ConservaPundit

If Hussein had WMD, why didn't he use them against the US?

04.30.04 (7:59 pm)   [edit]
In response to one of my postings recently one of the left-wing clones, perhaps it was WhyNot, went nutty on me. I had speculated that the WMD attack Al Qaeda planned for Jordan may have been WMD from Iraq that had been stored in Syria. In confessions the terrorists said they came to Jordan from Syria, met in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Jordanian authorities discovered a heck of a lot of destructive material. One would think Syria wouldn't be dumb enough to directly give Al Qaeda its WMD, seeing as how the US is just over the border.

Anyway, I'm accused of not thinking because if Saddam had WMD, why didn't he use them against our troops? Such a question is rooted in a misunderstanding of what Hussein was trying to accomplish.

It is believed by significant sectors of the intelligence community that for a year or so Hussein was secretly destroying or shipping out his WMD. Satellite photos show heavy and unusual Syrian and Iranian border events.

The reason why Hussein was getting rid of WMD was simple: he bet that the US would go to the UN (true), get authority for more inspections (true) and then, when none were found, either hope that the UN stop the US from enforcing its own resolutions (we knew he had WMD, he had to account for them, not us, and he wasn't) or, if the US did invade, than discredit them by having the country free of WMD.

Resolution 1441 demanded the same thing the 16 other UNSC resolutions demanded: adhere to the cease-fire you promised by dismantling and verifying your WMD or face the consequences. Part of that were inspections and a weapons declaration. The former were restricted, so they were useless, and the latter was a fraud. 1441 was broken.

Still, Hussein believed that with help from his buddies the French and Russians, who gave his weapons and bought oil from him illegally, the US would not have the political will to enforce the resolutions anyway. If it appeared that the whole world was against Bush, not Hussein's law-breaking, Bush wouldn't go in. With all of this, with Scott Ritter's flip flop, with Hans Blix saying there was no WMD (with no proof and contrary to the UN's own conclusions), with France and Russia in the pocket of a corrupt Iraqi dictator, and with the fraudulent weapons declaration and false inspections testifying to no WMD, the US would back down, [i]Hussein would be in power, which was the most important thing for him[/i], the UN would quit, and he'd slowly bring his weapons back afterward.

If the US invaded, a worst case scenario for him, he'd hide and wait out the invasion while the US and the coalition came up with nothing. And, when they left, he'd come back to power.

His goal was not to fight the US. Even with WMD he'd lose spectacularly. His goal was to defy the world and hold on to his WMD and stay in power. Later he could use the WMD to terrorize the Shiites and Kurds some more, ,entrench his power, terrorize Israel, keep up the al-qaeda connection by possibly giving them WMD, and so forth. After 9-11 this threat was all the more intolerable to the US, though it was a threat the world repeatedly failed to adequately respond to before.

If you live your life thinking that the US is the genesis of all evil you're no better than the fanatics that blow up pizzerias. The facts are that this was a UN mess, the US tried to take care of it because it was and is part of the war on terror, and we did it with absolutely no help from the arrogant French and Russians (and that means approval of the Security Council).

The US is currently losing Iraq politically, losing the battle for hearts and minds, and this is mainly thanks to the left-wing media and the al jazeeras of the world. They, like America's enemies, are no better than the jihadists themselves for they are not concerned with truth, they are concerned with exacerbating the situation for their own anti-american interests.

(This is why the behavior of those 7 US soldiers at the Baghdad prison is so horrible-- not only is the crime horrible and should require the immediate dishonorable discharge of all parties, including the female general that was in charge of the prison, but the Arab and left-wing media will portray it as the mindset of the 150,000 troops stationed there. And that means more lives taken and more chaos).

Jordan says Al Qaeda attack was WMD, Al Qaeda tape says no

04.30.04 (7:37 pm)   [edit]
It's pretty amazing when the media quotes an Al Qaeda tape as proof. I mean, Al Qaeda has a reason to lie about what it was doing in Jordan, and Jordan has no real reason to help the US.

Either way, this doesn't get enough press.

2 articles--

[b]Jordanians: Working From Iraq, Al Qaeda Planned WMD Attack[/b]
Posted Apr 30, 2004

Under the direction of Abu Musab al Zarqawi -- a terrorist chemical-weapons expert who began operating in Iraq well before the U.S. invasion of that country -- al Qaeda planned to launch its first weapons-of-mass-destructi on attack last month in Jordan. The U.S. Embassy in Amman was one of the planned targets of the attack.

A televised confession by the terrorist allegedly responsible for carrying out the operation included information that closely tracks the testimony about Zarqawi and his operations in Iraq that Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003.

According to the government of Jordan, the attack could have killed as many as 80,000.

In a series of sting operations culminating on April 20, Jordanian security forces arrested six terrorists involved in the plot and killed four others. Four of the alleged plotters made statements on video clips that were presented on Jordanian television last Monday, and U.S. authorities confirmed at least part of the plot to Western news agencies.

"We would agree with the Jordanians that it was a grave, serious and credible threat," Justin Siberell, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Amman, told the Chicago Tribune. "The investigation is ongoing and it continues in the area of the specific capabilities of the [explosive] devices we are talking about." Lisa Myers, chief investigative correspondent for NBC News, reported that U.S. officials confirmed the U.S. Embassy was one of the planned targets.

On April 26, Jordanian television ran a special 20-minute program, featuring clips of statements from four of the alleged plotters and showing images of trucks and materials that would have been used in the attacks. Among those featured in the report was Azmi al Jayousi, described as the leader of al Qaeda's cell in Jordan.

"In Herat, [Afghanistan]," Jayousi told Jordanian TV, "I began training under Abu Musab [al Zarqawi] which involved high-level instruction in explosives and poisons. Then I promised my loyalty to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I agreed to work for him -- no questions asked. When Afghanistan fell, I again met up with al-Zarqawi in Iraq."

"There in Iraq," said Jayousi, "I was told by Abu Musab to travel to Jordan with Muwaffaq Udwan. We were to get ready for a military action in Jordan."

"When I arrived in Jordan, I met with another person with ties to Abu Musab by the name of Haytham Omar Ibrahim -- a Syrian -- who secured our safe houses," said Jayousi.

"Next Muwaffiq and I began reconnaissance on the targets," said Jayousi. "Then we began to gather chemicals needed to make explosives. . . . amassing almost 20 tons, which was sufficient for all our plans in Jordan. Then I began manufacturing."

During this time, Zarqawi directed resources to Jayousi through Syria.

"I wrote to Abu Musab and I asked him to provide funding and needed papers," said Jayousi. "Using couriers, he started to send funds in increments of $10,000 or $15,000. In total, I received about $170,000, with which I purchased a great amount of materials. Using couriers, he also sent me fake passports, ID cards, car registrations -- and everything else I needed."

One of Jayousi's recruits was a Jordanian named Hussein Sharif, who also appeared in clips on the Jordanian TV report. "He [Jayousi] said he wanted to carry out an operation in Jordan that would strike at Jordan and the Hashemites [Jordan's royal family], and against the crusaders and the faithless," said Sharif. "He described this as al Qaeda's first suicide chemical attack."

"About 80,000 people would have died, with another 160,000 wounded," said the narrator of the Jordanian report.

Jayousi remained defiant. "I intend to find the approval of God," he told Jordanian TV. "If I die, I become a martyr. And those I kill will go to hell."

In his speech at the UN, Secretary of State Powell said that after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, Jayousi's boss, Zarqawi, had found safe harbor in Iraq, where he received medical treatment and established a "base of operations" in Baghdad.

-- Human Events

[b]Foiled Jordan Attack Not Chemical-'Qaeda Tape'[/b]
Fri Apr 30, 6:12 AM ET
By Ghaida Ghantous

DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda planned an attack on Jordanian intelligence services but not using chemical weapons as Amman has charged, according to a new audio tape purportedly from a leading al Qaeda figure aired on Friday.

Jordan said earlier this month it had foiled a major attack that could have killed thousands. The tape purporting to be the voice of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi accused Jordan of lying and of extracting "false" confessions from militants under torture.

Jordanian state television has aired what it said were confessions by captured militants linked to al Qaeda who said they had planned chemical attacks in Jordan, a key U.S. ally.

"Yes, the plan was to totally destroy the building of the intelligence apparatus," the voice on the tape said in excerpts aired by an Arab satellite television station on Friday.

"(But) their claims of unimaginable casualties and that it was a chemical bomb that would have killed thousands of people is a pure lie...The chemical and poisonous bomb is a fabrication by the evil Jordanian mechanism," he said in a full text of his statement carried on Islamist Web sites.

"God knows, that if we possessed such a bomb that we would not have hesitated for a second to avidly seek to strike Israeli cities such as Eilat, Tel Aviv and others."

He said the bomb was made of primary substances available on the market as claimed by one of the captured militants, the head of the captured group Azmi Jayousi. The group did not intend to kill Muslims as Jordan claimed, the statement added.

"The Jordanian intelligence lied twice...to protect their masters and sponsors from the Jews and Christians," he said, accusing Jordanian intelligence of helping their Israeli counterparts to penetrate Iraq (news - web sites).

It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the tape.

The arrested militants shown on television, who included Syrians, said they were ordered by Zarqawi to attack targets that included the U.S. embassy and intelligence headquarters.

The purported Zarqawi statement said the operation was meant to target "the black source of evil in our homeland."

Jordan television showed pictures of the site of the alleged chemical plants and trucks that were to be used in the attacks.

The tape purporting to be Jordanian-born Zarqawi said the attack was to punish Jordanian authorities whom he accused of "infidelity" by aiding the "treacherous enemy" America.

He said they played a key role in the fall of Baghdad by helping U.S. intelligence.

"Jordan was and still is a support base for arms and ammunition supplies for the U.S. army occupying Iraq," he said, adding Amman was also providing its air space to areas in Iraq.

A purported statement by Zarqawi last week claimed responsibility for suicide boat attacks on Iraq's vital Basra oil terminal. U.S. authorities believe he is probably in Iraq.

"Jordanian intelligence...did its utmost to hunt the knights of Islam until its jails became the Arab Guantanamo," he said referring to the U.S. base in Cuba holding al Qaeda suspects.

The Jordanian embassy in Iraq was one of the first to be attacked following the ouster of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) last April.

China sends warships to Hong Kong to warn against democracy there and in Taiwan

04.30.04 (1:33 pm)   [edit]
(And to warn the US)

There's a nice picture of the warships on the Reutes website. Just look at all that US technology! Thanks, Bill Clinton, for abolishing--by executive order-- military and dual-use export controls in the 1990s. Excellent!

[b]Chinese warships sail into Hong Kong[/b]-- http://www.reuters.co.uk/news...§ion=news
Fri 30 April, 2004 13:55

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Eight Chinese warships have sailed into Hong Kong in the largest show of military force by Beijing since it took back the financial centre from Britain in 1997.

The visit appeared aimed as a warning to Taiwan after the re-election of a pro-democracy president in March and as a show of force to Hong Kong, where many in the city have been calling for greater democratic freedoms.

"We, the Chinese People's Liberation Army, are ready at any time to obey our motherland's orders," Vice Admiral Yao Xingyuan, commander of the visiting fleet, told reporters on Friday.

"When absolutely necessary, we have the ability to ensure the stability of Taiwan's political situation," he said, brimming with confidence beside a warship bristling with weaponry.

More than a thousand Chinese sailors in gleaming white uniforms crammed the dock area of the base as the flags of China and the PLA fluttered in the breeze.

China regards Taiwan as a renegade province that must be returned to the fold, by force if necessary.

Beijing fears the re-election of Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian will mean the island edging closer to a formal declaration of independence.

Chen's plan to adopt a new constitution in 2008 is just one step Beijing perceives as moving Taiwan towards independence.

A pro-Beijing newspaper in Hong Kong said on Friday China was expanding the military's top decision-making body to seven members to "suit the needs of modern warfare". Analysts said the move signalled Beijing's readiness to go to war over Taiwan.

The visit also came days after Beijing defied public calls and ruled out universal suffrage for elections for Hong Kong's leader in 2007 and all legislators in 2008. The move sparked protests in the city and more are being planned.

"The PLA has made great contributions to Hong Kong's long-term prosperity and stability," Hong Kong leader Tung Chee-hwa said at a welcoming ceremony for the warships.

The fleet comprises two guided missile destroyers, four guided missile frigates and two submarines.

Guided missile destroyer Shenzhen is the largest and most advanced ship in the visiting fleet and Yao accompanied Tung to inspect officers and soldiers on board.

The fleet is in Hong Kong for six days.

Memories of PLA soldiers cracking down on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989 remain vivid in Hong Kong. More than a million took to the streets in what was then a British colony to protest at the repression.

The arrival of thousands of PLA troops in Hong Kong at the time of the 1997 handover re-ignited a widespread sense of fear.

Bush feels 'disgust' at abuse of Iraqis, says it does not reflect nature of Americans

04.30.04 (11:22 am)   [edit]
Well, it doesn't matter what Bush says now, because the pics say otherwise.

Perception is reality. And the perception from those photos is that America has zero credibility now. There may be 299,999,994 people in the US who are saints, but those 6 soldiers made us all into a nation of satans.

And that just reinforces their view of us as the great Satan anyway.

I want to thank the thick skulls that humiliated these mostly innocent prisoners for ruining the cause and endangering America. Hope it was worth a few sick yuks.

[b]Bush Feels 'Disgust' at Abuse of Iraqis [/b]

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) has condemned the apparent mistreatment of some Iraqi prisoners, saying, "Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That's not the way we do things in America. I didn't like it one bit."

He was asked about photos showing Iraqi prisoners naked except for hoods covering their heads, stacked in a human pyramid, one with a slur written in English on his skin. That and other scenes of humiliation have led to criminal charges against six American soldiers. Arab television stations were leading their newscasts on Friday with the photos.

"I share a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated," Bush said.

There currently are 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq (news - web sites) and 24,900 troops from coalition countries.

Bush made his comments in the White House Rose Garden after a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.

Bush is responsible for Arafat's 2000 intifada? YES, according to SpyMaster

04.30.04 (9:51 am)   [edit]
"...under Bush more Israelis have been killed between 2001 and 2004 than in the prior 30 years cumulatively."

--SpyMaster, brilliant blog post, April 30, 2004

SpyMaster says that somehow Bush is causing Israeli deaths in his neo-con oil grab that kills Arabs. He also references noted geopolitical strategist Sam Jazeerah.

Of course, the real reason why so many Israelis have died is because of Yasser Arafat's intifada, which began in the fall of 2000 (during the [i]Clinton[/i] presidency). And why did the intifada happene?

*Yasser Arafat was finally given everything he always proclaimed he wanted, but rejected it. And he rejected it because his real desire-- which he affirms in Arabic to his followers and in his alliance with Hamas-- is to destroy Israel.

*In order to blame the Jews for his own rejection, Arafat-- who had been planning the intifada for awhile-- launched his assault with the convenient excuse that Ariel Sharon inflamed the Palestinians by setting foot at Al Asqa-- the Jewish Temple Mount. And by the way, Sharon wasn't Prime Minster at the time. He was a candidate.

Suicide bombers sent to blow up Jews to destroy Israel have killed Israelis, not George Bush's insane "neo-con" policies, which, however you want to portray them, didn't even begin until 2002 when we finally set our sights on Iraq.

Therealspartacus said something to me recently about all of us searching for truth, but that is not true. SpyMaster isn't looking for truth, he's looking for hate and whatever advances his warped worldview (like most on the left). The sad thing is that he doesn't realize how otherworldly he sounds.

Let's just remember a few things:

*President Bush didn't do a thing to the Arab world that made 9-11 happen.

*President Bush didn't allow the Taliban to organize its terror structure during the 1990s.

*President Bush didn't refuse to capture Osama bin Laden when he had the chance.

*President Bush didn't sign disastrous deals with North Korea that allowed them to secretly build nukes.

*President Bush didn't look the other way at Iraq's weapons violations and terror support during the 1990s.

*President didn't allow America's first WTC bombing to go without an adequate response.

*President Bush didn't broker a disastrous Oslo "Peace" Accord that allowed Arafat and the evil he brings with him, back into Gaza, legitimizing anti-Israeli terror.

*President Bush didn't allow India and Pakistan nuke proliferation to go without serious consequences, he didn't allow Russia to secretly break nuclear treaties, he didn't allow China to get away with discovered espionage and theft, and he didn't allow Iran to further entrench their radical Islamic government behind a covert (but known to intel) nuke program.

If SpyMaster gave a damn about truth he'd legitimately criticize the president, not act like a circus sideshow.

State Dept. ran the occupation into the ground, wants Iraqi-hated UN to finish job

04.30.04 (9:17 am)   [edit]
[b]Rumsfeld’s War, Powell’s Occupation
Rumsfeld wanted Iraqis in on the action — right from the beginning.[/b]
By Barbara Lerner

The latest post-hoc conventional wisdom on Iraq is that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld won the war but lost the occupation. There are two problems with this analysis (which comes, most forcefully, from The Weekly Standard). First, it's not Rumsfeld's occupation; it's Colin Powell's and George Tenet's. Second, although it's painfully obvious that much is wrong with this occupation, it's simple-minded to assume that more troops will fix it. More troops may be needed now, but more of the same will not do the job. Something different is needed — and was, right from the start.

A Rumsfeld occupation would have been different, and still might be. Rumsfeld wanted to put an Iraqi face on everything at the outset — not just on the occupation of Iraq, but on its liberation too. That would have made a world of difference.

Rumsfeld's plan was to train and equip — and then transport to Iraq — some 10,000 Shia and Sunni freedom fighters led by Shia exile leader Ahmed Chalabi and his cohorts in the INC, the multi-ethnic anti-Saddam coalition he created. There, they would have joined with thousands of experienced Kurdish freedom fighters, ably led, politically and militarily, by Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani. Working with our special forces, this trio would have sprung into action at the start of the war, striking from the north, helping to drive Baathist thugs from power, and joining Coalition forces in the liberation of Baghdad. That would have put a proud, victorious, multi-ethnic Iraqi face on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and it would have given enormous prestige to three stubbornly independent and unashamedly pro-American Iraqi freedom fighters: Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani.

Jay Garner, the retired American general Rumsfeld chose to head the civilian administration of the new Iraq, planned to capitalize on that prestige immediately by appointing all three, along with six others, to head up Iraq's new transitional government. He planned to cede power to them in a matter of weeks — not months or years — and was confident that they would work with him, not against him, because two of them already had. General Garner, after all, is the man who headed the successful humanitarian rescue mission that saved the Kurds in the disastrous aftermath of Gulf War I, after the State Department-CIA crowd and like thinkers in the first Bush administration betrayed them. Kurds are not a small minority — and they remember. The hero's welcome they gave General Garner when he returned to Iraq last April made that crystal clear.

Finally, Secretary Rumsfeld wanted to cut way down on the infiltration of Syrian and Iranian agents and their foreign terrorist recruits, not just by trying to catch them at the border — a losing game, given the length of those borders — but by pursuing them across the border into Syria to strike hard at both the terrorists and their Syrian sponsors, a move that would have forced Iran as well as Syria to reconsider the price of trying to sabotage the reconstruction of Iraq.

None of this happened, however, because State and CIA fought against Rumsfeld's plans every step of the way. Instead of bringing a liberating Shia and Sunni force of 10,000 to Iraq, the Pentagon was only allowed to fly in a few hundred INC men. General Garner was unceremoniously dumped after only three weeks on the job, and permission for our military to pursue infiltrators across the border into Syria was denied.

General Garner was replaced by L. Paul Bremer, a State Department man who kept most of the power in his own hands and diluted what little power Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani had by appointing not six but 22 other Iraqis to share power with them. This resulted in a rapidly rotating 25-man queen-for-a-day-type leadership that turned the Iraqi Governing Council into a faceless mass, leaving Bremer's face as the only one most Iraqis saw.

By including fence-sitters and hostile elements as well as American friends in his big, unwieldy IGC and giving them all equal weight, Bremer hoped to display a kind of inclusive, above-it-all neutrality that would win over hostile segments of Iraqi society and convince them that a fully representative Iraqi democracy would emerge. But Iraqis didn't see it that way. Many saw a foreign occupation of potentially endless length, led by the sort of Americans who can't be trusted to back up their friends or punish their enemies. Iraqis saw, too, that Syria and Iran had no and were busily entrenching their agents and terrorist recruits into Iraqi society to organize, fund, and equip Sunni bitter-enders like those now terrorizing Fallujah and Shiite thugs like Moqtada al Sadr, the man who is holding hostage the holy city of Najaf.

Despite all the crippling disadvantages it labored under, Bremer's IGC managed to do some genuine good by writing a worthy constitution, but the inability of this group to govern-period, let alone in time for the promised June 30 handover — finally became so clear that Bremer and his backers at State and the CIA were forced to recognize it. Their last minute "solution" is to dump the Governing Council altogether, and give U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, the power to appoint a new interim government. The hope is that U.N. sponsorship will do two big things: 1) give the Brahimi government greater legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people; and 2) convince former allies to join us and reinforce our troops in Iraq in some significant way. These are vain hopes.

Putting a U.N. stamp on an Iraqi government will delegitimize it in the eyes of most Iraqis and do great damage to those who are actively striving to create a freer, more progressive Middle East. Iraqis may distrust us, but they have good reason to despise the U.N., and they do. For 30 years, the U.N. ignored their torments and embraced their tormentor, focusing obsessively on a handful of Palestinians instead. Then, when Saddam's misrule reduced them to begging for food and medicine, they saw U.N. fat cats rip off the Oil-for-Food Program money that was supposed to save them.

The U.N. as a whole is bad; Lakhdar Brahimi is worse. A long-time Algerian and Arab League diplomat, he is the very embodiment of all the destructive old policies foisted on the U.N. by unreformed Arab tyrants, and he lost no time in making that plain. In his first press conferences, he emphasized three points: Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani will have no place in a government he appoints; he will condemn American military action to restore order in Iraq; and he will be an energetic promoter of the old Arab excuses — Israel's "poison in the region," he announced, is the reason it's so hard to create a viable Iraqi interim government.

Men like Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani have nothing but contempt for Mr. Brahimi, the U.N., and old Europe. They know perfectly well who their real enemies are, and they understand that only decisive military action against them can create the kind of order that is a necessary precondition for freedom and democracy. They see, as our State Department Arabists do not, that we will never be loved, in Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East, until we are respected, and that the month we have wasted negotiating with the butchers of Fallujah has earned us only contempt, frightening our friends and encouraging our mortal enemies.

The damage Brahimi will do to the hope of a new day in Iraq and in the Middle East is so profound that it would not be worth it even if empowering him would bring in a division of French troops to reinforce ours in Iraq. In fact, it will do no such thing. Behind all the bluster and moral preening, the plain truth is that the French have starved their military to feed their bloated, top-heavy welfare state for decades. They couldn't send a division like the one the Brits sent, even if they wanted to (they don't). Belgium doesn't want to help us either, nor Spain, nor Russia, because these countries are not interested in fighting to create a new Middle East. They're fighting to make the most advantageous deals they can with the old Middle East, seeking to gain advantages at our expense, and at the expense of the oppressed in Iraq, Iran, and every other Middle Eastern country where people are struggling to throw off the shackles of Islamofascist oppression.

It is not yet too late for us to recognize these facts and act on them by dismissing Brahimi, putting Secretary Rumsfeld and our Iraqi friends fully in charge at last, and unleashing our Marines to make an example of Fallujah. And when al Jazeera screams "massacre," instead of cringing and apologizing, we need to stand tall and proud and tell the world: Lynch mobs like the one that slaughtered four Americans will not be tolerated. Order will restored, and Iraqis who side with us will be protected and rewarded.

— Barbara Lerner is a frequent contributor to NRO.

Prisoner abuse in Iraq: Bush, Bremer, Rumsfeld should apologize

04.30.04 (9:08 am)   [edit]
We're supposed to be showing Iraqis how a civilized society works. We're supposed to be the friends, the good guys that are doing away with Saddam's torture. Solders are supposed to follow rules of war and proper treatment of prisoners. With the conduct of these soldiers at Abu Ghraib we throw that out of the window.

Apparently we still don't get it. The Arabs, like most Americans, are heavily influenced by what they see on tv. Though most American soldiers are serving honorably, it takes these disgusting photos beamed across the world to further inflame the Arab world against us. This doesn't make our soldiers secure over there, it dishonors the reasons we're there, and it makes terror attacks against the US much more likely.

We have no one to blame but ourselves. Nobody, prisoner or not, deserves to be humilitated like the prisoners were-- even if they were fighters. THAT'S NOT HOW WE WORK.

My guess is that these soldiers-- and their general-- that tortured these Iraqis did it out of racism and religious bigotry.

How do we rectify? We can't. The damage is done, and we're ruining our own cause with our own sinful behavior. But we can start with the dismissal of everyone involved, an apology from Rumsfeld, Bremer, and Bush.

And I'm tired of getting flack from some on the right that I'm acting like a liberal with my criticism of Bush and his conduct in this war. They're wrong. It is because I care about this country and its success-- and doing things morally, it is because I believe in America, that I am all the more outraged that these things are happening (prisoner abuse, re-baathification, Brahimi, Fallujah nonsense). If I were a liberal I'd only pretend to be shocked and inside be delighted that America is failing on such a grand scale.

[b]Arab Stations Show Iraqi Prisoner Images [/b]
By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD, Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt - Arab television stations led their newscasts Friday with photographs of Iraqi prisoners being humiliated by U.S. military police. One main channel called the pictures evidence of the "immoral practices" of American forces.

The images, including prisoners naked except for hoods covering their heads, documented alleged abuses that have led to charges against six American soldiers. They were first broadcast Wednesday night in the United States on CBS' "60 Minutes II."

The Dubai-based Al-Arabiya and the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera channels blurred the nudity of the prisoners.

The images were potentially inflammatory in an Arab world already angry at the U.S. occupation of Iraq (news - web sites). Arabs consider public nudity dishonorable.

"This will increase the sense of dissatisfaction among Iraqis toward the Americans," said U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council member Mahmoud Othman. "The resistance people will try to make use of such painful incidents."

Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s office Friday condemned the alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners, but stressed it did not reflect the conduct of the vast majority of coalition troops.

"This is not representative of the 150,000 soldiers that are in Iraq," Blair's official spokesman said.

Blair's spokesman also confirmed eight cases of alleged mistreatment of Iraqis by British personnel were being investigated by the army's Special Investigations Branch. The Royal Military Police's Special Investigations Branch began its probe in June 2003 after an Iraqi POW reportedly was photographed suspended in netting from a fork-lift truck.

"Where allegations are made, they will be investigated by the SIB, and that's what every soldier who wears the British uniform knows," he added.

Al-Jazeera introduced the pictures by saying they showed the "immoral practices" of Iraq's occupation forces. The anchor reported that some of those responsible would face trial and could be discharged from the Army.

Among the images shown by the news channels were a hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his hands. CBS reported that the prisoner was told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted, although in reality the wires were not connected to a power supply.

Both stations also showed a photograph of a female U.S. soldier standing by a hooded naked prisoner. The soldier is pointing at his genitals, which are blurred out, and grinning at the camera.

The stations also broadcast a picture of several naked men intertwined as if they were engaging in a sex act.

CBS said the images were taken late last year at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, where American soldiers were holding hundreds of prisoners captured during the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The prison was the most notorious under Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). Its jailers allegedly tortured and killed thousands of Iraqis, and a cemetery outside has dozens of unmarked graves.

"The Saddam era was full of executions and torture, and we want the new Iraq to be clean of such images," Othman said.

The images caused outrage among viewers as well.

Omar Boghdady, an Egyptian insurance agent, said he was "disgusted and angered by those humiliating pictures."

"The scenes were really ugly, seeing people naked piled on top of each other blindfolded," said Boghdady, 25. "It really made me angry, but this is war."

In March, the Army said six members of the 800th Military Police Brigade faced court-martial for allegedly abusing about 20 prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The charges included dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, assault and indecent acts with another person.

In addition to the criminal charges, the military has recommended disciplinary action against seven U.S. officers who helped run the prison, including Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the commander of the 800th Brigade.

The Iraq-as-Vietnam lie is becoming truth

04.30.04 (3:05 am)   [edit]
And the President has only himself to blame.

Because of political pressure, Bush is straying from what needs to be done in Iraq-- win. According the Washington Post-- http://www.washingtonpost.com... :

[i]U.S. military officials in Iraq said that because of political sensitivities, [b]overall policy decisions about the standoff in Fallujah are being made by the White House, and Marine commanders have been reluctant to make public pronouncements about what should be done.[/b] But privately, many say they believe [b]the only way to eliminate the insurgency is through a series of large raids. [/b]

They note that a cease-fire agreement signed April 19 has largely been ignored by people in the city. Although the deal called for such heavy arms as mortars and rocket-propelled grenades to be surrendered to the Marines, all they have received is a small assortment of rusty, inoperable weapons.

More significantly, Marines note, insurgents were supposed to stop attacking U.S. positions. But front-line Marine posts are fired on almost daily in some places, prompting the Americans to respond with everything from sniper fire to precision-guided 500-pound bombs dropped by Air Force fighter jets.

"The only way to ensure that we really get these guys is for us to go in and take them out," a Marine officer said. [/i]

Just like in Vietnam, the military is not allowed to win. And that shows this morning, as the Marines are leaving Fallujah and handing it over to an ill-trained Iraqi security force chaired by a bunch of Ex-Hussein generals. We're also apparently releasing a Shiite cleric we arrested in October for his attempts at uprising against the coalition -- http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

According to the article--

[i]Washington is under intense international pressure to find a peaceful solution to the standoff that has killed hundreds of Iraqis and became a symbol of anti-U.S. resistance in Iraq, fueling violence that made April the deadliest month for American forces. [/i]

This 'symbol' of Fallujah exists because the anti-American media (al Jazeerah, most of the western media) made it look like a US failure, a quagmire. Just like Vietnam. The civilians casualties aren't documented, and quite a few were caused by the insurgents themselves.

Bush knows he has to win in 2004 in order to continue the war on terror. Kerry certainly won't. Maybe this is influencing his decision, but it shouldn't. The American people want to win, want to secure Iraq, and they support the president. His political decisions in Iraq, INCLUDING GETTING THE UN INVOLVED THROUGH BRAHIMI AND REHIRING BAATHISTS, are getting us closer and closer to solidifying the Vietnam comparison.

The Israel lesson still applies-- the only way you win against terror is if you kill it, not negotiate with it.

I fear Bush is on the verge of messing things up. He let the media's lies and the insurgency (planned by Hussein's intelligence and joined by foreign fighters/terrorists) get the better of him.

This is a critical, critical moment.

Final comment on abortion and therealspartacus

04.29.04 (10:35 pm)   [edit]
I appreciate therealspartacus' explanations, I really do. I don't have to read up on the principles of freedom, though.

Therealspartacus makes a couple of assertions about rights that I don't dispute, but when he tries to fit them into abortion, I think he fails.

Since it is a bit late, this isn't going to be the most well-constructed response, but I think it will work.

Spartacus says that an anti-abortion law will shred the Declaration of Independence. I think that is a bit absurd. One could argue that the "right" to abort itself shreds the Constitution. Either way, one thing still remains: owning your body does not entitle you to own another, especially one totally dependent on you.

We are not Gods.

Free will, believe it or not, is a cornerstone of Christianity. Free will allows for us to appreciate God. It is absurd to think that we are required to do good and it would be foolish to implement that. But the opposite of that is not the chaos of free will. Society demands the rule of law, which is based on morality.

The logic remains. No one is meant to own another. Each one of us, in the womb or not, has inherent rights, including the right to live. A woman that aborts a child because she can, because she 'owns' this child is not a model of perfect freedom, is not a woman exercizing her rights. She is stopping a life from happening and degrading her own freedom and dignity. Is she a murderer? I've used strong language, but I do believe that a woman who sees it as another form of contraception, as yet more insurance for her own selfishness is a murderer.

She is not required to save her child in utero. That still doesn't take away from the gravity of the offense. And that is not freedom, and that does not honor the Declaration of Independence.

It is clear that Spartacus and I see very differently, but I appreciate the chance to debate this. It was beneficial to me.

Patriot Acts accuses me of hating Palestinians...it would be nice if he knew how to read

04.29.04 (10:18 pm)   [edit]
For liberals it is too mighty a chore to read something, so they guess and stereotype in their all-knowing arrogance. For a group of people that laugh at traditional morality, they sure like to paint every Republican in moral terms (and guess which they are).

So PatriotActs, who is wrong 99% of the time, wrote this--- http://www.tblog.com/template... in response to an article I posted about the Palestinian "cause", which you can read here-- http://www.tblog.com/template... ....it is clear that he didn't read my blog. It is intellectually safer for him, like all lefties, to guard his stereotypes.

Of course, as I recently posted, I have great sympathy for the Palestinian people. But their plight is caused not by Israel, as PatriotActs recycles, but by their (lack of) leadership, a leadership that doesn't want a Palestinian state, and doesn't want to provide its people with anything. The PA and Hamas invented suicide operations in its hopes of destroying Israel, merely for existing. Since it was reborn, it is Israel, not the Palestinians, that has been warred against (and in the case of 1948, by the ancestors of these same Palestinians who know blame Israel for their parents' bloodlust).

I am consistently amazed by how the left has to post anything-- just anything-- that opposes conservatives. Since they employ lying as a legit means to an end, we can hardly rely on them for a single grain of truth.

Anyway, PatriotActs, I'm not anti-Palestinian. I'm anti-terror, pro-freedom.

The question is, what are you?

The World War II Memorial Arrives: FINALLY

04.29.04 (10:02 pm)   [edit]
My last year as an undergrad I had to take a class called "Literary Topics 460". Our professor, Dr. Cole, told us that our class would focus on the literature of war, specifically of World War I. When we focused on the literature itself, class was enlightening. Unfortunately, however, literature classes often morph from specific literature to liberal history to leftist indoctrination from the professor. This class was no different.

One of the things I remember Dr. Cole ranting against was patriotism. Patriotism starts wars, patriotism keeps humanity from achieving more. Patriotism is the real obstacle to peace in this world. One symbol of patriotism she said she couldn't stand (besides flag waving) was the war monument.

For Dr. Cole, a war monument is sick. It adds a gloss to what war really is, it makes heroes out of men forced to fight by old men (or for the left it seems, only Republicans) for nationalism, for imperialism, for all of the evil "isms" (Communism excluded) that ruin this world. In short, it is a gross form of historical revisionism.

World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, however, were far different wars. The US and its allies didn't fight for territory or national pride, or to rule others. They fought entirely for the cause of freedom--- for our freedom and for the freedom of the world. These wars were fought, in the end, for civilization.

Whether it was Naziism and Japanese imperialism, or Communism, these wars had to be fought. Imagine a world where Hitler ruled all of Europe, and takes his battle to our homeland. All Jews would be annhilated, as well as people of color, gypsies, and Catholics (and the disabled, and the old, and the weak). Imagine Japan's crimes left without a response-- the genocides in China and Korea, the prison camps, the iron-fisted rule.

With Communism, we fought for freedom differently. We had to. A nuclear rival ushered in the Cold War with arms races and real politik (an arms race that, like evil itself, never completely goes away). When we fought for freedom in Korea and Vietnam, we were fighting the Soviets as well. And though we didn't win in the normal sense, we are offered by those two "losses" a glimpse of the horror of a world without freedom. After we withdrew from Vietnam, and after the left in America prevented financial and material support of the South, Communism spread further through SE Asia, taking 2.5 million lives with it. In North Korea, well, we are presented daily with the misery that exists there.

Given the post-modern thinking that influenced an entire baby-boom generation, no one is surprised that we'd have a monument to "their" war, the Vietnam war, a "loss", before we'd have one for what is probably the victory of victories. The baby boom generation that currently runs the country should have honored their parents, the ones that secured their unprecedented freedom and prosperity, a long, long time ago. The Korean War monument came about just a couple of years ago. Why did it take so long?

But finally we have the World War II memorial. Its official opening in 4 weeks will amass the largest gathering of World War II veterans since 1945. Every living president will be there, along with hundreds of thousands of onlookers.

Finally, I'd like to say that a war memorial cannot adequately honor the sacrifice of those that served and those that fell. Nothing can. Yet collectively we have to remember, and we have to honor-- not only for us, but more importantly for the generations that succeed us.

If we forget the price of freedom, we take it for granted (and judging by the insane, shocking criticisms of what we're doing in Iraq, it looks like some of us already have). We also help along its defeat. The World War II memorial honors the vets that fought in, died in, and won the greatest war ever fought. For the world. It is beautiful, historic, and entirely appropriate. No matter what the leftists say.

God bless our troops past, present, and future.

National World War II Memorial Website-- http://www.wwiimemorial.com/

Consider what it takes to call yourself 'pro-Palestinian' -- a brilliant article

04.29.04 (9:13 pm)   [edit]
[b]Viva Palestine? With Friends Like These…[/b]
Clifford D. May
April 29, 2004

Consider what's required to wear the label: “Pro-Palestinian.”

To start, you have to appear non-judgmental about innocent Palestinian children being raised to become human bombs.

You must refer to those who send such children on suicide/mass murder missions as “political leaders” or, even better, as “spiritual leaders.” Call them militants if you must, but never terrorists.

To be thought of as pro-Palestinian, you must cite the plight of the Palestinian refugees as a key motivation for violence, ignoring the fact that there would have been no refugees had Israel's Arab neighbors not launched a war to destroy the tiny Jewish state immediately upon its birth.

Indeed, Arabs who chose to stay in Israel are today Israeli citizens, as are their children, enjoying more freedoms than do the citizens of neighboring Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia or even Jordan. Disregard all this if you want to be seen as someone who cares about Palestinians.

Supporters of Palestinians must point to the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank as another root cause of violence. Avoid mentioning that it was a second Arab war against Israel that led to the seizure of those territories which, at that time, were not called Palestinian territories. Gaza was administered by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan and no one demanded that they be turned them over to Palestinian sovereignty.

The Israelis captured the Sinai as well. That territory, several times larger than all of Israel, was returned to Egypt in exchange for a piece of paper promising peace. Forget these awkward details.

To burnish your pro-Palestinian credentials, even as you rail against the Israeli occupation, say nothing positive about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to end that occupation entirely in Gaza and to withdraw Israeli troops and settlements from 85 percent of the West Bank. In Orwellian fashion, insist that Mr. Sharon is giving up those lands as part of a “land grab.”

While it is true that at Camp David in 2000, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered about 95% of the West Bank and Gaza, Yassir Arafat turned that offer down and initiated several years of terrorist attacks. Even so, Mr. Sharon has said he's willing to consider further withdrawal, to discuss permanent borders, though he won't negotiate with those dispatching terrorists. Dismiss all that as irrelevant -- if you want to be described as someone who sympathizes with the Palestinians.

Also, continue to insist that Israelis eventually must agree to a “right to return” – that they must let millions of Palestinians settle not just in an independent Palestinian state next to Israel but in Israel itself.

Promote this idea even if you're savvy enough to know it can never happen – just as Hindus can never re-settle in what is today Muslim Pakistan, just as Greek Christians can never re-settle in what is today Muslim Turkey, just as the million Jews forced to flee from Arab countries after World War II can never return to what were, for centuries, their homes.

In fact, Israelis with roots in Arab countries today comprise about half of Israel's population. They may understand better than anyone else that a Palestinian “right to return” would mean the end of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people, that Jews would become a minority in what would no longer be the world's only predominately Jewish state. And that's a frightening thought because, sadly, few minorities living in the 22 Arab countries and the more than 50 predominately Muslim nations enjoy anything approaching freedom and equality. Such freedom and equality may be achieved in Iraq in the years ahead -- though not if the dictators of Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia can help it, and not if the Palestinian “political and spiritual leaders” who supported Saddam Hussein and who now oppose the American “occupation” have anything to do with it.

Nor should Friends of Palestine plan for the opportunities that the Israeli withdrawals will present. Don't even think about the Israeli homes that will be turned over to Palestinian families, the hotels that could be built along the Mediterranean. Forget about foreign investors, new hospitals and schools. And certainly don't talk about cooperation with Israel. On the contrary, shrug when Hamas terrorists bomb the checkpoints through which Gazans pass on their way to work in Israeli factories. But should the Israelis respond by closing those checkpoints, complain vehemently that the Israelis are cutting off the livelihood of Palestinian workers.

The United Nations is very pro-Palestinian. That's why UN experts are not hard at work drafting a plan to give Palestinians more say over who governs them. Arafat was elected Palestinian leader – he ran exactly one time in 35 years and in that election he was opposed by a woman whose name few can recall and who hadn't a ghost of a chance. Surely, that's as much democracy as any reasonable person could desire for Palestinians.

Perhaps someday people will look back in astonishment on all this. Perhaps someday the term pro-Palestinian will be redefined to include those who would urge Palestinians to seek compromise and peaceful co-existence with their neighbors, build a real economy, and discourage their children from suicide, murder and mutilation.

Right now, however, these are wildly radical notions.

Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and a Townhall.com member group. This column first ran on the Scripps-Howard News Service.

©2004 Clifford D. May

Panic is rapidly becoming policy for Bush in Iraq

04.29.04 (5:47 pm)   [edit]
This is very good column about what we should be doing, but aren't , in Iraq, and why.

From National Review--

April 29, 2004, 9:37 a.m.
[b]Political Problems
Panic as policy?[/b]
By Michael Ledeen

The root cause of our problems in Iraq is an excessively narrow vision, which has blinded us to the real strategic context, and therefore left us running after epiphenomena instead of developing a proper policy and a sensible mission. Nonetheless, our overwhelming military superiority has, so far, at least, made it possible for us to overcome a series of potential crises.

Like many others, I would have preferred our armed forces to pursue the murderers of the four security men, and to arrest or destroy them and their henchmen in Fallujah. Like Michael Rubin, I agree that the delay discouraged the long-suffering Iraqis and tortured them with the terrible thought that the son of Bush may yet betray them as his father did. But we are now closing in on the terrorists in Fallujah, and I have every confidence that we will destroy them in short order. (By the way, if you want to read a really good analysis of the battle of Fallujah, rather than endure the rantings of various retired officers and armchair generals, check out www.belmontclub.blogspot.com).

Meanwhile, back in Najaf, where the Iranian puppet Moqtada al Sadr took cowardly refuge among the holy shrines of the Shiite faith, there are armed bands in the streets, fighting Moqtada's thugs. As some of us have said all along, the Iraqi Shiites do not like their Iranian cousins very much, and they have never had much esteem for this excessively brash and altogether too-young man who has meager religious standing and precious little culture. Perhaps he will become a casualty of Iraqi Shiite self-assertion, an outcome devoutly to be desired. Perhaps, in the end, the Marines and the special-forces units will have to do it themselves. Perhaps, best of all, all will join to remove the thug. Time will tell. But if we clean up Najaf and Fallujah, the biggest winner will be Ayatollah Sistani, who can then have his cake (the defeat of his enemies) and eat it too (the delay and phony "negotiations" came in no small part at his request).

So while, as usual in human events, these things could and should have been done better, we are nonetheless moving in the right direction in the ground war. The more serious blunders are political, as they have been since well before Operation Iraqi Freedom. We should have prepared the political battleground before the fighting ever started, by creating a democratic Iraqi government-in-exile. But internal divisions within the Bush administration proved intractable, and future historians will no doubt marvel at the fact that more passion and more man hours were spent fighting Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress than combating the likes of Moqtada and the remnants of Saddam's security forces. Indeed, the internal battle consumed countless hours in recent weeks, as is demonstrated by the cascade of anti-Chalabi leaks from his many mortal enemies at the Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Thus paralyzed with regard to one of the central issues of our time ? how best to support newly freed countries in the Middle East ? we have been coping with the bane of modern government, namely the morning news. One has the impression that the CPA, even Viceroy Bremer himself, constantly seeks to remedy whatever bad news hits the popular press, rather than carrying out a thoughtful policy. Thus, when the dual unpleasantness of Najaf and Fallujah dominated the headlines, we responded in two missteps: first caving in to the outrageous demands of the U.N.'s Lakhtar Brahimi (best known in the region for delivering the Lebanese people to Syrian tyranny in 1989) and then announcing we would welcome Baathists back to positions of authority (in truth, the appeasement of the Baathists had started months ago, most notably in the north, where the media darling, General Petreus, had encouraged the creation of a municipal government with an overwhelming majority of Baathists).

The depth of Iraqi revulsion at these two intemperate decisions can be probed by looking at the better Iraqi blogs (like Iraq the Model, or Hammorabi, or Iraq & Iraqis). We had proclaimed that we were going to liberate the country from Saddam's tyranny, but we now say that the Baathists must have a share of power. Worse yet, after slowly and painfully constructing a transitional government, we then shrug our collective shoulders and turn over the enterprise to the United Nations, best known in Iraq for its intimate embrace of Saddam, its blatant theft of tens of billions of dollars from the "crude-for-food" program, and its cowardice under fire. Do not forget, for the Iraqis most certainly do not, that Kofi Annan's minions ran away after the first bombs directed at their offices, or that Kofi Annan's son is on the list of beneficiaries of "crude for food."

All of which bespeaks panic, rather than thoughtful policy. The goal of American policy ? in the eloquent words of President Bush ? is the democratization of the Middle East, and democracy means that the people choose their leaders. Our panicky decisions suggested that we were not serious, that we reserved to ourselves the right to make all those decisions, even in the last days of Coalition hegemony. There was no urgent reason for us to make those decisions, indeed they should have been left to the Iraqis. If the Iraqi government decides to give jobs to Baathists, so be it; the officials of that government will have to submit to the electoral judgment of their own people. And the people, not the United Nations, should choose the Iraqi government.

There were indeed decisions that the Coalition, and the American government, should have made. Some were, and some weren't. It seems that there is still a lot of money in the kitty for "reconstruction," and you can be sure that there is no shortage of entrepreneurial companies willing and able to come to Iraq and start work, despite the scary security situation. The CPA has been slow to reconstruct, as it has been slow to get reliable news media on the air in Iraq, although that is now moving forward, to Bremer's credit. But, to his shame, the Nuremberg process has not even begun, and that process is arguably the single-most important thing in building a viable Iraqi democracy. You want the rule of law? Then haul the miscreants of the Saddam tyranny in front of a judge and jury, and prosecute them. How can it be that, more than a full year after the fall of Saddam, not a single top Baathist has been brought to justice? (And why, now that you ask, have our media not been pounding this drum? Perhaps because some of them have employed former officials of Saddam's information ministry, a dirty little secret that helps understand many things)?

It would seem intuitively obvious that the rule of law is the bedrock of democracy, and that we should have devoted energy and passion to getting the process under way. Which brings us back to another failure: An Iraqi judge issued an arrest warrant for Moqtada six months ago, yet he was never arrested. We judged that he was losing popularity (I agree) and that time was working against him (yes), and hence we should just let events take their course (wrong). And then, again in what seems a panicky decision, we decided to shut down his newspaper, but leaving him at large.

If we had been true to our principles, we would have enforced the arrest warrant. And if we had a proper understanding of the region, we would have realized that any move against him was bound to provoke a swarm of angry hornets. We cannot "solve" Iraq's problems by acting solely within the confines of the nation, because at least three other terror masters of some significance ? Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia ? are fighting for their survival in Iraq. Against us. Moqtada is an Iranian creature, and Iran has long since created a huge network inside Iraq, ready to respond to orders from Tehran. The model is Lebanon in the Eighties and Nineties, a combination of (suicidal and other) terrorism, insurrection, hostage taking, religious indoctrination, and blackmail. They thoughtfully announced their intentions even before we set boot in Iraq, but our misnamed intelligence community thought they didn't mean it. Thus we were unprepared for March and April, and thus I suspect we are largely unprepared for the next big wave, which will come both before and after the turnover of power in late June and early July. I am told that preparations are under way for large-scale operations against the Coalition in Karbala, the second of the Shiite centers.

Our military men are indeed superb, and I think the battle of Fallujah will turn out to be a minor masterpiece of tactical brilliance and human courage. But it is unfair to reward these great fighters with policies invented from one day to the next. The global war on terror requires clear definition, a serious policy, and a strategic plan, which is then applied systematically by all elements of the government. That plan must be regional, at a minimum, and it must include regime change in Syria and Iran, along with a meaningful change of policy in the Saudi kingdom. I am told that the Saudis are now shaken by al Qaeda attacks within their borders, and are begging for help from us. If true, our help must be conditional on the termination of Saudi assistance to terrorists, and to those who man the terror assembly line in the radical mosques and schools spread throughout the West.

There is no shortage of wisdom in this administration, and our leaders should have learned by now not to listen to the whispers of British, Saudi, and European diplomats when they tell us that the Palestinian question is the only thing that really matters, and that we should show understanding for the sensitivities of our enemies, rather than show indifference to their whining because we know they are trying to kill us.

Remember one of the early dicta of Machiavelli: If you are victorious, everyone will judge your methods to have been appropriate. If you lose, you're a bum.

Faster, please.

Robert Novak's take on Woodward's book...

04.29.04 (5:21 pm)   [edit]
Robert Novak was no fan whatsoever of Bush's Iraq invasion (he called Bush arrogant), and Bob Woodward is a left-winger. So I was surprised when I read this in Novak's column today:

"Judging by published excerpts, news accounts and even some of Woodward's comments on television, "Plan of Attack" is of a piece with kiss-and-tell anti-Bush memoirs on the best-seller list. The full 443-page text, however, portrays George W. Bush as a conscientious, well-informed leader presiding over a military team that devised an ingenious attack plan. Whether Bush made the right decision to remove Saddam Hussein by force, he does not come across as the nitwit portrayed by Democrat."

Maybe that is why the Dems aren't really using this book as a weapon, aside from John Kerry, who lied about the President and the Saudi "oil fix" anyway.

The Arafat Money Quote

04.29.04 (5:07 pm)   [edit]
Yasser Arafat: "My life is not more dear to me than that of any Palestinian boy or a girl. We're all martyrs in the making in defence of our holy Muslim and Christian places."

Apparently it is. For if he thought himself the same as the boys and girls who at the very beginning of their lives and through his brainwashing strapped bombs on themselves and blew themselves up, he would have been a martyr a long time ago. I do not understand how these kids fail to connect the dots: if offensive martyrdom is to be desired, why does any Muslim live past 20 years of age? Go figure.

Also, Arafat is wrong. The holy places belong to the Jews first and foremost. There is a lineage to Judaism through Christianity, but there isn't one with Islam. Arafat only calls these places holy so he can sell death to the people he misleads.

Runner-up Arafat quote: "There will be no retreat from (the drive to) achieve independence, freedom and an independent state"

No one is stopping you, old man. You just don't want a state.

Bush gets WMD resolution passed at the UN, for what that's worth

04.29.04 (4:58 pm)   [edit]
Bush the cowboy unilateralist worked with the UN to get an anti-terror resolution passed. Of course, this means very little, as member states besides the US, UK, and Israel are not interested in fighting terror. They have no incentive to fight terror-- they hate Israel and the US.

[b]Bush applauds UN's arms vote[/b]
Wed Apr 28, 7:53 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) applauded the UN Security Council's unanimous approval of a resolution aimed at keeping nuclear, biological and chemical weapons from terrorists.

"Today's resolution is an important achievement. We must continue to press these efforts to ensure that the world's most destructive weapons are kept from the world's most dangerous regimes and organizations," he said.

"Member states should enact strict export controls, criminalize the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and secure all related materials within their borders," Bush said in a statement released by the White House.

The 15-0 vote approved a resolution crafted in months of negotiations by the council's five permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- all of which are nuclear powers.

The text was revised three times to answer objections from some of the council's 10 nonpermanent members, and finally won the support of the last holdout, Pakistan, which is also a nuclear-armed state.

US President George W. Bush first called for the resolution in September in a speech before the United Nations (news - web sites).

The resolution calls on the 191 UN member nations to stop terrorists, black-market traders and all so-called "non-state actors" from acquiring nuclear, biological and chemical weapons or the materials and technology to make them.

It also calls on them to adopt laws to prevent sensitive materials and technology from getting into the hands of non-state actors.

Palestinian peacekeeper who shot Americans in Kosovo may be HAMAS member

04.29.04 (4:45 pm)   [edit]
Has Hamas' war against America begun? It would make sense if this guy was a Hamas member-- the UN adores Hamas.

[b]A Massacre in Kosovo
A member of the United Nations police force murders his American colleagues. [/b]
by Stephen Schwartz
04/29/2004 12:00:00 AM

ON APRIL 17, as reported in THE WEEKLY STANDARD, two American women and an American man were slain in Kosovo, and eleven people were injured when they came under armed attack by a Palestinian from Jordan. The killer was a member of the same body in which they served: the United Nations police force in the territory.

The male American, who died of his wounds, was Gary Weston, of Vienna, Illinois. The Palestinian, Sergeant Major Ahmed Mustafa Ibrahim Ali, was killed when members of the contingent in which the Americans were traveling returned fire.

In the days since the first reports of the crime were received, more details have emerged, which make what was already a scandal for the United Nations in Kosovo even more alarming. [b]First and most disturbing is that the dead assailant, Ali, is being investigated for connections with Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization. Second is that the same Ali had visited the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, home of the Wahhabi Islamic sect that produced al Qaeda, only a month before he was sent to Kosovo in March.[/b]

More thorough descriptions of the incident are horrendous. The group of Americans, along with some Turkish personnel, were leaving a prison in the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica when the attack began. It was their first day on the job. According to the Associated Press, they were [b]"trapped between a locked gate and Ali's assault rifle."[/b]

The Palestinian carried an M-16, from which [b]he apparently discharged 400 rounds, leading NATO investigators to examine whether his four colleagues in a Jordanian detachment assigned to guard the prison had helped him by feeding his weapon as he fired.[/b] All four were detained after the bloody events, but three have now been released, while one of them, whose name has not been disclosed, remains under arrest as a possible accomplice, and his immunity from prosecution has been revoked.

The Americans shot back with pistols. An Austrian guard heard the noise and ran to the scene, but was wounded in the legs by the Palestinian.

The Associated Press account states chillingly, "When he had shot all those he could see, Ali paced around the vans [in which the Americans had been riding], searching for more victims."

The carnage continued until Ali's weapon jammed. The surviving Americans then stormed the Jordanians' guard shack, where they found his four comrades hiding. The Americans grabbed their weapons from them and killed the assailant, firing 16 bullets into his body.

[b]Because Kosovo media operates under heavy U.N. censorship, the whole truth about this atrocity may not be known for some time. But terrorism expert Dan Pipes warned this week, "If the Hamas connection does materialize, it could mean that the organization has in fact begun in earnest its war with the United States."[/b]

Stephen Schwartz, a frequent contributor, worked in Kosovo for most of 2000.

The Spartacus (and Sam Adams) abortion debate continues...

04.29.04 (3:46 pm)   [edit]
Spartacus wrote some comments to me and I'd like to respond to them....

1. [i]If the fetus were across the room, living independent of the woman, then she would have no right to kill it.[/i]

So if a child of 4 is sitting across the floor playing with his blocks, completely helpless without his mother, that child is protected from being killed by his mother because he is "indpedendent"? At least a four year old can run, right? A fetus is a human being...we come from fetuses. There is no other way.

If we were to use your new logic, anything living outside the womb is "independent", while anything living inside the womb is dependent. Or maybe not. I don't see how killing a dependent being is any better than killing an independent being. Maybe your problem, Spartacus, is that you don't want to say that you don't think a fetus is alive. Too bad science proves that notion wrong.

2. [i]But if the fetus were dependent on the woman for life, she would be able to withdraw her support at any time.[/i]

Why? Who or what gives her that right? Again, if this is the case, then you're advocating genocide. If you think it is a woman's choice- because she is her own God-- to murder a child in her womb "at any time" you're saying that no one has a right to live. So somehow we're supposed to will ourselves into being.

3. [i]No, we cannot help but be fetuses, but that doen't give a fetus the right to enslave. [/i]

I don't know if you're trying to sound intellectual, shocking, or both, but fundamentally, if a fetus IS DEPENDENT, he/she cannot enslave. The woman is not a victim. If she chooses to off her child, the child is the victim.

To insit that there is an equality in ability between fetus and parent is absurd. The equality lies in dignity, in the rights of each being to live. That seems to be something our founding fathers would appreciate.

4. [i]I don't treat the fetus as a good, all my analogies were comparing a fetus to a person. [/i]

A fetus is a person, but not, obviously in ability. A fetus depends on a parent. A fetus has to become a child and mature. That makes a woman's charge to protect it grave.

Since you now believe that a fetus is only a person if living outside the womb, your analogies were wrong.

5. [i]I expessed the viewpoint that a woman has the legal right to withdraw her life support. I find mid and late term abortions for most reasons to be appalling, disgusting and immoral. [/i]

A woman has no right whatsoever to murder, especially beings solely dependent on her. Women are not Gods, the lives they create they do not own. No one owns anyone else. Again, Spartacus, if this is what you believe, then you do think they are goods. Women are to be responsible for the lives they create, and killing them is not doing that.

You seem to believe that no one has a right until he/she manages to live outside the womb. Outside of that, women have the right to kill the "blob of tissue" that lives inside of her and, worse, depends on her, because they OWN that baby.

6. [i]'Sex is free and therefore meaningless' does something have to have a punishment to carry meaning??? If your entire opposition to abortion rights is based upon a wish for sex-lovers to be punished, don't hide it behind a false concern for life.[/i]

Spartacus, what do you think is the meaning of sex? Was its purpose chiefly for pleasure? Is procreation-- the only reason we're here-- secondary? The fact is, Spartacus, every day we make choices, and all of these choices have degrees of consequences. You say punishment. I do not believe a baby is a punishment. I do believe, however, that it means a hell of a lot more than a couple of beers and a desire to get screwed.

And I have to laugh when you assume that I'm some Nazi who wants everything punished. Sex is a gift from God, it is to be enjoyed (in marriage). But it is pregnant-pun intended-with consequences. A couple who puts sex for pleasure above anything else, without caring about the consequences, is one unworthy of the act.

I don't care is sex-lovers are punished, that's missing the entire point. But the life they help create, if it is created, is their responsibility, and ending that fetus ends that life. This is absolutely without question.

***

Sam Adams chimes in too with this:

[i]Of course what is amusing is this disdain for the lives of the mothers and once the "life' is out of the womb- Reducto wants it killed in wars to Enrich Halliburton. Yep, lets breed slave labor & cannon-fodder to serve up on a plate to the Mad King George & the rapists.

Of course, if a woman bears a mentally retarded child who needs care and she isn't rich-- the right-wingers and self-satisfied goons all tell her to GO TO HELL & FUCK THE BABY IF IT NEEDS ANY HELP.

Geez. Hypocrisy and Callousness in Action in the Good Ole USA![/i]


Number one, isn't Sam Adams the biggest loser on the planet? Number two, I don't want anyone to die in any war. But life isn't perfect. Democrats and leftists should know all about sending lives into unnecessary wars
(what was that quote from Stalin about one life being a tragedy, millions being a statistic?).

Number three, health care, proven time and again, works better in the private sector. That doesn't mean I don't think there shouldn't be any government oversigh (just not a whole lot). I actually care more about babies with mental deficiencies than Sammy does-- I want them to get good care, not whatever care the government says they deserve.

Sam-Jazeera's comments aren't worth my response, but what can I say, I aim to help.

CarteBlanche's Sierra Club Post Gets It Wrong

04.29.04 (12:18 pm)   [edit]
CarteBlanche has posted something totally misleading from the Sierra Club about Dubya's wish to keep executive privelige regarding Energy Task Force meetings.

Some points that need to be rebuffed:

Sierra Club says: "Desperate to keep the workings of the Energy Task Force secret, the Bush Administration argued today that the judiciary has no role reviewing whether it broke the law - an unprecedented argument in light of the Court's prior rulings against Presidents Nixon, Clinton, and others.

The truth: Congress has the right to investigate the President, the Supreme Court's constitutionality lies in interpreting law. The court eventually has to make decisions on whether a president has to release documents and such, but the court does NOT have a role in finding out whether the president broke a law. This is correct. That is the function of Congress (and Clinton obstructed justice by perjuring himself in a court case...therefore the courts acted appropriately...but Congress also had the right to impeach him for that).

Sierra Club says:"It seems that the Bush Administration is obsessed with secrecy. This case is about how that penchant for secrecy and back-room deals resulted in a polluting energy policy that will negatively impact Americans' health, safety and the places they treasure.

The truth: The Bush administration is hardly obsessed with secrecy. But they do have a right to executive privelige. Believe it or not, the president doesn't have to tell the world about every meeting his branch of government has. Secondly, the mere fact that Sierra Club, A LEFT WING ENVIRO ACTIVIST GROUP that is smarting because they weren't part of this "secret" meeting that eveyrone knew about calls the energy policy "polluting" tells you why they want to know who took part in the meetings.

Sierra Club says: "The Bush Administration has consistently demonstrated a pattern of shutting the public out, ignoring public comments, and instead favoring corporate campaign contributors."

Translation: Bush doesn't listen to the Sierra Club. By the way, was the public privy to Bill Clinton's PDB's? Were we privy to Hillary Clinton's health-care meetings? She was unelected....where's the accountability there?

There is hardly any truth to the Sierra Club's charges.

Hey Spartacus: does a woman have a right to someone else's life?

04.29.04 (12:01 pm)   [edit]
Therealspartacus writes in his blog that he opposes anti-abortion laws because "You, and only you, have a right to your own life."

I suppose a fetus doesn't have a right to his or her own life, I suppose the woman-- by being a co-creator of that life-- has dominion over that life, right? I suppose that if we all have a right to our own lives, then we are our own Gods. That won't create any problems, no.

Then Spartacus say something that comes from outer-space:

"The Republicans want to ban abortions, because they see it as the fetus's right to control and take the products of a mother's life, because otherwise the fetus will die."

I assume under this logic, then, that Spartacus would have had no problem if his mother asserted her control over his life in the womb. In fact, why doesn't she have the right to shoot and kill him? That's her right, even now. If stopping a fetus from living isn't stopping life, then I fail to see how stopping a fetus outside of the womb is stopping one either. We cannot help but be fetuses, therefore our humanity, our rights, exist within the womb.

Everything else Spartacus says to justify his logic is meaningless because he rests his argument on treating a fetus as a good, as a simple material that can be stolen and therefore, be possessed.

To see life in that way, as Spartacus clearly does, exposes a frightening point of view. If a baby is a good, it can be destroyed at any time at any place, for any or no reason. Sex is free and therefore meaningless-- if, instead of the intended product, pleasure, a woman gets a baby, no problem, she can just destroy it. That's her life. And if she wants a baby and she finds out it will have problems outside the womb, or if it has blue eyes and she wanted brown-- no problem again.

I am floored that Spartacus would make these arguments. It's amazing that he is claming fascism behind the need to respect life, instead of embracing it as a facet of his own abortion position.

Bush bows to anti-American pressure, pulls Marines out of Fallujah

04.29.04 (10:15 am)   [edit]
Get this...the US is pulling Marines out of Fallujah and REPLACING THEM WITH AN ALL-IRAQI FORCE LED BY A FORMER HUSSEIN GENERAL. This is supposed to pacify Fallujah, instead of encourage the insurgency there and allow corruption to grow.

Bush is starting to make political decisions, and he's being forced to do it by the likes of CNN, Reuters, Al Jazeera, ITN, and the BBC. For weeks we've heard nothing but anti-American bile from the media regarding Fallujah, that we're killing civies, etc. The Pope and UN envoy Brahimi got in on the act, gulping down the media's lie and calling US actions "collective punishment".

This is a huge mistake. The Americans that were savagely mutilated by Fallujans get no justice...Americans as a whole get no justice. Iraq is being compromised.

If the left can't get a US quagmire, they'll make one.

News article-- http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm...

Why DrForBush is wrong, again

04.29.04 (9:54 am)   [edit]
DrForBush calls the right a bunch of hypocrites because it is against the "assualt" weapons ban because they think it is a foot in the door-- a left-wing tactic that DrForBush says the right uses on abortion.

A couple of things.

One, people hate abortion because it ends a life. If any of our mothers "chose" to abort, we wouldn't be here. And wouldn't that suck? If women truly understand the gravity of having casual sex, if women understood the fire they're playing with-- emotionally, physically, and mentally-- abortion wouldn't be an issue. But it is left-wingers like DrForBush who reduce the ending of a life that a woman IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING as a choice...as a healthcare "option". People that think women who choose to have careless sex and get pregnant have a responsibility to their actions-- especially to the life they created. How is that a bad thing, Dr.ForBush?

The "right" didn't sneak through a fetus protection bill. It was voted on, and had supports from a significant numbers of folks on the left. This is significant, because it shows that more and more-- despite the nutjobs that organized the Washington Death March-- the realities of what a fetus is (A LIFE) cannot be denied. If a woman dies and her fetus dies, is one life or two lives prevented from living? I think a pregnant woman's murder underscores not only how there are two humans that die, but also shows the grave responsibility women have to their children in utero-- these babies are totally dependent on them.

The assault weapons ban, however, is a left-wing tactic to erase the 2nd Amendment. Why? The assault weapons ban doesn't ban "assault" weapons but anything that remotely "looks" like an assault weapon. It hasn't really accomplished much, just as the Brady bill hasn't accomplished much. The 2nd Amendment is pretty clear-- and was so important it was written into our Constitution. The right to kill a life in the womb has no Constitutional justification, and was conjured up by a group of left-wing judges responding to the sexual revolution.

So on this, the right are not hypocrites.

Iran's president admits Iranians imprisoned for political beliefs

04.29.04 (9:42 am)   [edit]
**Don't believe for a minute, thought, that Khatami is a 'moderate' and a 'reformer'**

[b]Khatami Admits Iran Imprisons People for Beliefs[/b]
Wed Apr 28, 7:21 AM ET

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran holds people in prison for their political beliefs, President Mohammad Khatami (news - web sites) was quoted as saying Wednesday, breaking a series of Iranian denials on the subject of political prisoners.

Iran's prisoners include Hashem Aghajari, a history lecturer who urged Iranians to forge their own interpretation of Islam and not follow the nation's clerical hierarchy "like monkeys," and Ahmad Batebi, who was jailed for holding the blood-stained T-shirt of a friend wounded in 1999 student protests.

"Absolutely, we do have political prisoners. There are those who are in prison for their beliefs," the moderate president was quoted as saying in the Iran daily newspaper.

Taking questions from young people frustrated by the lack of progress in his reform agenda, Khatami told an unusually frank meeting Tuesday he intended to publish fresh grievances about his inability to temper hard-line power.

The mid-ranking cleric, who speaks English and German, fitted Iran's problems into the malaise of ineffective democratic reform in the region.

"We are living in the East and face despotic governments, humiliating societies and centuries of destroyed hopes," said the president, criticized by many reformists for his fudged political compromises.

"We must ask how hope can explode in our society and then die so suddenly," he added, referring to the political apathy among the young, so often the vanguard of the reform movement.

Khatami was swept to power in a landslide victory in 1997 but most reformist attempts to push through change have been thwarted by the constitutional supremacy of hard-line bodies.

Earlier this month Khatami criticized the Guardian Council, a hard-line watchdog, for banning more than 2,000 mainly reformist candidates from February's elections.

He also withdrew two bills from parliament that were intended to boost presidential powers and curb the power of the Guardian Council to bar election candidates.

He withdrew the bills fearing that the spirit of the legislation would be perverted when conservatives take control of parliament in late May.

Iran's next presidential elections are in mid-2005. Khatami, having served two terms, cannot stand again.

Kerry continues to unravel, this time on Hardball

04.29.04 (9:22 am)   [edit]
[b]Kerry's Convolutions on WMDs[/b]
By Hugh Hewitt
Weekly Standard | April 29, 2004

After train wrecks on Meet the Press and Good Morning America, John Kerry took his tattered credibility to the friendly confines of Hardball, where a sympathetic and compliant Chris Matthews did his very best to help Kerry make it through at least one interview without wandering into bizarre asides, prolix dependent clauses, and baffling hedges.

Chris Matthews failed. On the bizarre side of the ledger, Kerry ended the interview by bringing up the fact that Karen Hughes had been born in Paris. Matthews was confused by this sudden turn of events and first indicated the interest that accompanies the revelation of a genuinely important fact, only to retreat into a forced laugh when Kerry indicated that he had made a joke.

The exchange of importance involved the invasion of Iraq and the WMD controversy. Here it is in its entirety:

[b]Matthews[/b]: If there was an exaggeration of WMD, exaggeration of the danger, exaggeration implicitly of the connection to al Qaeda and 9/11, what's the motive for this, what's the "why?" Why did Bush and Cheney and the ideologues around take us to war? Why do you think they did it?

[b]Kerry[/b]: It appears, as they peel away the weapons of mass destruction issue, and--we may yet find them, Chris. Look, I want to make it clear: Who knows if a month from now, you find some weapons. You may. But you certainly didn't find them where they said they were, and you certainly didn't find them in the quantities that they said they were. And they weren't found, and I have talked to some soldiers who have come back who trained against the potential of artillery delivery, because artillery was the way they had previously delivered and it was the only way they knew they could deliver. Now we found nothing that is evidence of that kind of delivery, so the fact is that as you peel it away I think it comes down to this larger ideological and neocon concept of fundamental change in the region and who knows whether there are other motives with respect to Saddam Hussein, but they did it because they thought they could, and because they misjudged exactly what the reaction would be and what they could get away with.

Kerry's answer is a jungle of dependent clauses and asides, but it deserves intense focus. Put aside the obvious reference to the left's theory that Bush took out Saddam to avenge Hussein's assassination attempt on the first President Bush, as well as the reference to the "neocons," which is verbal comfort food to the anti-Semitic loons in the audience. Let's take Kerry seriously for once.

Kerry acknowledges that WMD may yet be found. This admission destroys the left's critique of the war and months of "Bush lied!" rantings from the MoveOn.org swamp. Kerry knows what everyone with a memory knows: which is that Saddam had WMD and the world agreed he had them. Perhaps they were destroyed, perhaps hidden, perhaps trucked to Syria, but he had them. Thank you, Mr. Kerry, for your only contribution to the public's understanding of the war to date.

No sooner does he admit that the entire attack on Bush's credibility is a contrived, election-year stunt, then he goes on to fumble the issue by suggesting that only WMD in artillery shells matter to us, and that artillery was the only means available to Saddam to deliver WMD.

Two points, minor and major.

The minor point is that Saddam attack the Kurds in 1988 using chemical weapons delivered from planes. Kerry's statement that "artillery was the way they had previously delivered and it was the only way they knew they could deliver" is flat wrong. It is also easy to spot, and easy for the public to understand since they remember SCUDs hitting Israel in 1991.

The major point is that WMDs alarm us not only or even primarily when they are in artillery shells but when they are in the hands of terrorists. Had Chris Matthews been interested in actually asking a question that would have obliged the senator to show some thought, he would have inquired as to how much ricin is too much, or how great a biological threat has to exist in the lab before we take action.

Kerry's answer tells us that he fails to grasp the crucial issue of this campaign: the threat to America has changed, and our response has to change with it. Sure, he gave up a huge issue by admitting that WMD may yet be found in a transparent attempt to position himself against the possibility of their discovery before November, but more important than that admission is Kerry's display of what can only be called ignorance of the threat.

We should not be surprised. In his long career, Kerry has misjudged the threats posed by the Vietcong, the Soviets, the Sandinistas, and just about every other enemy the United States has faced. Now he has misjudged the threat posed by WMDs. Is America going to elect a "hear no evil, see no evil" president in the middle of a war that could go on for years to come?

Hugh Hewitt is the host of The Hugh Hewitt Show, a nationally syndicated radio talkshow, and a contributing writer for The Weekly Standard.

America tunes out left-wing radio

04.29.04 (9:19 am)   [edit]
[b]America Tunes Out Leftist Hate Radio[/b]
By Michael P. Tremoglie
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 29, 2004

If liberals have a radio network and nobody listens does it still make a sound?

This is the relevant question about the new "liberal" radio network Air America Radio, which debuted March 31. The network features a galaxy of left-wing stars.

Despite these stars Air America Radio is disappearing faster than a John Kerry campaign pledge. Air America could not pay its bills to its Chicago affiliate, so it was locked out of its office and its programs were cancelled. Now its CEO, Democratic Party operative Mark Walsh, has resigned.

After listening to a couple of the shows one can only conclude that Air America combines the worst elements of National Public Radio and Drive Time Radio – sophomoric humor and soporific conversation. The owners of Air America – Progressive Media, which is owned by Democratic Party operative Mark Walsh – assembled a group of "talent" such as late night TV comedians, Comedy Channel producers, former gangsta rappers, and liberal radio talk show hosts from NPR and the far-Left radio network Pacifica.

The 9 a.m. to 12 Noon show is called Unfiltered. The hosts are comedienne Lizz Winstead, Oxford grad Rachel Maddow, and Rapper Chuck D. Lizz Winstead and Rachel Maddow speak with the soft-spoken, quasi-intellectual tones that characterize NPR, and Chuck D, well, is Chuck D. Among their "jokes" is the suggestion that the CIA Iraqi Rewards program rewards frequent flier miles for "How many civilians you kill." Maybe they should interview the widows of our servicemen.

The major issue of the day was that terrifying threat to our civil liberties "hip-hop profiling." They interviewed Donna Lieberman of the New York ACLU about this important subject. It seems that there is unfair targeting by the NYPD and Miami PD of the hip-hop community.

One reason that "hip-hop profiling" may be important is that Air America caused the elimination of at least three minority radio stations and has thrown blacks and Hispanics out of work. Ten of twelve Air America hosts – or 83 percent - are white. Contrast that to Rush Limbaugh’s guest hosts, who are 67 percent white and tell me who is racist.

During their ruminations and articulations Chuck, Lizz, and Rachel, made the obligatory comments about cops being cruel and stupid, and the CIA is watching that each of them.

The only thing they did was ridicule: the CIA, the military, the cops, President Bush, you name it. This is Hate Radio.

Liberals believe that it is not their message that is unpopular, it is their lack of media. This is why Air America was created.

One New York Times’ article once stated that Carville, Begala, Bill Press and Phil Donahue are the only liberals in media. This is ludicrous. Clinton friend Rick Kaplan is president of MSNBC. NBC’s Tim Russert is the host of Meet the Press and used to work for Mario Cuomo. The host of ABC’s Sunday political show, George Stephanoupolos, was a high-level Clinton staffer. MSNBC features Chris Matthews, who was a former Tip O’Neil staffer, and Brian Williams who was a Carter staffer. Judy Woodruff of CNN, Margaret Carlson are registered Democrats. Bill Moyers of PBS is a vociferous critic of Republicans and a former Johnson administration official.

In 1985, the Los Angeles Times surveyed 3,000 journalists across the country at 621 newspapers. Their conclusion was that "Members of the press are predominantly liberal, considerably more liberal than the general public." A 1995 Roper Poll furnished similar results.

Comedian Jay Leno once referred to what would become Air America during one of his monologues last year. Leno remarked, "According to the New York Times, a group of liberal venture capitalists are in the process of developing their own liberal radio network to counter conservative shows like Rush Limbaugh. They feel the liberal viewpoint is not being heard -- except on TV, in the movies, in music, by comedians, magazines and newspapers. Other than that, it’s not getting out!"

Liberals and Democrats have a tendency to only talk to each other. According to their ratings, no one else is tuning in. The Democrats should heed the maxim, "Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much." And no one tunes in. The overwhelming popularity of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and conservative websites such as FrontPage Magazine prove where America really stands. It does not stand with the Left, and it certainly does not stand with Air America.

An al Qaeda chemical attack almost occurs and no one cares?

04.29.04 (9:16 am)   [edit]
[b]Al Qaeda's Poison Gas
The foiled attack in Jordan might have killed thousands. [/b]
Thursday, April 29, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
OpinionJournal.com Editorial

Jordanian authorities say that the death toll from a bomb and poison-gas attack they foiled this month could have reached 80,000. We guess the fact that most major media are barely covering this story means WMD isn't news anymore until there's a body count.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi--the man cited by the Bush Administration as its strongest evidence of prewar links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and the current ringleader of anti-coalition terrorism in Iraq--may be behind the plot, which would be al Qaeda's first ever attempt to use chemical weapons. The targets included the U.S. Embassy in Amman. Yet as of yesterday, most news organizations hadn't probed the story, if at all, beyond the initial wire-service copy.

Perhaps the problem here is that covering this story might mean acknowledging that Tony Blair and George W. Bush have been exactly right to warn of the confluence of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Jordan's King Abdullah called it a "major, major operation" that would have "decapitated" his government. "Anyone who doubts the terrorists' desire to obtain and use these weapons only needs to look at this example," said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

More details of the plot emerged Monday night with the dramatic broadcast on Jordanian television of confessions from the terror cell's leader and associates. The idea apparently was to crash trucks--fitted with special battering rams and filled with some 20 tons of explosives--through the gates of targets that included the U.S. Embassy, the Jordanian Prime Minister's office and the national intelligence headquarters. The explosions notwithstanding, the real damage was reportedly to come from dispersing a toxic cloud of chemicals, which included nerve and blister agents.

Anonymous U.S. officials have been quoted playing down the WMD wrinkle, suggesting the chemicals may have been meant to merely amplify a conventional explosion. But then much of our "intelligence" bureaucracy is still wedded to the discredited notion that secular tyrants and fundamentalist terrorists don't cooperate (see Hezbollah). They may also be defensive about their earlier, dismissive assessments of Zarqawi's significance.

Plotter Hussein Sharif Hussein was shown on Jordanian television saying the aim was "carrying out the first suicide attack to be launched by al Qaeda using chemicals." A Jordanian scientist described a toxic cloud that could have spread for a mile or more. So was it really a foiled WMD attack? Here's hoping someone is trying to get to the bottom of this.

The provenance of the operation is also of note. The bomb trucks and funds are said to have entered Jordan via Syria. Last fall General James R. Clapper Jr., director of satellite intelligence for the Pentagon, said there had been an unusual amount of traffic--including possibly WMDs--between Iraq and Syria in the lead-up to war.

The terror cell's ringleader, Jordanian Azmi Jayyousi, said he was acting on the orders of Zarqawi, whom he first met at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan: "I took courses, poisons high level, then I pledged allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi." Mr. Jayyousi said this attack had been plotted from Zarqawi's new base of operations in Iraq. A Jordanian court sentenced Zarqawi to death this month for plotting the 2002 murder of U.S diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman.

Prime Minister Blair has said it's simply "a matter of time unless we act and take a stand before terrorism and weapons of mass destruction come together." According to Jordanian authorities, that sometime was intended to be last week. That strikes us as news.

My problems with the far Jewish right

04.28.04 (8:33 pm)   [edit]
I support Israel's right to exist...it shouldn't even be a question. They're human beings, for God's sake-- they come from the Middle East, they've tranformed the desert into a paradise. They have ancient historical roots in Israel. Judaism is a cornerstone of western civilization. I believe they should fight against the Palestinian Authority and all Islamic radicalism-- they were fighting the war on terror long before the US was.

I also know that the Israel that exists today is not the Israel that used to exist. In fact, the borders of Israel have changed numerous times. The hard-right Zionists in Israel and around the world believe that Israel should engulf Gaza, the West Bank, clear to parts of Iraq. Indeed, that used to be the size of Israel at one point. Some anti-Israeli folks believe that Israel should have only its 1948 borders, giving Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip (all technically not occupied land, all territory won from aggression against the state). Quite a few think Israel should not exist at all.

Ariel Sharon seems a lot like George Bush: no matter what he does, no one likes it. Current critics of Sharon say that a unilateral Gaza pullout will endanger Jews living in Gaza (which it probably will) and encourage terrorism (which is irrelevant-- they don't need any more encouragement). Some think that Sharon is willing peace by leaving the Palestinians to deal with themselves-- if the Palestinians don't want peace, at least Israel will protect its citizens. Some think that Israel should take assert its control over those territories.

We know why Israel needs the Golan Heights and a large chunk of the West Bank (including Jerusalem-- this is a non-starter). THe "right of return" is a hoax as well. I do have a problem, however, with Israeli extremists who think that pulling out of Gaza is wrong, but yet don't have any answers whatsoever at how to solve these problems. They are the Pat Buchanan right of Israel-- they have a lot of problems, but offer no solutions.

There are millions of innocent "Palestinians"-- Arabs who live in Palestine-- who just want an average life, like the Israelis. They've lived in that area for centuries as well. Something has to happen to them. The Palestinians do not want a state, I am convinced of that--they want to destroy Israel first because they believe Israel is the source of all their troubles. That is how much Arafat has radicalized them. But I do not see how Jewish disregard for them helps.

What I'm saying is that I don't see how expanding the Jewish state to engulf Gaza and all of the West Bank helps anyone or anything. I think Bush and Sharon have chartered an adequate course. I would love some answers from the Jewish far-right on what, if anything, they'd do to bring peace to the area.

Ideologues are often at break with the realities on the ground. I support Israel with all my heart-- it has the right to Jerusalem, no right of return, and to defend itself. I'm tired of hearing how pulling out of Gaza is a wrong decision-- staying there didn't help much either.

The State Department's War Against President Bush

04.28.04 (8:08 pm)   [edit]
[b]The State Department’s War With the White House [/b]
Christopher Ruddy, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Apr. 27, 2004

“The State Department is in Kerry pre-inauguration mode,” a senior Bush administration official tells NewsMax, warning that the department’s bureaucracy is desperate to get President Bush out of the White House.
How desperate?

Well, last year the State Department invited billionaire financier George Soros, President Bush’s archenemy, to be its keynote speaker at an internal program known as “The Secretary’s Open Forum.”

Soros is giving tens of millions of dollars to a shadowy network of 527 organizations to help defeat Bush. After GOP senators got wind of the invitation, the department played down the Soros event but did not cancel it.

Controversy over Bob Woodward’s new book, as well as claims that Secretary of State Colin Powell has been frozen out of major policy decisions over Iraq, have obscured the enormous clout the entrenched State Department bureaucracy still wields and how ardently it wants to help defeat President Bush this November.

Though Powell has been described as the ultimate “good soldier” – disagreeing in private but supporting the president and his policies in public – he has left the State Department bureaucracy on automatic, without any check on its efforts to undermine the White House.

Please Don’t Betray Me

Even President Bush has made light of the problem, according to our source, telling political appointments he made to the State Department, “Don’t go native on me over there.”

On major issues a deep divide remains between the White House and bureaucrats at Foggy Bottom, including:

Weapons of Mass Destruction: The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) has been at the forefront challenging the administration’s claims to have had legitimate intelligence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. INR is believed to be the source of leaks intended to counter administration claims.

Senior Bush officials have seen so many obvious INR leaks published in the New York Times, it has becoming a running joke that some INR analysts must have Times reporters on their speed dials.

Some INR bureaucrats in this supposedly objective “intelligence organization” make no bones about their dislike for the Bush White House, and have posted demeaning cartoons about the president in their offices.

INR is a media favorite among the agencies that complete the U.S. intelligence community.

See No Evil

As one official put it: “[INR] never [/i]sees any evil and objected to all WMD findings against Iraq. It also objected to WMD findings against Iran, Cuba and North Korea.”

INR reflects the perennial liberalism of the State Department and its close ties with the Democratic Party.

INR is viewed as so clearly biased that even liberal experts are reluctant to cite it. For example, Ken Pollack, a former Clinton National Security Council official, noted in January’s Atlantic Monthly that INR is not taken seriously in Washington because it makes knee-jerk objections to everything and even disputed Iraqi WMD findings before the first Iraq war. [ See: http://www.theatlantic.com/un... ]

Syria: Related to the WMD controversy is Syria’s involvement in those weapons.

Though some U.S. intelligence and Israeli sources have evidence that Saddam’s regime moved its WMDs to Syria shortly before the U.S. invasion in March 2003, the State Department has opposed making any public charges against Syria.

North Korea: Administration officials such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were outraged when State Department officials kept from them vital information about North Korea’s atomic weapons program.
In April 2003, the North Koreans told a U.S. government delegation in Beijing, “[A]s we had previously told you in New York, we have finished reprocessing all 8,000 of our plutonium fuel rods.”

The North Korean statement floored the Bush administration because the State Department had kept these revelations from the White House National Security Council and the Pentagon.

Because of this and other acts of defiance, decision-making on North Korean matters has been removed from the State Department.

Still, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and State’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs are pushing for a quick Clinton-style deal with North Korea that would get a promise on paper from the communist regime, with no full verification clauses.

Libya: The White House was so fearful the State Department would “mess up the Libya account,” our source says, that the White House was placed in charge of the developing detente between Col. Moammar Gadhafi and the U.S.

Even so, the administration has had its hands tied.

Our administration source says the White House is salivating for a second term to clean house at the State Department.

At the same time, State bureaucrats are dragging their feet on Bush’s initiatives, hoping to hold out until a Kerry administration.

For the moment Powell has enormous public, media and congressional support, and any effort by the White House to seek his early departure would not be smart politically. But the administration knows it has its hands tied because it cannot implement policy.

Powell has resisted many Bush political appointees suggested for State, and has sharply limited the number of political appointees that the president can make as ambassadors.

Additionally, early in the administration, Condoleezza Rice, the president’s national security adviser, agreed to fill many of the top positions in the White House’s National Security Council with State Department career foreign service officers and career federal appointees, many of whom were promoted during the Clinton years.

Richard Clarke was just one of many such pro-Clinton bureaucrats who came to fill out the Bush administration’s national security team.

‘Strategic Error’

“It was a strategic error,” Dr. Constantine Menges said of the Bush administration’s decision to keep so many State Department officials and Clinton holdovers at the NSC.

State’s agenda is often at odds with the president’s, confirmed Menges, who served on President Reagan’s NSC as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and who authored “Inside the National Security Council.”

“It is a mistake to appoint career State Department foreign service officers to virtually all the senior regional positions in the NSC, as was done by Dr. Rice,” Dr. Menges said. “The president needs to have independent advice about international affairs and also about what is happening within the administration from competent foreign policy experts of his own party.”

The decision to populate the senior NSC staff with so many State Department officials, Menges argued, “created ‘two State Departments,’ and that does not provide any president with the range of information and ideas he needs.”

But a second may bring significant changes, an administration source tells NewsMax.

Powell’s retirement in the event of Bush’s re-election, which has long been rumored, is a certainty, Parade magazine reported Sunday.

Its selection as Powell’s most likely replacement: Condoleezza Rice.

Bob Kerrey's disgraceful Comedy Central appearance demands his resignation from the 9-11 Commission

04.28.04 (11:58 am)   [edit]
April 28, 2004, 10:58 a.m.
[b]Commissioner Buffoon[/b]
Michelle Malkin on Bob Kerrey & 9/11 Commission on National Review Online
By Michelle Malkin

Forget Jamie Gorelick. The member of the 9/11 Commission who most deserves the boot — or at least the swiftest kick in the pants — is former Senator Bob Kerrey.

The man who told PBS newsman Jim Lehrer four years ago that he needed to retire from political life because "it's time for me to breathe some private air" now won't stop polluting the public's airspace. In the past month alone, he has penned blabbermouth op-eds for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and logged appearances on CBS's Face the Nation, CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports, NBC's Today Show (twice), ABC's Good Morning America, CNBC's Capitol Report, and FNC's On the Record with Greta van Susteren and Hannity & Colmes (twice).

Kerrey's behavior during the 9/11 hearings — hectoring witnesses, mugging for the cameras, delivering a windy monologue to Dr. Condoleezza Rice ("Dr. Clarke") and then complaining about his time being "eaten up" — has been abominable. But it was Kerrey's shameful TV appearance on Monday night alone that should disqualify him as a commissioner on a federal panel investigating the deadliest enemy attack on American soil.

Catapulted back into the limelight thanks to the mass murder of 3,000 innocent men, women, and children, Kerrey took advantage of his terrorist-induced celebrity to appear on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Now, it would be one thing if Kerrey used his privileged position to inform Stewart's younger audience of the gravity of the 9/11 panel's task. But instead, Kerrey yukked it up. First, he dished with Stewart about President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's upcoming private meeting with the commission. When Stewart mocked the president's "buddy system," Kerrey guffawed: "He is bringing his buddy, that's exactly right, for safety." Emboldened by audience applause, Kerrey riffed that it was more like "Screw you, buddy." Asked by Stewart whether people were really blaming each other over the terrorist attacks during closed hearings, Kerrey snorted: "Oh, Jee-zus, yeah." More audience approval. (Taking the Lord's name in vain is always good for a few cheap laughs.)

Next, echoing a profanity uttered earlier in the show, Kerrey blurted out with a clownish grin: "Life is [expletive bleeped]." When Stewart proposed that Kerrey ask the vice president, "What the [expletive bleeped] is wrong with you people?" Kerrey cracked up and promised to use the question. And when Stewart called Attorney General John Ashcroft a "big [expletive bleeped]," Kerrey chortled some more.

After nearly ten minutes of knee-slapping hilarity, it was time for Kerrey to wrap things up. Instead of paying lip service to those who died in the terrorist attacks, Kerrey used his last moments on the program to suck up to Stewart. The Daily Show, Kerrey cooed, was one of the few shows he TiVo'ed. The other, he joked, was [the PBS kids' show] Boohbah. Ho-ho-ho.

House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) was spot on Tuesday in his reaction to Kerrey's performance: "His appearance on a program designed to satirize current events proves that Kerrey lacks the seriousness of purpose that this Commission requires and the American people deserve. This is not a laughing matter."

I would call on 9/11 chairman Tom Kean to rein in Kerrey's buffoonery. But we already know his response: It's none of our [expletive bleeped] business.

— Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists Criminals & Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores.

The Patriot Act allows the FBI to spy on anyone that reads a book! Not exactly...the facts

04.28.04 (11:18 am)   [edit]
This is section 215 of the Patriot Act, the section that deals with the FBI gaining access to library records. It is short. Go ahead and read it (relevant parts are in bold and underlined):

***

[b]SEC. 215. ACCESS TO RECORDS AND OTHER ITEMS UNDER THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT.[/b]

Title V of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1861 et seq.) is amended by striking sections 501 through 503 and inserting the following:

[b]`SEC. 501. ACCESS TO CERTAIN BUSINESS RECORDS FOR FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE AND INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM INVESTIGATIONS. [/b]

`(a)(1) The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) [b][u]may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution.[/b][/u]

`(2) An investigation conducted under this section shall--

`(A) be conducted under guidelines approved by the Attorney General under Executive Order 12333 (or a successor order); and

`(B) [b][u]not be conducted of a United States person solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States.[/b][/u]

`(b) Each application under this section--

`(1) shall be made to--

`(A)[b][u] a judge of the court established by section 103(a); or

`(B) a United States Magistrate Judge under chapter 43 of title 28, United States Code, who is publicly designated by the Chief Justice of the United States to have the power to hear applications and grant orders for the production of tangible things under this section on behalf of a judge of that court; and[/b][/u]

`(2) shall specify that [b][u]the records concerned are sought for an authorized investigation conducted in accordance with subsection (a)(2) to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.[/b][/u]

`(c)(1) Upon an application made pursuant to this section, the judge shall enter an ex parte order as requested, or as modified, approving the release of records [b][u]if the judge finds that the application meets the requirements of this section.[/b][/u]

`(2) An order under this subsection shall not disclose that it is issued for purposes of an investigation described in subsection (a).

`(d) No person shall disclose to any other person (other than those persons necessary to produce the tangible things under this section) that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained tangible things under this section.

`(e) A person who, in good faith, produces tangible things under an order pursuant to this section shall not be liable to any other person for such production. Such production shall not be deemed to constitute a waiver of any privilege in any other proceeding or context.
`
[b]SEC. 502. CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT. [/b]

`(a) On a semiannual basis, the Attorney General shall fully inform the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives and the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate concerning all requests for the production of tangible things under section 402.

`(b) On a semiannual basis, the Attorney General shall provide to the Committees on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives and the Senate a report setting forth with respect to the preceding 6-month period--

`(1) the total number of applications made for orders approving requests for the production of tangible things under section 402; and

`(2) the total number of such orders either granted, modified, or denied.'.

***

Now, I've talked to a bunch of lefties here, there, and everywhere who tell me that they've read this, and yet they still believe that this gives the FBI unbridled access to anyone's records.

To review:

1)FBI has to request to a judge or a person appointed to make the order permission to read material that would help in a terror investigation, and the FBI has to prove that the request doesn't intrude upon a citizen's exercizing his/her first amendment rights. It has to be related to an international terrorism investigation, not based soley on what a man reads.

A judge, not Bob Mueller or John Ashcroft, has to decide if the FBI's request meets the standard.

2)The warrant or order issued will not disclose what it is for-- for obvious national security reasons.

3)Congress will have oversight, naturally, over the whole thing -- on a semiannual basis for the House and Senate. There the AG will disclose how many times they've used the provision, what for, and how many times they were denies.

So what's the problem with the Patriot Act again? Seems to me that it protects our Constitutional, God-given rights while fighting terror.

lllegitimate Senator Lautenberg calls Bush a "chickenhawk".... what about Bubba?

04.28.04 (10:59 am)   [edit]
Senator Lautenberg, of New Jersey, is illegitimate. He was put on the ballot AFTER the New Jersey state deadline in 2002 (after Bob Toricelli resigned in disgrace). He was a hail mary after the clock expired, and he "won".

So there is this ancient man yesterday calling George Bush a chickenhawk because the Bush administration is critical of John Kerry's defense credentials (isn't this a presidential campaign?). Suddenly, the Democrats care about whether their candidates served in Vietnam or not. If only this were the case during the worst political decade in US history, the 1990s.

Bill Clinton was the worst kind of "chickenhawk": he didn't serve in Vietnam (and unlike Bush, he actively dodged the draft and protested against the war in foreign enemy territory), but was so arrogant in his all-knowing that he put incompetents around him in key military and diplomatic positions (like Sandy Berger, Will Cohen, and Madeline Albright)...a lot like a communist dictator would do. And then he ran the military in the ground.

Just look at what Clinton, by the left's definition a chickenhawk, "accomplished": humiliation in Somalia, installing toilets in Bosnia, a ridiculous, Congressionally-bypassed, UNILTATERAL war in Kosovo, military cuts, a failure to address Iraq while appearing to be tough (Iraqi regime change act) and a failure to respond to terror (oh, except for some missiles that destroyed an aspirin factory).

A "chickenhawk" according to the Democrats and the left recklessly and arrogantly uses the military because he doesn't know what it's really like. This is supposed to be defining Bush. But all it does is define their hypocrisy and the man that ruined their party-- BILL CLINTON.

President Bush surrounded himself with the right people and has succesfully waged the war on terror, which includes Iraq. Though he's not doing things perfectly, he's doing a much better job than the anti-military, anti-intelligence John Kerry would Bush's slander as a chickenhawk is just that. He's earned his national defense credentials.....Kerry will never do that.

John Kerry keeps profiting off of Enron and Halliburton

04.28.04 (10:46 am)   [edit]
We know that Kerry is already the receiver of the most special interest money in the Senate, but what many fail to see is that he also benefited from Enron and Halliburton.

This is important for this simple reason: Kerry and the entire left-wing think both companies are/were special interests of the Republicans. Of course, we know that lefties invested in Enron, and Halliburton has been used by all presidents for the last 50 years.

When John Kerry blasts the Bush administration's relationships with Enron and Halliburton, he should be pointing the finger at himself.

According to Sam Dealey in today's National Review Online-- http://www.nationalreview.com... :

"Personal financial disclosure forms filed with the Senate show that on December 11, 1995, the marital trust held by Kerry and his wife purchased Enron stock valued anywhere from $250,001 to $500,000. (The Senate requires only rough valuations for assets and liabilities.) The stock returned between $5,000 and $15,000 in dividends in 1996, and another $5,001 to $15,000 in 1997. Capital gains realized from the sale of Enron stock that year totaled anywhere from $15,001 to $50,000. All in all, the Kerrys made between $25,003 and $80,000 off their Enron buy.

"Likewise, financial forms on file with the Senate show the Kerrys made money off of Halliburton. On May 13, 1996, the marital trust purchased between $250,001 and $500,000 of stock in the company. Just seven weeks later, the stock was sold. The trust reported earning $1,001 and $2,500 in dividends and $5,001 and $15,000 in capital gains. Add it up and the gains were anywhere from $6,002 to $17,500."

Now, given the money the Kerrys have (which dwarfs Dubya's "fat-cat" excess), this is not a whole lot of money, but it is still very significant. It represents one more facet of Kerry's hypocrisy. Expect him to flip-flop when asked about this and say something like "Well, I didn't invest as much as Cheney did..."

Kerry is sinking like a stone.

Giving them what they want

04.28.04 (10:29 am)   [edit]
So I'm catching flack for the way I run my blog. Namely, that I'm cutting and pasting too much. I suppose that if I cut and pasted like WinstonSmith, SammyAdams and CheckItOut, that would be dandy. I'm expected to write a masterpiece of originality, instead of getting out good information.

(I also suppose that if I was a loser and had eons of time on my hands, or if I were a college student, instead of working every day, I'd probably write more original blogs...but oh well.....)

All I care about is informing folks abou what's going on in this world. But, since I'm expected to write something like everyone else, I will.

Here we go.

WE NEED TO STOP THIS NEOCON ROBBER-BARON IMPERIAL OIL GRAB!!!! BUSH KNEW ABOUT 9-11!!!!! HE ORGANIZED IT WITH SAUDI ARABIA!!!!!! BUSH LIED!!!!! CONDI RICE IS A SLUT!!!!! WHEN WILL THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE STOP?!!!! PROBABLY WHEN DICK CHENEY DIES WITH HIS HALLIBURTON BLOOD MONEY!!!!! BUSH HAS RAPED AND KILLED INNOCENT CIVILIANS!!!!!! IRAQ IS A QUAGMIRE!!!!! AND ALL FOR OIL!!!!!!! BUSH IS HITLER, EASILY THE WORST PRESIDENT WE'VE EVER HAD!!!!! I WISH BUSH DIDN'T HATE CHILDREN!!!!!!! BUSH PERSONALLY DESTROYED 3 MILLION JOBS!!!!!! HE DID IT TO LOCK US INTO A WAR!!!!!!! GOD BLESS SADDAM HUSSEIN AND KIM JUNG IL!!!!!!! THE FRENCH ARE 100% RIGHT!!!!!!! FUCK AMERICA!!!!!!!

That's much better than what I post, sure. And plus, now I feel like one of the guys.

Of armor shortages, re-Baathification, and Fallujah- Bush is messing things up in Iraq

04.27.04 (10:10 pm)   [edit]
The short version: we need to get armor in Iraq ASAP, or borrow Israeli armored carriers, we need to stop re-Baathification (it won't make friends as was intended) and kick Brahimi out, and we need to FIGHT in Fallujah, not seek political solutions (it is that approach that led to quagmire in Fallujah in the first place).

IF WE DON'T DO THIS RIGHT, IT WILL HURT THE SECURITY OF BOTH THE US AND IRAQ, AND WE'LL BE THERE FOREVER

3 articles...

[b]Shortage of armor limits U.S.
Options in urban warfare hindered [/b]
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
By David Wood
Newhouse News Service

WASHINGTON -- A shortage of armored combat vehicles in Iraq is pressing U.S. forces into a cruel dilemma: either advance stealthily on foot or hold up at a city's outskirts and use artillery, mortars and airstrikes.

The second course is safer. But shooting from a distance is less accurate than shooting at close range. It raises the potential for civilian casualties and collateral damage, which fuel anti-American fury.

Acknowledging the problem, senior U.S. military officers have said they did not anticipate the fierce urban combat encountered in Iraq this month. They are rushing in armor plate and considering sending additional tanks and armored personnel carriers.

On foot in Fallujah

On Monday, Marines advanced into Fallujah on foot and occupied a two-story building, which soon came under intense enemy attack from a mosque. It took repeated passes by helicopter gunships and jet fighters firing missiles before armored vehicles could approach to withdraw the Marines, according to press reports from the scene. The mosque was reported damaged in the counterattack.

A senior Sunni cleric, in remarks carried by the popular Arab network al-Jazeera, accused U.S. forces of carrying out a "bloodbath" and called for an investigation into American "war crimes."

In previous battles in Fallujah's crowded neighborhoods, U.S. forces have called in AC-130 gunships that spray lethal rounds over hundreds of square feet.

"Using bombs and AC-130s is a strategic defeat," given the political repercussions, said Kenneth Brower, a weapons designer and consultant to the U.S. and Israeli military. "But we've had to use them."

Restricted vision

In contrast, Israel has developed special armored vehicles for urban combat in Gaza and the West Bank, senior Israeli officers said, enabling them to drive up close to the enemy and use pinpoint weapons. Soldiers ride into Palestinian neighborhoods in tanks with turrets replaced by armored boxes with bulletproof glass, which allow the vehicle commanders to see 360 degrees without exposing themselves to fire.

American tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, like the Bradley, have notoriously restricted vision when hatches are closed. In city streets, they must operate with crewmen exposed in open hatches or be flanked by walking infantrymen to protect against side attack.

"We have a whole spectrum of vehicles that enable you to see where you are going and who shoots at you, without being hit," said a senior Israeli officer who recently commanded a brigade in Gaza.

"This enables you to advance inside the city and to get closer" to the enemy, said the officer, who spoke on condition that he not be identified by name. "As far as I can recall we have never used indirect fire in 3 ½ years in the West Bank and Gaza."

Urban combat unexpected

The U.S. Army and Marines have practiced fighting in cities for decades but found themselves unready when urban combat broke out in Iraq this spring.

"This is a new mission for us," Marine Corps Brig. Gen. William Catto said. After the Marines left Iraq last summer, he added, "We did not anticipate going back." The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was returned to Iraq last month.

Because the Pentagon did not anticipate the urban uprisings that erupted this month, some military units recently rotated into the country left behind many tanks and other armored vehicles. The Marines, for instance, are using only 16 tanks in Iraq of their inventory of 403, and have deployed 39 of their 1,057 assault amphibian vehicles that provide protection against small arms but not rocket-propelled grenades.

The Army and Marines are assessing whether to rush hundreds more tanks to Iraq, a process that would take weeks.

Pentagon officials acknowledged last week that $5.97 billion worth of new and modified equipment and weapons is needed, mostly for added troop protection. The list is "unfunded," meaning there's no money in the budget for it, said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Plywood armor

In the Army, 4th Infantry Division troops who drive 5-ton gun trucks in convoys that have been raked by Iraqi fire and roadside bombs have fitted their trucks with plywood "armor," according to Rep. Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who heads the House Armed Services Committee. Plywood provides no protection, even against small arms.

Hunter, furious that the Pentagon hasn't been able to provide armor, last week thundered at officers at a hearing, "You guys can't tie your shoelaces!"

The Army did not respond to repeated requests to discuss the issue in interviews. But Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, assistant deputy chief of staff for operations, told Hunter last week, "We must do better, and I think the Army and the leadership of (the Pentagon) is committed to doing that, sir."

Still, Army officers said they won't complete adding armor to their vehicles until October -- six months away.

'Paucity of vehicles'

Senior Marine Corps officers, meanwhile, stressed in interviews that they are making every effort to add armor to their vehicles.

There is "a paucity of armored vehicles" in Iraq, said Catto, who heads the office that purchases and builds weapons systems. By Saturday, every Marine vehicle in Iraq will have interim armor and ballistic glass available, he said.

But officers of both services said bolting armor on existing Humvees and trucks is far from satisfactory. Many vehicles simply can't carry the extra weight, and when they can, become difficult to maneuver.

And as the Israeli experience suggests, encasing troops in armor cuts them off from the outside world.

"Clearly, if you are going into a hostile area you want to protect yourself -- but you don't want to live like a turtle," said Col. Philip Exner, a senior Marine staff officer who just returned from Iraq.

Exner said it was critical that Marines interact with the population.

"There is always a trade-off between protection and your ability to engage people in the streets," he said. "To focus exclusively on protection is to forget why you are there in the first place -- to engage, not just survive."

[b]The Myths of Re-Baathification[/b]
By Joel Mowbray
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 27, 2004

In announcing last week the first rollback of the de-Baathification in Iraq, the Bush administration portrayed it as a move to help bring skilled technocrats back into positions where their “talents” could be put to good use.

Representative of the resulting media coverage is the New York Times reporting it as a move aimed at “bringing back thousands of teachers and professors.”

But the shameless spin was a lethal cocktail of understatement and myth.

Looking at just the official line—bringing back those who are “innocent, capable people who were Baathists in name only,” according to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) spokesman—the policy seems both sensible and reasonable.

What is actually happening, however, is anything but.

For starters, there are no actual teachers who were impacted by de-Baathification. In the broader field of education, lots of people were ousted from government positions—but they were largely administrators, principals, and chancellors.

To the extent people were ousted whose jobs were as teachers, they were only fired if they were top Baath Party leaders. Consider the treatment given to some “teachers” under Saddam. Those who actively supported the regime made up to seven or eight times as much as real teachers—meaning the primary source or their income was not teaching, but loyalty. Loyalty to the Butcher of Baghdad.

The unfunny punch line to the “teachers” joke is that thousands of teachers who did not actively report to Saddam on students and fellow teachers and who were newly re-hired last year will now lose their jobs to make room for Baathist thugs, according to former Defense Department official Michael Rubin, who was in Iraq until recently.

It looks like re-Baathification is already on the slippery slope. In an April 14 press conference, United Nations envoy to Iraq Lakhdar Brakimi indicated that he wanted to bring back top Baathists from a wide array of fields. In his opening remarks, he said:

“It is difficult to understand that thousands upon thousands of teachers, university professors, medical doctors and hospital staffs, engineers and other professionals who are sorely needed in the country have been dismissed within the de- Baathification process, and far too many of those cases have yet to be reviewed.”

The significance of this statement—almost universally ignored by the media—cannot be understated. Not only is Brahimi destined for a much larger role after CPA administrator Paul Bremer leaves in the near future, but the UN envoy already enjoys direct access to George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

Brahimi, a Sunni Muslim who used to work for the wildly undemocratic Arab League, is essentially doing the bidding of Iraq’s Arab Sunnis before they become the minority in a democracy. Particularly to the Shi’ites, this will be seen as yet another betrayal.

All of which means Brahimi will have to act fast.

Baathist leaders came from the 15% of Iraqis that are Arab Sunnis, the only people who lived well under Saddam. And de-Baathification enjoys strong support among the 60% who are Arab Shi’ites (who live mostly in the south) and the 25% who are Kurds (who live mostly in the north.)

The 85% of Iraqis who were consigned to poverty and lived in constant fear are not terribly forgiving to the top tiers of Saddam’s minions who helped make that tyranny possible.

Once it’s the Iraqi people and not the US or the UN calling the shots, former Baathists are not likely to get favorable treatment.

Nor should they. Of the two million former Baath Party members, only 15,000 – 20,000 of them were purged by Bremer’s order last spring. So the people who were members only to get a job were left unscathed.

Anyone in the top four levels of the Baath Party—the ones actually affected by Bremer’s order—were guilty by definition. Saddam could not have maintained his reign of terror without their active efforts. Just because some of them may not have physically murdered people doesn’t mean they don’t all have blood on their hands.

Signs are not encouraging. The media barely blinked when it was announced that full colonels and even generals will be let back in to lead the new Iraqi military. Given the almost unparalleled atrocities committed by the Iraqi military over the years, how could any of its former leaders be considered “innocent”?

Asks one person who consults several Iraqi officials, “Do they think those mass graves filled themselves?”

Joel Mowbray (mail@joelmowbray.com) is author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America’s Security.

April 27, 2004, 8:40 a.m.
[b]Focus on Fallujah[/b]
Ceasefires? How about victories?
By Jed Babbin

The picture on page 19 of the Monday Washington Post nearly broke my heart. It showed two Marines, their heads bowed in prayer, at a Sunday open-air Mass held on the outskirts of Fallujah. They have been there, on the line, for too long. Held back and under fire, the strain on them is palpable. Part of the essence of the warriors' creed is that they will die for their country, trusting that their lives may be spent but not wasted. We are in the process of wasting some of these precious lives in a tactical situation that is unacceptable by any measure. We're extending a phony "ceasefire" while Marines are fighting and dying.

On Sunday Gen. Mark Kimmet — our chief military spokesman in Iraq — announced that our effort to end the insurgency in Fallujah and capture or kill the barbarians who killed and mutilated four Americans almost a month ago is now on a "political track." Several groups of Marines began walking down that political track in Fallujah on Monday with Iraqi Governing Council units. At this writing, there is heavy fighting in Fallujah, and the Marines are taking casualties. At least one Marine has died. One mosque — where the insurgents have been storing weapons and from which snipers have been firing on the Marines — has been hit, knocking down its minaret. Civilian casualties are likely to be heavy, because we didn't force the evacuation of women, children and the elderly before the Marines went in. We have done precisely the wrong thing when the right one was in our grasp.

Even the normally levelheaded Fox News Channel immediately launched into speculation about the mosque strike, asking whether the Arab world will see this as a "war crime." Of course it will, because we are responsible, and because anything we do will be so labeled by al-Jazeera and the rest. But that's nonsense because any place — mosque, hospital, school — is a legitimate military target when the enemy is using it for a military purpose. The worst of it is that we've waited too long to strike, and are allowing the insurgents to trap us into the house-to-house fighting Saddam wanted us to face in Baghdad. We can still avoid the trap. But the leadership in Iraq — Bremer and army old-think generals — will have to be replaced before we can.

The way to fight that political battle is to win the military battle first and have an ally among the clerics who will speak out to condemn what the terrorist insurgents are doing. Why, after a year, do we lack even one such ally? Bremer and his Coalition Provisional Authority have been in place for a year. The failure to obtain any support from the most prominent Iraqi Shia cleric, Ali al-Sistani, is a failure of historic proportion. Our failure to impose security, and Bremer and our army generals' decision to operate our occupation as a garrison force, rather than a constant presence (as the Marines and the Brits have done in the areas they are responsible for) has bred fear, not calm. Even before the mosque strike happened, U.N. envoy Lakdar Brahimi was saying that "there is no military solution" to the Fallujah mess. As the Wall Street Journal's editorial page has said, all this can be taken as evidence that America wants out of Iraq on almost any terms. That's the recipe for defeat with which we are all too familiar.

The future of Iraq cannot be won on this political track. We are adrift, and our enemies are taking full advantage of it. One of my pals, an active duty military intellectual whose name I cannot use, sent me a message last weekend. Part of it says:

We are struggling to tip toe through the tulips in Fallujah when it is no longer possible to do so. Fallujah should already have been an object lesson that if handled decisively and quickly would make further operations in the south unnecessary. We have lost the equivalent of two marine infantry companies precisely because of our over-reliance on light infantry again. Sad for the parents' whose sons have died valiantly, but needlessly. Now, we are poised to sacrifice whatever good will remains in the Shiite population by making war on a cleric who until recently was a minor player. If we go into Najaf, we will enrage Shiite Arabs, Persians, Pathans and Punjabis unnecessarily. I sincerely hope we just quietly withdraw from Najaf and finish the problem in Fallujah instead. Fallujah is a better place to make clear what will happen to anyone who threatens or challenges US authority. We should leave the firebrand cleric to his superiors in the Shiite hierarchy.
Harsh words? No, just a dose of reality and good advice. Damnit, we are in a war. American lives are not expendable along a "political track" that leads to the appearance of order in Iraq and not its reality. We need to get ourselves back on a track that leads to victory, not a false U.N.-blessed "legitimacy."

As this is being written, American troops are repositioning themselves in apparent preparation for a strike into Najaf, one of Iraq's holiest sites where the prophet Mohammed's son is believed to have died. Terrorist cleric Moqtada Sadr's "mahdi militia" is there, surrounding their leader and preparing the religious trap for us to enter. It matters not whether we capture Sadr this week, this month, or this year. What matters is that we provide security for the population of Iraq, which means we have to destroy the insurgents. We can't talk them out of their ideology or their weapons. We have to defeat them decisively, and end the Iranian, Syrian, and other foreign support on which they depend. We need to start with Fallujah and elsewhere, and get the Iraqis ready to do it themselves in Najaf.

We could have, and should have, made a full-out attack on Fallujah two weeks ago. The longer we wait, the more casualties our men suffer while the Iranian, Syrian, and other imported terrorists entrench themselves among the innocents there. Our military operations should proceed without regard to damage to the city, only taking care avoid inflicting casualties on the noncombatants. This can still be done, by requiring the women, children, and elders to leave now, and then use the full force we have available to kill the insurgents. No more ceasefires anywhere, please, until the insurgents are beaten decisively.

Defense Department sources say that more is going on in Fallujah than meets the eye. I hope so. But what is going on — in the eyes of the Marines there, not yours and mine — is what is important.

— Jed Babbin, an NRO contributor, is author of the forthcoming book, Inside the Asylum: Why the U.N. and Old Europe are Worse than You Think.

For years, the world has tried to give Palestinians a state...for years the Palestinians opposed it

04.27.04 (9:48 pm)   [edit]
Why the Palestinians are in such a state
By Mark Steyn.
(Filed: 27/04/2004)

There was an hilarious piece in the Washington Post on Sunday, under the plaintive headline, "Why Did Bush Take My Job?" The author was Saeb Erekat, and the job he claims Bush has taken from him is "senior Palestinian negotiator" with the Israelis. The other day, speaking in support of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, President Bush stated the obvious: it was "unrealistic" to expect a return to the armistice lines of 1949, and there’s no point wasting time discussing the Palestinian "right of return" to what’s now Israel, because it’s never going to happen.

But this shift in favour of the "realities on the ground" sent "moderate Arab opinion" into a tizzy. Returning from a visit to America, Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, dropped in on Jacques Chirac in Paris. "Today there is hatred of the Americans like never before," he told Le Monde. And, in what sounded suspiciously like a threat, Mubarak added: "American and Israeli interests will not be safe, not only in our region, but anywhere in the world." Did he mention that when he was back at the ranch with Bush?

And that’s a guy American taxpayers give $2 billion a year to. In return for which, they get Mohammed Atta flying through the office window and vile state-funded Egyptian media that license anti-Americanism as a safety valve for disaffection that might otherwise be targeted more locally. Thanks a bunch, Hosni. The Guardian reported this as a "damaging rebuff to President George Bush’s policies", though it’s difficult to conceive of anything less "damaging" to Bush than being insulted by some third-rate Arab strongman dependent on US aid.

Now Mr Erekat has joined the chorus. "Why did Bush take my job?" To be honest, I’d forgotten whether or not Mr Erekat currently held it. Periodically he resigns from Arafat’s cabinet for some reason or another, but quietly returns to his post a couple of months later - "senior Palestinian negotiator" being the Palestinian equivalent of those ancient Cabinet titles Tony Blair can never quite get rid of.

Edward Heath, in his time as Lord Privy Seal, was once addressed by some foreign dignitary as "Lord Heath" and famously responded that he was neither a lord nor a privy nor a seal. The "senior Palestinian negotiator" is not "senior", speaks for no viable faction within either the dignified (Arafatist) or efficient (Hamas) parts of the Palestinian Authority, and hasn’t negotiated anything in a decade.

He last resigned last summer, after Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, went off to negotiate with Ariel Sharon and accidentally left his "chief negotiator" out of the negotiating team. I guess someone else was taking Mr Erekat’s job back then.

Mr Erekat’s real job is to look good in a suit and go on television and sound reasonable when, as on September 11, the excitable chaps in Ramallah are dancing in the street and singing the Arabic version of Happy Days Are Here Again. And he is, of course, "democratically elected", being presently in the ninth year of a five-year term. So Yasser keeps him around to do the CNN-BBC interviews when Hanan Ashrawi is washing her hair and they need someone to do the autopilot drone of "root causes", "desperation", "cycle of violence".

But, if Bush did "take my job", it’s because Erekat is not up to it. For 10 years, the world has been trying to give a state to the Palestinians and the Palestinians keep tossing obstacles in their path. The latest innovation was a suicide-bomber arrested with explosives bearing HIV-infected blood, the thinking being that anyone who survived would get Aids. Unfortunately, the heat of the explosion kills the virus. But, in his combination of depravity and incompetence, the "Aids bomber" neatly encapsulates the present state of Palestinian "nationalism". The only way the Palestinians will get any kind of state is if Israel and America inflict it on them and eliminate such lethargic middle-men as Mr Erekat.

So Sharon is withdrawing from Gaza, abandoning the settlements and building a wall. This is bad news for those Palestinians who take a more nuanced approach to Jews - who think that, if you accidentally infect yourself while strapping on the HIV bomb, you should have the right to state-of-the-art treatment from an Israeli hospital. But they’ll have to make the best of it. Israel has concluded that, if you can’t "live in peace" with your neighbour, the priority is to live.

What a strange world the Middle East is. For 10 years, in northern Iraq, the Kurds have run a pleasant, civilised, pluralist, democratic de facto state, but external realities require them to be denied one de jure. For the same period, in the West Bank and Gaza the Palestinian Authority’s thugs, incompetents and bespoke apologists have been lavished with EU aid and transformed their land into an ugly, bankrupt Arafatist squat. But external realities require the world to defer to the "Chairman" as a de jure head of state, lacking merely a state to head.

Meanwhile, Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN’s special envoy to Iraq, has told French radio listeners that "the great poison in the region" is Israeli "domination" and told American television viewers that the Israelis "are not interested in peace, no matter what you seem to believe in America". Well, he certainly hit the ground running. A week in town and he is already sounding like any decades-old Arab despot. In The Spectator a year ago, I warned against handing over Iraq to the UN: it would simply "install as high commissioner a non-Iraqi Arab bureaucrat" who’d "effectively wind up as an Arab League minder, there to ensure that the Iraqis didn’t get any funny ideas (rule of law, representative government) which might unduly discombobulate the Egyptians, Saudis et al." But even I didn’t think they’d ship over such a walking, talking cliché of Arab League man as Mr Brahimi.

If it’s any consolation to Saeb Erekat, Bush may have usurped his job in Palestine, but in Iraq Mr Brahimi is sounding as if he has usurped Bush’s. And that’s a lousy exchange.

Iraqi insurgents becoming centralized, threaten nationwide movement

04.27.04 (9:45 pm)   [edit]
This is not good for us or Iraqis (of course, it's even worse if this movement gains popularity). I'm sure the lefties are enjoying it, though.

from the April 28, 2004 edition

[b]Insurgents in Iraq show signs of acting as a network
They appear to be carrying out coordinated raids and finding ways to recruit new fighters.[/b]
By Ann Scott Tyson | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – Far from limited to a small group of "dead-enders" and Saddam "thugs" as Pentagon officials claim, the armed opposition to the US occupation in Iraq has reached the point where some experts say it threatens to become a full-fledged nationalist insurgency.

Bolstered by former Iraqi military and security personnel, today's insurgents are at the least conducting increasingly sophisticated coordinated attacks. In addition, they have built networks to recruit fighters, make weapons, and funnel funds from Iraqi businesses and charitable groups, military experts say.

Perhaps most important, insurgents are now motivated primarily by nationalism and Islam, rather than by loyalty to Saddam Hussein, they say.

US commanders are weighing moving tens of thousands more US troops into Iraq - as well as additional tanks and other armor - in an effort to curb unrest expected to surround the planned June 30 transfer of power to Iraqi authorities.

"The insurgency has worsened immeasurably," says Ahmed Hashim, an Iraq expert and professor of strategic studies at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. For example, "the new insurgents showed a dramatic improvement in small-unit fighting skills" during recent violence in Sunni towns such as Fallujah, he said, testifying before Congress as a private citizen.

Coordinated attacks on convoys and troops, such as a devastating ambush in Ramadi this month that killed 12 US Marines, show insurgents in some areas are striking virtually as military units and withdrawing under covering fire, he says. "They have shown an ability to stand and fight, rather than merely to 'shoot and scoot' or 'pray and spray' as in the past."

Coupled with urban uprisings by Shiite militia that have also recruited former Iraqi enlisted soldiers and are now stockpiling weapons in mosques, the Iraqi insurgency has emerged as a multifront war for US forces nearly a year after Mr. Bush declared major combat over last May 1.

What's behind deadly month

As heavy fighting reignited this week in Fallujah and Najaf, the number of US troops killed has roughly doubled to 120 this month, the deadliest since the war began. Meanwhile, deaths among Iraqi security forces and civilians, suicide bombings, and daily insurgent attacks all show upward trends.

"The trends on the security side are almost uniformly bad," says Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution who has been upbeat on the prospects for postwar Iraq.

To be sure, Iraqis have seen modest economic gains and improvements in basic services, and remain cautiously hopeful about their future, polls show. Yet the deterioration in security threatens to stifle, if not roll back, tentative progress on other fronts. In the debate over what has fueled the insurgency, military experts agree on some broad missteps: Unrealistic assumptions about how Iraqis would react to the occupation, the alienation of disbanded Iraqi soldiers, and too few US troops to ensure genuine security.

"We simply did not have enough manpower to police Iraq and protect the citizens while at the same time fully engage in combating the insurgency," says Mr. Hashim.

Beginning last fall and culminating in the winter with Mr. Hussein's capture, the insurgency's composition shifted from what the Pentagon calls "former regime loyalists" to Iraqis motivated by nationalism and Islam, as clerics increasingly stepped into the local power void, experts say. In Sunni areas, disgruntled, jobless Iraqi military and intelligence personnel used their expertise in weaponry and explosives to bolster the proficiency of insurgents.

Their ranks have swollen with young men from Sunni Arab tribes that felt both disenfranchised and angered by harsh US military tactics in the Sunni Triangle. Meanwhile, an influx of small numbers of foreign terrorists and Sunni extremists willing to carry out suicide attacks served as a "force multiplier" for the insurgency.

"Sunni tribesmen ... have become the principal popular support for most of the Sunni Arab and foreign insurgents," says Kenneth Pollack, a Middle East specialist at the Brookings Institution. Like other experts, Mr. Pollack stresses the existence of a popular base of support that is sustaining Iraqi insurgents. "We should always remember Mao Zedong's parable of the sea and the fish; the people are the sea and the guerrilla is the fish, and as long as the sea is hospitable to the fish, you will never catch them all."

At the same time, Shiite clerics asserting their influence after the fall of the regime steadily built up their militia and support networks. In Baghdad's sprawling Sadr City, for example, the anti-US cleric Moqtada al Sadr moved into former Baath Party neighborhood offices and systematically recruited poor, unemployed youth with offers of money and welfare for their families.

Today, military sources say Sadr's Mahdi Army has 7,000 to 10,000 men. Iran has agents in Najaf and Karbala who are providing arms and training to various Shiite militia, the sources say.

Some low-level cooperation is underway between Shiite and Sunni insurgents, says Hashim, and Shiite militiamen from Sadr City have even infiltrated Fallujah to battle coalition forces, he adds.

To head off worse violence, experts say the US must urgently add tens of thousands of troops to the 135,000 now in Iraq in order to uproot enemy fighters and better protect Iraqi civilians.

More troops needed

The top US commander in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, this month retained 20,000 troops scheduled to leave Iraq and says he may need more. Tanks and other armored vehicles, which were left at US bases when fresh troops such as the 1st Cavalry Division rotated into Iraq this spring, may now be brought into the country. "We are doing some planning for follow-on forces," said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this month, adding that the military may beef up existing forces by replacing some Humvees with tanks.

Israel's fight is justified by intl law, but Geneva still hates it

04.27.04 (9:41 pm)   [edit]
2 very fine National Review articles:

April 27, 2004, 8:43 a.m.
EU vs. Hamas
[b]Israel’s doing what so many other nations signed on to do.[/b]
By Joshua Muravchik
National Review

Israel's assassination earlier this month of Hamas chief Abdel Aziz Rantisi stirred gusts of indignation from European governments. As in previous cases, the critics largely rested their case on international law, a refrain also heard often from the continent's critics of American counterterror measures and of the war in Iraq.

British Foreign Minister Jack Straw asserted that "targeted killings of this kind are unlawful [and] unjustified." The French foreign ministry issued a statement saying that Israel's right to self-defense "should not be exercised against international law." The foreign minister of Ireland, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union, declared that "extrajudicial killings are contrary to international laws." Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson called Israel's action "illegal and disgusting." Spokesmen for the governments of Germany, Italy, Austria, Portugal, and Russia made similar comments.

If the law is what these Europeans say it is, then, as Dickens's Mr. Bumble put it, "the law is a ass" because the moral case for Israel's counterattacks on Hamas is overwhelming. But even in strictly legal terms, Israel's actions have sound justification. Ironically and shamefully, it is not Israel but these very critics of Israel who are in flagrant dereliction of their legal obligations.

Each of these European states is a party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Unlike, say, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the genocide convention is a treaty, with the force of law. It is one of the oldest, and perhaps the most widely subscribed piece of international human-rights legislation, and arguably the one with the soundest legal foundation, codifying what the Nuremberg tribunal and the U.N. General Assembly in its very first session found to be existing customary law.

Article One of the convention obligates every party "to prevent and punish" genocide as "a crime under international law." The convention goes on to define genocide as, inter alia, "killing" intended "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

By this definition, it is clear that Hamas is an organization devoted to genocide and has been working busily at this mission for years. Hamas's goal is the complete destruction of the Jewish state. As the late Rantisi himself affirmed: "By God, we will not leave one Jew in Palestine." Nor did Rantisi leave doubt about what would become of these Jews. Asked by an interviewer "what do you see ultimately happening to the people [of] Israel?" Rantisi replied: "They killed thousands of Palestinians.... so I think it is just to do with them as they did with us."

Nor are Hamas's intended targets limited to Israeli Jews. Hamas's covenant boasts: "HAMAS regards itself the spearhead and the vanguard of the circle of struggle against World Zionism [and] the fight against the warmongering Jews." It makes clear that there is to be no end of killing: "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.'"

In short, Hamas's and Rantisi's platform is as clearly formulated a project of genocide as we have had since Mein Kampf. And indeed, Hamas has expressed a solicitousness for Hitler's project. As Rantisi put it, to compare Zionism to Nazism is "an insult to Nazism."

Nor can this all be dismissed as mere rhetoric. Hamas sends a constant stream of bombers to blow up buses, restaurants, markets, any place, in short, where Jews can be slaughtered. For every one whose murderous deed is achieved, handfuls of others are stopped along the way by Israeli security.

What this means is that France, Sweden, and the rest are under a legal obligation to do what they can to destroy or cripple Hamas and to assist in the arrest and prosecution of its leaders and members. What have they done to fulfill this responsibility?

Until six months ago, the EU allowed Hamas to work freely in Europe, as if it were just another NGO. The rationale was a specious distinction between the organization's "political" and "military" wings, much like the distinction between Hitler's Nazi party and his storm troopers. (Indeed, this distinction was drawn, leading the Times of London to applaud the "night of long knives" on the grounds that Hitler was bringing the "radicals" in his movement to heel.)

Only late last year were French objections overcome in the face of a particularly deadly bombing, and Hamas was banned in the EU, its financial assets frozen. But under the genocide convention, Europe's legal obligations (and those of all the other parties to the treaty) go well beyond belatedly closing its own territory to Hamas operations. They include doing what can be done to bring a halt to the genocide and punish the perpetrators. By killing the likes of Rantisi and Yassin, Israel is doing what all the other nations ought by law to be doing, too. Since they are blithely indifferent to their own solemn undertakings, Israel is left alone to defend the law and itself.

— Joshua Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is author of Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism and, most recently of, The Intifada and the Media

[b]Business as Usual
No love for Israel in Geneva.[/b]
By Anne Bayefsky
National Review

Notwithstanding Kofi Annan's anxious disclaimers, U.N. special envoy to Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi's tendentious proclamation that Israel is "the great poison in the region" is no aberration. Assigning blame to Israel for the nonexistence of Arab democracy, the impoverishment of Arab populations, and the human-rights deficit throughout the Muslim world is standard U.N. policy. Indeed, in a subsequent interview, Brahimi affirmed his original incitement, saying "this is a fact — not opinion."

The annual six-week ritual of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, which ended on Friday, makes the point all too clearly.

After more than a month of negotiations, the commission on its final day could no longer avoid the ethnic cleansing in Sudan, which has left 30,000 dead and 900,000 in deplorable conditions. The U.S. proposal to condemn "the grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Darfur," and to call on the government of Sudan "to ensure all attacks against civilians are stopped" was defeated. Instead, the resolution announced: "the Commission expresses its solidarity with the Sudan in overcoming the current situation."

The Sudan result was actually better than the commission outcomes on gross human-rights abuses in China and Zimbabwe. Resolutions on these states were blocked by the success of procedural no-action motions.

Consideration of the human-rights situation in Iran didn't even make it to the floor. This was despite a report from one of the commission's working groups describing a legal system with the following features. "[E]vidence by a man is equivalent to that of two women"; punishments for sins "against divine law" are "the death penalty, crucifixion, stoning, amputation of the right hand and, for repeat offences, the left foot, flogging..."; and "criminal proceedings in their entirety are...concentrated in the hands of a single person since the judge prosecutes, investigates and decides the case." Iranian impunity from U.N. concern has practical results. Shortly after a meeting in Iran with the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression in November 2003, one person disappeared.

Israel was treated somewhat differently by the U.N.'s primary human-rights body, which is composed of a majority of Asian and African states and whose membership includes countries with such appalling human-rights records as China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe.

Not only were five resolutions adopted condemning Israel, but the commission took three hours out of its schedule to mourn the death of Hamas terrorist leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. Yassin personally instigated and authorized suicide bombing and exhorted his followers to "armed struggle" against Israelis and Jews "everywhere." A special sitting for Yassin was convened on March 22, 2004, despite the fact that the commission was already in session, and about to consider the only country-specific agenda item at the commission for the past 34 years — on Israel.

Although Israel's action was denounced by the commission and the secretary-general as an "extrajudicial killing," the conclusion is not only inflammatory, but incorrect. Both Yassin, and Abdel Aziz Rantissi, were combatants in a war. The legal term "extrajudicial," by definition, applies only to individuals entitled to judicial process before being targeted. Combatants — including the unlawful combatants of Hamas who seek to make themselves indistinguishable from the civilian population — are not entitled to such prior judicial process. International Committee of the Red Cross manuals state that civilians who take a direct part in hostilities forfeit their immunity from attack. Furthermore, judicial process was not an option for Israel since it would have placed both Israeli Defense Forces and Palestinian civilians at much greater risk. The legal limit in targeting combatants like Yassin is the rule of proportionality, or "incidental loss of civilian life" which is not "excessive" (in the language of the Geneva Conventions). In these cases, the outcome was proportionate since civilian casualties were kept to a minimum.

What makes the U.N.'s professed interest in the subject even more unconvincing was the commission's total lack of response to a simultaneous report on recent extrajudicial killings in Brazil. The U.N. Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions attempted to raise the alarm on more than 3,000 civilians murdered in Brazil at the hands of military and civil police. Details of "poorly disguised extrajudicial executions...[in which] the lethal shots had been fired from behind and at close range" were provided. Two people brave enough to talk to the rapporteur were shot and killed shortly after the U.N. representative left the country. No mention was made by the Human Rights Commission of Brazil.

The Commission Rapporteur on the Right to Food, while noting almost a billion people undernourished, spent his time issuing a special report on a "food crisis" in the "occupied Palestinian territory." He found blame on the "apartheid wall." No reference was made, however, to the inevitable disruption to the movement of goods and workers through passes subject to frequent terrorist attack, or the millions of dollars recently deposited in Mrs. Arafat's bank account.

The Commission Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief managed to produce an entire global report without mentioning "anti-semitism." The commission does, however, continue to require the production of an annual report on the "situation of Muslim and Arab peoples in various parts of the world." To his credit, the author of that report suggested to the commission that a report on anti-semitism would also be appropriate. His suggestion was ignored.

Perhaps the attitude of the U.N. towards Israeli victims of five decades of war and terror aimed at the destruction of the Jewish state is best summed up by the attitude of U.N. Special Rapporteur on Israel John Dugard. He told the commission "[a]fter the necessary disclaimer of sympathy for terrorism, the report will focus on two issues that...most seriously demand the attention of the international community — the unlawful annexation of Palestinian territory and the restrictions on freedom of movement."

The 2004 U.N. Human Rights Commission produced 5,539 pages of documents. Six weeks later there had been 86 separate votes, with the U.S. being in the minority 85 percent of the time.

In a final irony, the 2004 commission's last act was to consider that its performance warranted an additional six meetings next year — to be paid for, no doubt, from the U.N.'s regular budget, 22 percent of which comes from U.S. taxpayers.

— Anne Bayefsky is an adjunct professor of law at Columbia Law School. She is also a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute

America's shocking-- and continuing-- intelligence failure

04.27.04 (9:36 pm)   [edit]
THE INTELLIGENCE WAR

[b]Flying Blind With the CIA
Would The Wall Street Journal get its information from Mad magazine? [/b]
BY ROBERT BAER
Tuesday, April 27, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

To understand the state of U.S. intelligence before Sept. 11, read the now famous declassified Presidential Daily Brief of Aug. 6, 2001. As you read, though, keep in mind that when it comes to finished intelligence, PDBs are the crown jewels. They meld the best information from the CIA's clandestine sources, our embassies all over the world, the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and every other federal agency with a possible input. Like crown jewels, too, they are protected to within an inch of their lives. In all my years in the CIA, I never once was given access to a PDB, and I was by far the rule, not the exception. Compartmentation rules forbid it. Sources and methods are too valuable.

The Aug. 6, 2001, PDB, in short, represents the very best intelligence we then had on Osama bin Ladin and his plans. So how good was it? In fact, pretty awful. The first item in the PDB refers the president to two interviews that Osama bin Ladin gave to American TV in 1997 and 1998. In the interviews, bin Ladin promises to "bring the fighting to America," following "the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef." As it turns out, bin Ladin was telling the truth, but that's not the point. In intelligence documents as in corporate reports and the evening news, the best stuff goes up top, and in this case the best was cribbed straight from the boob tube.

How about items two and three? The information in both relates to bin Ladin's intention to attack the U.S., but it is from "liaison services"--i.e. foreign governments. We now know from leaks what those liaison services were, but we don't know the provenance of the information. Was our friendly liaison reading it in the local paper? Was it fabricating, as happened with the Italians and the Niger yellow cake that was supposedly going to Saddam Hussein? The CIA rule used to be that you never ever trust liaison reporting unless you can confirm it with your own sources. Imagine The Wall Street Journal relying on Mad magazine for its investigative sourcing, and you'll see just where such sloppy vetting can lead.

Not until three-quarters of the way through the PDB do we finally get to our own intelligence: a clandestine source who reported directly to a U.S. official that "a bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks." Why bury this seemingly valuable nugget? Perhaps because our own source was dead wrong. Sept. 11 was planned and organized in Afghanistan and Germany. The 19 hijackers found their own way here and relied on their own funds. Support inside the U.S. came from unwitting contacts. No American Muslim was recruited to help the hijackers.

What's in the PDB is damning enough, but to me, maybe the most alarming part is what's not there. In the entire document--this crown jewel of intelligence--there isn't a single mention of Saudi Arabia, the real Ground Zero of 9/11. Apparently, we had no idea suicide bombers were being recruited there or that cash was being raised for an attack on America.

Today, we're told that things are better. The CIA is getting more money, better recruits, and more support from our allies, especially from Saudi Arabia. But I wonder. There still hasn't been an indictment to come out of the Kingdom related to 9/11. Either Riyadh doesn't know who recruited the 15 hijackers and paid for 9/11, or it doesn't want to tell us. (You'll notice the 9/11 Commission tiptoed around the subject of Saudi Arabia. That's like investigating Lincoln's assassination without dipping into the Civil War.)

In his testimony before the 9/11 Commission, CIA director George Tenet--the most candid of any of the witnesses, by the way--said we need five more years to catch up. I think he's optimistic. It takes a generation to build an effective clandestine service. In the meantime, we have no choice but to rely on the Saudis to tell us whether we need to worry about all the killing going on in the Kingdom, whether it really has the petroleum reserves it claims to have, and a lot of other issues vital to our national security.

Personally, I would like to have my own source to tell me what's happening inside the Kingdom's fire-breathing mosques. That's the only way we're going to find out if more young Saudis are being recruited and money raised for another 9/11. Until then, we're flying blind not just on Osama bin Ladin but on Islamic extremism throughout the Arab world and our own. That's the opposite of intelligence.

Mr. Baer, a former CIA officer with the Directorate of Operations, is author of "Sleeping with the Devil" (Crown, 2003).

The real quagmire is in the American southwest, and it is a result of Bush's immigration policies

04.27.04 (9:33 pm)   [edit]
One news article, one column here. I think Bush is absolutely wrong on his work-visa proposals (economically and defense-wise). America is not a welfare state for the rest of the western hemisphere.

[b]Illegal Entry From Mexico to U.S. Rises[/b]
OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ
Associated Press

SASABE, Mexico - After a four-year decline, illegal immigration from Mexico is spiking as several thousand migrants a day rush across the border. Hopes of getting work visas under a program proposed by President Bush and of avoiding tighter security coming in June appear to be driving the dash.

The U.S. border patrol told The Associated Press that detentions - which it uses to judge illegal migration rates - jumped 25 percent to 535,000 in the six months ending March 31 compared to a year ago.

Near Sasabe, a town bordering the Arizona desert that's the busiest illegal border crossing area, an average 2,000 people arrive daily.

On a recent day, at a break in a barbed-wire fence outside Sasabe, about 300 migrants scrambled out of 10 trucks and four vans within 30 minutes with their smugglers, who led crowds along a worn trail. As the sun set, they disappeared into rolling hills that hide the treacherous desert.

Raudel Sanchez, a 22-year-old farm worker, said he wanted to get back to his job at a Minnesota ranch.

Sanchez crossed into the United States through Sasabe three years ago, but says the journey is getting more difficult. He walked three days in the desert and was out of water when he was caught in Arizona and deported.

Undeterred, he said he planned to take a bus to Altar, a northern city about 70 miles from the border where migrants hire smugglers. From there, he planned to head back to Sasabe and cross again.

"It's already very hard to cross, but it's going to be even harder," he said in Nogales. "I need to try again, at least one more time, and if I fail, I'll go back home."

Many migrants are betting on the approval of Bush's migration proposal, which faces an uphill battle in Congress. About 75 percent of those arrested are Mexican, while the rest are from Central America and other places, U.S. customs officials said.

In January, Bush proposed a guest-worker plan that would give legal status to undocumented migrants already working in the United States and to those outside the country who can prove they have been offered a job.

Because it's hard to get a job offer while in Mexico, many are heading north now, hoping to get settled before a program is in place.

Mexicans living in the United States have criticized Bush's proposal. Many say they wouldn't apply, fearing it could be a trap to deport them.

But in Mexico, the program has given many migrants hope that they might be able to seek something better north of the border, and that is enough to convince some to cross now rather than later.

"I want to try and make it to the United States to find out more about the permits because I've heard that with a job it will be easier to get" a visa, said Jaime Ulloa, speaking in Nogales after being deported for a third time. He is trying to get to Florida, where a U.S. farmer has promised him a job picking vegetables.

Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors stricter immigration policies, said the rise in illegal migration also shot up in 1986 when an amnesty was announced.

"Illegal aliens will respond to the messages the government sends," Krikorian said. "When we send the message that we are thinking about amnesty, they decide it may be worth it to try to cross."

Illegal migration had been declining along the U.S.-Mexico border since 2000. U.S. border patrol figures show detentions dropped from 1.6 million in 2000 to 905,000 in the fiscal year that ended last Sept. 30.

There is no exact data on the number of people crossing illegally. But in an indication of increased traffic, 535,000 illegal migrants were arrested along the U.S.-Mexico border from Oct. 1 to March 31, said Gloria Chavez of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Bureau.

In the same period, the border patrol's Tucson sector detained 70,000 more people, an increase of 49 percent.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner attributes part of the jump to increased security. "The main reason we're seeing an increase in apprehensions is because the border patrol is more effective, particularly in the Tucson sector," he said.

But Mexican officials are also seeing an increase. Grupo Beta, a Mexican government-sponsored group that tries to discourage migrants from crossing and aids those stranded in the desert, said 56,000 migrants went through Sasabe in March compared to 41,000 in March 2003.

In Altar, a farming town that has become the gathering point for those heading to Arizona, street vendors sell backpacks, water jugs and salt pills by the thousands.

The modest homes around the plaza, crowded with triple-decker bunk beds, serve as makeshift motels for migrants. They're almost always at capacity, said Francisco Garcia, a former mayor who now volunteers at the town's only migrant shelter.

"We're a town with a population of 6,000, and there have been weeks when we have twice as many people," Garcia said.

Under new security measures, about 300 more U.S. border agents will be deployed by June 1 along the Mexico-Arizona border. The number of border agents assigned to the Tucson sector will eventually increase from 1,800 to 2,500, Bonner said.

Many of the additional agents already have been sent to the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation, an area west of Sasabe where illegal migrant traffic has ballooned, said border patrol spokesman Charles Griffin.

The heightened border security is driving more migrants to more treacherous desert routes between Sonoyta and San Luis Rio Colorado in western Arizona, said Enrique Enriquez, an agent with Mexico's Grupo Beta.

Grupo Beta plans to assign rescuers to Sonoyta in May, Enriquez said. Every year, hundreds of migrants die in the desert, where temperatures soar above 100 degrees in summer.

[b]Arizona paying high toll as way station on alien-smuggling highway[/b]
Phyllis Schlafly
April 26, 2004

The television news brings us daily graphic reports from Iraq, where valiant Americans are battling danger, death and destruction. So why don't we get coverage about similar dramatic and scary confrontations taking place on the U.S. border?

The compelling truth about the danger and devastation on the U.S. southern border is crying out to be told. Americans need to hear from the likes of Erin Anderson, whose family homesteaded in Cochise County on the Arizona-Mexico border in the late 1880s.

Anderson says these American pioneers can't live on their own property anymore because it is too dangerous. They can't ranch it. They can't sell it.

It is unsafe to go on their own property without a gun, a cell phone and a two-way radio. Their land has been stolen from them by illegal aliens while public officials turn a blind eye.

Cochise County is a major smuggling route for illegal aliens and drugs, where every night thousands cross into Arizona from the northern Mexico state of Sonora. The Border Patrol admits to apprehending one out of five illegals, but many think it's more like one in 10.

The number of illegal aliens apprehended on the southern U.S. border jumped 25 percent in the first three months of 2004 compared to same period in 2003. In Tucson, the increase was 51 percent; in Yuma, it was 60 percent.

The news of President Bush's amnesty proposal spread like wildfire as far south as Brazil. After Border Patrol agents reported that undocumented aliens caught crossing into the United States said the amnesty proposal had prompted them to come, U.S. agents were told not to ask the question anymore.

Anderson says that U.S. landowners watch in horror as their lands, water troughs and tanks and animals are destroyed. The daily trampling of thousands of feet has beaten the ground into a hard pavement on which no grass for cattle will grow.

Places that illegal border crossers use as layover sites, where they rest or wait for the next ride, are littered with mountains of plastic bags, disposable diapers, human waste and litter of all kinds. When indigenous wildlife and cattle eat the plastic and refuse, they die.
Consequently, the local residents try to clean up the sites as often as they can.

The large number of discarded medicine wrappers indicates the prevalence of disease among the illegals. It is estimated that 10 percent of all illegals are carriers of Chagas disease, a potentially fatal condition that is widespread in Central America.

Sometimes, the local U.S. citizens who clean up the sites pick up pocket trash: scraps of paper with the name and telephone number of the illegal alien's destination in the United States. This indicates that these border crossings are a well-organized migration.

Other suspicious items picked up by local residents include Muslim prayer rugs and notebooks written in both Arabic and Spanish. These items come from a subcategory called Special Interest Aliens, who are illegals coming from terrorist-sponsoring countries.

The increased crime rate is frightening. Arizona has the highest rate of car theft in the nation, and residents risk home invasion and personal attacks.

The increase in violence is intimidating to U.S. residents. They are afraid to speak out because someone takes note of who they are and where they live, and gives that information to smuggling cartels in Mexico.

People-smuggling by men known as coyotes has piggybacked on the already well-established drug-smuggling networks and infrastructure. It has become the third largest source of income for organized crime. Drug smuggling and human smuggling are now interchangeable.

Smuggling has become a recognized industry in Mexico. The smuggling route is mechanized. Some northern Mexican villages have become known as smuggling-industry towns.

Illegal border crossers fly or take a bus from anywhere in Mexico or Central America to an industry town like Altar in Sonora. They are driven to the Arizona border, walk a few miles across the border, and then are picked up by shuttle buses that take them north to Tucson or Phoenix.

Shuttle buses are common carriers because they are not required to ask for citizenship identification as are the airlines. Often, the coyotes take their passengers to stash houses in Phoenix and then hold them for ransom even though they have already paid their smuggling fee.

People smuggling is so lucrative and pervasive that it is corrupting some U.S. high school students. Teenagers can make thousands of dollars a week by picking up illegal aliens on the road and driving them to the Phoenix airport.

When is the Bush administration going to put troops on our southern border to stop these crimes, and when are the media going to interview Anderson and other Arizonans so the American people can know what is really going on?

©2004 Copley News Service

Excerpt from Cheney's fine speech on Kerry's troubling National Security credentials

04.27.04 (9:27 pm)   [edit]
From the VP's speeech at Westminster College,
Fulton, Missouri

THE VICE PRESIDENT:

...In one of Senator Kerry's recent observations about foreign policy, he claimed that his ideas have gained strong support, at least among unnamed foreigners he's been spending time with. (Laughter.) Senator Kerry said that he has met with foreign leaders, and I quote, "who can't go out and say this publicly, but, boy, they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy,' things like that." End quote.

A week later, a voter in Pennsylvania asked Senator Kerry directly who these foreign leaders are. He replied, "That's none of your business." But recently the Senator did drop a hint. The other day on "Meet the Press," he told Tim Russert, quote, "I mean, you can go to New York City and you can be in a restaurant and you can meet a foreign leader." (Laughter.) Maybe next time he'll narrow it down for us a little more. Maybe the name of the restaurant, or the leader. (Laughter.) In any case, come November, the outcome of the election will be determined by the voters of the United States, not by unnamed foreign leaders. (Applause.)

Senator Kerry's record on national security raises some important questions all by itself. To give you some history, let's begin with the matter of how Iraq and Saddam Hussein would have been dealt with. Senator Kerry was in the minority of senators who voted against the Persian Gulf War in 1991, in which we liberated Kuwait after a brutal invasion and occupation. And at the time, the Senator expressed the view that our international coalition consisted of "shadowy battlefield allies who barely carry a burden." Yet last year, as we prepared to liberate Iraq, he recalled the Persian Gulf coalition a little differently. He said then it was a, quote, "strong coalition." Just eight days ago, Senator Kerry said former President George Bush had done, quote, "a brilliant job" of building the alliance. Having served as Secretary of Defense under former President Bush, I appreciate Senator Kerry's comment. But I find it odd that Senator Kerry is now commending an alliance he didn't want to build for a purpose he didn't support.

Six years after the Gulf War, in 1997, Saddam Hussein was still defying the terms of the cease-fire. And as President Bill Clinton considered military action against Iraq, he found a true believer in John Kerry. The Senator from Massachusetts said, quote, "Should the resolve of our allies wane, the United States must not lose its resolve to take action." He further warned that if Saddam Hussein were not held to account for his violation of U.N. resolutions, some future conflict would have "greater consequence." In 1998, Senator Kerry indicated his support for regime change in Iraq, with ground troops if necessary.

Four years later, in the fall of 2002, Senator Kerry wrote in an op-ed piece that, before America took any action against Iraq, President Bush should first go to the Congress for support, then go to the U.N. Security Council to seek enforcement of the resolutions, and then give an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein. President Bush, of course, did all of those things. And in the congressional vote, Senator Kerry was among those who favored military action if Saddam Hussein refused to comply with U.N. demands.

A neutral observer, looking at these examples from Senator Kerry's record, would assume that the Senator actually supported military action against Saddam Hussein. The Senator himself now tells us otherwise. In January this year, he was asked on TV if he was "one of the anti-war candidates." He replied, "I am." He now says he was voting in October, 2002 only to, quote, "threaten the use of force," not actually to use force.

Even if we set aside these inconsistencies and changing rationales, at least this much is clear: Had the decision belonged to Senator Kerry, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, today, in Iraq. In fact, Saddam Hussein would almost certainly still be in control of Kuwait, as well.

Beyond his struggle to maintain a position on Iraq, Senator Kerry's record raises serious doubts about his understanding of the broader struggle against terror, of which Iraq is only one front. Less than two weeks ago, within hours of Osama bin Laden issuing a tape promising further attacks on America, Senator Kerry suggested that the President is exaggerating the terrorist threat. As the Senator put it, "Home base for George Bush, as we saw to the 'nth' degree in the press conference, is terror. Ask him a question, he's going to terror." End quote.

Given that comment, it is not surprising that Senator Kerry has yet to outline any serious plan for winning the war on terror. Instead, he has questioned whether the war on terror is actually a war at all. Recently he said, quote, "I don't want to use that terminology." In his view, the war on terror is, again I quote, "not primarily a military operation. It's an intelligence-gathering, law enforcement, public diplomacy effort." End quote. As we have seen, however, that approach was tried before, and proved entirely inadequate to protecting the American people from terrorists who are quite certain they are at war with us and are comfortable using that terminology. (Applause.)

Even if we accept Senator Kerry's assertion that law enforcement and intelligence should be the primary tools in combating terror, his voting record over the past decade indicates a different set of priorities. In 1994 -- less than a year after terrorists first struck the World Trade Center -- Senator Kerry twice proposed cutting a billion dollars from intelligence funding. When the matter came to the Senate floor for a vote, it was rejected overwhelmingly by a vote of 75 to 20. The following year, Senator Kerry proposed cutting $1.5 billion from the intelligence budget over five years. The Senator said his goal was to eliminate intelligence programs that he considered to be, "pointless, wasteful, antiquated, or just plain silly." Senator Kerry's proposed cuts were so deeply irresponsible that he couldn't find a single co-sponsor for his bill in the Senate.

To his credit, the Senator did vote for the Patriot Act, along with 97 of his fellow senators. Now, however, he supports weakening that law.

Senator Kerry's record on defense measures is a bit more consistent. From the beginning of his career in the U.S. Senate 20 years ago, Senator Kerry has repeatedly called for major reductions or outright cancellations of many of our most important weapons systems. In 1984, the middle of the Cold War, while we were confronted with an aggressive, well armed Soviet Union, the Senator issued a white paper on the defense budget during his first campaign for the Senate. He called for cutting up to $53 billion from the Reagan defense budget. And these cuts included the following: The MX missile, cancel; the B-1 bomber, cancel; anti-satellite system, cancel; strategic defense initiative, cancel; the AH-64 Apache helicopter, canceled; the Patriot air defense missile system, cancel; the F-15, cancel; the F-14A and F-14B, cancel; the Phoenix air-to-air missile, cancel; the Sparrow air-to-air missile, cancel.

At the same time, he proposed reductions in funding for the Tomahawk cruise missile and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. And at numerous times, Senator Kerry has voted against funding weapons systems vital to fighting and winning the war on terror, such as the Blackhawk helicopter and the Predator drone.

And last September, when the President proposed an $87 billion-dollar supplemental appropriation for troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, Senator Kerry was asked whether he would support the President's request. He said, quote, "I don't think any United States senator is going to abandon our troops. That's irresponsible." End quote. The legislation provided funding for body armor and other vital equipment, hazard pay, health benefits, ammunition, fuel, and spare parts for our military. The legislation passed overwhelmingly, with a vote in the Senate of 87 to 12. Senator Kerry voted "no."

As a way to clarify the matter, Senator Kerry recently said, quote, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." (Laughter.) End quote. The Senator is, obviously, free to vote as he wishes, but he should be held to his own standard. It is irresponsible to vote against vital support for the United States military. (Applause.)

When Senator Kerry speaks about the direction of the war on terror, he often returns to a single theme -- the need for international cooperation. He has vowed to usher in a golden age of American diplomacy. He is fond of mentioning that some countries did not support America's actions in Iraq. Yet to the many nations that have joined our coalition, Senator Kerry offers only condescension. More than 30 nations have contributed and sacrificed for the freedom of the Iraqi people, including Great Britain, Australia, Italy, Poland, South Korea, and Japan. Senator Kerry calls these countries, quote, "window dressing." They are, in his words, "a coalition of the coerced and the bribed."

I am aware of no other instance in which a presumptive nominee for President of the United States has spoken with such disdain of active, fighting allies of the United States in a time of war. Senator Kerry's contempt for our good allies is ungrateful to nations that have withstood danger, hardship, and insult for standing with America in the cause of freedom.

In his years in Washington, Senator Kerry has been one vote of a hundred in the United States Senate -- and fortunately on matters of national security, he was usually in the minority. But the presidency is an entirely different proposition. The President always casts the deciding vote. And the Senator from Massachusetts has given us ample grounds to doubt the judgment and the attitude he brings to bear on vital issues of national security.

The contrast between the candidates this November will be sharper than it has been in many years. In more than three years as President, George W. Bush has built a national security record of his own. America came to know the President after one of the worst days in our history. He saw America through tragedy. He has taken the fight to the enemy. And under his leadership, our country has once again led the armies of liberation -- freeing 50 million souls from tyranny, and making our nation and the world more secure. (Applause.)

All Americans, regardless of political party, can be proud of what our nation has achieved in an historic time, when so many depended on us, and all the world was watching. And I have been very proud to work with a President who -- like other Presidents we have known -- has shown in his own conduct, the optimism, and strength, and decency of the great nation he serves.

Thank you very much.

China slams US and UK for Hong Kong criticism

04.27.04 (9:24 pm)   [edit]
China says that the US wasn't too concerned with democracy in HK before China took it over. Of course, the reasons for not overtly supporting democracy during the Cold War is pretty clear-- it was the Cold War.

Does anyone seriously think that China or the Soviet Union would have allowed a concerted US drive to bring full-fledged democracy to Hong Kong during the Cold War? We're talking the prospect of war-- nuclear war-- here.

The argument used by China to justify their denying HK's right is ignorant and childish.

[b]China Condemns U.S. and Britain on Hong Kong Democracy[/b]
By KEITH BRADSHER
The New York Times
Published: April 27, 2004

HONG KONG, April 27 — China's foreign minister responded angrily today to American and British criticisms of its latest restrictions on democracy here, accusing both countries of holding China to a double standard after ignoring the lack of democracy in Hong Kong during more than a century of British rule.

The strong reaction was the latest sign of a growing assertiveness in China's foreign policy, as Beijing has sought to position itself as a rising diplomatic power in Asia with influence to match its increasing economic might. Historians and politicians here noted that there was some truth to Beijing's complaint of a double standard, with Britain and the United States showing little interest in democracy here except in the 1940's and again in the 1990's.

"Do you think Hong Kong was democratic under British rule?" Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing asked reporters in Shanghai today. "Did the British raise concerns about that? Did the Americans raise concerns? No. Why don't you take a look at this double standard?"

Mr. Li joined other Chinese officials in saying that the running of Hong Kong was an internal concern of China. "Are you clear on that?" he asked. "Hong Kong is China's Hong Kong."

Kong Quan, the spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, denounced at a news conference in Beijing what he described as foreign interference in China's internal affairs. He pointed out that while London used to appoint governors to rule here, China had allowed a committee of prominent local residents to choose the chief executive, subject to Beijing's approval.

The committee, which has 800 members, is dominated by business executives with large investments on the mainland, and they tend to follow Beijing's wishes. Tung Chee-hwa, the Beijing-backed chief executive since Britain transferred Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997, ran unopposed in 2002 for a second five-year term.

Spokeswomen at the American and British consulates here declined to comment today on the criticisms from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's Communist Party-controlled Parliament, barred Hong Kong on Monday from holding popular elections for the chief executive in 2007 or for more than half of the seats in the legislature in 2008.

Bill Rammell, the British foreign office minister for China and Hong Kong, called in the Chinese ambassador to London to protest the erosion of the "high degree of autonomy" in Hong Kong that Beijing had pledged to observe before the territory was returned to it in 1997. In Washington, State Department and White House spokesmen also criticized the decision, as did the American consul general here, Jim Keith.

"The United States believes that the Hong Kong people's aspirations should be given priority in determining the pace and the scope of democratization in Hong Kong," said Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman.

Martin Lee, the founding chairman of the Democratic Party here, said today that the British had introduced very little democracy in Hong Kong until the final years of their rule. Direct elections for the Legislative Council began only in 1991, with 18 of the 60 seats chosen by the public.

That proportion has gradually increased since then and will reach 30 directly elected seats in elections to be held in September. On Monday, the National People's Congress capped this ratio at half the seats, while the rest will continue to be elected by representatives of so-called functional constituencies, like insurance and local chambers of commerce, that tend to be dominated by pro-Beijing executives.

Mr. Lee said that he was nonetheless disappointed that Beijing had resorted to such a blunt declaration on Monday that it would not permit greater democracy here. Beijing could have simply asked Mr. Tung not to introduce any bills containing electoral reforms to the legislature; the Basic Law, Hong Kong's miniconstitution, effectively bars members of the legislature from introducing such bills.

"They are really telling the world they don't care what they think, they want to rule from Beijing," Mr. Lee said.

Philip Snow, a leading historian of Hong Kong, said that the United States had shown little interest in Hong Kong until the early stages of World War II, when it actually put pressure on the British to return most of the territory to China's Nationalists. The United States was still opposed to colonialism then and was troubled by British rule here, which had allowed practically no democracy up until then, Mr. Snow said.

Only two members of the 13-member Urban Council were elected before World War II, and only people who were completely fluent in English were allowed to vote, which excluded most of the local population. The remaining members of the council were appointed, and the council had little power in any case, with the governor making all important decisions in consultation with London.

Under American pressure, Britain did begin making plans in mid-1943 to allow more popular rule here. At the time, Japan occupied Hong Kong, controlling the territory from 1941 until 1945, a period of large-scale killings, rapes and starvation of civilians by Japanese military forces.

Sir Mark Young, the British governor who came to Hong Kong soon after the surrender of the Japanese, put forward a detailed plan for a municipal council with two-thirds of its members elected by the general public. But interest in the plan faded after his retirement in 1947, while American officials stopped voicing support for democracy here after 1948, in response to the Communist takeover in mainland China.

The plan was finally scuttled in the early 1950's to a considerable extent because of the opposition of British and Chinese tycoons alike, who feared that greater democracy would lead to higher social spending and higher taxes.

Local business leaders have in recent months raised the same objections to popular elections, siding with Beijing against the large majority of Hong Kong's population that, polls show, favor direct elections. Prominent executives have warned that elections could lead to the establishment of a welfare state, a concern also raised in the late 1940's.

"The elite of the society, then as, I suppose, now, were dead against democratization," Mr. Snow said.

A Catholic theologian very adequately explains why John Kerry can be denied communion

04.27.04 (8:09 pm)   [edit]
(AND I THINK "SHOULD" BE DENIED COMMUNION...)

[b]Why Communion Could Be Denied to Anti-Life Legislators
Interview With an American Theologian in Rome [/b]

ROME, APRIL 26, 2004 (Zenit.org).- Moves by the Church to deny Holy Communion to staunchly pro-abortion Catholic politicians are growing.

At a Vatican press conference last Friday, Cardinal Francis Arinze said that politicians who unambiguously support abortion must not go to Communion and priests must deny them the sacrament.

Last January, then Bishop Raymond Burke of La Crosse, Wisconsin, issued a decree forbidding Catholic legislators who support abortion or euthanasia from receiving Communion.

To learn more about the canonical and pastoral implications of these declarations, ZENIT interviewed American theologian Father Thomas Williams, dean of the School of Theology of the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum.

Q: Is the Church beginning to adopt a hard-line stance regarding the reception of Holy Communion?

Father Williams: The Church has always taken this issue seriously. In very strong terms St. Paul admonished the Church in Corinth: "Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup." That's in 1 Corinthians 11:27-28.

The 1983 Code of Canon Law, echoing the teaching of the Council of Trent, Canon 11, states that, without a very serious reason, a person who is aware of having committed a mortal sin should voluntarily abstain from Communion. "A person who is conscious of grave sin is not … to receive the Body of the Lord without prior sacramental confession," says Canon 916 of the 1983 code.

Q: But isn't there a big difference between encouraging those in a state of sin to abstain from Communion and forbidding Communion to determined persons?

Father Williams: Yes, of course. Whereas anyone who is aware of having committed a grave sin of any sort, hidden or public, should willingly abstain from Holy Communion, only grave sins committed overtly or publicly provide grounds for non-admittance to Communion on the part of priests and bishops.

The pertinent reference in canon law can be found in Canon 915. In its entirety, this brief canon reads: "Those who are excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion."

This canon treats two instances where members of the faithful are not to be admitted to Communion. The first deals with excommunication and interdicts -- ecclesiastical censures forbidding participation in the sacraments -- and the second refers to obstinate persistence in manifest grave sin.

Q: So in the case of pro-abortion politicians we would be dealing with a situation of manifestly grave sin? What does this mean?

Father Williams: The technical language of the code which refers to those who "obstinately persist in manifest grave sin" must be carefully parsed.

Four essential elements come into play, all of which are necessary to fulfill the conditions laid out in Canon 915.

The first element is "gravi peccato," or grave sin. This can only be taken to refer to the matter of the action -- or omission -- without necessarily implying a judgment of subjective culpability. "Grave sin" in this case simply means objectively evil conduct of a serious nature.

The second requirement specified by Canon 915 refers to the "manifesto," or overt, character of the sin. This stipulation limits the sanction to sins of a public nature, and reiterates the public and ecclesial dimension of Holy Communion, which signifies moral, spiritual and doctrinal union with Christ and with his Church.

Thirdly, to be refused Communion a person must persist -- "perseverantes" -- in this openly sinful behavior. To say that a person persists in a public sin means that he somehow makes it known that he plans to continue engaging in his sinful behavior.

Finally, the code speaks of obstinate persistence. The Latin adverb "obstinate" here means that the person has been duly informed of the evil of his behavior but deliberately chooses to persist in it anyway.

There is such a thing as inculpable persistence in evildoing, when a person is unaware that a certain habitual activity is sinful. But once the evil of his actions has been brought to his attention, his persistence qualifies as obstinate.

Judging from the foregoing considerations, it seems clear that a politician who votes in a way that fails to defend innocent human life on a consistent basis and gives every indication of his intention to keep doing so despite warnings from ecclesiastical authorities can be said to obstinately persist in objectively evil behavior of a public nature. And in this regard he fulfills the requirements of Canon 915.

Q: In Bishop Burke's Notification, made public this past January, he speaks of scandal. To fail to "uphold the natural and divine law regarding the inviolable dignity of all human life," he writes, "is a grave public sin and gives scandal to all the faithful." How does scandal fit into the equation?

Father Williams: Though in common language "scandal" often refers to something shocking or disgraceful, the word comes from the Greek "skandalon" -- a stumbling block -- and properly means "an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil," as the Catechism says in No. 2284.

Because of their high public visibility and moral authority, politicians can, by their example, lead others to good or to evil.

According to the Catechism, No. 2285: "Scandal is grave when given by those who by nature or office are obliged to teach and educate others." We further read in No. 2286 that "they are guilty of scandal who establish laws or social structures leading to the decline of morals."

Along with its practical role of making certain actions punishable or permissible under the law, civil legislation has a pedagogical role as well and thus contributes to the formation of public opinion and private conscience.

The criminalization or legalization of determined activities influences the way people view the morality of such activities since it represents a social judgment on this sort of behavior. Thus legislators, even more than other public figures, are called to a higher standard of accountability because of their moral authority and the influence that their decisions have on others.

Q: In his comments last Friday, Cardinal Arinze stated: "The norm of the Church is clear. The Catholic Church exists in the U.S.A. and there are bishops there. Let them interpret." If the norm is clear, why is interpretation necessary?

Father Williams: One thing is the objective norm, another the application to specific cases.

According to the Code of Canon Law, it falls to the local bishop -- the "ordinary" -- to determine when such situations arise and to take the appropriate steps to correct the causes.

Canon 1339 states in part: "An ordinary can likewise rebuke a person from whose behavior there arises scandal or serious disturbance of order in a manner accommodated to the special conditions of the person and the deed." Thus it falls to bishops to apply these sanctions.

Q: Won't such sanctions be seen as playing partisan politics?

Father Williams: In the specific case of Catholic politicians who openly dissent from the Church's stand on life, prudence is particularly necessary.

Especially in the present instance, when the major political parties differentiate themselves along these lines, great care must be taken to avoid the appearance of partisan politics while at the same time giving an unequivocal message of both the Church's position on abortion and the importance she accords to this issue because of its centrality to the common good.

Where a political party takes an anti-life stand as a fundamental component of its platform, the Church may have no choice but to denounce it.

If the Church's pastors were to make it clear to politicians that abortion is truly a non-negotiable question and one on which they were prepared to "go to the mat," they would exert considerable moral, and political, pressure on all politicians to give this moral issue the weight it deserves.

Sometimes a prophetic voice is needed to shake people out of their moral lethargy, especially when people have come to accept as "normal" something which by rights should provoke moral outrage.

If publicly supporting abortion doesn't constitute a sufficient pastoral reason to justify the denial of Holy Communion, it is hard to imagine when recourse to this measure would be appropriate.

Q: Is this issue really that important? Should bishops really risk their moral authority on the question of pro-abortion legislators?

Father Williams: A glance at the past may prove instructive. History tends to be severe in its judgments of Church leaders who failed to use all the means at their disposal to put an end to egregious sins against human rights.

It is sufficient to recall events of the past centuries such as the African slave trade or apartheid or Hitler's Germany to bring home this argument.

Situations which appeared complicated and multifaceted at the time take on a peculiar starkness when viewed with historical hindsight.

A dispassionate analysis of the facts may show that the current situation with legalized abortion is no less grave than the greatest human rights issues of other times.

Though we may be inured to the grim reality of abortion, it seems likely that once civilization has comes to its senses, future generations will look back on our time as one of the most barbarous in history, not merely for our wars and terrorism, but especially for the antiseptic extermination of the most defenseless members of our society, the poorest of the poor, precisely because they have no voice.

Furthermore, the mere magnitude of the crisis -- now more than 40 million planned deaths of unborn children in the United States alone since the legalization of abortion in 1973 -- is sufficient to make abortion the greatest social justice issue of all time.
ZE04042622

The fun of universal health care: One million (1 in 60) folks in UK waiting for treatment...

04.27.04 (2:21 pm)   [edit]
[b]Britain's Million-Year Wait[/b]

Written By: Matthew Young and Eamonn Butler
Published In: Health Care News
Publication Date: June 1, 2002
Publisher: The Heartland Institute

Britons were shocked recently by newspaper headlines saying there are now a million people on National Health Service (NHS) waiting lists. The figure means one in 60 British citizens are now waiting for medical treatment. [b]Of those who are sick and actually need the NHS to do something for them, one in six are condemned to wait.[/b]

But the headlines conceal an even more disturbing fact: The enormous length of time people spend waiting for care. We have calculated that adding up the hours, days, weeks, and months Britons spend waiting for care produces an astounding fact: [b]Britons already in the queue for medical treatment will wait a total of one million years for care.[/b]

How Long?

What patients are most concerned with is not so much the number of other people on the waiting list, but the length of time they themselves will have to wait. Obviously, in principle it is possible for the waiting list to be small, but for each person to have a long wait; or for the waiting lists to be large, but for each person to be seen very quickly.

[b]The National Plan for the NHS, published in 2000, states that by 2005 “no one will wait more than 13 weeks for an appointment and 6 months for admission.”[/b]

That was two years ago, but the position has worsened slightly since then. The slide in performance suggests that, however determined the policy objectives might be, today’s centralized control structure cannot deliver even these modest goals.

In-patient waiting lists. Most urgent cases, however, are actually seen quite quickly. Consider in-patient waiting times: the period between a consultation with a senior doctor and admission for treatment. There are roughly 10 million admissions for in-patient treatment each year. Just under half (4.3 million, in England) are emergencies and as such are treated quickly. Just over half (5.7 million) are for other sorts of treatment.

Taking only the figures for England, for the one million people on this waiting list at any moment, it is estimated 155,000 are seen within four weeks.

However, non-urgent cases can have very long waits indeed. Of the remaining 845,000 who are seen after four weeks:

345,000 are seen before 13 weeks, but
500,000 are not seen until after 13 weeks, and of those
250,000 are not seen until after 26 weeks.
Out-patient attendance. There are roughly 44 million out-patient attendances each year. These are people waiting to see a consultant. The biggest delays are in getting to see the consultant in the first place: Once you have had a first consultation, subsequent attendances tend to follow more quickly.

Of the (roughly) 11 million first attendances with a consultant:

8.4 million (78 percent) are seen within 13 weeks, of whom:
3.8 million (35 percent) are seen within four weeks; but
2.4 million (22 percent) are not seen until after 13 weeks.

How Much Time Wasted?

Of course, we can probably never entirely get rid of waiting time in any service, in health care or even at the supermarket checkout. But for the population as a whole, today’s NHS waiting lists add up to a very long wait indeed. As Professor Richard Feachem showed in the January 19, 2002 issue of the British Medical Journal, [b]NHS waiting times compare very unfavourably with waiting times in Kaiser Permanente, a California health plan whose spending per patient is remarkably close to that of the NHS.[/b] In Kaiser, 90 percent of in-patients are treated within 13 weeks, and 80 percent of out-patients are seen within two weeks.

But let us set a more modest target for the NHS and say merely that a wait of over four weeks is unsatisfactory. Given the pain and anxiety people may suffer, a wait of that length clearly must be unsatisfactory. So how much time do NHS patients spend in this “clearly unsatisfactory” state of waiting more than four weeks?

Let us also assume people reach the top of the waiting lists at a fairly regular rate as indicated by our raw statistics, so that all out-patients are seen within 20 weeks and all in-patients are treated within 36 weeks. (Though as a number of hip-replacement patients will testify, this is perhaps an over-generous assumption.) We can then calculate that, in rough terms:

The in-patients on the NHS waiting list will spend 235,000 years waiting in excess of four weeks for their treatments; and
NHS out-patients will wait 830,000 years waiting beyond four weeks to be seen.

That is a total of 1,065,000 years of unsatisfactorily long waiting.

At What Cost?

Of course, this is not the whole story. Waiting lists cost people a lot more than just time. Dudley Lusted, chief economist at PPP Healthcare, undertook a major exercise on the economic cost of waiting lists. [b]His starting point was to estimate the cost to employers of working days lost—counting the period after the first four weeks’ absence—where the individual remained too incapacitated to return to work and was awaiting medical treatment.[/b]

Averaged across the workforce, Lusted estimated two days lost per employee per year. With a workforce of about 22 million, [b]that suggests 44 million work days lost due to delays in medical treatment. With a weighted average pay of £15,000, the cost is therefore £660,000,000.[/b]

The cost of anxiety and limitations on activity for the patients themselves has been estimated by Professor Carole Propper of Bristol University. Taking this at £5 a day (the mid-point of her estimated range), [b]the unseen cost of the 1,065,000 years that people spend waiting beyond four weeks is approximately £19.4 billion.
[/b]
There are, of course, other costs too. A MEDIX survey identified the extra burdens on general practitioners and their patients. Among the key results were:

Worsening conditions: 66 percent of GPs had patients waiting as out-patients admitted as emergency because their condition worsened.

Increased burden: 90 percent of GPs had patient consultations arising out of waiting list delays, and 70 percent of GPs dealt with problems arising from that—an estimated 1.5 million extra consultations.

Why the Wait?

[b]Waiting lists are the inevitable consequence of a politically driven, tax-funded, centrally run health service. Users have no customer power over the system. Since the amount people pay (through taxation) is unrelated to the volume of services they use, they have every incentive to demand as much service as they can get, however marginal or even unnecessary. [u]And because—unlike almost all other goods and services—there is no price mechanism to inhibit the over-demand, the central authorities must resort to the only other strategy open to them, that of rationing.[/b][/u]

Waiting lists are merely the symptom of this. They represent unmet demand. They are rationing by queuing.

Undoubtedly, this strategy has some success. Some people do not bother to see the doctor because they cannot face a long wait, while others fail to turn up at consultants’ appointments because they have simply got fed up waiting. A growing number choose to dip into their own savings and pay directly for their treatment in the private sector. [b][u]A quarter of cardiac patients actually die before it is their turn to be called in, which reduces the burden of demand even more.[/b][/u]

What Should Be Done?

Although all these costs are necessarily estimates, it is clear the cost of NHS waiting lists—in terms of anxiety, incapacity, time off work, the cost of absence to employers, the extra costs to the NHS of patients whose condition worsens, and the cost to GPs of seeing patients who are waiting for treatment—is well over £20 billion.

But rough as they are, these calculations do tell us something about the real human scale of the waiting lists and the costs to individuals and economy. Unfortunately, fewer people are being put on the waiting list, fewer of those are being treated in good time, and the total queue is not getting any shorter. Clearly, productivity is falling, despite a real increase in NHS funding of about £5,000 million in the past two years. The inescapable conclusion is that the current structure simply cannot make the improvements we all want, and that radical reform is inevitable.

Pumping more money into a failing structure will not deliver the benefits. Importing clinicians or exporting patients is a marginal stop-gap. [b]We need to change the system.[/b]

Most health care can be delivered locally, and there is a strong case for managing that delivery locally too.

More local management, greater diversity of provision, and methods to make the financial rewards come upward from the patient, rather than downwards from Whitehall and through the health bureaucracy, could all produce a more patient-centered system where there was a real downward pressure on waiting times both from patients and providers.

Dr. Eamonn Butler is director of the Adam Smith Institute, a highly respected think-tank in London, England. Matthew Young, also with the Adam Smith Institute, was formerly head of office automation policy at the Central Computer & Telecommunications Agency, head of policy branch on civil service running costs, a press secretary at 10 Downing Street, and private secretary to the head of the civil service. They can be contacted by email at info@adamsmith.org.uk; by mail at 23 Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3BL.

80,000 Jordanians could have been killed in prevented Al Qaeda strike-- with WMD that may be Iraqi

04.27.04 (2:03 pm)   [edit]
[b]Jordan foils Al-Qaeda chemical attacks but questions remain[/b]
Tue Apr 27, 7:36 AM ET

AMMAN (AFP) - Jordan found itself among the top targets of the Al-Qaeda terror network after foiling a plot to hit the capital with chemical explosives that Amman said could have killed tens of thousands.

But a day after the chilling announcement in an unprecedented television programme that aired the testimonies of alleged members of a dismantled group, several questions remain unanswered.

Officials said the plot involved attacking the intelligence department in Amman, using trucks loaded with 20 tonnes of chemicals that could have killed 80,000 people and injured 160,000 others within a two square kilometer (nearly one square mile) area.

Plans were allegedly also made for attacks on the headquarters of the prime minister and on the US embassy, which are also located in west Amman.

But officials did not provide details on those last two targets nor specify the type of chemicals they said the suspects behind bars had bought on the local market. Four other suspects were killed last week in Amman.

A source close to the investigation told AFP the chemicals consisted of "70 chemical agents, some of which were [b]pesticides,[/b] (BLOGGER'S NOTE: SEE RELATED POST "FOUND: SADDAM'S WMD) which mixed together could have produced a formidable chemical weapon never used before".

US defence and other officials in Washington also questionned the probable casualty toll provided by Jordan as well as the type of chemicals.

"We're still at the point of assessing what it might be involved and what the lethality might be," a US official said Monday on condition of anonymity.

Another US defense official said there have been reports in recent weeks of plans by insurgents or terrorists in Iraq to create a toxic cloud by detonating an explosive mix of chemicals.

But the official, who also asked not to be identified, said analysts concluded that its toxic effect would be localized.

Experts cited by Jordanian state television Monday night said the explosives would have caused "two explosions: a traditional one and a chemical in an area of two square kilometers."

"The chemical explosion would lead to the emission of poisonous chemical gasses which would cause physical deformities and direct injuries to the lungs and eyesight.

"Outside this circle, the human loss would amount to around 80,000 people dead and 160,000 injured," one of them said.

The report also did not explain [b]how the suspects were able to amass 20 tonnes of chemicals, set up laboratories to make explosives, buy trucks for suicide bombings and warehouses to store them in.[/b]

(BLOGGER'S NOTE: FROM A SYRIA THAT HARBORED IRAQI WMD? IRAN?)

"The lesson that must be learned here is that Al-Qaeda uses different means to strike and that chemicals can be bought locally and weapons made discreetly," a Jordanian official told AFP.

"Such weapons become frightening when they are in the hands of an expert in explosives," he said on condition of anonymity.

The alleged ringleader, Jordanian Azmi Jayussi was among four suspects whose taped testimonies were broadcast Monday night. He said he was such an expert.

[b]Jayussi, who is of Palestinian origin, said he was trained in Afghanistan (news - web sites) by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, a top Al-Qaeda operative [u]who he said later met with him in Iraq, where they planned the operation. [/b][/u]

The United States have a 10-million-dollar bounty on the head of Zarqawi, a fugitive Islamist sentenced to death by a Jordanian court earlier this month for the October 2002 killing of a US diplomat.

Jayussi said Zarqawi, to whom he pledged allegiance, ordered him to "instigate military operations in Jordan" and provided him with fake documents and 170,000 dollars through couriers, most of whom came from Syria.

However, the Jordanian authorities have said they do not believe the Syrian government was aware of what was going on.

Another suspect testified that Jayussi told him "the aim was to strike Jordan and the Hashemites (its ruling family), a war against crusaders and infidels".

Jordanians questioned by AFP on Tuesday were also searching for answers.

"Why doesn't Zarqawi ... use his knowledge (as a chemical expert) and his men and weapons to strike at US forces occupying Iraq or Israel," said engineer Monzer Ahmad.

A political analyst said he believed Zarqawi chose Jordan as a target as a punishment for having signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. "He believes Jordan is an apostate country and a traitor".

Kerry, desperate, acts unpresidential and is destroying his campaign

04.27.04 (1:43 pm)   [edit]
From James Taranto's "Best of the Web"--

BY JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, April 27, 2004 3:58 p.m. EDT

[b]Kerry: Up in Smoke?[/b]-- http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

A look at the second-day coverage of John Kerry's "Good Morning America" interview about his shifting Vietnam medal stories bolsters our view-- http://www.opinionjournal.com... that the Kerry campaign is in very deep trouble. "Kerry Questions Bush Attendance in Guard in 70's" reads a front-page headline in today's New York Times. The Times gives top billing to Kerry's attempt to change the subject:

[i]In a day of piercing and personal exchanges, John Kerry questioned on Monday whether President Bush skipped National Guard duty 30 years ago, while Vice President Dick Cheney disparaged Mr. Kerry as an opportunist unfit to lead the nation in wartime.

Mr. Kerry had previously declined to join other Democrats in raising questions about Mr. Bush's National Guard attendance record. But during a contentious interview on national television on Monday, when pressed on whether he threw away his Vietnam war medals in a protest in 1971, he defended himself and attacked the president.

"This is a controversy that the Republicans are pushing," Mr. Kerry said on "Good Morning America" on ABC. "The Republicans have spent $60 million in the last few weeks trying to attack me, and this comes from a president and a Republican Party that can't even answer whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. I'm not going to stand for it." [/i]

Now, some would argue that the New York Times is showing its own bias by emphasizing the National Guard business. But in fact, Kerry's mentioning of it is highly newsworthy. The man wants to be president of the United States, and he is in such a weak position that he feels it necessary to attack his opponent personally over an ancient issue that is as trivial as anything we can imagine.

Normally, presidential candidates are at great pains to appear above the fray, or "presidential." They leave most of the attacks to their surrogates--even attacks that are substantive, such as Cheney's speech yesterday-- http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... Thus Bush aide Karen Hughes has commented on Kerry's contradictory statements about his medals, but the president himself has remained mum and will likely continue to do so.

Why did Kerry feel that he himself had to bring up the National Guard? For one thing, because he is extremely vulnerable on the medal question. He has built his entire candidacy around the image of himself as a war hero, but when voters learn that he threw his decorations away, and then that he can't even tell a straight story about which decorations they were, the war-hero story becomes at the very least complicated.

Hence the need for a diversionary defense. Letting his surrogates belabor the National Guard would not have been effective, because they've already done so, leading a few weeks back to a kerfuffle that blew over when the White House released Bush's service records. By raising the issue himself, Kerry elevates it--but he diminishes himself in the process. (The Boston Globe notes-- http://www.boston.com/news/po... another Kerry statement that suggests his degree of desperation: "God, they're doing the bidding of the Republican National Committee," he said of ABC News immediately after the "Good Morning America" interview ended--and after he thought the microphone had gone off.)

Not that Kerry's surrogates haven't been sounding related themes. The Washington Times notes that "a Democrat-leaning group" has suggested "that Mr. Cheney's wife became pregnant to help her husband avoid serving in Vietnam." It seems an outfit called the Thunder Road Group is unhappy that the Cheneys were making love, not war.

Aren't Bush's National Guard record and Cheney's lack of military service fair game for the Kerry campaign and its allies? Well sure, if voters deem them important. We're guessing that they won't, although President Dole may disagree.

On the other hand, Kerry's antiwar activity seems highly relevant today. When he threw his medals, ribbons or whatever over the fence at the Capitol, he was already a politician, forming a worldview about America, its military and its role in the world. How that worldview was shaped and what form it takes today is of the utmost importance to voters choosing a candidate in November. Yet Kerry can't even seem to get his facts straight about those formative events.

Blogger Michael Totten-- http://www.michaeltotten.com/... suggests a way for Kerry to extricate himself from this quagmire:

[i]Most people don't really care if John Kerry did and said dumb things in '71. I certainly don't. I was only one year old at the time. I do expect him to act like an adult and be honest about it, however. He is, after all, auditioning for president of the United States.

I don't care for John Kerry, but I'll throw him a rope all the same. Here you go, senator. Say this on the TV: "Today's more strident anti-war activists remind me of my own immature self back in 1971." It will kill two proverbial birds with a single figurative stone. It will play well among people who matter. And you'll feel a lot better.[/i]

It's a good idea, but we're not holding our breath. Meanwhile, at least one commentator of the left, James Ridgeway of the Village Voice, is declaring, "John Kerry must go."-- http://www.villagevoice.com/i... We wouldn't be surprised if others join the chorus.

Democrats: "Bring it on...No, wait, call 'em off!"

04.27.04 (1:37 pm)   [edit]
From James Taranto's "Best of the Web" column--

[b]Bring 'Em On! No, Call 'Em Off![/b]

"If George Bush wants to make national security an issue in this campaign, I have three words for him that I know he'll understand. Bring it on!"--John Kerry, quoted in the New York Times, Feb. 1-- http://www.johnkerry.com/pres...

"Call off the Republican attack dogs."--Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, responding to Dick Cheney's speech on John Kerry's defense record, quoted by the Associated Press, April 26--
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=6 94&u=/ap/20040426/ap_on_e l_pr/kerry_cheney_6" title="http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=6 94&u=/ap/20040426/ap_on_e l_pr/kerry_cheney_6" target="_blank"http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm...

Majority of Iraqi WMD in Syria

04.27.04 (1:22 pm)   [edit]
2 stories:

[b]Iraq had chemical weapons: Yaalon[/b]
AP story, Pakistand Daily Times-- http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/...

JERUSALEM: Iraq had chemical weapons and the means to deliver them ahead of last year’s US-led invasion, Israel’s military chief said in an interview published on Monday.

Iraq may have transferred the weapons to Syria or buried them in desert sands, said Lt Gen Moshe Yaalon, speaking a month after a parliamentary investigation criticised Israeli intelligence gathering on Iraq.

The parliamentary report found that Israeli warnings that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction were based on speculation and that Israeli authorities had little evidence to support this belief.

The report did not specifically address the issue of whether or not Saddam possessed chemical weapons. In Monday’s interview in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, Yaalon said that before the war, Iraq had developed the ability to fit planes with chemical weapons that could have been used against Israel.

“There is no doubt that in the eight months leading up to the war, the Iraqis prepared an ability to deliver by air chemical weapons, at least at us,” Yaalon said. —AP

[b]Iraqi Weapons in Syria[/b]
Post April 26, 2004
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
InsightMag.com--
http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyi d=670123" title="http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyi d=670123" target="_blank"http://www.insightmag.com/mai...

On Dec. 24, 2002, nearly three months before fighting in Iraq began, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Saddam Hussein's regime of transferring key materials for his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs to Syria in convoys of 18-wheel trucks to hide them from U.N. weapons inspectors. "There is information we are verifying, but we are certain that Iraq has recently moved chemical or biological weapons into Syria," Sharon told Channel Two television in Israel.

Before talking about this on Israeli television, Sharon gave detailed information to the Bush White House on what Israel knew and what it suspected. Insight has learned, however, that once the information was handed over to the U.S. intelligence community, officials at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) swept it aside as lacking credibility.

In May 2003, just as major combat operations in Iraq were winding down, new reports surfaced in Israel, this time alleging that convoys of Iraqi water tankers carrying WMD components crossed the border into Syria repeatedly between Jan. 10 and March 10. The tankers reportedly were met by Syrian special forces and escorted to the heroin poppy fields of a Syrian-controlled area in Lebanon's Bekáa Valley, where their contents were dumped into specially prepared pits and buried. Again, INR discounted the reports, U.S. officials tell Insight.

Reports of Iraqi WMD winding up in Syria were not just coming from the Israelis. In October 2003, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, revealed that vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to Saddam's forbidden WMD programs had been shipped to Syria before the war. It was no surprise that the United States and its allies had not found stockpiles of forbidden weapons in Iraq, Clapper told a breakfast briefing given to reporters in Washington. "Those below the senior leadership saw what was coming, and I think they went to extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence," he said.

"We have had six or seven credible reports of Iraqi weapons being moved into Syria before the war," a senior administration official tells Insight. "In every case, the U.S. intelligence community sought to discount or discredit those reports."

This January, after he returned to Washington from Iraq, where for six months he had served as the CIA's top gun with the Iraq Survey Group hunting for Saddam's banned weapons, David Kay said he had uncovered evidence that weapons material had been moved to Syria shortly before the war. "We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he told the Sunday Telegraph in London. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD program. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."

Another piece of this puzzle was provided by a Syrian intelligence officer in letters smuggled to an antiregime activist living in Paris named Nizar Nayouf. In one letter the source identified three locations in Syria where WMD materials had been buried under an agreement between the Syrian and Iraqi leadership. Two of the sites were specially dug underground bunkers and tunnels. The third site was a factory operated by the Syrian air force in the village of Tal Sinan, located between the cities of Hama and Salimiyyah. In a follow-up letter dated Jan. 7, Nayouf's source provided more details on these locations, along with a map, and alleged that some of the weapons had been moved out of Iraq in ambulances.

So are Saddam's WMD stockpiles in Syria? When Insight asked the CIA if it was investigating these and other reports, a spokesman acknowledged there was "some evidence that way" and that the United States was "looking at all types of possibilities," but vigorously discouraged further inquiries. Administration officials tell Insight that the refusal to report on Syria's complicity with Saddam's regime stems from a "pro-Syria bias in the State Department and some elements of the intelligence community, whose threshold for evidence on Syria is suspiciously high."

Shoshana Bryen regularly escorts groups of retired U.S. military flag officers (admirals and generals) to Israel for meetings with senior Israeli political and military leaders, as well as intelligence officials. "We went to Israel just before the war and just after," she tells Insight. "Both times, Israeli intelligence officials told us, yes, WMD were definitely in Iraq, and that they had been sent to Syria." The Bush administration was trying to downplay these reports, she believes, "because if Iraqi weapons are in Syria, we're going to have to do something about it, and they don't want another war."

FOUND: Saddam's WMD

04.27.04 (1:20 pm)   [edit]
[b]Investigative Report
Saddam's WMD Have Been Found[/b]
Post April 26, 2004
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
InsightMag.com-- http://www.insightmag.com/new...

New evidence out of Iraq suggests that the U.S. effort to track down Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is having better success than is being reported. Key assertions by the intelligence community that were widely judged in the media and by critics of President George W. Bush as having been false are turning out to have been true after all. But this stunning news has received little attention from the major media, and the president's critics continue to insist that "no weapons" have been found.

[b]In virtually every case - chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles - the United States has found the weapons and the programs that the Iraqi dictator successfully concealed for 12 years from U.N. weapons inspectors. [/b]

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), whose intelligence analysts are managed by Charles Duelfer, a former State Department official and deputy chief of the U.N.-led arms-inspection teams, has found "hundreds of cases of activities that were prohibited" under U.N. Security Council resolutions, a senior administration official tells Insight. "There is a long list of charges made by the U.S. that have been confirmed, but none of this seems to mean anything because the weapons that were unaccounted for by the United Nations remain unaccounted for."

Both Duelfer and his predecessor, David Kay, reported to Congress that the evidence they had found on the ground in Iraq showed Saddam's regime was in "material violation" of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, the last of 17 resolutions that promised "serious consequences" if Iraq did not make a complete disclosure of its weapons programs and dismantle them in a verifiable manner. The United States cited Iraq's refusal to comply with these demands as one justification for going to war.

Both Duelfer and Kay found that Iraq had "a clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses with equipment that was suitable to continuing its prohibited chemical- and biological-weapons [BW] programs," the official said. "They found a prison laboratory where we suspect they tested biological weapons on human subjects." They found equipment for "uranium-enrichment centrifuges" whose only plausible use was as part of a clandestine nuclear-weapons program. In all these cases, "Iraqi scientists had been told before the war not to declare their activities to the U.N. inspectors," the official said.

But while the president's critics and the media might plausibly hide behind ambiguity and a lack of sensational-looking finds for not reporting some discoveries, in the case of Saddam's ballistic-missile programs they have no excuse for their silence. "Where were the missiles? We found them," another senior administration official told Insight.

"Saddam Hussein's prohibited missile programs are as close to a slam dunk as you will ever find for violating United Nations resolutions," the first official said. Both senior administration officials spoke to Insight on condition that neither their name nor their agency be identified, but their accounts of what the United States has found in Iraq coincided in every major area.

When former weapons inspector Kay reported to Congress in January that the United States had found "no stockpiles" of forbidden weapons in Iraq, his conclusions made front-page news. But when he detailed what the ISG had found in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last October, few took notice. Among Kay's revelations, which officials tell Insight have been amplified in subsequent inspections in recent weeks:

*A prison laboratory complex that may have been used for human testing of BW agents and "that Iraqi officials working to prepare the U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N." Why was Saddam interested in testing biological-warfare agents on humans if he didn't have a biological-weapons program?

*"Reference strains" of a wide variety of biological-weapons agents were found beneath the sink in the home of a prominent Iraqi BW scientist. "We thought it was a big deal," a senior administration official said. "But it has been written off [by the press] as a sort of 'starter set.'"

*New research on BW-applicable agents, brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin that were not declared to the United Nations.

*A line of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, "not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 kilometers [311 miles], 350 kilometers [217 miles] beyond the permissible limit."

*"Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited Scud-variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the U.N."

*"Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 kilometers [621 miles] - well beyond the 150-kilometer-range limit [93 miles] imposed by the U.N. Missiles of a 1,000-kilometer range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets throughout the Middle East, including Ankara [Turkey], Cairo [Egypt] and Abu Dhabi [United Arab Emirates]."

In addition, through interviews with Iraqi scientists, seized documents and other evidence, the ISG learned the Iraqi government had made "clandestine attempts between late 1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300-kilometer-range [807 miles] ballistic missiles - probably the No Dong - 300-kilometer-range [186 miles] antiship cruise missiles and other prohibited military equipment," Kay reported.

In testimony before Congress on March 30, Duelfer, revealed that the ISG had found evidence of a "crash program" to construct new plants capable of making chemical- and biological-warfare agents. The ISG also found a previously undeclared program to build a "high-speed rail gun," a device apparently designed for testing nuclear-weapons materials. That came in addition to 500 tons of natural uranium stockpiled at Iraq's main declared nuclear site south of Baghdad, which International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky acknowledged to Insight had been intended for "a clandestine nuclear-weapons program."

In taking apart Iraq's clandestine procurement network, Duelfer said his investigators had discovered that "the primary source of illicit financing for this system was oil smuggling conducted through government-to-government protocols negotiated with neighboring countries [and] from kickback payments made on contracts set up through the U.N. oil-for-food program" [see "Documents Prove U.N. Oil Corruption," April 27-May 10].

What the president's critics and the media widely have portrayed as the most dramatic failure of the U.S. case against Saddam has been the claimed failure to find "stockpiles" of chemical and biological weapons. But in a June 2003 Washington Post op-ed, former chief U.N. weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus called such criticism "a distortion and a trivialization of a major threat to international peace and security."

Lt. Gen. Amer Rashid al-Obeidi (left) and Lt. Gen. Amer Hamoodi al-Saddi (right) speak to an unidentified French intelligence officer at the Baghdad International Arms Fair in April 1989, and another French officer listens in (behind al-Saadi, facing camera)

The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction concluded that Saddam "probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons (MT) and possibly as much as 500 MT of CW [chemical warfare] agents - much of it added in the last year." That assessment was based, in part, on conclusions contained in the final report from U.N. weapons inspectors in 1999, which highlighted discrepancies in what the Iraqis reported to the United Nations and the amount of precursor chemicals U.N. arms inspectors could document Iraq had imported but for which it no longer could account. Until now, Bush's critics say, no stockpiles of CW agents made with those precursors have been found. The snap conclusion they draw is that the administration "lied" to the American people to create a pretext for invading Iraq.

But what are "stockpiles" of CW agents supposed to look like? Was anyone seriously expecting Saddam to have left behind freshly painted warehouses packed with chemical munitions, all neatly laid out in serried rows, with labels written in English? Or did they think that a captured Saddam would guide U.S. troops to smoking vats full of nerve gas in an abandoned factory? In fact, as recent evidence made public by a former operations officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority's (CPA's) intelligence unit in Iraq shows, some of those stockpiles have been found - not all at once, and not all in nice working order - but found all the same.

Douglas Hanson was a U.S. Army cavalry reconnaissance officer for 20 years, and a veteran of Gulf War I. He was an atomic demolitions munitions security officer and a nuclear, biological and chemical defense officer. As a civilian analyst in Iraq last summer, he worked for an operations intelligence unit of the CPA in Iraq, and later, with the newly formed Ministry of Science and Technology, which was responsible for finding new, nonlethal employment for Iraqi WMD scientists.

In an interview with Insight and in an article he wrote for the online magazine AmericanThinker.com, Hanson examines reports from U.S. combat units and public information confirming that many of Iraq's CW stockpiles have indeed been found. Until now, however, journalists have devoted scant attention to this evidence, in part because it contradicts the story line they have been putting forward since the U.S.-led inspections began after the war.

But another reason for the media silence may stem from the seemingly undramatic nature of the "finds" Hanson and others have described. The materials that constitute Saddam's chemical-weapons "stockpiles" look an awful lot like pesticides, which they indeed resemble. "Pesticides are the key elements in the chemical-agent arena," Hanson says. "In fact, the general pesticide chemical formula (organophosphate) is the 'grandfather' of modern-day nerve agents."

The United Nations was fully aware that Saddam had established his chemical-weapons plants under the guise of a permitted civilian chemical-industry infrastructure. Plants inspected in the early 1990s as CW production facilities had been set up to appear as if they were producing pesticides - or in the case of a giant plant near Fallujah, chlorine, which is used to produce mustard gas.

When coalition forces entered Iraq, "huge warehouses and caches of 'commercial and agricultural' chemicals were seized and painstakingly tested by Army and Marine chemical specialists," Hanson writes. "What was surprising was how quickly the ISG refuted the findings of our ground forces and how silent they have been on the significance of these caches."

Caches of "commercial and agricultural" chemicals don't match the expectation of "stockpiles" of chemical weapons. But, in fact, that is precisely what they are. "At a very minimum," Hanson tells Insight, "they were storing the precursors to restart a chemical-warfare program very quickly." Kay and Duelfer came to a similar conclusion, telling Congress under oath that Saddam had built new facilities and stockpiled the materials to relaunch production of chemical and biological weapons at a moment's notice.

At Karbala, U.S. troops stumbled upon 55-gallon drums of pesticides at what appeared to be a very large "agricultural supply" area, Hanson says. Some of the drums were stored in a "camouflaged bunker complex" that was shown to reporters - with unpleasant results. "More than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent," Hanson says. "But later ISG tests resulted in a proclamation of negative, end of story, nothing to see here, etc., and the earlier findings and injuries dissolved into nonexistence. Left unexplained is the small matter of the obvious pains taken to disguise the cache of ostensibly legitimate pesticides. One wonders about the advantage an agricultural-commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers 6 feet underground. The 'agricultural site' was also colocated with a military ammunition dump - evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG."

That wasn't the only significant find by coalition troops of probable CW stockpiles, Hanson believes. Near the northern Iraqi town of Bai'ji, where Saddam had built a chemical-weapons plant known to the United States from nearly 12 years of inspections, elements of the 4th Infantry Division found 55-gallon drums containing a substance identified through mass spectrometry analysis as cyclosarin - a nerve agent. Nearby were surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, gas masks and a mobile laboratory that could have been used to mix chemicals at the site. "Of course, later tests by the experts revealed that these were only the ubiquitous pesticides that everybody was turning up," Hanson says. "It seems Iraqi soldiers were obsessed with keeping ammo dumps insect-free, according to the reading of the evidence now enshrined by the conventional wisdom that 'no WMD stockpiles have been discovered.'"

At Taji - an Iraqi weapons complex as large as the District of Columbia - U.S. combat units discovered more "pesticides" stockpiled in specially built containers, smaller in diameter but much longer than the standard 55-gallon drum. Hanson says he still recalls the military sending digital images of the canisters to his office, where his boss at the Ministry of Science and Technology translated the Arabic-language markings. "They were labeled as pesticides," he says. "Gee, you sure have got a lot of pesticides stored in ammo dumps."

Again, this January, Danish forces found 120-millimeter mortar shells filled with a mysterious liquid that initially tested positive for blister agents. But subsequent tests by the United States disputed that finding. "If it wasn't a chemical agent, what was it?" Hanson asks. "More pesticides? Dish-washing detergent? From this old soldier's perspective, I gain nothing from putting a liquid in my mortar rounds unless that stuff will do bad things to the enemy."

The discoveries Hanson describes are not dramatic. And that's the problem: Finding real stockpiles in grubby ammo dumps doesn't fit the image the media and the president's critics carefully have fed to the public of what Iraq's weapons ought to look like.

A senior administration official who has gone through the intelligence reporting from Iraq as well as the earlier reports from U.N. arms inspectors refers to another well-documented allegation. "The Iraqis admitted they had made 3.9 tons of VX," a powerful nerve gas, but claimed they had never weaponized it. The U.N. inspectors "felt they had more. But where did it go?" The Iraqis never provided any explanation of what had happened to their VX stockpiles.

What does 3.9 tons of VX look like? "It could fit in one large garage," the official says. Assuming, of course, that Saddam would assemble every bit of VX gas his scientists had produced at a single site, that still amounts to one large garage in an area the size of the state of California.

Senior administration officials stress that the investigation will continue as inspectors comb through millions of pages of documents in Iraq and attempt to interview Iraqi weapons scientists who have been trained all their professional lives to conceal their activities from the outside world.

"The conditions under which the ISG is working are not very conducive," one official said. "But this president wants the truth to come out. This is not an exercise in spinning or censoring."

California professor charged with hate-crime hoax

04.27.04 (1:10 pm)   [edit]
Calif. Professor Charged with Hate Crime Hoax
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm /20040426/us_nm/crime_hoa x_dc_1" title="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm /20040426/us_nm/crime_hoa x_dc_1" target="_blank"http://story.news.yahoo.com/n... Mon Apr 26 2994 | Reuters

[b]Calif. Professor Charged with Hate Crime Hoax [/b]

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Southern California college professor who received wide media attention when she claimed that racists had vandalized and defaced her car with ethnic slurs was charged on Monday with filing a false police report and insurance fraud.

Kerri Dunn, a professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College, east of Los Angeles, portrayed herself as a victim of racists angered by her message of tolerance at a campus forum when she reported the vandalism on March 9. She then put in a claim with her auto insurer for damages to her car.

Her story drew media attention and prompted hundreds of students to rally in her name, joined by civil rights activists.

But police and FBI (news - web sites) agents who investigated the incident began suspecting Dunn of a hoax after witnesses came forward to say they had spotted the 39-year-old professor vandalizing her own car.

She was charged with one misdemeanor count of filing a false police report and two felony counts of insurance fraud. She faces three years in prison if convicted at trial.

"False accusations that imply hate crimes prey on the legitimate concerns of the public who truly abhor violence based on race, ethnicity or sexual orientation," Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley said in a statement. "And those who make false claims should realize there is a penalty for doing so."

After Dunn's car was found covered in racial slurs, its tires slashed and windshield shattered, college officials offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

Claremont President Pamela Gann has said the college would conduct its own investigation before deciding whether to retain Dunn, whose contract expires later this year.

By the way, free Iraq, you're welcome: Iraqi politician says US at fault

04.27.04 (1:07 pm)   [edit]
All governments make mistakes. Only the US, however, gets crucified for it.

I'm thinking that if the Iraqis wanted their freedom as dearly as they claimed, instead of sitting on their asses waiting for the US to do their work for them, we wouldn't be having the problems we are.

It may have been a mistake to disband the army, but it was a logical thought. Hindsight is 20/20....for the liberals it means that we shouldn't try at all. For those who care about freedom and security, it means we have to learn from the mistakes and try harder.

If this guy is going to put the onus of the success or failure of Iraq solely into American hands, then this state is destined to fail-- Iraqi failure to adequately participate in their country is what is making this so damn hard.

[b]Iraq's council chief: U.S. is at fault [/b]
The Philadelphia Inquirer ^ | Tue, Apr. 27, 2004 | By Louis Meixler, Associated Press

His words show the tension between the U.S. and the U.S.-appointed governing board.

BAGHDAD - The current president of the Iraqi Governing Council said yesterday that the United States had only itself to blame for the military deadlock at Najaf and Fallujah because it allowed its troops to change from "an army of liberation" to "an army of occupation."

In an interview, Massoud Barzani said the United States faced a dilemma: It must not be soft in the besieged cities and give insurgents "the impression that they have the upper hand," but it also must make sure civilians are not harmed if military force is used.

The comments from a close U.S. ally in Iraq signal the dissatisfaction between the United States and top Iraqi politicians. Barzani supported the U.S. war effort, and members of his militia fought alongside U.S. soldiers in northern Iraq.

For more than a decade during Saddam Hussein's rule, Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and another Kurdish party controlled an autonomous area protected by U.S. warplanes. Barzani's forces continue to dominate parts of northern Iraq, a region that has been largely stable and quiet.

Barzani, who holds the council's rotating presidency for April, spoke in one of the marble-tiled rooms of a building once used by Hussein's Ministry of Military Industry, now the offices of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council.

Some members on the council - seen by many Iraqis as tainted for their close association with the United States - have complained that U.S. commanders have been heavy-handed in Fallujah and launched military action without consulting them.

U.S. soldiers surround Fallujah and Najaf, unable to force fighters to disarm and fearful that assaulting the cities would lead to many casualties on both sides.

If the United States takes military action, Barzani said, it must make a "clear distinction between civilians and terrorist elements."

But Barzani also cautioned that "at the same time, no impression can be given to the terrorists that they will be negotiated with or they are seeing any chance that they will win at the end of the day."

When asked what he would do to resolve the sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, Barzani became animated, gesturing rapidly as he spoke and raising his soft voice.

"If it were me, I wouldn't have allowed it to come to this by making earlier mistakes," he said.

"What was a mistake is, they were liberators," Barzani said. But the U.S. Army turned into "an army of occupation," he added.

After Hussein was ousted last year, "an interim government could have immediately been set up," he said. "... Sovereignty would be in the hands of the Iraqis, and the Iraqis would be in the forefront of affairs."

The Iraqi army should not have been disbanded quickly but instead restructured, he said.

Those revamped Iraqi forces could have controlled Iraqi cities with U.S. forces backing them up and not patrolling inside cities, Barzani added.

"Certain problems could have been avoided had it been done in a better manner," he said.

Marines drop leaflets in Fallujah asking residents to leave, aircraft hammer insurgent positions

04.27.04 (12:51 pm)   [edit]
Governing council officials want their caretaker government to be able to make laws and oversee security. That goes against what a transitional government is for and would jeopardize not only US security, but Iraqi security. Sorry, but as long as there are no Iraqi security forces, and as long as US troops are over there fighting for the freedom of Iraq, US forces will remain fight and will remain under US command.

[b]U.S. Aircraft Hammer Fallujah After Dark [/b]
April 27, 2004
By JAYSON KEYSER, Associated Press Writer

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Multiple explosions shook Fallujah after dark Tuesday, and large plumes of smoke billowed into the sky as fighting erupted for the second straight night. An American AC-130 gunship hammered targets in the city.

Blasts and gunfire went on steadily for more than half an hour in sustained fighting, apparently in the northern Jolan district, a poor neighborhood where Sunni insurgents are concentrated.

Flames could be seen rising from building, and mosque loudspeakers in other parts of the city called for firefighters to mobilize.

The fighting erupted as a two-day extension to a cease-fire ended. Earlier in the day, U.S. aircraft dropped leaflets in the city of 200,000 people, calling on insurgents to surrender.

"Surrender, you are surrounded," the leaflets said. "If you are a terrorist, beware, because your last day was yesterday. In order to spare your life end your actions and surrender to coalition forces now. We are coming to arrest you."

Fighting in the same neighborhood on Monday night killed one Marine and eight insurgents, and tank fire destroyed a mosque minaret that U.S. commanders said insurgents were using as sniper's nest.

U.S. troops fought militiamen overnight near Najaf, killing 64 gunmen and destroying an anti-aircraft gun. An American soldier was killed Tuesday in Baghdad, raising the U.S. death toll for April to 115 — the same number lost during the entire invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) last year.

The battle outside Najaf was one of the heaviest with the militia as U.S. troops try to increase the pressure on gunmen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. U.S. troops moved into a base in Najaf that Spanish troops are abandoning, but promised to stay away from the sensitive Shiite shrines at the heart of the southern city.

On Sunday, the U.S. military had announced a two-day extension to the fragile cease-fire in Fallujah to give political efforts a chance — backing down from threats to launch an all-out assault on the city to root out insurgents. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt had said there was no ultimatum for a launch of an assault if political efforts are not showing results.

"We don't think deadlines are helpful," Kimmitt said Tuesday.

Earlier Tuesday, Marines were pushing ahead with training for a key part of the political track, the introduction of U.S.-Iraqi patrols into Fallujah.

As the United Nations (news - web sites) prepared to discuss the form of a caretaker government due to take power June 30, U.S.-appointed Iraqi leaders complained that the administration won't have real sovereignty as promised by American administrators for months.

"I think the sovereignty will be weak and not complete," said Mahmoud Othman, a member of the Governing Council. For "the security situation, there will still be the United States," he said.

He also expressed worries there will be limits as to what laws the Iraqis can pass. If the government can't make laws or provide security "it will not be real sovereignty," he said. "The less sovereignty there is, the less the possibility that the government will be able to work and achieve its tasks."

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has proposed that the Governing Council be dissolved and caretaker government made up of nonpartisan experts be created to run Iraq until elections in January. Washington has said that since Iraqi security forces are still not able to fight insurgents, U.S. forces will hold security powers even after the handover.

Ahmad Chalabi, a council member and close American ally, said he is demanding from top U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer that the coming government be given strong roles on both the security and political fronts.

"We tell him that Iraqis should have a bigger role in security, we tell him that Iraqis should have a bigger role in taking financial decisions, we tell him that Iraqis should have a role in running the Iraqi reconstruction fund," he told the Arab television station Al-Arabiya

John Negroponte, nominated to be ambassador to Baghdad, said at his Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that Iraqis will have "a lot more sovereignty than they have right now" after the June 30 handover, but the United States will still have a key role in providing and overseeing security, and the caretaker government won't be able to make laws.

Negroponte said the focus of the transitional government would be to organize elections, and the cabinet ministries will carry out the government's day-to-day operations.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said there is "ample precedent for self-imposed limits on authority of interim, caretaker governments, such as likely to be the case here in this first phase of Iraq's transition to democracy."

Also Tuesday, a Red Cross team visited Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) to see his conditions in U.S. custody, Kimmitt said, but he refused to say where the visit took place. It was the first since the Red Cross visited the ousted Iraqi leader in February.

The battles in the south Monday evening took place on the east side of the Euphrates River, across from Kufa and Najaf, Kimmitt said.

The first came in the afternoon, when Shiite militiamen opened fire on a U.S. patrol, and seven insurgents were killed. Hours later, a M1 tank was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades, triggering a heavy battle in which warplanes destroyed an anti-aircraft gun belonging to the militia, and 57 gunmen were killed, Kimmitt said.

Najaf hospitals listed 37 dead, all young men of fighting age, suggesting they may have been militiamen. Sheik Amer al-Husseini, an official at Sadr's office in Baghdad, said 25 were killed. He did not say how many of the casualties were militiamen.

Night video taken by the Associated Press Television News between Najaf and the nearby town of Kufa showed U.S. army helicopters flying low over smoke rising from an area in the distance amid flashes of gunfire.

An al-Sadr aide in Najaf, Mustaq al-Khafaji, accused Americans of trying to advance toward Kufa. "We will face the Americans whenever they show up," he said.

U.S. authorities have vowed to capture al-Sadr and uproot his militia, the al-Mahdi Army, which launched a bloody uprising at the beginning of April.

About 2,000 troops are deployed outside Najaf, but the military is having to tread carefully. Any action that even brings the possibility of harm to the sacred Imam Ali Shrine at its heart could turn the limited al-Sadr revolt into a widespread uprising by Iraq's Shiite majority.

Bremer heightened warnings about the reported stockpiling of weapons in "mosques, shrines and schools" in Najaf.

"The coalition certainly will not tolerate this situation," Bremer said in a statement to residents of Najaf.

About 200 soldiers on Monday moved into a base that Spanish forces are abandoning in Najaf.

In Madrid, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Spain has completed the withdrawal of its troops, recalling his campaign pledge to bring them home unless the United Nations took military and political control of the occupation.

The Baghdad attack Tuesday killed a U.S. soldier and wounded another in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, a stronghold of al-Sadr's Al-Mahdi Army militia, Kimmitt told reporters.

The death brought to 115 the number of U.S. troops killed in combat in the past 27 days — the same number of Americans killed during the two-month invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam.

Meanwhile, Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov said his country's troops were "not prepared" for the kind of fighting they are doing in Iraq and need "immediate and substantial military backup" from the coalition.

Speaking in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia after a visit to the 485-member contingent Sunday, Parvanov said he wants the troops be relocated to a new camp outside Karbala by June 30. Karbala has been the scene of recent heavy fighting by al-Sadr's followers.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) said Britain has no plans to send more troops to Iraq.

"The advice that we have now is that we have sufficient troops to do the job," Blair said at a news conference. Britain currently has 7,500 troops in southern Iraq.

Hillary Clinton resurrects 'universal' health care, but it still sucks

04.27.04 (10:58 am)   [edit]
Money quote:

[i]Somehow, the notion seems to be insinuated that the government can do it cheaper and better. But name three things that the government does cheaper and better than private individuals and organizations. It would be no trick at all to name dozens of things that the government does worse and at higher costs.[/i]

[b]Hillary's back![/b]
Thomas Sowell
April 27, 2004

A huge headline on the front of a recent issue of the New York Times Magazine said more than they intended: "Now Are We Ready to Talk About Health Care?" Inside was an article with the same title by Hillary Clinton.

The casual arrogance of that question is staggering. We talked endlessly about Hillary's proposed government-run medical system a decade ago and decided against it for many reasons. Now this re-run of the same issues proceeds as if the question is whether the rest of us are "ready" to talk about such things.

Senator Clinton parades the usual litany of reasons why the government should run the medical system, beginning with "soaring health costs and millions of uninsured." But, not only does she offer nothing that will actually reduce those costs, she declares that "our mental health delivery system is underfinanced."

In other words, she wants to spend more money on shrinks. Can you imagine what will happen to costs if unverifiable diseases and unverifiable cures provide blank checks to be paid by the taxpayers?

"Universal health care" is a lovely phrase with political resonance in some quarters. But what does it mean concretely?

First of all, since people differ in what they want, nothing can be "universal" without being mandatory. In other words, we are talking about forcing people to belong to whatever program the politicians and bureaucrats come up with, regardless of what the people themselves might prefer.

As for health, it is the end result of many things -- diet, exercise, genetics, lifestyle -- most of which are beyond the scope of government. What the government can control -- doctors, hospitals, medicines -- are only part of the equation.

What the lovely phrase "universal health care" boils down to is politicians and bureaucrats forcing people to get their medical treatment and pharmaceutical drugs the way the politicians and bureaucrats decide.

Somehow, the notion seems to be insinuated that the government can do it cheaper and better. But name three things that the government does cheaper and better than private individuals and organizations. It would be no trick at all to name dozens of things that the government does worse and at higher costs.

How is it going to be cheaper to manage hospitals, doctors and pharmaceutical drugs, when it is going to take an army of bureaucrats and tons of red tape to do it? Economists say that there is no free lunch. There is no free red tape either.

Whatever charming visions may be conjured up by political rhetoric, what matters are the hard realities of government-run medical systems. Such systems have existed in many countries around the world. Why not look at what happens in those countries?

How many of those who gush about "universal health care" know that the countries which have it also have waiting times to get treated that are several times as long as people in America wait to see a specialist or get an operation? Waiting not only means longer suffering, it can also mean that a treatable disease can become untreatable -- or even fatal -- because of the delay.

Britain has had a government-run medical system for about half a century, so it might be a good source of facts -- for those who are interested in facts, instead of political rhetoric.

A feature article in London's Daily Mail referred to "our filthy hospitals." The distinguished British magazine The Economist likewise commented on how dirty these hospitals are.

Why? Because British hospitals are so tied up in government rules and union contracts that a nurse has no authority to order the janitorial staff to mop the floor after a patient has vomited. If the nurse wants that floor mopped any time soon, she has to stop taking care of patients and go find a mop to clean it up herself.

Working for a government-run medical system is apparently not all that attractive to Britons who might go into the medical profession. Many of the doctors in Britain are from Third World countries whose medical schools are often substandard.

These are just some of the problems that go with government-run medical systems, whether in Britain or in other countries around the world. But what are mere facts compared to a lovely phrase like "universal health care"?

©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Russia's nuke proliferation continues, the chance of accidental launch is high

04.27.04 (10:38 am)   [edit]
Read the article below. It details how Russia is continuing to build its nuclear arsenal and how its launch detection system is old and unreliable, meaning that they could wrongly interpret a US strike, meaning that they would counterstrike.

The article details how former defense secretary McNamara, the author of our Vietnam defeat, thinks that we should just "give them up", that since both Russia and the US are on the same side in the war on terror, we can both give up our nukes.

The only problem with that is that Russia built its nukes throughout the 1990s, while it had promised in agreements with the US that they'd reduce their number. The US kept their part of the bargain, the Russians had no such plans.

The US also has pumped billions into Russia to help safeguard their nuke facilities.

Russia is not on our side. It is always on Russia's side. They will not give up their nukes. If we want to stick around, we won't, either.

I'm amazed that folks are finally starting to realize the threat from Russia, that they are finally understanding that the Cold War isn't over.

[b]McNamara: Nuclear War Still Possible; NY No. 1 Target [/b]
Jon E. Dougherty, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Apr. 27, 2004

The threat of devastating nuclear attack by Russia against the United States has not diminished, warns former Sec. of Defense Robert McNamara.
Writing in Monday’s Los Angeles Times, McNamara and co-author Helen Caldicott claim that the threat of a nuclear catastrophe remains real, “whether by accident, human fallibility or malfeasance.”

The Soviet Union collapsed on itself and the divide between Eastern communism and Western democracy disintegrated more than 13 years ago.

Because of that, the nightmare scenario is not on the minds of many Americans today.

[b]Missiles Still Pointed at New York, Cities[/b]

Nevertheless, the threat remains serious, McNamara and Caldicott argue, because, despite the end of the Cold War in the early 1990's, thousands of Russian nuclear warheads are still pointed at the U.S. targeting many civilian population centers.

McNamara, defense secretary to presidents Kennedy and Johnson, U.S. and Caldicott, a pediatrician and head of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, say that Russian nuclear targeting strategies haven't changed much — and certainly not enough to reflect the thaw in relations between both nations.

The pair also cite a January 2002 document from the U.S. Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., titled, "Prototypes for Targeting America, a Soviet Military Assessment."

The study reports that New York City is the single most important target after military installations on the U.S. Atlantic coast.

In addition, a report commissioned in the 1980s by the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment is still as relevant today.

It said Soviet nuclear war plans called for aiming two one-megaton bombs at each of the following: The three airports serving NYC; Wall Street; each major bridge; all major rail centers; all power stations; four NYC-area oil refineries; and the NYC port facilities.

Also, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in a recent report on nuclear-attack preparedness, featured a map showing an obliterated New York City from nuclear blasts and the resultant firestorms and fallout.

It predicted millions of people would instantly perish, while most survivors would die shortly thereafter from radiation burns and exposure.

[b]Russia, Leading Nuclear Superpower[/b]

Russia, despite press reports to the contrary, remains a nuclear superpower, arguably the greatest nuclear superpower.

Between Moscow and Washington, the two governments can lay claim to 96 percent of the world's 30,000 nuclear weapons.

In Russia, says the National Resources Defense Council, most of the 8,200 nuclear warheads are pointing at American cities and defense sites.

In return, most of the United States' 7,000 warheads are targeting Russian missile silos and command centers.

Russia continues to lead the U.S. in smaller tactical nuclear warheads. The U.S. destroyed most of its tactical nuclear arsenal during the 1990s.

Of the 7,000 warheads in the U.S. arsenal, 2,500 are maintained on a 24-hour ready alert status, and can be launched within moments.

And, the commander of the Strategic Air Command has only about three minutes to decide if a nuclear attack warning is real or not. Then he has 10 minutes to find the president and give him a 30-second attack briefing, including options.

After that, the president has three minutes to decide whether or not to retaliate and if so, which targets will be hit. Once they were launched, U.S. missiles would reach their Russian targets in about 15 to 30 minutes.

The situation is relatively similar in Russia, with the exception that Moscow's early warning system is rapidly aging.

According to the McNamara and Caldicott, the systems of both countries sound alarms daily, in response to wildfires, satellite launchings and solar reflections off clouds or oceans.

But as the Russian system continues to decay, it may be more difficult for Moscow to determine whether alerts are real or not.

That's dangerous, argue experts, because it may mean in the future, Russian commanders and leaders may have to rely more on human judgment—a concept much less reliable than computerized early warning systems that operate without emotion.

[b]Russia Continues Missile Build-up[/b]

Perhaps worse, as Russia's overall military structure continues to suffer from a lack of funding and crumbles, Moscow continues to pour scarce military funding into more nuclear weapons.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told reporters Monday Moscow will test its mobile version of the Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile once more before it is put into service.

The missile, which will form the backbone of Russia's nuclear defenses, is 47 tons, will carry one warhead, and has an estimated range of 6,900 miles. Ground-based Topol-M rockets are already in use; the mobile version could be operational by 2006.

The last test of the mobile missile came earlier this month, Ivanov said. It traveled its maximum distance before hitting a target on the Kamchatka peninsula.

In addition, according to Agence France Presse, the U.S. has hinted it may use a loophole to get out of a treaty signed with Russia in 2002, which mandates both countries slash their nuclear arsenals by two-thirds over a decade.

[b]Give Them Up[/b]

The liberal leaning McNamara and Caldicott say the best strategy now is to simply abandon nuclear weapons altogether.

They say Russia and the U.S. are now allied in the global fight against terrorism.

As such, "their first duty in this effort should be immediate and rapid bilateral nuclear disarmament, accompanied by the other six nuclear nations (France, Britain, China, India, Pakistan and Israel)," followed by U.N. Security Council action "to ensure no other nations, particularly Iran and North Korea, acquire nuclear weapons."

"Time is not on our side," they wrote.

CheckItOut's intentional stupidity..... "Bush hypocrisy"

04.27.04 (7:39 am)   [edit]
If I had the time to respond to each and every asinine post by the left on this site, I'd have no life. I'd be like, well, CheckItOut.

Besides his annoying use of !!!!! regarding everything, he apparently lacks the ability to think.

Somehow, he screams from a blog post, Bush is a hypocrite because the military will take some sovereignty away from Iraq when June 30 rolls around.

Well, does anyone actually think it is a good idea to give Iraq fully over to a caretaker government that has no military, security, and police forces?

I mean, the point Powell is making, and the point most people can understand, is that in order for Iraq's sovereignty to stick, the coalition must be able to ensure it by keeping the bad guys out of the government. I mean, this makes a boatload of f-ing sense.

For CheckItOut and other lefties, it's all gravy, though. If Bush were to hand over complete sovereignty to Iraq, the Iraq collapses the next day. Bush will get blamed for that. On the other hand, if Bush does the logical thing-- action that has been taken with other occupations in the past, like Germany, and action everyone saw coming-- then he is a 'hypocrite'.

Lefties seem to be like bitchy housewives who expect instant solutions. They lack massive amounts of foresight, and then, when they have to be responsible, blame someone else.

For Iraq to work as a free, sovereign country, it must be able to defend itself. Since it does not have a fully functioning security apparatus, guess what? For their security and for US security, the US and the coalition must have the power to defeat the insurgents.

This is all pretty clear. Except to the clucking housewives.

Iraqi insurgents stockpile weapons in mosques, schools, shrines, heavy fighting outside Najaf

04.27.04 (7:25 am)   [edit]
These are the folks that the left in the US and Europe support with their anti-Americanism, the kind of folks that abuse a more peaceful Islam, and abuse Iraqi society.

Also, the term "caretaker" as in "caretaker government" means by its nature that it is not meant to make new law-- it is transitional. Those Iraqis that clamored about a "truly representative" Iraq seem to now be upset that their caretaker goverment, which won't be truly representative, won't have the power to make laws, treaties, etc. Makes no sense.

[b]Fighting in Holy City of Najaf Kills 64 [/b]
By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. troops fought gunbattles with militiamen overnight near the southern holy Shiite city of Najaf, killing 64 gunmen and destroying an anti-aircraft system belonging to the insurgents, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

It was one of the heaviest fights with the militia, as U.S. troops are trying to carefully hike up the pressure on the gunmen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. U.S. troops moved into a base in Najaf, but promised to stay away from the sensitive Shiite holy sites at the city's heart.

Meanwhile, as the United Nations (news - web sites) prepared to discuss the formation of a caretaker government due to take power on June 30, U.S.-appointed Iraqi leaders complained that the administration will not have real sovereignty as promised by American administrators for months.

"I think the sovereignty will be weak and not complete," said Mahmoud Othman, a member of the Governing Council. For "the security situation, there will still be the United States."

He also expressed worries the caretaker will be limited in what laws it can pass. If the government can't make laws or provide security "it will not be real sovereignty," he said. "The less sovereignty there is, the less the possibility that the government will be able to work and achieve its tasks."

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has proposed that the Governing Council be dissolved and caretaker government made up of technocrats be created to run Iraq (news - web sites) from June 30 until January elections. The United States has said that since Iraqi security forces are still not up to the task of fighting insurgents, U.S. forces will be hold security powers even after the handover.

The battles in the south Monday evening took place on the east side of the Euphrates River, across from Kufa and Najaf, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said.

The first fight came in the afternoon, when Shiite militiamen opened fire on a U.S. patrol. In the ensuing firefight, seven insurgents were killed. Hours later, a M1 tank was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades. A heavy battle erupted, during which warplanes destroyed an anti-aircraft gun belonging to the militia and 57 gunmen were killed, Kimmitt said.

Night footage taken by the Associated Press Television News, from a throughway between Najaf and the nearby town of Kufa, showed U.S. army helicopters flying low over plumes of smoke rising from an area in the distance amid flashes of gunfire.

In Fallujah, U.S. Marines were pushing ahead with plans to send patrols into the city alongside Iraqi security forces, despite a bloody battle the night before with Sunni insurgents at a mosque. One Marine was killed, and tank fire toppled the mosque's minaret, from which commanders said the gunmen were firing.

The violence, in which eight Iraqi insurgents were killed, tested the U.S. decision to continue a political track in resolving the Fallujah standoff. On Sunday, the United States backed down from threats to launch a full-scale assault on the city, instead announcing it was extending the fragile cease-fire and would start the patrols.

The battle took place in Fallujah's Jolan district, a poor neighborhood where insurgents are concentrated. The insurgents fired from the mosque, pinning down a Marine patrol that called in helicopter support in an intense firefight, Marine officials said. At one point, a tank opened fire on the minaret and destroyed it.

A photo of the mosque before the fight, released by the Marines, showed a tall, cylindrical minaret. In an after-photo, also from the Marines, the minaret was completely gone, with rubble on the ground trailing behind what was once its base.

On Tuesday, the city was quiet, with little gunfire heard. Fallujah police chief Sabar al-Janabi met with U.S. military officers Tuesday to discuss the patrols, due to begin Thursday. Armed insurgents were fewer in number on the streets.

An al-Sadr aide in Najaf, Mustaq al-Khafaji, accused the Americans of trying to advance toward Kufa. "We will face the Americans whenever they show up," he said.

Still, fewer al-Sadr fighters were seen Tuesday on the streets of Najaf and Kufa, where they have been digging in over the past week against a possible American attack.

U.S. authorities have vowed to capture al-Sadr and uproot his militia, the al-Mahdi Army, which launched a bloody uprising at the beginning of April. Al-Mahdi gunmen still dominates the streets of Najaf, Kufa and Karbala.

Some 2,000 troops are deployed outside Najaf, but the military is having to tread carefully. Najaf is the holiest Shiite city — and any action that even brings the possibility of harm to the Imam Ali Shrine at its heart could turn the limited al-Sadr revolt into a widespread uprising by Iraq's Shiite majority.

About 200 soldiers on Monday moved into a base that Spanish forces are abandoning in the modern part of the Kufa-Najaf urban area, about six kilometers (three miles) from the Imam Ali Shrine. Al-Sadr is located in his office next to the shrine.

In Baghdad, Bremer heightened warnings about the reported stockpiling of weapons in "mosques, shrines and schools" in Najaf.

"The coalition certainly will not tolerate this situation," Bremer said in a statement addressed to residents of Najaf. "The restoration of these holy places to calm places of worship must begin immediately."

Bremer's spokesman, Dan Senor, would not elaborate on steps the coalition was ready to take to do so. He noted that in the case of military action, "those places of worship are not protected under the Geneva Convention" if they are used to store weapons.

The deaths of two soldiers in Baghdad and the Marine in Fallujah on Monday brought to 114 the number of U.S. troops killed in combat so far this month — nearly as many as the 115 Americans killed during the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) a year ago.

The two soldiers were killed when a workshop in Baghdad, believed to be producing chemical munitions, exploded in flames moments after U.S. troops broke in to search it on Monday. Two American soldiers were killed and five wounded. Jubilant Iraqis swarmed over the Americans' charred Humvees, waving looted machine guns, a bandolier and a helmet.

U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt did not say what sort of chemical agents were suspected of being supplied to insurgents from the Baghdad warehouse. After the blast Monday, there was no sign of precautions against chemicals.

"Chemical munitions could mean any number of things," including smoke grenades, he said.

Women take pot shots at Bush, extol joys of abortion

04.27.04 (7:08 am)   [edit]
This kind of says it all....

[i].. parents placed pro-abortion stickers on their newborn babies' clothing, and women went topless as a way to get others to take the cause more seriously. [/i]

[b]"Abort Bush"
The activists at the March for Women's Lives take partisan shots--and extol the joys of abortion. [/b]
by Erin Montgomery
04/27/2004 12:00:00 AM

"ABORT BUSH IN THE FIRST TERM." A group of women on the National Mall displayed a banner with these words during last Saturday's March for Women's Lives, while a throng of fellow abortion-rights demonstrators marched by, nodding their heads in approval. The banner's message couldn't have been more clear, or a more glaring example of sordid wordplay--unless you consider another sign displayed at the march: "KEEP BUSH OUT OF MY . . ."

Led by the ACLU, the Black Women's Health Imperative, the Feminist Majority, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the National Organization for Women, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the march featured a lengthy list of speakers. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, Gloria Steinem, Whoopi Goldberg, and Ted Turner were just a few of the many proponents of abortion rights who urged the crowd to take back the country and elect John Kerry in November.

When actress Camryn Manheim took the stage during the afternoon portion of the rally, she joked, "CNN [is reporting that this] is the largest march in the history of the universe. Of course, Fox is saying there's no one here." News reports now say that the event drew about 500,000 people, making it one of the largest abortion-rights demonstrations ever held on the Mall. The March for Women's Lives website says the crowd numbered 1.15 million.

But unconfirmed numbers (the U.S. Park Police no longer provide estimates) don't tell the full story behind the marchers. In terms of age, race, and gender, the marchers were diverse, and some were scared. "I spend half my day in class, half doing activist work," Niva Kramek, a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the student group Penn for Choice, said. "I'm terrified of what's going to happen [if Bush is reelected]."

As I made my way through piles of hot pink Planned Parenthood signs and dodged the Texas Mamas for Choice, I stumbled into Brenda Beckett. A 52-year-old from Seattle, Beckett explained that in 1975 she had had an abortion as a 25-year-old married woman. "I haven't regretted it once," she said. What she does regret is the "eight hours of orientation"--doctor going over alternatives, such as adoption--she sat through beforehand. "I never had any children cause I never wanted any," she said. Her husband at the time supported her decision; they are no longer married.

"Even though Bush says he believes in non-intrusive government, he is being intrusive," protestor Priscilla Balch said. An abortion-rights activist since her teens, Balch, 60, is "very upset to see that we're going backwards." John McKenna, a senior at Ohio University, has been a part of other pro-choice marches, though this was his first in Washington. He was raised Catholic and attended an all-boys Catholic high school in Cleveland. He has been able to reconcile his religious upbringing with his pro-choice beliefs, stressing that the march is not just for women.

By and large, the marchers were gleeful and unapologetic, sometimes leading to contradictory acts of protest: parents placed pro-abortion stickers on their newborn babies' clothing, and women went topless as a way to get others to take the cause more seriously. Juxtapose them with the counter-protestors who marched in a dignified manner on Pennsylvania Avenue. Silent No More, a group of women who underwent abortions and regret their decision, almost didn't make it to the march when they were denied a permit to stand on the outer sidewalks of Madison and Jefferson streets, directly across the street from the rally on the Mall.

Leading a group of women carrying "I REGRET MY ABORTION" signs, Silent No More co-founder Georgette Forney said, "It's ironic that they are marching to protect women's right to choose and at the same time [are] working to deny us our right to talk about the pain abortion caused us. We are the faces of the choice they promote." After having their permit denied, the women gathered under a permit issued to the Christian Defense Coalition, 16 members of which were arrested when they moved out of their designated area on Pennsylvania Avenue and into the area intended for marchers at Fourth Street and Madison Drive.

Meanwhile, I listened to Forney, 43, tell me about the abortion she had at age 16. She went through a healing process in 1995 and shared her secret with her church in 1998. She also began to correspond with other suffering, post-abortive women over email. Forney says her healing process started with an epiphany. "I came across my old high school yearbook one day. I was holding my yearbook, and it felt like my baby. All of a sudden, I knew she [I just sensed she was a girl] was there. I could feel her spirit, and knew she was awesome."

Erin Montgomery is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard.

© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

Marine in Iraq pleas for Americans to voice the truth, work against the left-wing media

04.27.04 (6:55 am)   [edit]
[b]A Plea from a Marine in Iraq[/b]

By Robert Nofsinger
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 27, 2004

Hello Everyone, I am taking time to ask you all for your help.

First off, I'd like to say that this is not a political message. I'm not concerned about domestic politics right now. We have much bigger things to deal with, and we need your help.

It seems that despite the tremendous and heroic efforts of the men and women serving here in Iraq to bring much needed peace and stability to this region, we are losing the war of perception with the media and American people. Our enemy has learned that the key to defeating the mighty American military is by swaying public opinion at home and abroad. We are a people that cherish the democratic system of government and therefore hold the will of the people in the highest regard. We love to criticize ourselves almost to an endless degree, because we care what others think. Our enemies see this as a weakness and are trying to exploit it.

When we ask ourselves questions like, "Why do they hate us?" or "What did we do wrong?" we are playing into our enemies' hands. [b]Our natural tendency to question ourselves is being used against us to undermine our effort to do good in the world.[/b] How far would we have gotten if after the surprise attacks on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor, we would have asked, "Why do the Japanese hate us so much?" or "How can we change ourselves so that they won't do that again?" Here in Iraq the enemy is trying very hard to portray our efforts as failing and fruitless. They kill innocents and desecrate their bodies in hopes that the people back home will lose the will to fight for liberty. They are betting on our perceived weakness as a thoughtful, considerate people. Unfortunately our media only serves to further their cause.

[b]In an industry that feeds on ratings and bad news, a failure in Iraq would be a goldmine. When our so-called "trusted" American media takes a quote from an Iraqi doctor as the gospel truth over that of the men and women that are daily fighting to protect the right to freedom of press, you know something is wrong.[/b] That doctor claimed that out of 600 Iraqis, that were casualties of the fighting, the vast majority of them were women, children and the elderly. This is totally absurd. [b]In the history of man, no one has spent more time and effort, often to the detriment of our own mission, to be more discriminate in our targeting of the enemy than the American military. The Marines and Soldiers serving in Iraq have gone through extensive training in order to limit the amount of innocent casualties and collateral damage. [/b]

Yet, despite all of this, [b]our media consistently sides with those who openly lie and directly challenge the honor of our brave heroes fighting for liberty and peace.[/b] What we have to remember is that peace is not defined as an absence of war. It is the presence of liberty, stability, and prosperity. In the face of the horrendous tyranny of the former Iraqi regime, the only way true peace was able to come to this region was through force. That is what the American Revolution was all about. Have we forgotten? Freedom is not free and "peace" without principle is not peace. The peace that so-called "peace advocates" support can only be brought to Iraq through the military. And we are doing it, if only the world will let us! If the American people believe we are failing, even if we are not, then we will ultimately fail.

That is why I am asking for your support. Become a voice of truth in your community. Wherever you are fight the lies of the enemy. Don't buy into the pessimism and apathy that says, "It's hopeless," "They hate us too much," "That part of the world is just too messed up," "It's our fault anyway," "We're to blame," and so forth. Whether you're in middle school, working at a 9-5 job, retired, or a stay-at-home mom you can make a huge difference! There is nothing more powerful than the truth. So, when you watch the news and see doomsday predictions and spiteful opinions on our efforts over here, you can refute them by knowing that we are doing a tremendous amount of good. Spread the word. No one is poised to make such an amazing contribution to the everyday lives of Iraqis and the rest of the Arab world than the American Armed Forces. By making this a place where liberty can finally grow, we are making the whole world safer. Your efforts at home are directly tied to our success. You are the soldiers at home fighting the war of perception. So I'm asking you as a fellow fighting man: Do your duty. Stop the attempts of the enemy wherever you are. You are a mighty force for good, because truth is on your side. Together we will win this fight and ensure a better world for the future.

God Bless and Semper Fidelis, 1st Lt. Robert L. Nofsinger USMC Ramadi, Iraq

9-11 is coming to Europe: Militants in Europe Openly Call for Jihad and the Rule of Islam

04.27.04 (6:35 am)   [edit]
There will probably be a 9-11 style attack somewhere in Europe because the EU still doesn't take terrorism seriously. And, when it happens, the EU won't blame itself and its lax, arrogant terror policies, it won't blame its unchecked radical Islam growth in its "superstate", something that has been going on for decades, it blames the US' "unilateral" war on Iraq.

The fact is that if the EU took terror seriously it would be more actively helping us in Iraq and the war on terror.

If the EU treated terror as warmaking instead of lawbreaking, they'd be in better shape. That may be hard to do with the way they let radical Islam already get out of hands, but it sure beats the alternative.


April 26, 2004
[b]Militants in Europe Openly Call for Jihad and the Rule of Islam[/b]
By PATRICK E. TYLER
and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

UTON, England, April 24 — The call to jihad is rising in the streets of Europe, and is being answered, counterterrorism officials say.

In this former industrial town north of London, a small group of young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II have turned against their families' new home. They say they would like to see Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging outside No. 10 Downing Street.

They swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling Western democracies to establish an Islamic superstate under Shariah law, like Afghanistan under the Taliban. They call the Sept. 11 hijackers the "Magnificent 19" and regard the Madrid train bombings as a clever way to drive a wedge into Europe.

On Thursday evening, at a tennis center community hall in Slough, west of London, their leader, Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammad, spoke of his adherence to Osama bin Laden. If Europe fails to heed Mr. bin Laden's offer of a truce — provided that all foreign troops are withdrawn from Iraq in three months — Muslims will no longer be restrained from attacking the Western countries that play host to them, the sheik said.

"All Muslims of the West will be obliged," he said, to "become his sword" in a new battle. Europeans take heed, he added, saying, "It is foolish to fight people who want death — that is what they are looking for."

On working-class streets of old industrial towns like Crawley, Luton, Birmingham and Manchester, and in the Arab enclaves of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe, intelligence officials say a fervor for militancy is intensifying and becoming more open.

In Hamburg, Dr. Mustafa Yoldas, the director of the Council of Islamic Communities, saw a correlation to the discord in Iraq. "This is a very dangerous situation at the moment," Dr. Yoldas said. "My impression is that Muslims have become more and more angry against the United States."

Hundreds of young Muslim men are answering the call of militant groups affiliated or aligned with Al Qaeda, intelligence and counterterrorism officials in the region say.

Even more worrying, said a senior counterterrorism official, is that the level of "chatter" — communications among people suspected of terrorism and their supporters — has markedly increased since Mr. bin Laden's warning to Europe this month. The spike in chatter has given rise to acute worries that planning for another strike in Europe is advanced.

"Iraq dramatically strengthened their recruitment efforts," one counterterrorism official said. He added that some mosques now display photos of American soldiers fighting in Iraq alongside bloody scenes of bombed out Iraqi neighborhoods. Detecting actual recruitments is almost impossible, he said, because it is typically done face to face.

And recruitment is paired with a compelling new strategy to bring the fight to Europe.

Members of Al Qaeda have "proven themselves to be extremely opportunistic, and they have decided to try to split the Western alliance," the official continued. "They are focusing their energies on attacking the big countries" — the United States, Britain and Spain — so as to "scare" the smaller states.

Some Muslim recruits are going to Iraq, counterterrorism officials in Europe say, but more are remaining home, possibly joining cells that could help with terror logistics or begin operations like the one that came to notice when the British police seized 1,200 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a key bomb ingredient, in late March, and arrested nine Pakistani-Britons, five of whom have been charged with trying to build a terrorist bomb.

Stoking that anger are some of the same fiery Islamic clerics who preached violence and martyrdom before the Sept. 11 attacks.

On Friday, Abu Hamza, the cleric accused of tutoring Richard Reid before he tried to blow up a Paris-to-Miami jetliner with explosives hidden in his shoe, urged a crowd of 200 outside his former Finsbury Park mosque to embrace death and the "culture of martyrdom."

Though the British home secretary, David Blunkett, has sought to strip Abu Hamza of his British citizenship and deport him, the legal battle has dragged on for years while Abu Hamza keeps calling down the wrath of God.

Also this week, over Mr. Blunkett's vigorous objection, a 35-year-old Algerian held under emergency laws passed after Sept. 11 was released from Belmarsh Prison. The man, identified only as "G," suffered from severe mental illness, his lawyers told a special immigration appeals panel, which let him out of prison and put him under house arrest.

Mr. Blunkett insisted that that should not be the final judgment on a man already found by one court "to be a threat to life and liberty."

In an interview on the BBC over the weekend, Mr. Blunkett advocated a stronger deportation policy, initially focused on 12 foreign terror suspects held without charge since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Despite tougher antiterrorism laws, the police, prosecutors and intelligence chiefs across Europe say they are struggling to contain the openly seditious speech of Islamic extremists, some of whom, they say, have been inciting young men to suicidal violence since the 1990's.

One chapter in Sheik Omar's lectures these days is "The Psyche of Muslims for Suicide Bombing."

The authorities say that laws to protect religious expression and civil liberties have the result of limiting what they can do to stop hateful speech. In the case of foreigners, they say they are often left to seek deportation, a lengthy and uncertain process subject to legal appeals, when the suspect can keep inciting attacks.

That leaves the authorities to resort to less effective means, such as mouse-trapping Islamic radicals with immigration violations in hopes of making a deportation case stick. "In many countries, the laws are liberal and it's not easy," an official said.

At a mosque in Geneva, an imam recently exhorted his followers to "impose the will of Islam on the godless society of the West."

"It was quite virulent," said a senior official with knowledge of the sermon. "The imam was encouraging his followers to take over the godless society."

While such a sermon may be incitement, recruitment takes a more shadowy course, and is hard to detect, a senior antiterrorism official said. "Believers are appealed to in the mosques, but the real conversations take place in restaurants or cafes or private apartments," the official said.

While some clerics, like Abu Qatada — said to be the spiritual counselor of Mohamed Atta, who led the Sept. 11 hijacking team — remain in prison in Britain without charge, others like Sheik Omar, leader of a movement called Al Muhajiroun, carry on a robust ideological campaign.

"There is no case against me," Sheik Omar said in an interview. Referring to calls by members of Parliament that he be deported, he added, "but they are Jewish" and "they have been calling for that for years."

Among his ardent followers is Ishtiaq Alamgir, 24, who heads Al Muhajiroun in Luton and calls himself Sayful Islam, the sword of Islam. He says there are about 50 members here but exact numbers are secret.

Most days, he and a handful of his followers run a recruitment stand on Dunstable Road much to the chagrin of the Muslim elders of Luton.

Mainstream Muslims are outraged by the situation, saying the actions of a few are causing their communities to be singled out for surveillance and making the larger population distrustful of them.

Muhammad Sulaiman, a stalwart of the mainstream Central Mosque here, was penniless when he arrived from the Kashmiri frontier of Pakistan in 1956. He raised money to build the Central Mosque here and now leads a campaign to ban Al Muhajiroun radicals from the city's 10 mosques.

"This is show-off business," he says in accented English. "I don't want these kids in my mosque."

Other community leaders look to the government to do something, if only to help prevent the demonization of British Muslims, or "Islamophobia," as some here call it.

"I think these kids are being brainwashed by a few radical clerics," said Akhbar Dad Khan, another elder of the Central Mosque. He wants them prosecuted or deported. "We should be able to control this negativity," he said.

In Slough, Sheik Omar spent much of his time Thursday night regaling his young followers with the erotic delights of paradise — sweet kisses and the pleasures of bathing with scores of women — while he also preached the virtues of death in Islamic struggle as a ticket to paradise.

He spoke of terrorism as the new norm of cultural conflict, "the fashion of the 21st century," practiced as much by Tony Blair as by Al Qaeda.

"We may be caught up in the target as the people of Manhattan were," he told them.

And he warned Western leaders, "You may kill bin Laden, but the phenomenon, you cannot kill it — you cannot destroy it."

"Our Muslim brothers from abroad will come one day and conquer here and then we will live under Islam in dignity," he said.

[i]Patrick E. Tyler reported from Luton, Slough and London and Don Van Natta Jr. from London. Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Germany.[/i]

Kerry's medal controversy: how is this man more honest than George Bush?

04.27.04 (6:28 am)   [edit]
Personally, I think little of the fact that Kerry has lied about his medals. He lies about everything, he has three positions for everything. The most important record is his galling anti-military, anti-intelligence, pro-tax Senate voting record. But, if Kerry is not willing to stand up for his anti-war principles and his anti-war history, then he is not willing to stand up for anything. He is more of a callous politician than Dubya ever was and, worse, he cannot help but lie, lie, lie.

Kerry thinks he's so much better than everyone else that he can talk his way out of anything and dupe us. It would be better if he just admitted the truth about things.

[b]JOHN KERRY'S QUIET COLLAPSE [/b]
NY POST EDITORIAL

April 27, 2004 -- THE conventional wisdom is that the presidential election will be close. It's a 50-50 country, so the CW goes, just as it was in the year 2000.
The problem is that the conventional wisdom hasn't taken a proper accounting of John Kerry. Here's the truth that Democrats don't want to admit and that Republicans are fearful of speaking openly because they don't want to jinx things:

Kerry is a terrible, terrible, terrible candidate.

It's not so much the policies he proposes, although they don't add up to all that much. The problem is Kerry himself. He no sooner opens his mouth than he sticks first one foot and then the other right in there.

Yesterday, Kerry went on "Good Morning America" to try and clear up a controversy about the Vietnam medals and ribbons he threw over a fence in 1971 as part of an anti-war protest to "give them back" to the U.S. Congress. Instead, he only made himself look worse.

Since 1984, Kerry has said he only threw ribbons over that fence (as if throwing ribbons away wasn't powerfully meaningful in itself). But ABC News dug up a TV interview Kerry gave to a Washington, D.C., station 33 years ago. In it, he said he "gave back the others" - by which he clearly meant he had thrown his own Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts over the fence.

In 1971, he wanted people to think he had thrown away his medals. In 1984 and ever since, he has wanted people to know he had kept his medals.

But Kerry's interviewer yesterday actually saw him on that day back in 1971: "Senator, I was there 33 years ago, and I saw you throw the medals over the fence," Charlie Gibson of "Good Morning America" said point-blank.

"No," Kerry said, "you didn't see me throw the, Charlie, Charlie, you are wrong. That's not what happened. I threw my ribbons across . . . After the ceremony was over, I had a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart given to me, one Purple Heart by a veteran in the V.A. in New York and the bronze star by an older veteran of World War II in Massachusetts. I threw them over because they asked me to."

ABC reporter Brian Ross uncovered the 33-year-old interview. But Kerry tried to blame the controversy on George W. Bush instead: "This is a controversy that the Republicans are pushing," he raged, "and this comes from a president and a Republican Party that can't even answer whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. I'm not going to stand for it."

Kerry mentioned Bush's National Guard service not once, but twice, during his five minutes with Charlie Gibson. So now we have the Democratic candidate for president himself making the accusation that the president of the United States was a deserter.

You don't have to be a Bush fan to think this is spectacularly stupid. The issue isn't Bush or his campaign. The issue is Kerry and a series of statements he made on the record in the media dating back more than 30 years. Trying to change the topic to Bush's service simply smacks of cornered desperation.

And that is Kerry's great weakness as a candidate - a weakness that will be hard for him to overcome, because it appears to be a character trait. The man who said "I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it" is a man filled with the conviction that he can talk himself out of a tough situation.

Sometimes, it's better just to be silent, take the hit and move on. But Kerry seems constitutionally incapable of doing that.

Kerry has been the presumptive Democratic nominee for two months now. Ask yourself: Aside from fund-raising success, has he had a good day? Has he come up with a winning soundbite? Has he made a policy proposal you've heard people talking about?

Bush has had about as bad a time as he could have had these past two months, and he's not only still standing, but doing better than he was a month ago. And why? Because when he takes center stage, as he did in the press conference last week, he usually helps himself.

Not so for Kerry. To put it mildly.

Yes, he has time, plenty of time, six months' worth of time. Kerry will surely get better, but that's only because he can't get much worse.

Here's the conventional wisdom: The margin on Election Day will be razor-thin because only 7 percent of the electorate hasn't made up its mind yet whom to support. So the entire campaign will be a fight over that 7 percent, and the whole business will come down to a few battleground states - Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico - where polling now suggests the race is neck-and-neck.

Every piece of information you've just read is true. But there's a strong possibility the conventional wisdom is wildly wrong.

Events over the past week suggest that Bush may win a substantial victory in November, and for this reason alone: Kerry's performance may seriously depress Democratic turnout. Or drive Democrats to vote for Ralph Nader, just as George Bush the Elder's performance in 1992 drove millions of Republicans to vote for Ross Perot.

Guys, you should have gone with John Edwards.
E-mail: podhoretz@nypost.com

Schedule for the National Democratic Convention

04.26.04 (4:48 am)   [edit]
From Don Luskin's blog-- http://www.poorandstupid.com/...

[b]THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION IN A SINGLE ACTION-PACKED EVENING [/b]

6:00pm - Opening flag burning ceremony.
6:15pm - Opening secular prayers by Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton
6:30pm - Anti-war concert by Barbra Streisand.
6:40pm - Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
7:00pm - Tribute theme to France.
7:10pm - Collect offerings for al-Zawahri defense fund.
7:25pm - Tribute theme to Germany.
7:45pm - Anti-war rally (Moderated by Michael Moore)
8:25pm - Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
8:30pm - Terrorist appeasement workshop.
9:00pm - Gay marriage ceremony (both both male and female couples)
9:30pm - * Intermission *
10:00pm - Posting the Iraqui Colors by Sean Penn and Tim Robbins
10:10pm - Re-enactment of Kerry's fake medal toss.
10:20pm - Cameo by Dean 'Yeeearrrrrrrg!'
10:30pm - Abortion demonstration by N.A.R.A.L.
10:40pm - Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
10:50pm - Pledge of allegiance to the UN.
11:00pm - Multiple gay marriage ceremony (threesomes, mixed and same sex).
11:15pm - Maximizing Welfare workshop.
11:30pm - 'Free Saddam' pep rally.
11:59pm - Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
12:00am - Nomination of democratic candidate.

Thanks to Jameson Campaigne.
Posted by Donald Luskin at 1:09 AM

China rules out Hong Kong direct election-- so much for "One Country, Two Systems" approach

04.26.04 (4:41 am)   [edit]
China's influence will, of course, gradually get worse. The irony is that Beiing is doing this while it recycles the same "One Country, Two Systems" approach to Taiwan.

To the Chi-Coms it has always been one country, one system, and no freedom.

[b]China Rules Out Hong Kong Direct Election [/b]
By MIN LEE, Associated Press Writer

HONG KONG - Mainland China dealt a crushing blow to Hong Kong's hopes for full democracy Monday, when its most powerful legislative panel ruled the territory won't have direct elections for its next leader in 2007 or for all its lawmakers in 2008.

Many people in Hong Kong have been demanding the right to democratically elect a successor to their chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, a former shipping tycoon chosen for his position by an 800-member committee that tends to side with Beijing.

But the Chinese National People's Congress Standing Committee said "universal suffrage shall not apply" to the selection of Tung successor in 2007 or members of the Legislative Council the following year.

Under the ruling, the territory will be allowed to make changes to its electoral methods — but only "in the principle of gradual and orderly progress," China's official news agency Xinhua quoted the committee as saying.

In a hint of the reforms that might be possible, Hong Kong's No. 2 official, Donald Tsang, said the committee that selects Tung's successor could be expanded to make it more representative.

But Tsang sought to play down any hopes that the public will have a greater say.

"We must understand the political reality," he said.

When Hong Kong reverted from British administration to Chinese rule in 1997, Beijing's leadership promised a "one country, two systems" governance that would ensure the territory's autonomy for coming decades. International observers said that would protect Hong Kong's status as an economic jewel.

Hong Kong's mini-constitution, the Basic Law, holds out the possibility that ordinary residents can elect their next leader in 2007 and all lawmakers by 2008. But earlier this month, the Standing Committee ruled that Beijing would have to give advance approval for any political changes.

Tung then proposed a set of nine guidelines that any reforms should meet, including keeping China's views in mind.

China insisted it had paid heed to the public's wishes. Beijing noted that Hong Kong's system of partial democracy gives ordinary people more say than they had under 156 years of British colonial rule.

"Before 1997, the Hong Kong compatriots, including your fathers and mothers, had no democracy," Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told reporters in Shanghai. "Now, everything follows the rule of law and this is real democracy."

Although ordinary Hong Kongers have no say in picking their leader, they will directly elect 30 of 60 Legislative Council members in September, up from 24 last time.

Opposition lawmaker Fred Li accused Beijing of "dictating Hong Kong policy" without regard to public opinion. Li said the decision violated Beijing's promise to give Hong Kong a great deal of autonomy after the handover.

Political scientists and pro-democracy politicians predicted more protests in Hong Kong. A large one is planned for July 1, the anniversary of a march by 500,000 people that forced Tung to backtrack on an anti-subversion bill that was widely seen here as a threat to freedom.

"We will not give up the fight for democracy," Yeung Sum, the leader of Hong Kong's opposition Democratic Party, said at a news conference.

Tung told reporters he understood that Beijing's decision will upset many of Hong Kong's 6.8 million people, but he urged them to "be calm and rational and strive for consensus on the constitutional development of Hong Kong."

Full democracy remains Hong Kong's constitutional goal, Tung insisted, but he would not offer any timetable.

While Hong Kong residents will elect 30 lawmakers in September, the other 30 will be chosen by elite voters from special interest groups — such as business leaders, doctors and bankers — which tend to side with Beijing.

Critics say that keeps the system unfairly rigged, and Tsang said there are no plans to expand the proportion of legislative seats that are directly elected.

Just hours before China issued its decision, three hardline political activists tried Monday to enter the mainland and protest but were turned back at the border following a minor scuffle.

Why America trusts "stupid" Bush over the liberal elites

04.26.04 (3:01 am)   [edit]
[b]Why America Trusts "Stupid" Bush Over the Liberal Elites[/b]
By Don Feder
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 26, 2004

One of the more charming conceits of the Left is that conservatives (Republicans, the middle class) – actually, anyone who doesn’t embrace its worldview – are, well, stupid.

This attitude is most conspicuous during election years. ("Vote for him, you’ve got to be kidding! He’s too dumb to be president.") With the subtlety of a Michael Moore documentary, said snobbery was illustrated by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on "Larry King Live" last week.

In discussing how Bush got us into Iraq, over the sage advice of the wise men of the State Department, the former first lady attributed the blunder to a lack of imagination.

"I think it’s important to have a president who asks a lot of questions, who is [i]intellectually curious[/i], who seeks out contrary points of view, who doesn’t just surround himself with people who see the world the same way he does…You don’t get that sense from this White House," said Hillary – who, as first lady, was infamous for lashing out at subordinates who dared to offer a perspective different from her own.

President Clinton got his advice from the likes of Janet Reno, Madeleine Albright, Robert Reich, Donna Shalala, Joycelyn Elders and Hillary herself – a group as intellectually diverse as the political science faculty of U Cal Berkeley – or the North Korean politburo.

Anyway, what Hillary’s saying (in her inimitably sweet way) is that Bush – BA, Yale, MBA Harvard Business School – is a dunce. We need a president who’s "intellectually curious." Bush just doesn’t measure up. Bush doesn’t have the smarts to ask discerning questions. He’s so insecure that he has to surround himself with yes men. (Like Colin Powell?) He can’t think outside the box. He isn’t into innovative solutions – ergo: the presidential equivalent of a special-needs child.

The Left – epitomized by New York’s junior senator – has questioned the mental acumen of every Republican president in memory.

Adlai Stevenson Democrats were sure Dwight Eisenhower was a man better suited to the golf course than the Oval Office. They never could quite figure out how Ike organized the greatest amphibious landing in history and ran the war in Europe.

Remember the jokes about Gerald Ford not being able to walk and chew gum. In the opinion of then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill, Ronald Reagan was an amiable dolt who needed 3 x 5 cards to answer the simplest questions.

There are exceptions to the Left’s Republican-equals-low IQ equation. (Richard Nixon wasn’t retarded. He was rotten, liberals told us interminably.) But, for Hillary and friends, a Republican president has to be one or the other. Thus Nixon was evil. Ford was stupid, as was Reagan. Bush Sr. – portrayed as slow-witted Pappy – was a dolt. W? Like father, like son.

It’s amazing how the goofy old Gipper managed to bring down the Evil Empire and give us America’s greatest postwar expansion – following four years of Carter-esque malaise – with such limited cranial capacity.

On the other hand, Democratic presidents widely admired for their intelligence have been absolute disasters, illustrating the expression: Too clever by half.

Thomas Jefferson (the quintessential renaissance president) decimated our Navy, leaving us vulnerable to the British in 1812. A raving Francophile even while the guillotine was in full swing, his much-vaunted IQ didn’t keep him from living way beyond his means. (He died deeply in debt.) Nor did it allow him to perceive the hypocrisy of lamenting the institution of slavery while living off the toil of slaves.

Or, take Jimmy Carter – Annapolis graduate, engineer, and the most pathetic president in a generation. Four more years of Carter and we would all have been singing the Internationale and buying coffee-table editions of Das Kapital.

Then there’s Hillary’s hubby – the ultimate oxymoron, a Rhodes scholar who managed to precipitate the greatest constitutional crisis in the 20th century, through a piece of abysmal stupidity with a woman half his age and his perjury and flagrant abuse of power in a vain attempt to cover it up.

If the above is the product of deep thoughts and high IQs, aren’t you glad Republican president are such simpletons?

But what Hillary and other elitists actually are saying is that anyone who disagrees with them – who adheres to limited government, the free market, traditional morality and a strong foreign policy – just doesn’t get it.

The counterpart is that people with conservative values are wicked. So, either we’re too dumb to understand how depraved our positions are, or we’re motivated by malice.

The Left, on the other hand, is genius personified. Clearly, considerable brain-power went into formulating the tenets of modern liberalism:

*Tax increases will fuel an economic boom.

*Reverse discrimination furthers racial harmony.
(Cutting defense and a foreign policy that convinces the bin Ladens of the world that we’re a bunch of wimps is the way to keep America safe.

*Handouts inculcate a work ethic.

*Gun control – which disarms potential victims – is the best way to fight crime.

*Attacking parental authority and facilitating family dissolution helps children.

*Condom distribution promotes responsibility among adolescents.

*Not drilling in the Artic Wildlife Refuge and the virtual abandonment of nuclear power contributes to energy self-sufficiency.

Brilliant! It reminds me of the comment of a friend’s grandfather. This cultured gentleman, a European immigrant, was watching a television interview with a college professor who was spouting the usual nonsense, when he turned to me in disgust and remarked: "Really, one has to be an intellectual to believe something so stupid."

Liberal arrogance and elitism aren’t confined to their attitude toward Republicans. The Left sincerely believes that ordinary Americans are imbeciles – unfortunates who are sorely in need of a keeper (big government) to bring us in out of the rain and keep us from drooling all over ourselves.

*Because we’re too dumb to know how to spend our income, they want to do it for us, through higher taxes.

*Because we’re too feckless to raise our children without their intervention, they believe the responsibility should be transferred to government schools and social-service agencies, whenever possible.

*Because we can’t be trusted to make basic decisions about how we are to be governed (through the democratic process), they’re shifting more and more of those decisions from elected bodies to the courts.
Modern liberals are autocrats are at heart. Like Plato, they seek the rule of benevolent philosopher kings (themselves). Their arrogance will be their undoing.

Republicans should pray that Democrats keep talking about Bush’s intellectual inferiority. More than any other factor, it was Al Gore’s disdain for Bush that lost him the 2000 election.

During the first presidential debate, there was Gore – the smug little overachiever – actually sneering at Bush as the Republican candidate set forth his positions. Gore rolled his eyes, smirked, grimaced, sighed audibly – and stopped just short of holding up a sign that read: "I’m not with stupid."

The American people compared the two, and decided that they’d rather be led by a decent man who had faith in them (albeit one who wasn’t terribly articulate) than a pompous, egotistic, know-it-all, who – in his heart of hearts – would like to limit the franchise to members of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Sierra Club.

Thus Hillary, Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson and others of the Democratic brain trust could just turn out to be the GOP’s secret weapon.

[i]Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant.[/i]

How North Vietnam won the war...and how activists like John Kerry helped

04.26.04 (2:51 am)   [edit]
There are some very good lessons here regarding the current situation in Iraq.

[b]How North Vietnam Won The War[/b]
By Grunt.com
Grunt.com | April 26, 2004

[i]What did the North Vietnamese leadership think of the American antiwar movement? What was the purpose of the Tet Offensive? How could the U.S. have been more successful in fighting the Vietnam War? Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist [in The Wall Street Journal, 3 August 1995]. Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. He later became editor of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of Vietnam. He now lives in Paris, where he immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the fruits of Vietnamese communism. [/i]

[b]Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?[/b]

Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said,

"We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out."

[b]Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?[/b]

A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.

[b]Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?[/b]

A: Keenly.

[b]Q: Why?[/b]

A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.

[b]Q: How could the Americans have won the war?[/b]

A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.

[b]Q: Anything else?[/b]

A: Train South Vietnam's generals. The junior South Vietnamese officers were good, competent and courageous, but the commanding general officers were inept.

[b]Q: Did Hanoi expect that the National Liberation Front would win power in South Vietnam?[/b]

A: No. Gen. [Vo Nguyen] Giap [commander of the North Vietnamese army] believed that guerrilla warfare was important but not sufficient for victory. Regular military divisions with artillery and armor would be needed. The Chinese believed in fighting only with guerrillas, but we had a different approach. The Chinese were reluctant to help us. Soviet aid made the war possible. Le Duan [secretary general of the Vietnamese Communist Party] once told Mao Tse-tung that if you help us, we are sure to win; if you don't, we will still win, but we will have to sacrifice one or two million more soldiers to do so.

[b]Q: Was the National Liberation Front an independent political movement of South Vietnamese?[/b]

A: No. It was set up by our Communist Party to implement a decision of the Third Party Congress of September 1960. We always said there was only one party, only one army in the war to liberate the South and unify the nation. At all times there was only one party commissar in command of the South.

[b]Q: Why was the Ho Chi Minh trail so important?[/b]

A: It was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and maintaining the trail was a huge effort, involving tens of thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical stations, communication units.

[b]Q: What of American bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail?[/b]

A: Not very effective. Our operations were never compromised by attacks on the trail. At times, accurate B-52 strikes would cause real damage, but we put so much in at the top of the trail that enough men and weapons to prolong the war always came out the bottom. Bombing by smaller planes rarely hit significant targets.

[b]Q: What of American bombing of North Vietnam?[/b]

A: If all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in slow stages under Johnson and it didn't worry us. We had plenty of times to prepare alternative routes and facilities. We always had stockpiles of rice ready to feed the people for months if a harvest were damaged. The Soviets bought rice from Thailand for us.

[b]Q: What was the purpose of the 1968 Tet Offensive?[/b]

A: To relieve the pressure Gen. Westmoreland was putting on us in late 1966 and 1967 and to weaken American resolve during a presidential election year.

[b]Q: What about Gen. Westmoreland's strategy and tactics caused you concern?[/b]

A: Our senior commander in the South, Gen. Nguyen Chi Thanh, knew that we were losing base areas, control of the rural population and that his main forces were being pushed out to the borders of South Vietnam. He also worried that Westmoreland might receive permission to enter Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

In January 1967, after discussions with Le Duan, Thanh proposed the Tet Offensive. Thanh was the senior member of the Politburo in South Vietnam. He supervised the entire war effort. Thanh's struggle philosophy was that "America is wealthy but not resolute," and "squeeze tight to the American chest and attack." He was invited up to Hanoi for further discussions. He went on commercial flights with a false passport from Cambodia to Hong Kong and then to Hanoi. Only in July was his plan adopted by the leadership. Then Johnson had rejected Westmoreland's request for 200,000 more troops. We realized that America had made its maximum military commitment to the war. Vietnam was not sufficiently important for the United States to call up its reserves. We had stretched American power to a breaking point. When more frustration set in, all the Americans could do would be to withdraw; they had no more troops to send over.

Tet was designed to influence American public opinion. We would attack poorly defended parts of South Vietnam cities during a holiday and a truce when few South Vietnamese troops would be on duty. Before the main attack, we would entice American units to advance close to the borders, away from the cities. By attacking all South Vietnam's major cities, we would spread out our forces and neutralize the impact of American firepower. Attacking on a broad front, we would lose some battles but win others. We used local forces nearby each target to frustrate discovery of our plans. Small teams, like the one which attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, would be sufficient. It was a guerrilla strategy of hit-and-run raids. [lloks like a re-writing of history with the benefit of hindsight]

[b]Q: What about the results?[/b]

A: Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise;. Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election. The second and third waves in May and September were, in retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971 to re-establish our presence, but we had to use North Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could have punished us severely. We suffered badly in 1969 and 1970 as it was.

[b]Q: What of Nixon?[/b]

A: Well, when Nixon stepped down because of Watergate we knew we would win. Pham Van Dong [prime minister of North Vietnam] said of Gerald Ford, the new president, "he's the weakest president in U.S. history; the people didn't elect him; even if you gave him candy, he doesn't dare to intervene in Vietnam again." We tested Ford's resolve by attacking Phuoc Long in January 1975. When Ford kept American B-52's in their hangers, our leadership decided on a big offensive against South Vietnam.

[b]Q: What else?[/b]

A: We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect.

Want a glimpse into the future of a UN-run Iraq? Go to Kosovo.

04.26.04 (2:38 am)   [edit]
[b]The UN's Kosovo Incompetence[/b]
By Stephen Schwartz
The Weekly Standard | April 26, 2004

ON APRIL 17, two American women were killed by a Jordanian in Kosovo. With all media eyes focused on Iraq, little notice has been taken of their sacrifice, yet Kim Bigley, 47, of Paducah, KY, and Lynn Williams, 48, of Elmont, NY, apparently fell as casualties in the war on terrorism.

Like the American contract employees murdered this month in Falluja, and the American journalist executed in Pakistan in 2002, and the American missionary killed in the Philippines in 2003, these women had voluntarily traveled to a dangerous Muslim-majority region to do constructive work. They were members of a UN police contingent assigned to Mitrovica, a scrubby, dusty, ugly town that last made world news in March, when the drowning of three Albanian boys there triggered ethnic violence across Kosovo that killed 28.

As best one can piece together the facts from local and international news sources, the women were leaving a prison where they had been undergoing police training along with UN colleagues--in a group of 21 Americans, 2 Turks, and an Austrian -- when they came under fire from Jordanian UN police on duty at the prison gate. Fire was returned, and Sergeant Major Ahmed Mustafa Ibrahim Ali -- who had been the first to fire, according to the Associated Press -- was killed. Four more Jordanian UN policemen have been arrested, and their immunity in the province has been lifted. In addition to the dead, four Americans were wounded in what is described as a 10-minute "shootout" or "gun battle."

An unnamed American police officer told Agence France-Presse that the Middle Easterners had shouted at the Americans that the United States had invaded Iraq and every other country. The same account claimed the Americans shouted back, and the Jordanians started shooting. Reuters, citing "police sources at the scene," also reported that the fight was about Iraq. Both Reuters and AP quoted American police officers as describing a deliberate attack on Americans.

Mustafa Ibrahim Ali, father of the dead man, was quoted as saying his son "was not living on Mars, and he was affected by what is happening in the Palestinian territories and Iraq." According to the New York Times, Ahmed Mustafa Ibrahim Ali was an ethnic Palestinian.

Rather than Mars, Ali was living in Kosovo, where he and other foreign police are supposedly helping protect the majority-Albanian population. Conventional wisdom is that foreign Muslims make a special contribution to an international force policing a majority-Muslim people. This latest episode isn't the only indication that that assumption is wrong. Late in 2002, an Egyptian member of the UN police in Kosovo shot and killed his Albanian female interpreter, which inflamed residents against the Arab police.

The murder of the Americans by the Jordanian led to harsh commentary in the local media. Veton Surroi, publisher of the Kosovar daily Koha Ditore, described Kosovo as a study in contrasts. Although it is European, and "almost the most pro-American (place) in Europe," it has "a vast Islamic religious and cultural underpinning." Now, Surroi wrote, Kosovar Albanians must deal with an imported conflict they never wanted: between the Americans who sacrificed to liberate Iraq from Saddam but were met by terrorism from an ungrateful population, and Jordanians who see Americans as modern colonialists driven by oil.

UN secretary general Kofi Annan expressed his regrets at the deadly clash, and promised that charges would be brought against the four Jordanians under arrest if sufficient evidence against them emerges from an investigation. But another prominent Albanian newspaperman, Blerim Shala of the daily Zeri, said the incident dramatized the need for reform of the UN police in Kosovo.

The poor quality of UN policing in Kosovo illustrates in turn the broader perils of UN administration in contested territories--including Iraq, where many opponents of American "unilateralism" would like to see the UN take over peacekeeping, using large police and army contingents from Muslim countries.

Of some 53 countries sending officers to police Kosovo, the United States has contributed the largest number -- 571 in 2001, the last year for which figures are available. Pakistan, riven by Islamist extremism, sent 235 that year, Turkey 114, Bangladesh 101, Egypt 64, and Malaysia 49. According to the Jordanian embassy, the Jordanian contingent is currently 360.

Bujar Bukoshi, a Kosovar Albanian politician, has called for all the Jordanians to leave the province. At present, it might be a good idea to retire all foreign Muslim police and troops from Kosovo, with the possible exception of the Turks and Malaysians, whose professionalism stands out. Meanwhile, it's clearly an even better idea for the world to pay closer attention to UN policies in Kosovo as examples not to follow in Iraq.

[i]Stephen Schwartz, an author and journalist, is author of The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror. A vociferous critic of Wahhabism, Schwartz is a frequent contributor to National Review, The Weekly Standard, and other publications.[/i]

The US can no longer ignore Iran's provocative involvement in Iraq

04.26.04 (2:32 am)   [edit]
[b]Mullah Mischief[/b]
By Constantine C. Menges
The Washington Times | April 26, 2004

On April 4, 2004, Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr, a pro-Iranian Iraqi cleric, called on his followers to "terrorize your enemy," meaning the Americans and all those Iraqis cooperating to bring about a constitutional government.

This led tens of thousands of the cleric's armed and unarmed followers to attack U.S. and Coalition forces in four Iraqi cities. This was a preview of the violence and turmoil Iranian covert action could inflict in the coming months.

This threat is the current September 11, because the administration has not yet "connected the dots" revealing Iran's secret but discernible activities.

Following removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the Iranian clerical dictatorship began a covert effort to set up an allied Shi'ite Islamist extremist regime in 60 percent Shi'ite Iraq. Iran has prepared this for many years and recruited political, military and covert agent assets among the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites who fled Iraq to live in Iran.

The Iranian dictatorship is acting to bring about a "second Iran" in Iraq in five ways:

(1) Those Iraqi Shi'ite clerics who agree with the heretical Khomeini view that the clergy should rule society in all aspects are used by Iran to build a power base from their mosques and associated social services. Iran views as the future religious leader of Iraq Ayatollah Al Haeri, an Iraqi cleric who has lived in Iran for the last 30 years and who, when Baghdad was liberated last year, issued an edict telling Iraqi clergy not to cooperate with the United States.

(2) Iran established the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq as a political movement that could win elections or take power town by town with the help of covert Iranian funds and propaganda. This organization also has an Iranian-trained and -armed paramilitary group of about 30,000. Both the political and the armed wings began moving from Iran into Iraq in March 2003. Iran also funds the Dawa Party. Leaders of both these Iran-linked parties are on the Iraqi Governing Council.

(3) Iran is working covertly with Iraqi extremist Sheik al-Sadr to use political and coercive means, including murder, to intimidate and take over Iraq's Shi'ite leadership. The murders of several prominent Shi'ite clerical leaders who favored democracy and cooperation with the coalition repeats Iran's covert actions since December 2001 in post-Taliban Afghanistan. There, a number of moderate Muslim clerics and political leaders were killed. It was Sheik al Sadr who issued the call to violence in Iraq on April 4, 2004. The next day, the coalition announced an Iraqi judge had issued an arrest warrant for Sheik al Sadr for the April 2003 murder of the respected moderate cleric, Ayatollah Al Kohei.

(4) Hezbollah, the Iranian-supported and often -directed terrorist organization has moved hundreds of cadres into Iraq as reported since last November. They along with Hamas, another Iranian-supported terrorist organization, have opened offices in Iraq and are recruiting Iraqis to be the foot soldiers and suicide killers in the massive terrorist attacks planned against U.S. and coalition forces. Iran is most likely to order these to begin fully after the planned July 1, 2004, turnover of civil authority to the Iraqis. It also is quite likely Iran will use its links with Hezbollah and al Qaeda to facilitate major terrorist attacks inside the United States this summer and fall to try to force the U.S. out of Iraq and increase the odds of an electoral defeat of President Bush.

(5) Iran has spent heavily seeking to dominate radio and television broadcasting in Iraq. A survey by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty found Iran is the source of 33 of 59 AM broadcasts and of 41 of 63 AM/FM/TV broadcasts heard in Iraq. In comparison, the U.S.-supported Iraq Media Network has one television station, two radio stations and one newspaper.

The Bush administration must immediately counter Iran's covert assets and planned actions or risk major setbacks to its goals in Iraq. Indeed, if Iran brings about an anti-U.S., pro-Iranian Shi'ite extremist regime in Iraq, the risks to the United States and its allies from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) would dramatically increase. And it would defeat the Bush "forward strategy for freedom" in the entire Middle East.

A first step is recognizing, analyzing and understanding the intent of Iran and its Iraqi allies and what they have done to date. Next, there is an urgent need to work with moderate Shi'ite leaders to build pro-democratic political parties and a broad pro-democratic political coalition that can withstand and overcome the pressures, coercion and terrorism of the pro-Iranian Shi'ite groups. This means revising the currently self-defeating and much-too-limited efforts to aid genuinely democratic Shi'ite and other political parties and groups.

The pro-democracy Iraqi media also needs to be enlarged, and, as a corollary, the pro-extremist, Iranian-funded media needs to be restricted. This is an inescapable element of the early stages of a post-dictatorship transition where anti-democratic groups and media have sources of support far greater than those now available to moderates.

It also is necessary to quickly arrest all extremist leaders advocating violence and disarm their thousands of armed followers. It is may be necessary to detain many of these armed extremists for some time, to assure they are cannot join anti-U.S. terrorist operations.

Such detention should be humane. Efforts should be made to educate these misguided people about the values of political democracy and tolerance and to counter lies they have been told by extremist leaders for the last year.

The best defense against Iranian destabilization of Iraq is helping Iran's people to politically liberate themselves from their dictatorship. While the Iranian regime has a 25-year record of effective and brutal terrorism and secret action abroad, it is weak, fragile and vulnerable at home.

Polls and a series of partially open elections since 1997 reveal more than 75 percent of Iranians completely reject the extremist Shi'ite clerical regime that is perceived as very corrupt and a total economic failure. The people know the dictatorship has spent much of Iran's oil wealth supporting terrorism, Islamic extremism and on WMDs and ballistic missiles.

Ironically, while the United States may face difficulty fending off covert Iranian political action in Iraq, it has the symbolic credibility of its democratic institutions and the knowledge and experience to encourage the Iranian people to free themselves.

President Bush has spoken eloquently and often about the Iranian people's right to freedom. Now he needs to instruct his State Department to cease all its open and secret "dialogue and engagement" activities with the clerical regime. These legitimatize the dictatorship and discourage those in Iran who might otherwise act to bring about a democratic future.

Taking these actions now in Iraq and encouraging the Iranian people to liberate themselves this summer could result in two democracies. Otherwise, there is grave risk the removal of Iraq's Saddam Hussein will ultimately result in two Irans — two Shi'ite extremist regimes in the region.

Constantine C. Menges, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute, is a former presidential special assistant for national security affairs and a former Central Intelligence Agency officer. He has analyzed events in Iraq and Iran since 1980. His forthcoming book is "China, The Gathering Threat — The Strategic Challenge of China and Russia."

Constantine C. Menges, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, formerly served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs.

Great pic-- what our GIs think of France, Germany, and Russia

04.26.04 (2:26 am)   [edit]
I saw this on Freerepublic a while back, but it's a good pic, fake or not.

Link-- http://www.frontpagemag.com/A...

The Iraqi insurgents understand guns, not diplomacy

04.26.04 (2:17 am)   [edit]
I opined on this a while back. It is something we have to wrap our heads around. They speak a different language in that part of the world. We have to learn it.

[b]The Fallujah Stakes
The insurgents understand guns, not diplomacy. [/b]
Monday, April 26, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
OpinionJournal.com editorial

The latest news from the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah is that Marines will now conduct joint patrols with Iraqis, as a way to regain control of the city without a full-scale assault. Perhaps this will even work, but it's also likely our enemies will consider it a sign of weakness and ramp up their attacks there and elsewhere.

The judgment in Baghdad seems to be that the most important outcome at this moment is that the coalition be seen to regain control of that city of 200,000 in the Sunni Triangle. There's no doubt Marines could retake the city by force, but the fear is that al-Jazeera and other anti-American media would portray the campaign in the worst possible light and perhaps prompt uprisings elsewhere in Iraq. So U.S. commanders and regent L. Paul Bremer have cut this deal with Fallujah intermediaries for the joint patrols, and U.S. forces can target the insurgents at a better time and place. At least that's the argument.

We hope this doesn't represent a decision by coalition political leaders to shrink from the military campaign that is inevitable. Sooner or later the Baath remnants, jihadists and criminals who have used Fallujah as a sanctuary have to be killed. They can't be bargained with, they can't be reasoned with, because for them a peaceful transition to Iraqi control after June 30 means defeat. If the estimated 2,000 or so insurgents decide to allow Marine patrols, it will be because they have concluded it is safer to melt away to kill Americans another day rather than fight to the death in Fallujah now.

The killers facing Marines in Fallujah are those who melted away a year ago as coalition forces closed on Baghdad. Rather than fight and die then, they retreated to the Sunni heartland to regroup, rearm and organize the murder of both coalition soldiers and the Iraqis who are cooperating with us. The U.S. didn't pursue those Saddamists at the time, and it decided in later months to let Fallujah more or less alone. We now know this was a mistake, and the Marine presence is a recognition that the city can no longer be tolerated as a terror sanctuary.

If nothing else, the Fallujah sanctuary repudiates the argument we've often heard that the U.S. would have been better to "wait" to begin the war last year. If we had, Senator Carl Levin and others argue, we might have had the French on our side (sure) and the extra forces would have made the fight easier. But delay would also have given the Baathists time to organize this guerrilla-style warfare nationwide. Instead of fighting them in Fallujah and Ramadi, as Marines now will, without the elements of speed and surprise, a year ago U.S. soldiers might have had to do the same in far more cities.

By the way, it hardly helps to have United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi publicly warning the U.S. not to defeat insurgents who are killing Americans. He repeated again yesterday that "In this situation, there is no military solution," and portrayed any U.S. attack in Fallujah as unjustified. This rhetoric, amplified by al-Jazeera, will only make it more likely that any offensive in Fallujah would be misinterpreted by other Iraqis.

Mr. Brahimi is the man Mr. Bremer and National Security Council staffer Robert Blackwill have sold to President Bush as the key to a sound political transition in Iraq. But three times in the past two weeks he has made public remarks damaging to coalition progress and U.S. interests in the region.

He told French radio last Wednesday that, "There is no doubt that the great poison in the region is this Israeli policy of domination and the suffering imposed on the Palestinians, as well as the perception by the body of the population in the region, and beyond, of the injustice of this policy and the equally unjust support of the United States for this policy." U.S. "poison?" Is Condoleezza Rice paying attention?

The danger with delay in Fallujah and Mr. Brahimi's comments is that they will be interpreted by Iraqis as a sign that the U.S. is losing its resolve and simply wants out. Perhaps caution in Fallujah makes sense at this moment, but sooner or later the insurgents have to be defeated, and at the point of a gun, not by diplomacy. If we're not prepared to do that, Mr. Bush might as well order the troops home now.

The UN crossed the line on their corrupt oil-for-food regime, and Iraqis paid for it

04.25.04 (4:19 pm)   [edit]
[b]The last thing Iraq needs is the cheats of the UN[/b]
By Mark Steyn
04-25-04

'War without the UN is unthinkable," huffed The Guardian's Polly Toynbee a year ago, just before it happened. For a certain type of person, any action on the international scene without the UN is unthinkable. And, conversely, anything that happens under the UN imprimatur is mostly for the unthinking.

No matter how corrupt and depraved it is in practice, the organisation's sunny utopian image endures. Say the initials "UN" to your average member of Ms Toynbee's legions of the unthinking and they conjure up not UN participation in the sex-slave trade in Bosnia, nor the UN refugee extortion racket in Kenya, nor the UN cover-up of the sex-for-food scandal in West Africa, nor UN complicity in massacres, but some misty Unesco cultural event compered by the late Sir Peter Ustinov featuring photogenic children.

So the question now is whether the UN Oil-for-Food programme is just another of those things that slip down the memory hole, and we all go back to parroting the lullaby that "only the UN can bring legitimacy to Iraq/Afghanistan/Your Basket Case Here". Legitimacy seems to be the one thing the UN doesn't bring, and I'm not just talking about the love-children of UN-enriched Balkan hookers in Kosovo.

The scale of the UN Oil-for-Fraud programme is way beyond any of the corporate scandals that so excite the progressive mind. Oil-for-Food was designed to let the Iraqi government sell a limited amount of oil in return for food and other necessities for its people. Between 1996 and 2003, Saddam did more than $100 billion of business, all of it approved by Kofi Annan's Secretariat.

In return, by their own official figures, $15 billion of food and health supplies was sent to Iraq. What proportion of this reached the sick and malnourished Iraqi children is anybody's guess. Coalition troops discovered stockpiles of UN food far from starving moppets. But let us assume there is an innocent explanation. Even so, by the UN's own account, Oil-for-Food seemed to involve an awful lot of oil for not much food.

Where did all the other billions go? According to Kofi Annan himself, some $31 billion went on other "humanitarian" spending for Iraq. Such as? Well, in 2002, the Secretary-General expanded the programme to cover other "humanitarian" categories such as "sport", "information", "justice" and "labour and social affairs".

In Iraq, "sport" meant Uday's rape rooms, and "justice" meant a mass grave out in the desert, but that is not to say there weren't attendant expenses involved. So Kofi himself directly approved such "humanitarian" items as $20 million for an "Olympic sport city" (state-of-the-art rape rooms) and $50 million for Iraq's Ministry of Information.

As the US Defence Contract Management Agency's report put it after the liberation, "Some items of questionable utility for the Iraqi people (eg, Mercedes-Benz touring sedans) were identified". The Jordanian supplier of school furniture had to be let go on the grounds that he didn't exist.

At the UN they were taken aback by this impertinent auditing by US government agencies. At Enron, you have to run the books past Arthur Andersen. But at UNron you don't need to hire even a ledger clerk. That total of $46 billion - 15 for food, 31 for Ba'ath Party interior decorating - is Kofi's best guess, and he expects us to take his word for it.

True, he approved some scrutiny. All Oil-for-Food shipments into Iraq had to be inspected - initially by Lloyd's Register of London, but in 1998 they were let go and replaced by a Swiss company, who had on the payroll a consultant by the name of Kojo Annan, son of Kofi. Hmm.

So far all this is just UN business as usual - venal and wasteful, albeit on a larger scale than ever before. But even by their own revolting standards the UN crossed a line.

A programme created to allow the world to constrain Saddam appears to have become instead the means by which Saddam constrained the world. Oil-for-Food gave him a free hand to reward well-connected French and Russian suppliers. He ran the programme by selling cut-price vouchers for Iraqi oil to politicians and bureaucrats, which they could then offload on the world markets at the going rate.

Among the alleged beneficiaries were senior French politicians and Russia's "office of the President". According to documentation found in the Oil Ministry in Baghdad, recipients of Saddam's generosity included the man Annan picked to run Oil-for-Food, the UN under-secretary-general Benon Sevan, who got enough oil to make himself a nice illegal profit of $3.5 million.

In other words, Oil-for-Fraud is everything the Left said the war was: it was all about oil - for Benon Sevan, the UN, France, Russia and the others who had every incentive to maintain Saddam in power. Every Halliburton invoice to the Pentagon is audited to the last penny, but Saddam can use Kofi Annan's office as a front for a multi-billion dollar global kickback scheme and, until it was brought to public attention by the tireless Claudia Rosett of The Wall Street Journal and a few other persistent types, the Secretary-General apparently never noticed.

Mr Sevan has now returned to New York from Australia. The lethargic Aussie press had made little effort to run him to ground because the notion that lifelong UN bureaucrats could be at the centre of a web of massive fraud at the expense of starving Iraqi urchins is just too, too "unthinkable" for much of the media.

So the conventional wisdom stays conventional - that we need to get the UN back into Iraq. No we don't. Iraq deserves better than an organisation which spent the last six years as Saddam's collaborator. As Claudia Rosett put it, "We are left to contemplate a UN system that has engendered a Secretary-General either so dishonest that he should be dismissed or so incompetent that he is truly dangerous and should be dismissed."

He should be, but he almost certainly won't be. After all, it is hardly his fault. When he set up the show, who would have thought that one day there would be US auditors in Baghdad? Why, it was, as Polly Toynbee would say, "unthinkable".

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.

How the Left supports the troops: "Dumb jock killed in Afghanistan"

04.25.04 (4:10 pm)   [edit]
Leftists all have the same uniform, don't they? They don't care about our troops, they don't care about America. Pat Tillman was as heroic as every soldier that dies in Iraq, but because he played football in the NFL, some lefty decided to dishoner him in death. That's pretty much par for the course for these vacant radicals.

"Dumb jock killed in Afghanistan" is how one poster at IndyMedia decided to introduce a news article about Tillman.

Only the left would use the very freedoms our troops defend to slander our troops. Only they have that lack of morality.

Link-- http://portland.indymedia.org...

Did you go to the Washington death march?

04.25.04 (4:00 pm)   [edit]
Do you know how stupid "reproductive rights" sounds as an excuse for abortion? Women have a choice, and it is this: either have sex or don't have sex. But sex isn't consequence-free. If pregnancy is a result of a woman's stupid decision to have sex outside of marriage, she has to live with the fact that she helped create a life. What abortion activists want is to declare that this life isn't a life, isn't a responsibility, isn't a consequence of a woman's true choice. Back in the day, the fetus was called a "blob" of tissue. Medical science has put that to rest.

But the lefties, the pro-murder crowd, don't get it. There they were over the weekend, celebrating the "right" to murder, a right that has been exercized enough to kill about 40 million people in the US alone over the last 30 years. George Bush is to be condemned for supporting the right of every human being to live. It is more than ironic that these left-wingers are the same group that accuse Bush of being Hitler by sending our troops-- through the authority of the US Congress-- to war.

Every single woman that supports abortion is, in essence, a true Hitler, a death-camp operator, a prison warden. The right to abort is not about a woman's rights over her body-- that right is exercized when she chooses whether to have sex or not-- it's about a woman's right to murder at her convenience.

Rape is a far different story, occuring in stuch statistically irrelevant numbers that it doesn't make the case for blanket-abortion rights. The right to have an abortion in the case of rape is far different than the right to have an abortion in the case of having a few drinks and making a stupid decision.

(And if a woman doesn't want her child, she can always give it up for adoption, a far better fate for the child than DEATH...)

We're supposed to be civilized. We're supposed to be adults. The abortionist's pro-death rally was no different than a Nazi rally.

[b]Thousands March for Abortion Rights [/b]
By ELIZABETH WOLFE, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Abortion-rights supporters marched in the hundreds of thousands Sunday, galvanized by what they see as an erosion of reproductive freedoms under President Bush (news - web sites) and foreign policies that hurt women worldwide.

Amid the clamor of an election year, the throng of demonstrators flooded the National Mall. Their target: Bush, like-minded officials in federal and state government and religious conservatives.

Speaking beyond the masses to policy-makers, Francis Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice declared, "You will hear our pro-choice voices ringing in your ears until such time that you permit all women to make our own reproductive choices."

Women joined the protest from across the nation and from nearly 60 countries, asserting that damage from Bush's policies is spreading far beyond U.S. shores through measures such as the ban on federal money for family-planning groups that promote or perform abortions abroad.

The rally on the National Mall stretched from the base of the U.S. Capitol about a mile back to the Washington Monument. Authorities no longer give formal crowd estimates, but various police sources informally estimated the throng at between 500,000 and 800,000 strong.

That would exceed the estimated 500,000 who protested for abortion rights in 1992.

Carole Mehlman, 68, came from Tampa, Fla., to support a cause that has motivated her to march for 30 years, as long as abortion has been legal.

"I just had to be here to fight for the next generation and the generation after that," she said. "We cannot let them take over our bodies, our health care, our lives."

Advocates said abortion rights are being weakened at the margins through federal and state restrictions and will be at risk of reversal at the core if Bush gets a second term.

"Know your power and use it," Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, House Democratic leader, exhorted the masses. "It is your choice, not the politicians'."

And feminist Gloria Steinem accused Bush of squandering international good will and taking positions so socially conservative that he seems — according to Steinem — to be in league with the likes of Muslim extremists or the Vatican (news - web sites).

Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton (news - web sites) of New York, referring to the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, said the administration is "filled with people who ... consider Roe v. Wade (news - web sites) the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history."

Organizers set up voter registration tables; supporters of John Kerry (news - web sites), the Democratic presidential candidate, handed out stickers. The event was not overtly partisan but denunciations of Bush set the tone from the stage and the ground.

The throngs gathered by the Washington Monument for opening speeches and set off along Pennsylvania Avenue, looping back to the Mall near the Capitol. They moved slowly, bottlenecked by their own numbers.

A much smaller contingent of abortion opponents assembled along a portion of the route to protest what they called a "death march." Among them were women who had had abortions and regretted it; they dressed in black.

Tabitha Warnica, 36, of Phoenix, said she had two abortions when she was young. "We don't have a choice. God is the only one who can decide," she said.

Police used barricades and a heavy presence at that site to keep it from becoming a flashpoint. Both sides yelled at each other as the vanguard of the march reached the counter-demonstration.

"Look at the pictures, look at the pictures," shouted abortion opponents, holding up big posters showing a fetus at eight weeks.

"Lies, lies," marchers shouted back.

Police arrested 16 people from the Christian Defense Coalition for demonstrating without a permit and another anti-abortion protester for throwing ink-filled plastic eggs at rally signs.

Celebrities familiar to the abortion-rights movement led the parade, among them Whoopi Goldberg, Kathleen Turner and Cybill Shepherd.

Although Roe v. Wade still anchors abortion rights, some states have imposed waiting periods before abortions, requirements that girls under 18 notify their parents, and other limits that have closed abortion clinics or discouraged doctors from performing abortions.

Bush has signed a ban on what critics call partial-birth abortion, and the first federal law to endow a fetus with legal rights distinct from the pregnant woman.

Abortion-rights supporters say a fragile Supreme Court majority in favor of Roe v. Wade could be lost if Bush is president long enough to fill vacancies that come up in the court. Kerry supports abortion rights.

Kate Michelman, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said the march was about more than the right to a safe abortion.

"The march is about the totality of women's lives and the right to make decision about our lives," she said.

Associated Press writers Jennifer C. Kerr and Kata Kertesz contributed to this story.

Kerry receives communion, profanes Christ

04.25.04 (2:53 am)   [edit]
[i] "Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup" (1 Cor. 11:27–28).

"A person who is conscious of a grave sin is not to . . . receive the body of the Lord without prior sacramental confession unless a grave reason is present and there is no opportunity of confessing; in this case the person is to be mindful of the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition, including the intention of confessing as soon as possible" (CIC 916). [/i]

John Kerry, a confirmed Catholic, is unworthy to receive communion because he unapologetically supports the murder of the unborn. He knows this is wrong according to moral law. Since he received communion in a Paulist center that is part of the Archdioces of Boston, not only does he profane Christ, but so does the Bishop who authorized it. In fact, the Bishops's sin is probably graver, since he is supposed to safeguard Christ's teachings and lead his flock into truth.

Of course, why this Paulist center enjoys the support of the Archdiocese is beyond me in the first place. If you read the article below, the center is promoted as somehow better than "St Around the Corner" (a slur against traditional Catholic churches) because it welcomes Catholics who basically have trouble adhering to Catholic dogma. And of course, it does all of this great charity work, which most churches do without the sweeping AP story.

The bottom line is that if this is a place for jilted Catholics who don't feel "at home" with the Church, who actually disagree with dogmas and not practices and rituals, and if it has archdiocecse support, at the very least these folks should not be able to receive communion.

The archdiocese itself seems to have trouble keeping with Catholic dogma. According to archdiocese spokesman Rev. Christopher Coyle, [The Archdiocese of Boston] "does not hold to the practice of publicly refusing Communion to anyone", leaving it up to the individual to decide whether he should receive communion or not.

(Is it any surprise that this place was founded in 1970?)

A Bishop's job is not to be some sort of grandfatherly equivalist, honoring each person's "right" to decide for himself if he is worthy to receive Christ. The Church is not a democracy, and its leaders are chosen to lead, not equivocate. And in the case of a public figure who uses his Catholicism as an election tool while at the same time actively working against Truth, which contains the fundamental preservation of all life, the Bishop has all the more responsibility to publicly refuse communion. It is a sad testimony to the rampant liberalism in the Church over the last 40 years, an unintended consequence of Vatican II, that this kind of casual treatment of Christ's teachings receives no outrage.

John Kerry doesn't realize what he's done. And he doesn't care. Why should he? His own Bishop doesn't.
Yet there are some misguided Catholics who will vote for this guy.

Christ have mercy.

[b]Kerry Takes Communion After Vatican Edict [/b]
Sat Apr 24,10:59 PM ET
By JENNIFER PETER, Associated Press Writer

BOSTON - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) received communion from a Catholic priest Saturday, one day after a top Vatican (news - web sites) cardinal said politicians who support abortion rights should be denied the Eucharist.

Kerry took communion during the 6 p.m. mass at Boston's Paulist Center, where campaign spokesman David Wade said the candidate regularly worships. The church is close to the Beacon Hill home Kerry shares with his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

"We're following the directive of our archdiocese," said Father Joe Ciccone, who gave Kerry the Eucharist. "They have said we should give him communion."

The Paulist Center attracts Catholics uncomfortable with some of the Vatican's orthodox teachings or who otherwise feel alienated from the Roman Catholic Church.

The congregation includes gay couples, whose adopted children are baptized there, unlike in some other Boston parishes. In November, its leaders refused to read aloud during Mass from a letter opposing gay marriage, as requested by the Massachusetts bishops.

The congregation is not geographical, but ideological, drawing people from as far as away as New Hampshire, said Drew Deskur, the center's music director and a parishioner for 25 years.

"It's not St. Around-the-Corner," Deskur said. "It's an intentional community that draws people from all over Boston. It tries to make sure that everyone feels welcome and that everyone participates in the liturgy."

The Archdiocese of Boston "does not hold to the practice of publicly refusing Communion to anyone," said archdiocese spokesman Rev. Christopher Coyne. He said it was up to the individual to decide whether to receive Communion.

In the days before Kerry attended Easter Mass at the Paulist Center, staff members received threatening phone calls and e-mails from Catholics who believed the senator should be denied Communion.

Coyne said he also received many letters and angry calls from concerned Catholics about Kerry's ability to take Communion. He said he contacted the Paulist Center ahead of time to ensure there would be no problem when the senator received the Eucharist.

The chapel celebrates Mass and can conduct every sacrament except marriage.

The center does not resemble a traditional church, but is housed among a row of brownstones. A band plays during worship, and the lyrics are projected onto the wall above the pulpit so parishioners can sing along.

Kerry joined in the singing from his pew near the back Saturday night. His wife was out of town, so he attended alone with several reporters and staff in tow.

Founded in 1970, the church is located within the Archdiocese of Boston and operates with the permission of the bishop. The center, however, is financially independent and has a history of reaching out to marginalized Catholics.

The Paulist Center began a support group for divorced Catholics that has since been replicated in churches across the country. The center also hosts a group for bisexual, gay and lesbian Catholics, as well as a program for lapsed Catholics who are considering a return to the flock.

The center helped launch the Walk for Hunger, a now annual fund-raiser for soup kitchens across the region, and has held funeral Masses for homeless people who die without family or loved ones.

[i]Associated Press Writer Nedra Pickler also contributed to this report.[/i]

Let's examine what is truly anti-Christian, PatriotActs....

04.24.04 (8:33 pm)   [edit]
PatriotActs and CarteBlanche, among others are using the religion area on T-blog to post political messages by wrapping up their points in Christianity. I guess this is about the same shameless act of these same members wrapping themselves up in "patriotism" in order to bash this country.

At any rate, PatriotActs' recent blog on the DoD firing the woman who took pictures of flag-draped coffins makes the inane point that it is anti-Christian for the DoD to prevent photos of coffins. PatriotActs' point is that doing this has nothing to do with privacy, but has everything to do with politics-- and that is anti-Christian.

Let's talk about politics. Obviously PatriotActs doesn't know a thing about our recent past, because is he did, he'd know that it was precisely the photographs of coffins and dead soldiers that led the left to politicize Vietnam and guarantee our political, not military, defeat there. After we left Vietnam, the communist swept through and 2.5 million people died in south Asia. Of course, those are coffins the left prefers to ignore.

It has been said that if the public were allowed to see the pictures of the invasion of Normandy, support for the war would have vanished. This is probably true, because pictures are used precisely by those like PatriotActs on the left not to "bear witness", but to politicize. Just like the eternally useless Doonsebury cartoons. PatriotActs phony concern about bearing witness is easy to gauge-- all you have to do is read every other blog he's posted and you know that he's only making political points. He-- and the rest of the left-- don't give a damn about "bearing witness".

Also, there's this point-- a lot of families really, truly, don't want those pictures released. They do feel that it is an invasion of their privacy. The photographer was fired because she broke the rules. That is to be expected.

But PatriotActs and every other anti-American leftist only want pictures released for the sole reason of politicizing the war. If they wanted to "bear witness", the Left would actually account for their role in the Vietnam aftermath, and account for their role regarding Somalia and inaction in Rwanda. But those images were seldom shown. PatriotActs and Carteblanche aren't interested in the truth, they're not interested in doing anything remotely Christian. The left-wing's religion is politics, it replaces Christ, it replaces God. And we should never forget that.

Whatever is bad for America is good for the leftist, pure and simple. They aren't concerned about America, they're concerned about power. All you have to do is look at the left's cookie-cutter commentaries and blogs on "King George" and "Slut" Rice and the "war for oil", etc. Lies and slander and hopes for quagmire aren't Christian elements, they are anti-Christian elements.

It's not like we haven't seen death and destruction in Iraq, anyway. We had embedded journalists show dead soldiers, we had the LA Times print pictures of the contractors killed in Fallujah, and we've had Sammy Adams' favorite "news" organization, Al-Jazeera showing dead and maimed civilians that they claim are all the fault of the US.

A flag-draped coffin is highly symbolic and the rabid wolves on the left know this. That's why they are using the Iraq pictures in all of their insipid commentaries.

THAT is true anti-Christianism.

John Kerry attends pro-murder rights rally, though he is "personally" opposed to abortion

04.24.04 (4:52 pm)   [edit]
Bill Clinton was many things, but one thing he wasn't was stupid. Though liberal, he knew that showing up at a pro-abortion/murder rally was not a wise political move. Given that the majority of Americans oppose abortion today, one would think that attending a pro-abortion rally would be an even dumber political move. Not so for the most liberal Senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a "Catholic" who absurdly uses the wrong, left-wing definition of the separation of church and state to justify his hypocrisy.

He can't have it both ways. He cannot call himself a Catholic and support a woman's "right" to kill her baby. In this case, he cannot be considered Catholic and should be excommunicated if he continues to support something so horrible. At the very least he is to be denied communion until he stops his public support of murder.

(or a woman's "right" to murder...)

Kerry has already decided that he's a left-wing politician first and a Catholic second. He shouldn't try and deceive us that both commitments are equal. If he chose public life and wanted to be a devout Catholic then his religion should influence his political life. And anyway, abortion itself is so anti-freedom and anti-constitutional that it should not be an issue. Roe v. Wade should be overturned, as abortion is, by any definition, murder.

[b]Kerry defends abortion rights at rally[/b]
Fri Apr 23, 6:21 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democratic presidential contender John Kerry (news - web sites) attended an abortion rights rally and made a ringing pledge to fight efforts to "sweep a generation of progress under the rug" regarding women's issues.

Kerry told the gathering he would work for "a stronger America where the right to choose and the right to privacy are just that, rights not political weapons. And they shouldn't be used by politicians to divide this country."

"Today, in 2004, we simply cannot afford to take out the broom and sweep a generation of progress under the rug," said the Massachusetts senator.

A campaign spokesman confirmed later he was referring to abortion among other issues.

Kerry accused President George W. Bush (news - web sites), his rival in the November 2 election, of systematically undercutting federal laws and programs aimed at ensuring economic and social justice for women in the United States.

"We cant afford to roll back the rights women have spent years fighting for. But it is going to take work from all of us and its going to take a change of leadership from the top," Kerry told the group, which was preparing for a march here Sunday.

Kerry, a Catholic, is personally against abortion but backs a woman's right to decide. Bush's Republicans have seized upon his stance as evidence of his support for left-wing Democratic positions they say are opposed by mainstream US voters.

Gorelick's refusal to resign taints 9/11 Commission

04.24.04 (4:38 pm)   [edit]
[b]Gorelick Agonistes
Her refusal to resign taints the 9/11 Commission. [/b]
OpinionJournal.com Editorial
Saturday, April 24, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

Jamie Gorelick has now issued her defense for staying on the September 11 Commission, and the usual media and Democratic suspects are rallying behind her. So let's put the issue as simply as possible: If Clinton-era Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick were not already a Commission member, does anybody doubt that she would be called to testify before it?

The Commission is interviewing nearly every major law enforcement and defense figure in two Administrations, and surely a Deputy AG was one of them. More than that, Ms. Gorelick was the author of a memo that has now become central to the debate over what went wrong before 9/11 in the way the U.S. dealt with terror threats.

Yet Ms. Gorelick now claims she can judge everyone else as a Commissioner because her now famous 1995 memo was no big deal and merely codified existing procedures. Even if we grant her this point, which many others dispute, shouldn't she be required to explain it under oath? What gives her an Olympian exemption?

No serious person on either side of the aisle doubts that the "wall" of separation between intelligence agents and criminal investigators that was memorialized in her memo was a problem. Everyone also now agrees that poor intelligence sharing was one of the key reasons U.S. authorities failed to detect the September 11 plot. We can think of several questions for Ms. Gorelick that would prove far more illuminating than anything that emerged from the Condoleezza Rice show. Such as:
• Ms. Gorelick, you write in the Washington Post that you did not invent the wall, which you argue was just "a set of procedures implementing a 1978 statute (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA)." Yet your 1995 memo to the FBI and World Trade Center bombing prosecutor asked for procedures that "go beyond what is legally required." Is it possible to merely implement the law and at the same time go beyond what it requires?

• Follow-up: Ms. Gorelick, no doubt you know that when the Ashcroft Justice Department finally challenged guidelines of the type you issued, the FISA Appeals Court agreed with your own 1995 assessment that those guidelines had never been necessary. In other words, the court said we didn't need the Patriot Act to permit greater intelligence sharing than your memo had allowed. Then why write a memo that imposed such restrictions?

Far from being unnecessary, Ms. Gorelick's testimony goes to the heart of the U.S. government's 1990s' failure to get its antiterror act together. She is right that before 9/11 the Ashcroft Justice Department endorsed her "wall" policy, but so what? They were wrong too.

What is clear is that for some reason the nature and height of "the wall" underwent a qualitative change in the 1990s, as any investigator or prosecutor who dealt with it now says. Whereas previous interpretations of the FISA statute had limited the ability of prosecutors to produce certain intelligence in court, the new rules effectively prohibited people from communicating at all. There seems to have been destructive tension among Justice, the FBI, and the lower FISA court at the time of the 1995 memo, tension that may in the end explain Ms. Gorelick's behavior. But we won't have a clear picture until she and some of the other major players--including members of the FISA court--testify.

The 9/11 Commissioners are only undermining their own credibility in rallying to Ms. Gorelick's defense. Her conflict of interest can't be solved merely by recusing herself from discreet portions of the probe, since as a Commissioner she will still serve as judge and jury on everyone else in government. She should have recused herself entirely from even questioning John Ashcroft. We also take no comfort in Republican Orrin Hatch's endorsement, since one of Ms. Gorelick's former law partners represented him in the BCCI case and he whisked her through Senate confirmation in 1994.

The 9/11 Commission was supposed to be a fair-minded, non-partisan probe that would help our democratic government learn from its mistakes. Ms. Gorelick's failure to resign and testify herself in the face of a clear conflict of interest is reason enough for the American public to distrust its ultimate judgments.

Enough is enough. We need more troops in Iraq, period.

04.24.04 (2:29 pm)   [edit]
I'll admit that I was convinced we didn't need more troops in Iraq. I believed, per the administration's excuses, that this was primarily an intelligence problem.

Our troubles in Iraq center on intelligence, but our troops don't have the time to gather correct intelligence. They are moving like the keystone cops from one civilian catastrophe to another. Plus, we cannot adequately train the Iraqi forces because we don't have the time.

The solution is obvious. More troops = more time = more intel = more security = more terror prevention. Iraqis are going to blame the US, justified or not, for this ongoing security failure.

We need to take as many troops as we can from Europe, plant them in Iraq, and do this damn thing right. Then, when we've rid the countryside of the terror element, when we've adequately trained Iraqi forces, then we can leave.

Those are the brakes. At every step of the way Bush has compromised, but it all started with the suspect notion that we didn't need any more troops.

Our troops are doing simply a miraculous job with current numbers-- but a lack of strength in numbers ultimately means less security in Iraq, less trust of the US, and more danger for our troops.

This is one mistake Bush should acknowledge and rectify. The people will stick with him if he does this.

[b]Dozens of Iraqis Killed by Rockets, Bomb [/b]
By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD - Mortar fire slammed into a marketplace in Baghdad's biggest Shiite Muslim neighborhood, and a roadside bomb hit a bus Saturday, a day that saw at least 33 Iraqis killed in multiple attacks. Outside Baghdad, insurgents rocketed a U.S. military base, killing four soldiers.

In Sadr City, the capital's sprawling Shiite slum, angry residents vented anger at Iraq (news - web sites)'s U.S. occupiers after the mortar barrages, which followed an early morning clash in the neighborhood between U.S. troops and militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric.

The worst single incident of the day came when a bomb exploded on a main road as a bus passed near Haswa, 30 miles south of Baghdad. The back of the bus was shredded and seats crumpled. At least 13 people — including a four-year-old boy — were killed and 17 wounded, said Wasan Nasser, a doctor at Iskan Hospital in neighboring Iskandariyah.

The violence came as U.S. commanders repeated warnings that they may launch a new assault on the besieged city of Fallujah soon, saying guerrillas had not abided by a call to surrender their heavy weapons.

L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, traveled to the U.S. Marines base outside Fallujah for consultations Saturday, while Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters: "Should there not be a good faith effort demonstrated by the belligerents inside Fallujah, the coalition is prepared to act."

The launching of the siege on April 5, along with the revolt in the south by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, fueled a flare-up of insurgent violence across the country.

The four U.S. solders were killed around dawn, when two rockets were fired from a truck and slammed into the base in Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad, Air Force Lt. Col. Sam Hudspath said. U.S. helicopter gunships then destroyed the truck, the military said.

Six soldiers were wounded in the attack, three of them critically, the military said. The military had initially reported that a fifth soldier died of his wounds afterwards, but later said that report was incorrect.

The deaths, along with that of a Marine announced Saturday, brought to 106 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the beginning of April. The military announced the death of a soldier in a non-combat incident, bringing to 715 the number servicemembers who have died in the country.

Anywhere from 900 to 1,200 Iraqis have been killed in April — depending on various reports of the death toll from Fallujah.

Some of the mortar shells in Saturday's barrage against Sadr City, which killed at least seven people, hit two miles from any U.S. position — suggesting they may have deliberately targeted civilians in the Shiite neighborhood.

Three shells pounded the neighborhood's main souk, known as the Chicken Market, just as morning crowds were gathering to shop. Human flesh could be seen among scattered market stalls and burned-out cars. Craters were blasted out of the asphalt.

At least six Iraqis were killed and 38 wounded, said Yassin Abdel-Qader, a doctor in the area's Health Directorate. The Baghdad slum is home to more than 1 million people.

Hours later, a projectile struck a two-story house, smashing through its roof and down into the ground floor, tearing a woman to pieces as she took an afternoon nap and wounding her daughter. At least two more landed later in the afternoon, hitting a main street on the edge of Sadr City, breaking windows but causing no casualties.

Iraqis called the projectiles rockets, but the U.S. military said mortars were fired.

Before the mortar fire, U.S. troops launched a pre-dawn raid into Sadr City, pursuing al-Sadr militiamen. They did not capture the targets they sought but got caught in a gunbattle in which two Iraqis were killed, according to U.S. Maj. Phil Smith.

During the fighting, a shell pierced the wall of a house, exploding in a bedroom and severely burning a 9-year-old girl and two teenage girls as they slept.

U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt suggested former members of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s security services were to blame.

"It was clearly an attack on civilians. There was no U.S. military at that spot," said Lt. Col. James Hutton of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division, which responded to the attack and helped treat the wounded. The closest U.S. post is nearly 2 miles away from the market, a division spokesman said.

But angry Shiites blamed the Americans for the assault.

After one of the afternoon strikes, residents chanted, "Long live al-Sadr, America and the Govering Council are infidels."

In other violence Saturday:

_ An Iraqi woman working as a translator for the U.S. military was shot and killed along with her husband as they drove to a U.S. base, a hospital official said.

_ A roadside bomb went off, detroying a car carrying Iraqis near a U.S. base on a downtown street in the northern city of Tikrit, hometown of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and a center for anti-U.S. resistance. Four Iraqis — two police and two civilians — were killed and 16 people were wounded, the U.S. military said.

_ Polish troops clashed overnight with Shiite militiamen in the city of Karbala, killing five, a spokesman for the multinational peacekeeping force in south-central Iraq said Saturday. A day earlier, followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr attacked Bulgarian troops in the city, killing one soldier.

_ Gunmen attacked a U.S. convoy near the city of Kut, and an armored vehicle was in flames.

FBI rewards agent who is anti-Ashcroft, anti-Bush

04.23.04 (9:25 pm)   [edit]
[b]FBI Rewards Ashcroft Critic[/b]
By Ira Stoll
New York Sun | April 23, 2004

An Arab-American activist who publicly denounced Attorney General Ashcroft as a ?lunatic? has been given a community service award by the Philadelphia field office of the FBI.

The award is being criticized by some who say it is another foul-up by the federal law enforcement agency, which has recently come under attack from across the political spectrum for its failures in counterterrorism before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Last year, the FBI decided to give a similar award to an Arab-American leader in Michigan but then changed its mind after protests.

During a panel discussion at an October 2003 conference of the Arab American Institute, the activist, Marwan Kreidie, referred to ?that lunatic Ashcroft, who is a lunatic, he really is.?That comment was reported in the October 20, 2003, New York Sun.

Said Mr. Kreidie, ?anytime Ashcroft comes to Philadelphia, we hand him a copy of the Constitution.?

Also at the October conference, which took place in Dearborn, Mich., Mr. Kreidie said, ?The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in a lot of ways the root of why they hate us in the Middle East.?

Reached by phone yesterday, Mr. Kreidie said he did not recall using the word ?lunatic? to describe the attorney general,who,as the head of the Justice Department, oversees the FBI. ?I don?t approve of the Patriot bill and some of the actions he took. I?m still not a big fan of Ashcroft,? he said.

A spokeswoman for the FBI in Philadelphia, Special Agent Linda Vizi, said Mr. Kreidie ?has been very helpful to the FBI office? as a leader of the Arab-American community.

She said he had been ?educating us on the mores and customs of the Arab people.?

Ms. Vizi said the Philadelphia field office was aware of Mr. Kreidie?s feelings about the Uniting & Strengthening of American by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, or the USA Patriot Act, before giving him the award this month. But she said she had been unaware of his description of Mr. Ashcroft as a ?lunatic.?

The editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, Jonathan Tobin, said Mr. Kreidie had taken part in protests outside the Israeli consulate in Philadelphia. ?After the whole September 11 and various investigations about what law enforcement and the FBI were or were not doing, it certainly doesn?t surprise me that the left hand doesn?t know what the right hand is doing,? said Mr. Tobin, whose newspaper is published weekly by the major Jewish charity in Philadelphia.

Another Philadelphia resident, a member of the board of the United States Institute of Peace, Daniel Pipes, called the award a ?travesty.?

?The FBI has repeatedly shown an inability to use common sense when it comes to honoring Muslim-American individuals and organizations,? Mr. Pipes said. ?It?s quite amazing to me that the FBI would honor someone who attacks the president, the attorney general in any of these ways.?

A May 23 article by Mr. Kreidie in the Philadelphia Daily News accused Mr. Bush of ?a litany of anti-Arab and Muslim actions,? including nominating Mr. Pipes to the peace post.

An anti-terror expert praised by Richard Clarke in his new book, Steven Emerson, said, ?This is someone who has compared the U.S. to authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, attacked the seizure of Hamas terrorist funds, and portrayed nearly all post-9/11 U.S. anti-terrorist initiatives in inflammatory language as racist. Does he have every constitutional right to express his views? Absolutely. But why would he, out of all the possible citizens in the greater Philadelphia area who have worked tirelessly to protect this country since 9/11, be selected as the man to be given this incredible honor by the FBI? This sends a terrible message to genuine moderates in the Arab and Muslim communities who have courageously stood up for the United States.?

Still, Mr. Kreidie has his defenders. The executive director of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Jewish Committee, Robert Seltzer, said,?Good for the FBI in identifying Marwan as an appropriate recipient.?

An award from the FBI may have less cachet now than it did before September 11. A former speechwriter for President Bush, David Frum, and the former chairman of Mr. Bush?s Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, argued in their recent book, ?An End To Evil,? that the FBI ?should be fired from the counterterrorism job it has bungled.?A front-page New YorkTimes headline on April 12 said, ?Disclosures Put F.B.I.?s Actions Under Scrutiny.?

The FBI seems to have at least one ally in Mr. Kreidie. He said he hung the award plaque in his living room.

?I?m very proud of my award,?he said. ?That?s the good thing about America,? he said. ?You can disagree, but in the long run, we are all in it together to make sure our country is safe.?

The crisis builds: China continues military buildup, Taiwan moves ahead with plans for constitution

04.23.04 (9:23 pm)   [edit]
Strategic ambiguity was always an effort to buy time. This is coming to a head, as Taiwan's president forces the US hand on its defense pledge, and China modernizes its military (and nuke forces).

2 related articles:

[b]China more than doubling budgeted military spending this year: Pentagon[/b]
Fri Apr 23, 4:05 AM ET

WASHINGTON, (AFP) - China is more than doubling its budgeted defense spending this year as part of an aggressive military modernization strategy, including deterring any moves by Taiwan to declare independence, the Pentagon (news - web sites) said.

China's official defense budget in 2004 is more than 25 billion dollars.

But when off-budget funding for foreign weapons system imports is included, total defense-related expenditures this year should soar to between 50 and 70 billion dollars, said Richard Lawless, the deputy undersecretary of defence.

This would rank China third in defense spending after the United States and Russia, he told a Senate hearing where China's military reforms were discussed Thursday.

Lawless, who handles security affairs in the Asia-Pacific, said that China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) had stepped up its modernization plan in recent years to prepare against any separation moves by Taiwan.

"In recent years, the PLA accelerated reform and modernization so as to have a variety of credible military options to deter moves by Taiwan toward permanent separation or, if required, to compel by force the integration of Taiwan under mainland authority," he said.

It also wanted capability to "deter, delay or disrupt third-party intervention in a cross-Strait military crisis," Lawless said.

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory despite a split 55 years ago at the end of a civil war, and has said it would invade if the island declared independence or descended into chaos.

The United States is Taiwan's biggest ally and arms supplier and is bound by law to provide weapons to help Taiwan defend itself if the island's security is threatened.

But Washington also acknowledges Beijing's position that Taiwan is part of China.

Lawless said PLA's determined focus on preparing for conflict in the Taiwan Strait "raises serious doubts over Beijing's declared policy of seeking 'peaceful reunification' under the 'one country, two systems' model."

He said conventional missile operations was among key areas of reform of the Chinese military.

Beijing's growing conventional missile force provides a strategic capability "without the political and practical constraints associated with nuclear-armed missiles."

"The PLA's short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) provide a survivable and effective conventional strike force and represent a real-time coercive option," he said.

China continues to improve the capabilities of its conventionally-armed SRBM force.

Some 500 to 550 SRBMs are deployed opposite Taiwan, increasing at a rate of 75 a year, Lawless said, adding that the "accuracy and lethality" of this force also were expected to increase through use of satellite-aided guidance systems.

He said China wanted to develop capabilities "to fight and win short duration, high intensity conflicts along its periphery."

[b]Taiwan rejects US warning over defence [/b]
By Kathrin Hille in Taipei and Salamander Davoudi in Washington
Financial TTimes
Published: April 22 2004

Taiwan rejected US warnings over its controversial plans for a new constitution on Thursday, setting the stage for further rocky relations with its sole protector against China.

Chen Shui-bian, the president, had emphasised his intention to deepen the island's democracy rather than set a timeframe for Taiwan independence, and his plans would not change the status quo across the Taiwan strait, said James Huang, presidential spokesman.

Foreign ministry officials said they were confident of convincing the US that Taiwan was not moving towards formal independence - as they had done before over US concerns about Taipei's first referendum.

Observers interpreted Taipei's stance as defiance. "They are calling for even stronger language from Washington," said a diplomat in Taipei.

The government's comments came in response to a tough warning by the US government that the island's defence could not be ensured if it were to unilaterally move towards independence.

James Kelly, assistant secretary of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said on Wednesday that the US opposed any unilateral move aimed at changing the status quo "as we define it".

"We have very real concerns that our efforts at deterring Chinese coercion might fail if Beijing ever becomes convinced Taiwan is embarked on a course towards independence and permanent separation from China," Mr Kelly said.

"While we strongly disagree with the approach, it would be irresponsible of us and Taiwan's leaders to treat these statements as empty threats," Mr Kelly said.

When asked whether the Taiwanese were under the impression that the US was willing to defend them at all costs he replied: "If they heard that they misunderstood."
Chen Tan-sun, Taiwan's foreign minister, said there had been many "misunderstandings" in Taiwan-US relations and suggested these could be removed by improving communication with Washington. But he insisted he had to safeguard Taiwan's status of "complete sovereignty."

China and the US hold the view that Taiwan is part of one China. But Mr Chen said the international community had to understand the status quo had changed completely since the US defined its China policy 30 years ago. Michael Kao, deputy minister, added that Taiwan would discuss a redefinition of the status quo with the US very soon.

Matthew Daley, US deputy assistant secretary of state, was quoted on Thursday by Reuters as saying the US was prepared to see a change in the status quo.

Both US statements are part of an effort to send a clearer message to Taipei to avoid encouraging Taiwan's controversial plans, as happened last year after some officials made positive comments about the plans.

How can you be a Palestinian refugee if you weren't alive in 1948?

04.23.04 (6:22 pm)   [edit]
Read this bit of AP propaganda below, and remember a couple of things:

1)The original Palestinian refugees left Israel voluntarily to fight with the Arabs in what was, they thought, sure victory over Israel. Oops. There were Palestinians that stayed. Guess what? They still live there.

2)None of the "refugees" in the article below were alive when the exodus happened 56 years ago. In fact, most of the actual refugees are dead, and they only numbered about 500,000, not 5 million. Their "home" is foreign to them-- they only want to go back to Israel in order to take it over.

3)Refugee camps exist today because 1)The Palestinian leadership doesn't want a two-state solution, and hasn't for decades and 2)No other nation will accept the Palestinians. Even Jordan, which is a true Palestinian state (it is 80% Palestinian), won't take them (and they are ruled by a Hashemite king). The UN-administered refugee camps in particular are breeding grounds for terror, as these folks blame Israel and the US-- and not their forefathers and leaders-- for their misery.

If any Palestinian "intellectual" examined the facts, and didn't let their hatred of Jews cloud their thoughts, they'd care more about building a succesful Palestinian state and getting on wiith is life and less about destroying Israel (which has a right to exist-- those lands are as holy to the Jews as they are to the Palestinians...more so, I would say).

But what can you do if hatred of Jews is built into your religion and political reality?

Ps. A word on hate. You can't hate someone more or less. You just hate. Palestinians said they hated America after we unveiled the "Road Map", and let's not forget the candy-throwing, horn-honking, and joyous yelling and clapping that they displayed as 3,000 Americans died on 9-11. They were a culture of hate long before Sharon and Bush met last week to address the reality of the Middle East.

Read on...

[b]Palestinians Blame Plight on U.S., Israel [/b]
Thu Apr 22,11:55 PM ET
By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press Writer

AMMAN, Jordan - Mohammed Domeh was relaxing on his living room sofa, watching the TV news when he heard the fateful words: President Bush (news - web sites) was flatly ruling out the return of Palestinians such as himself to what is now Israel.

"When I heard what Bush had to say ? and I am saying this as a Palestinian intellectual ? I wished I could wear an explosive belt around my waist and blow myself up in front of Bush," said Domeh, 44.

Such anti-American rage, from an otherwise mild-spoken, middle-class Palestinian writer, is being echoed around the Arab world at a volume some say is unprecedented.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (news - web sites), a close ally of Washington, told France's Le Monde newspaper that U.S. support for Israel, on top of the war in Iraq (news - web sites), has driven Arabs to a "hatred never equaled" toward America.

The trigger was Bush's meeting with Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) last week, after which the president publicly backed the Israeli prime minister's plans to withdraw from the Gaza Strip (news - web sites), endorsed the permanence of some big Jewish settlements in the West Bank and said a solution of the refugee question "will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel."

Unlike Domeh, teacher Raja Dirbash said she wasn't surprised. It merely confirmed what Israel and the United States had agreed long ago.

"What do you expect from a murderer?" she said.

Fifty-six years after they fled the land that would become Israel, millions of Palestinians still claim a right to return. Some, like Domeh, have built new lives and citizenships, while many others live in squalid refugee camps. Dirbash, 46, insists on living in the Baqaa refugee camp outside Amman until she returns to her ancestral home.

Domeh yearns for the 100 acres he says his family abandoned when they fled their village near Haifa in 1948. He thinks it must be worth $1 million today.

While Israel has always insisted there can be no refugee return, Palestinians have clung just as stubbornly to their "the right of return." It played a big part in derailing the last Palestinian-Israeli peace effort four years ago.

Hopes for a return are strong even in Jordan, the one Arab country that has integrated its 1.7 million Palestinian refugees and given most of them full Jordanian citizenship. Prominent Palestinian families control much of Jordan's trade and banking. The queen is of a renowned Palestinian family.

Domeh, who was born in the West Bank seven years before Israel captured it in the 1967 war, reckons many Palestinians would probably not go back even if they could, especially those who do not have property in what is now Israel. But it's the principle that counts_ "it's a question of rights," he said.

"To be frank, I hate the Americans. I don't like them. Now my hatred has tripled. Before, I didn't like them because of their unfair policies. Now, it's about me; it's personal. It's my right. It's not just about my country," said Domeh.

And Israel is only one source of anger. Iraq is another. Then there are reformers who accuse Washington of backing repressive Arab regimes, and conservatives who blame American pop culture for declining morals.

Refugee Fuad Mansi says his hatred built up over the years as Washington killed one U.N. Security Council resolution after another condemning Israel for its actions against the Palestinians.

"With every veto, they chip away at our dignity and play with our emotions," said Mansi, 30, who works in a car repair shop on the edge of the Wehdat refugee camp.

The United States usually says it imposes its veto when resolutions are one-sided. After the most recent veto, of a condemnation of Israel's assassination of Palestinian Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin, John Negroponte, the U.S. representative, said:

"This Security Council does nothing to contribute to a peaceful settlement when it condemns one party's actions and turns a blind eye to everything else occurring in the region."

Sarah Ghanem, 52, who lives in the Baqaa camp, said if it weren't for U.S. money, weapons and diplomacy backing Israel, "we would have been able to drive the Israelis out of our lands."

"America is our enemy as much as Israel is," she said.

Earth Day Celebrates Hatred of Man

04.23.04 (2:49 pm)   [edit]
I guess it kind of fits, then, that the "holiday" was created on Lenin's birthday...

From the Ayn Rand institute--

[b]Earth Day Celebrates Hatred of Man[/b]
By Michael S. Berliner, Ph.D

Earth Day approaches, and with it a grave danger faces mankind. The danger is not from acid rain, global warming, smog, or the logging of rain forests, as environmentalists would have us believe. The danger to mankind is from environmentalism.

The fundamental goal of environmentalists is not clean air and clean water; rather it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization. Their goal is not the advancement of human health, human happiness, and human life; rather it is a subhuman world where “nature” is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion.

In a nation founded on the pioneer spirit, they have made “development” an evil word. They inhibit or prohibit the development of Alaskan oil, offshore drilling, nuclear power — and every other practical form of energy. Housing, commerce, and jobs are sacrificed to spotted owls and snail darters. Medical research is sacrificed to the “rights” of mice. Logging is sacrificed to the “rights” of trees. No instance of the progress which brought man out of the cave is safe from the onslaught of those “protecting” the environment from man, whom they consider a rapist and despoiler by his very essence.

Nature, they insist, has “intrinsic value,” to be revered for its own sake, irrespective of any benefit to man. As a consequence, man is to be prohibited from using nature for his own ends. Since nature supposedly has value and goodness in itself, any human action which changes the environment is necessarily immoral. Of course, environmentalists invoke the doctrine of intrinsic value not against wolves that eat sheep or beavers that gnaw trees; they invoke it only against man, only when man wants something.

The ideal world of environmentalists is not twentieth century Western civilization; it is the Garden of Eden, a world with no human intervention in nature, a world without innovation or change, a world without effort, a world where survival is somehow guaranteed, a world where man has mystically merged with the “environment.” Had the environmentalist mentality prevailed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we would have had no Industrial Revolution, a situation environmentalists would cheer — at least those few who might have managed to survive without the life-saving benefits of modern science and technology.

The expressed goal of environmentalism is to prevent man from changing his environment, from intruding on nature. That is why environmentalism is fundamentally anti-man. Intrusion is necessary for human survival. Only by intrusion can man avoid pestilence and famine. Only by intrusion can man control his life and project long-range goals. Intrusion improves the environment, if by “environment” one means the surroundings of man — the external material conditions of human life. Intrusion is a requirement of human nature. But in the environmentalists’ paean to “Nature,” human nature is omitted. For the environmentalists, the “natural” world is a world without man. Man has no legitimate needs, but trees, ponds and bacteria somehow do.

They don’t mean it? Heed the words of the consistent environmentalists. “The ending of the human epoch on Earth,” writes philosopher Paul Taylor in Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics, “would most likely be greeted with a hearty ‘Good riddance!’ ” In a glowing review of Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature, biologist David M. Graber writes (Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1989): “Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet....Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” Such is the naked essence of environmentalism: it mourns the death of one whale or tree but actually welcomes the death of billions of people. A more malevolent, man-hating philosophy is unimaginable.

The guiding principle of environmentalism is self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of longer lives, healthier lives, more prosperous lives, more enjoyable lives, i.e., the sacrifice of human lives. But an individual is not born in servitude. He has a moral right to live his own life for his own sake. He has no duty to sacrifice it to the needs of others and certainly not to the “needs” of the non-human.

To save mankind from environmentalism, what’s needed is not the appeasing, compromising approach of those who urge a “balance” between the needs of man and the “needs” of the environment. To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress, and human life. To save mankind requires the return to a philosophy of reason and individualism, a philosophy which makes life on earth possible.

[i]Michael Berliner is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, California.[/i]

2 Months After 'The Passion': Body Count-- Zero

04.23.04 (12:10 pm)   [edit]
From the Catholic League--

April 21, 2004

TWO MONTHS AFTER ?THE PASSION?: BODY COUNT?ZERO

Catholic League president William Donohue commented today on the Mel Gibson movie, ?The Passion of the Christ?:

?Two months have elapsed since the film was released and no Jew has been killed. Not only have there been no pogroms, there have been no reported beatings, and no reported acts of vandalism associated with the film. This is true not only in the U.S.; it is true all over the world. By now the movie has played in literally scores of countries, all without violence.

?Those who predicted that the movie would generate violence need to explain themselves. And in some cases, they need to apologize to Christians. Recall that it was ADL director Abe Foxman who said last January that Mel Gibson is ?hawking it [the film] on a commercial crusade to the churches of this country.? He then concluded, ?That?s what makes it so dangerous.? In other words, it?s not lax Christians who are a danger to Jews, nor is it the anti-war protesters who carry banners bashing Israel, it?s those Catholics and Protestants who go to church on Sundays that Jews have to fear the most. Not only is this radically wrong?indeed it?s dangerously wrong?it?s also insulting to practicing Christians.

?Calls to censor the movie have been voiced in many countries, including the U.S. In France, three Jews who claim to be acting as spokesmen for the Jewish community, the Benlolo brothers, went into court to ban the film. Moreover, there is only one nation in the world where the movie has been banned?Israel; Shapira Films has the Israeli distribution rights and refuses to release the film. Just imagine the uproar if a Catholic country were to ban a film Catholics found offensive!

?Every time there is a Catholic-bashing movie, play or art exhibition, the critics lecture Catholics on their need for tolerance. For example, Catholics are told that artists like to ?push the envelope? and to ?make people think.? But somehow none of this elite spin seems to apply to Mel?s masterpiece. Which just goes to show that Catholics have been lied to all along.?

[i]The Catholic League is the nation's largest Catholic civil rights organization. It defends individual Catholics and the institutional Church from defamation and discrimination.[/i]

Vatican warns Kerry: Don't Take Communion

04.23.04 (12:03 pm)   [edit]
[b]Vatican Warns Kerry Not to Take Communion [/b]
From NewsMax.com

A top Vatican official close to the Pope, Cardinal Francis Arinze, emphasized today that priests must not give communion to pro-abortion politicians who claim to be Catholic.

Arinze, a Nigerian who has been mentioned as a possible successor to Pope John Paul II, did not comment specifically on whether presidential candidate John Kerry should be excommunicated.

But the inference was clear -- and Reuters news wire as well as others said the Cardinal's remarks were a clear shot across Kerry's bow.

The cardinal left no doubt about Kerry by saying that an "unambiguously pro-abortion" politician "is not fit" to receive communion.

"If they should not receive, then they should not be given," he noted.

The cardinal's directive "could influence the U.S. presidential race," Reuters observed.

Already several leading Catholic laity and clergy have told Kerry that he is excommunicated from the Church because of his abortion stance.

Kerry, meanwhile, planned to campaign with pro-choice groups today and denounce President Bush's greatest success in human rights: a ban on gruesome partial-birth abortions.

Myth vs Reality in Iraq, Middle East

04.23.04 (10:54 am)   [edit]
April 23, 2004, 8:33 a.m.
[b]Myth or Reality?
Will Iraq work? That?s up to us.[/b]
By Victor Davis Hanson

Myth #1: [i]America turned off its allies[/i]. According to John Kerry, due to inept American diplomacy and unilateral arrogance, the United States failed to get the Europeans and the U.N. on board for the war in Iraq. Thus, unlike in Afghanistan, we find ourselves alone.

In fact, there are only about 4,500-5,500 NATO troops in Afghanistan right now. The United States and its Anglo allies routed the Taliban by themselves. NATO contingents in Afghanistan are not commensurate with either the size or the wealth of Europe.

[b]There are far more Coalition troops in Iraq presently than in Afghanistan[/b]. [u]As in the Balkans, NATO and EU troops will arrive only when the United States has achieved victory and provided security. The same goes for the U.N., which did nothing in Serbia and Rwanda, but watched thousands being butchered under its nose. It fled from Iraq after its first losses.[/u]

Yes, the U.N. will return to Iraq ? but only when the United States defeats the insurrectionists. It will stay away if we don't. [b]American victory or defeat, as has been true from Korea to the Balkans, will alone determine the degree of (usually post-bellum) participation of others.[/b]

Myth #2: [i]Democracy cannot be implemented by force.[/i] This is a very popular canard now. The myth is often [b]floated by Middle Eastern intellectuals and American leftists ? precisely those who for a half-century damned the United States for its support of anti-Communist authoritarians. [/b]

Now that their dreams of strong U.S. advocacy for consensual government have been realized, they are panicking at that sudden nightmare ? terrified that their fides, their careers, indeed their entire boutique personas might be endangered by finding themselves on the same side of history as the United States. Worse, history really does suggest that democracy often follows only from force or its threat.

One does not have to go back to ancient Athens ? in 507 or 403 B.C. ? to grasp the depressing fact that most authoritarians do not surrender power voluntarily. [b]There would be no democracy today in Japan, South Korea, Italy, or Germany without the Americans' defeat of fascists and Communists. Democracies in France and most of Western Europe were born from Anglo-American liberation; European resistance to German occupation was an utter failure. Panama, Granada, Serbia, and Afghanistan would have had no chance of a future without the intervention of American troops. [/b]

[b][i]All of Eastern Europe is free today only because of American deterrence and decades of military opposition to Communism. [/b][/i]Very rarely in the modern age do democratic reforms emerge spontaneously and indigenously (ask the North Koreans, Cubans, or North Vietnamese). Tragically, positive change almost always appears after a war in which authoritarians lose or are discredited (Argentina or Greece), bow to economic or cultural coercion (South Africa), or are forced to hold elections (Nicaragua).

Myth #3: [i]Lies got us into this war.[/i] Did the administration really mislead us about the reasons to go to war, and does it really now find itself with an immoral conflict on its hands? [b]Mr. Bush's lectures about WMD[/b], while perhaps privileging such fears over more pressing practical and humanitarian reasons to remove Saddam Hussein, [b]took their cue from prior warnings from Bill Clinton, senators of both parties including John Kerry, and both the EU and U.N.[/b]

If anyone goes back to read justifications for Desert Fox (December 1998) or those issued right after September 11 by an array of American politicians, then it is clear that Mr. Bush simply repeated the usual Western litany of about a decade or so ? most of it best formulated by the Democratic party under Bill Clinton. Indeed, we opted to launch that campaign in large part because of Iraq's work on WMDs.

No, the real rub is whether Iraq will work: If it does, the WMD bogeyman disappears; if not, it becomes the surrogate issue to justify withdrawing.

Myth #4: [i]Profit-making led to this war[/i]. Then there is the strange idea that American administration officials profited from the war. Companies like Bechtel and Halliburton are supposedly "cashing in," either on oil contracts or rebuilding projects ? as if any company is lining up to lure thousands of workers to the Iraqi oasis to lounge and cheat in such a paradise.

This idea is absurd for a variety of other reasons, too. [b]Iraqi oil is for the first time under Iraqi, rather than a dictator's, control. And the Iraqi people most certainly will not sign over their future oil reserves to greedy companies in the manner that Saddam gave French consortia almost criminally profitable contracts.[/b] Indeed, no Iraqi politician is going to demand to pump more oil to lower gas prices in the country that freed him. Some imperialism.

[b]All U.S. construction is subject to open audit and assessment.[/b] A zealous media has not yet found any signs of endemic or secret corruption. [b]There really is a giant scandal surrounding Iraq, but it involves (1) the United Nations Oil-for-Food program, in which U.N. officials and Saddam Hussein, hand-in-glove with European and Russian oil companies, robbed revenues from the Iraqi people; and (2) French petroleum interests that strong-armed a tottering dictator to sign over his country's national treasure to Parisian profiteers under conditions that no consensual government would ever agree to.[/b] The only legitimate accusation of Iraqi profiteering does not involve Dick Cheney or Halliburton, but rather Kofi Annan's negligence and his son Kojo's probable malfeasance.

Myth #5: [i]Israel has caused the United States untold headaches in the Arab world by its intransigent policies.[/i] The refutation of this myth could take volumes, given the depth of daily misinformation. Perhaps, though, we can sum up the absurdity by looking at the nature of West Bank demonstrations over the past few months.

The issues baffle Americans: [b]Some Arab citizens of Israel, residing in almost entirely Arab border towns and calling themselves Palestinians, were furious about Mr. Sharon's offer to cede them sovereign Israeli soil and thus allow them to join the new Palestinian nation. Others were hysterical that two killers ? who promised not merely the "liberation" of the West Bank, but also the utter destruction of Israel ? were in fact killed in a war by Israelis.[/b] Both of the deceased had damned the United States and expressed support for Islamicists now killing our soldiers in Iraq ? even as their supporters whined that we did not lament their recent departures to a much-praised paradise.

Elsewhere fiery demonstrators were shaking keys to houses that they have not been residing in for 60 years ? furious about the forfeiture of the "right of return" and their inability to migrate to live out their lives in the hated "Zionist entry." Notably absent were the relatives of the hundreds of thousands of Jews of Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, and other Arab capitals who years ago were all ethnically cleansed and sent packing from centuries-old homes, but apparently got on with what was left of their lives.

[b]The Palestinians will, in fact, get their de facto state, though one that may be now cut off entirely from Israeli commerce and cultural intercourse. This is an apparently terrifying thought: Palestinian men can no longer blow up Jews on Monday, seek dialysis from them on Tuesday, get an Israeli paycheck on Wednesday, demonstrate to CNN cameras about the injustice of it all on Thursday ? and then go back to tunneling under Gaza and three-hour, all-male, conspiracy-mongering sessions in coffee-houses on Friday. [u][i]Beware of getting what you bomb for. [/u][/i][/b]

Perhaps the absurdity of the politics of the Middle East is best summed up by the recent visit of King Abdullah of Jordan, a sober and judicious autocrat, or so we are told. As the monarch of an authoritarian state, recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars in annual American aid, son of a king who backed Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, and a leader terrified that the Israeli fence might encourage Palestinian immigration into his own Arab kingdom, one might have thought that he could spare us the moral lectures at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club ? [b]especially when his elite Jordanian U.N. peacekeepers were just about to murder American citizens in Kosovo while terrorists in his country tried to mass murder Americans with gas. [/b]

Instead we got the broken-record Middle East sermon on why Arabs don't like Americans ? as if we had forgotten 9/11 and its quarter-century-long precursors. Does this sensible autocrat ? perhaps the most reasonable man in the region ? ever ask himself about questions of symmetry and reciprocity?

Is there anything like a Commonwealth Club in Amman? And if not, why not? And could a Mr. Blair or Mr. Bush in safety and freedom visit Amman to hold a public press conference, much less to lecture his Jordanian hosts on why Americans in general ? given state-sponsored terrorism, Islamic extremism, and failed Middle Eastern regimes ? have developed such unfavorable attitudes towards so many Arab societies?

What then is the truth of this so-often-caricatured war?

On the bright side, there has not been another 9/11 mass-murder. And this is due entirely to our increased vigilance, the latitude given our security people by the hated Patriot Act, and the idea that the war (not a DA's inquiry) should be fought abroad not at home.

The Taliban was routed and Afghanistan has the brightest hopes in thirty years. Pakistan, so unlike 1998, is not engaged in breakneck nuclear proliferation abroad. Libya claims a new departure from its recent past. Syria fears a nascent dissident movement. Saddam is gone. Iran is hysterical about new scrutiny. American troops are out of Saudi Arabia.

True, we are facing various groups jockeying for power in a new Iraq; and the country is still unsettled. Yet millions of Kurds are satisfied and pro-American. Millions more Shiites want political power ? and think that they can get it constitutionally through us rather than out of the barrel of a gun following an unhinged thug. After all, any fool who names his troops "Mahdists" is sorely misinformed about the fate of the final resting place of the Great Mahdi, the couplets of Hilaire Beloc, and what happened to thousands of Mahdist zealots at Omdurman.

So, we can either press ahead in the face of occasionally bad news from Iraq (though it will never be of the magnitude that once came from Sugar Loaf Hill or the icy plains near the Yalu that did not faze a prior generation's resolve) ? or we can withdraw. Then watch the entire three-year process of real improvement start to accelerate in reverse. [b]If after 1975 we thought that over a million dead in Cambodia, another million on rickety boats fleeing Vietnam, another half-million sent to camps or executed, hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving in America, a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, an Iranian take-over of the U.S. embassy, oil-embargos, Communist entry into Central America, a quarter-century of continual terrorist attacks, and national invective were bad, just watch the new world emerge when Saddam's Mafioso or Mr. Sadr's Mahdists force our departure.[/b]

This war was always a gamble, but not for the reasons many Americans think. We easily had, as proved, the military power to defeat Saddam; we embraced the idealism and humanity to eschew realpolitik and offer something different in the place of mass murder. And we are winning on all fronts at a cost that by any historical measure has confirmed both our skill and resolve.

But the lingering question ? one that has never been answered ? was always our attention and will. The administration assumed that in occasional times of the inevitable bad news, we were now more like the generation that endured the surprise of Okinawa and Pusan rather than Tet and Mogadishu. All were bloody fights; all were similarly controversial and unexpected; all were alike proof of the fighting excellence of the American soldiers ? but not all were seen as such by Americans. The former were detours on the road to victory and eventual democracy; the latter led to self-recrimination, defeat, and chaos in our wake.

The choice between myth and reality is ours once more.

Bush, trying to save Sudan, may receive opposition from his own State Department

04.22.04 (10:13 pm)   [edit]
April 22, 2004, 10:20 a.m.
[b]Saving Sudan
The State Department should stand up to Khartoum.[/b]
By Paul Marshall

President Bush may be on his way to alienating a large portion of his base: evangelical Christians. The issue is not gay rights or abortion or the other items usually thought to be of concern to religious conservatives; it is U.S. policy on Sudan. The reason is that the State Department seems once more convinced that the proper way to deal with murderers and their victims is to somehow to be an honest broker between them.

Over the last 15 years, the Sudanese government has brought together extremist Sunnis and Shiites; turned itself into international-terrorism central; harbored bin Laden; promoted slavery (bin Laden has probably owned African slaves); imposed a reactionary version of Islamic law that includes crucifixion, stoning to death of mothers who are out of wedlock, and "cross amputation" (removing the hand and foot from opposite sides of the body); waged what the U.S. House of Representatives has called a "genocidal" war on its southern, largely Christian and animist population; promoted forced conversion to its brand of Islam; strafed refugees with helicopter gunships; and manipulated food relief as a weapon, resulting in the death of over two million people ? more than in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Cote D'Ivoire, and Liberia combined. It has also produced four million displaced people, the largest such population on the face of the earth.

As usual, the U.N. and the rest of the world ignored this. It was only when a coalition of Americans campaigned to get the U.S. government to act that things began to change. That coalition was and is broad, combining African Americans, Episcopalians, Catholics, anti-slavery activists, and liberals opposed to genocide no matter who the victims. Most of its grassroots, though, are conservative Christians ? so much so that the New York Times referred to it as their "pet" project (would another group combating genocide be sneeringly be labeled as having some pet peeve?).

Domestic U.S. political pressure, combined with Sudan's post-9/11 fear that America might now get serious, has led to a cease-fire and American-brokered peace talks. Under the terms of the U.S.'s Sudan Peace Act, the American government is applying pressure on the Sudanese government (called the National Islamic Front and ? like Hamas, its better known brother ? an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood) and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement to conclude a just peace accord.

During this period of negotiations, the Sudanese regime has engaged in multiple violations of its ceasefire agreements. In the south, its allied militias have accelerated scorched-earth military campaigns, particularly in the oil-rich Upper Nile Province.

It has also used the breathing space in the south to launch a war against largely Muslim black Africans in Darfur, in the west of the country ? arming and assisting Arab militias in what the U.N. coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, calls "an organized campaign to rid an area of a group of people." Government-backed militias are engaged in systematic rape and murder. In recent months, more than 10,000 people have been killed, 110,000 have fled to neighboring Chad, and 670,000 are internally displaced, having been forced to flee their villages. Even Kofi Annan has voiced concern, and both President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell have used their bully pulpit to unequivocally condemn Khartoum's atrocities.

The last negotiating point with the south is the status of Sharia, or Islamic law, in Sudan. Khartoum is bent on imposing its extremist version of Islam on all people in the areas it controls. That means everyone in the north, Muslim or non-Muslim, and anybody from the south who enters the capital city of Khartoum. This position is particularly egregious since it was the regime's enforcement of its brand of sharia 21 years ago that led to war in the first place.

Apart from other barbarities, if it is allowed to do this, non-Muslims will not be permitted to serve as judges or lawyers in the courts to which they are subject. Their testimony will be given only half the weight of a Muslim's (or, if a woman, one quarter the weight given to a Muslim male). As in Pakistan, a Christian could be sentenced to death for blasphemy based on the unsupported testimony of one Muslim. They cannot exercise any authority over a Muslim ? which will, to say the least, put southern members of the government, under a proposed power-sharing agreement, in a very peculiar situation.

How can we expect southern Sudanese, who have been persecuted, enslaved, starved, and killed outright for over 20 years ? fighting against the Islamization and Arabization of their country ? to now give in to Khartoum and "submit" to Islamic law?

The U.S. government should not be in the business of forcing non-Muslims ? or Muslims for that matter ? to submit to the very type of regime that al Qaeda advocates. In order to get the issue off the table and move on, however, some State Department personnel at the peace talks appear to be pressuring the south (some of our strongest supporters in the war on terror) to accept this farrago. Apart from its other problems, then, this is a major hindrance to the War on Terror. It is now crystal clear that states and regions that implement reactionary, Wahabi-like versions of Islamic law view the West as infidels and enemies; are undemocratic and brutal; produce domestic terrorists; and nearly always produce international terrorists. While we try to prevent failed states elsewhere, we may be about to create the conditions for one in Sudan.

President Bush has built up enormous goodwill on this issue ? not least because it was his personal interest, commitment, and intervention that got the U.S. moving to achieve a just peace in Sudan. But the State Department bureaucracy is in danger of squandering it. If it does so, the administration will have accomplished an unusual trifecta: undercutting the war on terror; signaling that America is harder on its friends than on its enemies; and damaging the president politically. He needs to rein in and put some spine into America's diplomats in Sudan ? before it is too late.

[i]Paul Marshall is senior fellow at Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom. He is author of Islam at the Crossroads and God and the Constitution: Christianity and American Politics.[/i]

All of a sudden, the Palestinians want to honor the "peace process"-- big surprise

04.22.04 (8:05 pm)   [edit]
How is this for sheer hypocrisy: the Palestinian leadership, along with most of the Muslim world, is now claiming that the US has lost "credibility" because it endorses Sharon's disengagemet plan, and that it wants the "peace process" as required by the "Road Map" to continue.

"They have deviated from the right road," said senior Palestinian leader Farouk Kaddoumi of the Bush administration. "They initiated and proposed the peace initiative, but now, lately, after the visit from Sharon, they have canceled all these intentions to revive the peace process."

Isn't that something? Now I'm not the brightest bulb, but it occurs to me that the only reason why the Palestinians and the Arabs support the "peace process" as outlined in the "Road Map" is because the "Road Map" gives the Palestinian leadership a chance to do absolutely nothing to foster peace but blame Jews for their failure to act.

For if the Palestinians wanted to revive the peace process, they could have started by doing the very first thing they were required to do under the "Road Map' in the first place: stop the terror. If they did that, everything else-- including a compromise on right of return-- could be addressed. In fact, Sharon and Bush were very faithful to the Palestinian leadership-- through two puppet prime ministers and failed "cease-fires" (which were not in the plan but allowed anyway). It is not Israel's fault, nor is it the fault of the United States, that the "Road Map" failed. It is the fault of the Palestinian leadership.

Ariel Sharon is leaving Gaza to the Palestinians and keeping some West Bank settlements. Frankly, it's also about time that Sharon and Bush agreed on no right of return. That is a political non-starter, and everyone knows it. The Palestinian leadership was hoping that they could stall the peace process and wait out Bush and Sharon into concessions-- no such luck.

All of this reveals the true intentions of the Palestinian Authority, for what the disengagement does is force the PA to act according to their own words. If the PA wants their own state, living beside Israel, then they have to show the world, and if they just want Israel destroyed, if they just want chaos, then Israel and the US-- and the world-- should do their own thing and let the Palestinians finally deal with their failed leadership. There will be no more scapegoating.

Given the recent "outrage" by Palestinians leaders paying lip service to a peace process they never honored (which led to the disengagement plan and a final stand on right of return), I think we can determine that they still do not want peace. Now it is up to the Palestinian people to decide if they want to finally hold their government accountable for their own misery.

Let us hope.

The National Lawyers Guild visits North Korea and offers up some classic propaganda

04.22.04 (7:50 pm)   [edit]
[b]North Korean Lawyers Guild[/b]
By Shawn Macomber
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 22, 2004

The National Lawyers Guild has found a way to return to its overtly Communist roots: it sent a delegation to North Korea and authored a report comparing the U.S. unfavorably to the repressive ?worker?s paradise.? The report is the fruit of the most recent pilgrimage of NLG leftists to Kim Jong Il?s personal prison. The National Lawyers Guild recently sent a delegation to develop ?personal and professional relationships? in North Korea, an odyssey recounted in ?North Korea: The Grand Deception Revealed,? a piece of Marxist propaganda sure to have Stalin smiling in Hell.

The NLG decided to visit North Korea to determine the ?real situation for the people of the DPRK (North Korea),? which according to the NLG, is actually pretty rosy. In fact, after reading their 24-page report, I wondered how this group of American and Canadian lawyers brought themselves to leave this worker?s paradise. No matter where the delegation went, they recounted the incident in superlatives.

?We noted that this was not the Orwellian society George Bush and much of the media is [sic.] trying to portray,? the report states. It begins with North Korean airport security guards, who are a cheerful bunch, quick with a smile. ?It was not a highly charged and intimidating scene, and was more relaxed than most U.S. airport security.? The cities are filled with happy people, with nary a gulag in sight. ?Hermit Kingdom?? No way.

?The contrast between North Korea and its lack of policeman and North America in which armed police in bulletproof vests are commonplace was more than striking ? it was startling,? the delegation reports from a police state sans irony. ?If the presence or absence of armed policemen is a criterion for a free society then it speaks volumes about the nature of the two societies.?

This is no joke: At one point the NLG delegation stops for a picnic, and joyfully breaks out into a rendition of ?We Shall Overcome? and other ?old anti-war and protest songs? for a group of undoubtedly confused North Koreans. ?We know that if the contest between the lawyers of each nation were singing that this would have ended with our defeat quite swiftly,? they write. The reader need not worry for the NLG delegation?s self-esteem, though. Every step of the way, the North Koreans willingly stroke the egos of these useful idiots. At one point, a North Korean military official tells the nearly giddy NLG lawyers he is excited to meet them, ?because lawyers bare truth and justice in their hearts.?

The lawyers naturally praise the country?s free health care and education systems, its lack of a death penalty, that women are not ?objectified in the same ways they sometimes are in the West,? and even its single party system. ?The absence of other parties is not considered a failing, as the entire society is socialist,? they astonishingly write. But what of the right to dissent they spend so much time carping about in the United States?
While the NLG finds virtually every complaint against the North Korean dictatorship to be unfounded, they have no problem whatsoever taking all of the complaints of Kim Jong Il?s regime at face value. The delegation accepts without question evidence of ?egregious war crimes? of U.S. soldiers, and urges the ?ill-informed people of the West? to learn ?another truth about the North Korean war.? This ?truth? is that the North Korean invasion of South Korea was an invention of the ?U.S. Imperialist Aggressors? (caps in original), designed to take down what they feared would be a successful Communist country.

The NLG delegation decries the Bush administration?s ?insulting and discriminatory? comments about Kim Jong Il being ?little,? but ignores the official statements of the DPRK. This Communist thugocracy has referred to George W. Bush as ?a man bereft of an elementary reason or a politically backward child.? Their favorite regime called John Bolton, George W. Bush's undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, as ?human scum? and a ?bloodsucker.? And it naturally derided Dick Cheney as ?mentally deranged.? Further, the government of the DPRK contends that the United States is the ?the root cause of all sorts of our nation's disasters and misfortunes; an empire of evil that even ruthlessly tramples on the people's religions; and the stronghold that spreads a degenerate age's corrupt culture of perversion, corruption, violence, and lust.?

Yet despite it all, the NLG delegation scolds Americans that, ?We cannot be respected unless we respect others,? and is convinced that it is our rhetoric, and not the DPRK?s, that is truly dangerous. ?We realize that the U.S. must be held accountable for its failure to deal fairly and in good faith with the DPRK,? the delegation reports. ?The delegation feels that the U.S. government cannot advocate the rule of law and democracy, when it fails to model it itself.?

Over at the DMZ, it?s the same old scene according to the NLG. They describe the area as ?more suited for an eco-park than a war staging ground.? This is where U.S. and South Korean soldiers menace and blare rock music, while the North Koreans wait innocently for peace. ?The monolithic, robotic, repressive army described in the western press became as it appears, a mere figment of the imagination, as we shared joy and laughter rather than threats and rhetoric,? the delegation reports. The group faithfully records a DPRK general?s ?astute? comment that North Korea does not ?oppose the American people,? but rather just, ?U.S. hostile policy and its efforts to exercise control over the whole world and inflict calamity on its people.? The general expects Americans to believe the North Korean threat to turn American cities into a ?sea of fire? had nothing to do with the American people.

And what is the NLG delegation?s answer to those who might claim they only saw what they wanted to see in North Korea, or worse yet were duped by a totalitarian regime? Well, it?s simple. They?re smarter than you. ?As trial lawyers we have substantial experience and training in telling when someone is being evasive or untruthful,? they write. ?As a group we concluded that we were not being mislead, nor were answers intended to divert us from deeper inquiry.?

One wonders how the delegation would answer the countless North Korean refugees? tales of torture and death ? of degradation in vast prison camps, of whole families being executed, of the merciless depravity of the North Korean regime. Would they have the guts to look into those pained eyes, to see those scarred bodies and determine it was all a lie? I wonder if they would be able to tell those victims that the NLG finds the principles of the DPRK justice system ?quite progressive? and more focused on ?restorative justice than retributive justice.?

No, no. It?s a much more pleasant to be shielded from the horrors of reality. The NLG has chosen to act as a PR agent for one of the world?s most psychotic dictators. This is hardly a new role. The NLG was founded to be ?the legal bulwark of the Communist Party.? During the Sino-Soviet split, the NLG also Balkanized into competing factions. But all former rifts are healed now. The NLG has placed all its bets popularizing Asia?s most brutal, Stalinist dictatorship. After all, the NLG and Kim Jong Il want the same thing: the demonization and destruction of capitalist America.

[i]Shawn Macomber is a staff writer at The American Spectator and a contributor to FrontPage Magazine. He also runs the website Return of the Primitive.[/i]

Hamas's not only targets Israel, but the US as well

04.22.04 (7:46 pm)   [edit]
[b]Hamas vs. America [/b]
By Erick Stakelbeck
New York Post | April 22, 2004

SATURDAY'S assassination of Hamas leader Abed Al-Aziz Rantisi represented a victory not just for Israel, but also for the United States in its ongoing war against radical Islamic terrorism. Hamas has been an avowed enemy of America for years.

U.S. news accounts routinely get this wrong: They suggest that up until Israel's assassination last month of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, Hamas was concerned solely with the destruction of Israel, and had no intentions of targeting the United States.

In fact, Yassin and Rantisi both spoke often of expanding Hamas' operations to include U.S. targets. Then, too, Hamas has long aligned itself with terror-sponsoring states like Syria, Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

That said, the group's animosity for America reached a new level in recent weeks.

One of Rantisi's last public appearances came on Easter weekend, as thousands of Palestinians took part in rallies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in support of the armed rebellion against U.S. and Coalition forces in Iraq,

Speaking in Gaza, Rantisi called on Iraqis to "strike and burn" U.S. and Coalition forces, and "teach them the lessons of suicide actions."

Rantisi's comments - which came amid chants of "Death to America" and the burning of American flags by onlookers - were the latest in a long line of threats made by Hamas leaders toward the United States.

That is, until Monday, when Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal - speaking at a memorial service for Rantisi in Syria - called for a worldwide Arab and Muslim alliance to defeat the United States and Israel.

"Our battle is with two sides," said Meshaal. "One of them is the strongest power in the world, the United States, and the second is the strongest power in the region [Israel]."

Enter Muqtada al-Sadr, the extremist cleric who launched a violent power grab in Iraq this month. On April 3, Sadr vowed to serve as the "striking arm" in the region for Hamas and the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah. Since Israel has no troops in Iraq, it's obvious whom Sadr intends to "strike" in Hamas' name.

But Hamas has sent the same signal: Shortly before the U.S. invasion of Iraq last March, Sheik Yassin issued a fatwa (religious decree) ordering all Muslims to kill Americans wherever they were found if U.S. troops dared set foot on Iraqi soil.

As recently as last November, Yassin spoke of "striking the United States . . . in the appropriate place," a statement hardly befitting a man eulogized by a large segment of American media as an "elderly quadriplegic" and "spiritual leader."

But for sheer anti-U.S. vitriol, it is difficult to top Rantisi, who wrote an article published on a Hamas Web site in April 2003 titled, "Why Shouldn't We Attack the United States?"

In the article, Rantisi argued that attacking America was not only "a moral and national duty - but above all, a religious one." In another piece published soon after, he openly called for "terror against the United States."

Even before Rantisi's comments, however, Hamas had solidified its anti-American credentials by supporting the ousted Ba'athist regime in Iraq. In September 2002, Israeli agents videotaped a ceremony in Gaza City in which Sheik Yassin and other Hamas officials presented certificates and checks from the Iraqi government to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers

Yassin spoke at the rally, exhorting Palestinians to support Iraq in its confrontation with the United States. Tellingly, the participants stomped on American and Israeli flags upon entering the hall, and chanted pro-Saddam slogans.

But Hamas hasn't merely preached violence against America: It has also targeted U.S. citizens directly. In December 2003, Israeli authorities charged Jamal Akal, a Canadian citizen born in the Gaza Strip, with receiving weapons and explosives training from Hamas for use in terrorist attacks on Jewish targets in Canada and New York City.

And last April, two Hamas suicide bombers blew themselves up inside Mike's Place, a bar located next to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv that is frequented by U.S. government employees.

While previous Hamas attacks in Israel have claimed the lives of more than a dozen American citizens, these two incidents represent a troubling escalation in Hamas activity against the United States.

High-ranking Hamas officials have already managed to infiltrate America, the most notorious example being Musa Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas leader now based in Syria. Marzook, who had been living in northern Virginia, was detained by U.S. authorities for 22 months and deported to Jordan in 1997.

Following Yassin's death, Marzook warned his former host country that "currently the U.S. is not a target [of Hamas], but in the future, only God knows."

Despite the media's reluctance to catch on, Hamas' recent statements and actions regarding America make clear that the future Marzook spoke of is now.

[i]Erick Stakelbeck is senior writer for the Investigative Project, a D.C.-based counterterrorism research institute.[/i]

Our alliance with Europe erodes due to time, ignorance

04.22.04 (7:44 pm)   [edit]
From Tech Central Station-- http://www.techcentralstation...

[b]Allies Adrift?[/b]
By Nico Wirtz

[i]"The Cold War is over now. Very fortunately so, but at the same time?the glue that kept us together for so long has lost its strength."[/i]
- Jean-Luc Dehaene, former prime minister of Belgium

For decades, it was conventional wisdom on both sides of the Atlantic that Europe and the United States were intrinsically bound together by a "glue" which consisted two major components: a common external threat, and the more theoretical notion of "common values". This glue fostered a partnership built on military cooperation, most notably in the framework of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and, to a lesser extent, economic cooperation.

With the Soviet threat gone, there is no doubt that the glue has lost its strength. Only months after the demise of the Soviet Union, politicians and analysts on both sides of the Atlantic began to wonder about the future of transatlantic relations. Yet, while there were calls to redefine the role of the organization, the existence of NATO itself was never called into question as the main pillar of transatlantic relations.

But in recent years, particularly following the atrocious terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the glue's waning cohesiveness has exposed deeper rifts. The refusal of both France and Germany to support the U.S. administration in the decision to go to war against Iraq - even though Article V of the NATO treaty had been invoked after September 11 - is a manifestation of this divide.

In an article published in one of Germany's most influential daily newspapers in March 2004, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell observed that Washington and Berlin have been talking past each other for quite some time. Areas of disagreement have included many more issues than just Iraq, the International Criminal Court or the Kyoto Protocol. A reason for this can be found in a generational shift on both sides of the Atlantic. The generation of "Cold Warriors" has been replaced by what many have called the "Generation X". Germany is a prime example: this "Generation X" has no memory of being on the edge of nuclear warfare, which, during the peak years of the Cold War was a realistic scenario. The sense of profound gratitude felt by the vast majority of Germans for American generosity and support in the years after 1945, which left no room for differences between the two countries, has also faded.

Young Germans do not reject cooperation with the United States in general, yet they do not see their future in the transatlantic realm but inside of the European house - a future made by Europeans for Europeans. This does not necessarily mean antagonism toward the United States, but it surely means "Europe First"; the transatlantic partnership as we know it comes second. The German "Generation X" adds much less emphasis to the romanticized view of transatlantic partnership as a relationship of American military protection, CARE packages, the Marshall Plan or the Berlin airlift. Young Germans want an assertive European Union with greater independence from the United States, a form of independence unthinkable in the minds of the old guard within the German body politic.

The debate over Afghanistan, and most recently the war against Iraq, have shown that the military visions of both Germany and the United States are further apart than ever before. While Colin Powell concluded that the transatlantic partnership must be transformed from the defense of common territory to the defense of common principles, this perspective is still caught up in Cold War thinking and assumes a common military vision.

What is needed is a redefinition of partnership that goes beyond finding a new justification for military cooperation. The transatlantic community needs a shift of emphasis. While the military will always have a strategic value that should not be underestimated, the second pillar of transatlantic relations, which has long been the "junior partner" of the two, should be accentuated. In today's globalized world, politicians and analysts on both sides should try to reap the benefits of strengthened economic cooperation. Basic structures are already in place, but should be fostered. An important step in the right direction was the New Transatlantic Agenda from 1995, which resulted in the implementation of more formalized cooperative structures: the Transatlantic Business Dialogue with the ultimate goal of establishing a transatlantic free trade area.

Only a shift in emphasis will be able to win over the "Generation X" and help revitalize a friendship that has been too precious to give up on.

Woodward book shows that Bush did not lie about Iraq's WMD

04.22.04 (7:41 pm)   [edit]
Of course, we already know this-- the proof lies in UN documents and the consensus of the world dating back to 1991, but nothing wrong with piling on the evidence.

[b]Seeing Only What They Want to See[/b]
Clifford D. May
April 22, 2004 | Print | Send

Bob Woodward's new book is less an expose than an inkblot test. It's remarkable how people can see the same words on the same pages - and come away with entirely different pictures.

In an election year, it's to be expected that members of the opposition party would thumb eagerly through a book like "Plan of Attack," looking for stones to throw at the incumbent president.

More troubling is that so many media figures also are viewing the book through a partisan prism - headlining whatever casts the president in an unfavorable light, conspicuously ignoring those chapters that challenge the conventional critique of Bush and his policies.

An example? For months, the president's critics have accused him of exaggerating or even distorting the CIA's intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, the charge has been made repeatedly that the president "misled" the public - even that he "lied" and "betrayed" America.

The big news in Woodward's book is that Bush was deeply skeptical about the CIA's conclusions regarding Iraqi WMD - even after he was presented with a "Top Secret" document starkly warning: "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons."

What changed the president's mind? Woodward vividly describes a meeting in the Oval Office in which George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, responded to Bush's doubts by rising up from his seat and throwing his arms in the air. "It's a slam-dunk case!" he said.

Even that didn't quite persuade Bush. He pressed further, asking Tenet: "George, how confident are you?" At which point, the nation's top spy - a nonideological nonpartisan who held the same job in the Clinton administration - "threw his arms up again. 'Don't worry, it's a slam dunk!' he repeated."

Imagine if - instead of heeding this warning - Bush had ignored it, put on his sweat suit and gone for a jog around the White House. Imagine if a terrorist attack, utilizing WMD supplied by Saddam Hussein, had followed. Bush would have faced impeachment - and deservedly so.

But the president didn't do that. Instead - according to Woodward's reporting - he instructed his CIA chief to assemble the evidence on WMD, adding cautiously: "Make sure no one stretches to make our case."

The Woodward book also reveals that early in this administration, Vice President Dick Cheney recognized that, "Democracy in the Middle East is just a big deal for (President Bush). It's what's driving him." That's news to me. Isn't that news to you? But have you heard anyone in the media talk about it?

One more surprise: It's not a secret that President Bill Clinton in 1998 signed the Iraq Liberation Act, making regime change in Baghdad the official policy of the U.S. government. What was not widely known before Woodward's book was that in 2002 the CIA reluctantly concluded that neither diplomacy nor clandestine action could get the job done. Instead, the CIA's top Iraq specialist told Bush that he regarded "military action as the only feasible way of removing Hussein." In other words, Bush had no choice other than war or abandoning America's bipartisan policy on Iraq.

"Plan of Attack" also shows Bush listening - sometimes for hours - to Secretary of State Colin Powell as he made reasoned arguments about how difficult it would be to help Iraqis transform their injured nation into a free and democratic society.

On some occasions, Bush did take Powell's advice. Over Cheney's "strenuous objections," he followed Powell's strong recommendation to go to the United Nations "to seek new weapons inspection resolutions." On other occasions, he took Cheney's counsel instead. Is that not what a president is supposed to do - listen to various advisers and then make up his own mind? Inside the Beltway, the answer to that question would be "no." In this town, every president is supposed to take your advice - if he doesn't, what a fool he must be, as you are bound to reveal in a blockbuster book and maybe a movie, perhaps starring Harrison Ford in the role of you.

In the real America, people have different expectations, which might explain why the storms whipped up by Washington best sellers so seldom unsettle the broader political landscape. Americans expect debate and even disagreement within their government. They expect their president to make the tough, final decisions.

One last word: Those media moguls who have chosen to highlight only parts of Woodward's book they hope will damage Bush might want to recall the old joke about the man whose psychiatrist shows him a series of inkblots.

"Listen, Doc," he says, "I have serious problems to discuss with you. I have no time to look at a bunch of dirty pictures."

Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and a Townhall.com member group. This column first ran on the Scripps Howard News Service.

©2004 Clifford D. May

John Kerry: International Man of Apology

04.22.04 (7:38 pm)   [edit]
From The Weekly Standard-- http://www.weeklystandard.com...

[b]International Man of Apology
John Kerry tells Tim Russert just how much he values multilateralism. [/b]
by Hugh Hewitt
04/22/2004 12:00:00 AM

OVER AT JohnKerry.com's campaign blog, they're referring to Kerry's appearance on Meet the Press as a "home run." If that was a home run, I'd hate to see Kerry strike out. On question after question, Kerry managed to turn under-armed softballs into high and tight strikes, and the damage from his reflexive parsing and dodging are just beginning to be recognized.

Kerry tried to deceive Russert on the availability of his military records, and then his campaign tried to stonewall the Boston Globe reporter who heard the candidate quite clearly promise that all the military records would be available to all comers at "headquarters." That position lasted a day before Kerry sounded retreat, though the files are still not available.

And there is plenty of controversy waiting to erupt over Kerry's assertions that (1) Social Security could be saved by growing the economy, and (2) if this isn't true, then means-testing would make sense for folks like Russert and Kerry. Kerry's got a secret plan for Social Security, and it involves cutting benefits. That much we know. Perhaps the press corps will get around to asking him how the third rail feels.

More than the records deception and more than Social Security foot-in-mouth, however, the most damaging of Kerry's statements was this statement: "Within weeks of being inaugurated, I will return to the U.N. and I will literally, formally rejoin the community of nations and turn over a proud new chapter in America's relationship with the world, which will do a number of things."

One thing such a move would be sure to do is embarrass and outrage the American public. "Literally, formally rejoin the community of nations?" What can that mean except that Kerry believes that: (1) The United States and its many allies have been acted unlawfully in liberating Iraq from Saddam; (2) the French, Russians, and Chinese should have a veto over American foreign policy; (3) an apology is in order for exposing the massive corruption of the oil-for-food program; and (4) we should be sorry for having disarmed Libya of its nuclear ambitions and mustard gas.

In fact all President Bush did was demand that the United Nations honor its own commitments, and then enforce U.N. Resolution 1441. John Kerry would seem to believe that post-9/11 America is not safe for the rest of the world and needs taming--or reintegration into the "community of nations." James Lileks wrote that Kerry clearly intends a Jolson-on-bended-knee appearance before the General Assembly, an apology to dwarf all of Clinton's apologies of the past. That indignity and more, I think. Kyoto, the Law of the Sea treaty, the International Criminal Court--you name the U.N. auspice, and Kerry will be there for it, in a "literal, formal" way.

KERRY HAS three things going for him. First, the press, like Tim Russert, isn't listening very closely to the absurdities like "literally, formally rejoining the community of nations." Second, his speaking style is so overwhelmingly self-important and so stultifying oppressive that most folks hit the off-switch when his lips begin to move, thus tuning out comments that would outrage them if they registered on the ears. And third, the "Bush Lied!" crazies wouldn't care if Kerry simply declared the dissolution of American sovereignty and a merger with Canada.

Still, with his numbers dropping and his uncanny ability to fumble every opening he's given, Kerry's got to watch his back. He "leads" the party that invented the Torricelli Option, and folks like Daschle have to be worried about a November wipe-out. A "presumptive nominee" isn't the nominee. Who was that lady on Larry King this week?

Hugh Hewitt is the host of The Hugh Hewitt Show, a nationally syndicated radio talkshow, and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard. His new book, In, But Not Of, is published by Thomas Nelson.

© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

A military chaplain in Fallujah explains the reality on the ground

04.22.04 (4:31 pm)   [edit]
From Andrew Sullivan's blog-- http://andrewsullivan.com/ind...

EMAIL OF THE DAY: I can't verify this first-hand but it comes from a source I know and trust. It's from a military chaplain in Fallujah:

[i]Here's some background on Al Faluja to keep in mind.

A) Why is it in the news almost every night? Because it is one of the FEW places in all of Iraq where trouble exists. Iraq has 25 million people and is the size of California. Faluja and surrounding towns total 500,000 people. Do the math: that's not a big percentage of Iraq. How many people were murdered last night in L.A.? Did it make headline news? Why not?

B) Saddam could not and did not control Faluja. He bought off those he could, killed those he couldn't and played all leaders against one another. It was and is a 'difficult' town. Nothing new about that. What is new is that outside people have come in to stir up unrest. How many are there is classified, but let me tell you this: there are more people in the northeast Minneapolis gangs than there are causing havoc in Faluja. Surprised?

C) Then why does it get so much coverage? Because the major news outlets have camera crews permanently posted in Faluja. So, if you are from outside Iraq, and want to get air time for your cause, where would you go to terrorize, bomb, mutilate and destroy? Faluja.

D) Why does it seem to be getting worse? Two answers:

1) This country became a welfare state under Saddam. If you cared about your well-fare, you towed the line or died. The state did your thinking and your bidding. Want a job? Pledge allegiance to the Ba?ath party. Want an apartment, a car, etc? Show loyalty. Electricity, water, sewage, etc. was paid by the state. Go with the flow: life is good. Don't and you're dead. Now, what does that do to initiative? drive? industry?

So, we come along and lock up sugar daddy and give these people the toughest challenge in the world, FREEDOM. You want a job? Earn it! A house? Buy it or build it! Security? Build a police force, army and militia and give it to yourself. Risk your lives and earn freedom. The good news is that millions of Iraqis are doing just that, and some pay with their lives. But many, many are struggling with freedom (just like East Germans, Russians, Czechs, etc.) and they want a sugar daddy, the U.S.A., to do it all. We refuse. We don't want to be plantation owners. We make it clear we are here to help, not own or stay. They get mad about that, sometimes.

Nonetheless, in Faluja, the supposed hotbed of dissent in Iraq, countless Iraqis tell our psyopers they want to cooperate with us but are afraid the thugs will slit their throats or kill their kids. A bad gang can do that to a neighborhood and a town. That's what is happening here.

2) We have a battle hand-off going on here. The largest in recent American history. The Army is passing the baton to the Marines in this area. There is uncertainty among the populace and misinformation being given out by the bad guys. As a result there is insecurity and the bad guys are testing the resolve of the Marines and indirectly you, the American people. The bad guys are convinced that Americans have no stomach for a long haul effort here. They want to drive us out of here and then resurrect a dictatorship of one kind or another.

Okay, what do we do? Stay the course. The Marines will get into a battle rhythm and, along with other forces and government agencies here, they will knock out the crack houses, drive the thugs across the border and set the conditions for the Falujans to join the freedom parade or rot in their lack of initiative. Either way, the choice will be theirs. The alternative? Turn tail, pull out and leave a power vacuum that will suck in all of Iraq's neighbors and spark a civil war that could make Rwanda look like a misdemeanor.

Hey, America, don't go weak kneed on us: 585 dead American's made an investment here. That's a whole lot less than were killed on American highways last month. Their lives are honored when we stay the course and do the job we came to do; namely, set the conditions for a new government and empower these people to be the great nation they are capable of being.[/i]

The American burden.
- 11:58:53 AM

Al Jazeera lies about and works with insurgents against the Coalition

04.21.04 (7:43 pm)   [edit]
If you take Al-Jazeera seriously, if you quote it and use it to justify your hatred of the US and the "occupation", then you are no better than the terrorists themselves. You don't care about the truth-- you are actively working against not only the US, but the freedom of the Iraqi people.

This mean you, left-wing bloggers.

[b]The Al Jazeera Effect
How the Arab TV network's coverage of the Coalition is influencing opinion in Iraq. [/b]
by Robert D. Alt
04/21/2004 12:00:00 AM
Weekly Standard

THE PAST TWO WEEKS have witnessed an increase not only in anti-Coalition activity, but also in anti-Coalition sentiment among Iraqis. The majority of Iraqis still appear to support the Coalition, however this negative creep in public opinion has the potential to threaten that, and thereby may be far more detrimental to the long-term effort in Iraq than the recent series of failed insurgencies. While it is difficult to isolate a single cause, the shift in opinion does not appear to be motivated by either an increase in the popular mandate of Muktada al-Sadr's cause, or by any alliance of convenience between the Sunnis and Shias. Rather, it is a backlash--a visceral negative response to the perceived wrongs committed by the Coalition. It is, in other words, the Al Jazeera effect.

Following the Marine offensive in Falluja, Iraqi journalists began grilling Coalition officials at nearly every briefing as to why Americans were targeting women and children, and why the Americans were punishing so many innocent Iraqis for the wrongs committed by the few who desecrated the bodies in Falluja. [b]Coalition spokesman Dan Senor and Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt explained that the Coalition is not executing a campaign of collective punishment, is targeting only those who had demonstrated themselves to be violently anti-Coalition, and is following strict rules of engagement and stringent policies concerning the use of force. But these assurances fell on deaf ears.[/b] The journalists had seen the purported proof of the Coalition's barbarity:[b] they had watched satellite networks like Al Jazeera
and Al Arabia.[/b]

Upon modest examination, however, the evidence of Coalition inhumanity turns out to be a combination of half-truths and no-truths. For example, these networks reported that the Coalition dropped a JDAM on a mosque in Falluja. This much is true, [b]however many news sources failed to report why the bomb was dropped, or incorrectly stated that the action was unprovoked. In reality, anti-Coalition forces had overtaken the mosque, and were using the high ground of the minarets to fire on Coalition forces. The bomb was dropped to permit the Marines to breach one side of the mosque, and thereby to return order. By omitting any reference to the gunmen in the mosque, media outlets were able to neatly transform an act of self-defense on the part of the Marines into a purported violation of the Geneva Convention.[/b]

THE MORE GENERAL CLAIMS of Coalition forces targeting women and children likewise have been supported by a hodge-podge of unreliable and largely unsubstantiated evidence. First, there have been reports of extraordinarily high body counts, always followed with the assertion that most of the dead are women and children. [b]But there has yet to be a single count confirmed by an independent agency, such as the Iraqi Ministry of Health. The Marines have vehemently denied that the majority are women and children, saying that they have taken due care to avoid collateral injuries. This denial, needless to say, gets little attention in the local media.[/b]

The most damning evidence of Coalition forces targeting civilians comes in the form of eyewitness accounts, and pictures of the dead and wounded from the scene. However, even assuming the veracity of the witnesses, this evidence tells us little more than that women and children were hurt or killed, without clarifying [b]who committed the acts, or why they were committed.[/b] This is because many of the eyewitnesses only claim to have seen the injured or dead, but not the shooting or the shooter. [b]For example, an American reporter relayed to me what she thought was convincing evidence that the Coalition was targeting civilians. An eyewitness from Falluja informed her that his relative was shot in the streets by a sniper. The witness claimed that the shooter must have been a member of the Coalition, because the Coalition controlled all the high ground. But this premise was untrue: anti-Coalition forces had been using the minarets of mosques--the highest ground in the city--to conduct attacks. While there are some sophisticated snipers among the insurgents, many insurgents don't bother with