The information we have received from POWs today is that an al-Qaida cell may be operating in Az Zubayr," a senior British military source inside Iraq said in the report. "There are possibly around a dozen of them and that is obviously a matter of concern to us." [...]

Ha'aretz - Article

Syria is granting free passage across its border with Iraq to volunteers who wish to join the fight against the U.S. and British forces. Thus far, dozens of volunteers, primarily Palestinians from the refugee camps in Lebanon, have crossed over into Iraq through Syrian-controlled border posts.


The passage of volunteers with Damascus's consent has given rise to the theory that the U.S.-fired missile that struck a Syrian bus traveling in Iraq was an intentional attack on a busload of such volunteers. The bus left Damascus on Sunday and was hit by the missile some 50 kilometers inside Iraqi territory. The missile strike left five people dead and dozens injured.


Speaking on the subject, the Syrian military analyst, Hitham al-Kilani, said in an interview on Al Jazeera, on 24 March, that "the Syrian border was opened to Syrian, Arab and Muslim volunteers wishing to reach Iraq and participate in the fighting against the American invasion."[...]

Walid Phares on Arab League on National Review Online - Taking Care of League Business


Phares puts the ball back in the Arab League's court, concluding with three fair questions:

1) Speaking of withdrawal from Iraq, shouldn't the Arab League be asking Syria — a League member — to withdraw from Lebanon? That small country was invaded in 1990 by an Arab army following an Arab League decision — which, let us remind Mr. Mahmassani, was never authorized by the United Nations. Since 1976, the Arab League has sponsored armed interventions in Lebanon quite independently of the U.N. Worse, it legitimized the onslaught of the Syrian forces in Lebanon — complete with 15 years of shelling, massacres, kidnappings, and terrorism, and the forceful imposition of a new regime in October 1990.


2) The League's representative warned against the "harm that could be caused to the peoples of the region." But the League shows such thoughtfulness only to certain populations. Kurds are not on its list, nor are the Berbers or the Copts. The Kurds are massacred by the Iraqi regime, the Algerian government suppresses the Berbers, and the Copts are persecuted by both their own Egyptian government and by fundamentalist organizations. The list goes on. Despite a range of atrocities stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, the League has remained heavily silent.


3) Last but not least, the Arab League charges that its people do not want change, especially if it comes from the outside world, and particularly if it is to be at the hands of the United States. It claims that Arab matters are settled among and by Arabs. But if that's the case, why don't we call for free elections in Damascus, Riyadh, and Tripoli, and learn more about the real will of the people of the region? Let's grant the masses there what the League wants to grant the Palestinians — nothing more, nothing less. Why should the United States be urged to intervene in one Arab matter (the Palestinian one) and not in another one (Iraq)? Are the Kurds and Shiites second-class communities?

Victor Davis Hanson on Operation Iraqi Freedom on National Review Online


Read the whole thing, but I'll skip right down to the conclusion:

[...]When this is all over — and I expect it will be soon — besides a great moral accounting, I hope that there will deep introspection and sober public discussion about the peculiar ignorance and deductive pessimism on the part of our elites. In the meantime, all we can insist on is absolute and unconditional surrender — no peace process, no exit strategy, no U.N. votes, no Arab League parley, no EU expressions of concern, no French, no anything but our absolute victory and Saddam’s utter ruin. Unlike in 1991, commanders in the field must be given explicit instructions from the White House about negotiations: There are to be absolutely none — other than the acceptance of unconditional surrender.

Gleaves Whitney on Operation Iraqi Freedom on National Review Online


Someone now in Iraq writes, and an older warrior responds. Worth reading.

First we have this item:

FRANCE'S ANTI-AMERICAN HYSTERIA: A reader monitors the french evening news for me and sends in reports. His latest is the most disturbing yet:

Today's evening news broadcast on French ratings leader TF1, www.tf1.fr (streaming video at "News," under "Les JT a la carte"), finally has gone over the edge in directly supporting Saddam Hussein against the US and allied forces. Many, many of the stories center on civilian casualties and hardships. According to the leading story, the population of Baghdad no longer believes that the air attacks are meant to avoid civilians; the population of Basra is being actually targeted with "illegal" cluster bombs, shown in the video. (They looked like little canisters to me.) And the military situation isn't going any better for the Americans: Iraqis are proud that their army is matching up with the American forces, explains the broadcast. The video accompanying all this is filled with angry people on the street shouting in Arabic at the cameras, desperate people crowded around water and food distribution points, and sad wounded children in hospital beds. Story after story pounds these points home, repetitively, sickeningly, sadly. The strangest part of all this are the contradictions. The streets of Baghdad's government quarters are shown as a grey, deserted, and lined with bombed-out buildings; the residential quarters are shown teeming with people everywhere going about their daily business, most of them angry at the US, says the narration. As for the US army, it's practically losing the war - but Baghdad will be encircled within five or ten days.

De Villepin's awkwardness when asked whether he actually wants Saddam to be defeated was not misleading. We should realize that the French in their heads know we must win. But perhaps because of that, in their hearts, they want us to lose. They are not an ally.

Thursday you said: "I'm chagrined at my own optimism in this regard." Don't be. You're immersed in the war and you're going through the same changes as the soldiers. Everyone has to be optimistic at the outset. If a soldier ever saw a vision of what lay ahead of him, he'd never get off the boat. And then learn that war is not title bout that ends with a knockout or a bell at 15 rounds. It is an endurance contest in which the healthiest attitude is to prepare for everything but expect nothing. It ends when it ends. That's what Mr. Bush was trying to tell us this morning. If you have time, you might read Gleaves Whitney's piece in today's National Review Online. In his e-mail, Ms. Whitney's son in Kuwait writes: "Everyone finds ways to deal with the fear, pain, and suffering. I too have found a way. My life is not back in Michigan. It is here, now." I had that same moment during the 1968 Tet Offensive. My father described having it sometime after St. Lo, as he recovered from his wounds; my grandfather, somewhere on the Mexican border chasing Pancho Villa, with World War I still ahead of him. What counts is the moment: This is what happened today; these things are likely to happen tomorrow. (And if they don't happen, something else will.) That's not much of a philosophy to live by, but then war isn't life. Quite the opposite. Hope this helps.

FrontPage magazine.com

France is teaming with Libya on the U.N. Human Rights Commission to lift international restrictions on Sudan. The commission, chaired by Libya, is scheduled to meet in Geneva on Thursday and the first item on its agenda is to give Sudan a passing grade on human rights.


France, a leading member of the commission, indicated that it would support Libya's move to change the human rights status for Sudan. The deputy press counsel for the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., confirmed the report.



"There are no more sanctions against Sudan," stated the French Embassy press spokeswoman, Agnes Vondermuhal.


"Sanctions were lifted by the U.N. in 2001. The U.S. still maintains sanctions against Sudan," she stated. [...]

FrontPage magazine.com

Earlier this week, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri Ahmad al-Hadithi was quoted as saying that the already brutalized US POWs captured in southern Iraq would, "be treated according to the principles of Islam"..Unfortunately, this statement is not reassuring at all.[...]

Asks Kesher Talk:

Naive tools or duplicitous terrorist sympathizers? You decide. Remember Rachel Corrie? She worked with a group called the International Solidarity Movement. Palestinian peace activists, right? Well, the IDF just flushed out a senior member of the militant Islamic Jihad group from their West Bank offices, which also houses the International Committee of the Red Cross, international medical group Medicins Sans Frontieres and the Bank of Palestine.

The army said two women with the group, one British and the other Canadian, tried to hide the man but the group's spokesman, Tom Wallace, said the two group members were not aware of the man's identity.

Yeah, right.

Ha'Aretz

UNITED NATIONS - Washington's UN ambassador walked out of a Security Council debate on Iraq on Thursday after Baghdad's ambassador said the United States and Britain wanted to exterminate the Iraqi people.


"I did sit through quite a long part of what he had to say, but I think I'd heard enough after a certain amount of time," U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte told reporters outside the Security Council chamber after walking out.


"I didn't hear anything new in what he had to say and of course can't accept any of the preposterous allegations he put forward," Negroponte said.


Iraqi UN Ambassador Mohammed Aldouri, speaking at the close of a two-day emergency session of the 15-nation council, said the United States, Britain and Australia were "about to start a real war of extermination that will kill everyone and destroy everything."


Noting that Washington and London, short of votes, withdrew a draft Security Council resolution earlier this month calling on Baghdad to show its willingness to disarm or face war, Aldouri said the two nations had "tried to use another form of achieving their objectives" in launching an invasion.


"And I think this is a British vision, because they are well known for their trickery," Aldouri said. "They kill a person and then they shed crocodile tears, and then they go to his funeral."

If you're like me, you've been watching the daily war briefings and seeing those generals calmly respond the the most offensive questions from the world press and wondering how the hell they do it. I'd have slugged someone by now, or maybe even lined one of them up against a wall somewhere.


Sgt. Stryker has an interesting explanation. Seems he used to be one of the guys prepping the officers for dealing with the press.

Via LGF

Caption: A Pakistani student wears a headband with the words 'kill jews,' during an anti-war rally at a university in Islamabad, March 26, 2003. The students of Quaid-i-Azam University gathered on Wednesday to protest against the U.S.-led war in Iraq (news - web sites). REUTERS/Mian Khursheed

(Via LGF) Barbara Lerner on Mideast on National Review Online - There Will Never be a Palestinian Democracy


Barbara Lerner is not optimistic about a Palestinian Democracy. Well worth reading.

Israel's Natan Sharansky is one of the intellectual godfathers of President Bush's new "democracy first" approach to the Palestinian question. Sharansky's influence is hard to miss. His influence on the views of his countrymen is another matter. Twenty-nine months of suicide bombings, shellings, and machine-gun attacks aimed at civilians have decimated the ranks of Israelis who still believe a Palestinian state could ever be anything other than the same old terror-warriors, with new and more lethal powers. When I interviewed Sharansky in Jerusalem on February 12, his political party had just lost two of its four seats in Israel's 120-member parliament, but his faith that democracy was the answer remained unshaken.


Natan Sharansky has a big Russian soul, but he carries it on a small frame, and slumps in his seat. When I sat at his soon-to-be-vacated desk in Israel's Ministry of Housing and Construction, I had to scrunch down to be at eye-level with him. When I forgot, I would find myself looking instead into the eyes of his mentor, Andrei Sakharov, in a large photo above Sharansky's head. The man once known as Anatoly wants it that way. He believes the principles he and his fellow Soviet freedom fighters went to prison for are universal principles — as real and right in the Middle East as they were and are in what was once the Soviet Union. He also believes that in the terror war, as in the Cold War, appeasing tyrants can never bring lasting peace — only the spread of democracy can. And he believes, too, that democracy is for everyone, that neither Arabs nor Palestinians are exceptions to the rule.


I offer up the Israeli everyman's objection at the outset: Polls show that 80 percent of Palestinians approve of suicide bombings. Anyone they elect will be a murdering thug. "Of course," Sharansky explodes. "It's primitive to think democracy is about elections. It's not. It's about freedom. Freedom is the key." [...]

From the "what we're fighting for" file:


(Via The Rottweiler) CNN.com - Marines discover Iraqi 9/11 mural - Mar. 26, 2003

NASIRIYA, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. Marines searching Iraqi military headquarters in this southern city that was the site of intensive fighting came across a mural depicting a plane crashing into a building complex resembling New York's twin towers, a news agency photograph showed Wednesday.


The plane's logo and coloring resembled that of Iraqi Airlines, said Getty Images News Service executive Brian Felber, based in New York.


The photograph, showing two rifle-toting Marines in front of the mural, was shot by staff photographer Joe Raedle, who is accompanying the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force from Task Force Tarawa.


Getty is a news photo agency that distributes about 500 photographs from around the world each day and has 10 staff members embedded with U.S. forces in the Iraq conflict.


Felber said this photo was "causing a bit of a stir."

Winds of Change has a mini-collection of Victor Davis Hanson pointers. I haven't even had a chance to read them all, but they must be good, it's VDH!

StrategyPage (Via Instapundit)


Read 'em all. Most readers here will already be aware of some of this stuff, particularly the one below, but it's always nice to have one good source list.

4-The United States armed Saddam. This one grew over time, but when Iraq was on it's weapons spending spree from 1972 (when its oil revenue quadrupled) to 1990, the purchases were quite public and listed over $40 billion worth of arms sales. Russia was the largest supplier, with $25 billion. The US was the smallest, with $200,000. A similar myth, that the U.S. provided Iraq with chemical and biological weapons is equally off base. Iraq requested Anthrax samples from the US government, as do nations the world over, for the purpose of developing animal and human vaccines for local versions of Anthrax. Nerve gas doesn't require technical help, it's a variant of common insecticides. European nations sold Iraq the equipment to make poison gas.

Mirror.co.uk - HITCHENS: WE MUST KEEP OUR NERVE

HERE we go again: first the phoney war and then the war of the phoneys. In Kuwait, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Afghanistan - all of the post-Cold War conflicts against regional aggressors and terror-sponsoring states - it was necessary first to endure a lengthy period of apocalyptic warnings.


If the democracies stuck up for themselves or others, there would be intensified chaos and misery, uncountable civilian casualties, intervention from other states to widen the war, legacies of bad blood, massive alienation, etc, etc.


You have read it and I have read it.


The question is - do those who have written this tripe ever dare to go back and see how wrong they were last time?[...]

The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has a couple interesting pointers to recent Al-Jazeera bootings, and the surprising take of a First Amendment lawyer worth checking out.

Walid Phares on al-Jazeera on National Review Online


Charles over at LGF says it's important to remember that Al-Jazeera isn't just an alternative viewpoint, it's an enemy viewpoint. He's right.

Al-Jazeera is ruled by politics. Take the recent airing of footage of American soldiers killed by Iraqis and of the interrogation of American POWs. The decision to air the footage was just another example of the network making politics — rather than reporting — its business.


The constant replay of the graphic images on Sunday was a flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention. Showing footage of dead soldiers and conducting of prisoner interrogations before the media both clearly undermine international law. The Qatar-based network's goal was clear: It wanted the Americans to be seen as mercenaries.[...]

(Via BuzzMachine) Boston Globe Online / Nation | World / Freed detainees cite rewards, beatings

[...]Seated cross-legged on a floor of the Kabul Police Department jail yesterday, nearly all of the former detainees enthusiastically praised the conditions at Guantanamo and expressed little bitterness about losing a year of their lives in captivity, saying they were treated better there than in three days in squalid cells in Kabul. None complained of torture during questioning or coerced confessions.


After they were set free, however, two men who had remained silent earlier hesitantly began to recount being punished for protesting indignities to their captors. The two both admitted to having been employed by the Taliban as drivers.


Conversations with 13 of the men, first in prison and then in a restaurant after their release, paint a picture of Guantanamo as a place where a detainee may be treated well, reasonably, or badly, depending on whether Americans consider him a terrorist, and whether he protests perceived humiliations that other prisoners let pass.

[...]

OpinionJournal - Our Coalition - by Condoleezza Rice

WASHINGTON--The coalition that is currently engaged in the hard, dangerous work to disarm Iraq is strong, broad and diverse.


Nearly 50 nations are committed to ridding Saddam Hussein's regime of all its deadly, destructive and illegal weapons. To put this in perspective, the combined population of coalition countries is approximately 1.23 billion people, with a combined gross domestic product of approximately $22 trillion. These countries are from every continent on the globe, representing every major race, religion, and ethnicity in the world.


Diverse as this coalition is, each member shares a common goal. We seek nothing less than safety for our people. Many members have suffered from terror themselves; all understand the awful price of terrorism and the potentially catastrophic danger from weapons of mass destruction.


But, vitally, all have the will to face the gravest threat of our time--the nexus between outlaw regimes, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism. The world has seen what happens when countries that recognize emerging or present threats lack the will to meet them. Many times in the last century--and as recently as the last decade--the world failed to act in time to prevent a crisis or meet a threat. Some of the members of this current coalition had to live with the deadly and dreadful consequences of that failure for decades.


Some have only recently emerged from tyrannies imposed in no small part because of that failure. Months ago, the prime minister of Estonia told President Bush that he did not need an explanation of the need to confront Iraq. Because the great democracies failed to act in 1930s, his people lived in slavery for 50 years.


The members of this coalition have not failed to act. They are contributing different personnel, services and materials, according to their means and expertise. The British 1st Armored Division is engaging well-equipped Iraqi units in the southeast, and securing the southern oil field and the vital port city of Umm Qasr, through which tons of humanitarian aid will soon flow. The Australian navy is providing gunfire support to coalition troops in Southern Iraq, and clearing the port of Umm Qasr of mines. Polish special forces have secured a key Iraqi oil platform in the Gulf. A Danish submarine is monitoring Iraqi intelligence and providing early warning. Czech and Slovak special chemical and biological weapon response forces are in Kuwait, ready to react to a potential Iraqi WMD attack anywhere in the theater.[...]

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.


NYSE bars Al Jazeera reporter from trading floor - Mar. 25, 2003

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Qatar-based satellite TV network Al Jazeera said Tuesday it was "deeply concerned" over the decision by the New York Stock Exchange to oust the Arab media outlet from the trading floor.


"Al Jazeera regrets the decision of the New York Stock Exchange, just as it regrets any restrictions on the freedom of the press," the network said in a statement. "We urge the NYSE to reconsider its decision in the interests of upholding the values of the United States of America."


The New York Stock Exchange banned Al Jazeera late Monday, saying it was restricting access to networks that offer "responsible" coverage of business news.

"We only have a finite number of slots available within the exchange for broadcast networks and demand for space has been increasing ever since the war began," said Ray Pellecchia, spokesman for the NYSE.


Pellecchia said security precautions did influence the NYSE's decision about restricting the number of news outlets. He added that several other news organizations have also been asked to leave but didn't name them. Pellecchia said the decision regarding Al Jazeera was "indefinite." [...]

CNN.com - U.S.: Marines seize hospital hiding Iraqi soldiers - Mar. 25, 2003

NASIRIYA, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. Marines on Tuesday seized a hospital in Nasiriya and captured nearly 170 Iraqi soldiers who had been staging military operations from the facility, U.S. authorities said.


No civilians were in the facility, which U.S. Central Command said was "clearly marked as a hospital by a flag with a Red Crescent." Marines confiscated more than 200 weapons, more than 3,000 chemical suits with masks and Iraqi military uniforms in the hospital, and found a T-55 tank in the hospital compound, Central Command said.


Marines had been fired at from the hospital a day earlier.


No civilians were injured in the operation and none were found in the hospital when Marines from Task Force Tarawa of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines went in, according to Central Command. Before they moved in, Marines used loudspeakers to instruct any medical personnel or patients inside to evacuate, authorities said.

Just had a chance to watch some of the backstage interview.


Questioner: "Would you be worried about the blacklist in Hollywood?"


Moore: "I don't work in Hollywood. I'm funded by Canadians...and others who don't live here."


Well, that about says it, doesn't it?

Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing: March 23, 2003 - March 29, 2003 Archives


Got onto this one through Instapundit. I love Dan Abrams even though my wife has the hots for him. I like him even more after reading this.

Dan Abrams of MSNBC is pissed. It's kind of weird to see a television anchorman displaying frustration and disbelief at certain things going on. The whole thing about the Iraqis dressing in civilian clothes and shooting from protected sites has really stuck in his craw. First he hammered Gen. Trainer about it, and the General explained LOAC and all that good stuf, but Abrams just wasn't buying it. It looked to me that he just wanted to blurt out, "Why can't we blow up that mosque, if they're killing Marines?"


Then he had a retired JAG on and hammered him about the same thing. And then I heard something I thought I'd never hear an "objective" journalist say, and I paraphrase, "So our guys have to check with lawyers before they fire back? So we have these self-imposed rules that lawyers impose on our troops and the government imposes on itself and now Marines are dead because of it." That last line was a statement, not a question. The JAG guy's trying to explain about PR and the rest of it, but Abrams was on a roll. "Those Arab TV networks are going to show us supposedly targeting and killing civilians no matter what we do while we follow the Rules of War." It was nothing short of astonishing to hear that. I don't know what prompted all this. Perhaps he saw the tape of the Americans executed and exploited on TV. Who knows? But man, it was something to see.[...]

WayMoreSports.com/Gretzky speaks out in support of Bush (Via LGF)


The Great One is on the right side of history. I'm a baseball man, but maybe I need to watch more hockey.

[...]"All I can say is the president of the United States is a great leader, I happen to think he's a wonderful man and if he believes what he's doing is right I back him 100 per cent," said Gretzky, in Calgary for a news conference for Ronald McDonald Children's Charities.


"If the president decides to go to war he must know more than we know, or we hear about. He must have good reason to go and we have to back that."


Gretzky, who makes his home in the Los Angeles area, said his children are American citizens and he has a relative fighting in Iraq.


"I have a cousin who is in Iraq right now and is in the U.S. Marines. He was there in '91 and he's there now and it's a tough time for his family and it's a tough time for all of us.


Col. Kenny Hopper has been in the Marines for more than 20 years, said Gretzky.


Gretzky's aunt — his father's sister — married an American and raised three children in North Carolina.


"I talked to my aunt two nights ago and she's devastated, but she knows that her son believes in the cause," Gretzky said. "He's proud to be in the Marines and he's battling hard and our prayers are with him.


"A lot of people in the world don't have the answers but we've got to believe in the president of the United States and as I said, I happen to think he's a great leader. God bless him and I hope that everybody gets home safe."[...]

The New Republic Online: March 24

The bombs have begun to fall on Baghdad. Iraqi soldiers have shot their officers and are giving themselves up to the Americans and the British in droves. Others, as in Nasiriyah and Umm Qasr, are fighting back, and civilians have already come under fire. Yet I find myself dismissing contemptuously all the e-mails and phone calls I get from antiwar friends who think they are commiserating with me because "their" country is bombing "mine." To be sure, I am worried. Like every other Iraqi I know, I have friends and relatives in Baghdad. I am nauseous with anxiety for their safety. But still those bombs are music to my ears. They are like bells tolling for liberation in a country that has been turned into a gigantic concentration camp. One is not supposed to say such things in the kind of liberal, pacifist, and deeply anti-American circles of academia, in which I normally live and work. The truth is jarring even to my own ears.


If you want to understand the perceptual chasm that separates how Iraqis view this second Gulf war from how the rest of the Arab-Muslim world views it--or from how these antiwar elites here in Cambridge or, dare I say, in Turtle Bay or Paris or Berlin view it--then you must begin with the war that has already been waged on the people of Iraq by their own regime. Then you will know, horribly, how the explosion of a JDAM can sound beautiful. For Iraqis, the absence of this new American-led war is not the presence of peace. Years before the first American cruise missile exploded in a "safe house" of the Iraqi leadership, the people of Iraq were living through a war. They have been living through that war since 1980, the year Saddam Hussein launched his futile war against Iran. Since then, one and a half million Iraqis have met a violent death. Between 5 and 10 percent of Iraq's population has been killed, either directly or indirectly, because of decisions made by its own leadership. The scale of such devastation on a people is impossible to imagine. Think of Germany or France after World War I. Think of the Soviet Union after World War II. The peoples that are thrust into such a meat-grinder are never the same when they emerge. Is it any wonder that we Iraqis do not look at this war the way so much of the rest of the world does?[...]

David Horowitz clarifies the differences between honorable decent and the fifth column - and the dangers of ignoring the latter.

Suppose the traitor who rolled three grenades into the tents of our soldiers in Iraq, killed a captain and wounded 15 others, was a member of Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church or Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral. Do you think his picture might be on the evening news or page one of the New York Times? In fact, the culprit, Asan Akbar (aka Mark Fidel Kools) is a black Muslim from South Central Los Angeles, and a member of the Masjid Bilal Islamic Center there. What this incident would show us, if the press were doing its job, is that there is a connection between the ideas people devote themselves to and what they wind up doing. (The fact that Akbar's former middle name -- which looks adopted as well -- is "Fidel" is probably not without significance either.)[...]

I just read this article to see where it was the the US was violating the Geneva Convention.


Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | POW rights denied 'on both sides'


The Red Cross made some fairly generic statements aimed as a reminder to both sides, although it's important to note that in Iraq's case it's the state run media doing the interrog...I mean, interviews and filming, not that the Red Cross or Al Guardian would mention that.


But, speaking of the media echo-chamber, the only specific allegation is...ready?...from The Guardian reporting on an accusation made by fellow rag The Daily Mirror. Apparently, the British press needs to create its own allegations when the reality isnt quite enough.

Meanwhile The Daily Mirror this morning accused the US of hypocrisy, claiming that footage of its treatment of prisoners held at Guantanamo bay in Cuba also broke the Geneva Conventions.

United Press International: Syria seeks Arab condemnation of war

CAIRO, March 24 (UPI) -- Syria wants Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo Monday to condemn the U.S. war against Iraq and call for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of U.S. and British troops, according to a draft resolution released to United Press International.


The Syrian draft considered the U.S.-British attacks as "an armed aggression aimed at occupying the territory of a member of the Arab League and the United Nations, a violation of U.N. charter and a dangerous precedent that endangers international and regional peace and security."[...]

Andrew Sullivan is doing a great job keeping on top of media war spin, particularly from the BBC. He even has some BBS insiders emailing in with info from the inside:

Earlier in the evening I saw CNN (Pool pictures I guess) of Kurds in Ebril moving out of the town and away from the possible Iraqi incusion into the Kurdish area. An interview with one villager saying life was tough and she and her family wanted to be safe etc etc. Imagine my suprise to find the same pictures and interview turn up in a BBC report about how citizens of Bagdad were fearing the US bombing to come. Withoput explaining that the people of Ebril were escaping Saddam's violence, the commentary said, "And as in Bagdad so it is throughout Iraq" - cue Ebril material and interview. The implication being the Kurds (they weren't described as such) were afraid of US bombs. (in fact later in the oriinal piece, they welcome US intervention). Just one small example. I am wondering how I can go about shaming my former employer (30 years working in the Beeb). Any suggestions?

French Jews Tell of a New and Threatening Wave of Anti-Semitism - NY Times

[...]Swastikas, slogans and physical assaults against Jews in Europe have reached a frequency not seen since the 1930's when Fascism was on the rise. But in the vast majority of the cases today, the assailants are young Muslims of North African heritage whose parents emigrated to Europe in the 1960's and 1970's.


The greatest number and most violent attacks have come in France, which, with an estimated six million Muslims and 650,000 Jews in the country, has Europe's largest Jewish and largest Muslim populations.[...]

[...]Not everyone is willing to call the current wave of violence anti-Semitism. Henri Wajnblum, head of the Union of Progressive Jews of Belgium, said it is important to distinguish between anti-Semitic and anti-Israel actions. He and other members of his Brussels-based group have been visiting classrooms in Muslim neighborhoods to help explain the difference between Zionists and Jews in general.[...]

(Via Cox & Forkum):

FOXNews.com reports on the captured US troops, some of whom were executed and some of whom were obviously abused and paraded before the TV cameras. Is there any better illustration between "us" and "them?" This along with reports of Iraqis pretending to surrender and then opening fire on coalition troops. Burns me up.


Update: I was thinking I hope they go through all the video tape and catch up with every sorry bastard remotely involved. It should be very, very scary to have mistreated an American. Donald Sensing says he hopes they do a better job than they did with those who perpetrated the Malmedy Massacre.

FOXNews.com reports that the Bush Administration has gone public with complaints that first surfaced some months ago about Russian arms dealers making continuing illegal arms sales to Iraq, including night vision equipment and satellite jammers, some of which may have come in on ships bearing UN humanitarian aid. Further, Russian advisors may still be in Iraq assisting the Iraqis.


We all thought a major danger to the US was over with the fall of Communism, but Russia now seems to be run by the mafia. Which is worse, I wonder?


Update: Donald Sensing says the GPS jammers don't matter, BTW. That's in a technical, not a moral sense...

Jerusalem Post reported earlier today, and Fox News said The Pentagon has confirmed this evening that US troops have captured a large chemical weapons plant in Iraq.

About 30 Iraqi troops, including a general, surrendered today to US forces of the 3rd Infantry Division as they overtook huge installation apparently used to produce chemical weapons in An Najaf, some 150 kilometers (90 miles) south of Baghdad.[...]


The huge 100-acre complex, which is surrounded by a electrical fence, is perhaps the first illegal chemical plant to be uncovered by US troops in their current mission in Iraq. The surrounding barracks resemble an abandoned slum.


It wasn't immediately clear exactly which chemicals were being produced here, but clearly the Iraqis tried to camouflage the facility so it could not be photographed aerially, by swathing it in sand-cast walls to make it look like the surrounding desert. [...]

Telegraph | Opinion | I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam (Via Instapundit)

[...]I was shocked when I first met a pro-war Iraqi in Baghdad - a taxi driver taking me back to my hotel late at night. I explained that I was American and said, as we shields always did, "Bush bad, war bad, Iraq good". He looked at me with an expression of incredulity.


As he realised I was serious, he slowed down and started to speak in broken English about the evils of Saddam's regime. Until then I had only heard the President spoken of with respect, but now this guy was telling me how all of Iraq's oil money went into Saddam's pocket and that if you opposed him politically he would kill your whole family.


It scared the hell out of me. First I was thinking that maybe it was the secret police trying to trick me but later I got the impression that he wanted me to help him escape. I felt so bad. I told him: "Listen, I am just a schmuck from the United States, I am not with the UN, I'm not with the CIA - I just can't help you."[...]

InstaPundit writes:

UPDATE: A reader emails:


Speaking of BBC lip-curling: I've just seen one reporter on BBC News 24 question an Iraqi at an anti-war protest. The reporter obviously didn't do any kind of pre-rehearsal, because things did not go As Planned.


The young lady turns out to be absolutely pro-war, despite having family members in Bagdad, and was about 2000% more eloquent than some of the more telegenic air-heads that the BBC seems to have this curious talent for singling out, and then airing footage of over and over again.


Finally the reporter asks "Why are you at an anti-war rally if you agree with the war?" in a rather peeved tone of voice. The gist of her answer is that most of the protesters don't have the faintest idea of what it's like to live under a regime such as Saddam's, which is right of course.


Then the reporter turns to the camera and says "Well, there you go, one Iraqi who approves of the war" as if this was some mind-boggling occurance, and as if their own footage didn't show Iraqis dancing in the streets when the US Army showed up, and as if there was not one single Iraqi, anywhere else on the entire planet, who might have a itsy-bitsy-teensy-weeny little bit of an issue over how Saddam has been running their country.

I just finished watching the first news brief/update by Gen Franks. During the question period, a BBC World reporter stood and made some statements that were truly shocking. I'm going by memory, but the salient points were:


You (Franks) are trying to get us to report that many Iraqi troops are surrendering

If we do, this would provide you much valuable propaganda wouldn't it? It just might accelerate further surrenders.


You are going to have to provide me with much better proof if you expect me to report that there are "tens of thousands" of troops surrendering.


Franks replied with a "Whoa! No one here mentioned anything about 'tens of thousands' surrendering" and then proceed to calmly re-state the information he had previously.


What kind of mind inhabits the BBC? God forbid that they report something that might hasten and end to war - and save lives on all fronts.

I'm a lifelong NY Times reader and NPR listener. But no more. Raines has successfully driven me to subscribe to the Post. And this morning I started searching the radio dial for AM news to wake up to. The final nail in the NPR coffin occurred last night (3/21), when they reported on the Palestinian "Peace Protests." No mention of them chanting for "Our beloved Saddam, hit Tel Aviv." Instead, it was about them protesting American aggression. What really got me apoplectic was when they referred to the sympathetic relationship between Hamas and Hussein. As NPR described it, Hussein has helped give aid to Palestinian families who have lost loved ones in the struggle with Israel. This is how they refer to Hussein paying the families of homicide bombers. I'm through with NPR.

LGF has a couple of threads on this student group very much worth checking out. I've also linked a couple of related articles over at FrontPage as well. This kind of activity pretty much gets about as close as it's possible to get to defining what a 5th column is short of actually throwing a bomb.


This thread at LGF leads us to this story at WorldNetDaily concerning a Jewish college student who attended an MSA meeting and what he heard there.


This LGF thread describes a thread at Clear Guidance which also contains some disturbingly candid posts by the President of the MSA.


Don't miss this article over at FrontPage written by a conservative Muslim student and his treatment at the hands of the MSA and this Stephen Schwartz piece originally in National Review reprinted in FrontPage with an overview of the group and its roots.

(Via Instapundit)


Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'We tore down Saddam signs to convince them'

[...]Afraid that the US and Britain will abandon them, the people of Safwan did not touch the portraits and murals of Saddam Hussein hanging everywhere. It was left to the marines to tear them down. It did not mean there was not heartfelt gladness at the marines' arrival. Ajami Saadoun Khlis, whose son and brother were executed under the Saddam regime, sobbed like a child on the shoulder of the Guardian's Egyptian translator. He mopped the tears but they kept coming.


"You just arrived," he said. "You're late. What took you so long? God help you become victorious. I want to say hello to Bush, to shake his hand. We came out of the grave."


"For a long time we've been saying: 'Let them come'," his wife, Zahara, said. "Last night we were afraid, but we said: 'Never mind, as long as they get rid of him, as long as they overthrow him, no problem'." Their 29-year-old son was executed in July 2001, accused of harbouring warm feelings for Iran.


"He was a farmer, he had a car, he sold tomatoes, and we had a life that we were satis fied with," said Khlis. "He was in prison for a whole year, and I raised 75m dinars in bribes. It didn't work. The money was gone, and he was gone. They sent me a telegram. They gave me the body."[...]

Telegraph | Opinion | The Iraqis are certainly acting as if they are headless

Back in Baghdad, the Independent's Robert Fisk told his readers on Thursday: "At the Alastrabak grocery store, I bought 25 loo rolls."


Ah, the bog of war. When we Bush poodles say, "Let's roll!", this is definitely not the kind of roll we have in mind. Fisk is either settling in for a long siege or padding his expenses, but I can't say this strikes me as a 25-roll war.


On the television, the network pretty boys are riding on the backs of tanks going full throttle through the southern desert, hour after hour. Will it all be over before the Independent's man is halfway through the first roll?


Or will he be like those elderly Japanese holed up in the jungle decades after the Second World War, refusing to come out of his Baghdad bathroom even after the last Andrex has gone and he's reduced to using all those old columns mocking the very idea of any link between Iraq and terrorism?[...]

Via Andrew Sullivan:


Outrage at Sun Chirac jibe




Thank you British tabloid. You have brought a smile to mine lips this eve.

THE Sun hit Paris yesterday to show the world our disgust at the cowardice of President Jacques “The Worm” Chirac for wriggling out of his responsibilities to the West.


We took copies of a French edition of our newspaper labelling Chirac as Saddam Hussein’s whore.


Describing his actions as those of a “Paris harlot”, The Sun argued he was as big a threat to the civilised world as Iraq’s tyrant.


Sadly but predictably, the poor, misled French people backed their spineless president to the hilt.


On a sunny Champs Elysées, student Angelique Roulois, 18, nearly choked on her baguette when she saw our headline.[...]


Vincent Bouis, 32, was shocked at our display of good old British contempt for the French president.


He screamed: “This is violent and destructive language.”


As we quaked in our boots he went on: “Why attack Chirac just because he doesn’t agree with you. The French people are 100 per cent behind him.”


That’s something they have in common with Saddam then ...

Ribbity Blog

About a minute ago I was watching the Gulf news station Al-Jazeera, which was being relayed by the Palestinian TV station Bethlehem Television. The subject of the broadcast was of course the American attack against Iraq. As soon as the discussion turned to the subject of Iraqi soldiers who surrendered to the Americans today, the TV station pulled the relay off the air and started broadcasting Palestinian propaganda films. The Palestinian National Authority likes its Iraqis to be fighting heros, not frightened soldiers who surrender.

(Via Instapundit) Guardian Unlimited | World dispatch | Hopes and fears


And they don't sound that upset:

The "Great Satan" has invaded Iraq but students at Tehran University seem pleased at the prospect.


"It will be a good thing to have American troops in Iraq. Perhaps that will bring change to Iran," said Namin, a lanky engineering student strolling to class.


"Maybe that will put more pressure on the regime here." Unlike fellow Muslims in the Middle East or their predecessors 23 years ago who seized the United States embassy, students today are not seething with anger against America and are unmoved by the government's daily references to "the enemy" in Washington.


"I think only about the consequences of a war. If the war has good consequences, let it be," said another student, Mohammad. "We're not protesting like European students. We don't have a democratic government like they do. We're not acting like them because we're not in European shoes." [...]

This is what we want to hear.

[...]A few men and boys ventured out, putting makeshift white flags on their pickup trucks or waving white T-shirts out truck windows.


"Americans very good," Ali Khemy said. "Iraq wants to be free."


Some chanted, "Ameriki! Ameriki!"


Many others in the starving town just patted their stomachs and raised their hands, begging for food.


A man identifying himself only as Abdullah welcomed the arrival of the U.S. troops: "Saddam Hussein is no good. Saddam Hussein a butcher."


An old woman shrouded in black -- one of the very few women outside -- knelt toward the feet of Americans, embracing an American woman. A younger man with her pulled her away, giving her a warning sign by sliding his finger across his throat.


In 1991, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died after prematurely celebrating what they believed was their liberation from Saddam after the Gulf War. Some even pulled down a few pictures of Saddam then -- only to be killed by Iraqi forces.


Gurfein playfully traded pats with a disabled man and turned down a dinner invitation from townspeople.


"Friend, friend," he told them in Arabic learned in the first Gulf War.


"We stopped in Kuwait that time," he said. "We were all ready to come up there then, and we never did."


The townspeople seemed grateful this time.


"No Saddam Hussein!" one young man in headscarf told Gurfein. "Bush!"

(Via Michael J. Totten) The Chronicle Online - Column: Whitewashing truth (in full):

Bala Ambati (Sweep of Daylight)

March 19, 2003


Sugarcoating and whitewashing Islamic fundamentalism has become a pastime for an odd assortment of loony leftists, so-called self-proclaimed "moderate" Muslims, warmed-over ex-Communists and perennial anti-Americans. The Sept. 11 aftermath witnessed these terrorist apologists blaming the CIA or Mossad for the attacks, spreading the idiotarian and bigoted canard about 4,000 Jews missing work that day, and simultaneously saying it was just punishment for the U.S. Those guilty of imbecilic dissonance demonstrate refusal to deal with inconvenient facts and damning reality. Rather than expressing contrition for these lies or mercifully shut up, they switched to blaming the attacks on Israeli-Palestinian conflict, "globalization", or U.S. "imperialism", further proving themselves untethered from fact.


Their logical leaps and contorted convolutions never cease, now excusing the mass murder of Australian tourists in Bali on resentment over repression of Palestinians. The suicide bombing of a bus in Manila, torching of churches and worshipers in Nigeria, and throat-slitting and beheading of unveiled Kashmiri women are also no doubt due to resentment over repression of Palestinians. When will this weirdly wicked farcical falsehood yield to the truth, which is uttered by Islamic fundamentalists themselves? When a French oil tanker was rammed by explosives, the Islamic Army of Aden declared, "We would have preferred to hit a US frigate. But it is no matter-the French are also infidels." It is time to take fundamentalists at their word--they want to kill or convert all "infidels" to their perverse brand of Islam.


The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has little to do with Islamic fundamentalist hatred of others. Islamic fundamentalists seek to form over decades a caliphate state stretching from the Phillipines to Spain, and they have suicide bombed Filipinos, firebombed tourists in Indonesia, massacred Hindus in temples in India, enslaved and performed genocide on Coptic Christians and animists in Sudan and tried to impose sharia in Nigeria. What does any of this have to do with Israel and the U.S.?


All of this would be happening whether or not the US or Israel existed. Sept. 11, the suicide-bombing of civilians in Israel, and all the other recent attacks, are part of the ideology that is Islamic fundamentalist imperalism. This ideology holds that non-Muslims are worthy only of conversion to Islam or death, sharia should obliterate the difference between church and state, the ideal society is 7th century Arabia, mass-murderers of "infidels" get 72 celestial virgins in heaven, and peace on earth will come when the whole world is "dar-al-Islam" (Islamic), a peace of the grave. Sheikh Abu Hamza of London spoke for many, "If a kafir person (non-believer) goes in a Muslim country, he is like a cow. Anybody can take him. That is the Islamic law. If a kafir is walking by and you catch him, he's booty. You can sell him in the market. if Muslims cannot take them and sell them in the market, you just kill them. It's okay. I say the reality that's in the Muslim books. Whether I say it or not, it's in the books."


We must stop sugarcoating Islamic fundamentalist imperialism, whether by romanticizing or justifying suicide bombing or passing off grotesqueness as "cultural difference." Justifying suicide bombers anywhere by any grievance bestows Mohammad Atta justification by his grievances. Moral relativism is popular because it enables the obtuse to rationalize cowardice. Without moral absolutes there is no need to choose between good and evil, and no shame in choosing evil.


"Moderate" Muslim-Americans too often indulge in a PC combination of issue-avoidance, subject-changing, blame-shifting, and victimology seemingly designed to deflect reality and confuse the unknowing, e.g., passing off "jihad" as inner cleansing and spiritual upliftment. Just last week, al-Azhar University, perhaps the world's most esteemed Islamic seminary, called for jihad by all Muslims on all Americans. In the real world, jihad kills. Some have written that the Quranic verses I presented in prior columns that I found inflammatory were misinterpreted or mistranslated; but then why do so many imams and sheikhs use those same translations to incite terrorism? If indeed such verses are mistranslated, it behooves Muslims to discredit and defrock the imams and sheikhs who commit blasphemy to justify mass murder.


Dr. Bala Ambati is a former fellow in the School of Medicine and is currently on the faculty at the Medical College of Georgia. His column appears every third Wednesday.

Michael Ledeen - National Review Online - More Bad News for Daschle

The vision-challenged opponents of the war against the terror masters, those who have been saying that you can't fight Saddam and terrorism at the same time, got bad news today from Baghdad. It turns out that our surgical strike on Wednesday night — the one aimed at the "top leadership" of Saddam's little hell-between-two-rivers — got an unexpected bonus: a terrorist from the Palestine Liberation Front. And the good news comes not from the Pentagon but from the PLF itself.


According to UPI, the Palestine Liberation Front said Thursday one of its guerrillas was killed during the U.S. missile strikes on Iraq. A PLF statement released in the southern city of Sidon (Syrian-occupied Lebanon) identified the slain guerrilla as 1st Lieutenant Ahmed Walid Raguib al-Baz who was killed early Thursday "while confronting the treacherous U.S. air bombardment on Iraq."


I don't know anything about the late Mr. Al-Baz, but I know all too much about the PLF and its evil leader, Abu Abbas. This was the group that organized the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro back in the mid-1980s. They segregated the American passengers from the rest, and then courageously pushed an American Jewish paraplegic in his wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer, into the Mediterranean. We tried to have Abu Abbas arrested in Italy, but he escaped through Yugoslavia to Yemen.


The PLF has long been one of the most lethal Palestinian terrorist groups, and achieved notoriety for its high-tech killings. Recently, Abu Abbas had come to live in the Palestinian Authority, but when Israel moved against the terrorists there he ran away — to Baghdad. The PLF has been one of the main conduits for Iraqi money to Palestinian suicide bombers.


So, in a single stroke, we have demonstrated the rightness of our cause and the wisdom of President Bush. It makes no sense to distinguish between the terrorists and the regimes that support them, for they are one and the same. We targeted a high-level meeting of top Iraqi officials, and willy-nilly eliminated a member of the terror network. Time will tell just how good and how lucky we were in the opening salvo of the Second Gulf War. But there is already cause for satisfaction.


Somebody should tell Daschle and Byrd.

InstaPundit asks.


Matt Welch may have the answer.

Saudis and Their Apologists vs. ‘Cabal’ of Neo-cons: Who has been leading the charge against Prince Bandar, King Fahd and the perfidious House of Saud? Certainly, many of the leading figures come from the neo-conservative Right. Who has been leading the charge against the “cabal” of government neo-cons like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz? Could it be the Saudis and their apologists?


That’s probably an over-simplification, but it’s a trend definitely worth tracking.[...]

(Via Andrew Sullivan) David Frum lays out the whole paleoconservative derivation. Where did Pat Buchanan's accusations come from? Frum takes them on. A great read.

William Safire counters Chirac's denial and amplifies his charge of recent illegal French sales to Iraq.

Dancing with Dogs has a couple links to some very good blog entries on the subject.

Via (Instapunit) JunkYardBlog points out an old (last month) link to today's report of ricin discovered in a Paris train station.

Ha'Aretz is reporting that the three missiles fired so far by Iraq were short-range FROG's, not Scuds.

This is curious. I just received this email from The Federalist containing a list of French product to boycott:

"...Commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice." --Thomas Jefferson (1797)


FRENCH PRODUCT LIST (Please forward this list)


Air Liquide, Alcatel, Allegra (allergy medication), Aqualung (including: Spirotechnique, Technisub, US Divers, and SeaQuest), AXA Advisors Bank of the West (owned by BNP Paribas), Beneteau (boats), BF Goodrich (owned by Michelin), BIC (razors, pens and lighters), Biotherm (cosmetics), Black Bush, Bollinger (champagne), Car & Driver Magazine, Cartier, Chanel, Cheese labeled "Product of France", Chivas Regal (scotch), Christian Dior, Christian Lacroix, Club Med (vacations), Culligan (owned by Vivendi), Daniel Cremieux, Dannon (yogurt and dairy foods), DKNY, Dom Perignon, Durand Crystal, Elle Magazine, Essilor Optical Products, Evian bottled water, Fina gas stations and Fina Oil (billions invested in Iraqi oil fields), First Hawaiian Bank, George Magazine, Givenchy, Glenlivet (scotch), Hachette Filipacchi New Media, Hennessy, Houghton Mifflin (books), Jacobs Creek (owned by Pernod Ricard since 1989), Jameson (whiskey), Jerry Springer (talk show) Krups (coffee and cappuccino makers), Lancome, Le Creuset (cookware), L'Oreal (health and beauty products), Louis Vuitton, Magellan Navigational Equipment, Marie Claire, Martel Cognac, Maybelline, Méphisto (shoes and clothes), Michelin (tires and auto parts), Mikasa (crystal and glass), Moet (champagne), Motel 6, Motown Records, MP3.com, Mumms (champagne), Nissan (cars; majority owned by Renault), Nivea, Normany Butter, Ondeo/Nalco Water Treatement, Parents Magazine, Peugeot (automobiles), Perrier Sparkling Water, Pierre Cardin, Playstation Magazine, ProScan (owned by Thomson Electronics, France), Publicis Group (including Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising), RCA (televisions and electronics; owned by Thomson Electronics), Red Magazine, Red Roof Inns (owned by Accor group in France), Renault (automobiles), Road & Track Magazine, Roquefort cheese (all Roquefort cheese is made in France), Rowenta (toasters, irons, coffee makers, etc,), Royal Canadian, Salomon (skis), Seagram's Gin, Sierra Software and Computer Games, Sitram Cookware, Smart & Final, Sofitel (hotels, owned by Accor), Sparkletts (water, owned by Danone), Spencer Gifts, Sundance Channel, Taylor Made (golf), Technicolor, T-Fal (kitchenware), Total gas stations, UbiSoft (computer games), Uniroyal, Universal Studios (music, movies and amusement parks; owned by Vivendi-Universal), USFilter, Veuve Clicquot Champagne, Vittel, VIVENDI-SEAGRAM, Wild Turkey (bourbon), Wine and Champagne labeled "Product of France", Woman's Day Magazine, Yoplait (The French company Sodiaal owns a 50 percent stake), Yves Saint Laurent, Yves Rocher, Zodiac Inflatable Boats.

I dunno, too much to hope, I guess, but you never know... Rumors are floating around the press that military sources are "confident" they got their man. I'm not sure how we'll know sans DNA evidence. Add that to the rumour pile, I guess.


Drudge Report:

CBS: 'Senior Officials' Think Saddam May Not Have Survived

Thu Mar 20 2003 10:33:00 ET


"I am being told by several senior officials not to take that taped speech Saddam gave last night as proof that he survived the attack," CBS NEWS reporter David Martin said on air.


"They say the evidence that put him in the bunker last night was very reliable, and they are confident that the cruise missiles and bunker-busting bombs that were fired at that bunker last night hit the target. So now, intelligence experts are studying the tape to determine if it is really Saddam, or a body double which he is known to use from time to time. And they are running a computerized voice analysis, comparing that speech with known recordings of Saddam's voice. But that's a process that takes awhile. So we may not have a quick answer."


"There is considerable belief in this government that they may, in fact, have gotten Saddam."




Developing...

Why the Left Loves Osama [and Saddam] - article by Daniel Pipes


New Pipes up and it's a good one.

Has anyone noticed an indifference in the precincts of the far Left to the fatalities of 9/11 and the horrors of Saddam Hussein?


Right after the 9/11 attack, German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen called it "the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos." Eric Foner, an ornament of Columbia University's Marxist firmament, trivialized it by announcing himself unsure "which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." Norman Mailer called the suicide hijackers "brilliant."


More recently, it appears that none of the millions of antiwar demonstrators have a bad word to say about Saddam Hussein nor an iota of sympathy for those oppressed, tortured and murdered by his regime. Instead, they vent fury against the American president and British prime minister.


Why is the Left nonchalant about the outrages committed by al Qaeda and Baghdad? [...]

Times Online - 'Boom-boom tomorrow?' Iraq's fears and tears


Need a reminder of why all reporting from Iraq has to be taken with a grain of salt (Hat Tip: King)?

[...]If you wander, minder in tow, through the streets or the souks, through the winding lanes of old Baghdad where remnants of colonial Britain survive, you can ask people questions, but must choose your words carefully. Merely broaching certain subjects can put them at great risk.


Politics is a forbidden subject. Even references to any kind of change of regime are dangerous. Once, while I was exploring the sad landscape of Babylon, a guide described the death of Nebuchadnezzar. “No one knows how he died,” she said. “Strange, considering the power during his reign.”


Suddenly she caught the metaphor and tried to control the strange smile tugging at her lips. Then she controlled herself and her face went dead.


Sometimes there are things you do not want to know. Most days I would see a man in Baghdad with no fingernails, just raw scars.


The first time I saw this, I was shocked, then curious: how could this have happened to him? Who did it? What had he done to endure such agony? But when I asked an Iraqi friend about it, his face closed like a door slamming shut. I repeated my question, thinking my friend had not heard. Still, he remained silent.[...]

Had a busy day today, and frankly I guess I'm just waiting like everyone else.

Via LGF:


Don't miss out on this audio clip of an Iraqi caller to a radio talk show ripping some "peace activist" a new one.

Via One Hand Clapping:


Times Online


Here's a very nice little run-down on the numbers concerning which countries sold Saddam his stuff:

Sir, I have often heard the claim that “we armed Saddam”. Thankfully A. H. Cordesman, in his 1998 report on the Iraqi military for the Center for Strategic & International Studies, has enlightened me.



In the key period between 1973-91 the US exported a mere $5 million of weapons to Iraq; more reprehensibly the UK sold $330 million-worth of arms. Of much greater interest are the arms export totals to Iraq of the four countries most against military action: Germany with $995 million, China $5,500 million, France $9,240 million, and the Russians a massive $31,800 million. So the claim that we armed Saddam has to be treated with a degree of care, particularly by those who would award the moral high ground in this debate to the leaders of nations such as Germany, France and Russia.

A Long, Winding Road to a Diplomatic Dead End


The NY Times has a worthwhile timeline on the diplomatic wrangling, particularly from Powell's perspective, that got us here. Of particular interest are the reminders of his meeting before the signing of 1441:

Dining in September with a group of foreign ministers at the elegant Hotel Pierre in New York, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was uneasy. France was advocating that a first resolution at the United Nations Security Council, demanding that Iraq promptly disclose its weapons and disarm, must be followed by a second resolution authorizing war if Iraq refused.


"Be sure about one thing," Mr. Powell told Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister. "Don't vote for the first, unless you are prepared to vote for the second."


Mr. de Villepin assented, officials who were there said.[...]

The French-American alienation reached the breaking point on Jan. 20, when Mr. Powell attended a Security Council session presided over by Mr. de Villepin, ostensibly to discuss terrorism. Afterward, the French foreign minister held a news conference and declared forcefully, "Nothing! Nothing!" justified war. American officials did not hear about the news conference until the next day.


"We looked at each other and said, `What the hell is going on here?' " said an aide to Mr. Powell. "I think it all started to come apart after that moment."

Just in from a German reader:


Der Spiegel - Saddam legt Videos über mobile Labors vor

Die irakische Regierung haben den Uno-Waffeninspektoren Fotos und Videos vorgelegt, auf denen mobile Labors zu sehen sind.


Bagdad/Kairo - Wie der Sprecher der Uno-Waffenkontrollkommission (Unmovic), Hiero Ueki, gestern Abend in Bagdad berichtete, wurde das Bildmaterial von den im Irak eingesetzten Labors am Samstag übergeben. Die US-Regierung hatte mehrfach erklärt, Präsident Saddam Hussein verstecke in derartigen Labors verbotene Kampfstoffe. Ueki nahm keine Stellung dazu, ob die irakische Führung eine militärische Nutzung der Labors eingeräumt hat oder nicht.

Saddam submits videos of mobile laboratories


The Iraqi government has submitted photographic and video material to the UN weapons inspectors on which mobile laboratories can be seen.


Baghdad/Cairo - As reported by UNMOVIC spokesman Hiero Ueki yesterday evening in Baghdad, the photographic and video material of the laboratories deployed in Iraq was submitted on Saturday. The US government has declared on numerous occasions that President Saddam Hussein has concealed banned chemical and biological agents in such laboratories. Ueki refrained from commenting on whether or not the Iraqi leadership has admitted to a military utilization of the laboratories.

Mr. Ueki also reported that the Baghdad Government yesterday gave UNMOVIC "photographs and videos showing the mobile laboratories that are in use in Iraq."

More email with my British pal. (cleaned up for readability)


Him: I take it you caught the Azores address and press Q&A?


I admit to being a bit puzzled at Bush's address at first. When he mentioned "tomorrow", as the day we'll find out ... I was trying to work out if that was a declaration of war or not. It wasn't really till Blair spoke that I realised what they've (seemingly) planned.


I'm guessing a 24-hour deadline delivered to the Security Council tomorrow? The words seem strong enough for it to be just 24 hours (which is obviously a formality). Failing compliance with that, the commencement of hostilities?


I was very pleased with the emphasis placed on Iraq's natural resources being utilized to the benefit of the Iraqis. OK, I have no doubts that the US, Brits and Spain will filter off a fair slice of profit there, too (and rightly so, if you ask me), but the wording seemed to totally rule out FRANCE !!! Yeehaaw. Screw Total Fina :-)


A little less mention of including the UN in the future, especially in 21st century wars, would have been nice. Though I quite liked Bush's final bit, slagged the UN off a bit there.


Except for the "legs"...

I'm sure he meant to say (in reference to the UN) "get their act together"... But it came out as "Get their ... legs ... their legs of responsibility"

LOL


Me: I'm sorry to say I f**king missed it. My folks came back up from their winter in Florida so we were out. So far I've not been able to catch more than a snippet here and there. Now I'd like to watch the whole thing but it's not up at whitehouse.gov yet.


I think the 24 hour thing sounds about right. I *think* they're going to give the UN tonight and tomorrow by the end of the day we'll see what they've come up with and that'll be it. I'm sure they'd rather not have a vote that they'll lose - Blair could always say, "Look, now the US is going ahead anyway and we're not going to let them go alone" (He's fucked anyway from what I can tell. He's got to count on a quick war and shitloads of undeclared nasty stuff in vast underground storehouses and lots of horrible stories from survivors. But don't believe for one second any fantasy about that being enough, though. The left and the rest of the anti-American crowd will be able to spin whatever happens to cast doubt on the success of this no matter what happens.) The thing is that at Bush's last big press conference, he said that there would definitely be a vote at the UN, that everyone would have to "show their cards." Now, he could spin it and say that since France has said they'll veto no matter what, there's no point, but I don't think it'll work out well either way. Oh, and they've also got

to give the UN guys a chance to clear out.[...]


And they better take a cut of the proceeds! (quietly)


The good side-benefit to this whole thing is that disdain for the UN has gone from being a fairly fringe, right-wing thing to relatively mainstream in the US right now. No politician is going to be able to make much hay about working with the UN as an important matter anymore


Me (later): OK, I just read the transcript up at whitehouse.gov. I'd still rather see video to get the nuance, but still, it'll have to do.


OK, I get that what's going on at the UN is that they're gonna go to the last minute at the UN to see if they can pull off the 9 votes and force France to veto. If not, then the lesser evil I guess will be to skip the vote, blame France for saying in advance that they'd veto anyway, and Bush will spin and say that France had "shown their cards" which was all he was really asking for at his press conference (not). I guess they'll need to stay with what they have in 1441 so they can claim to be still acting within international law.


I don't know. Let me be the 7 millionth blogger to say that I think the war starts tomorrow night (Baghdad time). Of course, now I'll find out about some statement or reason why that's not so, but as far as I know now...


Side note: I was wondering about the fact that it seemed that none of the news reports were saying that the Portuguese Prime Minister would be present, even though The Azores is part of Portugal. A Portuguese-American caller to a talk radio show I was listening to said not to worry, he'll be there, they're just very quiet about those things in Portugal. I dunno. Curious.


Oh, and maybe I'm glad I didn't see the video. The "legs" thing...I cringe when he does stuff like that.

NYPOST.COM Post Opinion: Editorials: USEFUL IDIOTS REDUX (in full)


Yes, I know we've all read this before, but I can't seem to resist repeating it again.

March 16, 2003 -- Gotham's Saddamites are gearing up again to peddle their seditious nonsense on the sidewalks of New York. They've even won the right to march in the streets on Saturday - though, predictably, they're still fighting attempts to keep things orderly.


But apart from when and where they should be allowed to march, New Yorkers need to pay attention to what's said at this self-styled "peace" rally.


And to take note of who's organizing it.


Because the so-called movement is no spontaneous gesture by average Americans, no matter what its sponsors claim.


It's a collection of the same, tired old radical leftists who've spent the past 40 years preaching hatred of all things American - and particularly of U.S. foreign policy, which they depict as an instrument of imperialist aggression.


As writers like Byron York and Ronald Radosh have disclosed on these pages, behind the movie stars and the pop singers who speak at their antiwar rallies lies the same collection of extremists who, even now, maintain ties to the remnants of old-line communism and even to Middle East terrorism.


Consider: Not In Our Name, the major antiwar organizer, relies for its fund raising on the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) - which, in turn, sponsors the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom.


Until recently, that group's president was Sami Al-Arian - the Florida professor just indicted on 50 counts of racketeering, extortion, money-laundering, perjury and fraud in connection with his role as the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.


IFCO also sponsors Refuse and Resist!, an actively pro-Castro group with ties to the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party - one of whose members, Clark Kissinger, has played a key role in organizing the pro-Saddam rallies.


Indeed, according to York, Not in Our Name was created one year ago by a group of left-wing extremists representing, among other groups, the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party and the International League of Peoples' Struggles, as well as the outfits cited above.


Indeed, Not in Our Name's original financial sponsor, the Bill of Rights Foundation, sent nearly all of its money to the legal defense of convicted cop-killer - and radical icon - Mumia Abu-Jamal.


Also serving a key behind-the-scenes role is Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, a front group for veteran America-basher Ramsey Clark's International Action Center - itself a front group for the communist Workers World Party.


True, not all participants are dedicated members of such extremist hate groups. But those who plan to hit the streets on Saturday need to take a long, hard look at the "leaders" they'll be following.


None of them have anything to do with peace.

OpinionJournal - Featured Article


OpinionJournal prints an adaptation of a recent speech given by the original Churchill's grandson with a view to his ancestor's mistakes and his views that could help guide us now.

[...]Mr. Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, in urging delay, know full well that if the impending attack is not launched in the next two to three weeks, it cannot, realistically, take place until the end of the year, granting Saddam an eight-month reprieve. In whose interest would that be, I wonder? No doubt they imagine that, by their delaying tactics, they can save Saddam's bacon and with it their own arms-for-oil contracts. But I have news for these two shabby peace-mongers who know no shame: By their failure to join in the coalition of the willing--indeed, by their deliberate attempts to frustrate the removal of Saddam--they will forfeit both their arms contracts and their Iraqi oil. And it could not happen to nicer people![...]

WorldNetDaily: Spain links Iraq to 9-11 attacks

An alleged terrorist accused of helping the Sept. 11 conspirators was invited to a party by the Iraqi ambassador to Spain under his al-Qaida pseudonym, according to documents seized by Spanish investigators and turned over to U.S. authorities, the London Observer reports.


Yusuf Galan, who was photographed being trained at a camp run by Osama bin Laden, is now in jail, awaiting trial in Madrid. The indictment against him, drawn up by investigating judge Baltasar Garzon, claims he was "directly involved with the preparation and carrying out of the attacks ... by the suicide pilots on 11 September."


Evidence of Galan's links with Iraqi government officials came to light only recently, as investigators pored through more than 40,000 pages of documents seized in raids at the homes of Galan and seven alleged co-conspirators. The Spanish authorities have supplied copies to lawyers in America, and this week the documents will form part of a dossier to be filed in a federal court in Washington[...]

Dawson Speaks has a very useful chronology of the supposed "rush to war" using references to news reports and White House documents. Very much worth going over as a refresher.

(Via Israpundit) Israel removes all mention of 'independent' state in 'road map' - By Aluf Benn

All mention of an "independent" Palestinian state has been eliminated in Israel's response to the "road map" prepared by the Quartet - the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia.


An "independent" Palestinian state, which would be initially established along temporary borders, is replaced with "certain attributes of sovereignty" and any such state is required to be "credible" and "law abiding."


According to Israeli officials the term "independent" requires clarification and they point out that it was also omitted from George Bush's June 24, 2002 speech upon which the road map is based.

Purely a technical change here at solomonia.com that shouldn't have any affect on any end user other than maybe updating a link. This allows me to use "Server Side Includes" so I can update the links and other sidebar content without waiting for Greymatter to rebuild all of my files. That takes longer and longer every day as I add more entries and every single entry page needs to be rebuilt even if I add even one link.


If that doesn't mean anything to you, don't worry, it barely means anything to me, either.

Salam over at Where is Raed ? has a rant that should serve as a reality check to those who get puzzled sometimes that occastionally the people who live in the countries we "bail out" don't always seem overly grateful to us, even when their lot may be bettered.

Martin Kramer gives us a very good reminder on why it's a prudent thing not to be too quick to turn over administration of captured Iraqi areas to the locals. It'll be a bit before we can back off and not worry about extreme bloodshed in our wake.

[...]British forces thus left key areas of both cities to the mercies of a defeated regime. In Basra, the abdication resulted in the sack of the bazaar by rioters and looters. In Baghdad, it was far worse. Wavell instructed that his forces "should not get involved in street fighting in disadvantageous conditions." So while the British forces camped west of the Tigris, looting on the east bank by the bedouin and the remnants of the army and police turned into a full-scale pogrom. (Jews used the term farhud, a murderous riot.)


About 180 Jews (and some Muslims) were slaughtered. A British officer later wrote of hearing "the growing crescendo of rifle and machine-gun fire. Baghdad was given up to the looters. All who cared to defend their own belongings were killed, while eight miles to the west waited the eager British force which could have prevented all this." Iraq's ancient Jewish community never fully recovered from the blow, and its younger members began to plan emigration. (The pogrom also left a mark on young Elie Kedourie, who lived through it.)[...]

Also via Dean Esmay. Dean gives us a link to Bjorn Staerk's description of some gentle hinting on the part of the American Ambassador to Norway that perhaps Norway should maybe, kinda, sorta show some appreciation to a long time friend (us) and wonders if little events like this aren't happening in a lot of places. My guess: Yes.

(Via Dean Esmay): First Person: Hell no, I won't go - A fundamental deception lies at the core of the peace & justice movement

Call me a chastened peacenik. For the first Gulf war, I made every vigil and demonstration in Pittsburgh (10 years before that, I was at peace rallies in Italy against American missiles coming to Europe). I think I was wrong.[...]

Reuters

VIENNA (Reuters) - U.N. chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei will consult the Security Council on Monday about an Iraqi invitation to visit Baghdad to discuss disarmament issues, U.N. officials said.

"They (Blix and ElBaradei) plan to consult with the Security Council on Monday and then they'll make a decision whether to go," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told Reuters in Vienna on Saturday.

Iraq said earlier it wanted Blix and ElBaradei to visit Baghdad as soon as possible to "discuss ways to speed up joint cooperation...particularly on issues that were considered pending" by the inspectors.

NATIONAL POST - Mark Steyn


If the French seek to craft the EU as an economic competitor to the USA, then as things are going, I don't think we have much to fear. Socialism will cripple Europe as it crippled the Soviets before it. Steyn writes on the nonsense of American empire and the disturbing future of the EU.

Tom Gross on New York Times & Israel on National Review Online - All The News That’s Fit to Print?


This is a wonderfully detailed run-down on the anti-Israel bias at the New York Times. Well worth the read. A careful reader will be lead easily along to the author's conclusion, that sometimes even well-meaning "even-handedness" just goes on to cause greater problems.

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today


No, the Zionists have nothing to do with Korea (YET), but Best of the Web Today has some good stuff, as usual. First a pointer to this article concerning the sudden cooling-off in overt anti-Americanism in South Korea following Rummy's remarks about redeploying the troops.


Finally, if you scroll down to "The Plot Thickens" you'll find Taranto's further disection of the Zionist conspiracy in Iraq silliness.

Israel21c


This must be old news to most everyone but me. I even posted about the WTC design being chosen, but I failed to take note of the fact that the architect, Daniel Libeskind, is an Israeli-American. Something poetic in that, I guess. I've gotta start paying attention more. I guess blogging means not being shy about sharing your embarrassment before the world.

Israeli-American architect Daniel Libeskind has been chosen to design the new New York complex which will stand on the site of the World Trade Center.


Following months of debate and an architectural competition, New York officials appointed Libeskind to design the world's tallest building at the WTC site while retaining a memorial to the more than 3,000 victims of September 11, 2001.


While Libeskind holds joint Israeli-U.S. citizenship and currently lives in Berlin, he doesn't discount the chapter of his life spent in Israel nor his Jewish roots. "I am still an Israeli," he told The Jerusalem Post in an interview last year.


He recently noted in a German newspaper that parallels to his sombre-yet-soaring plan for rebuilding Ground Zero in Manhattan can be found in Jerusalem's Temple Mount.[...]

TCS: Defense - Our World-Historical Gamble By Lee Harris


This great piece has been all over the blogosphere, but I only now got around to reading throught the whole thing. It consolidates a whole bunch of concepts that have been right in front of us for some time now.


Anyway, I'm grabbing the quote of the week from it as well.

Reuters | Bereaved Palestinians Get $245,000 from Saddam

GAZA (Reuters) - Families of Palestinians killed by Israel received $245,000 in checks from Saddam Hussein on Wednesday, underscoring the Iraqi leader's continued support for a Palestinian revolt as he faces the prospect of a U.S.-led war.


Leaders of a pro-Iraq Palestinian group handed out the checks after delivering fiery speeches extolling the Iraqi president's virtues to hundreds of relatives of "martyrs" packed into a dingy YMCA hall in Gaza City.


Officials of the Palestinian Arab Liberation Front staging the ceremony said Saddam had now paid $35 million to support the kin of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip and West Bank since militants rose up against Israel there 29 months ago.


"Saddam Hussein considers those who die in martyrdom attacks as people who have won the highest degree of martyrdom," an official of the Arab Liberation Front said.


"Iraq and Palestine are in one trench. Saddam is a hero," said a banner over a mural of Saddam and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who sided with Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War against U.S.-led forces but has kept a low profile this time.


A family of a Palestinian suicide bomber received a check for $25,000 and 22 families of militants killed in fighting or of civilians killed during Israeli army offensives, incursions or air strikes got $10,000 each.[...]

OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today has a good run-down on Said, Moran and Buchanan's recent pronouncements and the question of anti-Semetism. I've put pointers to two of those (Said and Buchanon) here previously.


I'm against being too quick to cry "anti-semite." Neither Moran nor Buchanan's statements were, in and of themselves, anti-semitic. It's all in the context and the past history of the person. From the context of the Moran statement (that he was addressing a self-identified Jewish person) it doesn't sound like an anti-semitic statement at all, frankly. In fact, it just sounds accurate. That doesn't mean he's not an anti-semite - he may very well be and I understand he has a bit of a checkered past, but I think we should be careful with these accusations.


Buchanan has issues.


What's dangerous in too-quickly writing off some of these people as anti-semites, though, is that one misses the opportunity to address the substance of the issue, if any. This is particularly true in the case of Buchanan's editorial. The fact is that I have never felt any dissonance between my pro-Israel stance and my feelings as a patriotic American. We share so much in common history, background, culture, goals, enemies and a common future, that there's just no issue or worry for me, nor do I expect there to be and I don't mind stating so.


OTOH, if you're talking about overt crap like David Duke's droolings over the ZOG or somesuch, well, I admit, it would be a waste of time to spend much energy rebutting, like arguing with the tin-foil cap crowd over Roswell - but that's not the case with someone like Buchanan. He's far more likely to have tapped into something unsaid but felt by a lot of people, and the chance to address those thoughts is not an opportunity to be thrown away lightly.


OT: One of Taranto's readers suggests "Serious Consequences" as an alternate name for the MOAB. I couldn't agree more!

New York Times - The French Connection By William Safire


Safire has some details on some of the dirty-dealings most of us know are going on amongst Saddam, Syria, China and France (and others). We'll have to wait until after the war to read the entire book on such dealings - if we ever get the chance, they're so complex at times (as reading this piece will show).

[...]A shipment of 20 tons of HTPB, whose sale to Iraq is forbidden by U.N. resolutions and the oil-for-food agreement, left China in August 2002 in a 40-foot container. It arrived in the Syrian port of Tartus (fortified by the Knights Templar in 1183, and the Mediterranean terminus for an Iraqi oil pipeline today) and was received there by a trading company that was an intermediary for the Iraqi missile industry, the end user. The HTPB was then trucked across Syria to Iraq.


Syria has no sophisticated missile-building program. What rocket weaponry it has comes off the shelf (and usually on credit) from Russia, so it therefore has no use for HTPB. But cash-starved Syria is the conduit for missile supplies to cash-flush Saddam, as this shipment demonstrates. We will have to wait until after the war to find out how much other weaponry, for what huge fees, Saddam has stored in currently un-inspectable Syrian warehouses.


The French connection — brokering the deal among the Chinese producer, the Syrian land transporter and the Iraqi buyer — is no great secret to the world's arms merchants. French intelligence has long been aware of it. The requirement for a French export license as well as U.N. sanctions approval may have been averted by disguising it as a direct offshore sale from China to Syria.[...]

Just thought I'd point out that not all Nobel Peace Prize winners are of the idiotarian variety a la Jimmy Carter. First, we have Lech Walessa of Poland. [hat tip: King] Yahoo! News - Polish Nobel Peace laureate Walesa urges backing for U.S.-led strike on Iraq I'll reproduce the whole article here since the Yahoo links don't last:

WARSAW, Poland - Former Polish President Lech Walesa, the winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize, on Wednesday urged the U.N. Security Council to back a U.S.-led war on Iraq and criticized the United Nation's "ineffectiveness" so far.


The United States and Britain are seeking support for a new resolution that would give Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein an ultimatum to disarm, or face war. They face opposition from France, Russia and other nations that argue U.N. weapons inspections should continue.


"International authorization for the United States is today the only way to solve common problems," Walesa said in a statement. "In view of the ineffectiveness of U.N. actions, the international community must authorize the United States and its allies, as its representatives, to take the necessary action."


"Otherwise, there will be further conflicts and mutual accusations will weaken cooperation between the nations of the democratic world," Walesa added.


If the new resolution is defeated, U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have said they would be prepared to go to war anyway. Poland's current government backs their stance.


Walesa, the founder of the Solidarity movement and a key figure in the end of communism in Poland, was president from 1990 until 1995, when he lost his re-election bid to current President Aleksander Kwasniewski.

Telegraph | Opinion | He's right

Any fair-minded person watching Tony Blair's performance in the House of Commons yesterday would have concluded that we have a prime minister fit to lead us into war.[...]

Mr Blair displayed courtesy, conviction, clarity, courage and even wit. His line was that the UN has willed the end of the disarmament of Saddam Hussein again and again: now the members of the Security Council must show that they will the means. Whether or not it was a mistake to "go the UN route" is, for the time being, irrelevant.


Mr Blair has taken that route, and he is following its logic with determination and belief. President Chirac said on Monday: "No matter what the circumstances, we will vote No." Those were not the words of someone who wants to make the international system work; Mr Blair's words were.


It is worth appealing to fair-mindedness here because that quality seems to have deserted the debate about Iraq. Whatever people's doubts and fears, there is something sick about a political culture in which television audiences slow-handclap a prime minister on the brink of war and MPs of his own party scurry round thinking of ways of overthrowing him.

One Hand Clapping


Sensing has a very nice, concise piece on why, even without UN approval, Bush may go to war with Iraq and not violate US law - UN treaty not withstanding. Well worth a read.

Times Online - Bush Sr warning over unilateral action


Bush Sr. isn't pulling a Carter is he? At a talk he gave recently at Tufts University, he apparently had some slightly critical things to say about the path we're on.

THE first President Bush has told his son that hopes of peace in the Middle East would be ruined if a war with Iraq were not backed by international unity.

Drawing on his own experiences before and after the 1991 Gulf War, Mr Bush Sr said that the brief flowering of hope for Arab-Israeli relations a decade ago would never have happened if America had ignored the will of the United Nations.


He also urged the President to resist his tendency to bear grudges, advising his son to bridge the rift between the United States, France and Germany.


“You’ve got to reach out to the other person. You’ve got to convince them that long-term friendship should trump short-term adversity,” he said.


The former President’s comments reflect unease among the Bush family and its entourage at the way that George W. Bush is ignoring international opinion and overriding the institutions that his father sought to uphold. Mr Bush Sr is a former US Ambassador to the UN and comes from a family steeped in multi-lateralist traditions


Although not addressed to his son in person, the message, in a speech at Tufts University in Massachusetts, was unmistakeable. Mr Bush Sr even came close to conceding that opponents of his son’s case against President Saddam Hussein, who he himself is on record as loathing, have legitimate cause for concern.[...]

Got an email from a British reader:

WTF is with Donald? Are those Freudian slips, or calculated rhetoric? I've mentioned before that I don't buy into political altrusim, but I've nevertheless always believed that Tony was on the up-and-up with regards to Iraq.


The guy genuinely "believes" what he's saying. And he's in "no" danger orf being voted out on this issue (at least, not until regular election time comes round). The Tories are far too in love with him for that to happen.

US offering carrots to India on Iraq - The Times of India


Via Winds of Change


The US has been offering India a piece of Iraqi reconstruction. Maybe India could get that seat on the UN Security Council, after all, although it won't be the UN...

In an interview with The Times of India, US ambassador to India Robert Blackwill said, "We hope you have a major part to play and we have conveyed that at very high levels."[...]


Blackwill said India with its "very well developed successful norms in civil society" had a role to play in the "construction of civil society" in Iraq and "economic reconstruction". India, he said, had a "comparative advantage" over many countries because of three factors: Its "vital civil society", its "long term ties with Iraq" and the fact that "India would be welcomed in that situation" where "not every country would be welcomed." "So for all those reasons, we hope you have a major part to play and we have conveyed that at very high levels," he said.


The ambassador, however, added that detailed discussions on this aspect had not yet been held with the Indian government because the US did not want to give the impression that it was "planning in detail for a situation which has not yet happenned."


The US now had "a very clear perception of India's substantive and serious equities in the region" unlike during the 1991 Gulf war, Blackwill said, claiming that India itself had also been able to influence US policy to some degree.[...]

David Frum has a creative retort to Pat Buchanon's latest screed in National Review:


David Frum's Diary on National Review Online

[...]“We charge that a cabal of writers who misuse the title of ‘conservatives’ are rallying to defend an Iraqi dictator who has waged war on American allies, attempted to assassinate an American president, fired on American aircraft, and who is now arming to threaten Americans with mass murder.


“We charge them with making common cause with left-wing radicals and radical Islamists, former communists and other people who hate the United States – all in order to prematurely halt the war on terror and preserve the Iraqi dictator’s rule.


“We charge them with forgetting George Washington’s warning in his Farewell Address against ‘habitual hatred’ for any nation – and instead allowing their unreasoning loathing of the Jewish state to lead them into what Washington condemned as a ‘passionate attachment’ to Baathist Iraq.


“We charge them with disregarding their wartime duty to lay aside their prejudices and resentments for the sake of the common good. We charge them with attempting to undermine a conservative Republican president in a moment of national emergency. We charge them with acting as excuse-makers for America’s enemies. We charge them with failing to put America first.”

Middle East Newsline


Related to the below story, also via LGF


Al Azhar is a prominent Sunni Muslim school and sponsored by our friends in the Egyptian government.

CAIRO [MENL] -- The most prominent Sunni Muslim seminary, sponsored by the Egyptian government, has called for holy war against the United States and its allies.


The Cairo-based Al Azhar seminary issued a ruling on Monday that called on Muslims to wage a "jihad," or holy war against the United States and allied forces that participate in the war against Iraq. The seminary said all Muslims are required by their religion to join the jihad once the United States attacks Baghdad. The communique referred to the United States as the crusader.


"The jihad against the crusader forces is a commandment on all Muslims should the foreign forces begin hostilities," Al Azhar's Supreme Council said in the ruling.


The communique was the most explicit call by Al Azhar for Muslims to attack U.S. interests throughout the Middle East. For months, Al Azhar and its spiritual leader, Mohammed Sid Tantawi, had remained silent on the issue of a Muslim response to a U.S. war against Iraq.

WorldNetDaily: Sheik joins rabbi's condemnation of Arafat


Via: LGF


Apparently, moderate Muslims have to be imported here.

A Muslim sheik who condemns Yasser Arafat as a terrorist joined a Jewish rabbi in a protest outside the Palestinian Liberation Organization's U.N. mission in New York.


During dozens of demonstrations and memorials in recent months, Rabbi Avi Weiss, president of the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, had been calling, unsuccessfully, for a Muslim leader to join him in protesting Palestinian terrorist attacks.


One has answered the call, though he was in the U.S. only for a visit.


Sheik Abdul Hadi Palazzi, secretary general of the Italian Muslim Association, says it is time for the "world and civilized nations not to consider the Palestinian Authority as representative of a people, of having a place among the nations, but rather as a gang promoting terror, educating children in terror from elementary school age."


Responding last week to the attack in Haifa that killed 15 Israelis, Palazzi said at the New York protest, "We must ask if the perpetrators were educated to become suicide bombers with funds originating with American or European taxpayers."


In an interview with WorldNetDaily before returning to Rome yesterday, Palazzi urged the United States to become consistent in its fight against terrorism. He fears a repeat of history following the likely, upcoming defeat of Saddam Hussein.


After the Gulf War in 1991, he noted, the U.S. pressed Israel to accept the Oslo peace process, which resulted in the present intifada, or uprising. Palazzi fears that after Saddam's demise, the U.S. will make a similar miscalculation and renew a path toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.


"Why would you destroy a totalitarian regime in one part of the world and create it in another?" Palazzi asked.[...]


Palazzi believes that, in actuality, the Muslims of Iraq see a potential U.S. military action as "an opportunity for its liberation."


"We have already seen what's happened in the no-fly zone," he said. "We have in the north of Iraq, already, a liberated Kurdish area where Muslims are living in freedom."


A crusade means "a world where you want to enforce a religion on people, but this never happened in the liberation of that part of Iraq," he said. "On the contrary, we see that those people are now free."


The same situation can also be extended to the rest of Iraq, he asserted.[...]

CAMERA Column: Terror Rules at NPR

An Islamic extremist explodes a bomb amidst a crowd of civilians on March 4th, killing more than 20, including himself. Less than a day later another Islamic extremist explodes a bomb on a civilian bus, killing more than 15, including himself.


Parallel stories, but not covered in a parallel way on National Public Radio. In consecutive news segments on the March 5th broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition, the first attack was described as a "terrorist bombing," with "Muslim insurgents" the likely perpetrators. The report offered no explanation why the attack might have occurred, and in particular nothing that might have been construed as justification.


The second attack was reported without using any form of the word terror, and included nothing about who the likely perpetrators might have been, describing them only as “militants.” Moreover, the attack, and similar attacks in the past, were implicitly justified as a “campaign against ... occupation.”


Why the gross disparity, with straight news reporting in the first case, and clear advocacy in the second? Of course, the answer is that the first attack was in the Philippines, and was carried out by the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front, while the second attack was in Israel, targeted Israeli civilians, and was carried out by Palestinians.


Because Palestinians are virtually a protected class at NPR, the perpetrators of the attack in Israel are described not as Islamic extremists, or Muslims, or even Palestinians, but as "militants," who are said to be pursuing a “campaign against Israeli occupation.” The fact that Hamas, which carried out the attack, considers all of Israel to be “occupied” was not deemed worthy of mention by NPR, nor the fact that the Palestinians had rejected at Camp David and Taba Israeli offers to end anything that could reasonably be called an “occupation.”


NPR's March 5th news report is yet one more example of the truism that at NPR facts take a back seat to a European-style anti-Israel agenda which is pursued with an almost religious fervor.

The Dissident Frogman has an interesting tid-bit on a bunch of French web-sites which were shut down. The interesting bit is that these were all radical pro-Israel, pro-America sites, while, the Frogman insists, there are many equally radical sites on the other side which are still up. A sign of a double-standard? A sign of what side the French are really on? Maybe an unfair doubt on the motives of the shut-down. Maybe they just haven't gotten to the others, yet. Interesting, none the less.

Via OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today:


Pravda: Iraq: The Truth, The Whole Truth:

Dominican Sister Sharine, Iraqi, lives in Baghad. She went to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where she was heard by Pravda.Ru contacts, among them Joao Pedro Stedille, who sent us this report. We thank Senhor Stedille most sincerely for this chilling report.


Viruses and mice dropped by parachute against Iraqi agriculture

“One of the main causes of the hunger which afflicts the Iraqi people is the policy adopted by the USA, for more than eight years now, of sending viruses against Iraqi crops and the policy of dropping thousands of mice by parachute to destroy what little we have”.


Chemical weaponry deployed by the United States of America


Bombardeamentos com armas químicas feitas pelos EUA


“The United States of America used chemical weapons in their systematic bombings. There is hardly any drinking water left in Iraq, specially in Baghdad, a result of these bombing raids with chemical weapons which have contaminated the water”,[...]

As I say in my about me page, when I started this page a short time ago, I really had no idea about the world of blogs. I just had things swirling in my brain and wanted an outlet. The nice thing about making your own web page as opposed to trying to work out your frustrations in a BBS community, is that on your own web page, you don't need to put up with anyone else's crap (if you don't want to). On a BBS you have to deal with the never-ending drive to defend yourself as people twist your words into all sorts of pretzelized shapes. On your own page...screw it, just ban 'em if they bug ya - who can blame you? It's yours, not a piece of some damn "community" everyone feels a part of.


Since starting this, I started lampreying myself into the big world of blogging and I've noticed something - there are a lot of really intelligent, interesting people out there! Holy crap! I've been adding links to the list of Blogs at left as I surf around, basically any page that seemed like it had a slant I liked, looked decent and seemed to be updated regularly. I've slowed down on that, though, cause, damn again, there are a LOT of great pages out there.


I used to avoid "personal opinion pages" since I was never really that interested in anyone else's stinky opinion, frankly. Hell, if I want someone's opinion I'll beat it out of 'em, other than that, shut up. That's my attitude, but of course, that's just a self-defense mechanism to avoid being annoyed by...annoying opinions. But one thing that I've enjoyed about the blogosphere is the way one may "follow the memes." Given the size of the blogosphere, it's not been difficult to find (and bookmark) only those pages which have a slant I enjoy, and that's been...soothing.


The difficult thing is that I end up getting up a thought, and no sooner have I thought it, than I find someone else has already said the same damn thing I was thinking about, only they said it probably better than I was ever going to. So my page here ends up being pointers and comments, but that's fine...cause it's mine! Ha!


Speaking of following the memes, a recent post got picked up by some other sites and generated a bunch of hits. It was interesting to watch. First it was picked up by Dancing with Dogs, from there to Spleenville, then on to Dean Esmay, picking up hits as it went until it hit Instapundit where it topped out at about 1700 hits from that one source. Not sure if that's interesting to anyone else, but it was interesting to watch from my perspective. Oh, a by-product was that a bunch of people started hot-linking one of the photos from the story. I didn't mind so much that a folks posting in various BBS threads did it (interestingly, it seems to have gotten some traction in automobile enthusiast BBS's), but it was a little troublesome that other bloggers and webmasters did so (without an accompanying link), as they should know better. I've since disabled remote linking.


Well, ttfn...on we go, cruising the news.

Wired News: Afghan Internet Domain Launches

KABUL, Afghanistan -- "Planting its flag in cyberspace," Afghanistan will officially activate its .af Internet domain name on Monday for Afghan e-mail addresses and Web sites, officials and the United Nations said.


The effort, a joint collaboration between the U.N. Development Program and the Afghan Ministry of Communications, marks a giant technological leap for a country where the Internet was banned for years during the former Taliban regime. But it is likely to be a long time before the average, impoverished Afghan citizen will be able to afford to explore the new possibilities.[...]


So far, just two websites have been registered under the .af domain, one belonging to the Ministry of Communications, the other to UNDP. As of Sunday, the ministry site was still "under construction."


Despite the Internet's spread around the world in the last decade, it remains a rarity in Afghanistan, which is still struggling to recover from more than two decades of near-continuous warfare.


A handful of Internet cafes have sprung up in the war-battered capital, Kabul, since last summer, but online time is too expensive for the average citizen, who typically earns less than a dollar a day.

bitter sanity - Europe, Multilateralism, and Moral Imperatives Redux:


A very interesting piece on the differences in view between here and there (via Instapundit).

Via SharkBlog: Ha'aretz - Article - Enemies, a post-national story


Joffe is the editor of the German weekly Die Zeit. He gave a lecture recently at Ben Gurion University in Israel. Ha'Aretz has a summary that's very interesting and worth reading in full.


Here are a few choice bits:

[...]According to Joffe, Israel and the U.S. share basic traits that prompt many Americans to identify with Israel and also generate common hostility against them by circle in Europe and the Arab world. "They are the two most successful states in their surroundings - the U.S. in global surroundings, and Israel in the Middle East. Israel is in fact a constant reminder to the Arab world of its failure in economic, social, political and gender-related development. So much so that it is difficult to decide whether the Jews are hated because of their close alliance with the U.S., or whether the U.S. is hated because of its alliance with the Jews."


The often hostile attitude of Europe toward the U.S. and Israel has another deep cause as well, Joffe says: "Some of the Western European countries are leading the post-national age. Even their soldiers, who are stationed in various parts of the world, are there within the framework of international or multinational forces. After all we have gone through in the past several centuries, these states are also interested in not using their force for the benefit of national interests. All this gives them a feeling of moral superiority over societies that still remain in the national age. Both the U.S. and Israel are in that category. They have a strong national consciousness and a strong ideological identity. In the post-national age of blurring, they are countries that know who they are and what they want to be. They are also societies that define themselves by means of charter documents and not through nationalism: the Jews through the Torah and the Americans through the Constitution."[...]


[...]Concerning Europe's attitude toward the concept of the "clash of civilizations" (the title of Samuel Huntington's well-known book) as the basis of the confrontation with Islamic fundamentalism, Joffe remarks, "The Europeans do not believe in that because they do not want to believe in it. Because the implication of such an idea is very grave for states that have such large Muslim communities, such as Britain, France and Germany. They believe there should be a way to deal with the threat without a sharp confrontation."


In his lecture, Joffe said the Europeans do not really understand what happened on September 11. What happened, he said, is a complete transformation of American policy. According to Joffe, Bush said to himself that for the past 50 years the West lived more or less reasonably with the pathology of the Middle East. As long as the pathology did not spread to the outside and did not endanger Israel's existence, the West could live with it and even forge alliances in the region to counterbalance the Soviet Union. However, on September 11, it became clear that this pathology is definitely spreading outward, and therefore the time had come to attack it head-on.[...]


[...]But there is also another factor, he notes: "The Europeans know the U.S. guarantees Israel's security, so it is easy for them to play the `Arab game.' If it were not for that American guarantee, I think they would be far more cautious."[...]

ABCNEWS.com : Officials Narrow Bin Laden Search to Caravan

U.S. and Pakistani officials have narrowed their search for Osama bin Laden to a caravan near the border of southwestern Pakistan, ABCNEWS has learned.


The CIA and Pakistani army are electronically tracking the large caravan of people on foot and horseback through the rugged mountain area of Pakistan between the borders with Iran and Afghanistan, Pakistani officials told ABCNEWS.

Bin Laden may be traveling with the caravan and may be on foot.


Officials have cast a net around the caravan — using electronic U.S. surveillance and planes with cameras that can see through darkness to monitor its movement along a trail.


U.S. officials say they are not 100 percent sure that bin Laden is in the caravan, but they have a high degree of probability that he is and have closed off the area to all other traffic.


The area is so rugged that officials may not be able to move in with military vehicles, but instead could launch an operation with CIA paramilitary forces attacking the caravan from helicopters if it is determined that bin Laden is there.


President Bush has also authorized the launch of a missile attack if bin Laden is positively identified.[...]

Via Internet Haganah: United Press International: College to apologize to Bush for professor:

WASHINGTON, March 7 (UPI) -- The president of a California college is sending a letter to President Bush apologizing for an instructor who gave students extra credit for writing anti-war missives to the White House.


Citrus College President Louis E. Zellers wrote that Professor Rosalyn Kahn "did abuse her authority" in assigning students in her Speech 106 class to write letters to Bush protesting the possible war with Iraq.


"Students were clear in their understanding that they would only receive credit if they wrote 'protest' letters," Zellers said in a letter of thanks to FIRE -- the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education -- a Philadelphia-based campus watchdog group.[...]

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Saddam defiant as endgame nears

"The embargo against Iraq should be lifted totally and comprehensively after America's motives were revealed to the world and after Iraq abided by Security Council resolutions," the statement said.

AndrewSullivan has a great little piece on a telling BBC graphic. "About that caption on a recent BBC piece - "the educated are mainly anti-war" - several readers have pointed out that the poll they relied on had no data on educational level at all. [...]"

Via Michael J. Totten:


Independent - Stalin died 50 years ago, but his legacy lives on -

Not only are there Stalinists in power today; there are apologists for them here in Britain


Another terrific item on the mind-boggling continuing pass given to the Stalinists among us.

Fifty years ago today, a grey old man lay on a sofa, his lips turning black. In his daughter's words, "he was suffering slow strangulation" after a brain haemorrhage, yet he was so despised by the people around him that he was allowed to lie dying for 10 hours before a doctor was called. Suddenly, she continues, "he lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something up above and bringing down a curse on all. The gesture was incomprehensible and full of menace". Joseph Stalin died as he lived: paranoid, full of hatred and cursing the world.


Still we do not take Stalin's crimes seriously in this country. While Le Monde publishes a pull-out supplement and the anniversary features on the front pages of most Eastern European papers, here there is a distracted silence save for a BBC documentary. Or, to give another, trivial but revealing example: Gordon Brown's former spin doctor, Charlie Whelan, used to keep the collected writings of Stalin prominently on his bookshelf, "for a laugh". Obviously Whelan is far from being a Stalinist; but can you imagine if, say, Amanda Platell, William Hague's spin-doctor, had kept Mein Kampf prominently on display in her office?[...]

Palestinians Gun Down 3 Israelis in Settlement (washingtonpost.com)

JERUSALEM, March 7 -- Two Palestinian gunmen dressed as Jewish seminary students barged into a Sabbath dinner, killing a husband and wife before being shot dead.[...]


The attackers, dressed in customary clothing worn by Orthodox Jews, entered the gated settlement and walked into a home where a family was having Sabbath dinner. The gunmen killed the husband and wife and injured six other people.


It was unclear how the gunmen were killed but one of them had an explosives belt strapped to his body. The explosives did not detonate.[...]

...before you have to start coming up with your own solutions.


KoreaTimes : Roh Risks Being Branded as `Domestic President'

[...][Roh] may have been too busy with domestic issues during the first two weeks of his term but experts argue immediate attention should be given to North Korea. By becoming preoccupied with the domestic agenda, Roh is risking becoming a domestic president at a time when the nation desperately needs a leader focused on foreign policy.

Via LGF: Osama arrested near Pak-Afghan border area? - PakTribune

QUETTA, March 07 (Online): The American and local agencies Thursday arrested 9 Al-Qaeda suspects who may include Osama Bin Laden or his son near Shamshi airport near the Pak- Afghan border areas, sources said.


The sources added that the agencies were quite active in search operations for the last two days.


They maintained that at least one "very important" Al-Qaeda man (who may be Osama Bin Laden or his son) was also among the detainees.[...]

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Bush 'optimistic' on N Korea diplomacy


This is new talk, AFAIK.

[...]The president's remarks come as the US discusses a possible redeployment of its troops stationed in South Korea, along the border with the North.


Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the soldiers might be moved further south, or withdrawn from the country altogether.


"We still have a lot of forces in Korea arranged very far forward where it's intrusive in their lives and where they really aren't very flexible or usable for other things," Mr Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon meeting.


"Whether the forces will come home or whether they move further south of peninsula or whether to some neighbouring area are the kind of things that are being sorted out." [...]

Via RightWingNews


Charlie's Soapbox


Gotta love this open letter from Charlie Daniels to all the stiffs in Hollywood (in full):

An Open Letter To The Hollywood Bunch


Ok let’s just say for a moment you bunch of pampered, overpaid, unrealistic children had your way and the U.S.A. didn’t go into Iraq.


Let’s say that you really get your way and we destroy all our nuclear weapons and stick daisies in our gun barrels and sit around with some white wine and cheese and pat ourselves on the back, so proud of what we’ve done for world peace.


Let’s say that we cut the military budget to just enough to keep the National Guard on hand to help out with floods and fires.


Let’s say that we close down our military bases all over the world and bring the troops home, increase our foreign aid and drop all the trade sanctions against everybody.


I suppose that in your fantasy world this would create a utopian world where everybody would live in peace. After all, the great monster, the United States of America, the cause of all the world’s trouble would have disbanded it’s horrible military and certainly all the other countries of the world would follow suit.


After all, they only arm themselves to defend their countries from the mean old U.S.A.


Why you bunch of pitiful, hypocritical, idiotic, spoiled mugwumps. Get your head out of the sand and smell the Trade Towers burning. Do you think that a trip to Iraq by Sean Penn did anything but encourage a wanton murderer to think that the people of the U.S.A. didn’t have the nerve or the guts to fight him?


Barbra Streisand’s fanatical and hateful rankings about George Bush makes about as much sense as Michael Jackson hanging a baby over a railing.


You people need to get out of Hollywood once in a while and get out into the real world. You’d be surprised at the hostility you would find out here.


Stop in at a truck stop and tell an overworked, long distance truck driver that you don’t think Saddam Hussein is doing anything wrong.


Tell a farmer with a couple of sons in the military that you think the United States has no right to defend itself.


Go down to Baxley, Georgia and hold an anti-war rally and see what the folks down there think about you.


You people are some of the most disgusting examples of a waste of protoplasm I’ve ever had the displeasure to hear about.


Sean Penn, you’re a traitor to the United States of America. You gave aid and comfort to the enemy. How many American lives will your little, ”fact finding trip“ to Iraq cost? You encouraged Saddam to

think that we didn’t have the stomach for war.


You people protect one of the most evil men on the face of this earth and won’t lift a finger to save the life of an unborn baby. Freedom of choice you say?


Well I’m going to exercise some freedom of choice of my own. If I see any of your names on a marquee, I’m going to boycott the movie. I will completely stop going to movies if I have to. In most cases it certainly wouldn’t be much of a loss.


You scoff at our military who’s boots you’re not even worthy to shine. They go to battle and risk their lives so ingrates like you can live in luxury.


The day of reckoning is coming when you will be faced with the undeniable truth that the war against Saddam Hussein is the war on terrorism.


America is in imminent danger. You’re either for her or against her. There is no middle ground.


I think we all know where you stand.


What do you think?


God Bless America


Charlie Daniels

Interesting news conference. Sorry, the rumors weren't true. Bin Laden still at large (or still smooshed on a cave wall).


President Bush made a sincere, serious and thoughtful presentation. He did everything he could not to projext a cowboy image and he didn't. He did just what he should have - came off thoughtful and direct. The logic is clear. I'm the President, I took an oath, and while working with the UN is important and desirable, my main responsibility is to the American People, and if I believe the UN is wrong, then that's that. He will ask the nations of the world whether any of them can stand up and with a straight face say that Saddam has complied with 1441. He already knows the answer, as does everyone else. No more half-way-sorta answers, and he WILL bring it to a vote, even if he knows we'll lose the vote or have it vetoed.


Bravo Mr. President, another good speech. I'm just sorry that things have gone on so long and become so politicised that no one who wasn't already will be convinced.


Update: Instapundit has a bunch of good feedback, including this terrific email from a reader in Zurich:

I've just seen Bush's performance on TV. Whoever expected something in the Churchillian vein must have been disappointed. And I'd say that was quite intelligent. Why? Because the Churchillian style works well once you're already in the midst of total war. Otherwise it may sound demagogic and, for those who disagree, as pure warmongering. What seemed to be Bush's goal was not only to disarm his national and foreign critics but to show the non-bellicist face of a country that only goes into war reluctantly


The point is: day by day the so called pacifists look more agressive, more filled with hate. Indeed, it is as if they were those who were at war: against America. Bush has chosen exactly not to answer them in kind, stressing the protesters' right to protest, the allies' right to disagree and, of course, his own right to think differently. He didn't threaten France, Germany, Russia and so on: and that is very good. Many questions were about those countries' attitudes and he managed not to answer them without ever giving the impression he was running away from an argument: on the contrary, he spoke as a grown-up underlining that we shouldn't be too tough on the kids because, well, they're nothing but kids.


I don't know if this will work in Europe, although it won't be easy to use his performance to portray the president as a bloodthirsty imperialistic murderer. But I think that it reassures the domestic audience that the decision to go to war is being taken in a serious, sober, dispassionate way.

Having my ISP switch me from Windows to Linux. Should go smoothly, but... /knocks on wood.


Update: Had a bit of trouble, but I think everything's back to normal now. :)

Where is Raed ?

There is an incredibly strong rumor that Uday is in Russia (Belarusia), what makes it even more suspicious is this; I wrote that google was blocked from last night, well now it is open but type a search for anything in Russia and you get the "Caccess denied" page on the search results.

...and neither am I, that "normal economic activity in the Palestinian territories has largely ground to a halt."


USS Clueless

WorldNetDaily: Who was hiding al-Qaida sheikh?

There's good news and bad news in the arrest in Pakistan of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network, says a top intelligence analyst.


While there is no disputing the importance of Mohammed as a top figure in Osama bin Laden's organization and that he was an organizer of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, Joseph deCourcy writes in the latest issue of his weekly intelligence newsletter that the arrest took place in the home of a leader of a major Pakistani political party.


Thus, he suggests, the arrest once again raises questions about the reliability of Pakistan as a partner in the war against Islamist terrorism.


Mohammed was nabbed in the house of the son of a local leader of Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami, a group that is part of the Islamist-orientated Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, or MMA.[...]

[...]"So Mohammed, one of al-Qaida's most-important leaders, was found in the house of a leader of a major Pakistani political party that has growing public support and which shares power with the ruling party in a key province while controlling another province outright," writes deCourcy. "Furthermore, the house where he was arrested was not an isolated refuge in North West Frontier Province or Baluchistan, but in Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the Pakistan army and the home of President Musharraf himself." [...]

We already knew that, at worst, al-Dura was caught in a crossfire between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli troops, and was more-likely hit by PA bullets. This WorldNetDaily story claims the boy wasn't even killed at all, but the event was altogether staged.


WorldNetDaily: Report: 12-year-old Palestinian boy's martyrdom 'staged'

World Tribune.com--U.S. abandons Turkey as northern front

The Bush administration has abandoned the hope that Turkey will serve as a major front in the planned U.S.-led war against Iraq.


Officials said the Defense Department has ordered U.S. Central Command to begin preparations to execute a contingency plan for a one-front war against Iraq. That front would be Kuwait and Central Command has been informed to prepare for the arrival of at least two additional divisions meant for deployment in Turkey.


"The Pentagon has written off Turkey as a second front," an official said. "There is the prospect that U.S. special forces could eventually enter Iraq from Turkish territory. But this will not comprise the second front that we had been planning."

WorldNetDaily: U.S. official: Saudi repression not 'severe'


That's right, that Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. State Department today named China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Burma and Sudan as "countries of particular concern" due to ongoing, "egregious" violations of religious freedom, a designation that requires a policy response within 90 days.


For the third straight year, however, it omitted Saudi Arabia, considered by many human-rights analysts to be among the world's most repressive nations.


"Saudi Arabia is very close to meeting the threshold for designation," State Department spokesman Jeffrey Jamison told WorldNetDaily. "But at this point, the determination is that the situation remains as it has been in previous years."[...]

ArabNews: US Soldiers Express Reservations About War - Barbara Ferguson, Arab News Correspondent


Ummm...yeah...

[...]Some soldiers on an airplane crammed full of US military men, reservists and contractors from all corners of America told Arab News their small towns had been all but emptied when Uncle Sam called them up. Some said they had never been overseas before. Others said they had never even been on an airplane.


All of them expressed major concerns about this war. They do not want it, and they’re not happy with President Bush’s — as one GI put it — “cowboy gung-ho attitude.”


This poses a big problem. Because when the military doesn’t have confidence in their commander-in-chief, this could seriously affect morale.[...]

FrontPage magazine.com


Frontpage Magazine's Islam Symposium continues. Very interesting stuff. Prof. AbuKahlil particularly has trouble with excluding ad hominem attacks from every statement he makes.

FrontPage magazine.com - Hamas and Hizzoner By John Perazzo


Mayor Bloomeberg has appointed Omar Mohammedi, general counsel to the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), to his city's Human Rights Commission. This Frontpage article has a run-down on just how bizarre that should seem, when viewed in the context of the article's description of CAIR's history.

Washington Post - Suicide Bomber Kills 15 in Haifa


The latest 15 (so far) murder victims. Was reading Alisa in Wonderland's entry on this and wanting to say something. Religious folks have it easier, you can say "May God be with you," etc... but what do us not-so religious folks say...that doesn't sound trite?

LGF points out:

Every news story I’ve seen so far repeats the blatant lie that this is “the first suicide attack in two months.” It’s the first successful attack, but the rotten Palestinian cowards have been trying to do this every day.

BBC


It's a lukewarm, "Look, we don't want to, but we have to..." kinda position, but still significant.

The head of Turkey's armed forces has publicly intervened to support the deployment of US troops inside Turkey for a possible war against Iraq.

Chief of General Staff Hilmi Ozkok said allowing US troops to attack Iraq from Turkish territory in the north would shorten the war.


"The Turkish armed forces' view is the same as the government's," General Ozkok said.


Turkey's armed forces wield considerable influence in Turkish politics and the general's remarks are seen as significant following Saturday's vote in the Turkish parliament to reject a bill to allow US troops on Turkish soil.


The government has hinted that the bill may be presented again but it could be delayed by up to three weeks.[...]

USS Clueless says:

I have a suspicion that what's really going on now with the UN is that our opponents know full well they have zero chance of stopping us from attacking. What they want to avoid now is an open vote on the issue. For such nations as France, the best possible path into the future is for the US and UK to give up on the UN and to attack without bringing the latest UNSC resolution to vote. That way France is off the hook for responsibility; it can cluck and sneer and talk about how we should have gone to the UNSC no matter how the war comes out, but it doesn't actually have to go on the books with a formal response to the measure.


Equally, the non-permanent swing members don't like the heat; I think they wish the problem would just go away.

KoreaTimes : `NK Missile Warhead Found in Alaska'

The warhead of a long-range missile test-fired by North Korea was found in the U.S. state of Alaska, a report to the National Assembly revealed yesterday.


``According to a U.S. document, the last piece of a missile warhead fired by North Korea was found in Alaska,’’ former Japanese foreign minister Taro Nakayama was quoted as saying in the report. ``Washington, as well as Tokyo, has so far underrated Pyongyang’s missile capabilities.’’


The report was the culmination of monthlong activities of the Assembly’s overseas delegation to five countries over the North Korean nuclear crisis. The Assembly dispatched groups of lawmakers to the United States, Japan, China, Russia and European Union last month to collect information and opinions on the international issue.[...]

CNN.com - Two state lawmakers walk out during prayer by Muslim leader - Mar. 4, 2003

OLYMPIA, Washington (AP) -- Two lawmakers left the floor of the Washington House of Representatives during a prayer by a Muslim religious leader this week, citing patriotism and a lack of interest.


Republicans Lois McMahan of Gig Harbor and Cary Condotta of East Wenatchee walked to the back of the chamber during Monday's invocation by Mohamad Joban, imam of the Islamic Center of Olympia.


McMahan said she did not oppose having a Muslim deliver the prayer but left because "the religion is the focal point of the hate-America sentiment in the world."


"It's an issue of patriotism," she said. "Even though the mainstream Islamic religion doesn't profess to hate America, nonetheless it spawns the groups that hate America."


Condotta said he was talking to another lawmaker and "wasn't particularly interested" in the prayer. He would not elaborate.


In his prayer, Joban asked for God or Allah to bless the state of Washington and guide the House in making good decisions.


"At this time, we also pray that America may succeed in the war against terrorism," Joban said. "We pray to God that the war may end with world peace and tranquility."[...]

Via Best of the Web - Philippine terrorists claim link to Iraq -- The Washington Times

CEBU, Philippines — Islamist terrorists in the southern Philippines who have killed two American hostages in recent years say they are receiving money from Iraqis close to President Saddam Hussein.


Hamsiraji Sali, a local commander of the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf on the remote southern island of Basilan, says he is getting nearly $20,000 a year from supporters in Iraq.


"It's so we would have something to spend on chemicals for bomb-making and for the movement of our people," Sali told a reporter this week, renewing earlier claims of support from Iraq.


The payments, while small, provide additional evidence of a link between Iraq and the Abu Sayyaf — a group with long-standing ties to al Qaeda and its global terror network.


The boast of an Iraqi connection was taken seriously after the expulsion of an Iraqi diplomat from Manila last week amid charges he had been in contact with the Abu Sayyaf by telephone.[...]

Bush on Israel: Heartburn for All - article by Daniel Pipes


Pipes questions Bush's consistency on the Palestinian State issue and takes Bush to task for seeming uncharacteristic flip-flopping. Although he has concerns, he does feel Bush is on the right track:

[...]Observing these contradictions through two years of the Bush administration leads me to one main conclusion: In key ways - sympathy for Israel's plight, diplomatic support, providing arms - Bush tends to ignore his own Palestinian-state rhetoric and stand solidly with Israel. His statements demanding this from Israel and promising that to the Palestinians appear to be a sop to outside pressure, not operational policy.


In short, look at what President Bush does, not what he says, and you'll find his usual consistency, this time hiding under a veneer of apparent indecision.


If this is accurate, then the road map is for show, not true policy, and U.S. endorsement of a Palestinian state remains remote.

I believe that Bush remains committed to the creation of a Palestinian state AFTER the conditions are right for the creation of a state with a government that will strive to live in peace with Israel. In my view, he has a very clear vision of what he believes must occur if Israel and the Palestinians are to co exist in peace and he is working on that. That is one of the reasons he is taking on Iraq now and will soon start working on Syria and Iran. Until these governments eliminate state sponsored actions to destroy Israel, he knows that neither peace for Israel nor the end of terror for us will occur.

Palestinians destroy five Israeli Tanks, more Palestinians killed by Israel


From Arabic News.com: "However, resistance men from the Hamas movement said through loudspeakers inside al-Nseirat camp that members of Ezz Eddine al-Qassam groups of the Hamas movement were able to blow up five Israeli tanks in the framework of resisting the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people."


Huh...five Israeli tanks. That's sounds like big news. Haven't seen it anywhere else. Do they just make this stuff up? Don't answer that...

BBC NEWS | South Asia | 'Al-Qaeda brain' praised as hero

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - the alleged al-Qaeda mastermind arrested last weekend in Pakistan - is a "hero of Islam", Pakistan's largest Islamic party has said.


A spokesman for Jamaat-e-Islami, Amirul Azeem, said the Pakistani Government, acting on US orders, had committed a "shameful sell-out".


The outspoken endorsement of Sheikh Mohammed is an indication of the difficulties Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf may face in reconciling his urge to assist US anti-terrorism efforts with rising anti-American sentiment at home.


Regional scorn for such support was reflected in a message sent to the BBC from a militant Kashmiri group condemning Islamabad's decision to hand him over to the US.[...]

FrontPage magazine.com - Symposium: Islam, a Religion of Peace or War? Part I Also via LGF


A very interesting and somewhat eye-opening symposium over at Frontpage Magazine. Well worth checking out. I'm looking forward to the next installments.

Ha'aretz - By Aluf Benn (in full)

Government officials are vehemently critical of a draft constitution prepared by a Palestinian team. One source called it "eyewash, meant to perpetuate the conflict - this is not a constitution for a people thinking about conciliation and living in peace."


A legal analysis by Foreign Ministry experts led to the conclusion that the constitution's preamble includes terms hostile to Israel, said the sources, adding "we won't accept this and neither will the Americans. The terms extend the conflict and do not reflect an end to the conflict but a perpetuation of hostilities."


The preamble to the constitution, which was drafted by Palestinian Minister Nabil Sha'ath, says that throughout history, "the Palestinians conducted their legendary jihad against the colonialist forces of the old and new world," and speaks of "the depth of the wound caused by the superpowers in their handling of the Jewish problem and division of the Middle East, where the Palestinians bore the burden of the arrangements made to reflect the balance of power and the results of the first World War, to this very day."

Israel also rejects Article 2 of the draft, which says the Palestinian state will be established within the June 4, 1967 borders or "according to international decisions." According to the government sources, the Palestinians are ignoring previous agreements, which said the borders would be determined through negotiations and agreements between the sides.


But the government sources do admit the article concerning refugees is relatively easy for Israel to accept, since it does not refer to a mass return of refugees to Israel.


The sources said the structure of the government branches proposed by the constitution would perpetuate the role of the president, giving him veto powers over laws. "The Palestinian prime minister will be a rag, and all the praise Arafat has received for the impending appointment of a prime minister are nothing more than eyewash," said the government source.


The sources attacked the British team that helped the Palestinians draft the text, saying, "if this is what the Palestinians are going to adopt, and the British and Europeans are prepared to accept it, then it's a very grave matter. It turns out the Europeans are either naive or so hostile to Israel that they are ready to accept any Palestinian story instead of reading what is said there."

Ha'Aretz Article(in full)

PARIS - Seven French families living in Israel have lodged two complaints in a Paris court against Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, accusing him of genocide and crimes against humanity, their lawyers said Monday.


The attorneys, Pascal Besnier and Michel Calvo, said that the charges were filed by the families of victims of terrorist acts committed against Israeli citizens.


Six of these victims were killed and another was seriously injured in the attacks, which were carried out after the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000.


The charges are based on the plaintiffs' belief that although Arafat "had the power and the means to prevent acts of terrorism, assassinations and violence", he "organized and financed them" instead, the lawyers said.


Because they do not regard Arafat as a true head of state, the plaintiffs also consider that he is not covered by international laws protecting a national leader from prosecution in a foreign land.

Via lgf: Cartoonists par excellence Cox & Forkum have started their own blog where they will be posting much of their work. Go check 'em out now!

Robert Fisk: A breakthrough in the war on terror? I'll believe it when we see some evidence

In the theatre of the absurd into which America's hunt for al-Qa'ida so often descends, the "arrest" – the quotation marks are all too necessary – of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is nearer the Gilbert and Sullivan end of the repertory.


First, Mr Mohammed was arrested in a joint raid by the CIA and Pakistani agents near Islamabad and spirited out of the country to an "undisclosed location". "The man who masterminded the September 11 attacks" was how the US billed this latest "victory" in the "war against terror" (again, quotation marks are obligatory). Then the Pakistanis announced that he hadn't been taken out of Pakistan at all. Then a Pakistani police official expressed his ignorance of any such arrest.


And then, a Taliban "source" – this means the real Taliban but "source" is supposed to cover the fact that the old Afghan regime still exists – claimed that Mr Mohammed "is still with us and in our protection and we challenge the US to prove their claim". By this stage, it looked like a case of the "whoops" school of journalism; a good story that just might be untrue.[...]

Stanley Kurtz on North Korea on National Review Online


Stanley Kurtz is certainly not making me feel all that comfortable concerning the situation in North Korea.

Today, the United States stands on the brink of war — with North Korea. War with North Korea is much more likely than either the administration or the media have indicated. And our coming invasion of Iraq may trigger developments that push us still closer to conflict on the Korean peninsula.[...]


It will be said that all of this is the madness of the cowboys running the Bush administration. How else could we have moved from so long a relative peace to the brink of multiple destructive wars? Our nightmare, sadly, is the result of the lethal combination of terror and proliferating weapons of mass destruction, not the actions of the Bush administration. For all our might and technology, the confluence of terror and WMDs has the power to destroy us — if we do not destroy it first.


We are at the beginning, not the end, of a terrible new age. Our army is too small. So is our defense budget. They will get bigger. Even that, unfortunately, will not return us to our accustomed security. We stand today on the brink of a war — with North Korea.

Mark Goldblatt on Human Shield on National Review Online

Granted, there is a certain entertainment value in the merry band of "human shields" now scurrying around the Iraqi countryside, trying to deter the United States from bombing strategic targets by parking directly in the line of fire — it is, after all, the ultimate Jackass stunt. Saying that, however, it's still worth knowing a little something about their leader, a former Marine and Gulf War Veteran named Ken Nichols O'Keefe.


In his website's mission statement, which reads like a first draft the Unabomber might have written and discarded as too delusional, O'Keefe declares, "I have announced plans to bring serious charges against the United States. . . . You and your government are vile disgusting killers and people like myself have been and will continue to be attacked because we refuse to acquiesce or participate in your wretched policies." [...]

Joel Mowbray on Turkey & State Department on National Review Online - Snubbing Turkey

[...]In a meeting Friday in Northern Iraq, six leaders were selected — including one backed by Iran and another who is popular with Saudi Arabia — but the leader of the group representing Iraq's sizeable Turkoman population was merely promised a position on some unspecified committee. The move puzzled many in the Bush administration. "State warmly embraced the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution (backed by Tehran) and went out of its way to keep Saudi Arabia happy, but then they decided to screw our ally," complains a Defense Department official.


It is unclear exactly how many votes were swayed by the previous day's snub in northern Iraq, but considering the resolution only failed by four votes out of 534 members present, State's actions there could have been the difference. Either way, it is a sore spot for many in the Bush administration — some of whom think the State Department angering Turkey was no accident. Notes a Defense Department official familiar with the Iraqi opposition groups: "Many top officials at State don't want to go to war in Iraq. State knew the politics of the situation, yet they excluded the group backed by Turkey right as the Turkish parliament was voting on the resolution. It makes you wonder: Is State trying to undermine the president?"

Telegraph | Opinion | The BBC has become an open opponent of America's policies Via Dancing with Dogs:


Hey, tell me something I didn't know. Still, quite an interesting article, especially with what it says about the BBC's Arabic service.

[...]No one would want the BBC to turn into a Radio Free Europe or Voice of America. That approach to broadcasting, while legitimate, is the tool of a specific political agenda. But given the censorship in the Arab world, one would hope for a BBC approach similar to its glory days in the Second World War - truthful information in areas denied the listeners by their own media.


This is not what they get. The BBC Arabic Service appears to rule out any criticism of Arab leaders or their regimes. Apart from some cryptic and occasional references in news reports, there is no critical discussion and analysis of public policy issues such as human rights, health, housing and illiteracy. There is no discussion of government priorities, government corruption or the activities of the security forces and police. When Saddam Hussein was "re-elected" with a 100 per cent vote, the election was reported as if it were a perfectly normal exercise in democracy.[...]

Bwahahaha! Check this picture from Blogs of War


Nice Work!!

The Sun Newspaper Online - It'll be soon, it'll be swift and it'll be short Via Blogs of War:

[...]One of the first casualties of the conflict — apart from Saddam — is likely to be French President Jacques “The Worm” Chirac.


Relations between America and France are icy after Chirac’s attempts to sabotage UN moves to disarm Saddam.


In a blistering phone call last week, President George Bush told the posturing Frenchman: “President Chirac, we will not forgive and we will not forget.”[...]

Salam over at Where is Raed ? has some personal info and a pointer concerning large trenches filled with crude oil being placed around Baghdad.

canada.com - Despite Iraqi outrage, Emirates seeks support for its call for Saddam's exile


The King of Bahrain has added his voice to the UAE's call for Saddam to step down.

[...]The king of Bahrain, a U.S. ally, said he backs the call for Saddam to go, the Emirates state news agency, WAM, reported Sunday. The Emirates also submitted its proposal to a gathering of Gulf countries Sunday, looking for their backing.


The proposal sparked an outcry at an Arab summit in Egypt on Saturday and Arab leaders refused to discuss it. The Emirates was the first Arab country to say openly that Middle East leaders should persuade Saddam to step down.


"Rejecting these ideas put forward by the UAE. is acceptance of the remaining option, which is war," Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Emirates information minister, said.


The Bahraini king, Sheik Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, met Sunday with the Emirates president in Abu Dhabi. Afterwards, he called the Emirates proposal "honest advice to the Iraqi leadership," acccording to WAM.[...]

InstaPundit.Com Glenn Reynolds has some interesting thoughts with links and some emails on the subject.

Israel News : Jerusalem Post Internet Edition


Just noticed this one.

Any discussion of Islam and Democracy must begin with some definition of these two words, both of unstable and therefore explosive content.


By Islam one can mean both a religion, the equivalent of Christianity, and a civilization, the equivalent of Christendom. In this sense the word denotes a phenomenon of extraordinary richness, variety, and complexity; of more than 14 centuries of history; 1.3 billion people; 50-some states, about which it is very difficult to generalize.


The question is often asked: is Islam compatible with democracy? This is of course part of a larger question: is religion compatible with democracy?


One may ask the same question regarding other religions. There are two ways to approach this question: the historical and the theoretical.[...]


The ancestry of the Ba'ath may be found not in the Middle East, not in Islam, not in Arabism but in the Nazi Party and the Communist Party, two sources of inspiration which mingle very well in Ba'athist practice - the party as part of the apparatus of government, concerned more particularly with indoctrination, surveillance and repression, and failing every test of government except survival.[...]

United Press International: Anglosphere: Globalization and sovereignty Via Alisa in Wonderland


This one's an interesting read. On the future of national sovereignty and the dangers of opposing Bush and Blair.

[...]The next decade will probably tell us whether "sovereignty" will become a synonym for "possession of nuclear weapons." Why this is so is also relevant to the question of why U.S. President George W. Bush has become a pariah in certain circles worldwide. These two issues are part of a larger complex of questions having to do with the basis of international order and the contending schools of understanding about it.[...]


Ironically, many of those who profess to hate war, empire and poverty, and who strive for a just international order, accuse Bush and Blair of promoting those things. In reality, a failure of the Bush-Blair coalition would sooner or later (probably sooner) give rise to a world in which a number of regional tyrannies who gradually, under the cover of their weapons of mass destruction, would annex first the states that are sovereign by convention, such as Kuwait, and eventually many that have been sovereign by circumstance.[...]

eTaiwanNews.com/Roh urges peaceful end to nuclear issue


Most of the article is about the North's calls for talks with the US. The Pro-US rally bit is a sort of after-thought.

[...]In Seoul on yesterday, 30,000 pro-U.S. demonstrators jammed a downtown plaza to support the U.S. troop presence in South Korea and condemn North Korea as a "rabid dog" trying to arm itself with nuclear weapons.


The demonstrators, many of them veterans clad in military uniforms, waved South Korean and U.S. flags and shouted: "We oppose the withdrawal of U.S. military from South Korea."[...]

A large-scale pro-U.S. rally opposing the withdrawal of U.S. troops stationed here was held last Saturday in front of City Hall, downtown Seoul.


Some 100,000 members from the 114 conservative civic bodies, such as the Korean War Abductees’ Family Union and the National Council for Freedom and Democracy, gathered to protest against the North Korean nuclear plans and against Kim Jong-il on the occasion of the 84th anniversary of March 1 Independence Day.


They denounced the North Korean leader Kim for nuclear ambitions that, they said, have ratcheted up tension on the peninsula.


Amongst the demonstrators were former prime minister Chung Won-shik, former Sogang University president Park Hong, former Yonsei University professor Kim Dong-gill and National Council for Freedom and Democracy chairman Lee Chul-seung.


In addition, 83 lawmakers and Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor who has helped North Korean defectors find asylum in the South, took part in the rally.


Participants of the rally said in a declaration, ``North Korea's nuke plan has haunted 70 million Korean people with the fear of war.’’ They also called for the government to solidify its traditional alliance with the United States in pursuit of the national prosperity and world peace.


Holding the national flags of the two countries, and chanting ``We love America,’’ the demonstrators played the national anthems of the two allies.[...]

Israel News : Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

The alleged leader of al-Qaida in Lebanon, Farouk al-Masri, was killed in a car bomb explosion outside his shop in the teeming Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon on Saturday morning.


Islamic and Palestinian groups blamed Israel for the assassination, which they linked to the reported flying of a IAF reconnaissance drone over the camp at the time of the explosion.


There was no Israeli comment.


Masri, also known as Muhammad Abdel-Hamid Shanouha, was reported, however, to have more than his fair share of enemies among armed Palestinian groups in the camp and elsewhere in Lebanon.

lgf: Col. Gaddafi's Grrl Squad Have a look at The Colonel's bodyguards. Yowza.

ArabNews: Drama at Arab League Summit Via LGF


Near fisticuffs at the Arab Summit today. Qaddafi and Prince Abdullah got into it and the cameras were shut down and the meeting given a recess while everyone calmed themselves...

[...]Qaddafi criticized Saudi Arabia, in an impromptu speech, for the presence of US forces in the Kingdom.


He said when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, American forces started flowing into the Kingdom. “I told King Fahd that American forces are moving into Saudi Arabia. He then replied ‘America is a big country and we cannot prevent it and it can come.’ I told him: ‘How can this happen to Saudi Arabia, which is an independent country?’ After that in a telephone conversation, the king told me that Iraq had intention to invade the Kingdom. I asked him how he knew. He said: ‘We have seen the Iraqi forces deployed on the front. That means the Iraqi threat was a source of concern and threat for the Kingdom and all the Gulf states. America has pledged to protect this region because it is an important source of energy.’”


Here Prince Abdullah intercepted Qaddafi’s speech and said: “Saudi Arabia is a front line country for the Muslim nation. It is not a colonial agent. Colonialists are for you and others. Who brought you to power? Don’t say anything and don’t interfere in matters in which you don’t have any role. You are a liar. Your grave awaits you.”


The Saudi delegation then prepared to leave the conference hall but following the intervention of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Syrian President Bashar Assad, Lebanese President Emile Lahud and others the delegation returned to the conference. The session was reconvened after a 20-minute break caused by the confusion.[...]

Via LGF


Telegraph | News | Human shield Britons quit Baghdad


This is too rich. Are you still a human shield if you decide to get the hell out before the shooting starts? Hey, we wouldn't want to actually take any risks. We have to survive to get our film developed!

(in full) Almost all of the first British "human shields" to go to Iraq were on their way home last night after deciding that their much-heralded task was now too dangerous.


Two red double-decker buses, which symbolised the hopes of anti-war activists when they arrived to a fanfare of publicity a fortnight ago, slipped quietly out of Baghdad on the long journey back to Britain.


Nine of the original 11 activists decided to pull out after being given an ultimatum by Iraqi officials to station themselves at targets likely to be bombed in a war or leave the country. Among those departing last night was 68-year-old Godfrey Meynell, a former High Sheriff of Derbyshire, who admitted that he was leaving out of "cold fear". He had been summoned, along with 200 other shields from all over the world, to a meeting at a Baghdad hotel yesterday morning.


Abdul Hashimi, the head of the Friendship, Peace and Solidarity organisation that is hosting the protesters, told the shields to choose between nine so-called "strategic sites" by today or quit the country.


The Iraqi warning follows frustration among Saddam Hussein's officials that only about 65 of the shields had so far agreed to take up positions at the oil refineries, power plants and water-purification sites selected by their hosts.


It heightened fears among some peace activists that they could be stationed at non-civilian sites. Mr Meynell and fellow protesters who moved into the power station in south Baghdad last weekend were dismayed to find it stood immediately next to an army base and the strategically crucial main road south to Basra. Iraqi officials said there was little point in guarding what they considered to be low-risk targets.


Iraq's decision to force the pace was welcomed by some of the 20 Britons remaining in Baghdad. "It's only fair," said Uzma Bashir, 32, a college lecturer who is one of the team leaders.


"We've come here as shields to defend sites and now the Iraqis are asking us to make our choice."

UPI - Turkey Rejects U.S. Troop Deployment Plan


No!


This complicates things a bit. Does this change the dynamic? If we go, do we not have to consider Turkish wishes? Might the Kurds get more of a free hand? This could be good news for them, perhaps. It was sounding more and more like they might be sold out again to appease the Turks, but maybe that won't be necessary. Curiouser and curiouser...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- The man linked by authorities to nearly every al Qaeda terrorist attack in the last 10 years -- including the September 11, 2001 attacks -- was among three suspected al Qaeda operatives arrested Saturday in Pakistan, coalition intelligence forces confirmed to CNN.

Pakistani intelligence sources told CNN that they had been closing in on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed for several days, before the Pakistani security forces and FBI agents arrested him in a raid on a house in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, about 9 miles (15 km) from Islamabad.[...]

Via Thinking Meat


Dixie Flatline: Why do I hate?


An extraordinarily well-written entry on the loss of sympathy toward the Palestinians. Well worth reading.

[...]This is the path taken by countless peoples through history. Assimilation is impossible for the Palestinians, fault for this on both sides. But co-existence is possible. The building of a statelet where none existed before is possible. Grudging acceptance is possible.


Of course, there is an alternative to acceptance, the peace of the vanquished, and that is rejection, revolt, war from the shadows. Had the Palestinians taken this path, had Arafat spit in Barak’s face and said: we will meet you on the battlefield, I would have been sympathetic. I am a romantic, and there is something eternally appealing about a conquered peoples rising up and confronting certain defeat, rifles in hand. Had the Palestinians waged honest guerilla warfare, snipers and sappers and saboteurs, targeting the IDF, spilling the blood of Jewish soldiers wherever and whenever they could, I would not have objected. I would have sided with the Israelis, but there would be a measure of respect for the Palestinians, willing to die in honorable resistance. They would not have earned victory, but nobility in defeat, a triumphant memory of valiant struggle, generations of respect for bravery in the face of despair.


But the Palestinians chose a third path, one largely untaken in human history. Oslo rejected, honest war rejected. Instead, Arafat calls them forth: here is your chance to use your enemy’s humanity against them. Demonstrate your might by targeting the weakest of their citizens.


It is at this moment that my sympathy dies.[...]

Hey, and here I thought all those borders were the unwanted product of Western Colonialism. Guess they have their merits, eh?


Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

Syrian President Bashar Assad, in a speech during the opening session of the summit, said it was a mistake to identify the Iraqi leadership as the source of the crisis.


Assad accused the United States of being interested not in toppling a dictatorial regime, but in securing Iraq's "oil and redrawing the region's map and destroying Iraq's infrastructure."


"We are all targeted ... we are all in danger," Assad said.[...]

Assad also called on delegated[sic] not to disassociate the Iraq crisis with that of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ha'aretz has a good run-down on the conflicting desires and interests of the Turks and Kurds and the diplomatic sticky-wicket it's creating. The Turks are afraid of Kurdish power, and the Kurds are afraid that they're to be sold out again.